Not Dead Enough

by Warren C Easley

  Visions of Watlamet’s corpse flashed in my head. “What the hell happened? Has she been shot?”

  Philip leaned in close. “Looks like it. I think she’s still breathing.”

  I checked her neck for a pulse—a faint flutter, if anything—and looked closer at her chest. The puncture in her uniform looked like a bullet hole, and the torn edge of the fabric rose then fell perceptibly. “You’re right! She is breathing, but just barely. “Big C,” I said, “it’s Cal and Philip. Hang on. We’re going to help you.”

  No response.

  Philip nodded in the direction of the west wall of the canyon. “Keep your head down. By the way she fell, the bullet came from that direction. The sniper could still be up there.”

  I nodded impatiently and unbuttoned her uniform top. “She’s wearing a vest.” The black, tightly-woven mat was seemingly punctured, an indentation the diameter of my thumb. But it was free of blood.

  “It’s a Kevlar vest.” Philip unclipped the shoulder straps of the vest and lifted off the front section. Grooms coughed, and blood oozed from a jagged hole directly above her sternum.

  I winced and swallowed down an urge to puke. “Doesn’t look like the vest did her much good.”

  He held it up. The Kevlar fabric had a bloody protrusion about the size of a finger joint jutting out from the inside surface.

  “Is that what did the damage?” I said, pointing to the protrusion.

  He nodded, turned the vest over, and shook it. A small chunk of something fell out of the tiny pouch and bounced off the toe of his boot. He picked it up and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger. “This is the bullet that hit her, man. Looks like that vest kept it from boring a hole straight through her.”

  I stripped off my shirt and tee-shirt and bunched the latter into a crude compress. “Is there any duct tape in the truck?”

  “Glove compartment,” Philip said, springing to his feet. “I’ll get it.”

  Once we had the compress in place, I bent down close to Grooms’ ear. “We got a patch on you, Big C. Your vest stopped the bullet. Now we’re going to get you the hell out of here.” Her eyes fluttered, and I heard a faint gurgling sound as she struggled for a breath.

  I flipped my cell phone open. “No service. We need to use her radio.”

  “I know those radios. I’ll call it in,” Philip said. When he stood up, he glanced down at a faint wet patch emerging from the streambed. He knelt back down and studied it for several seconds before starting for the patrol car. “Don’t worry about the sniper, Cal,” he said over his shoulder. “He’s long gone.” When I asked how he knew that, he waved me off and got into Grooms’ car to use the radio.

  The dispatcher’s response to Philip’s account reverberated in the narrow canyon. “I’m sending deputies, an EMT team, and a medivac helicopter,” she told us. “Is the area safe?”

  “Yes,” Philip responded. “The shooter left the scene maybe thirty, forty minutes ago. Probably the same guy who shot Sherman Watlamet. I think he’s heading east on the Shaniko Fossil Highway.”

  “Copy that.” Her voice broke as she added, “Take good care of her, you hear.” An officer was down, a friend, a colleague. The nightmare of every law-enforcement organization.

  When Philip returned, I looked at him, incredulous. “How do you know all that?”

  He shrugged and pointed at the wet patch he’d spotted earlier. “That’s a fresh tire mark.” He dropped down and peered under his truck. “The other one’s under here. Someone drove out of here not too long ago. They were in a big hurry.” He got up and jerked a thumb in the direction of the west wall. “The sniper shot her from up there and took off. We didn’t pass any pickups on our way here, so I figured he headed east.”

  I nodded. “Well done.” My friend never ceased to amaze me.

  Grooms coughed again, and I wiped some blood from her lips with my handkerchief. We covered her with a blanket from the truck, and I took her hand. “Stay with me, Big C,” I told her. “Help’s on the way.” There was nothing we could do but wait at this point. I felt a frustrating sense of helplessness interspersed with waves of boiling anger. The sniper had hit another person, a friend, a good cop, and the son of a bitch was still out there. There was something else, too, something more insidious. Come on, I told myself, this wasn’t your fault. No guilt trips.

