“If we run, we can make it.”
I put the gun in her face. “Get the Goddamn fire extinguisher!”
Her eyes stabbed hatred at me, but she bit off whatever curse she’d been about to offer and ran to pull down the extinguisher. There was a pin she had to pull and a handle to squeeze. She started messing with it, and for as second I thought I’d have to put down the revolver to show her how. But she got it right and pointed it at the flames and squeezed the handle, a blizzard of white whooshing out, shrinking the fire a bit at a time.
And I guess that’s what they’d been waiting for because then suddenly Clay Jordan filled the doorway with a deer rifle in has hands and brought it up to his shoulder for a shot.
I squeezed the revolver’s trigger three times. The first two shots chewed up chunks of door frame, splinters of wood flying around Clay’s head. On the third shot, Clay dropped the deer rifle and grabbed the fleshy part of his upper thigh. He threw his head back and yelled. I saw hands yank him back from the doorway.
The hellcat had half the fire out and seemed to have the jump on the rest. Maybe if—
Blinding pain erupted at the base of my skull. I staggered forward, but somehow kept my feet, turned around, trying to bring the revolver to bear, but it felt like it weighed a ton. I saw a long, flat piece of metal swing down and smack my hand open. The revolver flew away.
I saw now that it was Matthew Jordan hulking over me. In the firelight I could see one ear bloody from the bash I’d given him with the coffee pot. He was still handcuffed to the locker door which he’d ripped off the hinges and was using as a club. He cranked it back for a swing at my head.
And got a face full of extinguisher foam. The hellcat was there, thrusting the extinguisher nozzle at Matthew and running out the rest of the foam.
He coughed, pawed at his eyes. “Fucking bitch.”
“I owe you this, Matthew.” I kicked him in the balls. Hard.
He let out this little squeak and went to his knees. One hand still wiped at his eyes. The other went to his groin. His face went so red I thought he might rupture.
I picked up my revolver and slapped him in the side of the head with it. He flopped over like a dead fish. I lifted the gun to bash him again but stopped myself. I wanted to, but no.
I motioned to the hellcat. “Help me lift him. We can drag him into the cell and—”
She slammed the empty fire extinguisher into my gut. I bent double sucking for air and went down, looked up just in time to see her vanishing through the back room.
I lurched to my feet, took three steps after her and stopped. Forget it. The one that got away. She was a criminal, probably a killer. The hellcat had trafficked in human lives across the border. The star on my shirt meant I was supposed to go get her, lock her up. But she’d helped me in the instant I’d needed it, right when Matthew Jordan was about to smash my head in. That probably didn’t go very far to balance out whatever wrongs she’d done, but it would have to do for now.
And anyway I had bigger worries. More Jordan brothers who wanted to kill me. And the station house was still a little bit on fire.
I grabbed a blanket from the cell, used it to smother the last few patches of flaming floor. That put us back mostly into darkness, except for the extra street light coming through the open front door. I dragged Matthew into the vacant cell and clanked the door shut.
It was suddenly weird and quiet in the stationhouse. I couldn’t even hear Karl’s snoring anymore, and I wondered how he could have kept sleeping with all the gunfire and mayhem. Maybe he was pretending.
Let him pretend.
I drew the revolver and took a few steps toward the front door, cocked an ear and strained to listen. For a second I thought—hoped—the rest of the Jordans had pissed off. Maybe shooting Clay in the leg had stung them into giving up. But I could still hear them out there, voices raised like maybe they were arguing.
Maybe deciding what they were going to do about me. Maybe toss in another gasoline bomb.
No more waiting. I grabbed the shotgun, loaded fresh shells. Time to take it on the offensive.
Showdown.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I had to do it fast.
Any other way and I’d lose my nerve or just collapse from exhaustion. There wasn’t much left in me, but I was-n’t going to fold, not yet. This would finish it. I had to make it to the end. So I took a deep breath, dug down deep for that last burst of adrenaline, pushed away every ache and pain that throbbed along the length of my entire body.
Time to kill some guys.
