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When she left Craig's room, Mel was badly shaken. Turning in runaways was one thing -- it took a hell of a person to resist both the monetary reward and the fear of being tortured and killed if you were caught aiding escaped slaves. But selling your neighbor to the Legion? That was the act of a monster, and monsters never stopped at one victim. The bastard had to be caught.
At least, assuming there was a bastard to be caught. It had occurred to Mel that Craig could have killed his wife himself and concocted this story in order to incriminate someone else. Having an outsider do the sleuthing added an extra layer of credibility to the conclusion, no matter who took the blame.
But there'd been such an artlessness to the way he'd told her what he wanted. If it'd been her trying to frame someone for murder, she'd have told it with the slightest hint of a quaver in her voice -- nothing more, that would be laying it on too thick. For that matter, she'd have come up with something far more prosaic than a kidnapping by the Legion --
Mel stopped, disgusted at herself. I lived with him too long, she thought, not for the first time. Craig wasn't exactly stupid, but she'd seen nothing to suggest his mind had that many twists in it. Still, for her peace of mind, she resolved to search his room when he took his shift in the sniper's nest.
Until then, she questioned the other residents of Novac about Craig and Carla. The first thing she learned was that very few people even recognized his first name; the McBrides had no idea who she was talking about until she described him. Mel hoped he wasn't offended that she called him Craig. It was just what Daisy used. She made a note to ask him what he preferred the next time they spoke. Names were important, and she'd answered to the wrong one for far too long to inflict that on someone else. She took a long slow breath. This was only her first interview, and she needed to keep her past out of her head in order to help Craig.
It was hard to do that at the McBrides' kitchen table. They just reminded Mel of her grandparents: practical, steady, good-hearted, and still so much in love that it made her chest hurt a little. She really hoped she could catch their Brahmin killer, but that wasn't until midnight. So since she was going to be up that late, she decided to conduct her other interviews and then try to catch a nap.
Over the next few hours, a half-dozen people told Mel the same story: Carla was a beautiful woman who loved her husband and loathed Novac and everyone else in it. She really must have been gorgeous if even people she'd treated poorly mentioned that. It made something prickle in her memory, but she couldn't place it, and instead considered the few discordant notes that had emerged.
Jeannie May was the only one to suggest that Carla had simply left Craig, which struck Mel as inconsistent with the otherwise uniform accounts of a deliriously happy couple. And Craig told her that no one knew that he knew his wife's true fate, so Mel found it odd that Ranger Andy volunteered that information so easily, without warning her that Craig didn't know. Either he knew more than he was supposed to, or Craig had confided in him and just not thought about him as a possible suspect because he was a Ranger. Was his more charitable opinion of Carla merely camouflage for his crime? Had he secretly hated her enough to betray his fellow soldier?
And speaking of fellow soldiers, she still hadn't even spoken to Manny, Craig's personal prime suspect. No wonder he felt he couldn't trust anyone in this town. The next person to tell her that stay-put people were so much more civilized than wanderers like her had better not be within arm's reach.
Enough of that. Most of these people were probably just trying to get by, same as her. They weren't all monsters. Even so, she kept to her fellow transients on the edge of town when it came time to eat, and was grateful when none of them felt particularly outgoing. At this point, polite nods of acknowledgment were all the social interaction she was up for before she curled into her bedroll for a few hours of mercifully dreamless sleep.
By the time she was up again, Manny's shift was just ending. At least she guessed the fellow in the beret like Craig's had to be Manny -- so she intercepted him on his way back to his room. The conversation started out amicably enough. Manny was friendly and startlingly open; she quickly learned that before he'd gotten his beret, he'd been a Great Khan. So that's why he's the one they talked to.
He was cagey about her would-be killer's destination, which made sense. For someone who'd served in the NCR's army, Manny was still quite concerned about his Khan brothers, and she doubted "their boss has something of mine" was a reassuring reason she was looking for them. But like everyone else in the world, Manny had his price. Mel was pleasantly surprised to discover that the favor he wanted would actually benefit the town as a whole, and readily agreed to clear the big building to the west.
Then she asked him about Craig and Carla, and his hands clenched on his rifle. Manny's voice went tight and his eyes intense in an eerily familiar way. Mel didn't pursue the sensation, tethering her attention to his words instead.
"So, I enlisted. Earned my future. Brought down my best friend to share that future with me. And here was this woman who was too good for it, trying to take him away." That brought the memory to the forefront: her husband's barely-stifled possessive outrage when another Legionary offered to buy her from him. Manny clearly viewed Craig as his. "So yeah. I didn't see eye-to-eye with the bitch."
