Blood Land (22 page)

“Sitting by a foggy window

Staring at the pouring rain

Falling down like lonely teardrops

Memories of love in vain

These cloudy days,

make you wanna cry

It breaks your heart

when someone leaves

and you don't know why.”

The Eagles,

No More Cloudy Days

WENDY DIDN’T say anything for a long while. Pruett respected her silence, waiting patiently for whatever her reaction might be. Hanson had waited outside at the sheriff’s request. When his daughter finally spoke, Pruett then found
he
didn’t know how to answer after all.

“Why does it have to come down so hard, all at once?” she said.

“The rain?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know, girl. I really don’t. Sometimes our number gets called and the heavens just open up.”

“This seems a lot more like Hell,” Wendy said.

“That it does.”

“I always liked Uncle Ty,” she said. “Never was close to granddad.”

“No.”

“But I still don’t understand. I thought he was your suspect.”

“Things get murkier the further down we’ve gone,” the sheriff said. “I don’t like what we’re turning up. Some ways I’m glad your mother isn’t here to witness it.”

“Are the McIntyres really this bad?” Wendy said.

“Not all the way,” he said. “Mainly ‘cause your mother was one of ‘em. And for all his ranting and surliness, Ty is a rough package but I’d say he’s not too far past half bad.”

“How many others are involved?” Wendy said.

“That’s what I aim to find out next. Bringing Honey and the other two boys in for questioning. After the meeting with the judge.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sorry for what?”

“That you have to deal with your town coming apart when you need to be concentrating on yourself. Your own grieving.”

“I’ll be okay. Makes me want to take a sip something fierce but I also like the challenge of it. Keepin’ it from beating me, you know?”

“I do know.”

“I just wish I’d realized all this sooner, maybe if I had…”

“You couldn’t have,” she said and put her hand on his. “No one could.”

“It’s gonna get dark, girl. A lot more before it gets light again.”

Judge Butler didn’t like the new turn of events. He was even more inclined to call a mistrial than Hanson had predicted. He looked to the sheriff for answers. “What the hell is going on here, James?”

“Bridger, you know as well as I do that we’re just starting to piece this shit together.”

“It would be helpful deciding how to proceed if the puzzle were finished.”

“Yessir, I understand that.”

Butler looked at Miles Stanton, who gave the appearance of a schoolchild waiting to give his first recital. The weight of the Universe had just dropped on the shoulders of a twenty-seven year-old kid a year and a half out of law school. “I’m about to ask you if after a reasonable continuance you’ll be prepared to take the reins on this case and drive ‘er home. Don’t tell me no, son. Don’t you even think about doing that.”

“Nossir,” Stanton said.

“You’ll be ready?”

“Nossir—I mean, Yessir. Yes, sir. I’ll be ready to proceed, Judge.”

“Good,” Butler said. He turned to Hanson. “Two weeks. It’s all I can manage without shutting this whole thing down.”

“It’ll have to do then,” Hanson said.

“We’ll convene in the morning to make this a matter of the official record,” Butler said.

“Can we keep the specifics off the record for now?” Pruett said.

“For
now
,” the judge replied. “Reconvene at nine A.M. for issuance on the record.”

Pruett left the chambers and said goodbye to Hanson. His intent was to drive out to the McIntyre ranch and haul Honey and whoever else was there in for questioning. He felt it was time to let her know he wasn’t backing down.

He didn’t make it.

For some reason he’d been thinking about Jesse all morning. Since seeing all that death again. In addition to making him long for a drink, he also craved some human contact. Not the kind he was in store for with the McIntyres—he needed something that made him feel
alive
.

The booze promised that but never really delivered. He’d feel alive for a short while—as if he were firing on all cylinders—but that was vaporous at best. He needed something that would fuel him for the long run. Or at least more than a few hours.

Jesse could do that for him. And she was sober. Maybe
she
could be his sponsor. He knew that was a horrible idea (and not entirely appropriate), but she was someone he trusted and, yes, probably even loved a little.

He ached then, as if a small pebble of guilt had just caught in the side of his heart. He thought of Bethy again. What he’d done to her trust all those years back. Thoughts of his own failure and betrayal were never more than a few feet from center stage, just waiting in the wings for their chance to jump into the spotlight.

No one blamed him more or was less forgiving than he was to himself. No one. But even back then he knew he loved Jesse. Not in the same way he loved his wife—his love for Bethy was rock solid; it was the kind of love that was a foundation for greater things. The cornerstone of an entire life spent together, being there for each other, helping one another. Until death do us part.

Death.

It took the death of his beloved to wrench her away from his life. The love he felt for Jesse was different. More raw and exposed—less healthy for him, like the booze.

No. That wasn’t fair. Jesse was not bad for him. She was not an addiction either. But still the love was different. That didn’t make him need it any less. At that moment Pruett felt like he needed the warmth of human contact more than ever before in his life. He wanted to curl into a tiny ball and cry like a baby.

Pruett didn’t cry. Or at least he rarely did. Not since he came back from the war. He saw far too many tears there to ever want to cry any himself again.

