It was as hot as hell. Easton checked his watch. 3:45.
“Anytime now,” he said, and almost as he said it, they saw a drift of dust on the access road, the flash of sunlight on bright metal.
Ironheel glanced up at the sun. “Too early for the Feebs,” he said.
Easton nodded tense agreement. The oncoming vehicle was a silver gray BMW 540i. He recognized it immediately.
“McKittrick,” he said.
Chapter Forty-Nine
The BMW pulled smoothly to a stop below, and Olin McKittrick got out. He was alone. Stepping away from the vehicle he ostentatiously raised his arms out horizontally from his body and turned around to show he was unarmed.
“Easton!” he yelled. “Easton, can you hear me?”
Ironheel scowled. “He expects us to go down there?”
“Not you,” Easton said. “Me.”
“Watch him.”
“Watch me watch him,” Easton said.
McKittrick smiled as he watched Easton buck-jump down the steep slope of sand until he reached the access road.
“Well, Dave,” he said. “You’ve been playing hard ball.”
“Still am,” Easton said.
“Where’s the Indian?” McKittrick asked, deep unease in his eyes.
Easton waved an airy arm. “Where the woodbine twineth.”
McKittrick shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
“I expected the organ grinder, not the monkey,” Easton said “Where’s Joe?”
“He’ll be here,” McKittrick said, and Easton saw the lie in his eyes. “But I’m the one you deal with.”
“You’re in no position to make deals anywhere, McKittrick,” Easton said. “Your dirty little racket is all washed up. And the fact you’re out here proves it.”
McKittrick pasted on the superior smirk Easton had always hated. Maybe he thinks it will cover up the fear I can smell on him, he thought.
“You’re the one who’s washed up, dickhead,” McKittrick jeered. “Know why? Because your friend Cochrane called the Feebs and changed the meet. The Seventh Cavalry isn’t coming. They’re probably arriving in Alamocitas round about now.”
“Tom wouldn’t do that,” Easton said. “You couldn’t make him.”
McKittrick smiled his hateful smile, and waved a lordly arm at the empty dunes all around. “You see any Feebs?”
“You’re bluffing,” Easton said.
McKittrick shook his head pityingly. “You’ve got just one chance of getting out of here alive,” he said harshly. “Let’s go sit down and I’ll lay it out for you.”
He led the way across to one of the table units and sat down, waving Easton to the bench opposite as if he were the host at a dinner party.
“You can’t win, Easton,” he said. “There was never going to be any way you could. What you stuck your nose into is going to crush you like a bug.”
Easton lifted his right hand so McKittrick could see the pistol.
“That still leaves you in the catbird seat,” he said.
“Wrong,” McKittrick replied, and the way he said it, a certain tension in the way he held himself, tripped a switch in Easton’s head. He fell sideways off the bench and hit the ground as a slug ricocheted off one of the metal struts and the whiplash crack of a rifle shattered the surrounding stillness.
Apodaca!
Rolling clear of the table and scrambling to the cover of the nearby chemical toilet, Easton guessed McKittrick must have dropped the sheriff off on the way in, waiting for Apodaca to get into position while he set Easton up like a sitting duck.
Up on the dune Ironheel’s Winchester cracked and McKittrick collapsed a couple of yards from the BMW, his leg buckled beneath him. As he fell, the hidden marksman fired again, the slug whanging off the steel toilet. Half-deafened, Easton made a crouching run toward the sheltering dunes and hit the soft sand, breathing hard, trying to get a fix on Apodaca’s location.
Squirming forward, he saw the flash of sunlight on metal on the crest of a dune about thirty yards away, and as if he had sprung from the very ground, Ironheel ran like a gazelle across the open space between two dunes off to the right. As he ran, he pointed with his rifle once to his right, and once somewhere behind where Easton lay. The signal told him the shooter was between the two points indicated.
Easton wormed his way along the flank of the dune, crawling slowly uphill in a half-circle. The hot sand burned his skin and his mouth was desert dry. Inching forward, eyes fixed on the rounded crest above, he reached the shoulder of the dune and saw the shooter.
