Double Prey (29 page)
In the seconds of silence that followed, Estelle could hear the gentle whisper of the approaching Expedition patrol vehicle, and the rancher turned to look. By now, the vehicle was close enough that they could see the shield on the doors and the roof-rack of lights. The figure behind the wheel could only be the sheriff, large and broad-shouldered, one arm out the window as if trying to stroke the heads of the chamisa that passed by the door.
“Spit it out, lady.” Prescott’s voice was almost a whisper.
“I think that Freddy Romero found the remains of Eddie Johns when he found that cat skull, sir. He found Johns’ handgun, and maybe knew exactly what was in the cave. He wanted to come back, but not with your daughter. Casey said that they had an argument about his reckless driving. You read in the newspaper about the discovery of the cat skull, or your daughter told you—either way, you wanted to warn Freddy away so you’d have time to cover up that little cave. You fired a shot at Freddy, and he panicked and crashed.” Estelle watched Prescott, watched the set of his shoulders, the placing of his feet, the flicking of his eyes. The whisper of the Expedition’s V-8 grew louder.
“That’s what I believe happened, sir.”
Prescott turned to watch Torrez’s approach. “I don’t know where you get these wild stories. You can’t prove a word of it.”
“Actually,” Estelle hefted the rifle, “I think we can.”
“You can’t just come onto my property and confiscate my goods.”
“If you’re in the clear on all this, then maybe that rifle will prove it,” Gastner said. “Think this thing through, Gus.”
“That rifle don’t have a thing to do with me and Eddie Johns,” the rancher said.
“What does, Gus? You think we’re not going to be able to trace that wrecked truck? Match up the damage to it with that old road grader of yours? Something like that?”
Gus Prescott looked down at the ground, then to his left as Sheriff Robert Torrez idled the county unit closer, coming to a stop a few feet behind Prescott’s truck, angled so that it didn’t block the sheriff’s view of them.
“I always thought a lot of you, Sheriff,” Prescott said finally. He looked up at Gastner, eyes sad.
“And we’ll work through this, Gus.” Gastner made it sound as if they were engaged in “working through” a simple neighborhood fence spat, Estelle thought. His mellow voice and grandfatherly manner could be a grand defuser, and she guessed that was his intent.
“That’s pretty damn easy for you to say.” Prescott looked as if he wanted to say something else, but it stuck in his throat. His gaze wandered off again toward his daughters, and Estelle saw a deep sadness there, more than the beer or rum-soaked depression of the chronic drinker during a moment of self-recrimination.
“Lemme get my keys,” he mumbled, and turned to his truck. Estelle stood a pace or two in front of the right front fender holding the carbine, while Sheriff Torrez now approached from the right rear. As the rancher turned to round the left front fender, Gastner took a step toward him, a casual enough move that kept him close. Gus opened the driver’s door and slipped inside, and did two maneuvers at once. The ignition key hung from the column, and instead of removing it, he twisted it forward, the big diesel starting with a sharp bark.
Without an instant’s hesitation, he yanked the gear lever into reverse and swung the door first toward him as if to close it, but then banged it hard open, aiming for Gastner.
The older man pivoted back a step, almost losing his balance. With a spray of gravel and dirt, the truck shot backward, its massive back bumper crashing into the left front fender of the Sheriff’s Expedition. Bodywork crumpled backward like tissue, jamming into the front wheel. Even as the crash resounded, Prescott yanked the gear lever into drive and accelerated hard, the homemade, welded iron grill guard catching the left front wheel, tire, and fender of Estelle’s Crown Victoria.
The undersheriff dove off to one side, sailing over the sedan’s hood to crash to the ground, the carbine skidding away. She felt more than saw the pickup swerve past her, and scrambled to her feet, yanking out her automatic.
Sheriff Torrez had reacted faster. As soon as the truck had driven clear of both Gastner and Estelle, he fired quickly, holding his .45 in both hands. The back window of Prescott’s pickup dissolved in a shower of glass, and Estelle could see the holes punching down the side of the truck even as it sped away. One of the rounds struck a back tire and howled away toward the west.
Both girls had dived to the ground by the fence, and the horses whirled in panic, nickering loudly. Christine’s arm was clamped around her younger sister, but Casey broke loose and dashed after the fleeing pickup truck.
“Daddy!” she screamed. Estelle twisted to yell a warning at Torrez, but saw that the sheriff was already holstering his weapon.
“Everybody all right?” Gastner sounded as excited as if somebody had dropped a box of books.
“Yes,” Estelle replied. She stepped around the mangled front of her car. The left front wheel was jammed inside the crumpled fender, pointing off in a direction all its own.
