Arrowmoon (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 8)

by George Wier

  The door stood wide open. A faint breeze wafted over us.

  All was still.

  “Three,” Sheriff Noonday said, yet again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Darla’s grandmother was dead before she hit the ground. Everyone got into motion at once. Darla and the Judge went to Mrs. Sinclair and Lief darted to the side and stiff-armed the front door, slamming it shut.

  I grabbed Lief’s shotgun, whistled at him, got his attention and tossed it to him.

  Ty Hennessey got down on the floor and crept behind the cover of the couch.

  Darla was crying and the Judge was still in a state of shock. I watched as he lifted his wife’s hand and began slapping it.

  “Wake up, Mandy. Please. Don’t go like this,” he said. But I knew, as did Darla and the rest of us; the old woman was long gone.

  Sheriff Noonday had his pistol in his hand again. He walked to the front of the house, slipped behind the couch between the two front windows on the dining area side and peaked outside carefully.

  “I don’t see anybody,” he said.

  “That’s Roth out there,” Ty said from the floor. “He’ll probably want to kill all of us. What they call ‘cleaning house’.”

  “Somebody call in some help,” I said. “We’ve got several cell phones in here.”

  “They don’t work out here,” the Judge said. “Can’t get a signal this far in the woods.”

  I looked down at him. The knowledge that his wife was gone was settling down upon him. I could see it in his eyes and upon his face.

  “That bastard killed her,” he said.

  “I know, Judge,” I said. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Judge,” Lief said. “We have to work right now. Mourn her later, sir. Do you have a phone that works?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Hanging on the wall in the kitchen.” He was still on his knees, his wife’s lifeless hand still held between his.

  “Darla,” Lief said. “We need you.” Lief had taken up position by the curtains on the living room side of the front of the house.

  Darla was crying. The little girl in her had come fully to the fore. I could understand it. I’d be bawling like a baby if it had been my grandmother.

  “Judge,” I said. “What’s the number to the guard station out front? We need reinforcements.”

  “Just dial eleven,” he said.

  A windowpane shattered next to Sheriff Noonday and there was a ‘pang’ sound from the kitchen. The window curtain next to the Sheriff lifted lazily.

  “That was close,” Noonday said, and moved a foot farther away from the window.

  I flitted into the kitchen, squatted behind the breakfast bar and spun around, looking for the phone.

  It was on the wall beside the refrigerator. Also, I noticed there was a neat hole in the center of it.

  I reached up, lifted the phone off the hook and punched ‘1-1'.

  “Gate,” a lazy voice said.

  I was trying to get a picture in my head of the guard we had passed there a few hours before, but couldn’t.

  “This is Judge Sinclair’s cabin. We’re under sniper fire. We need the help. Can you call the local Sheriff’s Office. This is a war zone out here.”

  The voice on the other end laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “He said it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Maybe it isn’t so easy as he said.” The laughter went up an octave. “He’ll teach you people not to rob federal banks.”

  “Who said?”

  “The old guy. Sneezy.”

  I hung up.

  “Sheriff,” I called out. “You know the number for the Leon County Sheriff’s Office?”

  “What? Hell no. Why would I know their number?”

  “Just checking,” I said.

  “Call directory assistance,” he said.

  Another window pane shattered and I heard Lief curse.

  “You okay in there?” I called out.

  “Yeah,” Lief said. “I hate this shit,” he said.

  “Oh yeah,” the Sheriff said. “I forgot to tell you, Mr. Prescott. I’ve got your Johnny Cash CDs at my jail.”

  “Can I have them back?” Lief asked.

  “As soon as we get out of here and get back.”

  “That’s all the incentive I need,” Lief answered back.

  I picked up the phone again.

  No dial tone. It figured.

  “Phone’s dead,” I called out.

  “Fine,” Sheriff Noonday said. “I prefer a straight-forward shootout to waiting any day.”

  “I think you’re going to get your chance, Sheriff,” Lief said.

  I went back into the living room in a crouching run.

  Another windowpane shattered and a picture frame leapt from the wall next to me and clattered around on the floor.

  Darla was standing.

  She looked composed and calm. Her eyes met mine.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Everything,” she said. “Everything I ever knew. It’s all gone now. It’s just me and him, now,” she said, gesturing absently with one delicate hand at the Judge.

  “And me,” Lief said from behind her.

  “And you. That will have to be enough, won’t it?” she asked and continued her steady, unblinking gaze into my eyes. Her voice sounded small and far away, but it had a certain vehemence behind it.

  “It’s just a fact,” she said. “The way it is.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Glass shattered once more and a hole appeared in the wall to my right.

  Neither one of us moved nor even blinked.

  “Okay,” she said calmly. “I suppose I will have to end all of this, now. Thank you, Bill. You’ve done your part. It’s my turn to do mine.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked her, my voice tone matching hers perfectly.

