She was away eighteen months. There were no letters, not even a postcard. When she came back, it was to be married to Ralph Twitchell. For them it would be beautiful bride, handsome groom, lovely home, perfect baby, fine career, big future, the American Dream all the way.
It took a long time for Easton to realize he probably never would have fitted into the Casey lifestyle. A long time … and Susan. Susan, who came into his life so softly and so unexpectedly, who healed all the wounds and made him proud to be who he was. Susan, whose death had left a hole in his existence nothing had ever filled.
Ironheel’s voice interrupted his reverie.
“Why did Apodaca kill Robert Casey?”
“Good question,” he said, as much to himself as to Ironheel. “I just wish I could answer it. But no matter how many times I run it through my head, I can’t come up with any kind of motive. Hell, they hardly knew each other.”
Pacheco Peak came up on their right, the flanks of the hills speckled with piñon. Every time he drove up here, Easton tried to imagine the way it must have been when this highway was one of the main cattle trails from Texas to California: the river wide and strong, the valley floor lush with grama grass, a couple of thousand cattle being herded along by yipping cowboys, the chuckwagon clattering behind. He’d never managed to do it yet.
“And the big man?” Ironheel asked. “You find out anything about him?”
“We tried. But your description doesn’t fit any of Joe’s known associates. Or anyone else we know, come to that.”
“He can’t have just … disappeared.”
“He has, though.”
They were passing the long mock-Victorian frontage of the Big Bucks restaurant, set back from the south side of the road at Estancia. It was lunchtime; the parking bays outside were full. He thought of Suze. The two of them sitting on the rear verandah of the restaurant, looking out across the river at the cottonwoods decked in a million gradations of autumn green and red and gold, Michael playing the piano inside, You are too beautiful for one man alone. Sometimes even now he awakened in the night and remembered the sweet perfume of her body, the soft caress of her dark hair hanging down as she leaned over to kiss him. Music I heard with you was more than music …
“He shouted,” Ironheel said abruptly.
“What?”
“Ncha’ahi. The big one. When the boy got away, he shouted. Like he was hurt. Or mad, maybe.”
“You didn’t mention this before.”
“Only just remembered.”
“Go back,” Easton urged. “Start at the beginning and tell me the whole thing.”
They swept past the junction for Franklin, cruising at about sixty. To their left below the road was the steeple of the church at San Patricio, named for his patron saint by an Irish priest who had supervised its building over a century ago. Above on their right, the hills out of which the roadbed had been cut rose sharp and stony.
Ironheel had closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat, thinking.
“After Apodaca shot the hastiin, the big man dragged the boy out of the car,” he said, his eyes still closed. “Then the boy broke loose and ran.”
“And that was when the big man shouted?” Easton felt a pulse of tension in his temple. “What? Can you remember what he shouted?”
“Yati’ yeyokaali. A curse, Something angry,” Ironheel said, concentrating, eyes shut tight. “‘Ice,’ ‘Spice,’ something like that.”
‘Ice’, ‘Spice’? Hardly words a man would shout in anger. But what other words sounded like that? He ran through the alphabet, dice, nice, rice, slice … Aye, sir? Why, sir? No, none of those. ‘Shyster’, maybe? Then realization hit him like a rock.
“Scheisse!” he said.
Ironheel opened his eyes and sat up. “What?”
“It’s German. Like when we say, Shit.”
“Scheisse,” Ironheel said, testing the word on his tongue. “Y’know, that—”
With a huge bang the windshield suddenly exploded and in the same instant Easton felt the hot burn of a bullet on the left side of his body and heard the whisper of flying glass stroking his cheek. His reflex reaction slewed the Jeep into the oncoming lane, tires screaming and smoking as he fought to keep it on the road. A gap appeared in the iron crash barrier bordering the road to the left and he went for it, sideswiping the scree on the right as the vehicle crashed and bounced down the unmade stony track. Metal crunched as the wheels hit a rocky outcrop, almost jarring the steering wheel out of his grip. He heard one of the tires blow and he lost control, the Jeep skidding unchecked sideways into a stony bank at the bottom of the steep slope, coming to a rocking halt in a cloud of dust.
