Lizardskin

by Carsten Stroud

  Ronny came back with the Motorola hailer. McAllister crawled back to the end of the tractor-trailer. “You there, by the tank!”

  Nothing. Maybe some movement.

  “This is the po—”

  Something went thoong and then—unbelievably—there was the whirring sound of—a kind of whistle—what the?—then a huge metallic clang hit the tractor-trailer near Beau.

  There was—there was a god-dammed arrow stuck ten inches into the back of the tractor-trailer. It had pretty blue feathers and a dark metal shaft, stuck in there good and solid. McAllister stared at it for maybe five seconds, not ready to believe what he was seeing.

  “Ronny, are you seeing what I’m—”

  Another basso thoong sound. McAllister scrambled back into the cover beside the driver and Ronny. The trailer caught another shaft. It hit the outside wall like a hammer blow.

  Arrows, McAllister was thinking. He couldn’t get his mind around it. Somebody was shooting arrows at him.

  Two more thoong sounds, and two more shrill whirrings.

  Chunk!

  Chunk!

  Joe Bell felt the need to respond. The three of them heard Bell pull his slide back.

  “No!” McAllister shouted. Ron and the J. B. Hunt driver were already running for the ditch at the side of the road.

  “I’m just gonna—” That sound again, and the whistling whirring. Joe Bell was up and leaning across the pump. The shaft came in like judgment, sliced into his left shoulder. Beau could see the plaid shirt open up and the vivid red flesh underneath.

  Bell stood up and bellowed once. He still had the shotgun in his right fist. That gun had everybody’s full attention now, the arrow stuck in his shoulder. Round and round she goes, thought McAllister, not able to drop, just watching the barrel and watching Joe Bell stagger around the end of the pump island, watching him come forward now, blood running from the slice in his upper arm—Christ, that would hurt. Everybody in the area who could see what was going on tried to dig a little farther into the dirt or tiles on the snack-bar floor or the bottom of the truck cab—but Bell wasn’t dropping that goddamned Winchester.

  Bell squeezed one off. The big gun kicked back in his hand.

  A swarm of fat black bees hurtled off into the blue.

  Jesus, thought Beau. He’s got double-ought in there. Twelve steel balls as big as marbles.

  So it came to McAllister that maybe he should just plain shoot Joe Bell. Otherwise they were all going to die.

  “Bell! Put the gun down!”

  Bell was out there, beyond control. His face was sweaty and bright as a road flare as he came out in the open now, bringing that big barrel around one more time, leaning back in his Tony Lamas, his big white belly out over the top of his jeans, his shirt ripped and flapping in the wind, his mouth wide open in the middle of that huge red beard.

  Beau pulled the Browning out and lined the red foresight up over Joe Bell’s right foot.

  “Bell! You gotta stop firing!”

  Boom! Bell got off another shell. Maybe he had visions of Wyatt Earp in his head. Maybe he was seeing it all on Eyewitness News. This one zipped and zanged into the gravel about ten feet to one side of the propane tank. Steel shot skittered crazily off across the highway.

  Beau saw a couple of things in a crystalline bubble of hallucinatory intensity.

  He saw the way Bell’s blue jeans had faded to white along the top of his right leg and the darker indigo color along the rumpled sideseam.

  He saw the frayed threads on the cuff of his own right sleeve and the sheen of silicon grease on the dull black slide of his Browning.

  And in his mind, he saw Lieutenant Eustace Meagher in front of a line of his fellow cops, McAllister standing there while Eustace pulled off McAllister’s stripes and somebody off to the left beat an accusatory rattle on a little muffled drum.

  McAllister breathed out slowly and squeezed off one round, aiming for Bell’s right foot. The Browning bucked in his hand, and his ears rang from the blast.

  Damn, thought Beau, watching in a cold detached way as the round hit Bell in the muscle of his ass, square in the middle of his wallet. Why do they make these things so goddamned loud?

  Bell jerked, reeled, and staggered left. He looked across at McAllister, his face the very picture of outrage and injured dignity. He twisted to regard the damage in his back pocket, then looked up at McAllister again.