  “My duty.”

  She turned and walked calmly to the front door and placed her hand on the knob.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was a perfect Texas summer day ― not a cloud in the sky, not too hot, not too cool.

  The air smelled fresh and clean as Darla Sinclair opened the front door of the little house in the woods and stepped outside.

  “Shit,” Lief said. He moved from his place by the window quickly and went outside.

  “Wait for me,” Sheriff Noonday said, and followed suit.

  Judge Sinclair dropped his wife’s dead hand, reached for the other one, removed the pistol carefully, stood and walked out the front door.

  “Give me a gun, Bill,” Ty said. He was on his feet.

  I tossed him one of Sheriff Noonday’s that I had tucked into my pants.

  Ty Hennessey went out the front door.

  I was no longer armed. I had just two bare hands.

  “Okay,” I said to Mrs. Sinclair’s lifeless form. “Here goes nothing, one last time.”

  *****

  By the time I was to the front lawn, Darla was almost to the road. There was a long, black car there parked on the other side of the road. Its windows were tinted black. Darla made a beeline for it.

  With a few quick strides I caught up with the rest of the crew and fell in next to Lief.

  Darla was suddenly knocked backwards as if struck by a giant hand and we heard the pop an instant later.

  I saw smoke in a tree across the road.

  “There!” I shouted.

  Guns roared. Our guns.

  Lief stooped and lifted Darla.

  “I’m... okay,” she said. “Kevlar... vest.” She was trying to talk and catch her breath at the same time. Not a good combination.

  “Take it easy,” Lief said. “Let’s get to cover.”

  I had no illusion that if there wa
s another shot from the trees, it would probably go through someone’s head.

  Thirty yards across the road a man fell out of a tree.

  “One down,” Scott Noonday said.

  Darla was back on her feet and catching her breath. Lief propped her up with one arm and we all marched forward.

  I felt a sting on the top of my right shoulder and heard the report an instant later.

  “There!” I said, and pointed at yet another tree fifty yards to the left of the first one.

  Guns roared, this time four of them.

  Another sniper fell.

  “Two,” Noonday said.

  The sting at my shoulder didn’t worsen. I didn’t have time to look. My eyes scanned the trees.

  There was movement behind the long, black sedan on the other side ― the driver’s side.

  I saw a head turning and looking where the second sniper had fallen.

  Everyone held their guns straight-arm, centered on the man.

  “Wait! Don’t shoot!”

  “Come out, Sneezy,” I shouted.

  We stopped, each of us expecting a bullet that never came.

  *****

  Two hands went up into the air. One of them held a drooping pistol.

  “Throw the gun away!” Darla shouted.

  We watched as the gun went flying.

  “If there is one more shot fired,” I shouted. “You’re a dead man.”

  “He’s dead anyway,” Lief said just above a whisper.

  I didn’t know what to make of that, except possibly that he had plans of his own. But suddenly I saw. It was the look on Darla’s face. Lief was right. Roth Hayward wasn’t long for this world.

  Hayward came out from behind the car, his hands still in the air.

  “Okay. Okay,” he said. “Everybody just remain calm.”

  “Any more snipers out there?” I asked.

  “No. That’s all. There’s no more. I promise.”

  Darla stepped forward, her gun pointed at Hayward’s face at point-blank.

  “Whoa!” Hayward said. “Hold on there. You can’t shoot me. I have the protection of the United States Government.”

  “We can’t see the government anywhere around here,” Sheriff Noonday said. “This is Texas.”

  “Darla,” Lief said. His voice had a softness to it, a gentleness I’d never heard there before.

  “Darla,” he repeated. “Arrest him, baby.”

  “I’ll do more than that!” She shook with each sharp word.

  “You can’t shoot him,” Lief said. “As much as you want to. It’s murder. You can’t.”

  She stopped shaking, abruptly.

  “Why?” she asked. She was crying. Her hand shook. Her finger was on the trigger.

  “Because,” Lief said. “You just can’t. You’re a police officer. You have to uphold the law. You swore an oath. I know you want to. We all want to. But you just can’t.”

  “No,” she said. Her voice was quiet again.

  It dawned on Hayward’s face at that moment. He was looking at death.

  Darla squeezed her eyes shut.

  She was going to shoot.

  “He’s right, Darla,” Judge Sinclair said. “You can’t do it. But I can.”

  The report was deafening.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Messes.

  Darla’s grandmother had alluded to such only moments before she departed this life.

  There were plenty of messes to clean up. It took the remainder of the day to do it, and by the time we made it back to Hearne, the sun had once again faded from the sky.

  I was exhausted.

  Also, I felt good. It felt decidedly good to be alive, to draw in the cool evening air, to watch people going about their business in the world. It may not be the best world, and most assuredly not the best of all possible worlds, but it was our world, and we were in it, and that’s what was so good about it.