“Give a hand here,” Torrez shouted. He was yanking at the Expedition’s bodywork, then backed away. “Need something to pry with.” In a few seconds he returned with the handle from his handiman jack, and he and Gastner heaved at the stubborn sheet metal.
As they worked, Estelle watched the retreating pickup, heading out the same trail she had taken to meet with Casey at the windmill. There was no open road out there, no back trail to refuge. The undersheriff pulled her phone from her pocket and touched the speed dial. Gayle Torrez’s response was immediate.
“Gayle, Bobby and I are down at the Prescott ranch and need assistance from a uniformed deputy ASAP.”
“Pasquale is on the road just west of town. I’ll have him swing down that way.”
“We’ll be apprehending a single male subject who is armed and may be dangerous.” She hesitated. What did Gus Prescott think he could accomplish? Did he think the law would simply let him go? Did he think he could evade a manhunt? Judging by his effective performance as a truck driver, he wasn’t as inebriated as might first appear.
Run
, she thought.
Panic and run
. “Tell Thomas to alert us when he swings off the highway at Moore.”
“Affirmative.”
She felt the hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach as she watched Bob Torrez take the heavy steel bar and thrash the fender into submission. His face was flushed with both effort and anger. For his part, Gus Prescott was not going to change his mind and drive meekly back to them.
“And Gayle, you might as well have an ambulance en route. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be a wasted trip for them.”
“Affirmative. You want a heads-up to the state police? And Jackie Taber is in the deputies office doing paperwork. I can send her.”
“Affirmative on the SP’s, Gayle. And go ahead and send Jackie. This is going to be a confrontation thing, not a chase. There’s nowhere the suspect can go.”
”You guys be careful.”
“Absolutely.”
She snapped off the phone in time to see Torrez give a mighty heave that seemed likely to tip the Expedition on its side. Something cracked and the sheriff nodded. “Now we go,” he said, panting with the exertion.
“Casey!” Estelle shouted. The girl had lugged saddle and tack out of the small barn, and was in the process of rigging the mare, who’d been wearing only the hand-woven rope hackamore. Estelle jogged over toward the girls. She could see that Christine was confronting her sister, and had taken the bridle from her. Their conversation was intense and private, their faces just inches from each other.
“Casey,” Estelle said, “Do you know where your father is going?”
The girl was crying, and she waved a hand hopelessly, taking in the open country to the north and east.
“His favorite spots are the breaks over east, out beyond the windmill,” Christine said. She reached out a hand and gripped Estelle’s. “Don’t let him hurt himself,” she whispered.
“I’ll try my best. You girls need to stay here with your mother.” If Jewell Prescott had heard the gunshots and ruckus, there was no sign.
“The sheriff tried to
shoot
him,” Casey cried.
“No, he only wanted to stop the truck,” Estelle said. Behind her, the Expedition fired up, and she turned. “Promise me?” Christine nodded, but Casey was having none of it.
“If I can find him, I can make him listen,” she wept, and swung up on the mare. She didn’t wait for the bridle, but seized the hackamore and twisted the mare’s head around, away from her sister’s reach. The gate had been drawn to one side, and the mare made for it, the unsaddled gelding in hot pursuit.
Now that he was underway, Sheriff Robert Torrez drove with no particular sense of urgency. He let the battered SUV heave along the rough two-track out toward Lewis Wells, and occasionally in the distance they could see the dust cloud raised by Casey’s mare. The gelding kept easy pace, no doubt reveling in free running with no human to kick his ribs or jerk his mouth.
“So what’s he gonna do?” Torrez asked. “He don’t have nowheres to go.”
“We can hope just what Christine said…go out and find a quiet place to sit down and think.”
“He’s going to have a lot of time to do that,” Gastner said from the back seat. “You have to wonder,” he added, and braced himself as Torrez maneuvered over a short patch of slick rock bordering a small arroyo. “Is there a back road out of here?”
“Nope.” The sheriff shook his head. “Unless he wants to try driving cross-country. The arroyos ain’t going to let him do that.”
The windmill appeared first as a speck on the horizon, then gently turning, the rudder swinging the blades to track into the fitful breeze. Lewis Wells sprouted out of a swale, a slight depression where the cattle had trampled the grass to dust.
“That well was drilled in 1951,” Gastner announced as they approached the last slight rise before the swale. “I wish I could remember the homesteader’s name. It’ll come to me. Lewis bought the property, but he didn’t do the drilling.”
Torrez leaned forward as he drove, both arms on the steering wheel. To the north and east of the windmill, the country looked as if a giant had snapped folds into a tawny, rock-studded blanket.
