Not Dead Enough

by Warren C Easley

  Kaboom. Kaboom. The buckshot sprayed out, kicking up dust well short of the trees, and the recoil knocked the gun out of my loose grip. I didn’t care. I just wanted the son of a bitch to know I was armed. As soon as I fired I rolled out of the way and two more rounds punched through the window where I’d just been. I dashed back to the gun rack, found a box of shotgun shells, and dropped in two more shells.

  The scene fell silent and nothing moved. I kept watching, my ears ringing from the shotgun blasts and my nostrils stinging from the stench of exploded gun powder. Then I heard the whine of a transmission out on the road, the sound of a car driving away at a high rate of speed.

  I was pretty sure my attacker had fled, but I watched anxiously for several more minutes before checking the house for a landline. I didn’t find one. My cell phone was in the car. I opened the front door a crack and peered out. Nothing stirred except the birds, which began singing again. I wanted to call out to Archie but stopped myself. If he was okay, I didn’t want him sticking his head up.

  I pocketed a half dozen shotgun shells and dashed first to the Toyota and then to my car, keeping both between me and the cottonwoods. I snapped the rear door open, my mouth so full of my heart I couldn’t speak. Archie was on the back seat. Light winked off bits of glass in his dark coat. His ears were back and his eyes met mine with a look of relief. He was unharmed.

  He whimpered and wagged his stub of a tail. I held my hand out, palm down. “Stay down, big guy. Stay down.” He obeyed and kept whining softly. I retrieved my cell phone from the front seat, but there was no signal. “Shit.”

  I got in the car and, keeping as low as possible, turned it around and gunned it to the top of the knoll. There was no sign of the shooter, but I felt terribly exposed up there.

  A single bar showed on my phone. I dialed 911. “There’s been a homicide out on Clarno Road.” I looked at the directions Philip had given me, read off the address, and told them that I’d exchanged gunfire with the shooter. At this point I noticed a stinging on my neck below my right ear and the fact that my collar was sticking to my skin. I reached up and touched the still wet blood and realized I had a nest of splinters embedded deeply in my neck. Not a nest, actually—more like a lumberyard. The wound began to burn, but the good news was I was still breathing.

  I drove back down the knoll and parked between the house and the Toyota. I scooped up the shotgun and Archie, who was still trembling, and hustled back into the relative safety of Watlamet’s house to wait for the officers to arrive.

  Damn, I thought, what in hell have I gotten myself into?

  Chapter Eight

  Jake

  Jake started sprinting toward his truck after firing two final rounds at the man in Watlamet’s house, the man with the double barrel shotgun. I hope to hell I hit the bastard but no way I’m waiting around to find out. Time to get out of Dodge. He reached the truck, stuffed his rifle behind the seat, and took off in the direction of his campsite.

  He pounded the steering wheel as he sped away. “Goddammit. Goddamnit. That dude saw me. This was supposed to be easy.”

  It wasn’t until he pulled off the highway and began the climb into the narrow canyon that he stopped talking to himself. And only after he pulled off the road below the mouth of the abandoned mine and tucked his truck in behind a pile of tailings did his pulse come back to normal.

  He double-timed up a steep ridge to where he knew there was a cell phone signal and tapped out a text to the number he’d been given: Target is down. One problem. Someone saw me as I was leaving. Not sure if I took care of him. I’m back at campsite. Need guidance.

  Seventeen agonizing minutes later he received a reply: Stay where you are. Check back tomorrow, mid-morning.

  After hiking back down, he slipped under the shade of the low tarp he’d rigged earlier, took a long pull on a bottle of water, and lit up a Camel. But the cigarette did nothing to calm him. He laid back using his backpack for a pillow and let out a deep sigh that turned into a moan. You fool. You never should have agreed to this.

  His thoughts flashed back to the night he’d arrived at the guest house…

  He’d let himself in, like the text said. But no one was there. Instead, he found two envelopes with his name on them, and he almost giggled. “Damn, this is like some kind of spy shit.” He opened the thick envelope first, whistled softly, and sat down on shaky legs. It was stuffed with money—a wad of crisp, new one-hundred dollar bills a couple of inches thick. One hundred and fifty of the little beauties. He counted them twice and did the math. A cool fifteen thousand.

