The Triggerman Dance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "Yeah, it's a bad feeling."

  "I don't think you can fire."

  "I will."

  Holt looks over to Partch and nods.

  It is pure reaction now. John holds on the middle of Partch silhouetted against the sky, and pulls the trigger. The click is the most final sound he's ever heard in his life.

  Then Partch is bending into a shooter's crouch, one hand inside his jacket, just as something shifts on the periphery of John's vision—gold flashing in sunlight. To his left Partch's gun points directly at him. But two phantoms have already materialized from the shadows of the tombs and into the bright day. Two sharp explosions jerk Partch onto his heels and over.

  Baum is screaming horrendously and the vibrations of that sound rattle into John's brain. Because for him it's an eternity in a moment as he tries to yank the .45 from his coat pocket. In that second he sees a figure turning a gun toward Holt. And the next thing he knows his whole body is being pulled across the table, his head clamped in Holt's big arm and something hard jamming into his forehead. The world is sideways. Baum is screaming so loud his ears whine. Holt yanks his face into the lunch plate. John feels the arm cutting off his blood and breath while straight in front of his eyes he sees the bullet tips in Holt's revolver, and past them the thick finger locked around the trigger and beyond that the unfocused figures of Joshua Weinstein and Sharon Dumars frozen in sunlight and gold.

  Holt's voice reverberates through the arm that chokes him. "My show now, kids. I'll absolutely kill him. Drop the guns. Lie down. Be good boys and girls. Now/."

  John's hand is still in his pocket and he knows it's still in his pocket but there's nothing getting to his brain or lungs and the world is getting fuzzy, warm and distant. He tries to focus on the agents but can only see the bullets right in front of his eyes. Are they starting to rotate? Then there's a roaring, percussive cluster of blasts and John feels his flesh shudder with the impact, feels the crack and splinter of bone around his face and the sudden splatter of blood into his eyes, and the terrible surge of something weighty and pressurized exploding. John falls thinking, so this is how it feels. You fall. Just like I thought. The next thing he knows he's on his back staring up at a clear blue sky and there's a warm breeze on his face and the air is rushing back into his lungs and someone is screaming call the ambulance, call thefuckingambulancejosh while her fingers dig into his neck. He can smell something metallic and wet on his face cooling in the breeze. A lot of it. But he realizes that he still has his hand on the gun. He grabs Sharon's arm with his free hand, climbs to his feet and finally draws it. It doesn't take him long to find what he's after. To get the sonofabitch in his sights. No. Because Holt is right there at John's feet with a blank look in his eyes and a big black hole between them, just above the frame of his glasses, another one in the middle of his forehead and another one an inch from that John feels himself swaying. He tries to follow the sight of the automatic passing back and forth across Holt's chest.

  "Easy, John," someone is saying. "Easy, John. We got him, You did your job. It's over."

  He stands there and for a moment feels above it all, sees himself from above looking down at himself standing over a dead body and pocketing his gun, looking down at a young man sprawled on the gravel with an automatic beside him, at a woman with dark hair and blood on her blouse and a lithe little guy with a pale face and a telephone in his hand, speaking but making no sound.

  I'm still alive, he thinks, but I've gone to hell anyway.

  A few moments later a red Jeep flies over the rise and skids to a stop. Valerie Holt stares at him from the driver's seat. Fargo sits next to her.

  The sight of her brings John back to himself. He strips off his coat and covers Holt. He steps to meet her as she breaks into a run. She pulls up just short of him and glares at Dumars and Joshua. Then she brings her full attention to what lies on the ground.

  "Oh," she says. "No? No."

  John sees her confusion turn to horror as she raises her eyes and beholds his face. He tries to guide her to the Jeep but she slugs and kicks her way past him. Joshua and Dumars converge, badges flashing. Then Joshua is barking his Bureauspeak while he and Sharon defend their prey. Fargo joins in, helping them drag Valerie back to her vehicle. Her arm trails out, hand open and fingers stretched, reaching back toward her father. As they pass John, Valerie fixes him with an utterly comprehending stare and Fargo adds his own malevolent gaze. "We have a date now, friend," he says.

  John stands there, watching them stuff Valerie back into her Jeep. The tablecloth skids across the gravel in the wind. The silver domes and china lie on the ground like old treasures. Susan Baum still sits at the table, silent, shivering and unseeing beneath the monumental bronzes of the Holt family.

  Fargo drives the Jeep away.

  You did your job.

  A while later a helicopter descends toward Top of the World in a lazy spiral and three Bureau sedans trail their way up from the road below.

  John is sitting on the stone bench next to Baum when the cars make the summit. Though he has an arm around her shaking body and though he mutters words of comfort to her, John feels nothing but darkness inside. And as he gazes out at the autumn splendor of Liberty Ridge, he sees nothing but darkness there, too.

