The Dark Horse (11 page)

Nobody was talking, nobody was turning on lights, and I had that hunch feeling that nobody was calling 911.

There was some more whispering, and I could hear someone coming down the hallway, through the kitchen, and toward the mudroom where I stood; he was moving slowly and carefully. I could see the barrel of the shotgun first and could even register the diameter—20-gauge—in the direct cast of the moon that had, of course, chosen to come from behind the clouds.

If the thing shifted four inches to the left, it would be pointed directly at my gut.

The shooter stepped forward, and I could make out the hands holding the scattergun and the gold Masonic ring. The owner of the bar and maker of the crapper laws stepped full into the moon glow, blinked, and looked out the screen door to my right. The barrel wavered for a second, at which point he took two steps closer, still looking out the doorway and into the overgrown back of the place.

I could see his face clearly. His hat was missing, and it looked like there was some swelling around the nearest eye; blood was palmed from his nose to his hairline. I looked at his hand again and could see the still-wet blood there.

Evidently, the taller man had struck him.

I hadn’t breathed since he’d entered the tiny mudroom and still didn’t. I watched him lean his face forward to get a better view of the back bushes. The swelling at his eye certainly wasn’t helping in the search, but he must have seen something because he suddenly turned toward me and looked directly up to my face.

The sound was already coming out of his mouth when I grabbed the shotgun with both hands and pivoted the butt up and into his chin—it sounded like a cleanly hit baseball. After a brief moment of teetering, he started to go over backward, but I was now practiced and grabbed one of the straps of his overalls and pulled his collapsing body into me.

I lowered him to the floor with one arm and leaned him against the wall with his legs folded underneath him, and then checked his pulse, which was rapid, but there.

Out cold.

I wondered why he hadn’t fired. I checked the Winchester and discovered that the reason he hadn’t was that he must’ve automatically clicked the safety on, something a lot of inexperienced shooters do. I was happy with his inexperience, clicked off the safety, and stood. More footsteps echoed from the silence, and I took the two steps that would give me a clearer view of the short hallway leading toward the front of the building. I could only see a small portion of the bar.

Nothing.

I unfocused my eyes to adapt to the dark and allowed them to become motion sensors as I stepped into the kitchen proper. There were a few BLTs on two plates on the cutting board along with a couple of cans of Coors. One of the sandwiches had a single bite taken out of it, and the other had been eaten, except for the crusts. Evidently, business had interrupted dinner, and then there was me.

The floor continued to complain under my weight as I took the first step into the hallway. I kept my eyes on the surface of the bar, fully expecting someone to flip over the counter with a two-handed grip and pop a few into my chest.

I raised the pump-action to my shoulder and tried to remember which way the front door of the bar opened, settling on left to right, and chose the right and larger side of the public room on which to concentrate. Television and movies would have you believe that the proper way to do this type of thing is to leap into a room, first directing your weapon one way and then the other, but without backup, it’s a fifty-fifty proposition that you’d enter said room dead.

In the dark, if you’re alone, the rule is reveal low and very slow. I crouched at counter level, slid along the wall, and scanned the area where the makeshift fight ring stood ghostly and empty. I pivoted the shotgun to my left, keeping it level to the bar and looking into the area where there were the few tables and mismatched chairs.

Still nothing.

I was sure I hadn’t heard the front door open and equally sure that the other man must still be inside when the big Dodge chirped and the interior lights came on in the truck. I started around the bar, quickly moving toward the front, when something moved to my left, raised up, and fired.

I staggered back, tripped over a loose chair, fell to the floor, and scrambled to put the bar between us. His aim had been high. He stood and continued forward, around the bar and toward me with what sounded like a 9 mm. The rounds from the semiautomatic blew through the beer poster on the wall and tore into the ceiling as I found the baseboard and turned the 20-gauge back toward the shooter. I decided to shoot high as well, since all I really wanted to do was back him off long enough to get a look at him.

