"She's never heard his voice before. I'll find a half dozen other peckerwoods and do a voice lineup."
"She marked him with the cigarette lighter. That should be enough."
"It's a start. Why don't you relax? You remind me of a lizard panting on top of a hot rock."
"You'd better get him off the street, Sheriff."
"I think your mama put you outdoors before the glue was dry, son. I really do," he replied.
A half hour later, after the sheriff had gone, Temple walked out of the emergency room. Her clothes were wrinkled and grimed with dirt, her hair in disarray.
"Give a girl a ride?" she said.
"You okay?"
"Sure," she said.
"Let me talk to the doctor first," I said.
She stepped close to me and leaned her forehead against my shoulder. I could smell the damp odor of earth and decayed leaves in her hair and clothes. "Take me home, Billy Bob," she said.
I opened the truck door for her and drove down Broadway toward her motel. The sky was blue, the snow melted from the trees now, the streets glistening and wet in the sunshine. It was a beautiful day, but Temple's eyes were disconnected from the world around her.
"Say it again. How did y'all find me?" she said.
"Somebody at the health club saw a man drive your Explorer away. I called the sheriff and he put an APB on it. A highway patrolman called in and said he'd seen a vehicle like yours headed west through Alberton Gorge. The sheriff got a helicopter and we took off."
"You could see the Explorer from the air?"
"Yeah, that's about it."
Her gaze was turned inward, as though she were adding up numerical sums.
"If they'd parked the Explorer in the trees, y'all would have flown right over me," she said.
"I guess we would have," I said.
She took a breath and pushed her hair back off her forehead.
"I don't think I'm going to sleep for a long time," she said.
I walked with her into her motel room, then left while she showered and changed. I drove down to a fast-food restaurant and ordered fried chicken and french-fried potatoes and a milk shake to go. When I returned to the motel, Temple opened the door on the night chain, her.38 hidden behind her leg.
"It's only me," I said, and tried to smile.
She slipped the chain and let me in and placed her revolver on a table by the door. She had put on makeup and a fresh pair of jeans and a blouse with flowers on it, but her eyes would not meet mine and her breath hung in her throat, as though the air were tainted and might injure her lungs.
"Don't you want to eat something?" I asked.
"Not now."
"Those tar mules down in Coahuila set a field on fire with me in the middle of it," I said. "I would have burned to death if L.Q. hadn't pulled me up on his horse. I still have nightmares about it. But that's all they are, nightmares."
She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked into space.
"Why did they give me the air hose? Why did they want to keep me alive?" she said.
"To make both of us suffer."