Out of Season (31 page)
We flashed by the airport, the final set of lights before the darkness of the prairie turned our headlights into a white tunnel.
“If Edwin went this way, he’s got about a fourteen- or fifteen-minute head start, and that means no matter how fast you go, you won’t catch him before he reaches the ranch, unless he’s puttering along at thirty miles an hour.”
“Even with his old truck, he’ll do better than that,” Estelle said.
Eighteen miles out of Posadas, a single set of taillights popped into view. Well before I could judge that they were small, low, and close-set, Estelle had drifted the car into the left lane. I reached down and flipped the switch by the radio console that activated the grille wiggle-waggles, and the little Subaru station wagon jumped to the right like a kicked puppy.
“They won’t be drowsy for a few minutes,” I muttered as we blasted past. I turned the red lights off. For the rest of the run to the Newton intersection, Estelle kept the car ballistic, the speedometer registering well over a hundred miles an hour.
And even as we awakened the sleepy little hamlet with our passing, it was clear to me that Edwin Boyd hadn’t nursed his old truck along. As we turned onto the dirt road southbound from Newton, not a trace of dust hung in the air from his passing.
I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It would have been almost impossible for Johnny Boyd to beat us to the ranch coming in from the county road to the east. That meant, with just a bit of luck, that we’d reach the ranch before he did, or before the two officers on his tail did. That was the only comforting thought just then.
We slid into the Boyds’ front yard, and the billows of dust drifted off like great ghosts, illuminated by the single arc light.
A figure materialized on the front step and before I could make out who it was, Estelle said, “Maxine.” The woman bustled across toward us, and I pulled myself out of the car. I could hear the roar of vehicle engines in the distance.
“Maxine,” I said, and she surprised me by catching me by both arms as if she wanted to be sure I would stay rooted in place. “Where’s Edwin?” I asked. “Did he come here?”
“Not five minutes ago,” she wailed, and then the words came out in a flood. “He’s so upset, and he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, just that he was in awful trouble somehow, something about Dick Finnegan being killed in town. And then he left. I’ve been trying and trying to get ahold of Johnny, but I don’t know where he is. And then I thought I should call Charlotte Finnegan…but I just couldn’t. Not until I knew for sure. I was just on the telephone with your office when I saw you drive in. Oh, Sheriff…”
“Where did Edwin go, do you know?” Estelle asked, her voice warm and gentle.
Maxine shook her head. “He just kept saying, ‘They’ll be along soon. They’ll be along.’ He didn’t say who. And when I tried to make sense out of what he was saying, he just said, ‘I’ve killed Dick Finnegan. They’ll be along directly. They know where I’ll be.’ What does all this mean, Sheriff?”
I didn’t try to shake loose from her grip, but I turned my head as Johnny Boyd’s pickup truck rounded the corner below the barn. “Which way did Edwin go, Maxine?”
“Oh, thank God he’s back,” she said, ignoring my question.
The pickup truck came in much too fast and slid to a stop in a shower of stones, narrowly missing the rear end of the patrol car and stopping within a hairsbreadth of the back wall of the house.
“Edwin was here, not more than five minutes ago,” I shouted as Johnny Boyd sprang from his truck. The rancher stopped as if I’d struck him. “He’s left already, so he must have passed you. He didn’t head out to the north.”
“He ain’t done that, or the law that’s behind me, either.” Even as he said that, the department Bronco idled into the yard with an astonishing display of self-restraint on its driver’s part. Pasquale pulled up so that his vehicle was almost touching Boyd’s back bumper. In order to leave, the rancher would have to either move the county vehicle or take the back bedroom off the ranch house.
Johnny strode toward me. “Maxine, where is he?” he snapped.
“Johnny, he wouldn’t tell me where he was going. He drove out just the way you came in. He said you all would know where he is. That’s all I know. That’s really all I know. That’s all he said. He was in such a state.”
“He drove right out there?” Boyd said in disbelief, looking at the east driveway.
“Right out there,” she said. “Not five minutes ago.”
“And he didn’t come back?” She shook her head. “Well, what the hell…” Boyd said. He swept off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “He ain’t gone far, then. And how the hell would we know where he was headed?”
