Moon was wearing his poker face.
“Then,” Parris growled, “you march into Mrs. Jeppson’s office, where she’s being threatened by two more bad guys—also armed with .44 Mag revolvers—and you shoot both of ’em dead!”
Moon shook his head.
The chief of police arched both of his bushy red eyebrows. “What?”
“You forgot something.”
“What?”
The Indian pointed at the white man’s hand.
Big smart Aleck. His face glowing pink, Parris pressed the fourth finger down. “And then . . . and then.” Dammit, Charlie made me forget where I was. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “You’ve been a law-enforcement officer for a long time, Charlie. Long enough to know how the game is played.”
The accused showed no sign that he disagreed with that statement.
“This ain’t the Southern Ute res, Charlie.”
By a faint nod, the tribal investigator allowed as how this was so.
Not sure where he was going with all this, Parris went for the ad-lib. “And you don’t have a half ounce of jurisdiction in Granite Creek.”
Moon begged to disagree. “Actually, pard—about two years ago, during that nasty business over at the Yellow Pines Ranch, you swore me in as your deputy. And even though I wouldn’t want to embarrass you by mentioning that I’m still waiting for about nine hundred and ninety-eight dollars of back pay, I’m bound to tell you that I don’t recall that you ever unswore me. So, unless I’m disremembering, I’m still a sworn deputy to the chief of police of Granite Creek.”
Parris’s face deepened to beet red. Veins in his thick neck started to throb. “I don’t care if you’re a U.S. deputy marshal and your territory is every square foot of Colorado this side of the Front Range!” He unfolded all four digits and wagged his pointing finger at Moon. “Point is, you should’ve put in a 911 call. If you had, my officers would’ve come out here and took care of business. But no, you had to do the job all by yourself.” He paused before hitting his friend below the belt: “It ain’t enough that you shoot these guys with the pistols you took off their buddies. No—you had to go for head shots—and through your hat.” Parris’s thin grin was sharp as a knife. “Some folks might figure you wanted to play the hot-shot, shoot-’em-up, two-gun movie-star cowboy.”
That hurt enough to make Charlie Moon flinch. The groundless charge also set his teeth on edge. “Maybe I should’ve waited for your uniformed cops to get here.” The tribal investigator’s follow-up was icy. “But if I had, Mrs. Jeppson might be dead now.”
Parris glared at the cheeky Ute.
Charlie Moon stared back.
Finally, the chief of police averted his gaze to his boots. “I guess it was lucky that you showed up just in time to prevent a killing.” Too damn lucky. “But tell me just one thing.” He cleared his throat. “Strictly off the record.” Parris looked up at his friend. “How’d you happen to be in this particular neighborhood on a rainy Sunday morning? I mean—what brought you here?”
The Indian had seen this arrow coming. “I came to check on Mrs. Jeppson. Wanted to make sure she was okay.”
Parris was goggled-eyed with surprise. “You had a reason to believe she was in danger?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Moon eased his lanky frame up from the uncomfortable nail keg. “When you check out these bad guys, you’ll find out they’re connected to the death of Mrs. Loyola Montoya.”
Parris cocked his head. “That Apache woman down in La Plata County?” I thought that was some kind of accident. “Didn’t she knock over a coal-oil lamp and set herself on fire?”
“That’s what the medical examiner believes.”
“But you don’t?”
Moon shook his head.
“So how’d you come to expect these boys would hold up ABC Hardware—and on this particular morning?”
“I wasn’t sure of the exact day, much less the hour.”
“Okay.” Parris got up with a grunt. “So tell me something you was sure of.”
“When I talked to Loyola on the phone—that was on the day before she died—the poor old soul told me she’d heard these ‘witches’ planning something nasty. But not in La Plata County—it’d happen here in Granite Creek.”
Parris’s normally expressive face went dangerously blank. He responded in a monotone, “And you didn’t bother to tell me?”
Moon shook his head. “I hate to admit it, but I didn’t believe a word she said.” Without any allusion to his peculiar experience during Holy Mass, the tribal investigator explained how some of the things from the elderly lady’s disjointed testimony had “kind of come together in my mind” right after he’d left St. Anthony’s that morning.
