Cheatgrass

by Bart Paul

  He yelped and the SIG dropped on the bridge. The second shot blew out his right knee. I was careful not to clip his femoral artery on the inside of his thigh. I didn’t want him bleeding out and dying on me. I stood up then and brushed a little dust off my clothes. I walked up to the bridge carrying the Remington in one hand. Kip was trying to crawl toward the SIG lying on the steel. He looked up when I stopped, the stupid shop light clamped on the generator at the far end of the bridge hitting me with a weak glow.

  “So it’s you,” he said. He took deep, shocky breaths. “It’s always you.”

  I started down the bridge toward Sarah and saw Kip squirm close enough to his 9mm to fumble his left hand around it. A headshot would’ve been safer for her, but I shot him in the forearm instead, breaking at least one of the bones. I still wasn’t ready to kill him, though he was screaming at me to finish him off. I stepped over him and set the rifle down, then wrapped an arm around Sarah and cut her free with my skinning knife. She was so cold to the touch I was afraid she was already dead.

  “My ears ring like shit,” Kip said, more to himself than to me. He was panting hard.

  Sarah moaned, and I grabbed her with both arms. A sob hit me so hard I almost lost it. She gasped when she saw me wearing her father’s hat and coat, then almost passed out again when she saw it was me. She was bruised bad and so cut and bloodied I could tell she’d fought him till she dropped. I wrapped her in her dad’s coat and pulled her to her feet. I could see her knees, bloody through the tears in her jeans.

  “You lied to me about earmuffs,” Kip said like he couldn’t believe that someone besides him would lie. He was trying to steady himself on his good elbow, but a splinter of bone stuck up above it and his whole body shook until he fell back on his side. “That’s not fair, goddamn you.”

  Sarah couldn’t stand on her own, so I picked her up and carried her toward my shot-out truck as best I could with my bunged-up leg. I could hear a barking dog and one gunshot, then the creaking of wood and screeching of metal. I was starting to figure things out when I felt steps behind me on the bridge.

  “Put her down,” somebody said. “Okay?”

  “Hey, Roger.” I turned around and shifted Sarah’s body in my arms.

  “It wasn’t supposed to work out this way,” Roger said.

  “What—you gonna shoot us?”

  “If you’re all gone,” he said, “I’m free and none of this happened, okay?”

  Kip said something nasty I couldn’t quite make out.

  “We got some sort of moral compass problem here, Rog.”

  “I got no choice.”

  I kissed Sarah on the forehead and pulled her close.

  “Hey,” he said, “how come you knew it was me?”

  “Get real. You’ve been covering Kip’s action since day one when you were first on the scene at False Spring—and up to and including tonight. Want a list? You didn’t pull your weapon at the dead EMT ’cause you knew who shot him. You didn’t call in the shooting at Dave’s after Burt phoned you. If you did, this place would be crawling with cops. Plus this whacko was up here expecting me and he knew all about his boys getting shot at Cathcart’s. And you called me Tom. Everybody but Kip calls me Tommy.”

  “I got this army gun,” Roger said. He pointed Captain Cruz’s weapon in my general direction. He looked down at it like he wasn’t totally sure just how it worked.

  “You never fired at a real live person, I bet.”

  “I got no choice,” he said again.

  “Yeah, you do. You got kids. A guy can choose to live if he wants.”

  “I got an ex,” he said. “Things add up fast.”

  “Don’t sweat it. You’re not the first hick cop who had his head turned by drug money, then died for it.”

  “Just shut up.” He was talking louder to hear himself over the flowing water. “Shut up and put her down and face me.”

  I kissed Sarah again and set her as soft as I could against a tamarack growing near the bridgehead. I saw my rifle on the planks about twenty feet away.

  “What’s the matter, Rog? ’Fraid you’ll miss?” I straightened up and stepped away from Sarah, but I only gave him a left-side profile.

  He brought the buttstock up to his cheek, but the muzzle wobbled. “Nobody was supposed to get hurt. I was just supposed to look the other way. And the occasional heads-up, okay?”

  “And now you got just a few seconds to live.”

  We both heard another screeching sound like wood and metal tearing.

