Shots Fired (22 page)

Pendergast seemed flummoxed, but he covered himself by saying, “Yeah, I guess I heard something about that.”

“So if you want to go somewhere, I'll be happy to drive you,” Joe said. “But you can't just leave me here and take it if you don't want to get caught.”

“Maybe you're going with us,” Pendergast said, narrowing his eyes.

“I thought that's what I just said.” Joe grinned. Then: “So was it you who shot a couple of rounds at a pickup a while back?” Joe asked, keeping his tone conversational. “The guy who called it in said he thought it was the sheepherder.”

“It was Bryce,” the woman said from inside the wagon. “Ain't that right, honey?” She was proud of him.

Pendergast nodded in agreement but kept his eyes locked on Joe.

“Get out here,” Pendergast said to the woman. “I need your help.”

“Doing what?” she asked.

“Just get the fuck out here,” Pendergast shouted.

“Jesus, you don't need to yell,” she said, stepping out. Joe recognized her. He'd seen her playing girls' basketball a couple of years ahead of his oldest daughter, Sheridan, for the same Saddlestring Wranglerette team. But she looked twenty-five years older than she should. He could see yellowed stubs where her row of white teeth used to be when she opened her mouth. She seemed to notice him staring and clamped her mouth shut. She was a serious meth user, all right. And maybe, he thought, she recognized
him
.

“So what did you do with Ander?” Joe asked. “I see his horse here and his dog.”

“Shut the hell up,” Pendergast said.

“So since your white van isn't anywhere around here,” Joe said, “I'm guessing you broke down or got stuck somewhere close and walked until you found the sheep wagon. You were probably hoping there'd be a vehicle with it, but there wasn't. So what did you do with Ander?”

“I said shut up while I think.”

“Never your strong suit,” Joe said. “But I'm worried about Ander. He's known as a hard worker and a good guy, even if he's a little . . . off. I've never met a rancher around here who didn't want to hire him. He takes his job seriously and he never caused anyone any problems. He keeps to himself and works hard for a day's pay. He's trustworthy and honest and he's never
hurt or screwed anyone. I'd hate to think that something happened to him, because anyone who knew him liked the man.

“So,” Joe asked, “do you know where he is?”

Pendergast paused for a moment, then screamed,
“Quit fucking asking the questions.
I
got the rifle—so
I
ask the questions.”

“Okay,” Joe said.

The girl shuffled up behind and to the left of Pendergast. Joe noticed for the first time that she held an old Colt .45 revolver in her hands. He glanced over his shoulder toward the open door of the wagon. No Ander. But he could see meth-smoking paraphernalia on the small table inside—crumpled aluminum foil packets, stubby pipes, open books of matches.

“Who knows you're here?” Pendergast said.

Joe weighed his answer before he said, “Plenty of folks. I gave my location to the dispatcher just a few minutes ago. The sheriff's department and the highway patrol are on their way. I'd suggest we end this before something bad happens.”

“When will they get here?” Pendergast asked, alarmed.

“Any minute,” Joe said.

Pendergast broke his glare and scanned the terrain for vehicles. “I don't hear nobody coming.”

Joe shrugged. “Lots of folks are looking for you since you walked away from the Honor Farm. The best way to go here would be to put down the rifle and turn yourself in. That way you'll be cooperating and they might go easy on you.”

“Fuck that,” Pendergast said, spitting out the words. “I ain't going back there. You know what they had me doin' on that farm? Milking fucking cows. I hate cows. I ain't no farmer.”

Joe nodded. Bryce Pendergast had been raised well by solid parents. He had two brothers and a sister who had turned out all right. Bryce was in the middle, and had always been a wreck. Couldn't keep a job, car theft, parole violations. He'd been in the process of setting up a meth lab with a buddy when Joe first arrested him.

“No, you aren't a farmer,” Joe said.

Pendergast pursed his mouth and nodded as if they'd finally agreed on something. Then he seemed to recall why he'd asked the girl to come out of the wagon.

“Kelsey, put your gun on him for a minute.”

Kelsey—Joe now remembered her name as Kelsey Trocker—looked confused.

