High White Sun

by J. Todd Scott

  Pregnant. Caty had held her hands just like that, cradling and protecting Danny before he ever came into the world.

  There was no way he was getting to his gun now. Not ever again. He rocked on his bloody knees, with smoke drifting above him from the two shotgun blasts.

  Saw through new tears that the dry grass really was on fire, setting embers free to spin and dance around him before bouncing and dying on the black macadam.

  Winking out like those fireflies from twenty years ago.

  Two men walked out of the grass, shaking loose more embers as they moved, one holding some sort of pistol and the other a shotgun. He knew the man with the scattergun, not the other, who still had a mask on his face. It didn’t matter anyway.

  The wind had been calm all night, but now, suddenly, it got loud. So damn loud, a brutal rushing in his ears—a freight train right on top of him so he couldn’t hear himself speak, couldn’t struggle to call out the name of his killer, either, because his mouth was full of rust and sparks and blood.

  But he wasn’t the sort of man who was going to beg for his own damn life anyway.

  Maybe his boy had it right all along. Cops weren’t superheroes, after all, far from it. They were just men who got old and tired and slow and made too many damn mistakes and sometimes stopped to help pretty girls beneath starry skies.

  Heroes didn’t die in the middle of the goddamn road.

  The barrel of the shotgun touched a spot right between his eyes.

  Soft, gentle, just like Caty’s fingers wrapped around his, when as teenagers—hell, as kids—they’d counted stars.

  “Howdy, Bob,” the man with the shotgun said, and then he pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  • • •

  BOB FORD DIDN’T HEAR the greeting or his own heart beating or the radio from his truck or the blast that followed.

  The wind in his face was too loud.

  * * *

  Almost ten years later, all along Texas 70, the first wind turbines of the Sweetwater Wind Farm came online—rows and rows of three-bladed towers stretching far into the chalky distance, standing like sentinels right over the spot where Texas Ranger Bob Ford died.

  A hundred white crosses, raised up high, visible for miles and miles.

  Trying to take all that goddamn wind and do something good with it.

  FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

  Breathe.

  Relax.

  Aim.

  Slack.

  Squeeze.

  That’s how you stop a man’s heart . . .

  * * *

  • • •

  THIS IS NOT MY FACE.

  There are parts I recognize but they’re someone else’s picture. A picture I might have once studied and turned over in my hands long ago.

  The eyes might be mine. The color is mostly right. But there’s a lot going on behind them, like too much stuff was moved in while I was away, cluttering up what used to be empty space.

  Maybe nerves, maybe fear, things that have been unfamiliar to me for a long time.

  Then there’s the shape of the jaw and the curve of the mouth; the small scar like a star at my temple. They all make some kind of sense, even if they seem borrowed, rented by the hour.

  Like all the tattoos running over my skin, inked and re-inked. They’re a map to all the places I’ve been and all the people I used to be.

  I believe all the lies I tell myself.

  But most of all, the hair is wrong. There’s hardly enough to run your fingers through and it still feels too long.

  After I returned from across the world I let my hair grow out. A lot of us did—a bunch of damn hippies, my father might have said—but it never felt quite right to me, no matter how much I wanted it to. It was too dark, too hot and heavy, and didn’t quite match the face that had been hollowed out and left empty beneath it. So I gladly cut it again when I got into the academy, and then went even shorter for my time in McKinney and left it that way for Tyler and Ballinger. Since then I’ve tried a second time to let it grow back, let it get thick like when I was a kid, and I try to pretend I can remember my father running his hands through it, but everything about me really has changed size and shape. My corners and edges don’t quite fit together anymore and I can’t arrange the pieces back again the same way. I’m missing a few. I don’t know where they are.

  Least of all this mirror, where all I can see is what isn’t there. Every goddamn thing about me that isn’t right anymore.

  So I’ve been faking it. Smiling through my mandatory counseling sessions and the desk duty—typing everyone else’s reports and helping out where I can. Smiling and joking because people feel better about everything when you smile. You only make people truly nervous when you don’t. And I was taped back together, just close enough . . . almost whole.

  Until today, until this morning . . . when Dyer called me in and gave me the news.

  He wanted me to hear it from him first, if I heard it at all.

  He knew my father all those years ago when it all happened—hell, everyone does. He knows the whole story, my story, and was part of the original investigation. He’s one of those good men who is always trying hard to be an even better one, and he didn’t want me getting the word from someone else. Or worse, picking it up from someone on the street, although we both know I’m not going back out on the street for a while, if at all. At least not like McKinney and Tyler. Definitely not like Ballinger.

  After he gave me the news, he stared at me long and hard to see my reaction, checking my face to see if it gave anything away.

  I told him I was okay.

  I thanked him for telling me and for his concern. He is a good man.

  I smiled when I said it.

  Polite. Respectful. Calm.

  I believe all the lies I tell myself.

  And I was still smiling when I left.

  * * *

  • • •

  THIS IS NOT MY FACE. Not anymore.

  Not now.

  The hair is all gone again, shaved down to stubble in some places, naked skin in others. It’s the best I can do with a Gillette and a can of Barbasol.

  There is blood in the sink, on my skull.

