Below Zero (28 page)

She didn’t see Leo reach up under the table and pull a pistol loose that had been taped there all along, point it at the window, and start shooting. The pistol still had strips of tape on it. The shots were so loud inside the house that her ears rang from them.

Stenko materialized at the entrance to the hallway holding a large cardboard box that appeared heavy. He’d ducked and snatched the napkin from the table and it was crumpled in one of his fists. He saw her, yelled, “Run, April!” and started toward her. He spun and ran. There was a door at the end of the hallway with a window that streamed light, and she ran toward it. Stenko was behind her.

One of the Talich Brothers yelled, “Stenko! Stop!” but she felt him close in on her and she was relieved to find the outside door unlocked.

They ran across the lawn toward the trees. Behind them, in the house, she heard several more pops from Leo’s gun, followed by a series of heavy booms. As they ran, Stenko pulled ahead and a few untethered bills fluttered out of the box he was carrying and settled into the grass behind him. Fifty yards ahead, Robert was running as well, his arms flapping wildly. He never looked back.

It didn’t occur to her at the time that the reason Stenko was outrunning her was because something was wrong with her. She’d been hurt. She stopped and looked down, saw the bright red blood coursing down her right leg into her shoe, and when she saw the wound pulsing blood, she suddenly felt the pain and pitched forward into the grass.

She couldn’t remember him carrying her through the trees all the way to the car, or Robert screaming at him because he didn’t get the account numbers.

THEY’D DRIVEN A FEW MILES like maniacs, Stenko yelling for Robert to pull over. When he finally did, Stenko said to Robert, “Take off your shirt.”

“No! It’s my favorite—”

Stenko bellowed, “TAKE OFF YOUR GODDAMNED SHIRT!” and Robert did, as fast as he could, and he watched in horror as Stenko cut it into strips.

Her head was slumped back against the seat, and she wasn’t sure she could raise it. Her blood had soaked into the back seat fabric until the fabric was black. The sharp hot pain of the gunshot had faded some into a place that was empty, numb, and cold. It didn’t make sense she was cold.

Stenko winced as if it hurt him to move her, to swing her legs toward him so he could work on the wound. He used the strips of Robert’s shirt to tightly bind the wound. Robert watched from the front seat, making a face.

Stenko said to her, “There, I think I’ve got the bleeding stopped.” He looked into her eyes and cupped his warm hand on the side of her face. “You’ll make it now, I think. The bullet hit an artery but no bones or organs. As long as we stop the bleeding you should be okay. But we’ve got to get you to a hospital. You aren’t hit anywhere else, are you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“The way Robert was blasting away, I’m surprised we all aren’t dead.”

Robert said, “It wasn’t me who hit her. I never even saw her.”

Stenko said, “Shut the hell up, Robert. Of course it was you. Bullets were flying everywhere. Did you ever think about maybe, you know,
aiming
?”

“Hey, I’m not the gangster in the family.” Then, “Well, it wasn’t on purpose.” Petulant.

Stenko ignored his son and looked up at her, tears in his eyes. Said, “I’m so sorry, April. I’m so sorry you’re hurt. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I never saw it coming. I’d never seen Leo with a gun in his life. Leo is
scared
of guns, just like Robert used to be.”

 

 

 

“YOU KNOW THEY’LL BE AFTER US,”
Stenko said to Robert after climbing back into the front seat and slamming the door shut. “They’ll want their share of the money. And who knows how they’ll be if their brother’s dead? He was a loose cannon, but he was their brother. They’ll want revenge.”

Robert hit the gas and the car fishtailed gravel and a plume of dust. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t want to stop.”

“We had to. She was gonna bleed out.”

A long pause. She pretended to sleep.

“What are we going to do with her, Dad?”

“We’re gonna get her some help.”

“How? For Christ’s sake, look around you. There’s nothing but trees and rocks for miles. And don’t you think they’ll be looking for us at all the local hospitals, or clinics, or whatever?”

“April needs a real doctor,” Stenko said. “There might be infection in that leg—or hemorrhaging.”

“We can’t run the risk—”

“The hell we can’t.”