The chief of police listened to every word, without interrupting.
Buckets and nails equals hardware store.
Alphabet soup suggested ABC.
Jefferson sounds like Jeppson.
Scott Parris thought that made sense. Sort of. He even bought the part about White Shell Woman rubbing her face with mud, suggesting a new moon as the time for the crime. But the white cop had a hunch that his Ute friend was holding something back.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SUPPERTIME AT THE COLUMBINE
WHICH IS A MIGHTY FINE TIME TO BE THERE WITH CHARLIE MOON AND his family and friends—which on this evening includes the Ute’s aunt Daisy, his ardent admirer Sarah Frank, and the tribal investigator’s closest friend—Chief of Police Scott Parris. Not to mention Sidewinder, the official Columbine hound dog, and Mr. Zig-Zag, Sarah’s aging cat, who are at present curled up on the west porch, watching the nearest star settle into a rosy slumber. All very comfy and cozy. But are these furry creatures as happy as the human beings inside the ranch headquarters, who are anticipating a sumptuous feast? It is hard to say with certainty, but both canine and feline nostrils are finely attuned to those scents that hint of meaty beef bones from locally grown Hereford stock, and thinly sliced ham imported from Virginia.
Mr. Moon is in the headquarters kitchen, preparing the meal.
While watching Charlie work, Scott Parris offers helpful advice.
Little Miss Sarah is setting the dining-room table with bowls, cups, plates, and stainless flatware. It is also her privilege to light the tall, yellow tallow candles. All six of them.
Tribal Elder Daisy Perika is in the headquarters parlor, fiddling with her nephew’s rarely used television. What manner of cultural enlightenment does the inscrutable old woman search for? Wheel of Fortune. Will she find her favorite game show? Stay tuned.
Happily, within the confines of Charlie Moon’s little slice of Rocky Mountain paradise, about nine evenings out of ten turn out to be this good, and the tenth is likely to be even better. Every once in a while, there is an exception.
The chief of police was helping himself to a pre-supper cookie when the phone in his shirt pocket vibrated. He pressed the instrument to his ear and barked, “Parris here.” The lawman listened to a report from the GCPD dispatcher until it was time to say, “Thanks, Clara.” The smug cop returned the phone to his pocket and grinned at his best friend. “You’re gonna love this, Charlie.”
The Ute was stirring an extra dash of black pepper into a gallon pot of pinto beans. “Whenever you say that, I don’t.”
“Oh no, this is great! Get this—while you were facing the last two bad guys down, Mrs. Jeppson switched on the automated alarm that forwards an alert to SUPD, and—”
“I already heard about that.”
“Well if you’d let me slip a word in edgewise, you’d find out what you didn’t hear—activating the ABC Hardware silent alarm also turns on a closed-circuit TV. The security company has a black-and-white video of the shoot-out. With a sound track.”
Ceasing his stirring, Moon frowned at the beans.
“Hey, don’t worry about seeing yourself on the tube.” Parris assumed the reassuring tone he used when advising worried wives that a husband who’d been missing for a week woul
d turn up sooner or later. “That recording is evidence in a crime. It won’t be shown except in a court of law, when the two bad guys you beat up go to trial.”
“Yeah. I guess you’re right.” Moon added a half dash of turmeric, just a tad of garlic salt, and commenced stirring the pinto beans.
What neither the tribal investigator nor Granite Creek’s top cop realized was that only minutes after the robbery, a part-time employee of the security firm had downloaded the lurid video onto a five-hundred-gigabyte flash memory stick, which he promptly concealed in his vest pocket. The young man had complained of a brain-splitting migraine and left for the day. Within forty-five minutes, he had sold the video file to a Denver broadcasting conglomerate that was affiliated with a major network. Honoring his verbal agreement, the thief would wait until one minute after midnight (Mountain Time) before posting the video on the Internet for the whole world to see. In the meantime, the network would broadcast the hot property across the lower forty-eight and every province in Canada.