Easton snapped up the door locks and Ironheel rolled out of the vehicle. Gun in hand, Easton scrambled out and thrashed after him deep into the middle of a cornfield bordering the creek below the track, stopping beside Ironheel in the humid shade, heart pounding. It was completely silent except for the harsh sound of their breathing.
“Madre de Dios!” Ironheel panted. “What was that?”
“Hit man,” Easton said. His mouth was bone dry, his throat so tight he had to push the words out. “Up there on the hill, waiting.”
“To kill us.” Easton nodded, yes.
“I thought nobody knew—”
“Yeah,” Easton said grimly. Both men fell silent for a moment, as the implication sank in.
McKittrick, Easton thought. McKittrick, McKittrick, McKittrick.
“You’re bleeding,” Ironheel said. “Your face, your shirt, everywhere.”
“I know,” Easton said. “It’s this.”
He lifted his left arm. Ironheel’s eyes widened as he saw the dark spread of blood from a wound low down left below his ribs.
“You need a doctor?” he said.
“Not yet,” Easton told him. “They’re still up there somewhere.”
He pointed back toward the track with his chin. The assassins would be pros, probably two men, maybe more. They wouldn’t leave without making sure their quarry was dead – or finishing the job. Easton could feel the pain from his wound gathering, like a big wave a long way out getting ready to roll in and break. He willed it back, forcing himself to think. He had to take a chance, now. He got out the key for Ironheel’s handcuffs and unlocked them, tossing them aside.
“I’m going to try and get the shotgun in the Jeep,” he said, handing the Apache his Glock automatic. “Cover me.”
Ironheel looked at the gun and Easton thought he saw something change in his eyes, although it might have just been his imagination.
“Big decision,” Ironheel said, hefting the gun. His face was impassive.
“Amen,” Easton said, and ran.
The Jeep was only about fifty yards away but it felt like a mile as he ran, crouched over, expecting any second to hear the whiplash crack of a rifle, or perhaps even encounter the blank blackness of sudden death. They said you never hear the one that kills you. When he got to the driver’s door of the Jeep he was breathing like he had a hacksaw stuck in his gullet. As he reached in and released the tailgate lock, the wave of pain he had been holding back rolled unstoppably through his body and he dropped helplessly to his knees, a red mist swimming before his eyes.
He knelt there swinging his head from side to side, cursing it, and after a moment the red mist cleared a little and the pain receded. Sweating like he was in a sauna, he scrambled to the rear of the vehicle, grabbed hold of the fender and hauled himself up, swung the tailgate open and unclipped the stainless steel Winchester Marine 12-gauge shotgun that gleamed darkly within. By now his ragged breathing sounded like an old freight train coming through a tunnel. Red spots floated in front of his eyes as he ripped open a cartridge box and stuffed his pockets full of shells. The brief burst of action so exhausted him it was all he could do to lift the weapon.
He looked warily around. Nothing moved.
He tried to remember exactly where they had been on the road – near Glenavon, he figured. T
here was a post office somewhere up on the other side of the highway. If they could get to it, maybe they could call for help.
A car whished past on the road above his position and he froze, his skin crawling. False alarm.
He pumped a round into the shotgun and crouched down, drawing in long slow breaths, readying himself for the run back. There was no sign of Ironheel but he knew he must still be in the cornfield someplace. At least he hoped so. Ready …
Now.
As he scrambled to his feet he heard a hoarse shout somewhere above his position. Concentrating completely on this one thing only, he ran. A rifle cracked and a slug took a chunk out of a boulder beyond him and screamed off into infinity. Half-turning, he saw a man in dark clothing run bent over between two stands of bush maybe ten yards uphill on the curve of the cutoff. Still running, he fired the shotgun blindly, pumped, fired and pumped again, and saw the dark-clad figure drop out of sight. Crashing through the bony uprights of standing corn, moving on sheer adrenaline, he collapsed sweating and breathless onto the moist red earth.
