by C. J. Box
Joe went back inside the house to check the humidor in his office, hoping he still had some smokable cigars. But because he hadn’t filled the humidor well with water for months, the two cigars that remained crackled drily between his palms and were irredeemable.
He nearly ran into Lucy in the hallway when he came out. She was in her nightgown, and he anticipated a complaint about April when she said, “I think I saw someone in the backyard.”
“Was it Nate?”
“No, Nate’s in the kitchen talking with Mom.”
As she said it, there was a heavy thump against the siding outside, as if someone had tripped in the dark and reached out to prevent a fall. Joe continued down the hall with Lucy padding in bare feet behind him. Sheridan stuck her head out of her bedroom doorway and said, “What was that?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out.”
There were a number of possibilities. Maybe Nedney had seen Nate and called the feds or the sheriff; one of Nate’s friends or enemies had followed him here; a reporter from the National Enquirer investigating the Terri Wade story had located the witness; Camish and Caleb had tracked him down to finish the job. Or maybe something more innocent: high-school boys trying to spy on his daughters. The last possibility made Joe angrier than any of the previous theories.
He looked up to see Marybeth rising from the table and Nate striding across the living room. He’d hidden his .454 on the top shelf of the coat closet.
Joe bypassed the .40 Glock in his office drawer and snatched a 12-gauge Mossberg pump from his gun rack. He used the piece for goose hunting since it took 3-inch Magnum shells, and he jammed three into the magazine and worked the slide to put one in the chamber. His six-battery steel Maglite slipped into his belt.
Joe turned to Marybeth, who hovered in the hallway as if positioning herself between her daughters and any outside threat. He said, “Make sure the curtains are closed in the back bedrooms and the girls are in our room in the front of the house.”
He waited while Marybeth shooed Sheridan, April, and Lucy across the hall in their nightgowns into the master bedroom. April sulked, Lucy went willingly—practically skipping—and Sheridan shot a look at Joe and Nate as if she wished she were with them instead of with her sisters and mom. When the girls were across the hallway, Marybeth leaned out and silently mouthed, “Okay.”
Although the operation had gone quickly and smoothly, Joe thought again of what his mother-in-law had said to him. How his job endangered his family. Here it was again. His girls were used to this sort of thing, and that wasn’t normal or right, was it?
Nate said, “Let’s go out the front and come around to the back on both sides.”
Joe nodded, said, “I’ll take the left side.”
As they slipped out the front door into the dark, Joe whispered over his shoulder, “Take it real easy, Nate. I live in this place. No shooting or pulling off ears if it can be avoided.”
Nate grunted his understanding. Then: “When we get in position, I’ll make a noise to get their attention. You be ready on the back side and come up behind them.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s take this slow.”
“Of course.”
JOE KEPT LOW TO AVOID being illuminated by the house windows and the lone streetlamp on the corner of the block. He went left, reminded painfully of the injuries in his legs. Once he was on the side of the house, he’d be in shadow. He avoided the concrete path and kept to the grass to avoid making noise. There was a narrow strip of grass between his house and Ed Nedney’s, and he’d turn at a ninety-degree angle at the corner and follow it to a six-foot wooden gate that led to his backyard. There, he’d wait for Nate’s distraction before opening the gate.
He turned the corner. Ed Nedney’s front porch light clicked on and Nedney stepped out on his landing, apparently to light his pipe. A match flared and lit up Nedney’s face, and he turned his head and saw Joe with the shotgun. Nedney froze, the match paused a few inches from the bowl of tobacco. He started to speak, but Joe held his index finger to his lips and hissed, “Shhhhh.”
Nedney’s eyes were wide. Joe thought, he has a decision to make: obey Joe’s command or say what he was going to say. The match burned down in Nedney’s fingers. Another time, two years ago, his neighbor had come outside to find Joe marching another man across his yard at gunpoint. Nedney hadn’t liked the experience one bit.
