Shots Fired (11 page)

“Don't forget to mend your line. There, that's the ticket.”

“If you hook up again, use your reel. That's what it's there for. Don't grab the line. Don't horse it in.”

“What a beautiful day. Every day is a good day on the river, ain't it?”

All of the land they were floating through was private, with just a few public spots marked by blue diamond-shaped signs
mounted on T-posts. There were few houses or buildings along the shores and it seemed to Jack they were the only people on the river or, perhaps, on the planet. There were no take-out spots anywhere, and the truck and trailer would be miles ahead by now, he guessed.

He thought:
Once you're on the river, you're on the river for the rest of the day. You can't stop and go home. You can't get out. There's nowhere to go.

•   •   •

A
LTHOUGH HE WAS CONCENTRATING
on the gentle bobbing of the strike indicator, Jack saw—or thought he saw—an odd movement in his peripheral vision from the back of the boat. When he turned his head and looked directly, he saw Tim pulling his arm back and jamming his hand into the pocket of his coat. There had been something black in his hand and his arm had been outstretched, but whatever it was was now hidden, and Tim wouldn't look up and meet his eyes. Instead, Tim made a beautiful cast toward the opposite bank.

Jack shook his head and rotated back around in his chair. What had been in Tim's hand? And why did he think it might have been a gun pointed at the back of Duke's head?

Then Jack thought:
Stop being ridiculous.

Duke backed the boat to the bank and dropped the anchor on the dirt with a heavy thud and said, “How about some lunch, guys?”

Jack had already reeled in because he could hear the
increasing roar downriver. The sound was heavy and angry. He asked, “Is that the Chutes up ahead, Duke?”

“That's it, all right. But we'll grab some lunch here first.”

Jack was hungry and it felt good to step on hard ground and stretch his legs and back. Duke had said the camp was leased from a rancher exclusively for Duke and his fishing guides and it had a picnic table, a fire pit, and an outhouse. Tim headed for the outhouse first, and Jack followed. Duke stayed back at the camp and started a fire in the pit and dug items out of his cooler.

When Tim finally stepped from the outhouse, Jack smiled at him. “I really want to thank you again for inviting me along. This is really special
.
”

“Sure, Jack,” Tim said. But he seemed distracted.

Jack hesitated, wondering how to put it. Then he said, “Is everything okay, Tim? I know we don't know each other all that well, but, well . . . Are you feeling okay?”

Tim looked up sharply.
“Why do you ask?”

“Is there something between you and Duke, or am I just imagining things?”

Tim looked hard at Jack, as if searching his face for something or wondering what he should reply.

Jack said, “A while back, I looked in the back of the boat and I thought I saw something.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But I might have been imagining things.”

In response, Tim reached up and patted Jack's shoulder as he
walked past him. He said, “I shouldn't have gotten you involved. I'm sorry.”

“Involved in what?”

But Tim was gone, walking alone toward the river far to the right of the camp.

•   •   •

J
ACK AND
D
UKE
sat at the picnic table and ate hamburgers. Jack ate two and half a tube of Pringles. He washed it all down with two cans of Coors Light. He said to Duke, “I can't believe I'm so hungry.”

“Being outside does that to you.”

“The burgers were great, thank you.”

“You're paying for them,” Duke laughed, then shouted toward Tim, who was still standing alone on the bank, watching the river flow by. “Tim, are you sure you don't want lunch? You've got to be starving, man.”

Tim didn't reply. Duke leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “To each his own, I guess. Is he always this surly?”

“No.”

“I never got his last name. What is it?”

“Hey, I really don't like gossiping about my host, if you don't mind.”

“Sorry,” Duke said, “I should mind my own business. You're right. Oh well, I've had worse in the boat. Luckily, I'm a people person. You have to be a people person to be a guide.”

“I guess you get some characters, eh?”

Duke laughed and shook his head from side to side. “You have no idea, Jack. You have no idea.”

•   •   •

D
UKE PACKED UP THE LUNCH ITEMS
and secured the cooler to the floor of the boat with bungee cords. Jack waited on the bank, looking downriver toward the roar. He said to Duke, “You say there's nothing to worry about, right?”