"I see." She clasped her hands behind her back in an attempt to suppress a shudder. This was his closest friend? She wondered if there'd ever been anything between the two men or if Manny had just decided that their partnership extended beyond their military service, but it didn't matter. Point was, Craig clearly felt nothing like that now, and Manny didn't seem to care. Mel decided nothing good would come of further probing. "I'm sure the days are long up there. I'll let you get some rest now."
The change of subject flipped a switch in him. The genial man she'd been talking to returned, wished her a good night, and sauntered off toward his room as though he hadn't just been cursing a dead woman. Oh, she did not like that man at all.
Mel initially climbed to the second floor of the motel just to be further away from Manny, but quickly realized it was a decent vantage point as well. She leaned on the railing outside a vacant room and watched the courtyard. She wanted to be sure everyone was in place for the night before she entered Craig's room. The lock didn't concern her; lockpicking was a skill she'd developed over the years on the road. Locked structures with no signs of recent activity made good shelters, and once her hair grew out again, she always had bobby pins at the ready.
But she'd never broken into a currently-occupied building before. Could she talk her way out of it if she got interrupted? Jeannie May didn't strike her as the sort who would hire a random traveler to fix anything around the motel, so a story about a broken lock wouldn't work. No, anyone who saw her would know she wasn't supposed to be there.
Then don't get caught. It wasn't the first time she'd recalled that instruction of his from when he sent her spying on his fellow Legionaries, but it startled her all the same with its clarity. Of course her husband's voice was much fresher in her head after Nipton. She gripped the railing tightly for a moment, then pushed off. Waiting wouldn't make the job easier.
She needn't have worried; the door wasn't even locked. She slipped in, stuck the bobby pin back in her hair, and for a moment wondered if she had the wrong room. There were so few personal effects that the room could easily be mistaken for vacant. Only an ammunition box that she remembered from earlier that day confirmed this room was Craig's.
Mel looked around, and then down, and oh, God, there was blood on the carpet. It couldn't be from the night Carla was kidnapped -- Daisy had said that was months ago. Or could it? Had Craig just left it like this all that time? Why? None of the possible answers said good things about his current mental state, but most of them made her more confident that Craig hadn't killed Carla. Murderers tried to conceal all traces of their crimes, didn't they?
That thought made her a bit nervous when she looked in the footlocker of clothes: what little was there was clearly Craig's. She hadn't thought him the kind of widower who would have immediately purged all his late wife's belongings.
There were none of Carla's things in the bathroom, either, only a bottle of Buffout in the sink and more blood. At least this time it was clearly from the smashed mirror over the sink. By all accounts, Carla had no reason to despise her reflection -- why did Craig, then? Did it have to do with the drugs she'd just found?
She ended her search with the wardrobe and found it contained only some liquor bottles -- most half-empty -- and two cardboard boxes. The smaller box was full of documents, starting with Craig's NCR discharge papers. Mel was startled to learn that he was only twenty-six; she'd thought him older than her, not two years younger. Was it grief or guilt that had aged him so?
Under his army paperwork was a stack of letters from a Joan Boone in Oak Creek, NCR; flicking one open revealed she was his mother, writing to keep him up to date on his sisters and the family's farm. Further digging revealed his marriage certificate, along with what must have been a photograph of that day. Mel turned it over and drew in an astonished breath.
Carla was indeed as beautiful as her neighbors had said: fair-skinned, a dusting of freckles across her fine features, bright red curls skimming her shoulders and lacy white dress hugging her generous curves. Mel had only ever seen women like her in Old World magazines. She almost glowed. Beside her, Craig was so happy he was almost handsome. In that picture, she could believe he was two years younger than her. His face was turned to the camera almost as an afterthought; his body was angled toward his bride. Even if something had happened between them later, Mel was absolutely certain that in that moment Craig and Carla had loved each other completely. Her heart hurt for the second time that day, even after she turned the photo over and looked at the next stack of letters.
They were all written in a fancy, looping script that took some effort to read -- not many people wrote like that, but it didn't really surprise her that Carla did. The letters themselves were so painfully affectionate that Mel set the whole stack aside almost immediately. There were letters to Carla, too, from several friends in New Vegas. These were fond and chatty, addressed to a woman who didn't seem at all like the cold, haughty person she'd heard about all day. Mel began to wonder if the entire town had closed ranks and concocted this story to reassure themselves that they were safe, that only an outsider like Carla could be taken like this. Easier to blame the victim than face the fear.
