by Bart Paul
“Your lady sharpshooter’s dead.”
Sarah saw Kip turn to face us with a 9mm in his hand before she got her pistol raised. He looked more pumped up than ever. The front of the EMT shirt was torn and covered with blood, and way too tight around Kip’s chest and shoulders. He looked chipper as hell, though, his eyes just bulging, so I guessed the blood belonged to somebody else. And there was already a body on the gurney. He reached out his free hand for Sarah’s 9mm, took it, and tossed it careless-like on the table.
“She was, I believe, your lady sharpshooter, Sarge,” Kip said. He was grinning. “And she ain’t the only one died today.”
The body on the gurney looked like one of the EMTs who’d met us at the pot farm. She was face down and had a knife sticking out of her lower back just below her ponytail. It looked like my skinning knife.
“My god, you killed them?” Sarah said. She could barely talk.
“Yeah,” he said. “They told me they were friends of yours—saw you two guys on an emergency call up at False Spring a couple days ago.” He took a couple of steps closer and looked at me on the bunk with the wild rag around my thigh.
“This guy,” he said to Sarah. “This freakin’ guy. He must be something special, huh, doll. Before Ofelia knew he was boinking you, I offered her some major coin to cap him, but she says no.” He started talking in a bad Mexican accent. “‘He is my man,’ she says, ‘I only kill heem for love, no for money.’ Damn, son, that wildcat was crazy for your ass. Ay Chihuahua, dude, I just had to hit that. You understand.” He looked at Sarah all smirky. “Sorry about cheating on you, doll.”
He took another step towards her and Sarah hissed at him.
“Hey—you can’t blame me for wanting to take Tom’s new woman for a spin.” He giggled like some girl. “Right after I tried out his new Mustang. That GT’s a righteously fine ride, son. Exactly like that hottie that drove it across the country just to mess you up.” He got a faraway smile. “Too bad I have to kill you, Tom. You and me coulda grabbed a couple of bottles of Patrόn, hopped in that Mustang, and tag-teamed that bitch all the way to Cabo and back.”
“Shut up, you pig, shut up,” Sarah said. “Just tell me where my father is.” She was on her feet.
“I’ll take you to him,” he said. “He’ll be real glad to see you.”
“Then he’s alive?” she said.
Kip grabbed her arm and jerked her to the door. She bumped into him, rubbing against the blood on his shirt. When she saw the red smear on her own shirt she made a disgusted sound.
“Is he alive?”
He just laughed at her. She planted her boots on the floorboards, putting all her weight against him. He buried the muzzle of the automatic in her cheek.
“You’re not very smart,” she said. She was panting now. “You just think you are. If Dad’s alive, nobody could really prove you killed anybody—till now. Jedediah was blamed for the Marine Housing and Hoyt and Randy Ragazino, too. It was Delroy who died trying to kill us. Then the Miller guy tried to kill Tommy. And the woman who just shot him was just a—a rejected coworker. That’s what they’ll say on the news.”
“Actually, I was the one killed Randy,” he said. “So give me my props on that one. He was helping us with your Dad, and he wanted more money or said he was gonna rat me out. Randy the Rat. My boys gave me a heads-up. They held him for me out at the Rez till we could go hands-on. One punch, Jedediah style.”
“The Miller boys?”
“Very astute, Tom. Your turn to go hands-on with me is coming right up.”
“Don’t you threaten him,” Sarah said. She was eyeing her pistol on the table.
“Isn’t she hot,” Kip said. “She just loved it when I’d go hands-on, right, doll?”
Sarah leaned her cheek into the pistol so hard it pushed his arm back. “Be as gross as you want. You’ve hung yourself now.” She looked ready to die right there.
Kip dragged the pistol muzzle across her mouth. “Yeah, doll. Maybe you’re right. But it’ll sure be confusing for a while, since one of the EMTs got shot with Tom’s Beretta here …” He pulled the automatic away from her face and held it up for me to see. It left a bloodless white circle on her cheek. “Straight from your desk drawer in Georgia, dude. And it’s gonna get found in your Mustang in the next hour or two.” He jerked Sarah by the arm. “And the one out here got stabbed with Tom’s knife.” He stuck his face close to Sarah’s. “Now did I say old Dave’s still alive? Maybe I got that wrong.”