“Dad—”

“Shut up, Robert. I’d do the same for you.”

“Look,” Robert said, lowering his voice, “we could drop her off at a ranch or something. With some nice old couple. They’d call an ambulance and get her into the emergency ward.”

“I’m not leaving her like that,” Stenko said. “She’d been left places all her life. I told her I’d take care of her.”

“This is insane!” Robert yelled. “You’re insane! What is she to you? This is your son talking. Your real son!”

“I’m not leaving her.”

 

 

 

SHE STARED
at her bandaged leg as they screamed down the old highway. He was right: the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Maybe, she thought, because she didn’t have any more blood to lose. She was cold.

Robert yelling, “Why did he threaten me at the window like that? It was like he was begging me to shoot him. And Jesus, I was pulling the trigger before I knew what was happening. I mean, it wasn’t my plan. I didn’t have a plan . . .”

Stenko saying, “He’s crazy, that Natty. Like you, he doesn’t think things through. He just reacts. When he saw you outside the window, he probably thought we were trying to ambush them.”

“Like we’d do
that,
” Robert scoffed.

“Hard to tell you aren’t when you just start shooting everything up.”

“You were protecting yourself. You didn’t even know where I was. The problem with you, Robert, is you don’t hold yourself accountable for anything you do. It’s always someone else’s fault.”

Robert screamed, “You made me what I am.
You made me what I am, Dad.
”

“Calm down.”

 

 

 

ROBERT HAD BOTH
of his hands on the steering wheel, squeezing it so tightly that his knuckles were white. She noticed that every time he shouted, he jerked the car one way or other.

“I wish I had more time with Leo,” Stenko said, uncrumpling the napkin and looking at the series of numbers. The black ink had soaked into the paper and obscured the accounts. “I don’t know where all these accounts are located or what Leo might have done to make sure only he could get to them. We still need Leo’s help if we’re going to get all the money for your cause.”

“I think he might have been hit, too,” Robert said.

Stenko groaned.

Said Robert, “How much cash did you get?”

“I don’t know. A few hundred thousand, maybe more. I didn’t take time to count it, Robert.” Stenko sounded weary, beaten.

“Count it now.”

“Robert . . .”

“Count it now!”

“Don’t grab at it, for Christ’s sake. Just concentrate on your driving.
Robert!
”

And she felt the car careen off the pavement and into a ditch, heard the furious scratches of brush from the undercarriage, saw the rolls of yellow dust blossom in clouds from both sides of the car. She closed her eyes as the car turned and hit something big and solid, felt the vehicle leave the ground, hit on its side in an explosion of dirt and shattered glass, begin to roll . . .

 

 

JOE SAW THE HELICOPTER WINK IN THE SUNLIGHT ON THE right side of Devils Tower as it bore down on the ranch in the foothills of the Bear Lodge Mountains. The mountains themselves had an entirely different look than Joe’s Bighorns or the Sierra Madres he’d been in recently. Rather than vertical and severe with dirty glaciers sleeping the summer away in fissures, the Bear Lodges looked sedentary and relaxed, sleeping old dogs covered with a carpet of blue/black pine. The aircraft was miles away, a flyspeck on a massive blue screen, still far enough that the sound of rotors couldn’t be heard. He knew Coon and Portenson were inside because he’d heard the chatter on the radio. Apparently, the preliminary investigation into the shooting had gone well enough to release them to the ranch call. Crook County sheriff’s deputies were also en route. Joe guessed that all of them would converge at once on the location of the distress call.

They were on State Highway 14, north of Devils Tower Junction, looking for the ranch access that would take them east toward the mountains and the ranch headquarters. Dispatch had been quiet; whoever had placed the initial 911 call had dropped off the line and had never come back. Calls to the ranch house had gone unanswered, which didn’t bode well.

Joe thought,
One for me, one for the dead psycho, and one for more bodies outside.

Sheridan sat in the middle of bench seat clutching her cell phone, staring at it as if willing it to ring. Nate hung out the open passenger window, squinting at the sky with his blond ponytail undulating in the wind. He reminded Joe of Maxine, his old Labrador, who liked to stick her head out the window and let the wind flap her ears.