I went through the backdoor and into the alley, pumped a shell into the chamber. I circled all the way around the firehouse at a slow jog, hit Main Street and turned back toward the station. I kept close to the buildings, jogging in the shadows.
I could see them up ahead, two pickup trucks, one facing in each direction, blocking Main Street, headlights on. I saw Jason and Evan standing to either side of the stationhouse door. They both held deer rifles and looked poised to charge in at me. But I wasn’t in there. I was out here.
And bringing it strong.
I ran at them fast, lifting the shotgun. I got pretty close before Clay saw me. He sat in the back of the closest pickup, foot propped up on an Igloo cooler, white bandages around his wounded leg, a red blotch seeping through. He turned his head and saw me, his eyes going big as hubcaps as I sprinted forward. Home stretch. I ran as fast as I could make myself while still keeping the shotgun up.
Clay overreached for the deer rifle in the bed of the truck and fell off his perch, rolled out of the truck and hit the street with a grunt. He stood, hopped on one foot and reached for the rifle again.
I cut loose with the twelve gauge.
The shotgun bucked in my hands, buckshot splattering across Clay’s torso. He convulsed like he’d been hit with a million volts, shrank to the ground and sat in a bulky pile of dead.
Jason and Evan spotted me. And I looked at them and our eyes met and just like that it was on, as if the eye contact had triggered some primal, animal charge.
I started running again, pumping in shells and firing and pumping. I was a screaming, running blizzard of buckshot, spitting fire. Thunder rattling the whole town. They ran at me too. Both crazy with banshee yells. We were a hell of a collision in the making.
I had the advantage, spraying buckshot. They ran awkward, shooting, trying to work the bolt actions on the deer rifles. Try it sometime, shooting and running at the same time. The shots went wide, and I almost didn’t care if I hit anything or not. I wanted noise and death. Let it all finish here. Pump, shoot, pump.
Twenty feet apart I made Evan’s face disappear in a horrible spray of blood and flesh. I pumped, swung the shotgun at Jason. Everything slowed. He worked the bolt action, eyes like a frightened rabbit’s. I could see all the mistakes in his face. He knew. The fear bringing it home. He knew in that moment it had all been a mistake, that he was going to die bloody and bad.
But he kept trying. I’ll give him that. He was game. He worked the bolt, tried to bring the rifle level for a final shot. Maybe he could get lucky. I shot from the hip, and blood exploded across Jason’s chest. The deer rifle flew away. He fell backward, slowly, like he was falling through cotton. That’s how I saw it. He hit the pavement and bounced. Lay there with his eyes wide open.
I thought he was dead, but he suddenly violently sucked for air. He coughed and gasped.
I knelt next to him, didn’t even feel angry. Didn’t feel anything.
Jason’s eyes focused on me. “You.” “Me.”
“You … fucking … fuck.” His breath came shallow, blood on his lips. I could almost hear the wrecked machinery of his guts and chest grinding out his final seconds.
“Why do you think I killed Luke, Jason?”
“We all know it was … you … son of a—” He broke off in a fit of coughing, spasms along his whole body.
“Why?”
“Call an … ambulance.”
I grabb
ed two fistfuls of Jason’s shirt, lifted his head off the road. “Why did I kill Luke? You got me pegged for it, don’t you? Okay then, tell me why.”
“Don’t be s-stupid.” Jason coughed again, more blood foaming out of his mouth, running down his chin, face going so white.
I shook him hard, his eyes pin-balling in his skull. “I asked you a question, Jason.”
“You know why,” he said. “Luke and D-Doris. Jealous, so you … killed …”
He froze, like somebody hit the pause button on his face. And suddenly he seemed plastic, his eyes like glass. I checked for a pulse. Nothing. I set him back on the ground and sighed over him. He looked smaller somehow, like he’d shrunk there on the road when the life had gone out of him.
I looked at his face. I wanted to see that Jordan sneer. I wanted to see the wild eyed rage I’d seen so long ago when he’d beat the hell out of that Mark kid at the Tastee-Freeze.
