by Earl Emerson
“It’s always about getting two sides on the same page. We go down the hill with the pistol, hand it over as a gesture of goodwill, and talk reason to them. I could do that…Giving it to them would be my selling point. I always like to have at least one major selling point. My persuader, I like to call it.”
They walked out to the road and continued discussing their options. When they saw the Porsche Cayenne appear at the head of the spur road below, Zak thought for a moment it was coming at them, but it turned down the hill.
Stephens said, “They’re going for help.”
“He might be going around so he can come back on some other road and get us from behind,” said Muldaur.
“I can’t believe how paranoid you guys are.”
Zak said, “You think about it. Scooter’ll tell his story to the authorities and we’ll tell ours, and they’ll see how drunk Scooter is and get a blood-alcohol reading from him and the dead man. They’ll test us and we’ll come up clean. It’ll be a no-brainer who to believe.”
Muldaur looked at him. “Maybe.”
Ten minutes later the Porsche climbed the steep road and turned back into the spur. It was Kasey’s vehicle, but the driver was William Potter III, aka Scooter. They were still on the hill discussing things. “He wasn’t gone long enough to get into town and back,” said Zak.
“Maybe he told the guard what happened,” said Giancarlo.
Stephens nodded. “It would accomplish the same thing.”
“I don’t think he was gone long enough even for that.”
They decided Stephens would wait at the road and Morse would remain in camp while Zak, Giancarlo, and Muldaur went to see what was going on at the base of the bluffs, if anything. When they got there, the body was just as broken and immobile as it had been earlier. Gazing south along the base of the mountain, Zak glimpsed two people near the dead man.
It was easy to tell from the desultory way they were moving that they had checked out the corpse and were making their way back up the cliffs. Even from where he stood, Zak knew the woman was crying, that for her this day would always loom larger and lonelier than any other. He had a day like that in his past. Almost everybody did.
When they got back into camp, Morse was gone, although his bike was still leaning against a tree. Zak put on his cycling shoes, packed his pockets with Clif Bars, filled his hydration pack from the store of creek water they had purified, and checked his tires and the air in his shocks. He kept thinking about how distraught Jennifer must be and how her story would influence Nadine’s thinking. Nadine might filter her thinking through Scooter’s murky viewpoint, too. The events of this morning would severely impact his relationship with Nadine, possibly in ways he had no control over. It shamed him to realize he was thinking about Chuck’s tragedy almost solely in terms of how it would affect his own life.
When the three of them reached the road where they’d left Stephens on watch, Morse was not there. Stephens stared at them guilelessly. “You can go back and get your gear ready,” said Muldaur. “We’ll keep watch.”
“Where is Morse?” Zak asked Stephens.
“He’s just going down to negotiate. Don’t worry. It’s what he does best.”
“He negotiates business deals,” said Giancarlo.
“All deals are basically the same.”
“We better go stop him,” said Zak.
“It’s too late,” said Muldaur. “He’s already talking to them.”
“What’s in the back of his waistband?” Giancarlo turned to Stephens, who stared at him blankly, then stepped into the road for a better view. “Is that my gun?”
“It’s a gesture of goodwill.”
“He’s got my gun.” Giancarlo stepped close to the smaller Stephens in a threatening manner.
“I don’t know anything…Okay. Yeah. Uh. I guess…he was thinking about it…I mean…we were thinking about it, and we, uh, we realized we were right and you were wrong.” Giancarlo grasped Stephens by the jersey and pulled him close. “I know you guys think it’s not necessary, but he thought it was, so he took the gun. Okay! He’s going to hand it over. He knows what he’s doing. It’s perfectly safe. It’s not loaded.” Stephens held his hand out, revealing half a dozen bullets.
“We have to stop this,” said Giancarlo.
“How are you planning to do that?” asked Muldaur.
“We leave him alone, he might calm Scooter down on his own,” said Zak. “I don’t think so, but he might. We go down there, and for sure all hell will break loose.”
“You guys just don’t get it,” Stephens insisted. “Morse is a professional negotiator. All this worry is for nothing.”
Five seconds later they heard the first gunshot.