“Right,” Duke said, chinning toward the Chutes. “I've done it a million times and haven't lost a fisherman yet. And right past the rapids is one of the deepest holes in the whole river. You'll need to be ready to cast out as soon as we clear the rapids. We'll for sure pick up some fish in there.”

“Jack, I'll take the front this time.”

Jack turned. He hadn't noticed that Tim had joined them. Tim's face was ashen, and he looked gaunt.

Jack asked, “Are you sure? Duke says it gets a little splashy in front
.
”

“Yes. Please, Jack, step aside
.
”

Tim shouldered past Jack and stepped into the front of the boat and took the seat. He swiveled it around so it was backward and he faced Duke, who was already on the oars. Duke ignored Tim and spoke to Jack.

“I'll swing the boat around so you can get in the back easy.”

Tim had his hand in his parka pocket and when he
withdrew it he held a snub-nosed revolver. He pointed it at Duke's face, not more than two feet away from him.

Tim said,
“Start rowing.”

Duke's face reddened. “Hey! What the fuck are you doing?”

Tim said, “I said start rowing. Pull up the anchor. We're leaving Jack here. He doesn't need to see this.”

Duke spread his arms, palms out. “Jesus, this is a joke, right? It's a joke?”

Jack stood on the bank with his mouth gaped. Tim spoke to him without taking his eyes, or the muzzle of his gun, off Duke.

He said, “I'm sorry, Jack. I'm sorry I used you and brought you along. But I was afraid Randall would recognize my name if I made the booking. I'm sure Amanda told him my name.”

Jack noticed that the blood had drained from Duke's face. Amanda, that was Tim's wife's name. Amanda.

Tim said, “Right, Randall? Right? She told you my name. She called you and told you when I was going on a business trip? Or a fishing trip? So you two could get together and humiliate me in my own hometown? Right in front of dozens of people who know me? I know all about it, Randall. Did you laugh at me when you were in my bed? Did you laugh because I was so stupid?”

“Look,” Duke pleaded, “it was Mandy's idea. Really. We never laughed at you.”

“Mandy, is it? She never asked me to call her Mandy. It's a stupid name. Like Randall. Or Duke.” A few wisps of Tim's hair had dislodged from his scalp and hung down over his eye.

Duke said, “You don't have to do this. This is crazy. Look, I'll never see her again. I fucking swear it, man.”

Tim's smile was terrifying. He said, “No, you'll never see her again. You're right about that. No one will ever see her again.”

He let it sink in.

Duke moaned,
“Oh, God. No.”

“Yes,” Tim said. “This morning. In that bed you know so well. She thought I was bending over to kiss her good-bye. And in a way, I was.”

Jack didn't realize he was unconsciously stepping away from the boat until the picnic table hit him in the back of the thighs. The roaring in his ears drowned out the sound of the Chutes. Tim shouted to be heard over it.

“I'm sorry, Jack. I'm sorry to leave you here. But there's a ranch house a couple of miles away. You'll be fine.”

Jack said, “Tim, don't do this. Please, Tim.”

“Too late, I'm afraid. They laughed at me, Jack. That's the worst thing anyone can do to me. Remember how they used to laugh at me in school?”

“That was a long time ago, Tim. You're a big man now. You're a good man.”

Tim said to Duke, “No one laughs at me.”

Jack watched Tim say something else to Duke, and the boat slipped out into the current and was gone. Because of the heavy brush downriver, he lost sight of it quickly, but began to run parallel to the river, hoping he could catch them ahead on a bend. Hoping he could persuade Tim to pull the boat over
before it picked up too much speed entering the Chutes and he'd lose them. And before Tim did something he'd regret.

Jack stopped when he heard the sharp crack of a shot. Then he lowered his shoulder and forced himself through the brush. Thorns tore his flesh and his clothing, and his face was bleeding when he broke through and stood knee-deep in the cold water.

The boat was a long way downriver. Beyond it Jack could see the huge boulders in the river and the foam of whitewater. Duke was bent over the oars, his head forward, his arms hanging limply at his sides. Tim had swiveled his chair around, his back to Duke's body, to face the Chutes. Tim stood up in the fishing platform and braced himself. He tossed the gun into the water and reached up and clamped his hat on tight and then raised his chin to the oncoming rapids.