That was the Jason Jordan I’d hoped to kill, the animal, the reckless bully. The Jason that deserved to be gunned down in the street.
But all I saw was fear. The last expression on Jason Jordan’s face, his gaze fixed into the distance, frozen stare at the big unknown coming right at him. I didn’t even want the answers to my questions anymore. I’d had bad answers to too many questions already. There was nothing left to do but haul away the bodies and hose the blood off the road.
People were coming out to the street, wrapping themselves in bathrobes, putting on glasses. I don’t know why, but I felt embarrassed to have them looking at me. But I supposed I’d have been curious too.
“Back inside, folks,” I yelled. “Everything’s under control.” I stood, made some kind of everything-is-okay gesture, hoping they’d all scoot back inside without question.
“What are you playing at, Toby?” It was Richard Macon, the hardware store owner. “Where’s the chief?”
“The chief’s on his way,” I told them. “By order of the Coyote Crossing Police Department, I’m asking you to all go back inside.”
“I’ve known you since you were six years old, Toby Sawyer,” Macon said. “Now, tell me what in blue blazes is going on.”
“You know me, and I know you too, Mr. Macon.” I thumbed the tin star on my shirt. “But tonight, I’m the law. Now you people get your goddamned asses back inside.”
And they did.
They grumbled and gawked at the bodies in the street, but they went. Soon doors were closing. I saw only a few faces peeking though curtains. Maybe I had some kind of authority they believed in, or maybe the fact I’d lied about the chief being on his way was good enough. Or maybe when a man with a gun tells you to do something, you do it.
I picked up the shotgun and put it on my shoulder, sucked in a big lungful of night air. Night. There wasn’t much left of it. The sun would be poking up over the horizon soon. The night was over. Everything was over. No more Jordans. No more Mexican smugglers. With morning would come the fallout. The State Police with mops and brooms and hard questions that I didn’t have all the answers for.
Hell.
I could use a bed. Maybe a hundred hours sleep.
I went back into the station and tried the phone, but no luck. The whole place still smelled scorched. It was a hell of a mess.
“Goddamn, son, what the hell did you do to this place?”
I flinched at the sudden voice behind me, turned and saw him coming from the back room.
“Been one hell of a night, ain’t it, boy?” said Chief Krueger. “I suppose you might have a few questions.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I didn’t have jack shit when I came back to Coyote Crossing. Nothing but a dilapidated trailer and a headstone with my mother underneath. Frank Krueger had been like some salty, distant uncle. The chief had known my father, not a lot but some. I told him I’d somehow managed to squeak through the academy and he tossed a part-time job my way, something to keep me in beer and cigarettes until I moved on. He put his trust in me right away, and that gave me a little pride when I didn’t have much else to cling to.
But I didn’t move on. That had been the plan, but it just didn’t happen. I’d stayed. Krueger must have felt like he’d been stuck with some idiot relation, but he never said a word. Never treated me like a charity case. Yeah, I’d pulled grunt work and crap night duty. But the chief never acted like he was tossing scraps to a mutt. Which was more the truth.
Things seemed to have changed since he was standing there pointing a pistol at me.
I shook my head, tried to clear the cobwebs. So tired. “Chief?”
The chief tsked, shook his head too but more like in a sad way, like he had to put down a pony with a broken leg. “You just couldn’t go home and mind your business, could you, son?”
Shit.
“Did you really gun down all them Jordans?” He chuckled. “Jesus, boy. I got to hand it to you. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
I looked him over then said, “You’re not wearing your hat.”
“Huh?” He ran his hands through his thinning salt and pepper hair. “Oh, yeah.” He grinned. “It got smudged.”
“I thought the blood … It wasn’t yours.”
“Nope,” Krueger said. “I got my hands dirty and got it on my lid. I guess maybe you got the wrong idea.”
“You burned down your own house, didn’t you?”
“I want them looking through the rubble for my body,” he said. “Give me a little more time to get away, find a place to lay low.”
I felt something like lead grow cold and heavy in my gut. “So you were in it with the Jordans and the Mexicans the whole time.”