  A note tucked into the bills read: “Down payment. Another $15,000 paid upon completion of task.” When he tore open the second envelope his hand shook slightly, and he felt a sinking feeling in his gut. The details of his job—what he was to do, who he was to do it to, and how—were precisely laid out on two pieces of typed paper. There was an explanation, too. It made him feel a little better. Some crazy old Indian hermit was going to dredge up the past and hurt a lot of innocent people. This was unacceptable to the Old Man, and he needed Jake to put a stop to it. The Old Man would consider it a great personal favor.

  But Jake still felt shitty after it all sank in. Kill a man? Sure, he’d killed his share of big game—long horns, elk, deer, even a couple of bears. But a man? That was different. Then he glanced over at that stack of bills. Thirty thousand bucks would change his life, big time. He could pay off some debts, get caught up on his alimony. A sliver of hope slipped into his thoughts. Maybe Amy would change her mind after this. Maybe we could start over...

  But then the thought of the awful task in front of him came back in full force. He sat there in the guesthouse for a long time, going back and forth. What finally swung it for him was the Old Man, what was said in the note about doing him a personal favor. Maybe this would really count for something. God knows, nothing I ever do is good enough. Sure, the money was great, but he knew deep down he would have done the job for nothing, just to please the old bastard.

  And besides, the job’s a no-brainer, and no one will miss the old Indian, anyway.

  Jake’s thoughts were brought back to the here and now by a gust of wind that slammed into the weathered tarp above him. He sat up. “No-brainer, my ass. Now there may be a witness out there. I hope to hell I killed that son of a bitch, too.”

  When the sun finally sank behind the rim of the canyon, he fired up the propane stove inside the protective ring of rocks he’d built and waited for a pot of water to boil. Freeze-dried beef stroganoff with noodles was his favorite camp food, but this particular night it didn’t taste that good. As a matter of fact, the food caught in his throat and the only thing that went down easy was a fifth of I. W. Harper.

  But the whiskey didn’t keep him from seeing the old Indian’s face in the scope of his rifle. Over and over again.

  He woke the next morning with a splitting headache, but as he hiked back up the ridge he felt more hopeful. I pumped two rounds in right where I saw the muzzle flash of that shotgun. I must have hit him. Hell, they can just pay me the rest and I’ll go home, lay low and let this thing blow over.

  But the text that came in read: There’s a loose end. Sit tight for 24 hrs.

  Jake’s throat constricted as he read the text, and he had difficulty swallowing. Shit. Missed the bastard. This ain’t over. Not by a long shot.

  Chapter Nine

  Once inside Watlamet’s house, I put Arch and the shotgun down, pressed a handkerchief to the wound on my neck, and rummaged through his kitchen for a clean towel. Still trembling, Archie shook himself and came over to me. I dropped to one knee and brushed the remaining bits of glass from his coat using the towel. When I finished he scrubbed my face with puppy kisses while I hugged his neck with one arm. “Thanks, big boy,” I said in a husky voice. “You saved my life.”

  I flopped down on a threadbare couch and leaned back for a moment. T
he shock of what had just happened sunk in. It was my turn to tremble, the shakes starting in my gut and rippling down my legs. I felt like an idiot and was glad no one was around to see me like this.

  After I calmed down I started poking around the house. I glanced at my watch and figured I had, at the outside, a couple of minutes. In any case, I’d hear their sirens coming in. I felt a twinge of guilt at the prospect of mucking around in a crime scene. After all, I’d spent a career in law enforcement. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to disturb anything. And I felt like I’d earned the right to know if there were any clues in Watlamet’s house that might tell me who had killed him and nearly blown my head off.

