I heard Daniel curse, then he dove out the driver’s door, a small satchel in hand. I made one last frantic look around for a weapon of some sort. What I had were handcuffs, attached, and a loop of tow strap hooked under the truck.
Daniel pointed the automatic at us. “This is only the beginning!” he shouted.
“You think you’re going to walk out of here?” I said, trying to stand up.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said matter-of-factly. He started to walk away, picking his way through the tangle of wires.
“What is it you want from us?” It wasn’t so much the question, or even the answer, that interested me at the moment. I wanted him to stop and talk, to look at me, to ignore County Road 14, down which Deputy Pasquale’s patrol car was approaching. A quarter-mile behind him, another vehicle was running on parking lights. The crunch of tires and burble of exhaust couldn’t be disguised, though. It would be only a matter of seconds before Daniel looked up at the approaching danger.
The young man ignored me. Instead, now a dozen paces from the crushed gate, he bent down and zipped open the little gym bag. He came up with what looked like two highway flares, and my gut did a flip-flop.
He still held the handgun, and again without warning or hesitation, he fired, this time from a crouch. Daniel let four rounds off, paced as if he had a metronome in his pocket. I flinched away from the clang of bullets off to my left. He hadn’t missed. The four holes punched in a vertical string down the drum, and instantly four fragrant jets of gasoline spurted out. A tiny fragment of something hit me just under the nose, stinging like hell, but the bullets—without doubt copper-jacketed—didn’t spray sparks.
As if I hadn’t had enough reason to think it before, the idea exploded in my mind—psychotics think up any excuse for their handiwork. Although it might have begun otherwise, Elliot Daniel didn’t care if the government was taking over Miles Waddell’s mesa for a clandestine fortress. He wasn’t the single, selfless hero saving his homeland from some faceless threat. He didn’t care who was trapped in a truck that was now a ticking bomb. He was a fruitcake, pure and simple. I’m sure his eyes gleamed when the first power pole started to topple, just as they gleamed now.
Just close enough that I recognized 303, Pasquale stopped his patrol car in the middle of the road. Certainly, he had been driving with his windows open, and had heard the shots. Coming up quickly behind him was another dark sedan. Finally, Daniel recognized Pasquale’s presence. He may simply have not cared until this point. The deputy popped on the headlights, snapped them to bright, and then turned on the spotlight. Daniel was pinned in the burst of light, and for a moment he stood confused, some little circuit in his brain short-circuited.
The deputy stepped out of the car, keeping behind the lights. “Drop the gun, right now!” he bellowed. Daniel remained frozen, gun in one hand, the pair of highway flares in the other. The second vehicle slid to a stop in the gravel just behind the deputy’s, and two figures got out, leaving the doors open.
“We have to go over the side,” I whispered harshly, and hauled at Waddell’s handcuffs. He had struggled to his feet—it was either that or lie in the growing lake of gasoline. The tow strap was stretched tightly enough that it would not reach to the back of the truck. Our choice was to clamber over the utility boxes.
Daniel raised his hand that held the flares, trying to shield his eyes. Gasoline gurgled out of the barrel, the top hole already slowing to a trickle as the level sank.
“Drop it right now!” Pasquale shouted.
I would think that it’s hard to stare into spotlights and remain brave. But bravery wasn’t Daniel’s problem. He bent down slowly and placed the handgun on the ground.
“Oh, shit,” I breathed. “Pasquale!” I bellowed as loudly as I could. “We have spilled gasoline over here!” The riddled drum was one thing—lighting off three more unvented drums put the bomb in another class.
“Come on,” I urged, and pushed myself on top of the utility boxes on the passenger side of the truck, keeping my left arm on the inside, waiting for Miles. He staggered, drawing close enough that I could swing a leg over the side, searching for a toehold. Nothing at all. The truck was slab-sided, a straight drop to the ground. The tow strap was tangled around the rear brace of the cab’s courtesy step.
Elliot Daniel had no where to go, but his mind was no longer sifting the choices. In fact, he had only two—and chose the wrong one.
“Don’t! Put it down!” Estelle barked, now moving fully into the light. Flanking her was another figure, handgun forward. I looked over my shoulder and saw Daniel fussing with the striker, and sure enough, the flare bloomed with a brilliant halo. His earlier shooting said that he was right-handed, and it took a second or two to transfer the lighted flare to that hand. He had a toss of fifty or sixty feet to reach us, no challenge at all.
His right arm went up, he shifted his stance with left leg forward like a ballplayer readying for the pitch.
“Now!” I shouted, and hauled at Waddell’s arm. I slid and he rolled, and the drop off the side of the truck was like a giant stamping on me with both feet. It didn’t help that Waddell landed fully on top of me, his bellow of pain punctuated by a sharp explosion that rocked through the night.
Everything hurt, and I couldn’t see what had happened. But gasoline still trickled in delicate little streams, now leaking down through the bed of the truck to spatter lightly on the ground beside my head.