  “What is that?” Roger sounded agitated as hell.

  We heard a yapping and Dave’s pup ran up on the bridge. He ran past Roger and stopped to give Kip a curious look because he was moaning so loud. The pup growled at him, then ran around me to Sarah. He was just tickled as hell to see her propped under the tamarack.

  Roger steadied Ofelia’s rifle. “Okay,” he said, pointing it toward Sarah. “Goddamn dog. It won’t be me who …”

  In the noise and pale light he hadn’t noticed me pull the .45 on the side not facing him. He hadn’t heard the hammer over the sound of the creek and the thump of his own heartbeat when I cocked it. He was concentrating the rifle on Sarah and by then it was too late for him to hear anything at all.

  Roger fell hard on the edge of the bridge then tumbled into the creek. The .45 had just boomed on that steel before the sound faded in the water’s rush. Kip rolled over to look at Roger spinning in the current. He was grinning with blood everywhere as he rolled back, facing me.

  “Terrific, dude,” he said. “You shot a cop.” Kip spoke so soft I could barely hear him until he laughed and fell back down on the planks. “Finish it. Sweet Jesus, finish it.”

  I heard him say that nice and clear. One part of me did dearly want to empty that revolver into him. But I slid the Colt back in the gun rig and went over to Sarah. We both looked up at the sound of trucks and saw flashing red and blue and white lights in the Jeffrey pine along the logging road. Then we heard a shout from the other end of the bridge. The pup looked up.

  Burt Kelly stumbled toward us, his pants wet to his thighs from wading the creek. His AR was slung over his shoulder and he carried someone in his arms. It was Dave.

  “He’s almost done for,” he said. “But the tough old bastard is still alive.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Frémont County EMTs and sheriff’s staff piled out of their ambulances and SUVs and were all over the wounded and dead. Becky Tyree pulled up behind them. She made sure that Sarah and Dave were tended to before Kip. Dave was unconscious, and one foot and some fingers had bad frostbite, but he wasn’t as dehydrated as they thought he might be. Sarah’s cuts and bruises from Kip beating her senseless and dragging her along the bridge weren’t life-threatening, but they bundled her tight to warm up her body core before they started cleaning her abrasions, as they were worried about hypothermia. I sat with her and held her hand while they worked. She cried from pure exhaustion when she saw her dad wasn’t dead. Pretty soon she started giving the county people a hard time, and I knew she was going to be fine.

  Burt had to back what was left of my truck up the hill as it was blocking the road. I was surprised the thing still ran. He walked back down toward the bridge with Jack, who was the senior Frémont County officer on the scene. I asked Burt to show the two of us just where he’d found Dave.

  We followed Jack’s flashlight across the bridge and down the old pack station road.

  “I bet you could walk this in the pitch black just from memory,” Jack said.

  “Pretty much.”

  I knew where Burt was leading us. Jack shined the beam on the old refrigerated truck box tucked back in the aspen. Burt had tried to shoot the padlock and chain first. When that didn’t work he tried to pry the doors apart with a piece of pipe. The chain tore a bit more of the sheet metal, but he couldn’t force a wide enough space to push his big self through. Finally, he smashed and jacked the hinges on one side so hard they tore loose from
the frame. The whole mess was hanging there off to the side when Jack ran his flashlight beam over it.

  “I gotta tell you,” Burt said, “going in there with no light except my phone was some spooky deal. I’ve seen some pretty rank shit in my life, but I didn’t want to step into Dave’s rotting corpse or anything.”

  “How did you know to look there?” Jack said.

  “The dog,” he said. He sort of laughed. “Tommy told me to park his truck on the slope to get Kip’s attention and then get the hell out of there. I tripped in a hole, and the damn pup got away from me. Didn’t you hear me yell? The little shit has a mind of his own. I was sure he was gonna get one of us shot, but he came right here. Maybe he smelled his pal.”

  We looked around inside. I could see bits of tack and rope and a couple of old saddles past repair, and the mostly empty saddle racks bolted to the wall. There was a torn-open grain sack half eaten by mice, the husks scattered everywhere, plus lots of trash. A ruined set of canvas pack bags lay in the corner. The whole place stunk.

