The blow came without any warning and pitched him across two rows of corn and down on his stomach. He didn't know exactly what had happened, but the other guy was right there, and Lucas got the impression of size and red socks and heavy boots and thought one thing: hold on to the gun, hold on to the gun.
He rolled, unsure of whether he'd been shot or punched, his face on fire, blood on his hands, and he saw legs and felt another blow on his thigh. He was losing it, he thought, and he dropped the safety on the.45 and pulled the trigger, blindly, hoping to freeze the other man just for a second, just long enough to get a break.
And it worked; the other man lurched away with the explosion and Lucas caught sight of his lower body ten feet away, turned, and screamed, "I'll fuckin' kill you, stop…"
The other man ran and Lucas rolled and fired a second shot, at knee level, missed, but the other man suddenly stopped and shouted, "I quit. I quit. Don't shoot."
Lucas was on his feet now, blood streaming out of his nose and onto his shirt and suit; pain surged through his face and down his neck.
"Get the fuck over here," he told the big man. "Get the fuck over here and get down on your fuckin' knees, get down on your fuckin' knees…"
And he heard Youngie, some distance away. "Davenport, Davenport.
"Over here, over here…"
The other man was down on his knees, his back toward Lucas, his hands webbed behind his head. He'd done this before.
"Look at me, Charlie," Lucas said.
"Look at you, who?" the other man said. He was overweight and block-headed and going bald and thick through the shoulders and arms, like a bench-press freak. He turned just his head. "Who the fuck is Charlie?"
LUCAS, STILL BLEEDING, held the man as he heard Youngie thrashing up through the field. "This way," he shouted.
Youngie pushed through the corn, pistol pointed at the sky, looked wide-eyed at Lucas and the kneeling man. "What happened? You shot?"
"Naw, he hit me in the nose. Goddamn it, it hurts. It's busted. Could you put some cuffs on this asshole? I'm leaking all over my suit."
They got the big guy on his feet and his hands cuffed, and Lucas put the.45 away, the stock all sticky with his blood. The guy's wallet was chained to his belt, and Youngie jerked it off the chain, flipped it open, looked at the driver's license. "Bobby Clanton, Albert Lea."
"I want a lawyer," Clanton said.
"Fuck you," said Lucas. He shoved Clanton in the direction of the barn. "Walk." To emphasize the order, he kicked Clanton in the ass, and Clanton stumbled and almost went down.
"You need a doctor," Youngie said to Lucas.
"Yeah, yeah. They're gonna push a goddamn stick up my nose and that's gonna hurt worse than it does now…" He kicked Clanton in the ass again.
YOUNGIE HAD SENT THE TWO young cops after the fourth man, and had called in a half dozen more on-duty deputies. "We'll get more in here as soon as I can find the people," he said. "I'm hoping the other two will hunker down in that field long enough that we can get some guys spotting the roads. If they get out of the field, they'll be hard to track. They can be five miles away in an hour, if they can run."
"Where's the lab? You said meth lab?" Lucas asked.
"Yeah, I could smell it, but I didn't look. The barn, I think. We've had a rash of them."
"Manufacture of a controlled substance, resisting arrest, assault on a cop. I bet we can get Bobby fifteen years in Stillwater, if he doesn't have any priors. If he's got priors, then, whoops, I guess it's gonna be bye-bye," Lucas said. He kicked Clanton in the ass a third time.
Clanton staggered, caught himself, looked at Youngie, "You always torture your suspects?"
"Fuck you," Youngie said, but when Clanton was turned back toward the barn, he looked at Lucas and shook his head: no more ass kicking. Lucas nodded, touched the side of his nose. Everything felt solid, but there was an arcing pain when he pushed left to right, familiar from his hockey and uniform days. Maybe not busted, but cracked. He was still bleeding, bubbling blood, spitting, wiping his chin.
WHEN THEY GOT BACK to the farmyard, they put Clanton face-down on a patch of grass and then Youngie said, "Got another one." Down the hill, the two young cops were marching the fourth man out of the cornfield. Then another sheriff's car, leaving a plume of gravel dust behind it, turned in at the drive and Youngie said, "Keep an eye on Bobby; I'll put these guys on the road."
LUCAS SAT ON THE GRASS next to Clanton and tipped his head back, sniffing against the leaking blood."You better talk to us, Bobby," he said. Blood trickled into his mouth and he spit again. Clanton didn't reply.