At about this time, Sarah showed up in the kitchen.
Oblivious to how his life was about to be turned upside down, Moon advised his teenage helper that it was time to summon the diners. It mattered not that all except one were present to hear this news. Ask anyone who knows and they will tell you that traditions are essential to the civilized life. Just as Sarah Frank was about to apply the thin steel rod to the hundred-plus-year-old Columbine triangular dinner gong, Daisy Perika, who was in the parlor, seated within a yard of the television, let out a shout loud enough to be heard all over the house: “Hey, everybody—come get a look at this!”
Sarah (rod and triangle still in hand) showed up first to gape at the TV screen, where a handsome talking head in a Los Angeles studio was informing his millions of viewers that a certain Colorado rancher who also served as a tribal investigator for the Southern Utes had foiled an armed robbery this morning in a small-town hardware store, severely injuring two of the suspects and killing two others outright in an Old West–style gunfight.
Scott Parris appeared in the dining-room doorway to cock his balding head at the anchorman. The story was bound to be on the news tonight, but Charlie won’t like it. Little did Parris realize how much Moon would not like it—or that the story would be fleshed out with an illegally procured video of the event. Moon’s best friend turned his impishly grinning face toward the kitchen. “Hey, Chucky—some yahoo on the TV is talking about you.”
Their host, who had been busy removing a savory, twelve-pound beef roast from the oven, came to see what the matter was. The timing could not have been more fortuitous. Or, from Moon’s perspective, more inopportunitous, because just as he entered the parlor, the network news anchor was about to give the Ute’s chain a severe rattling. The face smiled at the tribal investigator as if Moon were the sole member of his audience, and made this enticing announcement: “Be forewarned, the video clip we’re about to run—which was captured on the hardware store’s security camera—contains some extremely violent scenes.”
Parris muttered a mouth-filling oath under his breath.
Moon steeled himself.
The TV chameleon instantly exchanged his Mr. Smiley Face mask for a Solemn as a Mortician expression. “We particularly advise parents with small children to take this explicit violence into consideration.”
Tens of thousands of small children leaned closer to their TV sets. Twice as many innocent eyes goggled in anticipation, tender little shell-like ears cupped ever so slightly forward.
As the snip of black-and-white closed-circuit TV filled the television screen, the scene looked for all the world like fiction. The camera had caught the bad guys more or less from the back, but the tall, slim fellow with the cowboy hat in his hands was—in a phrase—center stage.
The flesh-and-blood Charlie Moon froze. Oh, no.
THE REPLAY
The digitized Ute might have been Cool Hand Luke.
“I’m here on behalf of Loyola Montoya. But if you tough guys figure this is a game, either fold your hands—or make your play.”
Viewers from Key West to Vancouver watched the bad guys’ hands move ever so slowly toward their pistols.
Thousands of hearts skipped a beat when the tribal investigator shook his head. “That’d be a serious mistake.”
The dead men’s hands froze.
Because of the camera angle, not a living soul could see Skeezix’s lip curl into a sneer. “There’s no way you can draw that big horse pistol before we blow you away.”
Even the dullest ear could hear Snuffy echo his agreement: “No way!”
“Boys, I won’t argue the point.” Charlie Moon’s voice was soft, barely above a whisper. “But you’d be well advised to place both hands behind your necks, fingers interlocked.”
Rapt viewers from San Diego to Kennebunkport heard Skeezix snicker, and Snuffy snort.
Snicker and Snort went for their pistols, the .44 Magnums concealed under Moon’s John B. Stetson hat spoke as if with one voice: bam-bam!
Count two holes through drilled Charlie Moon’s black cowboy hat.
But that was not that.
There was more.
A gaping crater appeared in the back of Skeezix’s skull. A gusher of sooty-black blood sprayed out.
Snuffy’s fuzzy head exploded as if the oaf had swallowed a live grenade. Bits of enamel-white bone shrapnel went zinging this way and that, bits of brain splattered hither and yon—including a tiny globule of cerebellum that splatted fatly on the security-camera lens and (under the force of gravity) began slowly crawling down the polished optics. Yes, crawling.