It was not Apodaca, but a big, broad-shouldered man, blond hair shining in the bright sun.
Gerzen!
In the same moment of recognition the German saw him, and his teeth flashed white in a tight grin as he brought his rifle to his shoulder. Both elbows already braced, aiming and shooting instinctively, Easton fired four shots in a diamond pattern and the big man went backwards as if he had been hit with a bat, blood and flesh flying away from his body.
Edging warily toward where Gerzen had fallen, Easton heard the sharp metallic slic-a-slac of a shell being levered into the breech of a carbine and turned to see Joe Apodaca standing on the crest of the dune behind him, Winchester leveled. Caught flat-footed, Easton braced himself against the shock of the slug.
“Ha-yihaah!”
Once again Ironheel appeared out of nowhere, running in an arc across the line of fire, his Winchester canted at his hip, firing as he ran. Easton saw the bullets stitch a bloody line across Joe Apodaca’s chest, but the sheriff still got off one round before he collapsed and Ironheel faltered and went down on his knees. As Easton ran toward him, he heard McKittrick starting his car in the recreation area below, then that sound was drowned in the sudden rolling thunder of a helicopter overhead, and the harsh electronic blat of a loudhailer.
“F.B.I! This is the F.B.I! Throw down your weapons! Throw down your weapons and lie flat on the ground, hands behind your heads!”
Taking no chances on being killed by friendly fire, Easton spread-eagled himself face down and watched the helicopter land about twenty yards away. For a few seconds flying sand obscured everything. Then out of it came a running phalanx of heavily-armed men in dark blue body armor.
All at once there seemed to be vehicles everywhere, dusty sedans and a couple of big off-roaders. As he was disarmed and frisked with professional thoroughness, Easton recognized Millard Goodwin coming toward him at the head of a posse of agents, sweat streaming down his beefy face.
“Ironheel is hit.” Easton shouted. “Get someone up there!”
“How bad is it?” Goodwin panted.
Easton ignored the question and scrambled up the dune to where Ironheel lay, his knees drawn up to his belly. Ten yards further on, Joe Apodaca lay face up, a bloodstain the size of a dinner plate darkening the front of his pale blue shirt. An agent was picking up his rifle, another checking his throat pulse. A minute or so later Goodwin appeared, and knelt down to take a look at Ironheel. Easton saw his expression alter.
“Get a medic up here!” he yelled, startling his agents into action. “Fast, damn it!”
At the sound of Goodwin’s voice, Ironheel opened his eyes. He saw Easton and smiled.
“We get them?”
“We got them,” Easton said.
“T’lo kahdinadi aha’eh,” Ironheel said. “You remember that?”
“Come from nowhere,” Easton replied. “You did. You saved my life.”
“Good team.”
“Damn good,” Easton said.
Two agents sweating in their body armor came scrambling up the dune with a stretcher. They laid it down and lifted Ironheel on to it. He gave a little groan as they straightened him out and for the first time Easton saw the black blood oozing low on his body above the belt line.
“Get him to a hospital!” he yelled at the agents. “Now, damn you!”
“Wait,” Ironheel said. The way he said it stopped them. The agents looked at Goodwin. H
e nodded an okay.
“Chihi’shka’say,” Ironheel said. “You know what it means, Easton?”
Easton shook his head. “Don’t talk,” he said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Say it.” Ironheel’s voice was getting weaker. Easton repeated the word until he had it fixed in his head. Cheesh-ka-say. Cheesh-ka-say.
Ironheel smiled. “Near enough,” he said.
“What does it mean?”
A little grin moved Ironheel’s lips and Easton thought he saw satisfaction in his eyes..
“Means … brother. I wanted . . . to… thank you, chihi’ska’say.”
Easton looked at the stretchermen. One of them shook his head gravely. “Brothers need no thanks,” he said.
“Beyond that ridge, chihi’ska’say,” Ironheel whispered. “Remember?”
“No, James,” Easton said. “No.”