But now he wanted to. Needed to.

And in Jesse’s arms he could do that.

He could cry.

Judge Butler convened trial Monday morning in order to grant the motion for continuance. It had been agreed in chambers the prosecution would first put the change of counsel into the record and after it being so ordered would then submit the motion for a two-week continuance.

“Mr. Stanton, I understand you are proposing to take over the case from Ms. Jorgensen, is this correct?” Judge Butler said to the prosecutor.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Stanton said. “I filed the official paperwork this morning before court.”

“So ordered.”

“Thank you, Judge.”

“You also have a motion for continuance before the court.”

“Yes. Due to exigent circumstances the State feels it needs some extra time to, uh, familiarize with the case.” Stanton looked nervous, even though he knew he’d get his continuance.

“Two weeks should suffice, I would think,” Butler said.

“Yes, sir. Two weeks is good.”

“Any objections from the defense table, Mr. Hanson?”

“None, Your Honor.”

“Court will then reconvene…”

The two main doors to the courtroom exploded open at the same time, both doors behind the bench opened quickly and two armed men with jean jackets and black ski masks slipped in behind Judge Butler. One put the muzzle of a side-by-side shotgun against the judge’s throat while the other disarmed the bailiff and tied his wrists behind him with zip-tie cuffs.

Two other men, one armed with two 9mm pistols and the other with a pump action shotgun and a silver .38 caliber stuffed in his belt, stormed down the aisle, controlling the crowd. Both had similar ski masks. The one with the two pistols came straight for Pruett, one barrel pointed between the sheriff’s eyes.

“Off with that gun belt, Sheriff,” the man said, trying to keep his voice gruff and unrecognizable.

“Fuck you, Rance,” Pruett said and spat on the floor. “Yeah, I know it’s you. You going to shoot me here in front of all these witnesses, are ya?”

“I said the gun belt or I put a hole in ya the size a Kansas, old man.”

“My hands will stay where you see them, but I won’t disarm myself. Not here. Not ever.”

“Drop one a them hands a fox hair, Sheriff and you’ll be sorry.”

Pruett kept his eyes locked on Rance McIntyre’s. The cowpoke looked scared. Like he’d already failed part of the plan and was now busy calculating what would go wrong next.

What went wrong next didn’t take all that long.

LaRue Hilton was an old rancher whose family had lived in the Green River valley since long before Wyoming was anything but Indian territory. One of the true pioneers of the land. He was eighty-nine years young and as ornery as any man in Wind River. He was also a friend of Judge Butler. Their families had been intertwined since LaRue could remember and he wasn’t going to miss his friend presiding over the trial of the century.

Like many other residents of Wind River (and of Wyoming in general), LaRue was armed. He was armed when he picked up his groceries, armed at the Post Office mailing letters to his granddaughters in Spokane and Hurt, Texas, and he was damn sure armed that day in court.

And he didn’t care for seeing his friend sweating bullets because of a side-by-side Winchester pressed up into the folds of his neck. LaRue eased the Colt Navy .38 out of the holster slung over his frail shoulder and strapped to his chest. He was a crack shot with that pistol and had a clear line on the back of the masked man behind the bench. He looked over at the two men to his rear and they were busy controlling the crowd, not paying attention to some old geezer down at the end of the front gallery. LaRue decided God wasn’t going to give him another opportunity to do the right thing

The old man stood and pointed the Colt at the back of the masked man’s head and he pulled back the hammer. “Don’t move, you fucking
shit
,” LaRue said.

For Pruett the whole room slowed down at that moment. He’d caught the movement in his peripheral when old Long Pole LaRue came to his feet, gun drawn, and he knew there wasn’t going to be any time to undo the ugliness that was about to unfold. He’d seen it too many times—it was one thing when you had a standoff with a bunch of well-trained participants. But this small handful of McIntyres and God knew who else were about as nervous as you ever wanted to see armed men with guns be.

The man with the shotgun pressed into Judge Butler would later be identified as Carter Lee Holcomb through examining the remaining third of his face. In the movies when a suspect hears something like “freeze” or “don’t move, you
shit
” they don’t make a move, unless it’s to put their weapon down or raise their hands dutifully in the air. In the real world a gunman like Carter Lee Holcomb isn’t considered “dangerous” because he’s armed—it’s mostly because he’s cagey and stupid and probably more than a little bit tuned up on whatever poison he thinks puts courage in his veins.

Carter Lee heard LaRue’s command all right but he damn sure didn’t comply. Holcomb spun (in slow motion, or at least that’s how Sheriff Pruett saw it all go down) and just got the loaded barrels halfway to LaRue when the first .38 slug tore off all of his cheek and the top half of his skull.

The concussion was so profound it spun Carter Lee back around, like a lifeless side of beef doing an awkward pirouette. Judge Butler just missed being the second gruesome casualty of the morning when he dropped to his knees and the blast of Holcomb’s shotgun shaved the top of his thinning hair—the gun having gone off by the death spasm that contracted Carter Lee’s finger on the hair trigger.