  “How many days was he in here, you figure?” Burt said.

  “Could maybe be a week,” Jack said. “Depending on when they brought him.”

  “It’s a miracle he survived,” Burt said.

  “You can go a week without food,” Jack said, “but not water.”

  We poked around the mess. There were wet spots on the sheet-metal floor, and a couple of holes in the ceiling where the rain and snow had puddled over the years and rusted through. We could see where Dave had positioned the pack bags to catch the little bit of condensation and snowmelt from the storm a couple of days before. Burt picked up a rotted canvas nosebag. There was soggy grain pasted to the inside.

  “What the heck?” he said.

  “Looks like he was softening up some cereal to eat. Yum.”

  “Are those black flecks what I think they are?” Jack said.

  “Those would be mouse turds, yeah.”

  “What a tough old bird,” Burt said.

  “You got that right. Dying was not an option.”

  We went back outside and walked through the trees.

  “I remember this was a nice place once,” Burt said.

  “It’s still a nice place.” I stopped at the edge of the bridge, looking back across the meadow all lit up now with jagged shadows from the lights of the county vehicles. Jack waited with me as Burt walked on ahead.

  “Wouldn’t be so nice if your future father-in-law died in that box,” Jack said.

  I laughed at that. “So where’s old Mitch? I’d expect to see him with a bullhorn, kicking ass and taking names.”

  “He was at a county emergency preparedness dinner down at Mammoth,” Jack said, “sucking up to the ski-resort money he’ll need come next election. But he’d been on the radio with that Douglas County guy you shot, so he’s real happy to think you turned psycho killer. Said he always knew you were a bad one. He told me to keep you here or know the reason why.”

  I held my arms out, wrists together so he could cuff me. Jack laughed.

  More emergency crews appeared at the trailhead and rolled down to the bridge as we finally walked back—so many that it got hard for them to turn around. Flashing lights lit up the pines overhead, and the meat-wagon carrying Roger Parrott’s body got stuck in the soft grass by the creek where they’d pulled him out. I saw Fuchs and another agent getting out of his FBI Impala. They talked with Burt for a minute, then the second agent walked with Jack to the ambulance and Fuchs came over to me.

  “I hear you got shot by your old army girlfriend this morning,” he said.

  “She only hurt my pride.”

  “So it wasn’t you who shot her?”

  I waited a minute to answer. “No. Sarah took her out to save my life.”

  “Did you always think Dave Cathcart was alive?” he said.

  “I wanted to for Sarah’s sake. But until a couple of hours ago when I finally figured Kip was keeping him here, I was pretty damned doubtful.”

  There was loud talk and cussing as an ambulance spun its wheels in the soggy grass. It was getting close to midnight. I told Fuchs I’d catch up with him and hobbled back to Sarah’s ambulance. She sat in the front seat, bundled in blankets. I stood just outside, holding her as best I could as she talked about her father. We watched Jack getting nonessential vehicles turned around and headed back up the hill where there was open space at the trailhead. I could see him talking with Becky and some EMTs. He came over to us when he was done.

  “Becky’s gonna unlock the gate and lead the ambulances to that meadow about a mile up the canyon,” he said. “She thinks the Care Flight chopper can set down there, and we can light up the landing site with headlights. Sarah, I think you oughtta ride with your dad in the chopper to Reno. It’s not SOP, but I talked to ’em and they’ll let you. It’ll make him happy if you’re the first one he sees.”

  Sarah nodded and put her arms around Jack’s neck for a second and kissed his cheek, which embarrassed the hell out of him. When he left, she and I were alone for a minute. She made me take her dad’s jacket back and put it on, then slid her arms inside the jacket and held me. I could hear her sniffle against my chest. When she did that, it just tore me apart all over again.

  “You did it,” she said. “You got him back.”

  “We were just lucky.”

  She shushed me and pulled back.

  “Baby?”

  “Yeah?”

  She made a face. “You smell like sheep.”