  I saw nothing of interest in the living and dining rooms. A desk containing a pile of papers—mostly bills, credit card receipts, and copies of a church newsletter—stood in a corner of the kitchen. I glanced through them without spotting anything. In the bedroom I found a cell phone that I’d missed in my earlier search. It lay on a nightstand, partially obscured by a lamp and a large, leather-bound Bible. Using a pencil, I flipped it open and scrolled down to Recent Calls. Under Calls Made, there were two numbers, under Calls Received, three. I jotted the numbers down on a business card from my wallet. As I closed the phone, I heard a siren in the distance.

  I waved with both hands to the Wasco County Sheriff’s cruiser that came down Sherman Watlamet’s dirt drive. I knew they’d be on high alert and wanted to make damn sure they saw I was unarmed and had no reason to confuse me for the gunman who’d shot the Indian rancher through the head.

  I gave a deputy—C. Grooms by her name tag—a quick rundown on what had just happened. She seemed satisfied that I was the innocent bystander I claimed to be, and when I told her I didn’t want an ambulance, offered to give me first aid. Her partner was, by this time, over in the cottonwoods looking for shell casings. The medical examiner and forensic team hadn’t arrived yet.

  A big woman with blond hair combed up in front, Grooms had biceps that filled her short-sleeved shirt and small gray eyes that were hard, like ball bearings. She retrieved a first aid kit from her patrol car, took a closer look at my neck, and made a face. “I’ll bandage this up for you, but you’re gonna need to get those splinters removed.” I nodded and she set about the task as she began questioning me. “So, Mr. Claxton, you said you got a look at the man in the truck who passed you comin’ in here?”

  Thinking of all the witnesses I’d questioned in my career, all the expectations I’d had about their ability to remember important details, I had to laugh inwardly. Now the tables were turned, and I wasn’t so sure how much I’d picked up in my quick encounter with the man I assumed was the shooter. “Yeah, I did get a look, and then he turned away. He looked surprised as hell to see me. Not a lot of traffic out here.”

  “Seein’ the way he circled back on you, he must consider you a witness, for sure.”

  I nodded. “I’m afraid you’re right about that.”

  She smiled and snipped off a piece of tape. When the tip of the scissors touched my neck, I flinched. “Hold still,” she said sternly. “Tell me what you saw, Mr. Claxton.”

  “He was Caucasian, mid to late forties, give or take. Big eyes in a long, narrow face. Prominent nose. Dark, heavy sideburns, long hair, maybe. Couldn’t tell for sure because of the cowboy hat.” I closed my eyes to picture the fleeting moment better. “Uh, medium build, maybe, fairly broad shoulders. That’s about it.”

  “Good. What was he wearing?”

  “The cowboy hat was gray, and he wore a dark shirt, blue maybe.”

  “I see,” Grooms said, not looking up from a pad she was jotting notes on. “Could you identify this man if you saw him again?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I could.”

  “Do you think you could help our artist come up with a sketch of this man?”

  “I suppose I could do that. It’ll be pretty rough.”

  “But better than nothin’. How about the truck?”

  I puffed a breath through my lips and shook my head. “Late model, dark blue pickup. Nondescript…Ford or Chevy, maybe.”

  Deputy Grooms rolled her eyes at my inability to differentiate between a Ford and a Chevy but didn’t comment. “Did you see the plates?”

  “Nope. I was worried about him being the man I’d come to see—the victim, Mr. Watlamet—so I really didn’t focus on the truck.”

  She snapped her notebook shut and said, “Excuse me,” and then walked briskly over to the squad car. I knew she was going to call in a BOLO for the truck and the man I described. There was a good chance he was still on the road.

  When she came back she asked me more questions about why I happened to be visiting Sherman Watlamet. I laid out the entire story and told her that Philip Lone Deer had helped me find Watlamet. I gave her Philip’s phone number and address. She asked me who my client was. I told her that was privileged, but if she felt she needed it, I would seek my client’s permission to give it to her. She told me to go ahead and do that.

  “Do you think this killin’ here’s connected to the disappearance of Mr. Queah in any way?” she asked when I’d finished.

  “I don’t see how it could be, but you know what they say about coincidences.”