  In my eyes.

  I’m raw, brand-new.

  My badge is on the sink, so is my gun. I’m only going to need one of them.

  I point the gun at the face in the mirror and my hand shakes. I don’t want to look at it anymore.

  I don’t want to look at what I’ve become. What I am.

  Breathe. Relax. Aim. Slack. Squeeze.

  This is how you stop a man’s heart . . .

  NOW, JULY

  PART ONE

  THE GIRL WITH THE GUN

  1

  It was damn hard to follow a blood trail at eighty miles per hour.

  Not that Sheriff Chris Cherry needed to see actual blood; he knew it was there all the same. Thick drops of it all down U.S. 90, bleeding off the rear fender of the Nissan Maxima that was trying hard to disappear in his windshield and throwing up dust as it swerved across lanes and the shoulder.

  All that blood from one of his deputies, Tommy Milford. Chris still didn’t know whether he was alive or dead.

  Another of his deputies, Dale Holt, was ten miles back with him. He’d been riding shotgun with Tommy when it all happened, and although he was barely one year older than the injured boy, when Chris had left them both behind, Dale had been holding Tommy’s hand like a father might a son’s, telling him over and over again to hang in there, brother, hang in there while they waited for the ambulance, because no one had been sure if it was a good idea to move Tommy or not. Honestly, it hadn’t looked good either way. But Dale, even before calling it in—even before kneeling down next to his damaged friend and grabbing his shaking hand and shielding his body with his own—had gott
en off a handful of rounds at the fleeing Nissan, and after this was all done they’d be out here looking for them in the desert, shining bright among the ocotillo and the cat’s-claw and the creosote; prying them out of the car’s metal body. At least one had definitely punched through the rear windshield, spiderwebbing the safety glass and X’ing the spot where a passenger’s head might be.

  Chris tried hard to focus on that, rather than his deputy’s blood drying on the asphalt.

  He prayed that Tommy was hanging on to Dale’s hand right now, squeezing back just as hard with each heartbeat, letting Dale and everyone else know he was still alive.

  Hanging on tight.

  Please don’t die. God, not today.

  Not today. Not Tommy’s first damn day on the job.

  * * *

  • • •

  DEPUTY AMÉ REYNOSA blasted past Chris, shooting up the shoulder, close enough they almost traded paint. He’d already barked at her once on the radio to stay behind him but she wasn’t listening and clearly wasn’t going to. He caught up to her and pushed ahead. They were both pushing ninety now, heading toward a hundred, chewing up the distance on the Maxima, whose back end suddenly fishtailed, brake lights flickering on and off. The driver must have seen the red and blue strobes on Chief Deputy Ben Harper’s truck up ahead, bright and clear and ominous even in broad daylight, leaving him surprised and really scared and unsure of what to do; maybe even bleeding out, if Dale’s bullet had bent the curve and clipped the driver while passing through the car’s interior. Harp had been out at Artesia most of the day but had been rolling back to Murfee when Dale fired his first shot, which put him right in the path of the fleeing car, so Chris had radioed for him to lay up at mile marker 67 and toss out the spike strip.

  Chris glanced over at the small green signs blurring past his window.

  Marker 65

  The strips were an expensive Stinger Spike System. He’d been reluctant to buy them at first, reading that some officers and deputies had been killed trying to deploy the damn things—struck by the very cars they were trying to stop—and Harp hadn’t helped the cause by admitting that the Dallas PD had recently banned them.

  But out here there was so much empty space, so much straight-line nothing, that you could chase someone all the way to El Paso or right down to fucking Mexico if you didn’t have a way to slow them down.

  So Harp had pushed and pushed for them, and in the end, Chris had agreed. Caved. That had become the defining nature of their relationship.

  In fact, Chris had ordered two sets for each patrol truck, enough to cross both lanes. They’d proved easy enough to set up when his deputies had practiced it out in the department parking lot, but so far they’d never been used—not in real life, not like this.

  Marker 66

  Almost there.

  Chris backed off the gas and hoped those damn spikes worked . . . and hoped to hell that Harp was out of the way.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE NISSAN’S TIRES GRABBED the pavement hard—spitting rocks and boiling smoke—as the driver locked them up, with both car and driver holding on for life as the Nissan started to slide sideways. It tipped ever so slightly up, catching air as the whole car shuddered, looking for one horrible second like it might roll and tumble down Highway 90 in a mess of buckled metal and broken glass, before straightening out and hitting the strips square at sixty miles an hour. The hollow spike tips punctured all four radials clean, and Chris swore he saw a dance of bright sparks beneath the Nissan—a July Fourth light show—as it plowed over the strips and kept going even as its tires died beneath it.

  Chris drove off the shoulder into the scrub, giving the strips a wide berth and catching air himself, as Harp’s truck roared to life and paralleled him from where it had been parked on the opposite shoulder. Harp had gotten clear from the truck, never even bothering to use it for cover in case the Nissan’s driver lost complete control and plowed into it. Instead, he’d been crouched low with his Colt AR-15 aimed straight and steady into the other car’s oncoming windshield. As it slid past, he’d calmly stood up and tracked it with his sights, before running back to his own truck.