“Estelle, turn off the car,” I said, and then shouted at Pasquale to do the same. “Now be still a minute.” One of the dogs in the house was yapping, and I heard the quiet thump of the door as Neil Costace got out of the Bronco. After that, the silence fell heavily. We all listened hard, and finally could hear it—the distant sound of an engine, laboring in low gear.
“Now that’s got to be—” Johnny started to say, and I held up a hand sharply. For another few seconds, the sound continued, but it was impossible to sense the direction from which it was coming. The sound floated this way and that across the prairie, and then abruptly ceased. “That’s over by the juniper drag,” Boyd said. “South of here.” He started back toward his truck.
“Johnny, wait,” I said. “What’s he doing?”
“Now how would I know that?” the rancher retorted without turning. He thumped a hand on the front fender of Pasquale’s Bronco. “You going to move that, sonny, or do you want me to drive through you?”
“Hold it,” I snapped. “Goddam it, just hold on. It doesn’t make sense for any of us to run into this blind. Your wife just told me that Edwin admitted killing a man and that he’s spooked. You don’t go charging after him.”
Johnny turned and took several steps toward Maxine. “He told you
what
?”
Maxine reached out a hand to her husband. “Johnny, what’s happening? Edwin said he killed Dick Finnegan. That’s all he would say. And that you all would know where he’d be. Then he just drove off.”
A second engine note drifted to us then, the deep, guttural sound of a heavy diesel. “What’s that?” I asked.
Boyd listened, his brows knit. “That’s the dozer, Sheriff.”
“A bulldozer?”
He nodded.
“If that’s Edwin, what the hell is he doing?”
“There’s a pasture south of here where we’ve been chaining down juniper the past few days. Nobody’d be down there but him or me, so that’s got to be Edwin.” The diesel roar increased, and I could hear an occasional metallic clank of the tracks.
“Goddam,” Johnny Boyd muttered. “You can see some of that juniper where we’re workin’ from over behind the barn.” We followed him around the black hulk of the long, low three-sided structure, past the enormous framework of the windmill tower. I didn’t have my flashlight and walked like a flat-footed old drunk, trying to keep my balance.
“There,” Boyd said from some point in the darkness ahead of me. His ranch yard might have been second nature to him in the dark, but to me, it was a featureless black box. I looked in the general direction of where “there” might be and saw a faint wash of lights.
“That’s the dozer,” Boyd said. “I don’t know what the hell he’s doing. Or where the hell he’s going. That isn’t where we’ve been working. He’s headin’ off to the south and east.”
“William’s Tank,” Estelle said quietly, and she turned and made for the car.
“Ride with us,” I said to Johnny Boyd, and he hesitated. Maybe he was wondering what Estelle knew and he didn’t. If that was the case, he had company. But she had already reached the vehicle, and I knew better than to stand there and demand explanations from her. “Look,” I said, “your brother’s in deep trouble. There are some things I need to know before there’s any kind of confrontation, and I think you can help.”
“You need to get some backup out here,” Neil Costace snapped, and I looked at him in surprise as he continued, “You’ve got some crazy man loose on a bulldozer. He’s already killed one man, and there’s no telling what he’ll do next.”
Boyd half turned in angry response, and I grabbed him by the arm. “Listen, Johnny.” I jerked his arm hard, pulling him toward me. I lowered my voice. “Enough’s enough. If we’re going to help your brother through this, then you’ve got to tell me what you know. Goddam it, trust me just this once. Ride with us.”
“We’ll go on ahead and cut him off,” Costace said, and his words were in that “Let’s lynch him, boys” tone that riled the crowds in old western films into action.
“The hell you will,” I said, and the ludicrous image of our new county Bronco being crushed like an aluminum can by the bulldozer ran through my mind. That was all the prompting Johnny Boyd needed.
“Let’s go,” he said, and pulled loose from my grip.
“Get in front,” I said after him, and as the lanky rancher slid into the front passenger seat and yanked the door closed, I turned on Neil Costace.
Before I could get two words out, he held up a hand and in the dim light, I could see a half grin. “That’s one that’s safe,” he said. “We’ll follow you on out—wherever it is that you’re going.”