  She allowed a faint smile. “Right. You gonna keep workin’ on the disappearance?”

  I shrugged. “It’ll depend on what my client wants to do now.”

  Grooms locked onto me with those hard, gray eyes. “You might want to consider quittin’ while you’re ahead, Mr. Claxton. But if you learn anything new, you be sure to call me.”

  Later that afternoon I was sitting on a park bench in The Dalles watching Archie sniff around. I had just finished up with the sheriff department’s artist, a young woman who quickly and deftly captured the essence of the face of the man I saw. To be honest, I was more than a little skittish about this. The sketch was bound to get into the papers and reinforce the shooter’s notion that I was a star witness. Of course, I didn’t know whether he knew who I was, and that was something I needed to talk to Philip about. Just what had he told people in his search for Watlamet? Had he used my name? I wondered. As if on cue, my phone chirped. It was Philip returning my call.

  “How’d it go with Watlamet?”

  “Uh, not too well.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “He’s dead. Someone shot him with a rifle at long range just before I got there.”

  “What? You’re kidding.”

  I went on to tell him what I’d found and how Archie had saved me from getting my brains blown out, too. After I finished he said, “Where are you now?”

  “I’m sitting in a park in The Dalles watching Archie take a leak.”

  “Don’t go home. Bring the hero dog and come to my place. We can talk about this. You can go home in the morning. I’m glad you’re okay, man.”

  “Me, too.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Hold still, damn it!” Philip was bent down next to me with a large magnifying glass in one hand and a pair of tweezers in the other. The tools came from his fly tying workshop. “I don’t know whether I can do this, Cal. Maybe you should go to the hospital.”

  “Come on. Tying a number sixteen fly’s a lot harder than extracting a few splinters from my neck. You can do this.”

  “You got something against hospitals?”

  “Just not a big fan. Carry me in to one, okay. Otherwise I’m looking for a work-around.”

  Philip shook his head. “Okay, but this work-around’s going to hurt. The next little bastard’s straight in like an arrow. I’m going to have to dig it out.”

  I gritted my teeth at the stab of pain as he began probing around in the wound.

  “Got it. Now, hold on. This next one’s the size of small log.”

  When the last splinter was out and I was rebandaged, we went into the kitchen and poppe
d two beers. Philip said, “My wife’s visiting her sister, and I only cook camp food. We can go out if you want.”

  “Tell you what, if we can find something in the fridge, I’ll cook. I owe you for medical services.”

  Philip opened the refrigerator and pulled out a package of ground beef. “Uh, how about hamburgers?” Archie eyed the meat, sat down at Philip’s feet, looked up at him and whimpered.

  I smiled. “Looks like Arch has first dibs on that.”

  Philip laughed. “Good point. The hero dog deserves a special treat tonight.”

  “You got any pasta?”

  “Yeah. Should be some in the pantry.”

  “Smoked salmon?”

  He looked insulted. “Of course. In the fridge.”

  I found a nice chunk wrapped in foil along with some green onions and white wine, and after rummaging through his wife’s spices I picked out some dried dill.

  I started heating a pot of water for the pasta. “So, tell me how you found Watlamet.” I handed him the onions and nodded toward the chopping block between us. “Chop these while you’re talking, and if you’ve got a couple of cloves of garlic, chop those, too.”

  “I tried every contact I had over at Yakama Rez,” Philip began. “They asked around to their friends. You know how it goes. All dead ends. They knew of him, but nobody had a clue where he was living.”

  “Did you tell them what it was about or mention my name?”

  “I didn’t use your name at all with those guys, just said someone wanted to talk to Watlamet about the disappearance of a Wasco Indian, Nelson Queah, to get their attention. Of course, I used your name with Watlamet, so he’d know who to expect.”

  “So how did you find him?”

  “My father remembered Watlamet used to be a hunting guide. He suggested I call Henry Johnson. Henry’s a Yakama who used to hunt elk with Dad in the Wallowas. He got back to me a day later. Said he had to make about a dozen calls to track Watlamet down. He’d pretty much dropped out.” Philip handed me the chopping block.