“He’s in the open?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Then that’s where we’re going,” Estelle said. Of all the people in the world who might be behind the rifle, she felt absolute confidence in Robert Torrez, but the ghost of apprehension still raised its head.
“He’s got the shotgun with him,” Torrez said. “He’s holdin’ it between his legs, stock down.”
“Ay, ” Estelle whispered.
“Pay attention,” Torrez instructed. “I ain’t going to wait this time.” She knew exactly what he meant. It had been three years, and her side still ached on occasion where a nine millimeter slug had taken her through the margin of her vest. An instant after the pistol’s trigger had been pulled, Sheriff Robert Torrez had fired, a hundred yard shot that the.308 rifle bullet had covered in a tenth of a second…an instant too late. “If he makes a motion to point that shotgun your way, he’s a dead man.”
There was no comfort in leaving the decision making to Gus Prescott.
Chapter Forty-three
The undersheriff kept her pace slow for Bill Gastner’s benefit. The older man watched his feet instead of the hillside in the distance, but on occasion he would stop to look off toward where Gus Prescott sat in the sun, looking out across the peaceful prairie. No doubt he watched their progress. Whether he could catch the glint of sunlight on the scope that watched him from four hundred yards away was another matter.
Estelle tried to imagine the swirl of conflicting thoughts that must be torturing Gus Prescott at that moment. If he knew he was in the crosshairs, his pulse would be hammering in his ears, no matter how deep his depression or how rich the alcohol in his bloodstream. The father in him would react to Casey’s presence, mixing worry for her safety with the torture of what she must think of him.
As they crossed the swale toward the ragged, low hills, walking under the possible trajectory of the bullet from Sheriff Robert Torrez’s rifle, Estelle could come to no firm conclusion about Gus Prescott’s intentions. He had ambushed Freddy Romero, rather than facing him eye to eye. If he had shot Eddie Johns, he’d done so in the back of the head, when the man was preoccupied. He hadn’t confronted Johns face to face. In his own front yard, he’d recognized that he was outnumbered three to one, and fled…to this rock in the sun.
“Wait a second.” Gastner stopped, hands on his hips, squaring his shoulders, sucking in air. “I should do this more often. The hiking part, I mean.”
Estelle looked back toward where Torrez waited, then turned and surveyed the hill ahead of them. Casey had stopped a dozen paces below her father, and they appeared to be talking. The sound of another engine attracted her attention, and she turned in time to see Christine’s little station wagon pull in beside the sheriff’s department Expedition.
“Ay, ” she breathed, and pointed. “Christine.”
“She’s got common sense,” Gastner said. “She won’t interfere.”
“She can’t just stand there and watch someone point an assault rifle at her father,” Estelle said.
“But that’s exactly what she’s going to have to do,” Gastner replied. “Nope, here she comes.”
Estelle reached around and removed her radio, making sure it was set to channel three. “Bobby, he’s not going to do anything while the girls are here.”
The radio squelched twice as Torrez touched the transmit bar to indicate he’d heard.
“We hope he won’t,” Gastner added. “He’s fresh out of choices.” He took another deep breath. “I’m ready.”
His deeds had, in effect, admitted to involvement somehow with two deaths, but Gus Prescott actually hadn’t said anything incriminating. Estelle knew that whether he could actually bring himself to utter those words while he looked his daughters in the eye was another story.
She skirted a jumble of smaller boulders that had slumped down from the hillside, and when she was sure that Prescott had a clear view of her, she stopped, arms held out to the side.
“Sir, we need to talk.”
“Just stay away,” Prescott replied.
“Can’t do that, sir. I’m concerned for Casey’s safety.” She could see the girl, now off to the side somewhat, still a dozen feet from her father. “Casey, are you all right?”
“Yes.”