“There she is.” Estelle pointed. She pulled the binoculars out of their case and found the image. Casey was urging her mare up a rough slope, the gelding following close.
“Over to the left,” Torrez added. She swung the binoculars and the pickup truck burst into focus. Prescott had pulled the vehicle near a copse of ragged, stunted elms, opportunistic little trees that responded to even the hope of water. They managed to tower over the sharp-spined acacias.
“Stop here,” Estelle said suddenly, and Torrez looked at her, puzzled. “No. Stop here, Bobby. Stop.” He did so, and she handed him the binoculars. “If we drive in on them, we’re going to push him to do something. We don’t want to do that, not with Casey over there. There’s no point in forcing his hand. He has nowhere to go.”
“You got that right,” Gastner leaned forward, his fingers clutching the prisoner grill that separated front from back.
Estelle popped the door. “I’m going to watch from here,” Torrez said. Estelle knew exactly what he meant even before he hefted the compact, scoped rifle from the rack that stood vertically beside the transmission hump. He could sweep the hillside four hundred yards away. “He ain’t going to want to talk to me anyway.”
“I think I should go,” Gastner said.
The undersheriff slipped out of the truck and opened Gastner’s locked, prisoner-proof door. “You’re feeling like a stroll, sir?”
“A
stroll
, yes. I don’t think Gus sees me as much of a threat.”
They watched Torrez arrange a folded jacket on the hood of the truck, with a heavy bean bag in front of that. He settled behind the rifle, working this way and that so that weapon didn’t rock on its short magazine. For a moment he visually roamed the hillside, eye close to the scope objective. The bolt of the rifle rode open.
“Casey’s tied her horse to a stump behind the acacia grove,” he said. “She’s makin’ her way up the slope.” Estelle saw the barrel of the rifle tilt upward, then drift from side to side before freezing. “He’s sittin’ on a big slab of sandstone,” the sheriff said. “Range finder says four hundred and twenty yards.”
“He’s in the open?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Then that’s where we’re going,” Estelle said. Of all the people in the world who might be behind the rifle, she felt absolute confidence in Robert Torrez, but the ghost of apprehension still raised its head.
“He’s got the shotgun with him,” Torrez said. “He’s holdin’ it between his legs, stock down.”
“
Ay
, ” Estelle whispered.
“Pay attention,” Torrez instructed. “I ain’t going to wait this time.” She knew exactly what he meant. It had been three years, and her side still ached on occasion where a nine millimeter slug had taken her through the margin of her vest. An instant after the pistol’s trigger had been pulled, Sheriff Robert Torrez had fired, a hundred yard shot that the .308 rifle bullet had covered in a tenth of a second…an instant too late. “If he makes a motion to point that shotgun your way, he’s a dead man.”
There was no comfort in leaving the decision making to Gus Prescott.
The undersheriff kept her pace slow for Bill Gastner’s benefit. The older man watched his feet instead of the hillside in the distance, but on occasion he would stop to look off toward where Gus Prescott sat in the sun, looking out across the peaceful prairie. No doubt he watched their progress. Whether he could catch the glint of sunlight on the scope that watched him from four hundred yards away was another matter.
Estelle tried to imagine the swirl of conflicting thoughts that must be torturing Gus Prescott at that moment. If he knew he was in the crosshairs, his pulse would be hammering in his ears, no matter how deep his depression or how rich the alcohol in his bloodstream. The father in him would react to Casey’s presence, mixing worry for her safety with the torture of what she must think of him.
As they crossed the swale toward the ragged, low hills, walking under the possible trajectory of the bullet from Sheriff Robert Torrez’s rifle, Estelle could come to no firm conclusion about Gus Prescott’s intentions. He had ambushed Freddy Romero, rather than facing him eye to eye. If he had shot Eddie Johns, he’d done so in the back of the head, when the man was preoccupied. He hadn’t confronted Johns face to face. In his own front yard, he’d recognized that he was outnumbered three to one, and fled…to this rock in the sun.
“Wait a second.” Gastner stopped, hands on his hips, squaring his shoulders, sucking in air. “I should do this more often. The hiking part, I mean.”
Estelle looked back toward where Torrez waited, then turned and surveyed the hill ahead of them. Casey had stopped a dozen paces below her father, and they appeared to be talking. The sound of another engine attracted her attention, and she turned in time to see Christine’s little station wagon pull in beside the sheriff’s department Expedition.
“
Ay
, ” she breathed, and pointed. “Christine.”
“She’s got common sense,” Gastner said. “She won’t interfere.”
“She can’t just stand there and watch someone point an assault rifle at her father,” Estelle said.
