Mop sounded chagrined. “That’s because you were shooting while I was still trying to get going. Damn, but you were quick Shooter.”
Then Mop got to answering the question.
“He said, ‘I’m Roy Elder and you are’ . . . I think the last word was ‘dead,’ but he was already hit and going down.”
Mop was still amazed, and Shooter realized his Uncle was more than a little shaken by the sudden and lethal battle. Mop said, “I think I hit him every time, but some of these .357s went on through. I heard one hit one of the cars further on. I can’t see too well, but I think your bullets stopped in him.”
Mop was rambling, so Shooter took charge.
He looked around. “Hell, nobody’s coming. Nobody knows anything even happened.” Shooter reached for his cell phone.
Shooter went to his speed dialer and punched Sonny Brunner’s number.
While he waited, Shooter said, “You call 911 and report this Uncle Mop. I’m getting Sonny, at least I hope I am. With luck, he could already be here.”
Sonny picked up, and Shooter said, “Sheriff, it’s me, Gabriel Galloway. Roy Elder just jumped Mop and me in the Mormon parking lot in Bloomfield. We shot him dead, and Mop is calling 911 right now.”
Luckily, Sonny Brunner was sitting with the old folks listening to a country band. As it was, his breath caught and his heart about jumped from his chest.
Although not often given to swearing, Brunner said, “Son of a bitch,” and he said it loudly. Heads turned, but Sonny did not notice. “I’ll be there in a minute; keep everybody away from the scene, Shooter. Hell, you’re a military cop, you know what to do.” There was a slight pause, and Gabriel could hear a hint of satisfaction in his voice. “I’ll call the new sheriff and get him going.” Brunner hung up.
Mop and Shooter waited. Brunner came fast. His car whipped in and blocked any exit by cars near the shooting scene. Before he walked over, Sonny opened his trunk and extracted a roll of crime scene tape. The old fire horse was still answering the alarm.
Brunner strung his tape from car to car, being sure to corral enough vehicles that no evidence could be trampled or removed. Still no one else appeared.
Sonny took his own close look. “Hell, I can’t tell if that is Roy Elder or not. If it is, he’s changed his looks. Not as much as Andrew had, but . . . you said that he claimed to be Roy?”
Shooter was on the phone to Dan Grouse, so Mop started to answer, but before he could get going, Brunner had second thoughts.
“Hold that, Mop. Don’t say anything until we hear what Dan has to say. He might not want either you or Shooter talking at all.”
Sonny pulled on Shooter’s arm. “Let me talk to him,” and lights flashing, a state police car spun into the lot and stopped beside Sonny’s vehicle.
Sonny muttered. “I wish he’d turn off those lights. He’ll have half the county down here to see what’s going on.” Then he spoke to Dan Grouse.
“Dan, can you take Mop Galloway on as a client over the phone? Good, I’ll put him on right now, and Dan, this looks like a clear case of self-defense without any other options. It’s a clean shooting.” He handed the phone to Mop.
The new sheriff wheeled in, and he, the state cop—who had taken a preliminary look and ordered everybody to stay close—and Sonny, who knew more about what had happened than anyone else, put their heads together.
Spectators were arriving and their excitement was making things louder. Shooter saw Emma, Hannah, and Doc Dyer standing back but trying to see. He ducked under the yellow tape and pushed to them.
He made it clear; “Roy Elder jumped Mop and me with a shotgun. We got him.”
With his pistol in his left pocket, Shooter showed his shot-through vest by wiggling his fingers in the bullet holes. He ignored both the citizens crowding close and hanging on every word, and his friends’ stunned reaction to his unadorned announcement.
“He’s laying there between the cars. We’re going to be held up here for hours, I would estimate, so you’d better find a place to wait or a ride home, whichever you’d like best.”
With sudden insight, Shooter said, “Would you be willing to take a look at Elder, Doc? It would be good to have a doctor declare him dead and beyond rushing to a hospital.” Dyer nodded and they plowed through the thickened crowd back into the crime scene.
Doctor Frank Dyer took a careful look at the dead man and declared him deceased. The ambulance crew appeared slightly disappointed, but they hung around to do whatever was next.
Mop was saying his piece to the state trooper even as another state car arrived—that also left its lights blinking.
Dyer said, “I’ll bet there will be five official cars sitting here before anything slacks off.”
Shooter said, “No bet,” and a fire truck came in and added to the light show.
Mop came over and said, “My feet are still killing me. I’m going to sit in Doc’s car, and to hell with their crime scene.” He did exactly that, and no one seemed to mind.
Dyer and Shooter stood off to a side where their words would not be overheard.
Doc said, “My God, Shooter. You shot that man so full of holes I could almost see daylight through him.”
Galloway answer, “What you haven’t been told, Doc, is that this guy said he was the last living brother of the two who ambushed me in The Notch.”