26
Kasey and Scooter were the first ones to the road, followed by Jennifer and Bloomquist. Lagging behind was Perry, who was becoming more useless with each passing moment.
The cyclist in front of them was one of the two businessmen, dressed in sandals, an old dress shirt, and Lycra cycling shorts that Kasey noticed creepily revealed the outline of his pecker. Kasey was glad he wasn’t one of the firefighters, because he hadn’t liked any of them. They all seemed too cocky for their own good. Kasey hated cockiness, even though he’d been accused of it himself. But he wasn’t cocky. What he had was an innate self-confidence. “What do you want?” Kasey asked.
“I’ve come to talk. That’s all. Just me. Morse, remember? I’m alone. I know some things have happened, and what we all need to do is try to get our bearings and figure out exactly where we are.”
“Some things have happened?” Scooter burst forward. “Your fucking buddies killed my friend, that’s what happened. Some things?”
Kasey couldn’t help thinking the muscles in Morse’s quads were impressive under the light of the morning sky. All five of those guys had incredibly well-defined legs that rippled every time they moved, even the retard, and it made Kasey a little envious, made him think maybe he should work out more at the gym.
“So, okay. Okay,” Morse backed away from Scooter, his hands in an ameliorating position. “I hear you saying you believe my friends caused the death of your friend?”
“They fuckin’ murdered him. Polanski and that retard.”
“His name was Chuck, right?”
“Charles,” said Jennifer Moore, quietly. “Charles Hilton Finnigan Junior.”
“I’m not trying to be contentious. I only want to be sure what your side of it is. Then, if you folks don’t mind, I’d like to give our side. I mean…that’s fair, isn’t it? Don’t you want to hear what Polanski and Muldaur told us?”
“Why the hell aren’t they down here propagating their own lies?” said Scooter. “Coupla chickenshit motherfuckers.”
“Settle down,” said Kasey. “Tell him our side of the story. What’s wrong with that?”
“We already know our side.”
“This guy doesn’t.”
“I don’t see why I have to stand here and dignify this fucker by telling it again. I’ve been through a lot this morning. I’ve seen one of my best friends murdered right before my eyes.”
“I know,” said Morse. “I know, but right now each side only has one perspective. If we can share our perspectives, we can all see a broader picture of what happened. I’m on your team here.”
To Kasey, this Morse guy was making a certain amount of sense. It might do them all some good to lay it out and hear the opposition’s statement. He was still confused about what had actually happened and how they were going to present it to the authorities. If there were discrepancies, perhaps they should iron them out now instead of waiting for the police to pick it all apart. Besides, what kind of half-assed fabrication could they have come up with to justify pushing Chuck off the cliff?
Scooter gave Morse a version that was essentially the same one he’d been telling all along. He and Chuck ventured onto the bluff. Polanski got irritable. The moron showed up, and for whatever reason, probably on cue from
Polanski, the two cyclists rushed forward and pushed Chuck off. Scooter had been unable to do anything about it, though he’d tried to fend Polanski off. He assumed he would have been next if he hadn’t threatened them with karate.
“Let me get this straight,” said Morse. “You’re saying that without any warning, Zak and Muldaur, uh, Hugh, rushed forward and pushed your friend off?”
“Exactly right!” barked Scooter.
“What was your reason for going up there?”
“I don’t see how that makes any difference.”
“I’m just trying to get a fuller picture of the scene.”
“I wanted to talk to Polanski. I needed to tell him I was sorry for things I said last night.”
“Okay. Yeah, that sounds very considerate. And your friend? Why was he along?”
“He wanted to take a walk.”
“I can understand that. It’s a nice morning. He thought he’d get a little exercise to help him wake up. Fine. If you don’t have anything to add, I’ll give their side. But I have to warn you, it differs significantly.”
“Lies are always different from the truth,” said Scooter, glancing at his friends.
“Let him finish,” said Kasey. “I want to hear this.”
The warm winds were beginning to pick up and it must have been hard to hear from where she was, so Jennifer stepped forward beside Kasey. Roger and Fred remained behind the Land Rover. Ryan Perry was even farther back, hiding behind another truck. Scooter folded his arms across his chest, a defensive posture.
