Part 34 (2/2)

Chapter 25.

'Someone sure don't like you, Professor.'

Sheriff Brady Munn stood by the door of the hospital room at the Big Bend Regional Medical Center in Alpine just north of the U.S. Courthouse and Detention Center. Alpine is the county seat of Brewster County and twenty-one miles east of Marfa, but there is no hospital in Marfa. They had been run off the road in Presidio County, so Sheriff Munn had jurisdiction over the investigation.

'Billy Bob Barnett.'

'Well, h.e.l.l, podna, I wouldn't like you either, if you all but called me a murderer on the only radio station in town. That tends to p.i.s.s people off.'

'Sheriff, Nathan Jones was murdered. By Billy Bob.'

The sheriff grunted. 'I reckon you're right-about the murder. Billy Bob's still an open question.'

'Two of his goons followed us to Midland in a black pickup truck. I confronted them.'

'I take it that didn't go well.'

'It was less than cordial.'

The sheriff chuckled. 'I bet it was. Less than cordial.'

'And a dark pickup truck ran us off the road three hours later. It had to be them.'

The truck had forced Book off the road. He managed to keep the Harley upright through the prairie gra.s.s, until they hit a railroad track embankment. The bike stopped; they didn't. They both went flying. Book landed in a barbed-wire fence; he required only a teta.n.u.s shot, bandages, and a dozen st.i.tches in his forehead. Nadine flew over the fence, crashed through a mesquite bush, and landed hard in the desert; she broke her left arm and right leg and suffered lacerations on her legs and possibly a concussion. The crash helmet protected her head, the goggles her gla.s.ses and eyes, and the leather jacket her arms and torso from further cuts; but Book had not protected her as he had promised. It was just after eight the next morning, and she lay in the bed, medicated and asleep, with casts on her arm and leg and a white bandage wrapped around her head; she looked like a child. A monitor beeped with each beat of her heart. Book sat next to the bed, close enough to touch her face. The Harley now sat in the back of a Presidio County Sheriff's Department four-wheel-drive pickup truck in the parking lot at the sheriff's office.

'Mexican name of Pedro, got a shop south of the tracks, fixes cars,' the sheriff said. 'Knows motorbikes, too. You want s.h.i.+rley to drop your Harley over there?'

'I'll go with her. Before I leave my Harley with a stranger, I want to check him out.'

The sheriff grunted. 'Way my wife used to be with baby-sitters. So you got nothing on the truck? No make or model?'

'The bright lights blinded me. But it was them.'

'Well, that ain't exactly a positive ID, Professor. I need evidence. I can't go around kung-fu-ing everyone I meet. I'm the law. I gotta play by the rules.'

'It's tae-... Never mind.'

Nadine stirred and tried to move. Her eyes blinked open ... and focused on the white casts covering her arm and leg ... then moved around the hospital room ... the IV connected to her good arm ... the beeping monitors ... the sheriff ... and finally settled on Book. The realization came over her face. Tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

'Oh, Professor.'

Book wiped the tears from her face.

'Where am I?'

'The hospital in Alpine.'

A nurse stuck her head in and said, 'Sheriff, there's a call for you.'

The sheriff stepped outside. Nadine's eyes followed him out then returned to Book.

'You know what we learned last night, Professor?'

'What?'

'A, taekwondo doesn't work against a big truck. And B, they're not trying to scare us off anymore. Now they're trying to kill us.'

'That's not going to happen.'

He wiped her tears again.

'I'm afraid of life, so I'm hiding out in law school. Then you bring me out here on that Harley and now I'm in the hospital with a broken arm, a broken leg, bruises, contusions, a.s.sorted scratches, possible brain damage ... by the way, mesquite hurts.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Professor, has this kind of thing happened before?'

'It has.'

'Is that why Renee quit?'

'It is.'

'Why do you do it?'

'Alzheimer's.'

'You've got Alzheimer's?'

'My mother. Early-onset. She doesn't know who I am.'

She studied him a long moment.

'And you're afraid you'll get it early, too? So you take all those supplements and vitamins I saw in your bathroom, you eat organic and run at dawn and hope you don't win that genetic lottery.'

'My mother has one of the mutant genes that guaranteed she'd have Alzheimer's before age sixty-five. She was sixty-two when the symptoms started.'

'I didn't know there was such a gene.'

'There is. Three, actually. All it takes is one.'

Nadine dropped her eyes and did not look up when she asked, 'Professor ... do you have that mutant gene, too?'

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