“Geez, Galloway, does that family have any cousins or uncles waiting out in the brush somewhere? This sounds like the Hatfields and the McCoys.”
“I sure as hell hope not, Doc. I’ve gotten real sick of these people. I’ve been lucky every time they’ve come after me, but how long can that continue?”
Doc Dyer thought about the shot-into-rags body he had just examined and suspected that Shooter Galloway’s “luck” might continue for a long time, but what he said was, “So where are you wounded?”
Shooter was jolted. “What? I’m not wounded, Doc.”
Dyer raised a jaded-looking eyebrow. “Well, that’s some progress, Galloway. This is the first firefight that you have walked away from without bleeding all over everything. Maybe you are starting to get it right.”
Shooter wanted to laugh. He could have used the comic relief, but heads would have turned and word would have gotten around that cold-hearted Gabriel Galloway had laughed after shooting a man dead.
Dyer went back to the ladies, and Shooter stood alone watching the investigators photograph and make sketches. They would finally get around to formal interviews, but Shooter had no worries about any of it.
If they got to chasing wound channels, the coroners might report that the deceased had been on the ground when he was shot one last time. Too bad for the deceased. Mop would simply say that he was scared to death and feared for his life. Who could argue about a man’s terror when facing a sawed off shotgun, and that would be the end of it.
There was sudden commotion and the voice was Doc Dyer’s. Dyer had just discovered that the bullet Mop had heard hitting a car had gone through his Mercedes door panel. Dyer sounded incensed. Shooter almost snickered, Damned swabbies were always complaining.
Gabriel stretched wearily and wished they could all go home, and that was when the magic number hit him.
So long ago, before he had shot Boxer Elder, he had decided to shoot all of the Elders, and by all of the strange gods, he had done it—except for Andrew who had eaten himself to death. He was finished.
Shooter began to feel better, as if he had laid down a long-carried burden.
He actually was finished.
Six down, no more to go.
Chapter 33
7 July 2004
Before he had left for Montana, Mop had said, “So what do you care what they think, Gabriel? We had no other choice, and I’m just pleased that we shot hell out of Roy Elder.”
Looking slightly bemused, Mop had added, “I wish I had gotten more bullets into him.”
Startled, Shooter had asked, “You enjoyed that, Uncle Mop?”
&
nbsp; “Enjoyed it? Hell no! I was so scared I couldn’t have moved even if I had the time.
“After it was over I was afraid I was going to wet my pants and puke at the same time. I broke out in a cold sweat, and my hands shook all the way to my shoulders. Not because we’d shot Elder, but because he’d gotten so damned close to killing us both. That’s why I’d like to shoot him some more.
“My God, Gabriel, we were looking into the muzzle of a sawed off shotgun pointed by a crazy man already starting to kill us. If your first shot had missed, he’d have gotten us both. If you had hesitated a split instant, he’d have blown us into rags.
“Yep, I wish I’d emptied my gun into the bastard. When I went up to him and kicked his shotgun aside I really wanted to kick him in the face, but someone might have been looking.”
Mop’s smile was cold, “You’ve got to watch out for spectators. They might not see it the same as you do.”
They had been waiting on the concourse at Harrisburg International Airport near a group discussing the Wild West carrying-on up the hills.
The Patriot News article was lurid and imaginative. Gabriel “Shooter” Galloway was the main subject, and a reporter had interviewed unidentified friends and acquaintances that apparently saw Galloway as a trained executioner who had killed many times before.
According to the paper, Galloway was still suffering aftereffects of a head wound received in Iraq—a wound that had disqualified him for further military service. The article was suggestive, speculating that, although a war hero, Galloway had killed before and might be a loose cannon no longer able to control all of his emotions and responses.
A group member wondered aloud why two grown men going to a local carnival would be carrying pistols in their pocket? There were nods at the strangeness of it.
The clincher, to their minds, was that the Galloways had shot the man until their pistols were empty, and that showed a hunger for revenge or a viciousness that was beyond their and the female reporter’s comprehension.
Shooter was for going to the newspaper editor and telling him off. At least that was what he grumbled to Mop.
Mop had said, “What in hell good would that do, Shooter? They’d probably write a follow up about how the enraged and half-crazed Shooter Galloway had stormed the offices and threatened to assassinate everyone involved. This dog will go to sleep in a week or so. Don’t rouse it.”
Mop was right, but Shooter saw a pair of ladies in the Post Office whispering behind their hands and staring at him. He nodded and greeted them with a smile. The women looked scared, as if he might draw a machete and attack them. In the food store, the cashier recognized him. Her eyes blanked over as if Count Dracula had appeared, and Shooter feared she would either scream or faint.
A number of men he had only nodded to in passing came over to congratulate him on a close shave, but they really hoped to hear the shooting story firsthand.