  CHAPTER 41

  Late that afternoon he packed up his things and set them on the breakfast counter of the cottage. Not that he had much: his personal effects, the clothes that he and Valerie had bought, half sack of dog food, his birdgun and a couple .boxes of shells. He stood for a while in the little kitchen and looked out at the lake watching his dogs in the water fighting over a ball. He slipped shell into the shotgun, let the action snap shut and put on the safety, leaving it on the bar, pointed toward the door. He took the .45 from his coat pocket and set it on the bag of kibbles.

  For the third time that day he walked across the meadow to the Big House. But for the first time, Lane Fargo was not there to turn him away at the door. He brushed his way past one of the cooks and walked down the tiled entryway, beneath the big timber beams, past the wrought iron candleholders and the oil paintings of the rancho days.

  Valerie was in the living room, sitting before a small fire that flickered in the cavernous fireplace, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a cup of something on the rough-hewn table in front of her.

  If she saw him come in, she didn't show it.

  "May I?" he asked.

  She looked at him for a long time, then nodded. He walked far around her and sat on a steerhide sofa on the other side of the table.

  "Is there anything I can get you?"

  She looked at him again, shook her head, then returned her gaze to the fire. "Mom doesn't comprehend. I tell her, but she doesn't get it. Says, 'oh, no—wait 'til Vanny hears.' "

  John sat there for a long while, listening to the pop and hiss of burning wood. He watched Valerie in profile, her unblinking eyes vacantly attuned to the embers.

  "Agent Dumars explained it to me," she said, without expression. "Who you are. What Dad did. I didn't understand why. I didn't understand why you did what you did to him."

  "Did she tell you about the woman?"

  "Jillian?"

  "Rebecca."

  "She didn't mention a Rebecca."

  "She worked for the paper when I did. We were in love. She went to get Baum's car in the rain and your father shot her."

  Valerie turned her head slowly to John. "It was your girl he killed, then."

  "That's right."

  "So you killed him."

  "No. Joshua did. I thought... we wanted to arrest him. For Rebecca."

  "Oh, it all makes sense," she said flatly, turning to the fire again. "All makes sense."

  "I don't—" But John didn't finish the sentence. Instead he watched a shadow move way up on the stairway landing of the second floor, just a little motion between the bannister slats reflected on the wall from the fire. Then nothing moved at all. "I don't ... I know you can't forgive me, ever. But I
want to say a few things. Will you listen to me, for just a while?"

  She shrugged beneath the blanket, but didn't look at him.

  "First, I want you to know it wasn't supposed to happen the way it did. If I'd have known how it would end, I wouldn't have done it."

  Valerie half-nodded, her chin lifting just a little, but never coming back down. "Not even for Rebecca?"

  "No."

  "Why. She was your reason."

  "I never set out to get anybody killed. I... I worked awfully hard to make sure that wouldn't happen. I worked hard to make sure we had the right man and that they could arrest him. And I never set out to fall in love with you. "Then came the other half of Valerie's nod, a little downturn of her chin. She shivered and pulled the blanket tighter.

  "It doesn't change anything," he said. "But I want you t know it."

  No response.

  "And I have to say this, hopeless as it is—I love you now and I'll do anything on earth for you. I want you whole again I'm yours. I know you won't have me but that doesn't change the way I feel. I want you to know that before I go."

  She looked at him again for a long while. He could see the fire reflected in her eyes. "There's no room left for you, John."

  "I realize that."

  "All I feel is hate."

  John looked at her until she turned her face away again back to the dying fire. He got up and threw on two more log. While the wood caught he glanced up to the second story landing where the bannister shadows sharpened on the plaster wall.

  "There's something you should know too, about your future here. When I was looking for evidence to arrest your father someone on Liberty Ridge was helping me get it. Some of the help was subtle. Some of it was obvious. I thought Sexton, then didn't."

  "No," Valerie said dreamily. "Lane. So he could run Liberty Operations."

  "Yeah." John looked up to the landing. He almost said something about who shot the video tape of Rebecca, then he told himself again that he'd never have to tell anyone that. "Fargo, you want to add anything?"

  A faint shadow moved within the sharper ones of the railing posts and Lane Fargo looked around the edge of the wall again: which he was sitting.

  "Come down, Lane," said Valerie. "It doesn't matter. I'll shut down the Ops anyway. Never liked it."

  Lane moved quietly down the stairs, easing into the living room like a ghost.

  "Leave us alone," Valerie said. "Will you, please?"

  "He's not telling you the truth, Valerie Anne. I can prove it if you give me a chance."

  "Later, maybe," she said.

  Fargo's face was tightened to a smirk as he looked at John and headed out.

  "Anything else, John?"

  "One thing."

  "You're sorry. You love me. Watch out for Lane. What else?"

  "Just that I know your father was a good man. The world turned him and he went bad. He lost a lot for no reason and then he lost himself. I wouldn't have done any better in his place. What happened up there on Top of the World proves it. And I was trying to do the same thing he was. I was trying to get back something I'd lost. But I didn't get back anything at all. I just lost you. And your dad never came any closer to Pat. He just got what was coming to him for killing an innocent woman. He'd be the first to admit that. And I'll get what's coming to me, too. That's the way it should be. I'm not real smart. But I know now that hatred isn't enough to live on. It'll kill you and everybody around you. Don't live that way, Valerie. If you're lucky enough to find it, love can fill the emptiness. You've got every bit of mine if you ever need it. Ever."