“Hell no,” Krueger said. “I’d as soon have a pack of chimps working for me as the Jordans. Just Luke. We paid him to drive sometimes and to keep his mouth shut. Dumb son of a bitch can usually scrape enough brains together to take his pay and go on about his business without causing any trouble.”
“But not tonight.”
“No, not tonight,” Kruger said and sighed. “Horny bastard had to play funny with the sister of one of those banditos. Shouldn’t be surprised. Luke never could keep himself zipped up. But I guess you already know all about that.”
I summoned everything I had into a cold stare. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He smiled sadly, shook his head, and just for a minute the colorful old uncle was back. “No, I guess not. That’s fine. But anyway Luke Jordan got himself dead.”
“With the keys to the truck in his pocket,” I said.
“I got back to Luke with a body bag, wrapped him all up like it was police business. Didn’t want an audience while I searched him. People were looking out their windows. And I didn’t want the keys locked up in the evidence closet. So I took him back to my place. Luke was supposed to give the keys to Billy before he went off drinking at Skeeter’s.” For just a second, the chief looked pained. “I found Billy’s body. You did quite a number on him.”
“He needed it.”
“I can understand that,” Krueger said. “Just a damn shame is all. The whole situation’s just a damn shame, and that’s for sure. If things had turned out just a little different … well, they didn’t, and here we are. A shame.”
“What’s the shame, Chief? That Billy’s dead, or that you can’t smuggle illegals no more?”
“Now you just come down from your high horse, Toby. I care about my people. I care what happens to Billy. I’d care if it was you too. Fact is the smuggling was about to dry up anyway. This Mexican crime gang brings them over the border, and they come through here and get spread all over. Some to work mines out west or other places to work the crops. This was a quiet little nowhere stop to switch drivers and get the wetbacks some food and water. But there’s federal people sniffing around up north and border patrol getting tighter down south. Too risky now. Too bad we didn’t shut down a little sooner. Could have saved some trouble.”
Some trouble. I understood now how Roy reacted when he’d seen his truck all b
anged up, and I’d said there’d been some trouble. Understatement of the fucking year.
I nodded at the gun in his hand. “So what happens now?”
“Looks like I got to get the hell out of Dodge,” Krueger said. “No way to cover up this mess. You’ve had a busy night. But I don’t blame you. I surely don’t.” He shrugged. “Shit happens, as the saying goes. No grudges.”
“No grudges. That sounds good. So maybe put the gun away.”
“No, sorry, son, but I can’t do that. I’m going to shoot you all right, but it’s purely practical, not cause I’m upset with you. I promise. There’s just no other way this can happen.”
My heart sank all the way down to the bottom, but I couldn’t help thinking at least it would be over. The long hard night would end at last. Maybe somebody would call Doris and tell her to come get the boy. Thinking of my son brought that ache behind my eyes like when I’m about to start crying.
Oh God.
“Sorry, son.” And Krueger really did look sorry. Sorry, old and tired. “But I got to think of myself now, and this is the simplest way.”
He raised the pistol, and I felt a warm, fat tear roll down my cheek.
“Stop right there, Chief.”
Amanda had come through the back, had her pistol aimed at the chief, walking slowly forward. I could have kissed her.
Amanda said, “I’m making a habit out of saving you, Toby. Maybe you’d better—”
The chief didn’t hesitate, spun fast, bringing the pistol around. Amanda fired. The pistol flew from Krueger’s hand. He grunted, clenched his teeth, and brought the bloody hand to his chest. His face went pale, sweat breaking out on his forehead. His breathing went fast and heavy like he’d just run a mile.
“That’s some shot,” Krueger said. It was an effort for him to talk. Blood spilled down his wounded hand. “Just like Wyatt Earp.”
“I was aiming for your chest,” Amanda said.
Krueger chuckled.
She spared me a glance. “You okay, Toby?”
I nodded. “But it was close.”
She edged around Kruger toward me, keeping her gun on him. She backed up against the cell, fished into her pocket for the cell keys. “We’ll put him in here, and then call the doc to come—”
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