Sarah pretty much caved at that, so he let her go and shoved the pistol in his belt. Sarah slumped on the bed, and I saw her scoop up Ofelia’s phone and hide it with her hand.
“And there’s still Santa Barbara heat on me on account of that little surfer girl up at the Monte Cristo mine.” He laughed. “That was my first trip up to your neck of the woods. Damn, she was almost as much of a wildcat in the sack as you, and she was only sixteen.”
Sarah got up and spit in his face. He wiped it with the back of his hand, sort of smiling at her.
“Her name was Wendy Hammond, remember shitbird?”
Kip looked a little blank when I said that. And he wasn’t a guy who usually let himself go speechless.
“You like to advertise what you do. Like that fake grave at False Spring with Wendy Hammond’s name on it.”
“You know something,” he said, “you guys give me a major pain in the balls. I always hated it when Sarah or Dave would get all serious like you horse guys have your own code or something that makes you special. Like you never told a lie or stole a dollar or got a girl drunk or did your best friend’s woman. Like it’s your club and nobody else can join.”
“Dad let you join,” Sarah said. “He took you in.”
“And when you left me, he dropped me like a hot rock.” He got crazed remembering that. “Said the water sale was ‘none of my business’ if I wasn’t with you. None of my business?”
Kip saw Ofelia’s phone in Sarah’s hand. He jerked it away. Then he tore Sarah’s shirt when he grabbed her phone from her front pocket. He threw both phones on the cold stovelid, then jammed my pistol back in her cheek as she tried to hold her shirt together. He turned to me and snapped his fingers.
“Do not dick with me, Tom,” he said. He’d got real wild-eyed again.
I held out my phone and he grabbed that, too.
He gathered the other two phones from the stove and shoved them all in his pants pockets.
“Come on, doll.” He dragged Sarah out the door and turned to me a last time. “History always repeats, fool,” he said, “but remember, you never ride the same wave twice.” Then he laughed. “You’ll figure it out, smart guy. I’m counting on it.”
Kip shoved her with my Beretta to her head. She stumbled, one hand holding the front of her shirt. They stopped at the ambulance, and he rooted around in the back and pulled out Captain Cruz’s sniper rifle.
“This already drew first blood on you, dude.” He dropped it on the steel flatbed of the old Ford. “Where’s your Remington?”
“Out in the snow under a dead horse.”
“Even if you’re lying,” he said, “I got you outgunned.” He held Ofelia’s rifle with his free hand, grinning like a crazy person.
He reached in Sarah’s truckbed and pulled out the Miller brother’s AR-15 and Sarah’s 12 gauge. He jabbed the shotgun muzzle in Sarah’s ribs and pushed her to the passenger side of the Ford. After he shoved her in, he stashed all the long guns in back and scooted around to the driver’s side, fired it up, and rattled out of there in a haze of white diesel smoke. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I limped to the door. My head was hot like hard whiskey shots. I found a broom for a crutch and the last beer in the fridge then walked outside to the gurney. I looked down at the woman and thought about the way she’d joked with Roger Parrott at False Spring. She was already starting to cool. I wondered where Roger and Mitch and the rest of them had got
to.
I went in the side door to the ambulance and rooted around for something to dress my leg. When I had what I needed I sat down on the passenger seat up front, popped open the beer, dropped my jeans, and went to it. I gave the leg a shot of lidocaine and sipped the beer for a minute while I waited for the numbing to kick in. Then I irrigated the whole area inside the bullet furrow with Betadine. I was staining the seat with the runoff, but with that woman out there on the gurney, it would be the least of Douglas County’s worries. I dried the wound, bandaged it snug, pulled my pants up and went inside to start the fire and put on some water for coffee. It had been a long time since breakfast.
The two horses we had left were still saddled in the gooseneck. I dragged myself over to where Sarah had parked it, trying to convince myself that the sick bastard wouldn’t hurt her any more until he did whatever he was planning on doing to me. The aluminum sides of the stock trailer were solid for the first five feet and open for about fifteen inches above that, so I could see the horses’ backs and ears and see that they were standing quiet. I was wondering if Kip had snagged the .45 from the floorboards of the truck when I swung open the latch of the right-hand trailer door.