Jack shouted but couldn't even hear himself. The boat began a lazy turn
sidewise.

A
s he did every morning, Paul Parker's deaf and blind old Labrador, Champ, signaled his need by burrowing his nose into Parker's neck and snuffling. If Parker didn't immediately throw back the covers and get up, Champ would woof until he did. So he got up. The dog used to bound downstairs in a manic rush and skid across the hardwood floor of the landing to the back door, but now he felt his way down slowly with his belly touching each stair, grunting with each step, and his big nose serving as a kind of wall bumper. Champ steered himself, Parker thought, via echo navigation. Like a bat. It was sad. Parker followed and yawned and cinched his robe tight and wondered how many more mornings there were left in his dog.

Parker glanced at his reflection in a mirror in the stairwell.
Six-foot-two, steel-gray hair, cold blue eyes, and a jawline that was starting to sag into a dewlap. Parker hated the sight of the dewlap, and unconsciously raised his chin to flatten it. Something else: he looked tired. Worn and tired. He looked like someone's old man. Appearing in court used him up these days. Win or lose, the trials just took his energy out of him and it took longer and longer to recharge. As Champ struggled ahead of him, he wondered if his dog remembered
his
youth.

He passed through the kitchen. On the counter was the bourbon bottle he had forgotten to cap the night before, and the coffeemaker he hadn't filled or set. He looked out the window over the sink. Still dark, overcast, spitting snow, a sharp wind quivering the bare branches of the trees. The cloud cover was pulled down like a window blind in front of the distant mountains.

Parker waited for Champ to get his bearings and find the back door. He took a deep breath and reached for the door handle, preparing himself for a blast of icy wind in his face.

•   •   •

C
LINT AND
J
UAN
stood flattened and hunched on either side of the back door of the lawyer's house on the edge of town. They wore balaclavas and coats and gloves. Clint had his stained gray Stetson clamped on his head over the balaclava, even though Juan had told him he looked ridiculous.

They'd been there for an hour in the dark and cold and wind. They were used to conditions like this, even though Juan kept
losing his focus, Clint thought. In the half-light of dawn, Clint could see Juan staring off into the backyard toward the mountains, squinting against the pinpricks of snow. As if pining for something, which was probably the warm weather of Chihuahua. Or a warm bed. More than once, Clint had to lean across the back porch and cuff Juan on the back of his skull and tell him to get his head in the game.

“What game?” Juan said. His accent was heaviest when he was cold, for some reason, and sounded like,
Wha' gaaaame?

Clint started to reach over and shut Juan up when a light clicked on inside the house. Clint hissed, “Here he comes. Get ready.
Focus.
Remember what we talked about.”

To prove that he heard Clint, Juan scrunched his eyes together and nodded.

Clint reached behind him and grasped the Colt .45 1911 ACP with his gloved right hand. He'd already racked in a round, so there was no need to work the slide. He cocked it and held it alongside his thigh.

Across the porch, Juan drew a .357 Magnum revolver from the belly pocket of the Carhartt hoodie he wore.

The back door opened and the large blocky head of a dog poked out looking straight ahead. The dog grunted as it stepped down onto the porch and waddled straightaway, although Juan had his pistol trained on the back of its head. It was Juan's job to watch the dog and shoot it dead if necessary.

Clint reached up and grasped the outside door handle and jerked it back hard.

Paul Parker tumbled outside in a heap, robe flying,
blue-white bare legs exposed. He scrambled over to his hands and knees in the snow-covered grass and said, “Jesus Christ!”

“No,” Clint said, aiming the pistol at a spot on Parker's forehead. “Just us.”

“What do you want?”

“What's coming to me,” Clint said. “What I deserve and you took away.”

A mix of recognition and horror passed over Parker's face. Clint could see the fear in the lawyer's eyes. It was a good look as far as Clint was concerned. Parker said, “Clint? Is that you?”

