“O.C., open the glove box there and get that .32. I doubt Gene will give me any trouble, but I don’t know.”
The judge opened the door, found the pistol, and checked the loads. The cylinder was full. He slapped it closed just as the back door opened and Gene dropped heavily into the rear seat of the car. Startled, O.C. nearly pulled the trigger, and Ned struggled to pull his own pistol from the holster on his hip.
“I’m ready, and you can keep that pistol in the scabbard,” Gene said in a relaxed, conversational tone. They turned to look at the man sitting calmly, fingers laced in his lap. “I’m giving myself up, because it’s been eatin’ on me something terrible. When the two of you got here together, I knew y’all found out. How’d you do it?”
Ned cleared his throat. “We just did.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s over.” Gene’s voice broke and he had difficulty talking. “I didn’t mean to shoot Tommy Lee, but I done it. I killed my brother on accident. We’s out to shoot us some table meat a little early.”
Ned looked over his shoulder. “You want to tell us what happened?”
Gene took a shuddering breath. “He went across the draw, and I walked up on a little rise. When I sat down, I could see him where he was sittin’ beside a tree, but kinda out in the open, you know? I always said he couldn’t hide worth spit, and that’s how come him to get caught peeking in winders in the first place.”
Tears rolled down his cheeks. “When the sun come completely up, I lined up on his head with my rifle, to practice my aim, and thinking what a good joke it’d be when I told him I was watching him pick his nose when he didn’t think no one was looking.”
He broke down, crying into his hands. His sobs were deep and heartfelt. They barely made out his words. “I didn’t know the safety was off. It was a pure accident, but I killed my own brother.”
Ned shifted into reverse and backed the car around in the yard.
A mile from the house, Gene gained control of himself and roughly wiped the tears from his cheeks. “Man ought not to cry like that.”
“You cry when you hurt.” O.C. put the revolver back in the glove box. “You been hurtin’ a while.”
“Yessir, Judge. I wouldn’t-a done it intentional for nothin’.”
Ned kept his eyes on the dirt road leading out of the bottoms. “Where’s your rifle?”
“Standing in the corner behind my bedroom door.”
Ned picked up the microphone, aggravated that he hadn’t waited to get the rifle himself. “Sheriff Parker.”
Cody’s voice came back. “Yessir.”
“You busy?”
“Kinda. Deputy White called in with a report of three missing businessmen who haven’t been heard from in a week or so. They were looking for some land and haven’t checked in with their wives. What’s up?”
Ned recalled the town square and a man with a camera, and wondered if he’d been one of them. “I know you don’t work for me, but you might want to send one of your deputies over to Gene Stark’s house and get the rifle from behind his bedroom door. Handle it careful. I’m bringing him in for the accidental shooting of his brother.”
The answer came a long moment later. “Yessir. Gene in there with you?”
“He is.”
“Gene, I’m sorry how it turned out.”
Ned concentrated on his driving while a steady stream of tears rolled down the farmer’s cheeks at Cody’s distant, tinny words. They struck the highway and Ned accelerated on the hardtop.
“It was an accident, Cody. It just went off. Oh God, he was dead when he hit the ground.”
Ned didn’t tell Gene the newly appointed sheriff couldn’t hear him. The appointment wasn’t easy, and O.C. had to do a lot of talking to convince the county commissioners that it was the right thing to do, but they agreed to let Cody fill Griffin’s term until the next election. Both Ned and O.C. figured he’d win. “Go on, Gene.”
“There weren’t nothing I could do for him, so I just set with him for an hour or so.”
They passed Neal’s store a moment later. Half a dozen loafers on the porch threw a wave at Ned’s passing car, and went back to talking.
Ned surprised himself by taking the new road to the dam. He was getting used to it whether he wanted to or not. “Then?”
“Then I threw him over my shoulder and carried him to the truck and set him up behind the wheel and walked home.”
“Why’d you do that, put him behind the wheel?”
Gene’s eyes went to the rearview mirror and met Ned’s. “I ’on’t know. I couldn’t leave him in the woods for the coyotes, and it didn’t feel right to put him the truck bed.”
The kids were gone when they passed the old house place. At the sharp curve midway across the dam, Ned braked and his unread mail again slid into the floorboard. “Dammit.” O.C. leaned over once again. He raised up with a thick packet in his hand. “Ned.”
“What? Put it back on the seat and I’ll take care of it later.”
“Look.” O.C. held out a thick envelope, reinforced with tape.
As he unconsciously took his foot from the accelerator, Ned’s eyes flicked to the flowing name handwritten on the return address.
Tom Bell Parker, Hembrillo, Mexico.
“What the hell?” He slowed even more, studying on the implications of the envelope. “What’s the postmark date?”
Frustratingly slow, O.C. dug a pair of reading glasses from the inside pocket of his coat. “Last week.”
They stopped in the middle of the dam.
O.C. peered over the top of his glasses. “You said he was dead.”
“I thought he was.”
“Didn’t you talk to the Rangers?”
“I did. And they won’t tell me squat.”
Ned’s gaze slipped away and out of O.C.’s window toward the raw, gaping hole that would soon become Lake Lamar.
Unaware, Gene leaned forward. “You know what, Ned?”
“Hum?”
“You wouldn’t think anybody would be so dumb, would you? To do such a thing as I did?”
Ned grunted and accelerated toward the main highway and the Lamar County courthouse. “Well, Gene, a lot of strange things happen up here on this ol’ river.”
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