Wild Country tq-3

by Dean Ing

  Sorel emerged from the house, holding the screen door for Maazel, talking all the while. "I suppose it will do," he was saying cheerily, "but there may be other parcels more secluded." Marianne saw no signal pass between him and Slaughter, but perhaps none was needed.

  Mills/St. Denis moved smoothly into the conversation, doing what he did best: "We could help finance the parcel you choose, but you will create less of a local stir if you haggle a bit and offer minimum down payment."

  Sorel seemed to consider it, nodding slowly, then patting his pockets. "Marianne, do you have my calculator?"

  Her mouth went dry. "Why, ah — oh. I guess I left it in the car," she managed to say, and moved toward the Chevy as Sorel, astonishingly, turned away from her, making some reply to the little negotiator. So it was that Aron Maazel was the nearest man to her when Marianne stumbled and fell.

  She scarcely cried out at all but Maazel saw her and hurried up, puffing, attaché case in hand. She reached down to her ankle with her left hand, her right snaking under her skirt, and Maazel's fat face held such genuine concern that she could not, at first, command her finger to pull the trigger. His bulk hid her gun hand from the others, however, and in that frozen moment the fat man was the only one who saw the gun in her hand' Maazel's expression turned ugly as he opened his mouth. That change of expression became deadly for Maazel as he faced the pistol at close range, because it was Marianne's release. She fired twice from a distance of three meters, unaware of what the others were doing, her universe suddenly contracting to the bulk of the man above her.

  Her first round caught the fat man just below the ribs and did not even stagger him. The second struck him near the heart while he lifted the attaché case as if for a shield, except that he held it edge on, almost like he would hold a guitar, and before she could fire again the end of the little case erupted in a stuttering burst. Spurts of dust surrounded Marianne, and she felt a searing pain in her right breast, flinching away, firing again as Maazel rocked back with the recoil of his own weapon.

  Sorel had turned away for two good reasons: first, he saw that Maazel would be near the woman so that St. Denis was his nearest target, and he raised his elbows as if to stretch himself lazily. It brought his right hand near enough to his chest to reach his shoulder holster with minimum effort. Second, with this move he placed St. Denis between himself and Azeri. The cavalier disinterest of St. Denis had to mean the little man was a confident killer — either that or a man so far out of his element that he did not even know he was lost. Sorel had the soccer pro's sense of where his opponents were. Slaughter could see to his own safety. Sorel kept Marianne at the edge of his peripheral vision and did not draw his own H&K parabellum until he saw St. Denis spin toward the sounds of gunfire.

  Sorel's victim reacted very oddly for a gunsel, clapping his hands to the sides of his head in horror instead of going for a weapon. For Sorel the job was ridiculously easy as the smaller man turned his back. Mills took two rounds in the back, point-blank, the mushrooming slugs flinging him forward as Sorel skipped sideways to face Azeri.

  Zoltan Azeri was very quick, very silent. At Marianne's first shot, he essayed a long shoulder roll, drawing his side-arm from its waistband holster. He came up on one knee with the pistol in his hand before Slaughter triggered his coldgas weapon, arm extended, flicking his wrist repeatedly in a series of chuffing reports. Azeri went down hard, writhing and kicking, and had time to scream once as he clawed at his neck. Sorel's single round at a range of five paces was really a coup de grace into the little man's forehead.

  Maazel was still standing, howling something in a language none of them understood, but now the attach^ case slid from his hands as he fell heavily to his knees, then face forward, clutching his chest. "Finish him," Sorel called to Marianne, sprinting toward her.

  But Maazel stopped breathing, voiding himself noisily as he died, and Sorel knew those signs well. Marianne Placidas tried to prop herself up with one arm, grasping her breast with the other hand. Then, blinking hard and muttering, she slid down very slowly to lie on her back.

  "She froze," Slaughter said with no particular emotion as he picked up the attaché" case. "What the hell is this thing?"

  Sorel reseated his own sidearm without looking as he studied the deadly case. "Wipe your prints from where you are touching it, fool. And wipe carefully; God knows how many more surprises that damned thing has inside it."