  But there it was, that old familiar feeling of guilt I couldn’t shake.

  Philip stopped his restless pacing and dropped to one knee next to a large photograph lying in the road face up. He looked it over without touching it. “This is a shot of one of the tire tracks I found at Watlamet’s ranch.” He got up and scanned the stream bed again, stopped and pointed. “There’s a track going the other direction, toward the canyon. It’s old but pretty well preserved. The mud’s thicker there.” He knelt back down, studied it, and looked over at me. “Matches the photo.” He looked down the road leading into the canyon. “Grooms had the bastard dead to rights, man.”

  I shaded my eyes and looked up at the canyon wall. “I think that was the problem. He was trapped and knew it. She said the mine was pretty far into the canyon. I guess she thought it was safe at this point.” I shook my head. “I wish to hell she’d waited for us.”

  “For sure,” Philip said. “But at least she was smart enough to wear the Kevlar.”

  The wait was agonizing. I sat talking to Grooms, whose breath came in barely audible gasps so ragged I thought each and every one would be her last. I felt her grip tighten on my hand a couple of times, and I wanted to believe it wasn’t a spasm, that she was with me at some level. I kept talking and talking while Philip paced. Finally, he said, “I can’t stand this anymore. That bastard’s getting away. I’m going after him.”

  “Cool your jets, man. You told them which way he was heading, and you’re a material witness here. Besides, what would you do if you caught up with him?”

  He glared at me. “I’ve got a weapon, too, you know.”

  I exhaled a long breath. I didn’t doubt for a minute that Philip could take care of himself, but the last thing I wanted was to put him in harm’s way. “I’d like to chase him, too, but this isn’t an action movie. He’s already shot two people at long range. Let the sheriff handle this.”

  Philip kicked a couple of loose stones into the runoff. “Okay. But, damn it, Cal, they’re spread so thin out here it’s pathetic.” He opened his arms. “Wait till you see how long it takes them just to get here.”

  My friend had a point, but so did I. And as I thought about it while we waited, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this thing ran deep, and that it was going to fall to me to piece it all together. This was a long way from prosecuting bad guys sitting in jail cells down in Los Angeles, and it sure as hell wasn’t what I expected when I opened my one-man law practice in Dundee.

  But on the upside, I felt like I had a purpose for the first time in a long time.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  We heard the faint wail of sirens out on the highway twenty-two minutes later. Two patrol cars arrived first, skidding to a stop abreast of each other some twenty yards away. An EMT truck stopped well behind them. A deputy got out of each car and stood behind his open door with his service revolver drawn. “Put your hands where we can see them,” one of them ordered. “Now,” the other one called out.

  They holstered their weapons and approached us cautiously, but only after I’d recapped the situation. They both knelt down next to Grooms, their faces twisted in anger and grief. The older of the two, a heavy set man with a florid complexion, bent down next to her face. “It’s Hank, Big C. The EMTs are here. You better not die on us, you hear me?”

  The EMT crew huddled around Grooms, assessing her injuries. An IV was hooked up, chest monitors and a finger clip were attached, and finally her nose and mouth were covered with an oxygen mask. After what seemed an eternity, she was trans
ferred to a stretcher and loaded onto the truck. “We’re taking her south to meet up with a medivac helicopter coming up from Bend, the lead EMT explained. “It’s the fastest way to get her into the ER.”

  As they pulled away, I felt a sense of relief, like a lead-weighted burden of responsibility had been lifted. I looked at Philip and he said, “She’s got a good chance, I think. She’s strong.”

  The Sheriff, a man named Grover Bailey, arrived shortly after the EMT truck left. Tall with sloped shoulders and big, strong-looking hands, he came straight up to us, his eyes as friendly as a hawk’s. “What in God’s name happened here?” He said it in a low, strained voice dripping with anger and accusation.

