by C. J. Box
And Bryce Pendergast was standing in front of him with the door halfway open, his face contorted into a pulled-back grimace. Pendergast was naked from the waist up, severely thin, with a sleeve tattoo on the arm. He had long, stringy hair that glistened with hair product-or grease. The tendons in his neck looked to be as taut as guitar strings, and his breathing was quick and shallow. The right side of Pendergast’s body was hidden behind the door. A strong whoosh of the odor enveloped Joe on the porch.
“What do you want?” Pendergast asked, his voice high and strained.
Joe smiled and said in a friendly tone, “I guess you know why I’m here, Bryce.”
“I guess I do,” Pendergast said.
And in the instant it took for Joe to realize that the cat-urine smell was in fact raw ammonia from inside and the burns in the grass were from meth-making chemicals, Pendergast threw open the door and Joe saw the big pistol in Bryce’s right hand that had been out of sight behind the door. The pistol suddenly swung up toward his face.
Behind him, Joe heard Greene-Dempsey gasp-and Joe ducked and flailed his hands up, managing to knock Pendergast’s aim off as the gun exploded next to his ear.
Operating more out of instinct and terror than thought, Joe pinned Pendergast’s wrist to the doorframe with the back of his right forearm and stepped forward and backed into him, now grasping Pendergast’s wrists with both of his hands. Pendergast’s arm was pinned under Joe’s left armpit, the gun pointed toward the dried-out lawn, and it fired again, but Joe could barely hear the roar this time because his right ear was stunned silent. Joe recognized the weapon as an old Army Colt 1911.45 semiautomatic, and he knew what kind of damage it could do.
Joe slammed Pendergast’s wrist against the doorframe again and again, trying to make him drop the weapon. But Pendergast was younger and stronger. He could feel the hardness of Pendergast’s body pressed against his back. Pendergast was now beating his free fist down on Joe’s head, neck, and back, and Joe wasn’t sure he had the strength or leverage to knock the gun loose.
Although he was temporarily deaf in his right ear from the gunshot and the side of his face felt stunned, he could hear yelling from behind him inside the house and Greene-Dempsey’s high-pitched voice screaming, “Call 911! Call 911!” to the woman in the right duplex.
Pendergast’s fist came down hard on the top of Joe’s head, mashing his hat down nearly over his eyes and unleashing a wave of starbursts in front of his vision. He realized that if he didn’t take Pendergast down soon-somehow-he’d be a dead man. He hoped whoever else was inside the house wouldn’t come out front and join in on the parade of blows, or bring his own gun along.
Joe let go of Pendergast’s wrist with his right hand and reached out and grasped the suspect’s thumb, which was curled around the grip of the.45, and jerked back on it as hard as he could. The bone broke with a dull snap, and the thumb flopped back, held by skin alone. Because Pendergast’s body was pressed tight to his back, Joe could feel him stiffen as the pain shot through him.
Pendergast howled in Joe’s other ear, but the.45 dropped to the concrete of the porch and bounced into the grass. As it did, Joe let go and wheeled, ripping the first thing he could find-a big canister of bear spray-from his belt with the intention of blasting Pendergast in the eyes. But Pendergast’s eyes were closed tight as he howled and hopped up and down on one foot, cupping his wounded right hand with his left, the thumb flopping from one side of his hand to the other, and Joe didn’t see an opening. So he reared back and struck Pendergast solidly on the bridge of his nose with the bear spray canister, staggering him.
While Pendergast was off-balance, Joe reached in through the open door and grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked down, and the man stumbled past him and crashed facedown on the lawn, his arms windmilling. Before Pendergast could come to his senses enough to scramble for the.45, which was within his reach, Joe fell on him and forced him back to the ground and hit him three more times on the head with the bear spray canister until Bryce yelled, “No more, man!”
When Joe paused, Pendergast opened his bloodshot eyes and looked up. Joe quickly held the canister out and blasted the man in the face with a red burst of bear spray.