  Slaughter frowned, but did as he was told. As Sorel knelt beside the woman he had sacrificed, he added, "Leave Maazel's prints. Her own prints are on her weapon. If the Canadians ever find anything, they will find that they killed each other."

  "She don't look dead to me."

  Sorel found the small wound, checked Marianne's breathing and raised her left eyelid, then stood up. "Not quite. But she took at least one round from that needle claymore, and they are usually loaded with alkaloids. Her eyes are dilated and her heart will soon race itself to death."

  "Besides which, you can't fuck around in Oregon nursing her in a goddam farmhouse, and I damn sure ain't gonna do it."

  "Very perceptive," said Felix Sorel, smiling. "We must wind this up quickly, put the car into the river near Portland, get back home, and maintain the position that I never left Mexico."

  "Damn shame about the Placidas bimbo. How do we handle her?"

  "Into the barn with everything, unless we find a well nearby."

  "Didn't see one. What about the Ford?"

  "Mierdal Of course." Sorel thought for a moment, then nodded. "I shall wipe my prints, plant Maazel's, and leave it with him. You check Saint Denis for weapons; he surely has one."

  Slaughter soon discovered that their third victim carried not so much as a pocketknife; nor, for that matter, had Maazel carried anything in addition to his lethal needle claymore. Watching Sorel cut Azeri's leather holster away and appropriate his unfired pistol, Slaughter said, "Man, that little case is better'n a scattergun."

  "It could clear out a cantina for you," Sorel agreed. He molded the dead hand of Maazel around the H&K weapon, fired it once more into the hillside to spread powder residue over Maazel's hand, then let the pistol fall into the fat man's jacket pocket. Then, cursing himself for almost forgetting, he fished the livesnaps from the man's inside pocket. He could destroy them later.

  "I think I get it," Slaughter said. "The fat man blew away the little farts, and she nailed him, and then he offed her with that claymore gadget."

  "Welcome to police forensics," said Sorel.

  "So how do you explain my slugs?"

  After a pause: "I suppose they came from a handgun that fell from the car while it tumbled down the ravine."

  "Shit-I-reckon! What ravine?"

  "I leave that to you, friend Slaughter. I believe you have gloves; use them to drive the Ford, with the woman in the seat beside you. It will be thought that she left the men in the barn, got away, and then lost consciousness while driving back. When you exit the Ford, I shall pick you up."

  "I'm glad you're takin' care of that little detail," Slaughter said, grasping Maazel's feet as Sorel staggered under the load of the fat man's shoulders. He saw the woman shudder, her breathing now faint and rapid, and headed for the barn. "You got it all worked out," he said, grunting with the effort. "Sorel, you shoulda been a lawyer."

  "Smile when you say that," replied Sorel, and held up his end of the burden.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Slaughter nearly bought himself a piece of Oregon after accelerating the Ford with the woman slumped in the seat beside him. Suspension systems simply could not cope with these ruts at respectable speed, and Slaughter's long legs got tangled as he bounced against the doorframe on his way out the open door. Slaughter hit on his stomach, sliding and rolling almost to the edge of the precipice. He got a vague impression of the car's underside, rising near him as the front wheels pitched over the grassy edge.

  He got up cursing his ruined shirt and spitting weed seed, and hobbled to the verge in ti
me to see the Ford rise into view twenty meters below as it began its second roll, now moving faster on the slick dry grasses, finally beginning multiple flips, shedding small parts in midair. Even after he could no longer see it. Slaughter listened to its progress with satisfaction. It took a good fifteen seconds before the sound of the last impact died away.

  Moments later, with Sorel in the Chevy, he craned his neck to see his handiwork. "Can't even see it for-the brush," he said, and spat again. "Good thing our duds are in the trunk; I purely trashed a good shirt — and damn near my hide in the bargain."

  "With the bonus I have in mind, you can buy many shirts," said Sorel, turning the Chevy's mapfiche toward himself. "Now get some sleep. We have a long drive over back roads before we reach the old interstate highway. You can take your turn then." Not once, then or later, did Felix Sorel show the slightest remorse over Marianne Placidas. She had been a tool cheaply bought and cheaply expended.

