Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) Read Online Free Page B

ketchup under
her nose and mouth. Like a movie. I went over to the guy and
stared at the hole in his chest. The blood running down his
ribs. Different blood.

    I looked up to say, "Miss, I'm gonna call-" She ran sideways past me, bumping past the rock.
    Then the car started up at the bottom of the canyon and
the tires popped over the gravel like firecrackers and I jumped.
    I must have stood there for a while, because five flies
landed on his chest, green as fake emeralds moving slowly
over his blood. I would lose my job over this asshole. I would
go to prison.
    His shoulder was sweaty and hot. I grasped it to see if the
bullet had gone through. It was gone. Went into the soft sand
that smelled of animal waste and creosote roots. I'd never
find it.
    I put the shoulder back down. I didn't look at the open
mouth. I didn't have time to go back to the ranch for a shovel.
I found a stick and started trying to dig in the damp sand
where the water had pooled long ago. Deep enough to keep
him from coyotes, was all I thought.
    A scraping above me, and granite pebbles falling.
    A pick slid down the steep hillside and landed a few feet
away. Homemade. Metal wired to a piece of crudely sanded
wood. Like someone had thrown an anchor overboard.
    Once it was all the way night, I thought that if he came my
way, down this trail that led to the east, to the golf course, I
would grab him, take the knife, cuff him, and keep my face
down. It was dark. He wouldn't see me.
    But he never came. He knew exactly where we were and
what we were doing.

    I'd slept, off and on, hearing small rustlings of rabbits and
birds in the darkness. Twice I heard metal scrape against rock.
One of the other men.
    The phantom hadn't gone toward the river, or the freeway, or the golf course. He was probably watching its, even
now at daybreak, when the sun rose over the Chino Hills and
the brush glittered with dew like glass shards.
    Kearney and George and the others came down the trail
and I fell in. We drank some water and ate some stuff they'd
packed, and then we fanned out to look for fresh signs. Footprints in the moisture, broken stems, all the things Kearney
had used for years to track Mexicans on the border. Mexicans
trying to swim up the rivers and walk over the desert. Beaners.
Wetbacks.
    I was out of breath. Hungry. Bending down so far my back
hurt, remembering the short-handled hoe my father keptthe one he'd brought from Red Camp and propped in the corner of the porch so he wouldn't forget it. He was awake, a few
miles away, brewing his coffee in the dented aluminum pot,
making sure the veladora was lit, looking out the window at
the pomegranate tree. He didn't know I was here-so close
to him.
    "Hey!" one of the deputies called softly.
    Fresh tracks.
    We followed for two miles, but we ended up at the mouth
of Brush Canyon. Kearney said he knew it all along. He and
two guys started up from the bottom, and George circled up
and worked his way down. I was behind him, and then one
guy hollered out, "There he is!"
    We looked down the steep canyon slope. A head popped
out of a heap of brush. Black curly hair covered with dust. He
was moving.

    Everybody drew their guns. I had mine aimed at his back.
His shirt was so tattered and patched it was like a weird quilt.
He had a knife. He had the pick. I'd left it there when I was
done. I'd wiped off my prints with my flannel shirt. His shirt
was even worse in front when he turned to see the rest of its.
    Don't look at me, I was thinking. Don't do it. Don't look
in my eyes and then start yelling about what happened.
    He was hunched over. I saw his face. He wasn't some little
mocoso. He was a grown man. But the sound he'd made, up in
Bee Canyon, when he heard the punch. The bones breaking.
He'd been beaten. I'm not through with you. That sound.
    But he had a knife. I couldn't move toward him, but if he
saw me and shouted, "No! I didn't kill him! He did it!" I'd
have to shoot