For about six heartbeats, the Columbine headquarters was dead silent. Then—
“My God in heaven!” No, that was Scott Parris, the hardened cop who believed he’d seen every grisly thing that could happen to a human being.
Sarah was shocked dumb and numb.
Even Daisy Perika did not utter a word.
A mortified Charlie Moon closed his eyes, shook his head.
How did the rest of the huge television audience react? The Nielsen Reports will not be in for hours. In the meantime, let us consider a nonrandom Sample of One. While this will not be representative in a mathematical sense, it may prove more interesting than mountainous compilations of statistics.
OUR SELECT AUDIENCE
At the very instant that Moon closed his eyes and shook his head, another dismayed viewer switched off the TV set, threw the remote control at the blackened screen, and uttered that serviceable expletive that so often succinctly sums up a situation: “Damn!”
This hardware-store foul-up was nothing short of a disaster. The Family would be extremely upset, with the young Turks calling for instant, bloody revenge and the older and cooler heads advising a pulling back—a licking of wounds—and taking time to think things over. The resulting tension could split the clan asunder. So what do I do to make things right? A measured, pragmatic response was called for—a course of action that would please both factions. Blood must be spilled, and additional members of the Family put in harm’s way. This being the case, the potential payoff must justify the risks taken. Which demanded a carefully worked-out plan.
A thoughtful drumming of fingers on the coffee table.
A series of long, wistful sighs.
Fond recollections of days gone by when carefully conceived burglaries, bold robberies, audacious car thefts, and cold-blooded assassinations at twenty-five thousand dollars a pop had gone off slick as boiled okra. These activities had kept the Family prosperous, even during hard times. Then, there were those more or less incidental murders along the way that provided essential training and inexpensive entertainment.
During all this finger drumming, wistful sighing, and bittersweet nostalgia, a variety of possible reactions to the Hardware Store Catastrophe presented themselves. After eliminating the least-attractive options, those few that remained were intriguing. So much so that it seemed a shame to discard even one. Indeed, combinin
g these ingenious elements into a single, grand-slam strategy produced a highly appealing plan.
And so it was that Trout made the fateful decision.
WE RETURN TO THE COLUMBINE
Only moments after the distressed Head of the Family tossed the remote control at the perfectly innocent made-in-China television set, Charlie Moon’s telephone began to ring. The first caller was the perky little lady who owned and managed Harriet’s Rare Books in Granite Creek.
“Hi, Charlie—it’s me.”
He recognized the voice of one of his favorite local characters. “Hi yourself, Harriet. What’s up?” Like I don’t know.
“I was just watching the boob tube and caught the latest news.”
“I hope you don’t believe everything you see on the TV.”
“Don’t be so doggoned modest, Charlie. I’m glad you shot those two no-goods—the only complaint I got is that you didn’t kill the other two!”
“Well—”
“Oh, don’t go explaining how you was only doin’ your duty and all that ‘I’m just a simple-cowboy’ malarkey. You’re my favorite fella, you big ga-loot! There, I’ve said what I had to say. G’night, Straight-shooter.”
“Good night, Harriet.” Moon was talking to a dead line.
Over the next several days, the tribal investigator would receive dozens of calls. Most were congratulations from gun-toting locals who wished they’d had a piece of the action. Moon also listened patiently to stern lectures from well-meaning citizens who were convinced that the tribal investigator was a gun-happy fanatic who had deliberately violated the sacred civil rights of the alleged hardware-store robbers. Unique among the calls was a 3 A.M. death threat from a San Francisco vegetarian who had no interest in the shootings; she hated anyone who produced meat for human consumption. The most persistent were journalists who wanted an exclusive story on the shoot-out. Moon’s solution was to give the telephone to Aunt Daisy, who would demand a million dollars up front for “my version of what really happened.” Finally, there were four proposals of marriage—the most charming of these from an adoring eight-year-old in Torrington, Wyoming, who thought Mr. Moon was “way cool!” He suggested that the ardent young lady call him back in about thirty years.
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