Ironheel moved his head and Easton saw pain fill his eyes. Then his eyelids closed and he died.
Easton stood looking at him for what seemed a long time. Then he turned away. It was over.
Chapter Fifty
The FBI helicopter’s engine roared as the pilot increased revs before takeoff. Without any recollection of having walked there, Easton found himself in the recreation area.
“Apodaca’s still alive,” Goodwin told him. “They’re bringing him down now.”
He pointed with his chin and Easton saw two agents coming awkwardly down the side of the dunes with Joe Apodaca on a stretcher. His face was paper white and his eyes looked like holes burned in wood. He looked up at Easton as they drew level.
“All this for that goddamn Indian,” he said. “Why, Dave? Why?”
“You know why, Joe,” Easton replied. “You taught me.”
He turned away, and as he did the sheriff reached out a beseeching hand.
“Please,” he croaked. “For old times sake, Dave, listen, please, I’m begging you. Don’t let them send me to the pen. Shoot me, kill me now.”
There were probably twenty or thirty lifers in the State penitentiary doing hard time because he had put them there. His life wouldn’t be worth a tin cup.
“Don’t think I wouldn’t like to,” Easton said harshly.
He watched, racked with regret, as the stretcher bearers hurried Apodaca away toward the chopper. Off to one side, two agents were lifting Olin McKittrick on to a stretcher. His face was putty gray and there was a bloodstain the size of a pancake on the right leg of his tan pants. Easton saw him reach out and tug at one of the tags on Goodwin’s body armor to get his attention.
“Goodwin, listen to me,” he whined. “Listen, we can make a deal. I can give you everything. Names, dates, places, all of it. On a plate.”
Goodwin made an impatient, almost angry gesture.
“Get this piece of shit the fuck out of here!” he snapped at his agents. “Before I throw up.”
“You’ll need me if you want to tie it all up tight, Goodwin!” McKittrick shouted, as the two agents stretchered him across to the helicopter. “You’ll have to talk to me!”
“Do us all a favor,” Goodwin muttered. “Bleed to death.”
As soon as McKittrick was loaded, he lifted a hand and the pilot gave a thumbs-up sign. Fine sand whirled high again as the big bird roared up and away. Now Goodwin picked up a loud-hailer and raised his voice over the sound of the departing aircraft.
“All right, men! Let’s finish processing this scene and get the hell out of here!”
Watching the criminalists at work, Easton was suddenly swamped by a feeling of enormous lassitude. Two agents came down the sloping dune with Gerzen’s body on a stretcher and slid it into the 4x4 alongside Ironheel.
Goodwin looked across at Easton, then came over to where he was standing.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “About Ironheel.”
There was nothing to say about that.
“What the hell held you up?” Easton wanted to know.
“We got a call from Tom Cochrane telling us you’d changed the rendezvous, the meet was now in Valley of Fires State Park. We knew something wasn’t kosher because he didn’t use the password we’d given him. But we couldn’t take any chances, so we had to put two teams together, one to go to Valley of Fires, and one to come here. That was what delayed us.”
Easton could feel the lassitude overtaking him, making it hard to concentrate on what Goodwin was saying. All he could think was, ‘What am I going to tell Joanna Ironheel?’
“That guy you shot,” he heard Goodwin saying. “The German. There wasn’t much left of him above the belt. What the hell were you using, a howitzer?”
For a moment Easton was puzzled, then he remembered that night on the mountain, loading Moses Kuruk’s odd-looking Extreme Shock ammunition into his Winchester.
“His name was Carl Gerzen,” he said. “And he had it coming.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Two weeks later David Easton was appointed acting sheriff, pending a November election. One of the first things he did was name Tom Cochrane as his Chief Deputy, confident Tom was going to make a great number two.
It turned out to have been the right choice. Tom took to administrative work like he’d been born to it, running the day-to-day activities of the civil, court security, patrol and criminal investigation divisions with ease and aplomb. In addition he collated and prepared the criminal case statistics and prepared the reports needed to apply for federal grant money to hire additional deputies, handled liaison with RPD, and dealt with all aspects of public relations. It was like he had taken on a new life.