Then another sheet of paper in Carla's hand gave her the answer. She'd been planning a trip back to New Vegas, complete with a list of people to see (names from the letters, and then some more Mel didn't recognize), places to visit (The Tops, Mick and Ralph's, and the Old Mormon Fort), and things to buy (hair clips, yellow gingham fabric, and a new bra). She'd titled it "Next Time in New Vegas", and that's what made the day's prickles of memory click into place in her head: Zinnia. Carla must have been like Zinnia.
For Zinnia, it was always "next time we're in Rock Springs", and the sentence usually ended with "I'll show you a real" whatever-it-was they'd been discussing. She'd been born and raised there, only joining the Ironwood at fourteen when her mother had married in, and she never missed an opportunity to talk about how much better it was in town. It had been twelve years and Mel's jaw still tightened a bit when she remembered how the girl's lip curled every time she found some aspect of Ironwood life lacking. No wonder Carla hadn't been popular in Novac.
And, Mel reflected grimly, their stories ended the same way, too: the Legion came and then they died. She could still hear the explosion of Zinnia's slave collar and the wet thuds when her clumps of bloody hair hit the dirt. Mel shook her head hard to clear away the image that went with it. Point was, it sounded like Carla, too, had been far away from all the things and people she knew best, and covered her loneliness and vulnerability with a brittle facade. And someone here had thought that was an offense worth her freedom.
Mel was sure now that that someone wasn't Craig, especially when she peeked into the larger box and found Carla's clothes and cosmetics. Too painful to look at, but too precious to let go. It fit with everything else she'd seen. She shied away from thinking how much the box's contents cost and carefully replaced everything in the wardrobe.
She'd seen enough. One last look around to be sure she hadn't noticeably disturbed anything, and then Mel returned to the motel's courtyard, easing Craig's door shut behind her. She kept to the shadows until she'd passed the office and rounded the corner to the far side of the building. If she could get back out to the communal kitchen without being seen, no one would ever know she'd trespassed.
Then -- of course -- someone accosted her from behind a trash bin, voice harsh and hissing. "Who's there? Better not be any more of them Commie ghosts."
No-bark. Mel felt doubly relieved: he meant her no harm, and even if he claimed to have seen her actually breaking in, no one would believe him. She should have been ashamed of herself for how quickly that second conclusion had come to her -- even if it was true, it was cruel and entirely too much like the way he thought -- but then she realized something else. If she'd dismissed him out of hand, so had whoever had sold Carla. No-bark was invisible here in all the ways she once had been: literally beneath notice. It hadn't even occurred to her to question him about the Boones.
So she leaned against the back of the motel, close enough to talk quietly but not so close he'd feel threatened, and asked. Sure enough, he'd witnessed the kidnapping -- and seen one of them go into the lobby. She had no idea why they would have stopped there, and reminded herself to check inside in case she'd missed something that might have interested the Legionaries.
No-bark seemed so happy to have an attentive audience that she stayed to hear his theories that molerat men had taken Carla and what was really killing the McBrides' Brahmin. That last one had startled her a little -- she hadn't expected any 'civilized' people even to know what a chupacabra was. Mel was still pretty sure they didn't exist -- that carcass Sidewinder had claimed was one looked a lot like a mangy coyote -- but she hadn't expected to hear a story about the creatures ever again. It was bizarrely heartening.
Before she left, she asked him if anyone had been acting strange in the last few months, and his answer made her blood run cold with its truth: "I don't trust a man that doesn't have something strange going on about him, cause that means he's hiding it from you. If a man's wearing his pants on his head or says his words backwards from time to time, you know it's all laid out there for you. But if he's friendly to strangers and keeps his home spick-and-span, more often than not it means he's done something even his own ma couldn't forgive." He might as well have been describing her urbane -- and diabolical -- husband.
Mel swallowed hard and tried to form a reply, but No-bark looked around nervously. "You know, this is the Spooklight's hour, and it's coming west a little more every year. We should get inside, just in case."
"I will. Thank you, No-bark." As soon as he was ten yards down the path from her, she doubled back to the motel's office to look for any traces of the Legionaries who took Carla. She was sure it wasn't molerat men, but she absolutely believed that No-bark had seen someone go into the lobby. That last speech of his had been entirely too perceptive for someone who had completely broken from reality.
