a good boy.”
Jimmy Bayles took in the Walmart Studio portrait and nodded appreciatively.
“Ah’m a big believer in family, mahself.”
Dominguez did not extend the repartee. They stood there in silence. Finally…
“You got my check?”
“Yes, indeedy, ah did.”
“Okay then.”
“Ah reckon ah best be puttin’ a wiggle on.”
And with that, Morgan sauntered back to his horse and made a clicking sound. The horse dropped his front legs on command and Morgan just stepped on without even having to put a boot in the stirrup. The horse then stood up on all fours—horse and rider casually loping down a game trail into the canyon. Jimmy Bayles stopped for a moment and looked back at Buster, then continued out of sight.
“What the hell was that about?”
“Ah really coont tell ya,” Buster said.
Dominguez let it go, turning attention to more important things.
“That’s a nice pile of guano you got there. Biggest one in the family.” He motioned for the other children to get out of the truck and help load it.
“We’ll use this load for the firing tonight,” said Dominguez. “Maybe I’ll even show you our family secret—that is, if you’re interested.”
“Sure,” Buster said, taking Dominguez’s offer as a sign of commendation. Cookie, overhearing the compliment from the truck, took it with a sigh of relief.
After dinner had been eaten, the plates washed, the carpet vacuumed, and the kitchen floor had been mopped with Spic ’n’ Span, the children were bid to bed. As the boys walked to the bunkhouse, Cookie Dominguez was suspiciously friendly to Buster. It wasn’t that he had stopped hating him, he still hated him. It was just that now he pitied him. He knew better than anyone what Buster was in for.
It was around 11:30 when Dominguez opened the door to the bunkhouse. He came and shook Buster awake.
“I’m doing a run of black octagonals. Come on.”
“Be raht there,” Buster said.
Dominguez left him to rub the sleep from his eyes. Ever so carefully, he shimmied down the side of the bunk bed so as not to wake his temperamental brother, but Cookie was only pretending to be asleep. He watched Buster go out the door and cross the garden, thankful that it wasn’t him that was being shown the family secret tonight. A few moments later, a huge explosion blew the windows out of the bunkhouse.
Sheriff Dudival arrived at the scene with a fire truck. The heat from the explosion of the giant propane tank turned the cinder block building into a pile of white ash—still pulsating with enough heat to melt the windshield of Dominguez’s truck. The children were huddled around their mother who was, understandably, in shock. Cookie was now the psychotic head man of the family. His first act was to keep Buster away from the real Dominguezes. Somehow, Buster got the feeling that he was being blamed for this.
Dudival approached the family.
“Mrs. Dominguez, I’m very sorry about your loss.”
Mrs. Dominguez burst into tears and held her children coveyed up around her.
“Anybody have an idea how this happened?” The Dominguez family responded en masse in the direction of Buster who was sitting alone in singed pajamas on the other side of the yard.
“Why don’t you ask him?” Cookie spat. “He was the last one to see him alive.”
Sheriff Dudival nodded that he’d take that under advisement and approached Buster. Dudival sat down next to him. Together they watched the hook-and-ladder boys ratchet a good forty-five feet up the front yard’s cottonwood tree to retrieve Carlito Dominguez’s smoldering right haunch.
The sheriff lit a cigarette.
“Hurt?”
“Don’t think so.”
“What happened?”
“What do you think fuckin’ happened?” Cookie shrieked, eavesdropping. “He killed him!” Sheriff Dudival looked back at Cookie, his face puffy from crying and made a mental note for his journal that, despite his gigantism, Cookie was something of an emotional weakling. Mrs. Dominguez put a gentle hand over her son’s mouth to quiet him.
“You get along with him…Cookie, is it?”
“He don’t cotton to me fer some reason only he knows hissef.”
“Okay, let’s leave that for a moment. Were you out here when the explosion happened?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What were you doing out here at this hour?”
“Mr. Dominguez wanted to show me somethin’.”
“Show you what?”
“How he makes them black tiles a his.”
“Uh huh,” said the sheriff. He’d heard the rumors about Dominguez and Cookie, but Social Services was never called in, so he wrote it off as racially inspired gossip.
“But ah couldn’t get the door open.”
“Why was that?”
“Ah guess it were locked.”
“And then what happened?
“All hell broke loose.”
“You ever have any bad feelings with Mr. Dominguez? Like maybe he wasn’t treating you as well as his real kids, something of that nature?”
“No, sir. Ah lahked him.”
“You liked him.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dudival just looked at him. “Will you excuse me for a moment? I’m going to have a look around.”
“Sure thang.”
Dudival got out his flashlight and began to pace the debris field. He stooped to look at something stuck on a sagebrush, then fumbled around in his shirt pocket for his reading glasses. It was a little scrap of paper with the letter V printed on it. He held it up to his nose and sniffed it, then put it in his pocket and kept walking. Something else had caught the beam of his flashlight. On the ground, one hundred yards directly in front of the kiln, was the cylinder from the workings of a lock. It was still hot to the touch. Dudival figured that it was from the kiln door. Someone had hammered a brad into the keyhole preventing the handle from being turned. Dudival put that in a Ziploc snack bag, then stood up, brushed the dirt off his pants and looked at Buster who quickly pulled his finger out of his nose. The two of them stared at each other for a moment, then Dudival turned and walked away.
Dudival would enter