Which was just as well, because from the time Easton took over as sheriff, his feet hardly touched the ground. Following the arraignment of Joe Apodaca and Olin McKittrick, both of whom took a change of venue to Santa Fe County, the attorney-general appointed a new district attorney for Baca, Lee and Fall Counties. His name was Jack Thornton. He was forceful, frank and tough.
Born in Brooklyn, he had grown up in suburban Cleveland and graduated from the University of Ohio. His father was an artist. His mother had worked as a medical receptionist between raising three kids. He met his wife in college and together they moved west in 1978. His first job after law school was practicing civil law in Kansas. A short while after passing the bar, he moved on to prosecuting cases for the district attorney’s office in Las Cruces.
“I’m going to have to lean on you, Dave,” he told Easton at their first meeting. “In both senses of the word. As sheriff, and I hope, in time, as a friend, too.”
“Works for me, Jack,” Easton said.
“Then we’ll get along just fine,” he said.
Easton found out real fast that when Jack Thornton said he intended to do something, he did it. And when he asked you to do something, he expected you to do it, just as thoroughly and just as fast.
“Our first priority here is to clean up McKittrick’s mess and restore the reputation of this office,” he said. “And I’m going to do it – correction, we are going to do it – right down to the last speck of mouse shit. And if that means we have to work twenty four hours a day seven days a week until it’s done, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Easton served on the honor guard that accompanied Bob Casey’s coffin to the grave in South Park cemetery, and attended a small family service for Adam Twitchell in the little chapel behind the ranch in Pacheco. He had not seen Ellen or Kit since. The scars were still too fresh; only time would heal them.
About a month after he took office, he got a call from Millard Goodwin from the FBI office in Albuquerque.
“You heard about McKittrick?” he said.
“Something break?”
“Happened yesterday. He cut a deal with the prosecution,” Goodwin said.
“What kind of deal?”
“All singing, all dancing,” Goodwin said. “They get Apodaca for Casey and his grandson. McKittrick co-operates with State and Federal investigators in breaking up the porno syndicate, names, addresses, dat
es, places. In return he gets a nolle pros.”
Nolle pros was legal jargon that meant the prosecution would decline to proceed against the defendant.
“So he’s going to walk?”
“He may get his knuckles rapped,” Goodwin replied. “Expelled from the bar. But he won’t do hard time.”
“Shit.” Easton said it very emphatically.
“It’s the system, Dave,” Goodwin said wearily. “And crawly bastards like McKittrick know all the best ways there are to manipulate it.”
“I want to know what happens,” Easton said. “Will you keep me posted?”
“Bet on it,” said. “How you getting along with Jack Thornton?”
“I like him.”
“Funny, he said the same thing about you. Must be love.”
Easton hung up and sat for a long while just staring out the window, thinking of all those young lives, all those grieving parents, all those cruel lonely deaths. He thought about Kit and wondered who would comfort her, and about Ellen Casey and Alice Apodaca and the private hell both of them would live in for the rest of their days. He thought of Bob Casey and his grandson dead on the uncaring earth in Garcia Flat. He thought of Mack Gallerito, burned alive in his cluttered cabin. And James Ironheel, sleeping the big sleep on the hill above Whitetail Canyon.
He had not expected to be invited to his funeral, but Joanna Ironheel insisted.
“He would want you to be there,” she said. “Please come.”
The ceremony was extended one. No formal rites were performed over the body, for Apache consider death to be the final foe and not something to be celebrated. He was dressed in his best clothes. His hair was parted and brushed smooth. His wrists were covered with bracelets and beads. Everything that belonged to him had been placed inside the blanket-shroud with him and then they buried him facing the morning sun high above Whitetail Canyon.
After the committal, ashes and pollen were sprinkled in a circle around the grave, beginning at its southwest corner. This, Joanna Ironheel told him, was considered to be a prayer that the soul would safely enter O’zho, heaven. Ironheel’s name would never be mentioned again. In earlier times, they would have burned down the cabin, too.
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