“But that’s exactly what she’s going to have to do,” Gastner replied. “Nope, here she comes.”
Estelle reached around and removed her radio, making sure it was set to channel three. “Bobby, he’s not going to do anything while the girls are here.”
The radio squelched twice as Torrez touched the transmit bar to indicate he’d heard.
“We hope he won’t,” Gastner added. “He’s fresh out of choices.” He took another deep breath. “I’m ready.”
His deeds had, in effect, admitted to involvement somehow with two deaths, but Gus Prescott actually hadn’t
said
anything incriminating. Estelle knew that whether he could actually bring himself to utter those words while he looked his daughters in the eye was another story.
She skirted a jumble of smaller boulders that had slumped down from the hillside, and when she was sure that Prescott had a clear view of her, she stopped, arms held out to the side.
“Sir, we need to talk.”
“Just stay away,” Prescott replied.
“Can’t do that, sir. I’m concerned for Casey’s safety.” She could see the girl, now off to the side somewhat, still a dozen feet from her father. “Casey, are you all right?”
“Yes.”
Estelle shifted position somewhat but Bill Gastner stayed well behind her, positioned to intercept Christine. Estelle could see that Prescott held the shotgun between his knees, the barrel pointed upward. If the rancher leaned his head to the left, he could touch the blued barrel with his ear. One hand was on the fore end of the shotgun, the other resting on his knee. The trigger guard was concealed between his knees, but it would take only a breath of time for him to drop his hand to the trigger, a few more second fragments to move the barrel so that it pointed somewhere other than into the open sky.
In her left hand, Estelle held the portable radio, and she pushed and held the transmit bar so that Torrez could listen in on the conversation. “Sir, will you put the shotgun down? Just lay it on the rocks beside you.”
“It’s okay right where it is.” Prescott’s voice cracked a little, and that was a good sign. He hadn’t settled into the dangerous calm of a man who’d made up his mind.
“What do you plan to do with it, sir? I don’t see that you have many choices. I hope you’ll make the right one.”
“I don’t have to talk to you.”
“No, sir, you don’t. Do you have a cell phone with you?”
He laughed, and shook his head. “Cell phone.”
“If you do, you might use that, sir. Call someone you
will
talk to.”
“Well, I don’t need to talk to nobody. I got myself into this mess all by myself. I guess I can get out of it, one way or another.”
“That’s what concerns me, sir.”
“Don’t care if it concerns you or not, lady.” He nodded at the badge on her belt. “Wearin’ that don’t make you God.”
“It also concerns your daughters, sir. I can’t believe that you want Casey and Christine to have to live with this.”
“It ain’t
their
problem.”
“Oh, yes it is, sir. Let me draw some pictures for you, sir. If you swing that shotgun around and point it at me or Casey…” and she held up the radio, the transmit bar still depressed. “You can see the sheriff across the way. He’s watching you through the scope of his rifle, sir. And listening as we talk. If you make a threatening move, you’ll be dead. Just like that. You won’t even hear it coming.”
She saw a flicker of anxiety on Prescott’s face, and his eyes squinted, focusing in the distance first, then darting to his youngest daughter, then to Christine, who was just coming up behind Bill Gastner. The older man reached out a hand and stopped the girl, who nodded quickly and looked up toward her father.
“Is that what you want your daughters to see? To live with? I can’t believe that. You want that image to be their last memory of you?”
“I…I ain’t going to do you no harm.”
“That’s good to hear, sir.” She smiled at him. “I’ve been harmed enough in the past couple of years.”
“Yeah, well.”
“That leaves some other choices. Are you planning to harm yourself, sir? Have you ever seen what a 12 gauge shotgun does to someone?” Casey whimpered something and out of the corner of her eye, Estelle saw the girl sink to her knees. “I have, sir, and I can’t believe that you want the girls to witness that. To live with that?” Her thumb still held the transmit bar, and she shifted her grip a little. Turning away so she could look out across the open prairie, she shook her head. “So beautiful, sir. Your ranch is so beautiful.”
Prescott stated to say something, but she cut him off. “I was out at the windmill earlier with Casey. She tells me that this is one of her favorite places. Yours too.”
“That ain’t your affair.”
“Sure enough not, sir.”
“Daddy,” Casey said softly, but couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Maybe you can imagine what this spot will mean to her if you go through with this.”
“You don’t know what I mean to do. Don’t think you do.”
“Well, sir, if you’re not going to shoot
me
, and you’re not going to shoot your
daughters
, and you’re not quail hunting, then that leaves you. That’s the way I see it, sir.”
“You can just get off my land.”