What could Clint want? Parker thought. There was little of significant value in the house. Not like Engler's place out in the country, that book collection of western Americana. But Clint? He
was
a warped version of western Americana. . . .

“Get up and shut the hell up,” Clint said, motioning with the Colt. “Let's go in the house where it's warm.”

Next to Parker, Champ squatted and his urine steamed in the grass.

“It don' even know we're here,” Juan said. “Some watchdog. I ought to put it out of its misery.”
Meeserie.

“Please don't,” Parker said, standing up. “He's my bird dog and he's been a great dog over the years. He doesn't even know you're here.” Clint noticed Parker had dried grass stuck to his bare knees.

“You don't look like such a hotshot now without your lawyer suit,” Clint said.

“I hope you got some hot coffee, mister,” Juan said to Parker.

“I'll make some.”

“Is your wife inside?” Clint asked.

“No.”

Clint grinned beneath his mask. “She left you, huh?”

“Nothing like that,” Parker lied. “She's visiting her sister in Sheridan.”

“Anybody inside?”

“No.”

“Don't be lying to me.”

“I'm not. Look, whatever it is—”

“Shut up,” Clint said, gesturing with his Colt. “Go inside slowly and try not to do something stupid.”

Parker cautiously climbed the step and reached out for the door Clint held. Clint followed. The warmth of the house enveloped him, even through his coat and balaclava.

Behind them, Juan said, “What about the dog?”

“Shoot it,” Clint said.

“Jesus God,” Parker said, his voice tripping.

A few seconds later there was a heavy boom and simultaneous yelp from the backyard, and Juan came in.

•   •   •

P
AUL
P
ARKER
sat in the passenger seat of the pickup and Clint sat just behind him in the crew cab with the muzzle of his Colt kissing the nape of his neck. Juan drove. They left the highway and took a two-track across the sagebrush foothills eighteen miles from town. They were shadowed by a herd of thirty to forty pronghorn antelope. It was late October, almost
November, and the grass was brown and snow from the night before pooled in the squat shadows of the sagebrush. The landscape was harsh and bleak and the antelope had been designed perfectly for it: their brown-and-white coloring melded with the terrain and at times it was as if they were absorbed within it. And if the herd didn't feel comfortable about something—like the intrusion of a beat-up 1995 Ford pickup pulling an empty rattletrap stock trailer behind it—they simply flowed away over the hills like molten lava.

“Here they come again,” Juan said to Clint. It was his truck and they'd borrowed the stock trailer from an outfitter who got a new one. “They got so many antelopes out here.”

“Focus,” Clint said. He'd long since taken off the mask—no need for it now—and stuffed it in his coat pocket.

Parker stared straight ahead. They'd let him put on pajamas and slippers and a heavy lined winter topcoat and that was all. Clint had ordered him to bring his keys but leave his wallet and everything else. He felt humiliated and scared. That Clint Peebles and Juan Martinez had taken off their masks meant that they no longer cared if he could identify them, and that was a very bad thing. He was sick about Champ.

•   •   •

C
LINT WAS CLOSE ENOUGH
to Parker in the cab that he could smell the lawyer's fear and his morning breath. Up close, Clint noticed, the lawyer had bad skin. He'd never noticed in the courtroom.

“So, you know where we're going,” Clint said.

“The Engler place,” Parker said.

“That's right. And do you know what we're going to do there?”

After a long pause, Parker said, “No, Clint, I don't.”

“I think you do.”

“Really, I—”

“Shut up,” Clint said to Parker. To Juan, he said, “There's a gate up ahead. When you stop at it, I'll get Paul here to come and help me open it. You drive through and we'll close it behind us. If you see him try anything hinky, do the same thing to him you did to that dog.”

“Champ,” Parker said woodenly.

“Ho-kay,”
Clint said.

•   •   •

J
UAN
M
ARTINEZ
was a mystery to Parker. He'd never seen or heard of him before that morning. Martinez was stocky and solid with thick blue-black hair, and he wore a wispy gunfighter's mustache that made his face look unclean. He had piercing black eyes that revealed nothing. He was younger than Clint, and obviously deferred to him. The two men seemed comfortable with each other and their easy camaraderie suggested long days and nights in each other's company. Juan seemed to Parker to be a blunt object; simple, hard, without remorse.