Estelle shifted position somewhat but Bill Gastner stayed well behind her, positioned to intercept Christine. Estelle could see that Prescott held the shotgun between his knees, the barrel pointed upward. If the rancher leaned his head to the left, he could touch the blued barrel with his ear. One hand was on the fore end of the shotgun, the other resting on his knee. The trigger guard was concealed between his knees, but it would take only a breath of time for him to drop his hand to the trigger, a few more second fragments to move the barrel so that it pointed somewhere other than into the open sky.
In her left hand, Estelle held the portable radio, and she pushed and held the transmit bar so that Torrez could listen in on the conversation. “Sir, will you put the shotgun down? Just lay it on the rocks beside you.”
“It’s okay right where it is.” Prescott’s voice cracked a little, and that was a good sign. He hadn’t settled into the dangerous calm of a man who’d made up his mind.
“What do you plan to do with it, sir? I don’t see that you have many choices. I hope you’ll make the right one.”
“I don’t have to talk to you.”
“No, sir, you don’t. Do you have a cell phone with you?”
He laughed, and shook his head. “Cell phone.”
“If you do, you might use that, sir. Call someone you will talk to.”
“Well, I don’t need to talk to nobody. I got myself into this mess all by myself. I guess I can get out of it, one way or another.”
“That’s what concerns me, sir.”
“Don’t care if it concerns you or not, lady.” He nodded at the badge on her belt. “Wearin’ that don’t make you God.”
“It also concerns your daughters, sir. I can’t believe that you want Casey and Christine to have to live with this.”
“It ain’t their problem.”
“Oh, yes it is, sir. Let me draw some pictures for you, sir. If you swing that shotgun around and point it at me or Casey…” and she held up the radio, the transmit bar still depressed. “You can see the sheriff across the way. He’s watching you through the scope of his rifle, sir. And listening as we talk. If you make a threatening move, you’ll be dead. Just like that. You won’t even hear it coming.”
She saw a flicker of anxiety on Prescott’s face, and his eyes squinted, focusing in the distance first, then darting to his youngest daughter, then to Christine, who was just coming up behind Bill Gastner. The older man reached out a hand and stopped the girl, who nodded quickly and looked up toward her father.
“Is that what you want your daughters to see? To live with? I can’t believe that. You want that image to be their last memory of you?”
“I…I ain’t going to do you no harm.”
“That’s good to hear, sir.” She smiled at him. “I’ve been harmed enough in the past couple of years.”
“Yeah, well.”
“That leaves some other choices. Are you planning to harm yourself, sir? Have you ever seen what a 12 gauge shotgun does to someone?” Casey whimpered something and out of the corner of her eye, Estelle saw the girl sink to her knees. “I have, sir, and I can’t believe that you want the girls to witness that. To live with that?” Her thumb still held the transmit bar, and she shifted her grip a little. Turning away so she could look out across the open prairie, she shook her head. “So beautiful, sir. Your ranch is so beautiful.”
Prescott stated to say something, but she cut him off. “I was out at the windmill earlier with Casey. She tells me that this is one of her favorite places. Yours too.”
“That ain’t your affair.”
“Sure enough not, sir.”
“Daddy,” Casey said softly, but couldn’t finish the sentence.
&nb
sp; “Maybe you can imagine what this spot will mean to her if you go through with this.”
“You don’t know what I mean to do. Don’t think you do.”
“Well, sir, if you’re not going to shoot me, and you’re not going to shoot your daughters, and you’re not quail hunting, then that leaves you. That’s the way I see it, sir.”
“You can just get off my land.”
“Sir, that’s not going to happen, and you know it.” He looked at her for a moment, and she repeated herself. “That’s not going to happen, sir. And I think that you’re smart enough to know that. When there’s an incident, we don’t just ‘go away.’ In fact, more officers are enroute. My deputies, the state police. Even an ambulance. And you know what? I want it all to be a wasted trip for them.”
“I ain’t going to talk to them.”
