Read Online The Final Country by James Crumley - Free Book Online

spring, down there in the park. The cops know that much from Annette’s answering machine tape…”
    “The cops?”
    “Two days later they found her body stuffed under a ledge above the spring,” Molly said, nodding toward the sleeping dog, “and Ellie was sitting beside her. Maybe she’d never been lost at all.
    “The son of a bitch had… he had raped and killed Annette… he had tortured her, raped her, killed her, then, my God, the son of a bitch cut her head off… they never found her head… we had to bury her without a goddamned head…” Then Molly paused again, heaved a great breath, then let the rest gush out. “My mother couldn’t take it. Six weeks later, she hanged herself.”
    “Jesus,” I said. “What can I say?” Both my parents had been suicides, so I had some idea of the confusion and guilt it caused.
    But Molly was already moving away, back to the bathroom, leaving the dog and me in the pitiless moonlight.
    And when she came back, she came back into my arms. Naked. Just as she was supposed to. Whispering against my neck, “Don’t say anything.”
    * * *
    Nobody ever knows how much is only real for the moment. Or how much is real forever. Maybe the momentary is all we’ll ever know, the woman open beneath you, her lips wild with laughter, or riding high over you, her tears like hot wax on your chest. Molly was muscular and willing and lovely, and there were moments when I felt as if I might die, and moments when I knew I’d live forever. And even worse, a moment when I convinced myself that I was doing the right thing, somehow giving support and comfort to this woman.
    * * *
    Afterward, we leaned again on the rail over the dark wrinkles of the hollow, ice ringing like tiny bells in our glasses, the moon still molten, but the wind had shifted to the southeast, suddenly warm in our faces, our sweat unslaked.
    “I never lived any place where you could work up a sweat in November,” I said. “Just standing still.”
    “I’ve never lived any place where piss froze before it hit the ground,” she said.
    “Maybe I made that part up,” I admitted.
    “I thought so,” she said.
    “But no matter how cold it is,” I said, “you can always put more clothes on.” Then I paused. “But I’ve never figured out how to take enough clothes off when it’s hot down here.” Then I paused again, turned to face her, touched the dark stone on her chest. “What’s this?”
    “The only thing my mother left me,” she said quietly. “It’s called the Shark of the Moon.”
    I looked more closely. The golden band no longer looked irregular now that I could see the snouts, dorsal fins, and tails of the golden sharks circling the dark pool of the stone. And etched faintly in the center I could feel another.
    “So what the hell do you want from me?”
    “Believe me. I’ve tried everything. I can’t get anybody to help. Not the cops. Not the most desperate and sleaziest PIs. Hell, I even tried to put an ad in Soldier of Fortune, but they wouldn’t take it. So it’s up to you, Milo. And as Mattie Ross said, ‘I hear you have true grit.’ “
    Jesus, I thought as I tried to remember if John Wayne got laid in that movie, she’s pulling out all the stops. “I’m guessing here, but I’ll bet you want to put an ad in the paper about a lost dog in Blue Hole Park, right? And you hope the same bastard will answer it?”
    “I’m meeting him at ten o’clock this morning,” she said, “on the same overlook where he took my sister…”
    “What makes you think it’s the same guy?”
    “I knew it in my bones,” she said, “when I heard his voice over the telephone. I fucking knew it.”
    “You cut it pretty close.”
    She reached into the chest of drawers and pulled out a Glock 20.
    “You know, I’ve yet to meet a woman in Texas who doesn’t carry a piece,” I said. “It doesn’t have a safety, it doesn’t have a blow back lock, and the FBI thinks it’s perfect.”
    “They gave me a