  “You god-damned asshole! You shot me!”

  “Somebody had to, Bell! You were gonna—”

  And now Bell felt the muscle give, and he started to go down to his right. As he came down he brought the shotgun around and he was trying to …

  … get that barrel lined up …

  … on what?

  … on me, thought McAllister.

  Now what? Do I kill Joe Bell?

  When Bell hit the ground, the shotgun bounced out of his hand and clattered across the pavement. McAllister was out around the J. B. Hunt trailer and halfway to Bell when he remembered that somebody had been shooting arrows at him only a minute ago.

  “Hey, over there! No shooting, eh?”

  Jesus. Listen to yourself, McAllister. Like it was half-time or something.

  The way the sun was lying, it was hard to see into the enclosure. He stood there in the open for a second, waiting for another one of those lunatic arrows to come flying across the parking lot. Bell was trying to crawl toward the shotgun. McAllister could hear him swearing to himself.

  Ronny Thornton came out from the front of the tractor cab and put his Smith over the propane area.

  “Ronny, don’t shoot into that tank.”

  Ronny’s hair was in a tangle, and a clump of grass was stuck to his shoulder. “I’m not gonna shoot, Sarge. Anyway, I think they’re gone.”

  “Then why the hell’re you pointing your piece over there? Get back on the air, tell everybody in Charlie Sector—tell everybody in District Four, get Radio to notify the Counties and get a BOLO out for three male Indians and a juvenile female. They’re armed and dangerous. Last seen this ten-twenty. Tell ’em what’s happened here. Now. Go do it!”

  Thornton nodded once and went back to the cruiser at a jog.

  McAllister walked over to the shotgun, picked it up, and jacked it empty. Joe Bell rolled over onto his side and said something. Beau couldn’t make out anything but “McAllister.” He figured it had something to do with lawyers.

  “Ronny, get on the radio and find out where the hell Fire and Rain is. We’re gonna need them.”

  He walked over to the Indian boy on the ground, got down on one knee, and put two fingers of his right hand under the boy’s shirt, just where the ribs met the breastbone.

  Not a sound. And nothing at the neck. The kid had a look on his lean unmarked face that McAllister had seen before. Although we all live surrounded by death and dying, every one of us believes he will live forever. The truth is always a surprise. The boy had long blue-black hair; it would have run down past his shoulders if it hadn’t been matted with drying blood. He had a Plains Indian look about him. Clean lines and that heavy-bodied, skinny-legged shape.

  McAllister touched one of the boy’s eyes. No reflex. No pupil change. Down at his left side, a loop of intestine and a pink bulb of kidney projected through the bloody ruin of his shirt.

  Bled to death while I was jerking around with Bell. Poor little bastard. One more sorry-ass useless killing. Kid had good taste in boots, too.

  McAllister patted the boy down. He found an eelskin wallet in his back pocket and a large bowie knife in a beaded doeskin scabbard at his right side.

  He tugged the knife out. A buck knife with a solid bone handle. A foot long, and sharp as an ex-wife.

  So what? He could pat down half the citizens of Montana and find some kind of knife.

  He headed across the lot toward the propane tank, holding the Browning out to one side, trying to look like a reasonable guy, the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to shoot an arrow into.

&nb
sp; Still, it was a long walk in the afternoon sunlight.

  The little fenced-off yard was empty. Behind the tank he found a sliver of blue feather lying in the dirt.

  Now that would be your basic clue, right?

  Or was it a sign?

  A sign of what? Times like these, Beau was glad he was just a patrol sergeant. Let the boys from the Criminal Investigation Bureau figure out this Indian voodoo.

  The dirt was scuffed up. Bootprints and some kind of patterned grid, maybe a running shoe. The sign ran to the back of the fence and continued on the far side. Wherever they had got to, they had done it on foot. Behind Bell’s Oasis there was a low coulee that ran a couple of hundred yards up into the hills. And beyond the hills, half of Montana, the Bull Mountains, Canada. He could see a faint trail running up into the brown prairie grass.

