Arrowmoon (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 8)

by George Wier

  “Phew,” Hennessey exhaled, almost into my ear.

  We lay there, collecting ourselves.

  I opened one eye to track the helicopter as it slowed, turned, and began to settle in the open field between the hill behind which we lay and the barn.

  It settled down slowly behind the hill, out of our sight.

  *****

  The whine of helicopter turbines damped out completely and the rotors had slowed to a crawl.

  Three trespassers moved through the brush to the south of the old hay barn.

  When we were within fifty feet of the jeep we squatted behind a thick clump of yaupon that grew amid a stand of scrub oak.

  Two men stood in the illumination from the jeep headlights. Although the light was cut off about chest high for both of them, I could tell that one of the two men was the one who had signaled with the flair. The law man. The other fellow, a tall, big man, wore a bomber jacket and black slacks. Maybe it was cold when he’d left New England.

  The big man reached inside his coat and fished out something. He offered it to the other fellow with a large, fleshy hand. For a moment it looked like the officer wasn’t going to take it.

  There were words. I couldn’t make them out, but I could tell that someone wasn’t happy.

  After a long moment some sort of agreement had been reached. The officer took the item. In the briefest of instants I made out a flash of white. Paper, most probably. If I were a betting man, I would have put good odds on an envelope of some kind, most likely containing multiples of old Ben Franklin’s face. You never know, though, until you know.

  There were one or two words more, then the two turned and went around the corner of the barn. Through a series of holes in the side of the barn illuminated by the jeep headlights I could make out movement inside. They were in there.

  I whispered to Lief and Hennessey: “You two stay here. I’m going to get closer.”

  I didn’t wait for a reply but took a good look around, emerged from cover and crossed the distance to the next clump of shrubs to the west of the barn, the opposite side from the entrance, or at least I hoped.

  Within twenty feet of the back wall of the barn I looked and listened.

  The voices were there and I caught muffled snatches: “It’s back...”

  “Watch... rats. Big ones.”

  A flashlight clicked on. The bright beam roamed about inside the barn.

  I heard a heavy thump. A moment later there was a sneeze.

  “Criminy!”

  “Damn rats... everywhere.”

  There were bumps and rustles from inside. The tin near the base of the barn close by me squeaked and then there was a rustle in the dead leaves and brush coming toward me. Something ran across my foot and a shiver went up my spine. I resisted the sudden urge to jump away.

  The rustling settled. I peered closely again, narrowing my eyes. The flashlight beam was steady.

  “Got a combination?” One man asked.

  “No. Nobody...”

  “How... move this thing?”

  “Shut up,” the other voice said. Jockovitch, most likely.

  Then, off to my right there was a sudden disturbance.

  A cone of light sprang out and a voice said: “Alright boys, come on out of there.”

  I heard Lief’s voice: “Okay, okay. Don’t shoot. I’m the construction manager for the highway.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The men in the barn came out and I saw them briefly as they passed the jeep.

  They made a lot of racket moving through the brush toward Lief, Ty, and the man who held the flashlight and, I assumed from Lief’s statement, a gun. I stood frozen in a crouched position. The muscles in my legs were starting to shimmy and shake, but I didn’t want to make a sound. Chances were they would discover me anyway, but I wasn’t going to give them the heads-up if I could help it.

  “Why that’s Able. You still squatting, Able?” The voice was that of the other man from the barn, the law man.

  “Yeah.”

  “I forgot all about you. Who’s this?”

  “Says he’s the highway construction manager.”

  “Your trespassing here is criminal,” Jockovitch said. “We have a restraining order against you.”

  “It doesn’t say anything about not coming on this land. It just says I can’t build a road through it for fourteen days.” I had to give Lief some credit for keeping his head.

  “None of that matters,” the law man said. “You’re both under arrest.”

  “Let’s just shoot ‘em and be done with it,” the first voice said. I figured him for some kind of deputy. There were few other possibilities. The most likely was the Sheriff’s department. If they weren’t the Sheriff and his deputy then possibly they were Game Wardens, although I’d never heard of Parks and Wildlife getting mixed up in anything such as this before. A third option was private security, but you find few thriving rent-a-cop agencies flourishing in small Texas towns, and fewer still who have arrest powers to back them up. Barring that, the only other possibility was the state patrol. I didn’t care much for any of the options. They all meant trouble.

  “There won’t be any shooting,” Jockovitch said.

  “There’d better not be,” Lief said. “Luke is back in town by this time. If I’m not back by ten o’clock, he’s to get the boys together and come in here and get me.”

  Good bluff, Lief, I thought.

  “He’s lying,” the deputy said.

  Ty Hennessey laughed.

  “Shut up, old man,” Jockovitch said. “Sheriff, you say he’s a squatter. On this land?”

  “I never knew what land he was squatting on. I see him in town about once a month. He spends the night in jail when I do see him. Vagrancy, you know.”