“You don’t have to, sir. You can talk to me. Or Mr. Gastner, if you want. You owe it to your daughters now, sir. You owe it to them to clear the air. Years ago, you and Eddie Johns had an argument. What did he say to you, Gus? Did he want you to go into business with him? Is that it? To hook up with the Mexicans?”
“Nothin’ like that. I had no dealings with him.”
“He made some remark about Christine? Is that what it was?” When Prescott didn’t reply, Estelle shifted the radio to her right hand, relaxing a cramping thumb. “We all know how Johns was, sir. Christine tells me that he made passes at her down at the Broken Spur. Is that where it started, sir? You were protecting her, is that it? Who could fault you for that?”
“That son-of-a-bitch…” he started to say, and cut it off. He closed his eyes, and the side of his head actually touched the shotgun barrel.
“He came out to talk to you one day while you were working on the road for Miles Waddell, didn’t he, sir. Is that it? Things went from bad to worse after that?”
“I said it ain’t your concern.”
“How could it not be, sir. We recovered a body. The victim had been shot through the head, just like the jaguar. Now how would that not be our concern? And the why of it all is our concern, too, sir. Self-defense can come in many forms, sir. We know what kind of man Eddie Johns was.”
“Shootin’ somebody in the back of the head ain’t self-defense,” Prescott said.
“Well, sir, that depends on what was said, what was going on. If you felt that Johns was a threat to you…” Prescott’s eyebrow twitched. “Or to your family…” When he didn’t respond further, she added, “I think that there’s a lot of the story that will come out. You have to give it a chance. I know you had a reason for what you did, and you thought it was a good reason, sir.”
“The boy,” Prescott said, and he looked toward Casey, eyes pleading. “I just wanted to scare him off. I knew where he’d been, what he was diggin’ into. I know the girl’s sweet on him, and I don’t care about that. I know you won’t believe that, but it’s true. But he found the cave. I know he found it. I didn’t know what to do.”
“How was shooting at him going to scare him off, sir? Wouldn’t he just go to the authorities?”
Prescott actually laughed. “That little Mexican? I don’t think so. He didn’t want no one findin’ out what he found.”
“The handgun, you mean?” She watched Prescott’s face carefully. If the rancher had known that Freddy Romero had picked up Johns’ automatic, and in fact had it with him on the four-wheeler, why hadn’t he just scrambled down into the arroyo and retrieved it after the crash? Did he panic? Panic so thoroughly that he had forgotten to go back and seal off the little cave?
“Maybe that.” Prescott remained pointlessly cagey, as if he had cards to play.
“What difference would that have made? There was no connection between the gun and you, sir.”
The rancher shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t think it through.”
“Sometimes we just act,” Estelle said gently. “Like the Romero boy. He lied about the location of the cat’s skeleton because he wanted to explore the rest of the cave, and find what there was to find. He didn’t think it through.”
“I didn’t mean to hit him.” Prescott cleared his throat. “Didn’t even mean to shoot. It just went off…”
“That’s what the evidence shows, sir. Let us help you,” Estelle said, seeing him sinking into that easy sea of self-recrimination. “Let Casey and Christine help you, sir. You did your job protecting them as best you could.”
“That Romero kid gettin’ killed was an accident,” Prescott said, addressing Casey directly for the first time. “I didn’t even mean to shoot. I didn’t hit him, and I didn’t mean to hit his four-wheeler. If you’d been with him…”
“But you knew she wasn’t, sir,” Estelle said.
“I just saw him comin’, drivin’ like hell’s afire, and I didn’t pay attention. God damn rifle went off without a thought.”
“You didn’t climb down to check on him, sir.”
“Nope. I know dead when I see it.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I guess I got some things to answer for, ain’t that right?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right.”
“Might be easier just to let the sheriff…” His gaze drifted out, across the valley where the sheriff waited. Estelle knew that the rifle’s bolt would be closed on a live round, the safety off, Torrez’s rock-steady finger close to light trigger.