Ten minutes later, with Pendergast cuffed facedown and howling in the grass, Joe leaned against the grille of his pickup, dabbing his eyes with a moist cloth provided by the woman in the right duplex. She’d called 911, she said. He’d gotten a whiff of the bear spray’s blowback himself, and it seemed like every fluid in his body was trying to pour out of his nose.
Lisa Greene-Dempsey stood a few feet away, shaken. She glared at him with her hands on her hips.
When he was able to make out her blurry image, Joe said, “You saw all that, right?”
“Of course I saw it,” she said, angry. “I saw the whole damned thing. You could have gotten yourself killed.”
“You didn’t get hit with any of the bear spray, did you?”
“No.”
“Good. It’s nasty stuff.”
He knew bear spray contained much more oleoresin capsicum than standard law enforcement personal-defense pepper spray, and it could turn a charging grizzly. It wasn’t designed for use on humans, but at that moment Joe didn’t care.
“I hope we don’t have a lawsuit on our hands,” she said.
“How you doing, Bryce?” Joe called out.
“I’m blind! I’m fucking blind!” Pendergast cried.
“Let him sue,” Joe said. “I thought he was going to kill me, and the bear spray was the first thing I could grab onto.”
She said, “I saw his partner run out the back and keep running down the alley.”
“Was it McDermott?”
“How should I know?” she said, her voice rising.
“We’ll find him,” Joe said. His cheek burned where the gun had gone off, and his eyes, nose, and mouth were on fire from the blowback. There was a high whistle inside his right ear that blocked out any other sound.
“Excuse me,” he said to Greene-Dempsey, and staggered past her toward the cab on his truck. “I’ve got to get on the radio and let everybody know to keep an eye out for McDermott. He won’t get far on foot.”
When he was done and hung up the mic, he turned to find Greene-Dempsey blocking his path.
“You could have been killed,” she said again, shaken. “I could have been killed.”
“I know,” he said. “This isn’t how it usually plays out. I had no idea things would get western.”
He could feel adrenaline painfully dissipating from his muscles. He imagined she felt the same way and her method of dealing with the comedown was to upbraid him.
He said, “They were cooking meth-or trying to cook it. I don’t think they had it figured out yet, judging by Bryce’s reaction. I should have known by the smell and the chemical burns in the grass.”
In the distance, several blocks away, he heard the whoop of a siren.
“Maybe they found McDermott,” Joe said.
“I hope so,” Greene-Dempsey said.
“They’re not all meth heads,” Joe said defensively, to a point she hadn’t raised. To Pendergast, still crying on the ground, “You’re not all bad, are you, Bryce?”
“Fuck you, I’m blind!” Pendergast shouted back.
Greene-Dempsey looked from Joe to the suspect, her anger replaced by caution.
“Joe. .” she said worriedly.
Joe grunted and stepped around her and walked toward Pendergast in the yard. Pendergast continued to rage on that he was blind, and Joe stepped around him and retrieved the.45 and stuffed it in his belt. As he returned to the truck, he wheeled near Pendergast and reached again for the holstered canister of bear spray.
“No, no!” Pendergast screamed. “Put that back!” He tried to wriggle away in the direction of the house.
Joe turned and shrugged to Greene-Dempsey. “See, he’s not blind.”
She started to say something when the iPhone in her hand chimed. Joe watc
hed her check the screen, and she looked up and said “Julio Batista” before taking the call. As she listened, her demeanor changed to one of utter seriousness, he thought.
Greene-Dempsey signed off, lowered the phone, and said, “They’re ready for you now. You’re supposed to meet them at some ranch outside of town, and he said you knew the place.”
“Big Stream Ranch,” Joe said dourly.
“That’s the one,” she said.
12
Dave Farkus felt like he was being shaken to death, like his teeth were going to vibrate out of their sockets, and he asked ex-Sheriff Kyle McLanahan, who was at the wheel of the three-quarter-ton pickup towing the long six-horse trailer, if he was going to slow down soon. They were on an ancient two-track fire road that was washboarded and marred by cross-trenches caused by spring runoff. The center strip consisted of bumper-high sagebrush that scratched along the undercarriage of the pickup like long fingernails on a blackboard. A long roll of dust followed the rig.
