Free Avenging Angel by Rex Burns Page A

cautious. “We took a test for it—all the candidates take a test. The highest score gets the job. And all the scores are posted.”
    Wager believed her; and he had a good idea who wrote the test. “Are all the radio calls logged in?”
    Her voice became businesslike. “We try. Sometimes when it gets real busy we have a hard time keeping up. Daryl—Sheriff Tice—tried to get the commissioners to buy a tape recorder. A lot of times the officers will need to know what they radioed in—a name or license number. But the commissioners said not this year. So we do what we can.” Holding up the clipboard, she showed him the mimeographed form with its columns filled with abbreviations under Time, Sender, Message, and Disposition. Most of the entries were in the Uniform Ten-Code and were routine.
    When she had talked herself out of her defensive mood, Wager asked what he really wanted to know. “Do you think there are any avenging angels around the county?”
    She giggled nervously. “No!” Then she thought a moment. “I mean I didn’t—not until I heard about those killings in Denver and Pueblo. And then Mueller got shot. But I don’t think I believe in them.”
    “Are there a lot of people who do?”
    “I don’t know…it’s not something you talk about much. Cynthia was scared after Mueller got killed, I know that.”
    “Who’s Cynthia?”
    “Cynthia Moreles. She works the day shift.”
    Wager remembered. “The pretty one?”
    “The young one.”
    “Why’s she afraid?”
    “I’m not really sure. I just know she heard about Mueller and she just shuddered.”
    “But she didn’t say anything?”
    “No. Not to me.”
    Wager filed the item in his memory; it was a card to be pulled when he got the chance. “Is there a restaurant open this late?”
    She glanced at the twenty-four-hour clock, whose hands pointed to 20:00. “The Mesaland restaurant should still be open. They don’t close until nine, unless there’s no business. Ten on weekends.”
    Thanking her, Wager headed his Trans-Am toward the steady wink of green-yellow-red in the distance. He found himself driving much more slowly than he did in Denver; there was no place to rush to, and not much to do once he got there. Even the traffic lights seemed to be slower, stopping him for a long time at an empty intersection to look at a gas station closed for the night; at a rambling block of one-story shops with dim lights here and there behind the cluttered windows; at another corner gas station converted into a drive-in curio store, lightless now, and perhaps even out of business judging from the sun-faded signs for real Indian turquoise jewelry.
    The Mesaland Motel sat at the west end of town, where the state highway swung south toward the Four Corners region and a main county road aimed west at Utah. Here, where traffic was a bit heavier, there was no light and Wager had to yank his wheel hard to miss a swerving pickup truck that screeched rubber across the highway from the county road. The howl of teenage voices hung in the exhaust behind the weaving truck, the spinning clatter of an empty beer can tossed high in the air, a flashing moment of self-contained noise and excitement and speed challenging the dark indifference of the surrounding night and the silent, vast earth beyond. Wager could remember how, just before going into the Marines, he and his buddies had cruised noisily like those kids. It was as if motion and excitement and laughter could hold back the impending world of adulthood and all its plodding sterility. It had not. In fact, Wager had rushed to meet it, not knowing that the avenue he’d chosen for its excitement and challenge was no different from that of his buddy who went into insurance, or the others who became salesmen or contractors or truck drivers. He shouldn’t have joined the Marines at sixteen, but his mother had signed the papers and his sister was glad to see him go. And what the hell, if the old man had been alive