Page 62 of Three-Inch Teeth

“SON OF A bitch,” Dallas Cates said, spitting out the words. “Someone took our sign down.”

“What sign?” Bobbi Johnson asked sleepily from the backseat. She’d dozed off once it got dark and was slumped against Axel Soledad’s shoulder. Cates saw her scramble back into her place once she realized what she’d done. Cates admired her discomfort in the rearview mirror.

The interior of the pickup reeked of broken fruit, the odor emanating from the device in the bed of the vehicle. They should have cleaned it thoroughly after leaving Powell, Cates thought.

“What’s the sign say now?” Johnson asked.

“Now it says BLUE SKY LLAMAS,” Cates said from behind the wheel. “What the fuck is that all about?”

“I hate llamas,” Lee Ogburn-Russell said from the passenger seat. “They look stupid and they spit at you.”

“Everybody hates fucking llamas,” Cates said, his mood suddenly black.

The compound in which he’d grown up was largely concealed by the dark, but Cates still knew every inch of it. The main two-story house; the four-stall garage, where his father, Eldon, had parked his service pump truck; the guesthouse, where his brother Bull and Bull’s wife, Cora Lee, had lived; the original log cabin homestead house that had once been filled with saddles and other outfitting gear; the corral where Dallas had learned to ride wild bucking horses; the deep hole on the edge of the property where his mother, Brenda, had imprisoned Liv Romanowski before she was Liv Romanowski.

All that could be seen of it now, as Cates steered under the arch and his headlights painted the sagebrush on the side of the dirt road, were some yellow lights at the main house and a single blue pole light in front of the garage.

“So this is where you grew up?” Johnson said to Cates.

“It is.”

“Who lives here now?”

“No idea. It went into foreclosure after they killed and crippled my mom and dad, and somebody must have bought it.”

“Llama ranchers,” Soledad said from the backseat. His tone was more provocative than Cates appreciated at the moment. “Llama ranchers bought it.”

Cates was miffed by the idea that strangers, llama ranchers, now lived in his family house. It was just one more humiliation on top of a mountain of them.

Cates felt a bolt of anger, like a lightning strike, arc through his chest. It was the same feeling he used to have when he dropped down into the chute onto his saddle and grasped the rope and settled in for the ride. That anger, directed then not only at the bucking horse but his competitors, had been his rocket fuel.

“When I get to the house,” he said, “I want all of you to stay here inside. I don’t want to spook the people living in my house any more than I need to. I’ll let you know when the coast is clear.”

“Let us know if you need any help,” Soledad said, leaning forward and patting Cates on the shoulder.

“I won’t, I suspect,” Cates replied.

*

HE PARKED IN front of the house and got out and waited for the interior pickup lights to douse. Cates didn’t want the occupants inside the house to see how many people were in the vehicle. When the inside of the truck went dark, he turned toward the structure. He could see by the glow of the interior lights that the wooden porch had been painted white and that the old rocking chairs Eldon and Brenda used to sit in on warm summer evenings had been replaced by a Peloton bike. Cates was disgusted.

He assumed the people inside the house must have seen him coming. The sight lines from the compound to the road were treeless and vast. It was a long driveway from the arch, and his headlights were the only thing out there. No one had ever sneaked up on the Cates family, especially at night. Brenda kept a shotgun near the front door if anyone ever tried.

But the porch light didn’t click on as Cates approached the front door, and nobody looked out the windows at him.

He strode up the porch steps and rapped twice on the door.

There were tentative footfalls inside and then the porch light went on. Cates took two steps back so he could be seen clearly and appear nonthreatening. Then he manufactured a smile on his face and waited.

The door opened about eight inches and a woman looked out. She was thin, angular, and birdlike. Late thirties or early forties, wearing yoga pants and an oversized T-shirt. Her legs were like sticks and she wore flats that hugged her feet. She had short blond hair, a pair of readers pushed up on her head, and a multitude of plastic and leather bracelets on her thin wrist supporting a multitude of causes, he guessed. Beads of perspiration dotted at her hairline and she was flushed and mildly out of breath.

Obviously, she’d been working out. That was why she hadn’t seen them drive up.

She looked at him with suspicion. “Are you lost?”

“I hope not,” Cates said, maintaining his grin. “I’m out here looking for property and I understand that this place is for sale.”

“For sale?” she said. Then: “No. It’s not for sale. I don’t know where you heard that.”

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