Chapter Thirty-six
Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman was deft and gentle as she released the cuffs and untangling the tow strap, but the dripping gasoline lent an urgency that even spurred on the wounded rancher. He pushed his soaked carcass off of me and scrabbled away like a wounded spider, dragging his leg behind him. Lynn Browning appeared and hoisted him to his feet, letting him lean on her shoulder as they hobbled toward the gate.
“We need to get us all out of here, Padrino,” Estelle prompted.
“Gladly,” I managed. “But something doesn’t work too well.” I rolled onto my butt, sat up and winced as somebody stuck a row of needles in my left knee. “Shit,” I muttered, and heaved like a wounded whale onto my right side. I managed to rise to my hands and knees, left leg awkwardly splayed. I stopped and looked out toward the road, catching my breath.
Elliot Daniel lay on his back, arms outflung. Looking like wisps of fog, tendrils of smoke rose from around his body. Deputy Thomas Pasquale stood a short distance away, the muzzle of a short magazine-fed rifle unwavering and pointed at Daniel. The handgun the young man had used to put holes in both Waddell and the gasoline drum lay two yards from the young man’s feet.
“Everybody who’s anybody is on the way,” Pasquale said with forced jocularity. His single shot had been perfectly timed and saved lives, but I knew that looking down at your score was still a soul-jarring, sobering experience. Waddell was still hopping north with Lynn Browning, putting himself behind the lights, and well away from the explosion threat.
I stopped when I reached Elliot Daniel.
“What’s smoking?” I asked, but I already knew. Tommy Pasquale needed any reinforcement he could get at the moment, and knowing how perfectly justified his shot was would help…a little.
“He fell backward on the flare, sir.” A phosphorous highway flare was designed to stay lit come wind, snow, or rain. The damn thing was a danger, no matter what. Being muffled by Daniel’s body was somehow appropriate. The second flare lay in the dirt, still capped.
I hobbled close enough that I could reach the deputy and shook him by the shoulder. “Thanks, Thomas.” There was no need to check the victim for signs of life. The heavy .308 bullet had plowed into Daniel’s body through the right armpit as he turned and reared back to throw the flare. The large wound high in his left side, and then through the muscle of his upper left arm, told me that the slug had smashed through lungs and heart before exiting.
; “There are four drums of gasoline on that truck, and he put four bullets in one of ’em, so pay attention.” I turned to Estelle, whose strong little hand was still clenched on my right elbow. “You have the girl in custody?”
“Yes, we do. A little bit of a surprise.”
“In what way?”
“Julie Warner, sir.”
I looked at her sharply. “Curt Boyd’s girl?”
“Well, sometimes, apparently. She claims that she was trying to talk Daniel out of this,” and she turned to look at the truck.
“Didn’t work too hard at it,” Pasquale said.
“She was doing her best,” I said. “We found ’em in Finnegan’s barn, and from the looks of things, she was giving it her all.”
Far off in the night, the symphony of sirens reached us. “Fire and rescue is on the way to nail this place down.” He pointed a finger pistol at me. “And they found your vehicle and secured it, sir. It’s kind of battered up.”
Estelle urged me toward the lights. “We need to put some space between us and that gasoline,” she said. “Tom, will you get a tarp and cover him up?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t turn him over yet…and can the gun.”
“You got it.” He seemed relieved to have something to do.
She added, “And nobody goes near that truck until Fire and Rescue have secured it. Nobody.”
Both back doors of Estelle’s car were open, and I took the side opposite Miles Waddell. I reached out and shook hands with him. “Be thinking about this escapade of ours,” I said. “Both you and I are going to be writing depositions for about the next week.”
“Two weeks, more likely,” the undersheriff said. She walked around the car and knelt, examining Waddell’s punctured leg with a flashlight. “Nice clean nine-millimeter hole,” she said. “Any grating when you flex it?”
“I try not to do that,” Waddell said. “But no. Just aches like hell now. Didn’t hurt when he did it.”
“We’ll get you taken care of here in just a minute or two.” She touched his shoulder as she stood up. Lynn Browning had been standing behind her, looking over the undersheriff’s shoulder at Waddell. He ducked his head and looked up at her, and she knelt by the car to make it easier for him.
“You sure you want to work for me?” He laughed weakly. “And we haven’t even started yet!”
“It gives me pause,” Lynn said gently.
“First thing I want to know,” Waddell said, “is why he did it.”
“I think we all do, sir. For one thing, he wanted a job with us. Now, whether he thought that would give him insider information so he could play more games, I don’t know.”
I watched Pasquale spread out the black tarp and drape it over Daniel’s body. He waited until Estelle had snapped several digital photos of the weapon, then nudged the gun into a plastic evidence bag, and then, because it was still loaded and cocked, into a stout ammo can half-full of Styrofoam peanuts. He marked the can with bright tape and label so some careless idiot wouldn’t grab the gun out of the can and touch off a round.
My intent was to hobble around a little until my knee started working half normally, then hitch a ride back to my bashed SUV. Various folks had other ideas. It was Estelle who sliced open the bloody rip in my left pant leg and frowned at the impressive gouge below my knee.
“How did you do this, sir?”