  Both deputies hesitated, so I stepped forward and introduced Philip and myself. “Grooms got a positive on the composite sketch at a gas station near here. She thought the shooter might be holed up at an old mine back in this canyon.” I nodded toward the photographs and the tape measure lying next to the body. “She was looking at tire tracks in the mud when she was shot.” I pointed at the west wall of the canyon. “Looks like the shooter was up on that ridge.”

  Bailey looked up at the ridge and back at me, his eyes narrow, his jaw set. “Why the hell were you first on the scene?”

  “She called us, and we drove over from the Warm Springs Rez. Philip, here, is the guy who found the boot prints and tire tracks at Watlamet’s ranch. Grooms thought maybe he could help pick something up here.”

  “Why are you so sure it’s the same person who killed Watlamet?”

  Philip pointed at the photographs lying next to the runoff. “There’s one halfway decent tire print there in the mud, and it matches the one I found at Watlamet’s ranch. The sniper must’ve slowed down coming in. Probably didn’t want to muddy his rig. And the wheelbase looks right, too.”

  Bailey nodded and looked up the canyon road. “How do you know he’s not still up there?”

  “Someone came out of here in a big hurry,” Philip answered. “We saw the tracks when we first arrived, but they’ve dried out. Had to have been him.”

  By this time, Bailey was a believer. He nodded again, impatiently, and turned to his deputies. “Was she told to wait for backup?”

  Deputy Hank looked down at his boots. “She called in, and Elva told her to wait for me. I was over in Clarno on a domestic call. Wendell, here, was out on the highway doing traffic.” The second deputy shuffled his feet and nodded.

  Bailey blew out a breath, pure frustration. “Why am I not surprised? She never listens to anyone. At least she wore her vest. The EMTs told me it caught the bullet. Otherwise, she’d be on her way to the morgue.”

  “That’s right,” I said. We took Bailey over to the hood of Grooms’ patrol car, where we had laid out the vest and the flattened piece of lead we’d recovered from it. Bailey picked up the spent bullet and looked at it. “Hard to believe this little piece of lead could do so much damage. The EMTs told me she has a shattered sternum and God knows what kind of internal injuries. He looked at us, his eyes suddenly bright with moisture. “You know, we’ve only had those vests for a year or so. He rapped on the vest with his knuckles. “This one’s got a ceramic plate between the Kevlar. It cost more, and the grant we got from the DOJ only paid for half.” He barked a laugh. “Big C bitched like hell, but she finally ordered one.” He shook his head. “Kevlar alone will stop a handgun, but without that plate that rifle bullet would have gone right through the vest and right through her.”

  Bailey turned to his deputies. “Hank, you go on up to the junction at Route 207. I told the State Police we’d meet them there. We gotta find this fella. Wendell, you secure this crime scene. I’m going to take these two gentlemen up this canyon and see what we can find. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything about Big C.”

  We located the shooter’s campsite near the abandoned mine, and Philip quickly found the signature boot prints, including the pigeon-toe flourish. He’d left nothing behind except a pit full of garbage that was bagged for forensic examination. We also hiked up the west rim of the canyon to the source of the spring, which we figured was the most likely site of the ambush. Philip spotted another boot print in the damp earth adjacent to the source of the spring, but we found no shell casings or other physical evidence.

  Other than the hope that a fingerprint or DNA fragment might turn up, it looked like our boy had made another clean escape.

  When we got back to the scene of the shooting, Bailey interviewed Philip and me at length. With me, he wanted to know anything new on the case, anything Grooms hadn’t already briefed them on. I didn’t have much to add, except that the only link I’d found to Cecil Ferguson, Sherman Watlamet, and Nelson Queah was a man named Braxton Gage. I told him about the letters Queah had written, the fact that Ferguson had worked for Gage, and the rumors about the graft at the dam that Fletcher Dunn was investigating prior to Queah’s disappearance.

  When I mentioned Gage’s name, Bailey’s eyebrows rose. “The Braxton Gage, from The Dalles?”

  I nodded. “His dad’s company poured the cement for The Dalles Dam. Braxton Gage ran the project.”