Lucas dabbed at his face with his knuckles, trying to keep the blood off his suit. "You better talk, Bobby, because you are in some serious shit. Look at me. You're gonna be as old as I am when you get out of Stillwater. You're gonna spend your young life in a cell the size of a fucking Volkswagen. You need me to go to court and tell them you cooperated."
Nothing.
Lucas: "You think you're tough. Maybe you are. I give you that. But you're stupid, too. Think how long it's been since last summer,everything you've done since then. Think about being locked up for fifteen times that long. Think about being locked up forever, if we put you with Charlie Pope."
Clanton twitched. Lucas turned his head down just for a second, snorted blood, but saw that Clanton had started to cry. "Better talk, Bobby."
YOUNGIE CAME BACK with a big gauze first-aid pad and said, "Here. You're still bleeding." Lucas took it as another cop car pulled into the yard. "We'll start pushing the field as soon as we have enough people."
Lucas said, "Ah," through the pad.
The two young cops arrived with the fourth man and put him on the grass a few yards from Clanton. "You shot?" one of them asked Lucas.
"Nuh-uh," Lucas said. The fire in his face was transforming itself into a first-class headache.
"Got punched in the face by the fat guy," Youngie said. He looked down at the fourth man. "Who's this asshole?"
"Sandy Martin, cousin to one of the Martin brothers. Says he doesn't know anything about a meth lab, he just came up to check the farmhouse."
"Must be why he ran when he saw us coming," Youngie said.
"Goddamn this hurts," Lucas said.
The two cops from the new car came over and one asked Lucas, "You shot?"
YOUNGIE AND THREE of the other cops cleared the barn. Lucas and the youngest of the deputies sat on the lawn next to the captives. "Take it easy in there," Lucas said, as the cops went in with drawn guns.
THEY WERE BACK OUT in ten minutes. Youngie, positively cheerful, said, so Clanton and Martin could hear him, "My, my, my. That's the biggest and best meth lab I've ever seen. And I've seen a few. Bobby, Sandy, if I were you guys, I would do anything I could to cut down the time, because right now, you're gonna do a stretch in Stillwater and then the feds are gonna want to talk to you."
"I want a fuckin' lawyer," Clanton said.
"I didn't do anything, I was just here to check the property," Martin wailed.
"Not giving us any help at all, are they?" Youngie said to Lucas. "I mean, we put them with Charlie Pope, that'd be a murder charge to go with the drugs."
Silence, then "Who the fuck is Charlie Pope?" Clanton asked. His face was still wet with tears. "This asshole"-he jerked his head at Lucas-"called me Charlie. Who the fuck is he?"
"You don't read the newspaper or watch TV?" Lucas said. "The guy who raped and killed a girl and then raped and killed a guy and killed the guy's little boy? That guy?"
Clanton was baffled. "That guy? What does that guy got to do with us?"
"We know Charlie hung out here," Lucas said. His whole face hurt when he talked. "His mom says so."
Clanton arched his back to get his head up out of the dirt. "Not since we been here. Maybe he worked with the Martins, but I don't know no Charlie Pope."
Lucas turned his head to Sandy Martin. "Is that right? He hung with you guys?"
"I can't believe this," Martin said. "I was just stopping off before I went fishing."
"The guys who ran… we believe one of them was Charlie Pope," Youngie said. "Look, we're gonna get them. All that plastic in the barn, all that is perfect for fingerprints. We got clothes and a couple of trucks. So tell us… what's their names? If one of them isn't Charlie Pope…"
"Ah, fuck you," Clanton said. He snorted once, then said something else.
"What?"
"Sean McCollum and Mike Benton, that's who that is," he said. "You'll get all their stuff anyway. Isn't no Charlie Pope."
"Where are the Martins?" Lucas asked.
"Alaska, I guess," Clanton said. "They rented us this place, and they went to Alaska. They aren't coming back until November."
"How long you been here?" Youngie asked.
"Since March," Clanton said. Then, "I want a fuckin' lawyer. I ain't sayin' no more, but there wasn't no fuckin' Charlie here."
Lucas turned back to Sandy Martin: "Is that right? The brothers are up in Alaska?"
"I can't prove it, but they said they were going there," Martin said. "They bought a new truck for the trip."