“Good afternoons, my friend.”
There was a guy standing behind the horses in the shadows, resting a shotgun on the bay’s butt. It looked like a Mossberg, and it was pointing at me. The guy wore a dirty ballcap and had a bandage across his face. When he stepped around the horses I could see one foot was bandaged, too. He was the Mexican we’d found up at False Spring. He still looked like crap, but I was keeping my eyes on the Mossberg. Kip must have got a bulk rate on those shotguns at Big 5.
“What the hell do you want?”
“For you to stay right there, I think,” he said.
“Why?”
“Mister Kip wants you to wait for the police,” he said. “They take you to the juzgado pretty soon, so you wait here with me.” His voice gurgled.
“I saved your life, you prick.”
“I thank you for that,” he said. “But Mister Kip can take it from me pretty damn quick. So perdόn, but I hold you for he.”
“Shit.” I swung the trailer door shut and yanked the foot-long latch handle around, dropped the keeper in place, and stepped back.
“Señor?” I could see his eyes wild through the slats. Then I saw his arm come out over the solid part of the door as he reached down, feeling around half frantic. His hand was an easy six inches short of the latch, so he was as good as in jail.
“Señor!”
I heard the clank of the shotgun barrel against the aluminum sides.
“Don’t shoot with that mare in there, goddamnit.”
I hit the dirt just as he cut loose with the Mossberg. Some of the pellets ventilated the trailer door so the aluminum got a cheese-grater look to it, and some more of them ricocheted around inside. I heard the guy yelp twice as Sarah’s mare almost shrieked at a second shotgun going off close to her in less than a week, and I heard that nasty clank, rattle, and stomp that scared horses make when they scramble in a closed space. Then I heard a sort of grunt, and knew he’d either been kicked or slammed against the trailer wall or trampled. Or all three.
I picked myself up from the ground and brushed the snow off, getting steady as I caught my breath. I pulled myself up on the fender and peeked inside. The guy was lying fetal on the floormats, moaning soft. The horses had settled but were still giving him the stink eye. I swung both rear doors open wide, talking quiet to them as I led the mare out first and tied them to the side of the gooseneck. That bay looked ready to turn herself inside out. She had some blood on her croup and above one hock. I checked the wounds. Neither seemed bad, but I could feel a pellet of buckshot under the skin of her croup that would have to be taken out later. I stepped back into the trailer and picked up the shotgun. It was just like the one from the pot farm. I ejected the five shells it carried just to count them, then reloaded. I patted the guy down looking for more shells, and my leg hurt like hell when I bent over. All I found was a half pack of American Spirit cigarettes, a bottle of prescription Motrin from a Tijuana farmacia, and a photograph of a dark little woman standing in front of a crappy-looking house with three sorrowful-looking little kids. I picked up the shotgun and found a saddle blanket in the tackroom of Sarah’s trailer. I shook the dust out of it and covered the ungrateful bastard. He was pretty much out of his head, so I left a couple of our plastic water bottles next to him before I shut the trailer doors on him again, locking him in. He might live, but he’d probably never make it back to Mexico.
The pickup’s hood was up. When I looked in, I saw the battery cables were cut and the terminal clamps were gone. I looked inside the cab. The gun rig was where I’d left it on the passenger-side floor and the Remington was behind the seat. That was something. Guys like Kip get cocky on the thrill and forget the small stuff. I buckled the gun rig on and checked the cylinder. Then I led the horses to the round corral and turned them loose with the saddles on, as I wasn’t sure if I had the strength to hoist the rigs up on their backs again. I threw them hay and went inside where the coffee was boiling. My head was killing me and I was about to pass out, but the coffee helped.
I lay on my back on the bunk and ate an apple while the caffeine kicked in, then shuffled back outside. I knew I didn’t have much time. I covered the lady on the gurney with a blanket from the ambulance. When I pulled my skinning knife out of her back, it bothered me way more than I thought it would. I cleaned it with rubbing alcohol from the ambulance before I sheathed it. I was destroying evidence in a homicide case but didn’t much care, as there was plenty more evidence to go around. I grabbed the Betadine to squirt in the mare’s wounds. She was touchy about that but let me do it. With food, water, and whiskey in my saddle pockets, I tied the Mossberg on Sarah’s mare, put the hackamore on the sorrel and climbed up on him. Then I grabbed the mare’s leadrope and headed away from that place.