  “And I thank you for your kindness, Sheriff,” Hennessey said, chuckling.

  “What’s so funny?” Jockovitch asked.

  “You fellas,” Hennessey said. “What are you doing out here in the woods with your jeep and your helicopter?”

  “Sheriff, what did you say this old-timer’s last name was?”

  “Uh... I think it’s Johnson. Something like that. That’s how he signs in when we book him. Doesn’t have any I.D. No address either, except maybe these woods.”

  “Okay,” Jockovitch said. “Let me know if you run across anyone with the last name of ‘Hennessey’.”

  “Will do,” the sheriff said.

  “Who’s Hennessey?” Lief asked.

  “None of your goddamned business,” the Sheriff said.

  Hennessey and Lief stood with the deputy’s flashlight beam directly on them not more than thirty feet away. I was no longer worried they’d be shot. I was, however, trying desperately to think of some kind of distraction. Also, I wanted to see what was in that barn.

  I didn’t have to think long, thanks to Lief.

  *****

  I’ve never understood why it is that when many things happen all at once, time begins to have a sort of stretched quality to it. It probably has to do with motion. I haven’t yet seen a working clock that didn’t have moving parts, so until someone proves otherwise, I’ll stick with that little theory.

  The first thing was that there was an unmistakable twittering sound, like a nervous little bird, but I knew instantly that it was Lief’s cell phone.

  “Damn,” he said. He brazenly reached into his shirt pocket to get it out before anyone could say anything. Through the yaupon branches where I was hiding I could make out him fumbling it around in his hands, then he dropped it. It twittered away. The flashlight beam pinned it on the ground. Lief’s hand went for it just as another set of hands did, probably the deputy’s. Lief’s hand was there first. He came up with it fast and I saw a cloud of dirt come with it, tracing back up the flashlight beam.


  “Ow!” the deputy’s voice wailed.

  The flashlight tumbled to the ground and rolled.

  I heard a grunt, then a loud thump and a rustle. Someone had hit the ground.

  There were long, fast strides going off through the brush away from the party. Either Lief or Hennessey, or possibly both.

  In the next instant there was a bright flash of green fire and a deafening CRACK! Pistol shot.

  I broke from cover, ran around the barn through the jeep headlights and ducked inside through the open doorway.

  I heard: “Did you get him?”

  “Missed the son of a bitch. Stay where you are, Able.”

  Inside the barn there was a dirt floor and bales of moldy hay tossed about.

  Then I saw it. A glint of reflected light to my right.

  I stepped carefully over and felt.

  It was cold and round. I felt notches. I moved out of the way of the little light afforded by the headlights outside. It was the combination wheel for a safe. I felt for the edges of it. The safe was quite large. About four feet high and two and a half feet wide, three feet from front to back. I gave it a shove. I must have weighed half a ton. It wasn’t going anywhere quickly.

  I’d seen enough.

  I turned and darted back outside.

  A man was cursing: the Sheriff.

  There was an idling sound. The jeep was running, its finely tuned engine gently humming.

  I climbed in the passenger side, scooted over, felt for the clutch with my left foot, grabbed the gearshift with my right hand, yanked it down into reverse and floored the gas.

  “Shit!” somebody yelled.

  My head was thrown forward into the steering column and I felt a thud and for an instant there was a huge pulse of purple behind my eyes and a flare of pain. There would be a nice knot there in a little while, if I survived what I was about to do.

  The rear of the jeep hit a tree and I jerked back in the seat.

  I threw the stick shift into forward gear and gunned the gas. The tires peeled for a moment, throwing dirt up into the tree and back over on top of my head, then the tires caught traction and I was rolling forward fast.

  CRACK!

  I had no illusion that I wasn’t being shot at.

  “Stop shooting, goddammit!” That was Jockovitch.

  “Where are these bastards coming from?”

  “Out of the freakin’ ground!”

  And that was the last of the conversation that I got to hear. The jeep engine drowned out the rest of the shouting.

  Suddenly there was a large object in my headlights–

  The helicopter!

  I had just enough time to turn the jeep, but then a feeling came over me.

  I ducked down beneath the dashboard and kept my foot on the gas.

  I had anticipated a heavy impact. There was a horrendous shriek of crumpling metal, but the impact was little more than a good sneeze, and suddenly I was through.

  I looked back.

  From the faint moonlight I could make out what was left of the helicopter. It sat at an odd angle and its tail was wrapped back around toward the cockpit.

  There would be no chases from the sky.

  *****

  I meandered in the direction that I thought Lief may have run. The woods were thick for a stretch, then gave away abruptly to a power-line clearing. I was possibly a quarter of a mile from the barn. I turned right and headed through the high weeds and low scrub brush of the power-line cut.

  I drove another two hundred yards and stopped. I turned the engine off but kept the headlights on.

  “Lief!” I called. “It’s Bill! I’ve got their jeep!”

