An American Outlaw (7 page)

“You ever hear of Walter Reed?”

“Who?”

“It's a place. Walter Reed. In D.C.” 

I thought of Nate. The time he spent in that hospital. Orla, his widow. Two kids, boy and a girl. 

Whatever happened, I wasn't going in. No matter what. 

I didn't plan on hurting her. I wasn't about to rot in any jail. 

There had to be some way to get to Michael. Some other way. 

Ahead, the highway twisted north. I watched the heat shimmer through the dust streaked windshield. 

“I'll give you fifty thousand dollars...”

Nothing, from the back of the crew cab.

“I keep driving. We get to Marfa, I get out. I'll give you the money.”

I glanced in the rear-view. Saw her eyes meet mine.

She says, “I'll shoot you dead.” 

She raised the shotgun across the seat back.

“They wouldn't charge you...”

“I swear to God...”

“I said; they wouldn't
charge
you.”

“What the hell's that supposed to mean?”

“If you did. If you shot me.”

There's a long silence.

“I'm wanted. For armed robbery. You were trying to turn me in. I went for you...”

There's nothing but the growl of the engine. The sound of the truck tires, humming against the road.

“You got the perfect alibi. Anybody stops us, you're trying to turn me in...”

“Are you crazy? Are you even listening?”

“Who are they going to believe, me or you?”

My mind raced. Every second that passed we were heading in closer to Alpine.

“How hard,” she says, “did you hit your God damn head last night?”

I thought of Michael with a bullet in him. 

Either I was making it, or she'd have to cut me in half with her shotgun. 

I tried to swallow, my mouth so dry I could hardly spit.

“
Stop the truck
,” she shouts.

“
What?
”

“You heard me. Stop the God damn truck.”

I braked hard. Skidded to a standstill. Breath coming shallow in my chest.

“Get out,” she says.

I put a hand on the door lever. Pushed it slow, stepped out, my skin crawling in the blast of desert heat.

She got out from the back seat.

I stood with my hands half-way raised.

She grabbed my pack off the seat. Threw it across the road. Pushed the butt of the shotgun into her shoulder. 

“Open it.”

I stared down the empty highway. 

To the south, it was deserted. To the north, it curved right, behind a bank of mesquite. Any car could come, any vehicle; me standing there—her holding a shotgun.

“Empty the bag,” she says.

I squatted. Unzipped it, slowly.

“I even think you're about to pull something,” she said, “I swear, I'll kill you.”

I opened the back pack; drew loose the top.

“Empty it,” she said. “Right there. On the highway.”

The cell phone clattered on the asphalt. I tipped out the few clothes; the half-drunk bottles of water. They rolled away. I shook out everything. Held the pack empty.

“What fifty thousand?” she calls out.

“Not me,” I says.

She moved her hand on the fore-stock of the twelve gauge.

“The guy I'm meeting with,” I says, “in Marfa...”

“You're full of shit.”

“Three days back we robbed a cash shipment. An airport. In Lafayette.”

She stared at me. Her face a mask.

“All you got to do is keep that shotgun on me. Get us to Marfa.”

“Maybe you don't believe I'd shoot you?” 

The sun caught the rib of the shotgun barrel.

“I believe it.”

Her jaw was set hard. She shook her head. 

I listened for the sound of anything approaching from the north.

“Get the hell back in the truck...”

Alpine.

A hot wind's blowing sand along the blacktop. From a dirt lot, by a low-roofed shack, Whicher leans against the hood of the Silverado.

His eyes drift toward a ridge of mountains rising in the west. 

To the north, white sides of one-floor houses glint among the mesa dropseed. 

He scans the vehicles formed up in a defensive line. No way through.

Two Border Patrol SUVs are parked across the road from the south. Officers in combat fatigues. M4 carbines resting on the roofs of their vehicles.

A state trooper cruiser blocks the center of the highway. Driver waiting by his vehicle to stop all incoming cars.

In the dirt lot behind Whicher is a black pick-up and an unmarked sedan. Brewster County Sheriff in the pick-up. ATF special agent in the sedan. 