  We laughed and I held her tight. I said I’d drive to Reno as soon as I could and spend what was left of the night with her in her hospital room. She nodded and squeezed me again hard. The ambulance pulled out, and Burt and I followed it up the hill on foot. Sarah and I said our good-byes then, and Becky led the convoy up the canyon to wait for the chopper. There was nothing left to see but dust and tail lights.

  Burt showed me the hole he’d fallen in when he ran away from my truck. It sat just off the pack station turnoff among aspen and pine, below the road where the headlights didn’t reach. It was about where I’d flushed the Miller brothers that morning eight days before. I borrowed Burt’s phone and used the light. After a second or two I hollered for Jack to bring his big flash. He was closing the drift fence gate and came over and put the beam where Burt had tripped.

  We looked down into the fake grave. I saw the cross made of pipe painted white, just like the one at False Spring. I saw my old trophy buckle baling-wired to the cross with a bullet hole in it through my name. We all stared down at the body in the shallow hole, at the straw hat still on the head, and at the rubber irrigating boots turned down below the knee.

  “Aw shit,” Jack said. “That’s Francisco, the irrigator at Dominion’s.”

  “I wondered why the pack station gate was wide open,” Burt said. “Dominion always keeps their pastures and barns locked up tight. Was he shot?”

  Jack looked closer. “We’ll have to wait for the medical examiner to move him, but it looks like he’s got blood on his shirt. Shot or stabbed.”

  “Kip must’ve caught Francisco coming to change the water on the meadow when he was setting up his psycho-drama on the bridge.”

  We walked back down toward the creek. A deputy wearing plastic gloves had already put Kip’s SIG in an evidence bag and fished Ofelia’s sniper rifle out of the creek, but they hadn’t got to Dad’s Remington yet. I saw it still lying on the planks. I went to fetch it before it disappeared, then walked back to where Jack and Fuchs were standing with the last ambulance crew. At Jack’s orders they had Kip restrained, lashed to the gurney with straps, and a deputy keeping watch.

  Burt was looking at Kip’s BDU. The camo cloth was soaked with blood and torn but still recognizable.

  “What a disgrace to the Corps,” Burt said. “I oughtta rip that off you.”

  “We’ll all look the other way,” Jack said. “Get ‘er done, big guy.”

  Kip made a major deal of ignoring them. He kept his eyes
on me, breathing hard as they worked on the smashed forearm. He’d already jerked out the first IV they’d stuck in his other arm.

  “I told you to finish it,” he said. He sounded weak and faraway.

  “Didn’t much feel like it.”

  “Don’t give me that shit,” Kip said. “You got medals for killing.”

  I talked to Jack with my back to Kip. “If I had finished him, nobody’d believe what a crazy mother he was. Now he’s my character witness.”

  “Plus you wanted him to suffer,” Burt said.

  “If I wanted him to suffer I’d have done way worse.”

  Jack looked at me like he wondered what that could be.

  “I’ve done enough of this for one lifetime.”

  Messed up as he was, Kip still had that predator’s radar.

  “You remember you said that,” he said. His voice was scratchy and faint. “You remember you said you’ve had enough when I break out of wherever they put me and I come for you and that blond whore some night when you don’t expect it. You’ll remember I said this, I promise.”

  Blood bubbled out of his mouth when he tried to talk, like maybe he’d bit his tongue. The EMT working on him was as sick of hearing him talk as the rest of us. He nodded to the driver. Then he rolled the gurney hard into the back of the ambulance and slammed the door.

  I asked Burt to hold the .270 while I crossed the bridge and climbed the hill to get my horse. Ten minutes later I was still horseback, and Jack was taking a statement from me while Fuchs stood by just listening, watching Dan turn his gooseneck around. That’s when Mitch finally pulled up. He was wearing a tie with his uniform and looked about as good as he ever would. He pulled cuffs from his service belt and walked over to me. He said he was arresting me for the murders of the big weightlifter earlier that night, the first Miller brother I shot on Dave’s permit in Nevada, old Roger who I’d just shot here in Mitch’s jurisdiction, and Ofelia Cruz, Captain, United States Army, who I hadn’t shot at all. To top it off, Mitch kept calling the captain “Olivia.” He didn’t mention the second Miller boy I’d shot at Dave’s, so I figured that one was still alive.