Clint Peebles was dark and of medium height and build and he appeared older than his fifty-seven years, Parker thought.
Clint had a hard, narrow, pinched face, leathery dark skin that looked permanently sun- and windburned, the spackled sunken cheeks of a drinker, and a thin white scar that practically halved his face from his upper lip to his scalp. He had eyes that were both sorrowful and imperious at the same time, and teeth stained by nicotine that were long and narrow like horse's teeth. His voice was deep with a hint of country twang and the corners of his mouth pulled up when he spoke, but it wasn't a smile. He had a certain kind of coiled menace about him, Parker thought. Clint was the kind of man one shied away from if he was coming down the sidewalk or standing in the aisle of a hardware store, because there was a dark instability about him that suggested he might start shouting or lashing out or complaining and not stop until security was called. He was a man who acted and dressed like a cowpoke, but he had grievances inside him that burned hot.

Parker had hoped that when the trial was over he'd never see Clint Peebles again for the rest of his life.

•   •   •

P
ARKER STOOD ASIDE
with his bare hands jammed into the pockets of his coat. He felt the wind bite his bare ankles above his slippers and burn his neck and face with cold. He knew Juan was watching him closely so he tried not to make any suspicious moves or reveal what he was thinking.

He had no weapons except for his hands and fists and the ball of keys he'd been ordered to bring along. He'd never been
in a fistfight in his life, but he could fit the keys between his fingers and start swinging.

He looked around him without moving his head much. The prairie spread out in all directions. They were far enough away from town that there were no other vehicles to be seen anywhere, or buildings or power lines.

“Look at that,” Clint said, nodding toward the north and west. Parker turned to see lead-colored clouds rolling straight at them, pushing gauzy walls of snow.

“Hell of a storm coming,” Clint said.

“Maybe we should turn back?” Parker offered.

Clint snorted with derision.

Parker thought about simply breaking and running, but there was nowhere to run.

It was a standard barbed-wire ranch gate, stiff from disuse. Wire loops from the ancient fence post secured the top and bottom of the gate rail. A heavy chain and padlock mottled with rust stretched between the two. “You got the keys,” Clint said, gesturing with his Colt.

Parker dug the key ring out of his pocket and bent over the old lock. He wasn't sure which key fit it, or whether the rusty hasp would unsnap. While he struggled with the lock, a beach-ball-sized tumbleweed was dislodged from a sagebrush by the wind and it hit him in the back of his thighs, making him jump. Clint laughed.

Finally, he found the right key and felt the mechanism inside give. Parker jerked hard on the lock and the chain dropped away on both sides.

“Stand aside,” Clint said, and shot him a warning look before he put his pistol in his pocket and leaned against the gate. The way to open these tight old ranch gates was to brace oneself on the gate side, thread one's arms through the strands until the shoulder was against the gate rail, and reach out to the post and pull. The move left Clint vulnerable.

Parker thought if he was prepared to do something and fight back, this was the moment. He could attack Clint before Juan could get out of the pickup. He felt his chest tighten and his toes curl and grip within his slippers.

Clint struggled with it. “Don't just stand there,” Clint, red-faced, said to Parker through gritted teeth. “Help me get this goddamned thing open.”

Parker leaned forward on the balls of his feet. He considered hurtling himself like a missile toward Clint, then slashing at the man's face and eyes with the keys. He could tear Clint's gun away, shoot Clint, and then use it on Juan. That's what a man of action would do. That's what someone in a movie or on television would do.

Instead, the lawyer bent over so he was shoulder to shoulder with Clint, and his added bulk against the gatepost was enough that Clint could reach up and pop the wire over the top and open it.

•   •   •

B
ACK INSIDE THE PICKUP,
they drove into the maw of the storm. It had enveloped them so quickly it was astonishing.
Pellets of snow rained across the hood of the pickup and bounced against the cracked windshield. The heater blew hot air that smelled like radiator fluid inside the cab. Parker's teeth finally stopped chattering, but his stomach ached from fear and his hands and feet were cold and stiff.