“I guess bailing over the side of the truck. I don’t know.” As I spoke I noticed that a couple of slender fingers had a grip on my wrist, counting the pulse. With a grimace of impatience, I pulled away. “Come on, now. We’re fine. What I really need is someone to run me over to my own vehicle before somebody makes off with keys, guns, and who the hell knows what else.”
“It’s secured,” Estelle said. “It’ll be back in town before you are.” Headlights stabbed toward us, and in a moment Sheriff Robert Torrez’s Expedition slid to a halt immediately beside Pasquale’s. The sheriff got out, walked halfway toward the covered corpse and stopped. For a long moment, he gazed at the scene, then finally sighed and turned back, finding Miles and me where we now sat with legs splayed, feet on the ground.
The sheriff said something, his soft voice not carrying the twenty feet to me.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why am I not surprised?” he repeated. He ambled over and regarded me, eyes invisible under heavy brows and the brim of his baseball cap. “You all right?” He ducked down, one hand on the roof, and looked past me to Miles Waddell. Without waiting for my answer, he said, “How about you?”
“I’ll live,” Waddell said. He sounded tired. Who knew why.
“He’d appreciate it if you had a morphine amp in your pocket,” I said, and Torrez made a little snorting sound of amusement.
“Ambulance will be here in a minute,” he said, and slapped the roof. As he pushed himself away and started to turn back toward Estelle, he added, “Don’t head out anywheres.”
I laughed, and Miles shifted position painfully.
“He sounds like he might be a little pissed,” he said.
“If he was pissed, he wouldn’t say anything.” I nodded as we watched the big man approach his deputy and slide a hand across Pasquale’s shoulder to grip him by the back of the neck, give a gentle squeeze, and turn him loose. “Pasquale is the one who pulled the trigger, and Bobby knows what’s going through the kid’s mind.”
“Torrez never struck me as the compassionate kind.”
“Don’t underestimate the sheriff,” I said. A brilliant array of flashing lights approached, diving up and down along the dips of the county road. “Our ride,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” Waddell exclaimed. “We’re not going to ride all the way back in that…”
“Relax and enjoy,” I laughed. “Beautiful nurses, soothing IV, warm blankets…it doesn’t get better than that.” As the ambulance pulled to a stop, I saw that Fred Romero and Paul Moore were the two EMTs on call. “Well, two out of three, anyway.”
The warm blankets felt wonderful, the IV went unnoticed, and the pneumatic knee brace hurt like hell. The big pad of bandaging on the scrape below my knee would hurt worse when it was removed, along with the hair on my leg. I had been captive in an ambulance a number of times in my various careers, and hated every adventure. But this time, I didn’t argue about anything. The gurney, cramped as it was, felt soft and wonderful. I was sound asleep before we reached the pavement.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Julie Warner had been crying like a lost puppy, but she was still cute enough to take my breath away. Not beautiful, mind you. Just plain cute, with freckles, dimples, a nose close to aquiline, thick auburn hair that swooshed back into a ponytail, and fair skin that hadn’t been toasted to crisp wrinkles by New Mexico sun.
The photo of her that I’d seen at the Boyds’ hadn’t done her justice. But now she sat in one of the old oak captain’s chairs in the first floor conference room, right wrist handcuffed to the hardwood arm. Sergeant Jackie Taber had been keeping her company, escorting her through the myriad interviews. She had told her story probably ten times.
As Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman and I entered, Sergeant Taber stood up, one hand on Julie’s shoulder. She introduced us, not explaining who I was or what the hell I was doing there. The high-tech hinged knee brace was awkward, and the two stitches below ached, but otherwise I was fit enough to pass muster as maybe someone who should matter to Julie Warner.
“Ms. Warner, we have identified you as being in Elliot Daniel’s company earlier tonight at the Finnegan ranch north on County Road 43.” The girl nodded, and Estelle added, “Is that true?”
Julie’s voice was hoarse. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And why were the two of you there?”
Julie swallowed hard. “Elliot was preparing the truck.”
“For what?”<
br />
“He planned to blow up the electric substation down south.”
“The one near the development, on the county road?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And why were you present?”
“I was trying to talk him out of it.”
“Why would you do that?”
Julie’s head sank down until her forehead touched the table.
“Julie?”
“Because I knew…I knew what had already happened.”
“What was that?”
“About…about Curt. Curt Boyd.”
“And the police officer?”
“I didn’t know about him until this evening.”
“Ms. Warner, when the police talked to you earlier—for the first time the day before yesterday, I believe it was—why didn’t you tell them that you knew what Curt Boyd and Elliot Daniel had been planning to do?”
She didn’t bother to wipe the tears away. And she didn’t answer.
“Ms. Warner, why did you accompany Elliot Daniel tonight?”
The girl nodded wearily. “I told you…I thought I could talk him out of doing any more harm. I mean…” and she snuffled. “I mean, before, when they talked about dropping the power line, it sounded like just a crazy stunt. It would bring attention to a project neither one of them believed in, and Elliot kept talking about how after all this he’d be able to get this great job with a security company. And then after everything went wrong, Elliot was so dead set…so determined. Like he could make everything all right again.”
“And even when you learned that he had shot a police officer, you still chose to do nothing. You chose not to call us.”
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