  I waited, my pulse pounded in my ears.

  The silence was the eeriest thing I’d ever heard.

  Something tapped my left shoulder. I jerked so hard and turned so abruptly that I could have hurt my neck.

  “What the hell took you so long,” Lief said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  You don’t live well into your forties without learning a few useful things. It was experience that got us through the Booger County woods that night and back to the rutted county road, but it was an instinct of sorts that made me talk Lief into leaving his truck where it was and turning the opposite direction to head further west.

  We picked our way by feel through the network of dirt roads and back around to Lief’s unfinished highway.

  The jeep picked up tar and gravel and the pinging rocks underneath made a racket. The jeep would never be the same again―I hoped.

  Lief and I compared notes in loud voices as the wind whipped through our hair.

  I felt good. I felt alive. I was twenty years old again, or maybe eighteen.

  Also, I was overdue to call Julie.

  I fished my cell phone out of my pocket and called home. I put on my most boring, tired voice.

  “Are you okay?” Julie asked.

  “I’m fine, baby,” I said.

  “What’s that racket?”

  “Rocks hitting the underside of this jeep. We’re driving over fresh tar and gravel.”

  “Yuck,” she said.

  “Yeah. Listen, baby,” I said. “I may be wrapped up and headed home by tomorrow.” I looked over at Lief. He rolled his eyes. “Or... maybe not. It depends. I will call, though.”

  “Bill,” she said. She rarely calls me by my name; it’s usually “honey” or “baby”. I knew what was coming.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not sticking your neck out, are you? Like at Caddo Lake?”

  “Julie, it’s just business.”

  “Business,” she said. “I hope not business like when we met.”

  “Not like that, darlin’,” I said. “How many times do we have to have this conversation?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me. Alright, somebody wants to speak to you.”

  “Okay,” I said. I waited while the phone was handed over.

  “Daddy?” It was Jennifer, all of four years old and talking up a storm.

  “Hi darlin’. Why aren’t you in bed already?”

  “Mommy says that you are doing silly things. The bad people haven’t shot you yet, daddy?”

  “No, Princess,” I said. “The bad people are all asleep right now.”

  “That’s good, daddy. Bye.”

  “Bye,” I said.

  Julie got back on.

  “You should listen to her,” she said.

  “What have you been telling her?”

  “Oh. Nothing. Just about daddy’s business, that’s all.”

  I laughed. “Okay. I love you. Goodnight, baby,” I said.

  “I love you too. ‘Night.”

  She hung up.

  I looked over at Lief to see him grinning from ear to ear.

  “Man,” he said, shook his head and started laughing.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just nothing.”

  *****

  Most construction projects of any significant size will have a construction shack somewhere. Lief’s was parked in a field off of the unfinished highway: a large portable building, complete with a generator for power and air conditioning. There was an old Range Rover parked on the side. I asked Lief about it and he told me the story. His ex-wife had abandoned it up in Dallas when a fan belt broke on North Central Expressway. By the time she must have come back, if she did, it had been towed. Lief got a call two weeks later from the wrecking yard where it was in storage. His ex had never bothered with changing the title; it was still in his name. He sent one of his hired hands to pay off the wrecking yard and pick it up, and over the last month he had had to move it every time he moved the construction shack. But, the main thing I wanted to know I found out with my next question: yep, it ran. That was all I needed to know. The
re was a stock pond not a few hundred yards away from the construction shack. Lief had been fishing there a time or two. Was it deep? Yep. Deep enough? Yep.

  We both stood there as midnight fell and watched the jeep disappear beneath a fountain of escaping air. I’m not usually so blasé about littering, but sometimes you have do things you normally wouldn’t.

  Which brought me to my next course of action.

  We took a long, late night ride back alongside the highway in Lief’s ex’s Range Rover, avoiding the tar whenever we could. We stopped and parked where the real wet tar began and walked half a mile until we came upon a phalanx of silent earth-moving equipment.

  A man stood there at the side of the road with his back to us, silhouetted by a temporary security light setup. He peered through binoculars into the night.

  “Hey, Luke,” Lief called.

  The figure turned.

  “Oh. Hey, boss. You scared me.”

  “What are you looking at?” Lief asked.

  “Your truck, I think. That is your truck down there, right boss?”

  “I’m pretty sure is,” Lief replied. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s somebody messing with it. I thought they were stealing it, but it’s been too long, now.”

  “Luke, this is Bill,” Lief said. “He’s a partner of mine.”

  Luke was young, early twenties. He appeared lean and chiseled, no doubt from the highway work. He handed Lief the binoculars.

  “Can’t see much,” Luke said, “but every now and then you see a flashlight come on.”

  “How’d you know they were there? I figured you’d be sleeping.” Lief gestured. I turned the direction he had pointed. There was a pickup there with a camper shell.

  Lief put the binoculars to his eyes.

  “They woke me up when they broke out one of your windows.”