The marshal removes the jacket of his gray suit. He pushes the tan Resistol a notch forward, the wide brim shading his eyes.

Underneath the jacket, he wears a shoulder holster. He takes out a .357 Magnum Revolver. Six inch barrel. Finished in stainless steel. 

He places it on the roof of the Silverado. Leans in, hands clasped. Thinks of Gilman James. 

Fight fire with fire
.

Behind him, a car door opens. A man walks towards him, across the dirt lot.

“How's it going, cowboy?”

Whicher turns his head to the side. Conceals the scowl that's formed up on his face. 

Beside him stands a man in his early forties. Dark hair combed back. Olive skin, Wayfarer sunglasses, leisure shirt.

“Drew Cornell. Special Agent. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”

“US Deputy Marshal John Whicher.”

“You're the criminal investigator?”

“For my sins.” 

Whicher offers the man a rough hand. Shakes hard.

Agent Cornell steps up towards the Silverado. He leans against the truck, uninvited. 

“US Marshal's office, huh?” 

He points a finger and thumb at Whicher's pistol. 

“The fuck is that thing?”

“Ruger. Revolver.”

“I know what it is. I mean what the hell you carry it for?”

Whicher stares at the man. “Excuse me?”

“You carry a large-frame revolver? This day and age?”

The marshal unbuckles a second gun belt at his waist. He swings it, together with the polymer holster, up onto the roof of the truck. 

“I got this little plastic thing, too.”

“Glock 22. So what's with the six-shooter?”

“Y'all ain't from around here, are you?”

“Houston. The 5
^th
Ward.”

Whicher squints at the ATF agent. “These little plastic fucks are like to jam up on a feller.” He nods at the Glock. “With the heat. The sand and grit an' all.”

Cornell shakes his head. “Like steppin' into yesteryear.”

Whicher chews on his lip. “How come they bus your ass down here?”

“Special request. But there's a lot of chiefs, it looks like, to me. Not enough Indians.”

“ATF feeling the squeeze?”

“We can't all have jurisdiction, Marshal. ATF have the best record of any DOJ agency in the country...”

“So?”

“So when they put us in charge? It's 'cause we punch our weight.”

Whicher turns his eyes to the mountains. Thinks of punching. 

“Alpine Police told me you wanted to talk to me?”

“Right.”

“You run a trace on the gun from the bank?”

“The guy that got popped was carrying a mil-spec semi-auto. M9. Belonging to a Gilman James. You know we got the best trace system...”

“Yeah, yeah, we know.”

“Take it easy, cowboy,” says Cornell.

Whicher turns to face him. “Son. Don't call me cowboy.”

Agent Cornell stares back behind the black Wayfarers. 

“Alright, Marshal,” he says. “No offense.” 

But in his crooked smile, there's nothing but.

“Gilman James is ex-Marine,” says Whicher.

“You look him up?”

Whicher nods. “Combat vet...”

“Yep. And no sheet.”

“I don't like it.”

“Come out to Houston. This guy's a pussycat compared to some of the shitbags we're kickin'.”

“No,” Whicher shakes his head. “No, he ain't.”

“Well,” says Cornell, “you're lead investigator. Any case, it's the other robbery I wanted to talk to you about—at Lafayette; the airport. You know we found a Marine-issue magazine? Plus some spent shells?”

“That's the link...”

“Right,” says Cornell. “You know the statistical likelihood of that? Of identifying traceable, service-issue firearms, used in successive robberies. Four days apart?”

“I'm guessing low.”

“They're linked. But here's the thing. We had a hard time getting a distinct ID—on the clip and the shells at Lafayette.”

“But?”

“Now we think we've got one.”

“An ID?”

“Yeah, Marshal. And here, it gets weird.”

Whicher looks at the ATF agent from under the brim of his hat. “How's that?”

“That gun was used in a suicide. Less than three weeks ago.”

“Can't be.”

“Yeah,” says Cornell. “A suicide.”

“That's how it turned up?”

Cornell nods.

“What's the name of the suicide?”

“Nathaniel Childress.”

“
Childress
?”

“Yes, sir.”

“As in Childress. Steven Childress? Like the dead guy?”