  McAllister had no inclination to go tear-assing up the slope and into the hills after anybody with arrows as mean-looking as the ones stuck into the rear of that van. He was too old and too smart. Maybe the National Guard would let them borrow one of their Hueys and a pilot.

  Rita Sonnette pulled up into the yard as McAllister got back to where Ron was using a field dressing on Bell’s wound. She got out of her cruiser and started pushing tourists and truckers away from the dead boy by the gas pumps. Rita was a short, well-constructed lady with green eyes and deep copper-colored hair.

  Joe Bell was putting out a fair amount of unfriendly vibrations in spite of the hole in his butt. They could hear a siren in the distance.

  “Bell—I tried to—”

  “I got nothing to say to you, McAllister.”

  “I told you to stop shooting that artillery piece all over the place. You know the blast radius of that tank better than I do.”

  “You ever hear of fire control? I was in the war!”

  “Yeah? You weren’t controlling a damned thing.”

  “I was protecting my property and my place of business. And the citizens. I got a constitutional right. You had no call to shoot me. Why didn’t you shoot one of those Indians?”

  “You shoot that boy over there?”

  “You’re damned right I did! It was him or me.”

  “He drew on you? He showed a weapon?”

  “Of course he did! Otherwise I wouldna hadda shoot him. I don’t usually shoot my customers. Word gets around.”

  “What exactly did he do?”

  “They all come in in that blue Chevy pickup over there. Soon as I see the weapons out, I know what’s happening. The one I shot, he comes right into my office with a knife out, so I braced him and backed him down.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Now! It just happened. Christ, Beau! Ain’t you got a watch?” Bell jerked as Ron taped the pad down. “Jeez, Thornton, where’d you get your training?”

  The Fire and Rain wagon rolled up in a cloud of dust and a hearty hi-ho-plasma, the way those guys like to do. They came running across the lot, and McAllister could almost hear them going hut-hut-hut to themselves, the way they saw it done on Rescue 911. Same as the young cops nowadays—Ray-Bans and black leather gloves and zombie cool. Television was taking all the fun out of being a cop.

  McAllister patted Bell on his good shoulder. “I’m sorry about shooting you. We’ll haveta talk later. You hang in there, Joe.”

  “I got a hole in my wallet you could stick your dick through, McAllister. Fucked up all my cards, my ID, everything!”

  “I’ll buy you a new wallet.”

  “Hey, this ain’t no joke! I can’t walk, I can’t work. Somebody’s gonna have to make good on this.”

  “Man, don’t tell me you’re gonna sue? What the hell’s Montana coming to, a hard case like you goes squealing to a lawyer?”

  “Jesus, McAllister. We’ll see if you can still laugh with a lawsuit stuffed up your ass.”

  “Long as you’re somewhere in Montana, Bell, I can always find something to laugh at.”

  “We’ll see, McAllister. We’ll see.”

  “No doubt, Joe. No doubt. You go with him, Ronny. Get a complete statement, and get a Polaroid of that wound there. And go around, take some shots of those arrows right where they are. The CIB guys’ll want that.”

  He stepped back as they hoisted Bell onto a gurney and hut-hut-hutted him away to the van.

  They’ll hit the siren as soon as they get the back doors slammed, thought McAllister. He sighed. Another lawsuit in the works there.

  He walked across to where Rita Sonnette was standing next to the dead boy. A circle of the curious and the bored stood a few yards away, staring at the body with that kind of face people get in the presence of violent death. Sick, avid, hungry. McAllister thought they looked like those walking corpses in Night of the Living Dead. They all had that blankness.

  “You’re standing in the blood there, Rita.”

  She jumped and stepped back.

  “God. I’m sorry, Sergeant.”

  “No problem. Go get some of that crime scene tape. We might as well get this place organized for the CIB guys. Seal off that blue pickup, but don’t touch it and don’t go inside it. I wanna be able to tell the dicks that no patrolman of mine screwed up their crime scene. I’ll get these people on the move here. And get those arrows outta that J. B. Hunt trailer. Do it without screwing up the shafts, okay? We might get prints off them.”

  It took Rita and McAllister awhile to close down Bell’s Oasis and empty out the snack bar. They put a tarpaulin over the dead boy and wrote down the names and numbers of anybody who would admit to seeing anything.