"And you never meet Charlie Pope."
After a moment of silence, Martin said, "Look, I'm just watching the house, okay?"
Not a denial. Lucas looked at Youngie, who raised his eyebrows. "Sandy, this is a murder charge we're talking about here;" Lucas said. "You give Charlie Pope one ounce of cover, man, you're right in it with him."
Another moment of silence, then, "He was up here. A month ago."
"A month ago. With Bobby here?"
"Yeah." Martin looked uncomfortable.
"You're fuckin' lyin'," Clanton said. He was angry, turning to face down Martin. "You were talking," Martin said to him.
"You're full of shit, you little asshole," Clanton shouted."They're gonna find out…"
"He was here," Martin insisted. "He was that guy who walked up the hill, he had that bag of doughnuts…"
LUCAS WAS LOOKING at Clanton's face as he absorbed what Martin had said. His expression shifted from anger to confusion and then to disbelief. He said, "That retard? The retard with the smiley T-shirt?"
"That's him," Martin said.
"I didn't know who he was," Clanton said, lifting his head to look at Lucas. And, "We ran that asshole off. He wanted to pick beans or some shit. We told him we didn't have no fuckin' beans, and to go the fuck away."
Clanton told the story, and it was short: Pope had been at the farm-house for ten minutes, having hitchhiked out from Austin. When he found out there weren't any beans, he walked back down the hill with his bag of doughnuts.
"What's this about the doughnuts?" Youngie asked.
"It was like he thought he might be camping out,and he needed food, so he bought doughnuts," Martin said.
Clanton said, "He's a fuckin' retard. He can't be the guy who did all that shit. He walks around in a smiley shirt with a bag of doughnuts, for Christ's sake."
Lucas pressed the pad to his face and said, "Jesus."
THE DEPUTIES CLEARED the farmhouse and found a hundred and fifty gallons of agricultural precursor in the kitchen-so much for Sandy Martin's tale of checking the house. With cops all over the place, and no real information about Pope, Lucas decided to head back home. He washed his face in the farmhouse kitchen sink, got a new first-aid pad from Youngie, and climbed into his truck. "You oughta stop at the hospital," Youngie said.
"I'm only an hour and a half from home."
"There's gonna be a report, the gunshots…"
"You can do most of it. I'll either send you an affidavit or come down and talk to your county attorney, whatever you want… Now I just want to go home," Lucas said,
Youngie grinned: "Man, you look like shit."
"One of your guys already told me," Lucas said. He started the truck. "Thanks for the reminder."
THE DAY WASN'T QUITE DONE. He could feel his nose swelling, and blood still dribbled from one nostril. He stopped at a convenience store, paid five dollars for a bag of ice and some Ziploc bags to hold it, showed his ID to a gawking counter girl so she wouldn't call the cops, put a Ziploc bag on his face, and wheeled onto I-35.
Clanton, Lucas thought, had called Pope a retard. That was after a ten-minute acquaintance, if Clanton was to be believed. And Lucas believed him, on that much, anyway. Then he thought, What if Pope was really this sophisticated Cary Grant kindof guy who for years… He almost smiled to himself, but when he started to smile, pain arced down through his face.
That was Charlie Pope's fault, too.
HE SAW THE HIGHWAY PATROL car when he topped a hill. He went for the brake but knew it was too late: he could feel the radar waves passing through his nose. He was doing eighty-eight, and when the lights came up behind him, he pulled over. The patrol car idled in behind him, the patrolman calling in the Lexus's tag number. When the patrolman got out of his car, Lucas hung his ID out the window.
"Lucas Davenport, BCA,"Lucas called back to him.
The cop stepped closer, looked at Lucas's shirt, soaked with blood: "What the hell happened to you?"
"I busted a meth lab with the Mower County sheriff's guys about an hour ago. One of the dopers knocked me on my ass and broke my nose. You can call the Sheriff's Department, if you want to check."
The cop took Lucas's ID, looked at it, handed it back. "You know how fast you were going back there?"
"Yeah, yeah. Man, I'm just trying to get home," Lucas said. "I'm really messed up."
"Jeez, you're gonna have a shiner, Davenport," the patrolman said with great sincerity. "You look terrible."
"Thank you," Lucas said. "That makes it fuckin' unanimous."