  Despite his bruises. Slaughter exulted in a job well done. Before racking the seat back, he saw the deep ravine once more from a turn near the blacktop road. He could see no sign of the Ford. From their high vantage point, it was impossible to see the slight depression where the car had ended its first roll, where its lone occupant had tumbled from the open door into high grass before the car continued its headlong plunge.

  Ten minutes later, Slaughter was enjoying the sleep of the innocent and Sorel was figuring their timetable to Portland. Several kilometers behind them a Toyota Scrambler howled up Dead Indian Road, driven with the happy abandon of a maniac or of a man who knew every pothole in the road between Ashland and the high mountain lakes.

  Keith Ames had the Toyota's top down to savor all the glory of a fall day and scanned the mountainside above to avoid being surprised by a car coming his way. Blasting along at this pace, he might have passed Sorel eventually, had he not spotted movements in the tall grass high on a ravine, above and to his left. It was some distance from the main road, but when snow began to dust the flanks of Grizzly Peak nearby, Ames would be hunting blacktail in these parts. He slowed the roadster, expecting to see antlers emerge against the sky. What he saw made him forget venison. Like many ex-racing drivers, Ames kept a remarkable memory for the features of roads he flogged. He knew that a path that was almost an access road fed into the blacktop a couple of turns above. "Why the hell," he asked himself as he flicked the gear lever and surged the Toyota forward, "would a woman be crawling up that ravine?"

  He would not have much of the answer for some time. He would, however, spend his next twenty minutes driving as he had not driven since dueling a prototype tree harvester against a similar machine driven by a killer, years before. He saw as he scooped the woman into his arms that she was delirious and near death. He buckled her in, trying not to look at the ruined face, hit the blacktop with a squall of rubber, and ignored his usual caution when driving with a passenger because this one was bleeding all over herself and might not live even if he broke all records down Dead Indian Road.

  He broke the records, skirting Ashland en route to the city hospital, hanging his inside front wheel in thin air over the verge at every turn because, with its stiffened suspension, the Toyota had enough chassis lean in one-gee sideloads to keep that wheel aloft. On one long straight, he used his radiophone for the emergency freq and had time, before wailing the Toyota through the next bend, to tell them the bare essentials. Still, Marianne Placidas was more dead than alive as Ames burst into the emergency entrance with his gory burden, shouting for his friend, surgeon Dominic Ewald.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Quantrill knew he was in for either an ass chew or a peace offering when, after being summoned to Stearns, he spent only a few moments waiting in the rec room. Either way, he'd be paid for the trip to Junction. And these days he was actually beginning to think about saving these extra dollops of cash. That worried him, because a conservative man tended to be overcautious, and too much caution could kill you just as surely as foolhardiness.

  "Take a load off," Stearns told him as he entered, waving him to a chair. "Coffee?"

  At Quantrill's nod, the chief deputy poured it himself and brought it, taking the adjoining leather-backed chair and placing a slender faxbook in his own lap. It was standard issue, with a case ID on its cover.

  Steams occupied himself with his coffee in the old Texas way, dribbling some into a saucer to cool it, blowing into the puddle, pouring it expertly back into the cup. Then, over the rim of his cup, he astonished Quantrill by smiling. It was a warm, easy smile full of informality and welcome; a politician's smile.

  "No point beating around the bush, Quantrill; I was wrong about you."

  Ted Quantrill smiled back and sipped; waited for the other boot to fall. Against his backside, maybe.

  "I read your report on old Placidas's statement. Must've been a nasty time."

  "For the judge, especially," Quantrill said, and waited.

  "So I gather. Never met the old fella myself," said Steams, his eyes meeting Quantrill's steadily, "but it's a hell of a shock to find he was on the other side. The point is, you did a fine job and you probably deserve a commendation, I listened to the tape," he added, tapping the faxbook in his lap. "There are only a couple of little things I thought we might go over."

  Good news and bad news; carrot and stick, thought Quantrill. He hadn't really done much mote than hold a recorder for Placidas, then describe everything on polypaper. Well, it would be just like Marv Steams to give commendations for paperwork. "Whatever you say," he replied.

