Rain Gods Read Online Free PDF

guard to fire his burp gun point-blank into their chests and faces. But because of the mercurial nature of their executioner’s bloodlust, Hackberry was spared and made to watch while others died, and sometimes he wished he had been left among the dead rather than the quick.
     
    He believed that looking into the eyes of one’s executioner in the last seconds of one’s life was perhaps the worst fate that could befall a human being. That parting glimpse into the face of evil destroyed not only hope but any degree of faith in our fellow man that we might possess. He did not want to contend with those good souls who chose to believe we all descend from the same nuclear family, our poor, naked, bumbling ancestors back in Eden who, through pride or curiosity, transgressed by eating forbidden fruit. But he had long ago concluded that certain kinds of experiences at the hands of our fellow man were proof enough that we did not all descend from the same tree.
     
    Or at least these were the thoughts that Hackberry’s sleep often presented to him at first light, as foolish as they might seem.
     
    He drank the coffee from his cup, covered his plate with a sheet of waxed paper, and set it inside his icebox. As he backed out of the driveway in his pickup truck and headed down the two-lane county road, he did not hear the telephone ringing inside his house.
     
    He drove into town, parked behind the combination jail and office that served as his departmental headquarters, and entered the back door. His chief deputy, Pam Tibbs, was already at her desk, wearing jeans and cowboy boots and a short-sleeve khaki shirt and a gun belt, her face without expression. Her hair was thick and mahogany in color, curly at the tips, with a bit of gray that she didn’t dye. Her most enig matic quality lay in her eyes. They could brighten suddenly with goodwill or warmth or intense thought, but no one could be quite sure which. She had been a patrolwoman in Abilene and Galveston and had joined the department four years ago in order to be near her mother, who had been in a local hospice. Pam had a night-school degree from the University of Houston, but she spoke little of her background or her private life and gave others the sense they should not intrude upon it. Hackberry’s recent promotion of her to chief deputy had not necessarily been welcomed by all of her colleagues.
     
    “Good morning,” Hackberry said.
     
    Pam held her eyes on his without replying.
     
    “Something wrong?” he said.
     
    “An Immigration and Customs Enforcement guy by the name of Clawson just left. His business card is on your desk.”
     
    “What does he want?”
     
    “Probably your ass.”
     
    “Pardon?”
     
    “He wants to know why you didn’t call in for help when you found the bodies,” she replied.
     
    “He asked you that?”
     
    “He seems to think I’m the departmental snitch.”
     
    “What’d you tell him?”
     
    “To take a walk.”
     
    Hackberry started toward his office. Through the window he could see the flag straightening on the metal pole in the yard, the sun behind clouds that offered no rain, dust gusting down a broken street lined by stucco and stone buildings that had been constructed no later than the 1920s.
     
    “I heard him talking on his cell outside,” Pam said at his back.
     
    When he turned around, her eyes were fixed on his, one tooth biting down on the corner of her lip.
     
    “Will you just say it, please?”
     
    “The guy’s a prick,” she replied.
     
    “I don’t know who’s worse, you or Maydeen. Will y’all stop using that kind of language while you’re on the job?”
     
    “I heard him talking outside on his cell. I think they know the identity of the witness who called in the shots fired. They think you know his identity, too. They think you’re protecting him.”
     
    “Why would I protect a nine-one-one caller?”
     
    “You have a cousin name of William Robert Holland?”
     
    “What about him?”
     
    “I heard Clawson use the name, that’s