With shaking hands he slid replacement rounds into the shotgun. He tried to get up but could not. He groaned, unable to keep the sound from escaping. His wound was burning like all the fires of hell. The world started to tilt as he fought the blackness boiling up like tar inside his skull.
He heard a male voice shout something. Here they come. He jammed the butt of the shotgun on the ground as a crutch to at least get to his knees. Damned if he’d let them kill him like a dog on the ground.
“Gódah! Keep down!”
The sibilant hiss of Ironheel’s voice froze him. Where the hell was he? He could see nothing except the tangled rows of close-standing cornstalks and the blue uncaring sky. He was helpless and safe at the same time. Any movement among these sun-dried stalks would make a rattling racket announcing the presence of danger.
As he sank back down flat he heard a metallic bump and liquid sounds over where they had left the Jeep. There was a soft whoooooomphhh! then a pillar of flame and smoke leapt up into the sky above the cornfield and the bitter tang of burning rubber assailed his senses. They had torched the car.
Where the hell are you, Ironheel? he wondered.
He blacked out again for a moment. As he came around he thought he heard the stutter of pistol shots and someone shouting, but the wound in his side was throbbing mercilessly and there was a solid roaring in his ears. Fighting to stay conscious, he heard someone crashing through the corn stalks toward him. Then suddenly they parted and a man he had never seen before stood looming above him. He was big and broad and wore a hunting vest, dark pants, and he had a Browning automatic in his hand.
Easton tried to lift the shotgun but couldn’t. The big man smiled a death’s head smile and pointed the gun at Easton’s head. The muzzle yawned like the mouth of a cannon. Easton flinched as the shot rang out but there was no impact, no pain. The man started to turn around but fell to his knees, his mouth working, and then collapsed dead in front of Easton, his eyes wide open and his forehead oozing blood like a crushed egg.
The cornstalks clashed noisily again, then parted. Ironheel stepped into view with the Glock in his hand and knelt down by Easton’s side.
“There were two of them,” he said.
Chapter Sixteen
The drums were pounding.
Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.
Something evil.
It was getting closer and closer, no matter how fast he ran. He could smell the foul stink of its breath. Something awful. A ghastly emptiness coming to suck him into its blackness. And all the time the drums, pounding inside his head ….
Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.
He couldn’t find Susan. People turned away angrily when he asked if they’d seen her. He couldn’t make them understand. Then he saw her running ahead of him through fields of sweet clover bordered by aspens, Somewhere high in the mountains. Then he could hear the black thing behind him again, drawing nearer, nearer, ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum, and he shouted a warning. Susan waved and ran as fleet and swift as a deer across the mountain meadow.
He knew there was danger and he tried to catch her but it was like he was underwater, moving in slow motion. He saw the abyss ahead of her and watched helplessly as she ran straight over the edge. She turned as she fell and called out his name, and he saw her lovely face that one last time, and everything inside him died.
Then somehow Ellen Casey was there, her hands extended, her frank eyes meeting his. Her voice echoed. You have to learn to live again. Without Susan. Without Susan. Without Susan. But still the evil thing drew closer.
It’s coming, he said. I can hear it.
What does it want?
Revenge. It wants revenge.
And the pounding drum was getting louder. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.
And he was in an autopsy suite and Robert Casey’s body was lying on the tilted steel table with the top of his head lifted back like the lid of a coffee jar, his brain sliced and laid neatly on a glass plate like smoked salmon. The water in the sinks ran red with blood. Then he sat up and opened his eyes …
And awoke.
It was pitch dark. His heart was still pounding from the dream and he was soaked with perspiration. Memory flooded back: the windshield exploding, the quick sear of pain in his side, the whoomph! of the burning car, the astonishment in the dead eyes of the big man crumpling to the ground, the thin thread of smoke coming from the gun in Ironheel’s hand.