“Uh-huh,” says Agent Cornell. “I thought you'd want to know...”

“Y'all thought right.”

Del Norte Mountains.

Ten more miles—it couldn't be more. 

This Ford Super Duty comes around a bend in the road. Suddenly it’s flashing its headlights on and off. 

It closes with us—then it’s honking on its horn. 

It blows by. The driver shouting something out the window. 

Something up ahead
; it must be. 

Tennille pushed the shotgun barrel at me from the back seat of the crew cab—its muzzle digging hard against my ribs. 

I met her eyes, in the rear-view.

“Don't even think about stopping.”

Ten more miles. 

Only minutes left. 

Ahead, what—a roadblock, some kind of checkpoint? 

“You need money?”

She didn't answer.

“How come you had to take a look—inside that bag?” 

I glanced again in the rear-view. Saw her eyes flick up, then away.

 “This guy in Marfa. He has money...”

I could feel her—wound up, two feet apart, in the truck.

She says; “What makes you think I believe you?”

“How come the radio's putting out an alert? A guy with nothing?”

She didn't answer.

“Fifty thousand dollars.”

“Just drive. Jesus Christ.”

I searched the ground stretching from the edge of the highway. Flat scrub. Low hills in the distance. No cover in a hundred yards. 

“You got nothing to lose,” I says. “You got a mind, you can turn me in, do whatever the hell you want.”

I felt the dryness in my throat. There was nowhere to run. 

“You drive this truck into Alpine, or I'll shoot you dead.”

If I stopped the truck—then what? 

It'd take something for her to pull the trigger. A space as small as that cab.

“You need money?”

“Shut up. I'm turning you in,” she says, “you hear me?”

“Get me to Marfa...”

“Shut your damn mouth.”

“All you got to do is get me there...”

“I swear to God. I'll pull this trigger. I'll blow you clean through the windshield.”

My heart's racing. Maybe this was it. A girl I never would've met, that I didn't know a thing about. My life in her hands. 

I'd only known her hours; I tried to think back. Anything she'd said. Why'd she want to see inside the bag? 

She had to know
.

I thought of the ruined miner's house. The way she found me. She said something; accused me. Something. About a husband. Then again—at the house. What was the name? She'd said a name.
Lee
?
Leo
? “Leon...”

“What?”

Her eyes met mine in the mirror.

“You thought he sent me—you said so.”

We came up a rise in the road. The faintest outlines through the heat haze. Buildings, in the distance, outlying the town, up ahead.

“Whatever trouble you're in, fifty thousand maybe get you out of it.”

“
Christ
,” she shouts out.

“Up ahead, there's going to be cops. You know it. On the junction into town.” 

My hands were wet against the steering wheel. Electricity at my skin.

Last chance.

Put it all on her. 

If I stopped the truck, what would she do? 

Pull the trigger? Choke? 

If we went on, I knew it was over. If I stepped out—if I put it all on her.

To shoot a man dead on a highway. 

Watch a shotgun blast rip him apart. 

Blood flying, like a slaughterhouse. I'd seen it before, that kind of pressure. Could she raise the stock? Push it in her shoulder?

“You're holding...”

No answer.

“You make the choice. I'm going to stop. I'm getting out.”

“I'll shoot you dead...”

“I'm getting out, I'll cut the junction on the road. On foot. I'll meet you in there. In the town”

Nothing from the back of the cab.

“You give me ten minutes, I'm not there you call the cops.”

Nothing.

“Tell 'em what you want. That I forced you to give me a ride. That you were bringing me in—I broke out...”

I felt the shotgun. 

She held it up, against my cheekbone. 

I braced my body. Foot lifting from the throttle pedal.

“What are you doing? Don't slow down...”

The engine note's dropping.

“Speed up,” she says, “don't slow down.”

“Ask yourself—what have you got to lose?”

There's nothing but the hum of the engine. Pitching down. The sound of the big tires, rolling against the road. 

My right foot's loose against the floor now. No gas. Nothing feeding the motor.

I felt the shotgun barrel cutting against my cheek.

“What have you got to lose—against what you have to gain...”

CHAPTER 10

Alpine.