His neighbor inhaled to speak, but Joe shot his arm out and pointed his finger at him, gesturing for him to go back inside. Although he was clearly angry, Nedney tossed the match aside, turned on his heel, and scuttled into his house. Probably to call the police or start drafting covenants for the neighborhood forbidding residents from lurking around in the dark with shotguns, Joe thought. Joe hoped Nate was in position so whatever was going to happen would happen quickly and he could warn Nate to keep out of sight in case the police were coming.
He paused at the back gate and tried to see into the backyard through gaps in the wood slats. He got a glimpse of the two large cottonwood trunks, Lucy’s bike propped up against a planter, and a small swatch of the cracked concrete porch. He couldn’t see who had made the noise, but the hairs on the back of his neck were up and he was sure someone or something was back there.
Of course, he thought, it could be innocent. Possibly neighborhood kids playing around. Or an animal—a stray dog, a coyote down from the foothills, a badger looking for dog food to eat, even a deer or bear. A few years before, Joe had been called out to shoot tranquilizer darts at a mountain lion perched in the fork of a mountain ash tree. And there was the occasional moose, elk, antelope, wolverine . . .
Behind the fence in the backyard was an empty field dotted with sagebrush that smelled sweet in the late summer and perfumed the dry air. That was the way Nate had approached their house earlier and Joe peered through the gap in the fence to see if the back gate was open. It was. He knew Nate had closed it earlier, which eliminated the animal options and indicated someone was back there. Whether the intruder had slipped out while he and Nate armed up and sneaked around or was still there was yet to be determined.
Then Joe heard it, a rhythmic wheezing sound. Somebody breathing, but not easily. Whoever it was remained in the backyard, but Joe couldn’t get an angle through the fence to see him.
From the other side of the house came an eerie high-pitched call mimicking the sound of an angry hawk: skree-skree-skree-skree.
Joe quickly pushed through the gate and was startled when the hinges moaned angrily from lack of oil. He dashed through the opening into the backyard, putting distance between the open gate and himself in case whoever was back there had been as surprised by the rusty hinges as he’d been. There was only one human form he could see, and the man was standing in the muted light beneath the kitchen window with his back to Joe, looking in the direction of the hawk sound. The man was big and blocky, wearing a cowboy hat, an oversized canvas Carhartt ranch coat, and jeans. The left cuff was carelessly pulled outside a cowboy boot and bunched on the top of the boot. What looked like an M1911 .45 ACP semiautomatic pistol was hanging down in his right hand along the hem of the ranch jacket.
Joe said, “Freeze where you stand or I’ll cut you in half with this shotgun.”
Joe recognized the hat, boots, and pistol. He raised his Maglite alongside the barrel of his shotgun after twisting it on so he could see clearly down the sights while aiming. The beam was choked down to the minimum size, and he trained it on the man’s head and shoulders.
He said, “Bud, is that you?”
Bud Longbrake, Missy’s ex-husband and Joe’s ex-father-in-law, stood like a bronze statue of a washed-up cowboy caught in a spotlight. Slowly, Bud turned his head a little so he could talk to Joe over his shoulder. “Hey, Joe. I didn’t know you were home.”
His voice was bass and resigned, and his words were slurred.
“I live here, Bud,” Joe said. “You know that. So what are you doing sneaking around in my backyard
? Oh, and drop the Colt.”
Bud said, “If I drop it on the concrete, it might go off.”
“Then bend over and put it at your feet and kick it away, Bud.”
“Oh, all right.” It took him a moment to bend all the way over, and he grunted while he did it. He gave the weapon a kick with his boot. Joe thought Bud had gained quite a bit of weight since he’d last seen him, and his movements were stiff as if his joints hurt.
“Okay, turn around slowly,” Joe said. “Keep the palms of your hands up so I can see them.”
Bud did, and Joe put the beam of his flashlight on Bud’s face. He was shocked by what he saw. Bud’s eyes were rimmed with red and his cheeks were puffy and pale and spiderwebbed with thin blue veins. His nose was bulbous and looked as if it had been rubbed gray with woodstove ash. A three-day growth of beard sparkled like silver sequins in the beam of the flashlight.