  She turned her head toward him again and John could see nothing in her face but the emptiness of infinite loss.

  "Come here," she said.

  He rose and walked over to her and put his hands very gently on either side of her head. Something hard clacked to the tile and John could see Val's revolver spinning to a stop. A big teardrop landed beside it. Then the storm hit and all she could do was cry. He held her. He had never thought a person could cry so hard for so long. It was much later when he finally left her asleep on the sofa. He made sure the blanket was snug around her and set three more logs in the fire before he walked out.

  Fargo was standing in the driveway, leaning against the red Jeep. His arms were crossed, his right hand snugged under his armpit, inches away from the handle of his automatic.

  "Clever guy," said Fargo.

  "You're the clever one, Lane. You smelled me out from day one."

  "Couldn't believe Mr. Holt didn't."

  "That's what he got for trusting you."

  "It bothers me that you know."

  "It doesn't really matter that I know."

  "Does, now that you squawked to Val."

  "She's closing the Ops. Or didn't you hear?"

  "She's emotional right now. She needs time to think."

  "Then give her some. Anything unpleasant happens to her up here on Liberty Ridge, I might tell the man to have a talk with you."

  "That won't be possible because you'll be dead."

  John shook his head and looked out to the sunset gathering in the west. The sun was smearing a lot of red in the clear autumn sky, the same bright color as the Jeep behind Fargo, the same color as Holt's blood on the stone table.

  "I'm not playing that one, Lane. I don't ever want to see a gun pointed at a man again. It just isn't right and there's no damned end to it. Haven't you learned a thing?"

  "You've got to understand the situation. I got no boss now. I got no money out of my time building the Ops. I got no job. All I got is a dead master, a bad conscience and a lot of frustration built up. Something's gotta give."

  "Well, do what you have to, but I'm walking down to the cottage to get my stuff. I'm packing that stuff in the truck. Then I'm getting in and driving away forever. Shoot me in the back if you want. It's all the satisfaction I can offer."

  John started off down the drive. He could hear Fargo's boot pivoting behind him, and he could hear the quick whip of steel leaving leather.

  "Turn around, motherfuck!"

  John didn't break stride. He lifted a hand and waved, trotting down the embankment and into the meadow with his heart up in his throat.

  The dogs charged as he got close to the cottage. Boomer crashed into him while Belle and Bonnie snarled at each other and wagged their tails. They were wet and dirty from the lake oblivious to the bloodshed of the day. He let them into the cottage anyway and they sniffed around the floor as he picked his clothes off the kitchen counter. He looked through the window toward his truck, and set the clothes back where they were.

  Through the meadow, constant as the northern star, Fargo marched toward him. John studied the wide-legged gait, the purposeful swing of the arms, the odd cant of the dark man's head and the automatic in his right hand. John's heart fell and rose again as a cold sheen of sweat broke out on his face. He clicked off the safety on the birdgun, which was enough, as always, to send his dogs into a frenzy. They careened into the kitchen, sliding on the hardwood floor, yapping. No bird, John muttered, double-checking the safety and leaving the gun on the counter, pointed at the open doorway.

  "No bird."

  The dogs took off into the living room, noses down.

  He stood where he was, behind the little chest-high bar, resting his finger on the trigger of the shotgun, not moving. He thought of Fargo shooting the video of Rebecca Harris while she took bullets in the winter rain.

  Fargo hopped up the steps and into the cabin. It took him a second to find his target—going from sunlight to the shade. Maybe he was distracted by the dogs. But when he saw John standing there motionless in the kitchen he raised his gun quickly and John blew him back out the door, over the railing and onto the bed of sycamore leaves piled high by the wind. The dogs raced outside. They leapt off the deck and charged past Fargo's body, looking for the quail. Then Boomer circled back and sniffed the dead man's face, twice, before backing away and looking up at John with a puzzled expression. />
  CHAPTER 42

  It is a quiet restaurant off the tourist path in Laguna Beach, given to candlelight, mismatched flatware and locals. John, the nominal guest of honor, lifts his tequila glass to Joshua and Sharon, who face him from across the booth. Their proximity to each other surprises him.

  It is five days after Liberty Ridge. Boomer, Bonnie and Belle are snug in the Laguna Canyon home, a place where John has spent many solitary hours in the last five days, trying to decide if he belongs there or not. He has been looking into rooms a lot, as if someone he cares about might be there, as if anyone ever really was. It feels good to return to a place that is, in some small way, his own.

  "To the three of us," says Joshua.

  They drink.

  It is the second toast of the night, though dinner hasn't arrived yet. The first was to the three of them also, and John can see that Joshua's rum and coke has gone straight to his non-drinker's head.

  "What was the worst of it?" asks Sharon.

  "Snakey."