“See that chopper?” Nate said, pulling his head inside the cab.

“Yup.”

“You had better let me off up here for a while. I don’t think it would help anyone concerned if Portenson sees me.”

“Agreed.”

“Why not?” Sheridan asked.

“Because I’m on the run,” Nate said, matter-of-fact.

“On the run?” she asked. “Like from the law?”

He nodded, said, “Thanks to your dad I’m not in jail right now.”

Joe felt Sheridan’s eyes on him, hoping for an explanation.

“Dad, I thought you put people in jail.”

“I do.”

“But . . .”

“It’s a long story.”

“Are you going to tell it to me?”

“Not now.”

“Nate?”

“Me either,” Nate said, taking Joe’s cue.

“There’s a stand of trees up ahead on the right,” Nate said, changing the direction of the conversation. “Maybe I can hang out over there and wait for you.”

It was an old homestead. On the high desert that led toward the foothills, the only trees were those once planted by settlers trying to make a go of it. In nearly every case, they’d failed—overwhelmed by poor soil, harsh weather, isolation, and market conditions. All that remained of their efforts were rare stands of trees, usually cottonwoods, that had been put in for shade and to provide a windbreak.

The highway was a straight shot across the stunted high-country sage. Traffic was practically nonexistent except for a single pickup ahead in Joe’s lane. The vehicle crept along with its right wheels on the shoulder.

“Let me pass this guy and get up ahead out of his view,” Joe said, “then I’ll drop you off.”

As he approached the slow vehicle—a late-model blue Dodge pickup with out-of-state plates and no passengers—and swung into the passing lane, Joe felt a rush of recognition. The Oklahoma plates—reading “Native America”—confirmed it.

The driver, Ron Connelly, looked over casually at first to see who was passing him as Joe shot by. Their eyes locked and Joe saw Connelly’s nostrils flare as he recognized Joe as well. Connelly slammed on his brakes and Joe shot by him on the highway. But Connelly’s face lingered as an afterimage and Joe was sure it was him.

Joe said, “Hang on—it’s the Mad Archer!”

Nate said, “The mad
what
?”

“Brace yourselves,” Joe said, flinging his right arm out to help protect Sheridan from flying forward as he hit the brakes.

Joe cursed himself for being careless and alerting Connelly, who’d been moving down the highway much too slowly and too far over on the shoulder with no apparent car problems or flashing emergency lights. He’d been cruising the road with all the characteristics of a road hunter—scanning the terrain out the passenger window for game animals to shoot illegally from the comfort of a public road. And since most wildlife became acclimated to the singing of traffic on the rural highway, they no longer followed their instincts for caution. Over the years, wildlife had learned not to look up unless a vehicle stopped. Unscrupulous road hunters like Connelly took advantage of the new paradigm and jumped out firing.

“Is he the one who shot Tube with an arrow?” Sheridan asked as Joe came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the highway.

“That’s him,” he said, throwing the transmission into reverse. To Nate: “He’s the same one who shot your eagle.”

“Let’s get him,” Sheridan said through gritted teeth.

Nate said, “Proceed.”

Connelly had decided to run and was in the process of turning back the way he’d come, his back tires churning up fountains of dirt in the borrow pit, his front tires on the pavement. His pickup was bigger and newer, and Joe knew that on the open road Connelly could outrace him. He had to stop Connelly before he could get going.

Rather than turn around and give chase, Joe floored it in reverse. He was filled with sudden anger at Connelly, at Stenko and Robert, the choices he’d made that consumed him with guilt, at everything. Getting the Mad Archer would be another one in his good works column.

“Joe,” Nate said calmly as the motor revved, “are you sure you want to do this?”

“Brace yourself,” Joe said to Sheridan and Nate.

Joe used the rear bumper and tailgate of his pickup to T-bone Connelly’s pickup on the passenger side as Connelly tried to make his turn. The impact knocked the Dodge six feet sidewise, and Joe saw Connelly’s hat fly off and his arms wave in the air. The collision wasn’t as severe in the Game and Fish pickup because they’d been accelerating straight backward, had braced themselves for the collision, and were cushioned by the seat.