There were two of them.
Two pros, sent expressly to kill. No warning, no mercy. If it hadn’t been for Ironheel, I’d be dead.
His chest felt constricted. He touched it and discovered the wound in his side was bandaged. His face felt stiff. When he ran his fingers over it, he could feel puckered skin. Cuts from flying glass, he remembered. He also needed a shave.
He lay quite still in the silence until his eyes became accustomed to the darkness and he could make out detail. A window with shutters closed and blinds drawn. Chinked log walls. Pitched roof. Plank floor, some rugs.
The room was sparsely furnished. Just the truck bed he was lying on, with its heavy Navajo blanket, a bureau with a wood-framed mirror above it, a ladderback chair. A dreamcatcher by the window, a water color of a barn on one wall, an old Winchester in a beautifully beaded saddle holster hanging from two pegs on the other. There was a doorway to his right, the door closed.
Where is this? How long have I been here? How did I get here? Where is Ironheel? What happened to the bodies of the men who had tried to kill us? The questions clamored in his mind like barking dogs.
He made a try to get out of bed, but sudden huge waves of lassitude swept over him and he slid back deep down into blackness. This time, however, there was no dream.
When he awoke again the blinds were drawn and the room was bright with sunshine. He turned his head to see Ironheel sitting watching him. Unthinkingly, he tried to sit up and pain ran down his left side like boiling water. In two strides Ironheel was at the bedside.
“Hanányo’l,” he said, gently pushing Easton back flat. “Easy, now. You got shot, remember?”
“It’s not the sort of thing you forget,” Easton said.
Ironheel had gotten rid of the prison jumpsuit and was wearing a dark blue work shirt, Levi’s, and scuffed-out cowboy boots. His long black hair was tied back with a headband and there was a knife in a sheath on his belt. He looked even more Apache than before.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“If I was a bell, I’d be ringing,” Easton said.
Ironheel shook his head impatiently. Probably hasn’t seen many musicals, Easton thought.
“Where is this?” he asked.
“My sister’s cabin.”
So they were on the Mescalero Apache Reservation.
“You live here too?”
Ironheel moved his head in what might have been a negative gesture. “Close by.”
Of course, Easton thought. He would probably not live in t
he same house as his sister. In the old days, Apache kinship rules required that from childhood on, a brother’s relationship with his sister be formal. As children, they would of course be permitted to play together, but after puberty the brother would treat his sh’ila – sibling – with decorum in both speech and action. If their mother and father were not at home and the sister was alone, the brother must go elsewhere until the parents returned or put disgrace on the whole family. The rules probably weren’t applied as stringently now as they had once been, but the taboo would still be there.
“You tell that sheriff where you were taking me?” Ironheel asked him.
Easton shook his head. “Only the DA. A man called Olin McKittrick.”
“Then …” Ironheel looked thoughtful. “They’re both part of this thing.”
“Damn right they are,” Easton said. “And they want us dead.”
“They’ll have an interesting time getting it done,” Ironheel said flatly.
Easton felt a fresh surge of anger at the way they’d sent him to what they confidently expected to be his death. Probably the first thing McKittrick did after I left his house was to call Apodaca, he thought. He knows, Joe. We need to take care of this. The duplicitous bastard had no more contacted the Department of Justice than he had called the Dalai Lama.
The fact McKittrick was involved added another dimension to the murder of Robert and Adam Casey, but he had no idea yet what it might be. It was a cliché that in a murder case, the first question you asked was Who benefits? He tried to concentrate but his brain felt like it was clogged up with cotton candy. I’ll think about it later, he promised himself.
“How did I get here?” he asked Ironheel.
“My sister came down to get us.”
Easton frowned. “Your sister? How did she know …?”
“One of the men had a cellphone.”
“Did you kill both of them?”
Ironheel got up and looked out the window. “My sister will be here soon,” he said, sidestepping the question.
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