  Holleman Keefer met us at the police station, along with Darla’s boss, the local Police Chief. Also, there were six other policemen there. I had no idea there were so many, but the word was out that a local hero was coming home after a trial and a tragedy and ultimate victory.

  Darla was hugged all around and patted on the back. She shed tears and laughed as well.

  Holly Keefer took me aside and whispered a few things. The first was that as soon as Sheriff Noonday had called him and told him what had happened, he had turned around and gotten on the phone to the FBI Chief out of Bryan. The man was due to drop in any moment to take all of our statements. In the meantime, there were a series of hearses converging on Leon County at that moment, to pick up all the fallen. They were all to be brought back to Hearne.

  “How much trouble are we in?” I asked Holly.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Travis,” he said.

  “Call me ‘Bill’,” I told him.

  *****

  The trouble turned out to be worse than I thought, first one way, and then the other: First, Julie wasn’t too happy that I hadn’t called. I explained a few things, assured her it was mostly over and that I would be in town at least another day ― that is, if she didn’t have to come and post bail for me. She let out a long breath. I made a mental note that I would have to stop doing those kinds of things to her that I had been doing. Things like sticking my neck out, running gauntlets, shooting craps with fate. That sort of thing. There were, after all, the five of us ― me and four girls I cared for more than anything on Earth.

  The other thing was that the survivors of the events in the dark East Texas woods would have to appear before a Congressional Oversight Committee in Washington.

  The FBI Chief who gave me this news was a young fellow, by which I mean that he was in his mid-thirties. His name was Jerry Forrest. He was a clean-cut and thoroughly professional fellow, and I liked him right off.

  Forrest also went on to explain that my instructions were to keep the journal safe until the day I appeared before the committee. It was all going to come out.

  “How?” I asked. “How does Congress know about this? It was supposed to be a big secret. Classified and all that.”

  “The way I understand it is that it all comes back to that man sitting over there,” he pointed at Ty Hennessey, who was sitting in a chair sipping coffee, the same chair that Salmon Jockovitch had sat in the night before.

  “Why him?”

  “While he was in the Robertson County Jail he was allowed to make a phone call. Apparently, he called the right person.”

  “Oh. Better late than never, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” Agent Forrest said.

  “What’s going to happen to Rogan Sinclair?”

  “Probably nothing,” he said. “Except... I doubt very seriously that he will be allowed to keep his office. He will likely have to step down.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “I’ve never seen him wearing his robes in court, but I can’t think of him as anything other than a judge.”

  “How about a retired judge?”

  “Well,” I said. “Maybe that.”

  *****

  There were no charges preferred against any of us. Julie didn’t have to make my bail.

  I had one last chance to talk with Judge Sinclair alone before he left that day. He looked tired, careworn, and overcome with grief. I almost refrained from asking him, but I felt I had to know.

  “Judge,” I said. “Why did you say those things about Scott Noonday? That you’d had that falling out over the lawn-mowing business and about the guy he didn’t actually beat up?”

  The Judge sighed. We were out by his car. The evening breeze tossed his scant, white hair about. He looked old, just as Ely Green had looked, but there was little light behind his eyes. What little twinkle there had been was gone, perhaps for good.


  “Bill,” he said. “There are many things I would do different, that I would change for the better, if I could. But I can’t change any of it. It may be all behind me now, but it will likely haunt me. At the time I said those things I needed you. I needed your unquestioning help. And I got it. I didn’t like doing it, but I felt I had to. I hope you will understand.”

  I didn’t say a word.

  “You’re still young, Bill. You have, hopefully, most of life ahead of you to be lived. As you live out those years and miles, make certain that when you get to be my age that you don’t have to spend your last days in regret. That’s about the only thing I can tell you.”

  He opened his car, got inside, and drove away.

  It was the last time I would see him alive.

  And that was my one regret from that day. That I didn’t shake his hand one last time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Rogan Sinclair passed away quietly in his sleep on the Fourth of July.

  I brought Julie and the kids with me to Hearne. We left Jessica and the kids with Luke, Lief’s hired help, at Darla’s place while Julie and I attended the service. I had the sneaking suspicion that Jessica, who was now eighteen, might take too much of a shine to Luke and I had qualms about leaving her there in Darla’s house with him, but Luke was a good kid.

  I was anticipating a strictly religious Southern Baptist service with a sermon admonishing the mourners to take this opportunity to come clean and get right with God, but, to my pleasant surprise that didn’t happen. Not that I didn’t need a good sermon. As my nightmare version of Sheriff Noonday had said, all backsliders must return to church.

  Instead of a rousing sermon, a distinguished looking gentleman came up to deliver the eulogy. I didn’t recognize him right off because he was clean-shaven, neatly trimmed, and wore a navy-blue suit and a pair of silver-rimmed glasses.