  Most of the witnesses agreed that the first thing they noticed was Joe Bell coming out of the station with the barrel of his shotgun stuck into the belly of that dead boy over there.

  He got the same story from the waitress on duty. She was a weathered-looking number with pale yellow hair that floated around her head like cotton candy. She said her name was Marla LeMay and had ID to prove it, which was good enough for McAllister. She had that seen-it-all-and-seen-it-first look that made McAllister think of cops, hookers, and old nuns.

  “How long you been working for Bell, Marla?”

  “Six weeks. Maybe seven. I got a place over in Hardin, near the post office? I work double shifts here ’cause Joe can’t seem to keep his help.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “He lets his little head think for his big head.”

  “Oh—that doesn’t bother you?”

  “No. First time he tried anything, I put my hand down the front of his jeans and give his tail a twist. Then I told him if I leave I’m goin’ straight to Montana Labor and sue his ass off. Plus I’d come back and kill his dog.”

  “You sure Bell has a dog?”

  “If he doesn’t I’ll buy him one and then kill it.”

  They both laughed.

  “Okay, Marla. What’d you see today?”

  “Can I just not say anything?”

  “Why?”

  “I need this job. I just don’t like lying to cops, either.”

  “Why would you have to lie to me?”

  “Because I ain’t at all sure anybody had to get shot today.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what you saw, and I’ll work out where I mighta heard it?”

  “Bullshit, Sergeant.”

  “Call me Beau.”

  “Bullshit, Beau. Call me Marla.”

  “I’ve been calling you Marla.”

  “Yeah. But now you got my permission.”

  “Why’s it bullshit?”

  “I been to court a coupla times. You guys are always saying hey, well now, you’ll never have to testify. Then you go back to the office, and some college-kid DA says fuck that. Subpoena the bitch.”

  He smiled down at her again.

  “You’re a smart woman. You can see how sometimes shit happens and all you can do is try to scrape it up. I got a poor dead boy over there, died while Joe Bell was playing at Wyatt Earp. Bell says it was self-defense, but all I can see is a dead kid
. I don’t see a cash bag. I see arrows—an odd choice for armed robbery, but that’s okay. Everybody says the first they saw was Bell backin’ the dead guy out of his office with his Winchester. Is that what you saw?”

  “I saw the boy go into Joe’s office. I heard them talking. Then I seen the boy backing out, and Joe’s got that shotgun shoved right into the kid’s belly.”

  “Were they fighting?”

  “It looked like a fight from where I was at.”

  “Yeah, but what was being said?”

  “I really couldn’t hear. By that time, some of the customers were screaming and a lot of people were trying to get out of the way.”

  “And the kid?”

  “He wasn’t saying anything. He was just trying to back up without falling.”

  “You see a weapon?”

  “Yeah. I saw a knife. The kid had it in his hand when he came backing out.”

  “Was it in his hand when he went in?”

  “I didn’t see it. Knife like that, you notice it.”

  “Was Bell in his office when the kid went in?”

  “Yeah. He’s always in there. Has a bunch of skin magazines under the desk. We call him Zamfir.”

  “Why Zamfir?”

  “Bell’s a master of the skin flute.”

  McAllister thought it over. Bell said he saw weapons. When? Not from his office. His office had a window that opened onto the snack bar and cash area, which led out to the pumps. There was a large plate-glass window cluttered with oil cans and antifreeze bottles. There was too much inventory stuck in the window for Bell to see out into the pump area. So you couldn’t see the pumps from Bell’s office, just out into the snack bar and the store. So when did Bell see the weapons?

  “What happened then?”

  “Bell backed the kid outside. Then he …”

  McAllister waited. She’d either say it or not say it.

  “Kid did have a knife, Beau.”

  “True.”

  “So that makes it self-defense, right?”

  Not exactly, thought McAllister. Something about this thing just hit him as strange. Bell had a shotgun over the kid. The kid was backing away. Any cop who used deadly force in that situation would be looking at permanent administrative leave and maybe even criminal charges.