Bad Country: A Novel by CB McKenzie Read Free Book Online Page A

man.”
    Not that I asked you where you were, pal. The deputy grinned. But I already did call up to Show Low and got you resided in Kiva Inn on Deuce of Clubs Road most of that week. Motel clerk up there said you was some drunk up there too, pal. What’s with that?
    Relatives.
    You know what they say, pal. Everything’s relatives.
    They get anything off that piece of blue plastic they found on the scene?
    Butcher’s apron. Victim’s blood was all that was on it though.
    Sheriff leave anything for me? Rodeo asked.
    Nope. Came by this morning and then left but didn’t mention you at all, pal. Are y’all dating or something?
    Rodeo ignored the dig. Where was Ray headed? he asked.
    Going to a job fair in Scottsdale to try and recruit us some new hands. The deputy shook his head dramatically. But even an infamous used car salesman like Apache Ray Molina ain’t gonna have no luck with that pitch since working for Los Jarros County Sheriff’s just too hard a job for too low a pay these days like everybody knows.
    Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be on the side of the Law, Pal.
    Rodeo left the courthouse and bought a few groceries from Safeway then drove back to his casita and shot his guns for a while. When he was tired of killing tin cans and scaring rabbits, he put some beans to soak in a cast-iron lid skillet on his propane stove and then took a long siesta. Late in the afternoon he got up and poured the soakwater off the beans and started cooking the beans in fresh water with some hogback and then studied gun bibles for a while as he listened to his mother’s LPs, mostly opera neither he nor she had ever understood. When the heat of the day had dissipated, Rodeo put on a pair of ragged gym shorts from his Ranger College days and a pair of old Chuck Taylors and jogged from his house down Elm Street to the Agua Seco Road with the dog lagging behind him. On the way back Rodeo stopped at the pile of concrete building blocks from which yellow crime scene tape now fluttered in shreds. He stood for a minute staring at the killing spot, then he sprinted the last quarter mile to his house where he sat on the side steps of his casita until his breath and the dog returned.
    Rodeo fed and watered the dog and gave him his vitamins and medicines. He pulled the bean pot off the stove and let it sit while he took a short tepid shower, then he re-dressed in Wranglers and a white T-shirt and ate his dinner, drank one Tecate and then spent the rest of the evening reloading spent shotgun shell hulls at his workbench. At ten o’clock he took a spoonful of Eagle Brand for dessert, then brushed his teeth at the kitchen sink and read the Bible in bed until he fell asleep.
    *   *   *
    The next day Rodeo got up well before dawn, took a sink bath, dressed in tub-washed, line-dried clothes, packed a big duffel including the ten-gauge riot gun with rubber ordnance, the Colt .357 revolver in a perforated leather sidearm holster, a two-shot derringer in a chamois-lined ankle holster, ammo, a Kevlar vest, metal and plastic handcuffs, two Tasers and an adjustable neck brace and stowed these all in the stainless-steel gear box of his truck. Rodeo also carried away from his casita a pair of creased Wrangler bootcuts and two heavy-starched Larry Mahan snap-button shirts on hangers and in plastic dry-cleaning bags, a tooled leather belt with RODEO embossed on the back and his Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association National Finals trophy buckle on the front, a pair of alligator Luccheses and his 100X Beaver riding hat, both in plastic form-molded cases. Into his El Paso Saddleblanket Company saddlebags went his Toughbook laptop, an assortment of regional maps, his camera, eavesdropping and recording gear, binoculars, pepper spray, a sap, a Tony Hillerman and a Little Green New Testament. In his toiletries kit was a chunk of Ivory in a silver-plated soap travel dish, Crest and a toothbrush, a twenty-tooth comb and a bottle of Porter’s Lotion.
    Rodeo