“You look like hell, Bud,” Joe said, lowering the shotgun but keeping the flashlight on the old rancher.
Bud said, “You know, I feel like hell, too.” He swayed while he said it, as if he’d been hit with an ocean wave at knee level or he was doing some kind of lounge dance very poorly. His arms circled stiffly in their sockets, and he took a step forward to regain his balance. “Whoa,” he said.
“Sit down,” Joe said, propping his shotgun against Lucy’s bike. “Grab one of those lawn chairs.”
“I’ll do that,” Bud said, pulling a chair over and collapsing into it. The whoosh of his exhale floated in Joe’s direction, and the alcohol content was so high Joe was grateful he didn’t have a lighted cigarette. He hoped the chair wouldn’t collapse under the ex-rancher’s weight.
Nate remained hidden, and Joe purposefully didn’t look in his direction. Although Bud seemed completely harmless now, it was good to have Nate there monitoring the situation. It was preferable Bud didn’t know it.
Said Bud, “I heard this damned poem in the bar the other night I can’t get out of my head. It’s a Dr. Seuss poem. It goes:
I cannot see, I cannot pee
I cannot chew, I cannot screw
Oh my God, what can I do?
“Dr. Seuss, you say,” Joe said. “I doubt that.”
Bud continued, “ . . . My body’s drooping, have trouble pooping
The Golden Years have come at last
The Golden Years can kiss my ass.”
With that, Bud paused and grinned a new jack-o’-lantern smile that was the result of missing teeth. One gone on top, two on the bottom.
“Are you through?”
“Yup,” Bud said. “There’s more, but I can’t remember the lines. So yeah, I’m through.” He said it while digging into his ranch coat and coming out with a tin of Copenhagen. Joe watched as he formed a huge wad with his thumb and two fingers and crammed the snuff into the right side of his lower lip in front of his teeth. The wad was so big it distorted his lower face.
“So what are you doing here?” Joe asked. “I don’t appreciate you sneaking around my house at night.”
“I’m sorry,” Bud said, shaking his head. “I really am.”
Joe couldn’t believe how this man had changed in just two years. Bud had been one of the best-liked and most influential ranch owners in Twelve Sleep County. He was generous and avuncular, served on boards and commissions, donated thousands to Saddlestring charities, and almost single-handedly kept the 4-H Club and rodeo arena afloat. He’d been a kind step-grandfather to Sheridan and Lucy, and he’d briefly employed Joe as foreman of the Longbrake Ranch when Joe had been fired from the Game and Fish Department. But here he was, broken and embarrassing. And armed.
He looked up, trying to focus. “Missy told me,” he said.
“Told you what?”
“Missy told me she’d hired that Nate Romanowski to put the hurt on me. To knock hell out of me and send me down the river in a pine box. I know what that character can do with that big cannon of his he carries around.”
Joe moaned.
“She said he was coming here, to this house, and he was going to kick the living crap out of me in front of my friends and buddies.”
“She said that, did she?”
Bud nodded. “She called me yesterday and told me that. She said she was giving me fair warning to get the hell out of town and stop bothering her. I thought about it some, I’ll admit. I couldn’t sleep at all last night, and I had a beer for breakfast to help me decide what to do. I been on a tear ever since,” he said, tipping an imaginary glass of bourbon into his mouth. “Then I said to myself, the hell with it. I ain’t scared of no Nate Romanowski. I came here to get the drop on him and maybe bring this thing to a head.”
Joe sighed. He was as angry at Missy for inadvertently revealing Nate’s whereabouts as he was disappointed in what Bud had become. “It’s probably hard to sneak up on guys when you can hardly stand up.”
Bud nodded. “You’re telling me?”
“She’s a cancer,” Joe said. “Why do you still listen to her?”
“A cancer?” Bud said, sitting back and slapping his thighs with his big hands, “Cancer can be cured most of the time. No, she’s a damned witch! She’s an in-the-flesh witch! She put her spell on me for a while and she took everything I owned, and now she’s working on that guy, the Earl of Lexington. She’ll have everything he’s got soon, I’ll bet you money. I mean, if I still had some.”