“You think about your daughters before you take that road, sir.”
“Daddy,” Casey said softly, “let them help you.”
For a very long minute, Gus Prescott said nothing. And then, with exaggerated care, he leaned the shotgun forward a bit and waited while Estelle stepped forward and took it from him.
Chapter Forty-four
Estelle Reyes-Guzman looked up from her desk as a vast, colorful form filled her doorway. County Manager Leona Speers regarded her with affection.
“Welllllll,” she warbled. “Dare I ask you how things are going?”
The undersheriff leaned back in her chair. “The road ahead is a little straighter.”
Leona’s eyebrows shot up. “My, how philosophical we are this morning. How did the confab with his nibs go?”
“The district attorney is going for a second degree murder charge in the death of Eddie Johns, and criminally negligent homicide in the death of Freddy Romero. And everything is always open to negotiation and bargaining.”
“That’s all fair, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. It’s fair. Expected, and fair.”
“Harvey will go with the Pat Garrett defense?”
Estelle looked quizzically at Leona. What Derrick Harvey, the public defender, would decide was always in question.
“You know…self defense. They claimed that Garrett was so dangerous that his killer felt justified in shooting from behind. Face to face, he wouldn’t have stood a chance against Garrett.”
“True enough. Prescott would have no chance face to face with Eddie Johns, and knew it.”
“Mr. Johns’ reputation is going to receive an airing in court, I can believe.”
“I would expect so,” Estelle said. “I’ve never heard it called that, though. The ‘Pat Garrett’ defense. Interesting.”
“Oh, my, yes. You just ask Bill Gastner. He’ll know.”
“I may have to do that.” She turned and found the appropriate folder. “I have two names for you,” and held the folder of job applications out to the county manager.
Leona held up both hands. “Oh, I don’t need to know, do I? Just that you hire two. ” She grinned and leaned forward eagerly. “Who are they?”
“If David Veltri will come work for us, that would be perfect,” Estelle said. “He has military police experience, a perfect record, and is a home town boy. Married, one child. That’s one. And I want to talk in person with Becky Hronich.”
Leona’s eyes grew wide with surprise. “The retired Chicago detective? My, I can’t imagine.”
“Well, neither can I.”
“But she’s older.”
“Oh, just ancient. I believe forty-six.”
“Family?”
“Husband retired from the military, and builds boats. No children.”
“Something of a culture shock for them, I would think. Wait until she talks with Bobby. I’d like to be a mouse in the room.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, she’s had occasion to do that very thing on the phone. ‘No nonsense,’ is how he described her. She’s willing to come out for an interview. Take a look at her file, and see if you have any questions.”
“Oh, it’s not my hire.”
“I know, but I value your opinion, Leona.”
“What did Mr. Bill say about the detective?”
“That if we didn’t hire her, we should have our heads examined.”
“There you are, then.” She nodded brightly, then her expression sank into a frown. “I hear some disturbing rumor, by the by, and that’s really why I stopped by.”
“All rumor is disturbing, Leona.”
“No, this really is. The Romeros? George and his wife? I heard they are planning to sue the department. Well, to sue the county, the department, you, my dear, the EMT’s, and any other moving target they can find.”
Estelle nodded noncommittally. “I heard rumblings of that too. Padrino talked to him a time or two, and that was the impression he got.”
“My dear, on what grounds? For heaven’s sakes, who could have done more than you did?”
“That’s not the issue, my friend,” Estelle replied.
“Whatever is the issue, then?”
“That he can? That it gives him something to focus on, maybe? Someone else to blame? I can’t imagine his loss.”
Leona shook her head slowly, lips compressed. “You’re too sweet, dear. One son loses an eye, the other dead in a senseless crash? We could argue parental supervision until the cows come home, but that won’t do any good.”
She regarded the undersheriff, who didn’t reply. “Maybe his lawyer will talk some sense into him.”
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