“Why?” McLanahan asked.
“We’ve been on bad roads for an hour,” Farkus said, looking out at the dust-covered hood between the shoulders and heads of the two men in the front seat. “I feel like I’m gonna get sick.”
Spare tools and beer bottle caps skittered about at Farkus’s feet in the back.
“We’re in a hurry, Farkus.”
Then McLanahan turned to the man in the passenger seat of the crew cab, a dark man Farkus had met for the first time when McLanahan picked him up, and who hadn’t said two words in the past two hours.
“Jimmy, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Sollis said.
“Jimmy’s fine,” McLanahan said to Farkus, making eye contact via the rearview mirror. “Time to strap in and cowboy up, buckaroo.”
Farkus turned away and stared out the side window at the sagebrush flats. They were vibrating as far as he could see.
The idea, McLanahan had said when he arrived at Farkus’s mobile home with the horse trailer attached to his pickup and the mystery man in the passenger seat, was to drive north on the interstate, cut off at Winchester, and approach from the west the range of mountains where Butch Roberson was last seen.
“Those federal yahoos,” McLanahan said, “are going to mass on the east slope at Big Stream Ranch and push west. When ol’ Butch, he realizes the Feds are coming-I figure those boys will make a lot of noise and racket moving through the timber-Butch won’t be stupid enough to try and make a stand. Instead, he’ll stay ahead of ’em and work his way west. There are only a couple of possibilities how he’ll come out, and I’m guessing he’ll use the most direct route and the one he’s most familiar with. That’s where we’ll set up and intercept him.”
Farkus had nodded, not able to visualize the route McLanahan had in mind. Apparently, his puzzlement was written on his face, and it was obvious to the ex-sheriff.
“That’s where you hunted with him, right?” McLanahan said. “Up there on the west side on those saddle slopes and in those canyons?”
“I think so,” Farkus had said, “but we came from the other side, from the ranch. We never went up there from the west side.”
McLanahan had rolled his eyes and said, “It’s the same mountain, Farkus. The features don’t change because you’re looking at them from a different direction.”
“It’s wild country up there,” Farkus said. “It’s easy to get turned around.”
Inside the cab of the pickup, Farkus had heard the mystery man snort a derisive laugh.
“Who is that?” Farkus asked, chinning the direction of the pickup.
“Jimmy Sollis. His brother used to be a deputy of mine, a good loyal guy. He was killed in the line of duty when Wheelchair Dick got it. I’ll always be regretful it wasn’t the other way around.”
Farkus looked up, trying to connect the dots.
“He’s a prize-winning long-distance shooter,” McLanahan said. “He travels the country winning tournaments. He’s got some kind of custom rifle and scope, and he knocks the center out of targets at a thousand-plus yards. I figure he’s a good man to have along, and he wants to test his skill.”
Quiet, big, and deadly, then, Farkus thought. He’d been around too many of those types in his life, and he didn’t much like them. He shifted uncomfortably from boot to boot.
“Three guys-that wasn’t the deal,” Farkus said.
“He’ll be good to have along.”
“But three guys means a three-way split, is what I’m sayin’.”
“So?”
“I’m doing this for the money, Kyle. I don’t have any hard feelings toward Butch.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” McLanahan said, and sighed. “This ain’t about the money. And don’t call me Kyle. Call me Sheriff.”
Farkus nodded toward his mobile home. “It’s about the money for me, Sheriff.”
“I told you already, this is big money. Federal money. They’ve got lots of it.”
“So how much are we talking about?”
“I don’t have figures”-McLanahan drew the word out sarcastically-“but a shitload of it, that’s for sure. The Feds are the only folks who have any these days, don’t you know. It’ll be enough that you won’t ever have to worry about when the next disability check comes in the mail so you can fill your tank.”
Farkus considered pulling out. But what was his choice? There were few jobs, and he didn’t want one, anyway. He liked being a free man, and busting his butt was for losers. And this was free government money. They wouldn’t even miss it.
“Okay,” Farkus said.