I pulled the trigger and listened to the loud crash as the front window of the bar exploded onto the walkway out front, immediately followed by the roar of the Dodge as its engine dieseled to life.

I abandoned the thought of a remote starter and figured he’d just been throwing down cover fire long enough to get himself out the door to his avenue of retreat.

I struggled up from the floor and grabbed the corner of the bar as I ran toward the jagged glass shards of the now-shattered front window; I slid to a stop in the full illumination of the truck’s high beams.

I brought the Winchester up in a half-extension, the barrel pointed directly at the darkened driver’s side. Old habits die hard, and the words were out of my mouth before I could reassess. “Sheriff, freeze!”

There was a brief second when absolutely nothing happened, except the second, third, fourth, and fifth helping of guessing; you don’t know who they are, you don’t know if they’re going to comply, you don’t know if they’re still armed, you don’t know if they’re still aiming at you, you don’t know if they’re involved with the case, and you don’t want to shoot even after being shot at, unless you absolutely must.

Then the big full-ton shifted, and the reverse lights illuminated the rear of the truck. I lowered the barrel of the shotgun, aimed at the radiator, and pulled the trigger. There was a sharp click.

Nothing.

I jacked the pump-action as the Dodge flew into reverse, sprayed gravel in a murdersome arc, and was jammed into a forward gear. I took aim at the rear tires and pulled the trigger again.

Click.

Nothing.

The truck disappeared over the hill at the edge of town and then reappeared on the next hill, hell-bent for diesel leather as it continued down the Powder River Road, the smoldering running lights like tracers in the darkness.

I turned back and heard noises from the rooms in the motel—people shouting, people running, and probably now people dialing 911. I rested the shotgun on the particleboard surface, jacked the pump-action back but not forward, and looked into the empty chamber of the Winchester.

I raised my head and could still see the unconscious owner of The AR propped against the mudroom wall in the pooled moonlight. I spoke quietly to the two of us as I lay the scattergun on the bar and watched my hands shake. “Who the hell puts only one round in a shotgun?”

I waited quietly in the back of the Campbell County sheriff’s cruiser, tried not to concentrate on the multitude of stains on the seat, and watched as the former and now retired Absaroka County sheriff and the current and very active Campbell County one explained to a deputy why it was he couldn’t arrest me. The deputy didn’t seem happy with the turn of events but, with less than a year on the job and facing close to a half-century of experience, he didn’t have much recourse.

Sandy laughed with Lucian, and they came over to the parked car where they both got in the front. They turned and looked at me through the wire mesh that divides the arrester from the arrestee, both grinning like possums.

My old one-legged boss shook his head. “Jesus H. Christ.”

I shrugged as best I could with the handcuffs on, nodded toward him, and looked at Sandy. “What, you decided you needed backup?”

He smiled and glanced at Lucian. “He said you were most likely lost, and we should go look for you.” Everybody liked Sandy, and if you didn’t, all he had to do was smile and you would. “He also said it was likely that people would be shooting at you.” I didn’t say anything, and he continued. “That deputy of mine wants to put you in jail some kind of bad.”

“I refused to give him any ID and didn’t offer a whole lot of information. I told him I’d just wait for you. I take it he doesn’t know who I am?” The young man was watching us from the walkway of The AR.

Lucian interrupted. “He thinks you’re Dillinger, but then he couldn’t find his pecker in a pickle jar.”

Sandy folded his arms over the back of the front seat. “So, what happened?”

I told them.

“Holy crap.” He sighed.

I leaned forward. “What’d Pat say?”

“The owner?” I nodded. “He says he was closing up the place and that he heard something in the back and went to check it out.”

“With the shotgun?”

The sheriff of Campbell County snorted. “He didn’t mention that part, till we asked him how the window got blown out and onto the road.”

I looked at him. “And?”

Lucian laughed. “He says somebody drove by, threw a few shots into the bar, and kept going. Says it happens periodically when he makes folks pay up their tab—said he always throws a few rounds back at ’em just to dissuade ’em of the activity.”