The day was cold. With the wind across my scalp, I wished I had my hat. Some snow from the night before had melted or blown away so there were bare patches, but the sky was stormy-looking and most of the snow was still on the ground. I broke the horses into a trot down the road toward the cattle guard. As smooth as that colt was, I still winced at every step. I knew I had to get past the drift fence and lose myself in the piñon before anybody else came up that road. I stepped off at the cattle guard to lead the horses through the wire gate at the side, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off Captain Cruz lying dead in the ghillie suit. Instead of mounting up quick, I tied the horses to the braceposts, pulled out my rifle and went over to her. I fell trying to kneel down. There, on my hands and knees, I did my best to straighten out her body, untwist her clothes, and pull the burlap, leaf and twig camouflage mask away from her head. I took off my jacket and spread it over her, covering her face. It was only a soldier’s shroud, but she’d served her country and suffered for it, so she deserved at least that much. Besides, she’d meant something to me once. I stuck my rifle stock-down in the piñon duff to brace myself so I could get back on my feet. I gave her one last nod and closed the wire gate on that whole sorry part of my life. Then I caught up the horses and got moving. Downcanyon I could already hear a vehicle coming.
I drifted uphill, angling through piñon and juniper on the high side of the road until I reached where fire had thinned the trees to almost nothing. I stopped and had a good look downslope all the way to where the canyon spilled into the alkali flat. To the left, Buckskin Mountain, usually bare and brown, was dusted with snow, looking about as nice as it ever would.
I could see a Douglas County sheriff’s Chevy Tahoe coming toward up from the valley. I sat my horse on the high slope, hiding in plain sight in the shade of a single juniper. I watched the tracks the SUV made in the snow, then watched it stop. A Douglas deputy got out. It was almost too far to see, but it looked like Roger Parrott—better late than never. He walked around the front of the Tahoe, then stopped. He twisted his bo
dy a bit like he was reaching back for something, maybe drawing his weapon, but when he walked forward one slow step at a time almost like he was afraid, his hands swung free. If he knew what was waiting just up the road, he’d be afraid plenty. I could see a shape pale in the dirt and see the deputy stop before he took those last steps. He was looking down at something in the road, and I figured it must be the pale skin of the second EMT. This would be the one that Kip said he killed with my 9mm before he stole the guy’s bloody shirt, so the body would have fresh chest wounds. They would be from close range because that’s how Kip would have liked it. I could see the deputy look all around as he radioed in. If it was Roger, he looked antsy and unsure. He was a town guy a long way from where he’d feel safe. He looked right at where I sat the sorrel, and he kept on looking across the burned-over hills. Somebody used to hunting stock in open country would have spotted me right away, but I knew I was okay with this clown. Now that he’d radioed in, he’d be stuck out there securing the crime scene until help arrived. I figured that if Kip was trying to pin the two dead EMTs on me, he’d have called Douglas County already with some fake name and bullshit story. No matter what, when Roger’s help did arrive, I wanted to be long gone.
I eased the horses down the sandy slope heading into Hudson Valley. I figured I’d cross the dirt road about where we’d run into the sheep the morning we drove up. I wouldn’t stay on the road, as real soon it would be full of sheriffs, EMTs, coroners, and maybe a reporter or two. I would drop below the road into pastureland, mingling with grazing cattle until I hit the ranch headquarters of someone I knew, or who knew me. Someone who could lend me a phone or a truck. I had a pretty good idea of where I had to get to and hoped I’d get there before it was too late. I was talking out loud to the horse, figuring my options, when I saw a truck and trailer coming down the dirt road in my direction. I was hunting a gate or a hole in the pasture fence when I saw the rig turn uphill into the sagebrush. I dropped to a walk but kept riding toward it until I saw the brush moving and stirring the dust and could finally tell it was sheep. They were only about a mile down from where they’d been a couple of days before. I saw that the truck was the camp tender’s International.