“What do you mean,
on
him?” she asked.

Pendergast sighed and said, “Raise that pistol and cock the hammer back and aim it at his face. If he so much as flinches, you pull the trigger. Now do you fuckin' understand?”

“Yeah,” she said, “but you don't need to talk to me like that.”

“Just do it.”

“Where you goin'?”

“I gotta pee.”

“Oh, okay.”

Pendergast stepped aside while Kelsey stepped forward. Joe felt his life about to end when she raised the revolver and fumbled with the hammer in an effort to cock it. She was as shaky as Pendergast. Then she managed to figure it out and Joe watched the cylinder rotate and the hammer lock in place. He could see—close as he was—lead bullets in three of the four
visible chambers. The chamber that previously had been lined up in the barrel had been fired.

And he thought he knew what had happened to Ander Esti.

Pendergast kept his eyes on Joe while he backed away, making sure Kelsey had the situation under control. Then he turned near the wagon and Joe could hear him unzipping his jeans.

“Did you shoot Ander?” Joe asked in a low voice.

She shook her head no, but something that scared her flashed through her eyes. Maybe she was just now remembering what they'd done . . .

“You don't need to go down with him,” Joe said, chinning toward Pendergast. “If Bryce was the one who did it, you can get yourself out of this.”

“Shut up,” she said, and Joe could see her finger whiten on the trigger. He shut up.

After leaving a meager puddle in the dirt, Pendergast zipped up and hoisted the rifle. He strode back toward Joe, but then stopped, as if he suddenly recalled something. With a lopsided grin, he turned and found Joe's gear belt and removed the canister of bear spray.

Joe thought,
Oh no
.

“Keep that gun on him,” Pendergast said to Kelsey, as he clamped the rifle under his left arm. He held the bear spray aloft in his right hand.

“How'd you like a taste of your own goddamn medicine?” he said to Joe.

“I wouldn't.”

“You thought it was pretty damned funny when you used it on me.”

“No, I didn't,” Joe said.

“I learned at the Farm that this stuff,” he said, gesturing to the canister, “ain't even legal to use on a human. It's too damned powerful. They shoulda arrested you for excess force for sprayin' me.”

“It was self-defense,” Joe said. “You might remember you were trying to shoot me at the time.”

“Bryce,” Kelsey said, stepping back, “don't get any of that stuff on
me
.”

“Don't worry, darlin',” Pendergast said, warming up to his idea. “Just don't take that gun off him.”

“Be careful,” Joe said to Pendergast. “That spray doesn't always go where you aim it.”

Which made Pendergast pause for a moment while he studied the canister in his hand. There was a ring to put his index finger through, and a safety tab to flip up so he could trigger the release with his thumb. The complexity of it seemed to overwhelm him, Joe thought.

“Why don't you—” Kelsey started to say.

“Why don't you shut the fuck up!”
Pendergast exploded. “He fucked me up with this stuff, so I'm gonna return the favor. Got it?”

Kelsey grimaced, and for a second the muzzle of the gun wavered.

“Really,” Joe said helpfully, “sometimes it shoots out about
forty-five degrees from where you aim it. So you've really got to know what you're doing.”

It was about the fifth lie he'd told them since he arrived, he thought.

“Honey, can't you spray him later?” Kelsey pleaded.

Pendergast ignored her and advanced with the canister out in front of him. When it was three feet from Joe's face, Pendergast squeezed the trigger. But because he hadn't armed the spray by raising the tab, nothing happened.

But Kelsey didn't know that. She'd covered her face with her left hand and closed her eyes to avoid blowback. Joe threw himself at her.

He wrenched the Colt free and bodychecked her with his hip and she fell away like a rag doll. Before Pendergast could get rid of the canister and reseat his rifle, Joe raised the .45 in Pendergast's general direction and fired.

The gunshot was flat and loud and Pendergast went down as if the wires that had held him aloft had been snipped. Joe didn't know where he'd hit him, but he thumbed back the hammer again and pounced. Pendergast had taken his rifle down with him and Joe didn't want it aimed at him.