“Thanks,” I said. As I walked to the car, I saw Maxine Boyd standing alone, hands held in front of her as if in prayer. I detoured over to her and wrapped her in a bear hug. “Stay near the phone,” I said. “I’ll do what I can.”
She murmured something, and I gave her a final squeeze and then walked to the car. I’d forgotten how difficult it was to contort into the back seat, but I managed.
I knew we didn’t have much time, and I leaned forward, Boyd’s left ear just inches away. “Did you know where Edwin was going this evening?”
For several seconds, he didn’t say anything, and when the nod came, it was just the faintest of movements, just a little tick of the head. “Jesus H. Christ,” he murmured. I wasn’t sure if he was responding to our launching over the cattle guard behind the barn or to my question. He half turned in the seat, using one hand against the dashboard to brace himself, with his left arm hooked over the seat back.
“He said he was going to get something for his knee. Every now and then, he likes to wrap himself around a glass, and the Pierpoint…that’s his favorite watering hole over in Posadas. Now what?”
“He and Finnegan had an argument about something. We’re not sure about what, and we certainly don’t know who provoked it. The other deputies are down there now, and they’ll take statements from everyone who saw anything. Right now, we don’t know what the hell happened.”
Yeany Boyd said distantly. “Well, I can guess what happened.”
When he didn’t elaborate, I pulled myself forward on the seat, practically talking right in his ear. I could smell the cloying aroma of beer and cigarette smoke. Estelle drove almost sedately, which was fine with me. I didn’t relish being tossed through the roof. And it didn’t take hell-bent-for-leather to beat a bulldozer.
“I want your help,” I said. “I don’t want him hurt, or anyone else hurt either. And neither do you. But he’s the only one with all the answers.”
Boyd took his time lighting a cigarette, the smoke curling up and out the side window.
“Johnny,” I went on, “when I told you that it looked like your brother and Finnegan had an argument, you didn’t seem surprised. You want to tell me about it?”
“It won’t be the first time,” he said and pushed himself back in the seat, wedging himself against the door. “My brother and Dick Finnegan haven’t seen eye to eye on a lot of things over the years.” He sighed. “I don’t know what it is, ’cause my brother is about the gentlest man on the planet. He minds his own business and just asks that the rest of the world do the same.”
“Did he and Finnegan argue over something recently?”
“The damn antelope,” Boyd said, and he shut his mouth tight after those three words and turned to watch the road as Estelle negotiated a turn where the ruts had been cut deep into the prairie. She bridged the deepest portions, keeping the big sedan’s undercarriage out of the dirt. The lights of the dashboard were just enough to outline Boyd’s features, and by the set of his jaw, I could only guess at the struggle he was having.
“Finnegan was impounding antelope,” I said. “We know that. We were out there just a little while ago. We saw the sections of sheep fencing. We went all the way over to the corner, by the abandoned well. That’s the one you called Williams Tank.”
“Well, then,” Boyd said, and let it go at that, as if we knew all there was to know.
“I don’t understand, though,” I pressed. “Sheep fencing isn’t cheap. Where’s the profit in a handful of antelope? I’d think you could sell a good steer for more money than you’d get for some critter about the size of a big German shepherd.”
“First off, it ain’t no ‘handful,’ Sheriff. Dick’s workin’ on a pretty good herd. Hell, I counted thirty-four once, in just one clan. And it isn’t selling the animals for meat that it’s all about.” Boyd fell silent again.
“Then what’s it for? Hunters?”
“That’s right.”
“There’s money in that?”
Johnny Boyd snorted. “You’re kidding. Hell, some of the city boys will pay a thousand bucks a pop for a chance at an antelope with a good set of horns. Guaranteed success. A nice, private little hunt. Dick’s got about a section of land fenced in like what you saw, both to the south by the old windmill and another area north. You remember where that old stone house is?”
“Sure.”
“Up north of that.” Boyd crushed the remains of the cigarette out and dug another from his pocket.
“So he sells hunts,” I said.
Boyd nodded. “That’s where the money is. Ten hunts at a thousand bucks each will pay for a lot of ranching. Tax free, interest free. Any time of year that it’s convenient. My brother doesn’t think much of that,” Boyd said.