“Okay,” Morse said. “Remember, it’s not my story. It’s Polanski’s, as best I can remember it. And Muldaur’s. The way they tell it, Zak was out on the bluff as you two approached. He told you not to come out, that he would come in. You kept coming anyway.”
“It was just a stupid rock until he got pushy. A public rock, I might add. This is bullshit. We should shoot this fucker.”
“Be serious,” said Jennifer.
“I am serious.”
Morse hadn’t seen either Fred or his rifle.
Ignoring the hostility, Morse continued. “The way they tell it, Mr. Potter came out first, Mr. Finnigan behind. Potter put his hand out to shake with Polanski, but Polanski didn’t want to shake. That was when Mr. Potter reached for Polanski’s hand. At about this same time, Mr. Finnigan tried to pass Mr. Potter on a narrow section of the bluff. Mr. Potter, not realizing Mr. Finnigan was approaching, waved his arms, and at this point bumped Mr. Finnigan unexpectedly, knocking him off balance. Mr. Polanski and Mr. Muldaur moved forward to try to keep him from falling but weren’t able to rescue him.”
Kasey was thinking hard, because he realized suddenly that this could have been how it happened. But then, Scooter’s story more or less fit the picture, too, didn’t it? He’d replayed Scooter’s version in his mind too many times now to be sure which story best reflected reality.
“Bullshit!” yelled Scooter, stepping away from the group. “They pushed him. You liar!”
“I’m not here to stir up controversy.” Perspiration pimpled Morse’s brow. “Remember, I’m just repeating what they told me. I wasn’t out there, and neither were most of you. I think it’s important we all know exactly what the other camp is thinking.”
“Yeah, well, you’re right about one thing. You weren’t out there. But my friends all saw what happened, and they know I’m telling the truth and you’re telling a pack of lies!”
Morse looked nervous for the first time. “Check this out. I brought a token of goodwill. I don’t have to do this, and in fact, if you want the God’s honest truth, they told me not to, but I’m going to give you the only weapon we have in our camp. My gift to you. Okay? As proof that we don’t mean any harm.”
Morse pulled a pistol out of the back of his waistband and offered it to Kasey, barrel first. Kasey, who thought for a split second he was about to be shot, realized Morse wasn’t threatening him but was offering the gun—a revolver, large and heavy and silver, as lethal as anything Kasey had ever seen.
A rifle shot split the morning. Simultaneous with the noise Morse jumped into the air and landed in the road on his rump, a large patch of blood spreading across the front of his shirt. Kasey could see the hole in his rib cage when the wind blew the shirt aside. Kasey had never seen anyone more surprised than Morse, sitting in the road looking at Kasey as if he had fired the shot. Then, for whatever reason, Morse raised the pistol once again, and as he did so a second shot rent the quiet morning and a particle of Morse’s skull flew away like a bat wing. The second bullet slammed the upper half of his body to the ground.
Fred, who had fired the shots from behind the truck, ran out to the road, pointed the rifle up the hill, and said, “You better get on back in before they start returning fire.”
Ryan Perry darted out from behind his truck in a panic. “What did you do that for?”
“He was going to kill Kasey,” Fred said through gritted teeth. “Maybe all of you.”
“Jesus.”
“He was talking shit,” said Scooter, more concerned with Morse’s story than his death. “Everything he said was a lie.”
Bloomquist was shaking and cowering behind the Porsche. Perry appeared about to faint. Jennifer was crying again. Kasey felt like vomiting.
“Fred, I can’t believe you did that,” said Jennifer. “He was just trying to—”
“Kill us,” said Kasey, wondering where the words came from. “Fred’s right. He pulled that gun and pointed it at my apple sack. The cops would have mowed him down long before Fred did. You don’t ever let a man point a loaded gun at you. Especially a man who was just involved in the death of one of your friends.”
27
“Jesus Christ,” said Stephens. “Did you see that?”