And that didn't look good for Jeannie May. Mel was sure the older woman kept a close eye on the heart of her little empire, and she would have noticed anything out of place the instant she came in the next morning. There was no reason for her not to mention it when Mel started asking questions -- unless she was involved.
Now that Mel thought about that, it didn't sound too farfetched. Someone like Jeannie May would hear any criticism of her town as criticism of her very self. And if Carla had wanted Craig to leave, the town would also have been short a watchman. It made too much sense, especially once Mel remembered Jeannie May's now-clearly-absurd claim that Carla had abandoned Craig. But she wasn't prepared to send someone to her death just because the story fit together. She had to find some evidence.
Mel almost laughed when the first thing she did inside the office was to open the Mojave Express dropbox. Habit. A silly one, in this case -- anything that'd been put in here the night Carla was taken would be long gone. She checked a folder on a nearby end table -- just the Express log -- and moved on to the rest of the room.
There were cabinets along the wall and behind the desk, but to her surprise, they were all empty, their contents likely used for kindling decades ago. Mel had pegged Jeannie May for a record-keeping kind of woman, but maybe she kept track of everything in her head. Novac was small enough for that. Mel found nothing in the niches under the desk, either, not even more little dinosaur figures.
She was about to give up when she brushed against the chair and realized that underneath it there was a safe set into the floor. Two bobby pins later, she was sifting through its contents. Fewer caps than she'd expected, a stash of money likely left over from the Old World, and as expected, Jeannie May's list of who'd paid for rooms at the motel. But underneath that was the undeniable proof she'd been hoping to find: the bill of sale. Mel knew very well what they looked like; he had hung hers on the bedroom wall in an old mirror frame to remind her of her place.
This one was a bit different, though. Obviously, it was written in English, and Carla was identified by name, rather than physical description and place of capture as Mel had been. But there were also additional lines at the bottom: Payment of an additional five hundred bottle caps will be due pending successful maturation of the fetus --
"Oh, God!" Mel cried, smothering most of it in her sleeve. Pregnant. Poor Carla had been pregnant. At least Mel had had time to adapt to Legion life before she'd had to confront the reality of bringing a child into it. Carla had lost her freedom and her child's future all in one horrific night.
And poor Craig, too; he had lost his wife and his child, all at the hands of this -- this -- monster now seemed an insufficient description of Jeannie May. For a moment Mel was so furious she could barely breathe; it was all she could do not to drag Jeannie May by the hair out of her bed and to her death at the foot of the dinosaur. Her mind caught up with her, though. As satisfying as that sounded, it would also rouse the entire town, and the woman had caused enough death already without adding any misguided person trying to defend her.
You have to be smart about this, she told herself. Mel folded the bill of sale in careful, crisp quarters and pocketed it before easing the safe closed again and slipping back outside. She checked the time: about half an hour till midnight. Perfect. Whoever was killing the McBrides' cattle wouldn't know what hit them.
---
Well, it surely didn't know what had hit it, but ... she didn't know what she'd hit, either. Mel stood staring at the enormous purple body on the ground. She'd never seen anything like this before, and when she had a moment to think about the creature's size -- and minigun, -- she couldn't believe she'd even attacked it in the first place.
She felt much clearer-headed now, though -- enough so to be curious. She checked the body for clues to where it came from or why it killed Brahmin it didn't even eat. She found and played the holotape journal it -- no, he -- carried, and sat quietly on a rock beside the corpse afterward, heart heavy with something approaching regret.
She suspected there was no better way the encounter would have gone even if she'd known -- his anger didn't sound like the sort of thing she could have talked down before the minigun spun up, -- but Mel didn't feel any real satisfaction at eliminating the threat. She was glad the McBrides no longer had to worry about losing their livelihood, but sorry to know that the cattle killer had only been sick, trying to quiet the voices he heard in his mind. She still wasn't sure what, exactly, the creature was, other than roughly, massively humanoid, but the tapes revealed that he was no monster.
Not like the one she needed to deal with. Would Craig hesitate when he saw that it wore the face of a delicate old woman? What if they stood at Dinky's feet and nothing happened?
She already knew the answer, and wished she weren't hearing it in her husband's voice: You can deal with that yourself. Well, if his voice was going to be in her head anyway, she might as well get some use out of its evil expertise. She could use one monster's tactics to bring down another.