Galloway did not oblige them, but he expected they would be announcing all over town how they had talked it all over with Shooter himself, and here is what he said. Facts seldom get in the way of a chance for self-importance.
Doc and Hannah had gone home to New York, and now Mop was in Oregon. Shooter walked about wondering what he was supposed to be doing next.
He wondered if the school might not be getting a little twitchy about having a notorious man-killer on their faculty? They almost certainly were, he decided, but they would probably just go on. Hoping he would go away quietly? Not beyond reason, Shooter suspected.
The phone rang, and Galloway went to get it.
His father had taught him how to answer a phone, and he had stuck with Bob Galloway’s system.
Shooter said, “Galloway’s, Gabriel speaking.”
Ted Barner said, “We read the papers and made a few calls, Shooter. Damn good shooting. Not many could have made those shots looking into a shotgun.”
Galloway was glad to hear a knowledgeable voice.
“Thanks, Ted, but not everybody sees it that way.”
“Of course not, Shooter, but what do you care? We don’t travel with those kind of people, anyway.
“Bob asked me to call. He said it’s time you got out of Dodge. As you are discovering, a lot of people don’t understand, but we do. Pack up, and meet us in Salmon, Idaho. We’ll raft the river until we get tired of it, then we will do something better.”
Barner spoke beyond the telephone, then came on clear again. “Bob wants to talk, so all I’ll add is: Listen to what he has to say. Then get a move on.”
Bob Robinson came on.
“Shooter, congratulations on being alive. That you could react as you did impresses the hell out of me. You are all that people who know say you are.
“Now is the time to decide if molting away up there in the sticks is what you really want. If it is, so be it, and we will back off.
“Now is the time because right now you are particularly keyed toward taking the measure of the people around you, and for these few moments you can look more critically at your situation—which is how you would live for the rest of your life.
“I haven’t seen your famous Notch, but I lived in one place for a number of years before I got into my current business. Before I was your age, I had used it up.
“If you had not gotten into shooting scrapes and twice served in Iraq, you would have already had enough of the same faces, the same words, the same restaurants, even the same carnival.
“You are a warrior, Shooter, and you will not be satisfied with a life that is tame or suited for ordinary citizenry. Like it or not, you are beyond that, and you should face the fact straight on.
“There’s a world out there to see, feel, and taste, Shooter. It’s trite to say that you’ve got a shot at the brass ring, but you actually do, and if you don’t take it, I predict that you will regret it the rest of your life.
“Your Notch and the rest will still be there when your joints get stiff and your reflexes slow.”
Ted Barner’s voice came from beyond the phone, “Like mine have, damn it.”
“You’ve got a position waiting in my organization, Shooter, but don’t push the time frame. I need a man who can make up his mind when he should and act on what he decides. So, we’ll be expecting you in Salmon.”
Shooter found himself holding a dead telephone.
Shooter sat on the big stump in The Notch and weighed his choices.
There was the point that the school would always be searching for good teachers, and after his latest escapade cooled for a few years, he would probably be rehired with enthusiasm—if he wanted to return.
Would he be satisfied if he did not give Bob Robinson’s business a try? Damn it, he was talking himself into going!
Still uncertain, Shooter headed for the house. He walked without awareness, his mind visualizing strange places with special missions beside hard and dedicated men. Men who would not find his killing record unusual or in any way intimidating. He could like that. He could like . . . Damn! He was doing it again.
There was the war, of course, and it looked to him as if the United States would be engaged for decades to come. Not in Iraq but in other hot spots. If he hung around, he might eventually be reactivated, and he would be back in it—or he might be permanently out to pasture. His fingers touched his head where slightly longer hair disguised the scar of his head wound. Galloway knew he should strongly consider that latter possibility.
Which should it be, a hired gun well paid to protect important people, a highly valued colleague and friend traveling widely while entrusted with important commodities and secrets? Or back to the close camaraderie and comfortable regimentations of quasi-military life at the school—the kind he had enjoyed for most of his life?
He reached his phone before it stopped ringing. The caller was the female reporter from The Patriot-News. She requested a personal interview with the famous Shooter Galloway. Gabriel said, “No,” and hung up on her. Damn, how long would that continue?
&nb
sp; Too long, Shooter found himself nodding.
Why fight the tide? In many ways, he hungered to go with the Robinson deal—and the phone rang again.
Shooter said, “Galloway’s, Gabriel speaking.”
Bob Robinson said, “Shooter, there is something I forgot to tell you. There will be four of us going out west.
“My daughter, Jacque has decided to come along. Actually, I think she wants to meet the man who will probably take Ted Barner’s place. Every time your name comes up she gets interested. She has seen most of your file, of course.
“She’s a great gal, Shooter. She’ll be good company. Maybe you’ve seen her on TV—Jacque? She does interviews on the Outdoor Channel.”
Shooter Galloway Page 36