  Stearns smiled again and flicked the faxbook's cover open, dialing medium magnification on its display so that he would not need reading glasses. "I see you never read him his rights."

  "He waived 'em," said Quantrill. "Hell, he was a judge."

  "No big deal; wherever Placidas is, we can't indict him anyhow. But in the future, do it. Just for me, okay?"

  Quantrill nodded.

  "Second, it seems the judge had quite an audience for his true confessions. Try not to let that happen again."

  Quantrill thought it over: realized that old Placidas's revelations, might mark all those who heard them. "I can do that," he said.

  "Okay. I mean, how many people heard Tony Plass say that Mul Garner hung one on us?"

  "Two or three, I — Mul Garner what?"

  "You got it on tape, remember? Placidas said the contraband went through Garner Ranch, and somebody says, 'Mul Garner?' and Placidas says, 'He hung one on us,' and then apologizes to his daughter."

  "Damn if I remember that," said Quantrill, who had only an average memory for dialogue. "I thought he said it was the son. Jerome Garner," he added as if that explained much.

  Steams repeated the name contemptuously. "A Saturday night hero, I hear tell. I can only go on hearsay, but Jerome Garner doesn't strike me as a gang organizer. Anyhow, Tony Plass didn't say anything remotely like 'Jerome.' Listen to it yourself," he urged, and punched an instruction into the faxbook's keyboard.

  The digital recording, as well as photographs and written reports, lay stored in the faxbook for later study. Quantrill heard a soft thrum of prairie breeze, remembered squatting beside the old man while Jess Marrow hovered near: heard

  Placidas say, "Conduit always maintained through Garner Ranch." Then Jess, unbelieving: "Mul Garner?"

  And then, so soft as to be nearly inaudible, Tony Plass: "The young one onus." Or perhaps, "The young one's on us." It was hard to say for sure. Stearns stopped the tape and let his eyebrows ask the question.

  But Quantrill's memory was tripped by the recording. "I'm sorry, Steams, but the man said, 'The young one.' I don't remember that last couple of words."

  Marv Stearns tipped his palm toward the faxbook and shrugged. "It's your tape, Quantrill. "But he doesn't say anything that sounds like 'Jerome."

  "He said, 'The young one.' I remember it now."

  A tiny cloud of irritation was gathering across Steam's brow. "But you don't remember the other words," he
accused. "You'd have him saying, 'The young one on us.' Shit, Quantrill, that doesn't make sense. And I tried the tape on three other people and all of 'em hear Placidas say that Mul Garner hung one on us. Now I ask you—"

  "Can I hear it again?" Quantrill listened repeatedly. The quality of the sound was poor, and it still sounded to him as though old Tony Plass had said, "The young one"; but those two following words, slurred and indistinct as they were, threw him off badly. Perhaps… "You could be right," he said at last.

  With gruff bonhomie: " 'Course I am. Anyway, just between us two, there are other agencies watching the Garners. So we're to keep hands off, and we means you. Soon as you adjust your report so you don't look silly, I'll get cracking on a commendation. You've earned it." His smile was now a grin; good ol' Marv Steams, giving his good buddy Quantrill a chance to un-fuck up.

  It took Quantrill only moments to revise his original report. It no longer implied that Jerome Garner was more than a barn-dance bravo. In fact, it no longer said anything whatever about "the young one."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  To be hoodwinked by a politician is bad enough: to admit later that you half knew it at the time is worse. Quantrill arrived at the ranch at dusk, his dull rage tempered only by a suspicion that going along with Stearns had been the correct move. But for the wrong reason — maybe several wrong reasons. He really had let Marv Stearns talk him into changing that report. Flailing his memory hard, he still saw the pale lips of old Tony Plass form three words: the young one. That meant Stearns had doctored the tape, and then dangled a goddam lousy commendation like a carrot ahead of a jackass, and Quantrill had brayed agreement and, for him, a pussywillow flexibility in order to bask in the favor of Chief Deputy Marvin Steams. Slamming into his two-room digs near ranch HQ. Quantrill thought he understood why.