---
The beret didn't fit over her braids, so she set it carefully inside the ring they made around her head and pinned it in place. Mel took several deep breaths, willing herself to be calm, or at least to appear so, and knocked on the door of Jeannie May's house. She kept it soft, hesitant, in line with the timid approach she'd decided on. She planned to let Jeannie May think she knew she wasn't good enough for this town, but was throwing herself on her mercy anyway. People who think they have the advantage are not very suspicious.
"Miss Crawford? I'm so sorry it's so early, but I was thinking things over, and this is such a nice little town that I'd like to stay and be a part of it." Tell them what they want to hear and they are halfway to believing you.
"Why, of course you do. Novac's a great place to make a home." She paused a moment as if she was thinking, but her eyes were moving all wrong for that. It was just for effect, to make Mel afraid she'd be rejected. "And, do you know, I've even got a room available. We can settle that all up in a little while."
"Well, before I put down money, I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask about the area. Would you mind coming with me so I can point out what I mean? I ... don't always know the right words for things in civilization."
She worried then that she'd laid it on too thick, but Jeannie May only patted her hand, said, "Of course, child," and followed her.
Mel felt like she was going to need a shower after this, but led her out under the dinosaur and pointed off into the distance. "What's that little shack across the bridge?"
"Oh, child, that's not a shack, that's a dumpst--" And then her head went the way of Zinnia's, courtesy of a bullet from above.
The instant the body hit the ground, Mel dropped to her knees beside it, pulled her cleaver from her pack, and sliced off her feet just above the ankles. It probably didn't mean anything to the people here, but Mel still got a grim satisfaction out of publicly marking Jeannie May as one whose death should be welcomed.
She was wiping down the blade on Jeannie May's skirt when Craig approached, looking a little wary. "You ... don't have to chop her up."
Mel stowed the cleaver and stood, dusting herself off as she did. "Cut the feet off a dead monster, it won't walk the earth again."
"Oh." He looked visibly relieved; when she realized the likely reason why, she laughed a little and started unpinning the beret.
"You thought I was going to eat her, didn't you?"
"Didn't know what the hell you were doing." Refusing to admit he'd thought her a cannibal was probably as close as Craig was ever going to get to tact. It was actually sort of refreshing. "So ... how did you know it was her?"
She handed him the beret, which he replaced immediately, and then the bill of sale. "I'm sorry."
At this angle she could see his eyes moving behind his sunglasses as he read it. They stopped moving, presumably because he'd finished, but he kept staring down at the paper.
I have to go was what she should have said then, but instead she asked, "How long before somebody finds her and raises the alarm? Where are you going to go?"
His mouth flickered into an almost-smile. "Don't worry. People die out there. Often enough that no one worries about blame. They're too anxious to forget it happened in the first place, I guess."
It was a harsh worldview, but her experience -- of the world in general and of Novac in particular -- bore it out. "So if you don't have to run, what are you going to do?"
He paused, as if he hadn't thought that far ahead yet. "I don't know. I won't be staying, I know that. Don't see much point in anything right now, except hunting legionaries."
Well, she was only too happy to help with that. His expertise would make it much easier to release the slaves Boxcars had told her about back in Nipton. She hoped they'd help her get the man to a capable doctor in exchange. So she told Craig, "Come with me," before she could think too much about it.
She suspected that if left on his own, he'd just wander into the desert looking for death, which struck her as both senseless and unfair. After all, he hadn't killed his wife. And it was a self-serving position, too: Mel had never believed in "safety in numbers" before, but with Craig's hatred of the Legion, he posed no danger to her freedom even if he found her out. Furthermore, as much as she hated to admit it to herself, a sniper's range would have put the odds at Nipton in her favor. Better to avoid ending up in a situation like that again, especially with him in the area.
"You don't want to do that," he told her.
She cocked her head. "Why's that?"
"Because I've got bad things coming to me. You'd better keep your distance."
She wasn't sure if it was the pent-up emotions from learning the details of Carla's sale, the adrenaline rush of seeing Jeannie May's brains blown out barely two feet to her left, or just the sheer ridiculousness of Craig thinking he could bring down something worse on her than the monsters she'd already encountered, but God help her, she burst out laughing.
"The hell's funny about that?" he asked her indignantly.
She thought fast and tapped the bullet scars on her forehead. "Are you planning to give me more of these?"
"No." His face twisted. It was the most emotion he'd shown yet, and that it was revulsion at the idea of harming her only made Mel more sure he'd be a good ally.
"Then let's assume I can survive it. I'm tracking some Legionaries who took slaves from Nipton. Trail's cold enough as it is. So are you coming or not?"
They were on the road that afternoon.