“Then let’s get the map out,” McLanahan said. “I want to make sure you’re familiar with the terrain before we waste our time going up there.”
While the ex-sheriff unfurled the map on the hood of the pickup, Sollis got out of the truck without a word and bent over the side of the pickup into the bed. Farkus heard the sound of latches being thrown, and soon Sollis was holding a heavy and polished long bolt-action rifle with a black-matte scope. Farkus watched out of the corner of his eye.
“What’s he up to?” Farkus whispered to McLanahan.
“The map,” McLanahan said impatiently. “Pay attention to the map.”
Farkus tried to concentrate on the features of the map McLanahan was holding flat on the hood with his bearpaw hands. The layout of the canyons did look vaguely familiar. He bent close and found the confluence of Otter and Trapper Creeks. To the north of the confluence was a series of sawbladelike peaks. He was pretty sure he remembered them.
“This is where we camped,” Farkus said, jabbing the location with his fingertip.
McLanahan marked it with a pencil stroke and said, “That’s where we’re going to be. If Butch is familiar with the camp, it’s odds-on likely where he goes.”
Farkus nodded.
“I don’t see any roads going up there,” McLanahan said.
“There were no roads. Butch likes to hunt in the wilderness, not in places you can drive to. He’s crazy that way, like I told you.”
As they were going over the map, Farkus kept stealing looks toward Sollis, who had jacked a cartridge into his rifle and was now at the rear of the pickup. He’d rested his rifle on the top of the corner of the bed walls and was leaning down, looking through his scope at something in the distance.
“So I think we’re set,” McLanahan had said, rolling up the topo map and sliding a rubber band over the roll.
As Farkus opened his mouth to speak, the air was split by the heavy boom of Sollis’s rifle. Farkus jumped and looked up. In the sandy hills past the municipal dump, a plume of dirt rose in the air, leaving two black spots.
“What did you shoot at?” Farkus asked Sollis, alarmed.
“A black cat,” Sollis said, ejecting the spent brass. “Eight hundred yards. Cut it right in two.”
“That was my cat,” Farkus had said.
“Not anymore,” Sollis said, fitting the rifle back into its case.
The hu
ge dark western slope of the Bighorns filled the front window of the pickup as they got closer, and the road got worse. Farkus leaned over and pressed his mouth to the gap in the open window so he could breathe fresh air and fight against the nausea he felt from being jounced around in the backseat. When he closed his eyes, he tried to picture the rough country he’d hunted with Butch Roberson the year before, but from the other direction. McLanahan seemed to think it was easy, but it wasn’t. There were granite ridges and seas of black timber, and he remembered at times trying to look up through the trees to see something-anything-he recognized. A unique-shaped peak, a rock wall, a meadow, or a natural park-anything that stood out so he’d know where he was. He remembered stumbling back into the elk camp at the confluence of the creeks one night near midnight, four hours late, because he’d been turned around in a box canyon, and although he had a compass and GPS, he’d convinced himself that the instruments were wrong but he was right. Butch Roberson had been happy to see him, but concerned about the possibility of him getting lost again.
From that night on, they’d hunted together, which was a nice gesture on Butch’s part, Farkus thought.
And now he was back. If it weren’t for that substantial federal reward money. .
McLanahan apparently figured out how to make Jimmy Sollis open up, Farkus thought drearily: ask him about his rifle.
“It’s a custom 6.5x284,” Sollis said, “equipped with a Zeiss Z-800 4.5x14 Conquest scope. .”
Jimmy Sollis was over six-feet-four, Farkus guessed, two hundred twenty pounds. He had olive-colored skin, black hair, a smooth almost Asian face with small, black wide-set eyes and a flattened nose. He spoke in a flat tone with no animation at all, and he enunciated every word clearly, as if he were transcribing them on stone.
“I shoot a 140-grain Berger bullet at just over three-thousand-feet-per-second muzzle velocity,” Sollis said. “I’ve taken the eye out of a target at fourteen hundred yards, and I can hit a man shape at eighteen hundred. I prefer a bench-rest, of course, but I’ve got a bipod setup that cuts down on the distance in favor of portability. .”