I readjusted my weight. “And the part about being unconscious when the deputy got there?”

“Says he slipped and hit his head.”

“In the mudroom. In the back?”

“Said that’s where he usually goes when folks are shootin’ up the front.”

I pushed my cuffed hands to the side. “Well, since he’s not saying anybody hit him, do you think he has any idea who did?”

Lucian chimed in again. “Hard to say, but since you displayed yourself in a rather dramatic fashion and announced to any and all, including the fella in the truck, that you were a sheriff, it might be time for you to get the hell outta Dodge—red, white, or blue.”

I looked at Lucian and thought about the woman in my jail as it grew silent in the cruiser. “Have you been to the jail?”

“Mine?”

“Mine.” Our eyes met, and I was always struck by the darkness in his pupils; maybe I needed to get him and Saizarbitoria together. “You meet her?”

His voice changed, growing softer. “Yes, I have.”

“Do you think she’s guilty?”

He took a deep breath and blew it out of his nostrils like a shotgun blast. “She’s burnin’ bridges in her head; I’m just not sure if he was one of ’em.” He studied me. “What’s that got to do with horseshit and hat sizes?”

“Everything.” He made a noise in his throat. “Somebody taught me that, a long time ago.”

It was quiet, and neither of them looked at me.

“Well.” The ex-sheriff of Absaroka County sniffed and thumbed his nose. “Never did any of this undercover crap—you’ve got a lot of people worried that you’re gonna fool around and get yourself killed out here.”

I thought that the old sheriff had been sent out to check on me, but I didn’t figure on him admitting it. I changed the subject to save him any further embarrassment. “What’s everybody else in the motel say?”

There was a pause as Sandy prepared to speak; Lucian and I both looked at him. “Not a whole heck of a lot.” He scratched his neck and placed one of his sun-leathered hands on the dash, the heavy, curved, Cuban bracelet on his wrist blinking in the morning sun. “There’s a little tattooed girl that says you beat up her boyfriend, but other than that it’s business as usual out here on the Powder River—ain’t nobody sayin’ nothin’.”

“Who called 911?”

“Anonymous, female, from the pay phone outside the post office/library up the hill.”

I thought about it and could only come up with one name. “You’ll run a check on the Dodge?”

“Yep.” The hand on the dash reached for the mic.

“One more thing?”

He and Lucian turned back to look at me. “Yeah?”

“Get these damned handcuffs off.”

I’d followed Dog, who had made a habit of trotting to the holding cells.

Mary Barsad was running her hand across his back. She was sitting on the floor beside the bars and looked up when I came in. “Nice dog; where’d you get him?”

“From a friend.”

“Didn’t they want him anymore?”

I thought about what to say. “Um, no.” It was still early, and Vic was going to be back soon, so I pulled one of the folding chairs over and sat.

She looked back to study him. “What kind of dog is he?”

I shrugged. “When there’s bacon around, I’d swear he was part wolf.”

“St. Bernard and some German shepherd, I’d say.” She scratched under his neck. “Something else, but I’m not sure what.”

“You know a lot about animals.”

She breathed a soft laugh. “Yes, but evidently I’m a poor judge of human beings.”

I leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Which brings to mind a question.”

The more-than-blue eyes came up. “Please don’t ask me why I got mixed up with Wade.”

We sat there looking at each other. “You know, my daughter was in a bad relationship back in Philadelphia, and I’ve developed a theory on that.” She continued to gaze at me. “I think our hearts are the most fearless organ we’ve got, considering how often they’ll make the same mistake, over and over again.”

She continued to study me. “You do know the heart is just a muscle, right?”

I smiled. “Then maybe we’re getting stronger from the exercise.”

Her eyes had broken contact with mine. “Or you just lose another piece.”

The first cup of coffee I could get was at the auction at Bill Nolan’s place. It was from a catering service out of Wright called the Chuck Wagon, and thankfully they didn’t know me. I took my two ham and egg sandwiches and my coffee back over to the rental car and fed Dog his breakfast through the window.