  Bailey whistled. “Now there’s a big fish. So, you’re saying this mess is to cover up a little financial hanky-panky when the dam was going in fifty years ago?”

  “That and the murder of Nelson Queah and a kid named Timothy Wiiks. Maybe Gage was worried the whole thing was coming unglued.”

  Bailey puffed a breath. “We’ll never know, will we. Watlamet and Ferguson are both dead. And I’m gonna need way more than that to take on Braxton Gage. The son of a bitch’s richer than God and meaner than a rattlesnake.”

  I shrugged. “It’s all I got.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Jake

  With 9X magnification, the Z3 Swarovski rifle scope puts the target right in front of the shooter, even at three hundred yards. When Jake squeezed off that single round, the woman went down and violently convulsed twice before going still. He knew she was dead, and the knowledge left him with a numbing sense of disbelief. He had killed a cop. Not just a cop, a woman.

  He had never thought of himself as a bad person. That all changed when he shot the old Indian and chased that stupid lawyer off a cliff. Now his fall was complete and irreversible.

  The only thing stronger than his guilt was the fear of getting caught. It wasn’t jail time or the needle he feared so much, but the thought of letting the Old Man down, of fucking up what should have been a simple job, of being called an idiot. The Old Man would be screwed, too. Jake would never talk, but surely the cops would find some link between them.

  He double-timed it down the ridge and started breaking camp as fast as he could. By this time, the numbness he felt had been replaced by a sense of raging panic. She’ll be missed in no time. Get the hell out of here! His breath came in ragged gasps as he tossed everything in the back of his truck. Looking over the scene a last time, he noticed the empty propane canisters lying in the fire ring. “Shit.” he said aloud. “Just leave your fingerprints lying around.” He tossed the canisters into the bed of the truck, got in, and started his engine. He had studied the area before selecting this particular canyon, so there was no need to refer to a map now.

  What he needed was a place to hide his truck in that godforsaken country. No map would help him with that.

  Jake didn’t look at the body of his victim as he tore past her on his way out of the canyon. He headed east and then swung north on Route 207 in the direction of Fossil, where the country was even more desolate and unpopulated, a moonscape of rugged hills folding down into narrow arroyos, all of them rocky and most of them dry. He slowed down when he reached Route 19, which headed off to Spray. A sign at the junction proclaimed that Spray was The Home of the Best Small Town Rodeo in the USA. When he ditched his truck, he would need another car. He took the turnoff.

  Five miles outside Spray he passed a prop
erty on his left marked by a rusty mailbox listing at a forty-five degree angle and a weathered gate with the shredded remains of a for sale sign on it. The sign had taken a direct hit from a shotgun blast, probably fired from a passing car. An unpaved driveway led across the mesquite-dotted landscape and disappeared behind a rocky hillock. He checked for traffic, hung a U-turn, and pulled up in front of the gate. It was chained shut and secured with a hefty padlock, and a four-foot barbed wire fence ran in either direction along the road. He tried to spit out the window, but his mouth was dry as cotton. He pounded his fist on the steering wheel and swung his truck back in the direction of Spray.

  A quarter mile down the road he saw a spot where the fence sagged. He let a truck pass in the opposite direction before pulling over. He got out and put his shoulder to a leaning fence post until the sagging barbed wire was on the ground. He swung his rig around and drove across the rusty strands. His tire treads were thick. Those barbs were nothing to worry about. Then he hopped out and pushed the fence post back up to reestablish the fence line.

  Weaving his way through the mesquite, he joined the driveway well past the gate and followed it around the hillock until he was out of sight from the road. He stopped in front of an old ranch house that looked like a good fart would blow it over. He exhaled a breath of relief. He was positive no one had seen him on his way in, and the place looked like it had been deserted for a very long time.

  The barn behind the ranch house was sturdier and its doors secured with a chain and padlock like the one out on the gate. But the double doors to the hayloft didn’t appear to be locked. There wouldn’t be a bolt cutter in the barn. He wouldn’t be that lucky. But a hacksaw or a chisel?