LITMIR.BIZ

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he said. “You handed the gun to Roy and he said, ‘Like we agreed?’ Like a question. What did that mean?”

      “Oh,” she said. “When Roy an’ I were talking about this, we agreed early on. We’d share in everything. All the fame, and all the blame. There wouldn’t be no killin’ that was just done by one of us.”

      Stan closed his eyes. Whenever he did that, it was like he was seeing tiny flashbulbs going off behind his eyelids. When he heard the bedroom door open, he opened his eyes. He saw Roy’s shadow in the doorway and tried to sit up. Laurel pushed him back down. “Like I said, honey,” she smiled down at him as Roy approached the bed, “we share everything.”

      Keller walked into the office the next morning. Angela came out of the back at the sound of the bell. “Anything?” she said.

      “Yeah,” Keller said. “I need you to find me any info you can get on this Randle guy Laurel Marks was hanging out with. She may have been living with him.”

      “Okay,” she said. “I’ll put Oscar on it.”

      Keller had picked up a phone book and was thumbing through the R’s. He looked up. “Oscar?” he said.

      “Yeah. I’ve been teaching him records searches. Criminal records checks, Register of Deeds, stuff like that.”

      “It’s something to do,” Oscar Sanchez said as he hobbled out of the back office. There was a touch of bitterness in his voice as he said, “Since I can no longer work as a laborer.”

      “Well, hell,” Keller said. “You didn’t want to do that, anyway, right? It was just a way to earn a few bucks.”

      Sanchez nodded, his face still glum. He sat down at the computer.

      “Lot more future here in working with your brain, Oscar,” Keller said.

      Oscar looked up and smiled sadly. “Oh, si” he said. “Oscar Sanchez, Private Eye. I can see it now.” He turned back to the computer. “You forget, I am illegal. I can only rise so high.”

      “I’m going to get the mail,” Angela said abruptly. She walked out the front door, banging it slightly.

      Oscar looked at the door and sighed. Keller took a seat at the desk. “Things aren’t going too well, I see. With Angela.”

      Sanchez was silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “I do not know. Things were well for us at first, but after… after I was shot…” He trailed off and rubbed his face wearily. “I cannot sleep. I keep seeing what happened in my mind. I feel angry all the time, even when there is no need.” He bowed his head. “I am not the same man I was, Jack,” he said softly. “I do not know how to be that man again.”

      Keller crouched down beside Sanchez’s chair. “Oscar,” he said. “Look at me.” Sanchez looked up.

      “When I was in the army,” Keller said, “I and the men with me got lost in the desert. A helicopter…I never saw it, but it had to be one of the ones on our side…mistook us for an enemy. They fired a missile at us. Every one of my men was killed.”

      Sanchez looked at him soberly. “How did you survive?”

      Keller grimaced. “Dumb luck,” he said. “I had walked off to take a piss. If I hadn’t, I’d have died, just like them. I saw them bum, Oscar. I heard them screaming.” He stood up and put his hand on Sanchez’s shoulder. “For years after that,” he said, “I couldn’t sleep. I was angry all the time. Then I went through anger, to the point where there was nothing left. I was a dead man, Oscar, except I was still walking around.”

      “So what changed?”

      Keller looked out the window. “I found someone who cared about me.”

      “Angela.” Sanchez’s face was expressionless. “Yeah,” Keller said. “She gave me a job, and I found out I liked it. And she liked me. For someone who’d spent a lot of time not being able to stand himself, that was pretty amazing.”

      “I have wondered…well, I know you have been together for a long time. I have wondered why…you and Angela…”

      Keller shook his head. “It’s complicated. I guess we just decided we were good as friends. As lovers we’d be a disaster for each other. Too much baggage.”

      Sanchez looked confused at the idiom. “Too much bad stuff in our lives,” Keller explained. “Anyway, don’t worry on that account.”

      Sanchez smiled. “I wasn’t worried. Exactly.”

      “Okay,” Keller said. “Look, Oscar, a friend of mine has been helping me out with this stuff. A doctor. You want me to…”

      Sanchez’s face had clouded over. “I have no money for a doctor.”

      “Well, now you’ve got a job. I mean maybe—”

      “No, Jack,” Oscar said, then he smiled again. “I’ll be fine. Knowing I have friends…that helps.”

      “Okay,” Keller said. “You’ve got my cell. If you find out anything, let me know.”

      “You need it today?”

      “Soon as you can get it,” Keller said. “But I’m going to Fayetteville to see Marie tonight. Let me know if there’s some reason to believe they’re going to make a run for it. Otherwise,” He smiled. “I’m taking the night off.”

      Sanchez arched an eyebrow at him. “Es verdad?” He said. “This is a change for you, no?”

      Keller smiled. “Maybe so.”

CHAPTER FOUR

      Stan awoke dry-mouthed and shivering, even though it was warm in the tiny bedroom. Laurel and Roy were gone. He pulled the thin blanket over himself and curled into a fetal position. The night before was coming back to him. Without the distance imparted by the drugs, he felt filthy, soiled.

      The door opened. Laurel came in, holding a glass of orange juice in one hand and a fat joint in the other. “Morning, sleepyhead,” she said.

      Stan sat up. He didn’t speak. Laurel slid onto the bed next to him and handed him the glass. He wanted to move away from her but there was no room on the bed. Besides, he was so thirsty. He drained half the juice in one swallow. Laurel snuggled closer to him. “You were great last night,” she whispered.

      Stan shuddered. He drained the rest of the juice, then slid away from her to sit on the opposite edge of the bed. He dropped the glass to the floor and put his head in his hands. He heard the sound of a cigarette lighter flicking, then the sharp tang of pot smoke filled his nostrils. He looked back at Laurel. She was sitting up in the bed, looking at him calmly. She took a drag on the joint, held the smoke in, and passed it to him. He looked at it for a moment. He didn’t want it, but he suddenly desperately wanted that distance, that fuzziness around everything, especially his recent memories. He took the joint and inhaled.

      “I know you’re a little freaked out right now,” she said. “You done things you never thought you’d do. But Stan, that’s kind of the point. That’s freedom, Stan. That’s learning that there ain’t no rules anymore.”

      The familiar buzz was coming back, the surge of energy, the feeling of power. The joint, Stan realized, was laced with the meth. He didn’t care anymore. He took another pull. “He hurt me,” he said sullenly. “You hurt me.”

      She slid over and put her hands on his shoulders. “I know, baby,” she said softly. “But that’s part of it, too. It’s like you’re being born again. Like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. And that hurts some. But you got to learn to live with the pain, Stan. You got to rise above it. You got to not mind it.”

      Stan shook his head. He couldn’t seem to track what Laurel was saying. It sounded like gibberish to him. Maybe it was gibberish. He

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