“Sir, that’s not going to happen, and you know it.” He looked at her for a moment, and she repeated herself. “That’s not going to happen, sir. And I think that you’re smart enough to know that. When there’s an incident, we don’t just ‘go away.’ In fact, more officers are enroute. My deputies, the state police. Even an ambulance. And you know what? I want it all to be a wasted trip for them.”
“I ain’t going to talk to them.”
“You don’t have to, sir. You can talk to me. Or Mr. Gastner, if you want. You owe it to your daughters now, sir. You owe it to them to clear the air. Years ago, you and Eddie Johns had an argument. What did he say to you, Gus? Did he want you to go into business with him? Is that it? To hook up with the Mexicans?”
“Nothin’ like that. I had no dealings with him.”
“He made some remark about Christine? Is that what it was?” When Prescott didn’t reply, Estelle shifted the radio to her right hand, relaxing a cramping thumb. “We all know how Johns was, sir. Christine tells me that he made passes at her down at the Broken Spur. Is that where it started, sir? You were protecting her, is that it? Who could fault you for that?”
“That son-of-a-bitch…” he started to say, and cut it off. He closed his eyes, and the side of his head actually touched the shotgun barrel.
“He came out to talk to you one day while you were working on the road for Miles Waddell, didn’t he, sir. Is that it? Things went from bad to worse after that?”
“I said it ain’t your concern.”
“How could it not be, sir. We recovered a body. The victim had been shot through the head, just like the jaguar. Now how would that not be our concern? And the
why
of it all is our concern, too, sir. Self-defense can come in many forms, sir. We know what kind of man Eddie Johns was.”
“Shootin’ somebody in the back of the head ain’t self-defense,” Prescott said.
“Well, sir, that depends on what was said, what was going on. If you felt that Johns was a threat to you…” Prescott’s eyebrow twitched. “Or to your family…” When he didn’t respond further, she added, “I think that there’s a lot of the story that will come out. You have to give it a chance. I know you had a reason for what you did, and you thought it was a good reason, sir.”
“The boy,” Prescott said, and he looked toward Casey, eyes pleading. “I just wanted to scare him off. I knew where he’d been, what he was diggin’ into. I know the girl’s sweet on him, and I don’t care about that. I know you won’t believe that, but it’s true. But he found the cave. I know he found it. I didn’t know what to do.”
“How was shooting at him going to scare him off, sir? Wouldn’t he just go to the authorities?”
Prescott actually laughed. “That little Mexican? I don’t think so. He didn’t want no one findin’ out what he found.”
“The handgun, you mean?” She watched Prescott’s face carefully. If the rancher had known that Freddy Romero had picked up Johns’ automatic, and in fact had it with him on the four-wheeler, why hadn’t he just scrambled down into the arroyo and retrieved it after the crash? Did he panic? Panic so thoroughly that he had forgotten to go back and seal off the little cave?
“Maybe that.” Prescott remained pointlessly cagey, as if he had cards to play.
“What difference would that have made? There was no connection between the gun and you, sir.”
The rancher shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t think it through.”
“Sometimes we just act,” Estelle said gently. “Like the Romero boy. He lied about the location of the cat’s skeleton because he wanted to explore the rest of the cave, and find what there was to find. He didn’t think it through.”
“I didn’t mean to hit him.” Prescott cleared his throat. “Didn’t even mean to
shoot
. It just went off…”
“That’s what the evidence shows, sir. Let us help you,” Estelle said, seeing him sinking into that easy sea of self-recrimination. “Let Casey and Christine help you, sir. You did your job protecting them as best you could.”
“That Romero kid gettin’ killed was an accident,” Prescott said, addressing Casey directly for the first time. “I didn’t even mean to shoot. I didn’t hit him, and I didn’t mean to hit his four-wheeler. If you’d been with him…”
“But you knew she wasn’t, sir,” Estelle said.
“I just saw him comin’, drivin’ like hell’s afire, and I didn’t pay attention. God damn rifle went off without a thought.”
“You didn’t climb down to check on him, sir.”
“Nope. I know dead when I see it.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I guess I got some things to answer for, ain’t that right?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right.”
“Might be easier just to let the sheriff…” His gaze drifted out, across the valley where the sheriff waited. Estelle knew that the rifle’s bolt would be closed on a live round, the safety off, Torrez’s rock-steady finger close to light trigger.
“You think about your daughters before you take that road, sir.”
“Daddy,” Casey said softly, “let them help you.”
For a very long minute, Gus Prescott said nothing. And then, with exaggerated care, he leaned the shotgun forward a bit and waited while Estelle stepped forward and took it from him.