Joe said, “I won’t take that bet.”
Bud laughed drily. “The only revenge I got is that the way things are going, I’m not sure I could have afforded to pay the taxes or comply with all the new regulations they’re putting on us out here. I’m glad somebody else has to deal with that shit. But I don’t like the idea of your friend coming after me, either.”
Joe said, “Bud, Nate’s not after you. That’s all in Missy’s imagination. Not that she hasn’t tried to hire him to intimidate you, but that’s not what Nate does.”
Bud said, “What does he do?”
Which momentarily left Joe at a loss for words.
The kitchen drapes parted, and Joe saw Marybeth look out. Her face fell when she saw Bud Longbrake and how he looked. Joe nodded to her and indicated that everything was fine. Before she let the curtains fall back into place, he could see her purse her lips and shake her head sadly.
“I asked what he did,” Bud repeated.
“I take drunk old ranchers home,” Nate said, stepping out from the shadows where he’d been hiding. His .454 was low at his side but not in the holster.
At the sound of Nate’s voice, Bud’s arm rose stiffly and he fluttered his hands and his boots kicked out in alarm.
“Calm down,” Nate said to Bud, putting a hand on his shoulder. “If I was going to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
Joe shrugged to Bud, as if to say, You know he’s right.
“Where’s your pickup, Bud?” Nate asked.
Bud gestured vaguely toward the sagebrush field in back of the house. “Out there somewhere,” he said.
“Why don’t we go find it?”
“Then what?” Bud asked.
“Then I’ll take you home. Are you still living in that apartment over the Western wear store on Main?”
Bud nodded.
“Then let’s go.”
Bud didn’t move.
Nate reached out and grasped Bud’s ear and twisted it. “I said, let’s go.”
Joe had seen Nate twist off enough ears. He said, “Nate . . .”
But the pressure caused Bud to rise clumsily and stand up. Nate let go of Bud’s ear and Bud pawed at it with his free hand like a bear cub.
“Can I at least see the girls?” Bud asked Joe. “I miss them girls.”
“They’re in bed,” Joe fibbed. “It’s a school night, Bud.”
“I do miss them girls.”
“They miss you, too,” Joe said. “You were a good grandpa to them.”
“Until that witch screwed it all up.”
Joe nodded.
“You
know the worse thing about her?” Bud said suddenly.
Joe braced himself.
“I still love her. I still goddamn love her, even after all she did to me.”
Joe said, “That is the worst thing, all right.”
“What about my Army Colt?” Bud asked Joe. “I like to have it within reach.”
“Go home, Bud. I’ll drop it by later.”
“Come on,” Nate said. “Can you find your keys?”
Bud clumsily started patting himself. In addition to his pickup keys, he located his can of Copenhagen and a warm bottle of beer. Bud twisted the cap off and took a long drink, and offered it to Joe and then Nate.
“No thanks, Bud,” Joe said.
As Nate guided Bud out the backyard toward the distant truck, Joe heard Bud say, “If you really want to kill me, I probably wouldn’t put up too much of a fight.”
“Shut up,” Nate responded.
LATER, AS JOE crawled into bed, Marybeth said, “It’s so sad what’s happened to Bud. I don’t know what’s going to become of him.”
He moved close to her and she turned away to her side. Their bodies fit so well together, he thought.
She said, “I keep expecting to get a call from the sheriff’s office asking us to come down and bail him out of jail. Or identify a body.” She didn’t sound sleepy.
He said, “Your mother’s body count is getting pretty high. How did you manage to turn out so well?”
“I guess I’m the black sheep of the family.”
Joe chuckled. “Yup. No one can accuse you of trading up.”
“Do you think he’ll come back? Bud, I mean?”
Joe pulled her closer. Her body felt warm and soft. He buried his face into her hair. “I doubt it. He knows now Nate’s not after him. And deep down, Bud’s a good man. He’ll wake up and be ashamed of himself for showing up here, I think.”
“Mmmm.”
“Marybeth,” he whispered into her ear, “I was wondering . . .”