James burst into his uncle's house and found Cassie sitting at the kitchen table, fidgeting.
"Where's your dad and my brother?" he said.
"In the bedroom, trying to help the guy," she said. "He's really taken a bad turn."
"Now listen to me, Cassie. I want you to go out on the front porch. Sit under the fan and stay there until you hear from me."
"Why?"
"Cause I said to."
"You don't give me orders."
"Not usually. But this is for your own good, you understand? Out."
Luke heard the commotion and emerged from the bedroom.
"What the hell's goin' on?" he asked.
"I got to talk to you and Bill, privately," James said.
"So come in the bedroom."
"Very privately."
Luke shook his head as if to say he didn't have time for this.
"Well, shit, Cassie, go on outside. This won't take long." Luke glanced back at his brother. "It better not take long."
She started to leave when Luke called her back.
"I got a better idea," he said pulling his keys from his pocket. "Take the truck and go to the 7-Eleven and bring us another two big bags of ice." He gave her the keys and 20 dollars and she skulked off.
Luke turned on James. "Now what the fuck's so important?"
James pointed back toward the bedroom. "That guy in there, he's a big-shot crime investigator from Vegas. They're huntin' everywhere for him. We are in deep shit."
Luke paled. "We better tell Bill."
James gasped when he walked into the bedroom and saw the man lying on the guest bed. His body was awash in sweat, salt-and-pepper hair matted to his scalp, drops of moisture clinging to his beard. His head rolled on his pillow, and his face contorted, as if he were suffering through nightmares. He was mumbling nonsense, totally out of his mind with a raging fever. His breath came so fast James thought the man might hyperventilate.
Zippered plastic bags of ice lay on against both sides of his neck, against the top of his shoulders. Others were jammed into his armpits, under his wrists, on his chest and in his groin, along and under his thighs and over his right ankle.
"He's delirious," Bill said. "Fever's 104 and rising. I'm trying to cool him down. I increased his antibiotics two days ago, but he just kept getting worse. He's got a hell of an infection somewhere, and I don't know how to attack it." He smacked his hands on his thighs and stood up. "Damn it, I told you boys that first night to drop him at a hospital. Now look what's happened."
"It's worse than you think," James said. "His name's Grissom. He's a hotshot crime investigator for the Clark County Sheriff's Office in Vegas. He disappeared in Pyramid Canyon that same day we were over there. The day we found him. Everybody's looking for him. We gotta get him outta here."
"Jesus," Bill said. "And where do you suggest we take him? We drop him off at the hospital now, and he gets well enough to talk, he knows my name. He knows Cassie. He knows you, Luke. We can't chance it."
"So what do you want us to do?" Luke asked.
"Just lemme think a minute," Bill said. "Lemme get a drink and think about it."
xxxxxxx
Twelve minutes after his phone call, Nick slid into the restaurant booth beside Sara.
"Got the SOBs," he said without preamble.
"What?" Brass said. Sara just turned and stared at Nick.
"You remember the DNA on the Jack Daniels bottle we found next to the dead elk?"
Sara and Brass nodded.
"Came back to the Brothers Blount of Henderson, big-game poachers," Brass said. "Except there are no Brothers Blount in Henderson."
"They moved," Nick said. "To Kingman, Arizona. Little independent tire dealer in Kingman…" he consulted his notes, "…uh, Sport Tires and More, usually deals in the low-end stuff. But the owner ordered a full set of the Goodrich T/As about two years ago for his cousin, Luke Blount, and mounted 'em on Luke's black Dodge Ram Mega-Cab. Gave him a family price. Said Luke's an AC contractor, in business with his brother James."
"Do we know where they live?" Sara asked.
"Got addresses on both of 'em, and on an uncle, a William Firth."
"Why's he important?" Sara asked.
"He used to be a doctor, a medical doctor. Until his wife died and he tried to find peace at the bottom of a bourbon bottle."
"What are we sitting here for?" Brass said.
"It's normally about a two-hour drive to Kingman," Nick said as they all got up and waited for Brass to throw some money on the table. I figure with lights and siren, we can be at the Arizona border in an hour. The Arizona state police will meet us there and escort us in the rest of the way. Local cops will take the two brothers' homes. We'll help take the uncle's. Given his past profession, that seems to be the most likely place to find Grissom."
Nick didn't add: "If he's still alive."
xxxxxxx
Firth's drinking and thinking were interrupted 30 minutes later by Cassie's return bearing two 10-pound sacks of ice.
"Some of those bags in the bedroom will need refreshing," Firth said. He made no move to help but replenished his drink, instead.
Luke threw one bag in the freezer and went into the bedroom with Cassie to add ice to the bags surrounding Grissom.
"What with the blood and the water, this mattress is ruined," Cassie said. "It's all soaked through the pads." She looked up at Luke as they busied themselves with the ice. "You gonna tell me what's going on?"
"No."
"Why? I have a right to know. This is my house, too."
"It's for your own good, Cassie. You ain't had no real part in this, at least not in the decisions we made. The less you know, the less trouble you're gonna be in."
Cassie stood up straight. "You know who he is, don't you?"
"Never mind what I know," Luke said. "Just go back outside. If it gets too hot, you can sit in my truck and run the AC."
Bill wandered in then, passing Cassie on her way out, and took his patient's temperature again. He shook his head. "It's still goin' up," he said.
"How high can it go?" James asked.
"Rule of thumb, in a normal healthy adult it gets potentially lethal at 104.9. He's about 104.2 now. Since he's so sick, he could have reached lethal for him already."
"Okay, look Bill, you got any bright ideas?"
Firth shook his head.
"Then I say we send Cassie off on another errand, load this guy in the back of my truck again, drive him way out in the desert and dump him," Luke said. "The sun'll take care of finishing him in a couple of hours, if that long. And we'll be clear."
"That's cold-blooded murder," Firth said, slightly slurring his words.
"If he stays here, can you save him?" Luke asked.
"Probably not."
"Then what's the argument?"
"Oh, shit. Oh, double-double shit," Firth said. He returned to the living room and sagged back into his chair. When he grabbed the bottle again, he didn't bother with the glass.
xxxxxxx
It took a while to convince Cassie to leave again. She had a bad feeling about it. Her instincts said if she left now the sick guy in the back bedroom would be gone when she returned, and chances were nobody would ever see him again. She wondered again who he was. Her cousins and her father obviously knew, though she had no clue how they found out.
She didn't even know the man, had hardly passed the time of day with him after that first time he woke up. But she had feelings for him. She felt badly for him. He had a life somewhere, and someone who loved him. Judging from that one dream she witnessed, he must love her back a great deal. Yet as things stood, they'd probably never see one another again, and it broke her heart to think about it. She liked love stories with happy endings. She fantasized about someday living one of her own.
She was pretty sure her cousins planned to dump him somewhere in the desert where his body might never be found. Those last hours of pain and loneliness and despair would be unbearable for him. But what about her, his wife? She would spend the rest of her days wondering what became of him, whether he was alive or dead, whether he suffered.
Cassie put her head in her hands and cried for a man whose name she didn't even know.
Then she got the keys for her father's car and left. She didn't even go to the patient's bedroom to say good-bye. She didn't think she could handle that.