  Now, he and Chris were slow-rolling up to the Nissan, which had finally come to rest in the middle of the road, nose canted at an angle, the driver’s door visible to both of them but still closed. The car sat wreathed in smoke, all of its tinted windows dirty. The car itself looked exhausted, worn-out, sporting an ugly metallic scar down the left flank—another one of Dale’s bullets.

  And Tommy’s blood, which had been so bright and visible to Chris only moments before, was now lost to the dust.

  Chris got out with his Browning A5 and positioned himself behind his engine block, while Harp opposite of him did the same. Amé rolled to a hard stop behind them both, and with his attention full on the Nissan, Chris felt rather than saw her join him at his shoulder.

  She was breathing hard, her Colt 1911 resting over the hood.

  “Son of a bitch,” she said. “Pendejo.”

  “Exactly,” Chris agreed. He stole one glance at her; hair in her eyes and those dark eyes narrowed and angry, trying hard to see beyond the Nissan’s windows. And for the first time since he’d made her a Big Bend County deputy, he was regretting it. Not that she wasn’t capable—she had more than proven her worth and was tougher than he ever could have imagined—but because of moments like this one, right now.

  He didn’t want to send her in harm’s way and he knew that was exactly what he was going to have to do.

  In two years as sheriff, none of his deputies had gotten hurt on his watch. It was like a run of cool, calm weather, or a desert rain. It couldn’t last forever and maybe it wasn’t supposed to.

  But he was going to make damn sure it wasn’t two in one day.

  * * *

  • • •

  “SHERIFF, TIME IS WASTING.” Harp’s voice carried over the road.

  His chief deputy was pushing, his idea of subtle. Harp always complained that Chris was too slow, too measured; too goddamn deliberate . . . just like their long debate over ordering the Stinger system. Even though he won more than he lost, the older man still liked to needle Chris: It’s all about action versus reaction, Sheriff . . . you can’t finish what you don’t start. These were Harp’s idea of lessons, freely and frequently given, and Amé Reynosa had already taken way too many of them to heart.

  It didn’t take much for Chris to imagine what his two deputies would think about his first impulse here and now: to keep them all safe behind their trucks and just wait the fucking guy in the Nissan out.

  All afternoon if they had to; hoping against hope that he got tired and gave up.

  Now that was goddamn deliberate.

  But there was another of Harp’s sharp lessons: Chris, hope is not a strategy . . .

  Sheriff, time is wasting.

  Fuck me.

  * * *

  • • •

  CHRIS TOOK A LONG BREATH, turning to Amé. “Okay, I’m going to call him out. If we’re lucky, there’s only the one and maybe he’s already hurt. I’m going to walk him backward between us, and when I stop him and tell him to get on his knees, you’re going to go up, put him facedown, and cuff him. I’ll stay covered on the car in case someone else is in there. I’ve got the best angle on it, so Harp is going to stay covered on you. If our bad guy so much as flinches, reaches for anything, even breathes too hard, Harp will take the shot. Got that?”

  Amé nodded, already grabbing for cuffs and making ready to move down to the rear of the truck, near to where she’d have to expose herself. It wouldn’t be much and it wouldn’t be long, but it would be enough.

  Chris put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re angry, we all are. It’s not personal. Just do it by the numbers. Wait till he’s on his knees.” Chris let her go. “You good?” he asked.

 
She smiled, grim. “Bueno.”

  Chris waved toward Harp to get his attention, raising his voice. “I’ll call the guy back. Amé is contact, you’re cover.” Harp never took his eyes off the Nissan, didn’t respond, but hitched up a thumb . . . okay.

  In a perfect world, Chris would’ve put hands on the guy himself, but he didn’t have faith in his bad knee. It had never fully recovered after he’d reinjured it at the Far Six. You’ve never fully recovered. He pushed that cold thought away. But fortunately Harp had spent almost three decades on the Midland PD, many of those years as part of their SWAT team. Even though he and Amé had spent a lot of free hours together at the makeshift range near Chapel Mesa, and Harp claimed she’d developed a hell of a shooter’s eye, Chris still felt comfortable with Harp taking a tight shot more than anyone, far more than even himself. The chief deputy was the only person who had killed more men than Chris. That left Amé as the best choice, the only choice, to approach the driver if he ever showed himself.

  Chris took another deep breath, steadied himself. He squinted past the shortened barrel of his A5 to the Nissan. Still there, still waiting.

  Waiting for him to do something. Just like his two deputies.

  “Driver, roll down the windows and throw out the keys. Then extend your left hand through the window and open the door.” His voice surprised him, too loud.

  Nothing happened and the Nissan kept idling.

  “Driver, roll down the windows and throw out the keys.” Or what, exactly? Chris didn’t want to send Harp and Amé up to the car to forcibly pull the driver out, there was too much open ground to cover and it was too naked, too exposed. And they sure weren’t going to start pumping lead into it from here. Even if he made that threat, would the driver believe it? Could he even make it sound believable? Maybe he’d get his wish after all and they’d just sit here the rest of the day like Old West gunfighters in a duel, forever trapped at high noon; neither of them ever drawing.