They’d all seen it. Morse had been conversing, standing a good ten feet away from the nearest man in the Jeep group when he calmly removed the pistol from his waistband and tried to hand it to Kasey Newcastle. Before he even had the pistol all the way extended, two gunshots rang out and he fell backward. Without going down to check on him, they all knew instinctively that he was dead. Moments later Fred Finnigan came out to the road and pointed a rifle up the mountain at them. Before he could fire a third shot, they all scrambled to take cover.
“It had to have been an accident. I mean, nobody shoots a…well, you know, there was no animosity in Morse. He wasn’t somebody who…I don’t think he was ever in a fight in his life…”
Giancarlo crept to a pile of rocks and peered down the hill through the brush. “Two accidents, in case you’re counting. One to the chest and one to the brain. A third accident aimed our way right now.”
“He was pointing the gun at them,” Zak observed. “Morse was.”
“They didn’t have to shoot him. I mean, you think about…the gun was empty.” Near tears, Stephens made a choking noise that under different circumstances might have sounded like laughter. “The gun wasn’t loaded.”
“You don’t point a gun at anything you’re not planning to kill,” said Giancarlo. “And every gun is loaded. Simple rules to live by.”
“He stole it,” said Muldaur. “That’s what he did.”
“Hey, now wait a minute,” said Stephens, creeping over to where Zak, Muldaur, and Giancarlo were peering down the slope at Morse’s body from a point of concealment. “Don’t you guys be putting this on Morse. Morse was a skillful negotiator. One of the best. Like I said, none of this was his fault. God.”
Muldaur scampered away in a crouch toward their camp. Zak thought about following him and getting his bike, but he couldn’t see riding out onto the road and exposing himself to rifle fire until he had a better idea of what the Jeep camp would do next.
Zak saw movement below, a man running in a squat across the road, only to disappear behind a large knob on the side of the hill, another man darting up the hillside toward them, throwing himself behind a log forty feet in front of the first. Both had rifles. One of them fired, and Zak heard a b
ullet ricochet off a nearby rock and whir into the distance.
“Good God,” said Stephens. “They’re shooting at us.”
“We could shoot back, except we don’t have a gun,” said Giancarlo, sarcastically.
Just then Muldaur returned and knelt in the weeds behind them. Zak heard a zipping sound, as if a match had been struck, and then a fizzing and a loud pop that made them all jump. Muldaur was setting off firecrackers, big ones. In quick succession he produced four loud pops.
“What the hell are you doing?” Stephens asked.
Below, the two riflemen turned around and sprinted past Morse’s body and then vanished along the spur road.
“They don’t quite sound the same as gunshots,” said Giancarlo. “At least not to the trained ear, but I don’t think we have any trained ears down there.”
“Where’d you get the firecrackers?” asked Zak.
“I always have a couple in my backpack when I’m in the mountains. I got chased by a bear once.”
“Now they think we’re shooting at them,” said Stephens. “This is only making things, I mean…This is worse than…We’re never going to be able to talk sense to them now.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, people who talk sense to them tend to have accidents,” said Zak.
“I’m inclined to get the hell out of here right this minute,” said Giancarlo. “This might be our only opportunity.”
“Scooter must have them all convinced we murdered their friend,” said Zak.
Muldaur looked at Stephens. “You want to sit here and wait for the sun to come around the mountain so you can work on your tan, fine, but I’m outta here.”
“Me, too,” said Zak.
“Ditto,” said Giancarlo.
28
“What the heck are we supposed to do now?” Roger Bloomquist yelled. “Those were shots. They’ve got more guns.”
Even though Fred and Scooter had been right on his heels after the shots erupted, Kasey was embarrassed over how quickly he’d scurried across the road to hide behind the trucks. He wasn’t sure if he’d incited the flight or if the others would have fled anyway, but he could still feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins, as if he just drank a whole bottle of Jolt. Standing behind the Ford in various postures of readiness, guns cocked, trying to pretend they weren’t embarrassed about their mad flight, the three of them avoided one another’s eyes. Kasey was angry that the cyclists had fired on him but even angrier over how frightened he’d become. Before today, he never imagined that sort of instant fear existed anywhere.