Pendergast grunted
“Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck”
and rolled in the dirt away from Joe, who could see a red stain blossoming through the fabric of Pendergast's pant leg near his knee. He looked as if he intended to roll to his backside and sit up so he could fire the rifle at Joe.

Joe shot him in the butt from three feet away and Pendergast howled.

The rifle barrel raised in the air and Joe grasped it with his left hand and jerked it away, then sent it flying toward the near flock of sheep that had frozen and watched them with dumb eyes.

When the rifle hit the backs of the sheep—they were that tightly packed together—the entire herd panicked and began to move away as if they were a single organism. Their bawls filled the air and thousands of tiny chunks of earth were kicked up by their sharp hooves and rained down near the wagon and on Joe and Pendergast and Kelsey.

“Ungh,” Pendergast moaned, “you shot me in the ass.”

“Yup,” Joe said, cocking the hammer of the single-action.

Kelsey had recovered from being thrown aside and was on her hands and knees, trying to stand up.

“Just stay down,” Joe said to her.

She sighed and did as she was told, but raised her head and stared at the grass where the sheep had been. “It wasn't me who shot that old man,” she said vacantly. “All I was in this thing for was to pick up Bryce when he got loose so we could go to California, where I've got friends. But no—Bryce wanted to see his old grandma first and said he knew a back way. He got my van stuck in the mud because he was too fucked up to drive. Then we had to walk all the way here and . . .”

Joe followed her gaze and there he was. Ander Esti's body lay on its back not fifty feet from the wagon. His sheep had grazed around him and obscured him from view. There was no doubt from the odd angles of his arms that he was dead. That, and the hole in his forehead singed with a gunshot powder burn. The
rifle Joe had flung—Esti's ancient lever-action carbine—was in the dirt next to him.

Joe took a deep breath. He kept an eye on both tweakers while he released Esti's blue heeler, who bolted for where the body was and sat down beside it as if guarding the remains.

Pendergast had rolled onto his side so his wounded butt cheek was off the ground. He moaned and gasped and said again, “You shot me in the ass.”

Joe said, “And I might just shoot you again.”

•   •   •

W
ITH
K
ELSEY
cuffed to the front bumper and Pendergast cuffed to a ringbolt in the bed of his pickup, Joe called in the incident and requested a Life Flight helicopter as well as the sheriff's department crime scene team.

“The sheriff's department advises it may take an hour to get there,” the dispatcher said. “They're worried about the suspect bleeding out.”

Joe acknowledged the transmission and looked over the wall of his pickup bed at Pendergast, who had heard it.

“No great loss,” Joe said, and keyed off.

“That was fucking cold,” Pendergast said. But the bleeding had slowed since Joe had lifted him into the bed and wrapped the wounds. Most of the blood had flowed from Pendergast's broken knee, and Joe was able to cinch it securely. The buttocks entry shot seeped black blood like a puncture wound, and it didn't appear life-threatening.

Joe said to Pendergast, “You won't be able to just walk away next time you feel like it, either. This time, you'll go to big-boy prison in Rawlins and you'll be there for a long time.”

Pendergast grimaced and looked away. He said, “There's a pipe in that wagon. I need a hit to kill the pain, so do me a solid, won't you?”

Joe turned away with thoughts of grabbing his shotgun and finishing the job.

Joe coaxed the story out of Kelsey.

After they'd gotten the van stuck and tried in vain half the day to dig it out with twisted lengths of greasewood, they'd set out on foot cross-country in the general direction of Winchester. After several hours, they saw the big herd of sheep and the wagon. Bryce figured there would be a pickup truck there as well, probably on the side of the wagon they couldn't see, and they'd threaten the sheepherder and get his keys.

Ander opened the door and said something they couldn't understand. Kelsey said it sounded like a foreign language but she couldn't be sure because she was so fucked up. Bryce ordered the man to speak English. When he didn't, Bryce took Kelsey's gun, which she'd stolen from her grandfather before driving south to pick up Bryce, and shot Ander in the forehead. They dragged his body into the herd of sheep thinking, she said, the sheep would eat it and destroy the evidence.

“You didn't know sheep don't eat meat?” Joe asked.