Avenging Angel (17 page)

“The benchland’s a big place,” Wager mused.

“God-awful big,” said Tice. “Somebody either knew where he was going, or they followed him.”

In the street behind them, a tractor-trailer rapped its exhaust loudly as it geared down for the red light. “You found the avenging angel stuck between his fingers?” Wager asked.

“Left hand. Just like Mueller. Folded over and slid in. Killer probably reached in through the driver’s window. No fingerprints anywhere—I dusted it myself. Not a print on it that wasn’t Orrin’s.”

“The picture was the same?”

“Xerox copy.” He nodded.

“Any footprints? Any leading up to the car?”

“We looked, Wager. But I reckon somebody dragged the ground and then the wind did the rest. Hodges didn’t find him until about noon today. Same thing goes for tire tracks. We found the place where the killer probably waited, but there were no clear tracks. Too sandy.”

“I suppose it’s too late to drive out for a look.”

“It is. Be dusk by the time we got there. We marked the spot with a stake, though, before we brought his truck back. Tell me.” Tice’s pale-gray eyes settled on Wager again. “What was it you wanted Orrin to talk to Zenas about?”

“To ask if he had any idea where the Kruse family might be hiding.”

Tice grunted. Then he asked, “How much do you know about Zenas?”

“He’s one of the people you don’t want to bother for a little thing like bigamy.”

“That’s right. His people been here since before Colorado was a state. They stay by themselves over there. Always have. I sort of think of them like Indians on their own reservation.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“It would be just the same if it wasn’t fine with you. Now, what makes you think Zenas might know about the Kruses?”

“He kept in touch with Beauchamp. He sent a warning to Kruse through Beauchamp that Willis was looking for them.”

“And if the Kruses were running, they might run to Zenas as a friend—I see. Well, Zenas might know something at that.” He lifted his Stetson and dragged the bandanna across the red line it left on his forehead. “Those people don’t trust strangers, but they got to trust each other. Most of the time, anyway.” Then, “You think the avenging angels are still after the Kruse family? Is that it?”

“Yes. And I think we’d better find the Kruses before they do.”

Again Tice nodded. “First thing in the morning, I’ll have a vehicle ready for you. And a map. I ain’t got the time to go with you—commissioners’ meeting, budget hearing. But you can drive out to where Orrin was found, then on over to talk to Zenas. I reckon you’ll want to do that.”

Wager did, but some certainty in Tice’s voice made him ask, “Why?”

“Orrin lived long enough to write a couple words: ‘water’ and ‘Wager.’ Newspaperman,” Tice explained. “Always carried a pencil and paper.”

“Water and my name?”

“Yep. The first, I reckon, because he was in that desert and pumping out a lot of blood. The second because he had something for you. Maybe something he found out from Zenas, and Zenas might tell you now.”

Before Wager drove off with one of the county’s two yellow rescue vehicles, Sheriff Tice jotted down the mileage. “I got to bill that special task force of yours for the gas,” he said. “I told that to your man Doyle when I called yesterday.”

Wager bet his man Doyle was happy about that. “You say it’s a stake with a red cloth tied to it?”

“It marks the left front wheel. Here’s a sketch where I figure the sniper stationed himself. This wash, here—you’ll see it.” Tice handed Wager a carefully drawn sheet of graph paper. “Now, you got extra water in this vehicle, and a radio into our county net. But that don’t always work out there—there’s a lot of dead spots and skips once you’re on the benches. If you get in trouble, don’t start walking in that desert. Just stay with the vehicle—it’s a lot easier to see than a man, and sooner or later somebody’s bound to come along.”

“Any reason why I should get in trouble?”

“It’s the desert, Wager. Only a damn fool wouldn’t be ready for trouble.”

The sand road’s descent cut through the white glare ahead of him. If he did need the help Tice warned about, Wager hoped it would come sooner rather than later. Without enough water, without shade, without protection from a wind as hot and dry and steady as a sigh from hell, a man might last one day in the sun. Night would bring relief from the heat but not from the thirst. Dawn would bring a flaming sky and the knowledge that he would not live to see sunset.

Between the two worn front seats of the Jeep, a receiver crackled and muttered as distant transmissions ruffled the band. But as soon as Wager dropped over the mesa’s edge the radio began to blank into total silence and the only reason now for leaving it on was that even the occasional static was better than hearing nothing but the rush of empty wind.

The last time he had driven this road had been with Orrin. Now the man’s torn body lay at the funeral home, where Tice had shown Wager the holes, and the bloodless lips still twisted from the impact of bullets and the effort to write those two last words.

“He must have died pretty quick.”

“Emory said maybe two minutes. Either bled to death or drowned in his own blood—throat wound.”

“Emory?”

“Emory Wright—funeral director. He’s the county coroner.”

That was why Tice was satisfied with an either/or cause of death. “Where’d you find Orrin’s note?”

“On the floor.” Tice showed Wager the man’s wire-bound notebook. The tan paper cover was scuffed by fresh dirt. Inked on the cover was a date from a couple of days ago followed by a dash. “I reckon the dirt came when Orrin kicked his legs.”

“What’s this?” Wager pointed to the date.

“Mrs. Winston says that’s Orrin’s filing system. He dates his notebooks when he starts one; when it’s full, he puts another date on it. Then he files them in the order of the dates.”

That explained why the pages were mostly empty. Wager read the earlier entries. A couple of leaves were dedicated to a Mr. Angstrom’s ninetieth birthday celebration; a sentence was underlined: “
He was fond of saying you should run through life like a rabbit
.” There was a note on a local artist who was opening a new show at the gallery—that would be today—featuring a model for the Coors Beer Cowboy and other genuine western scenes. A cryptic “8 p.m. C.” Some memos to himself: “Call Ellie for mock-up Frank’s ad,” “commiss. meetg 9 Fri.” And, underlined, “Wager,” followed by a local telephone number.

“Do you know this number?”

“Mine,” said Tice. “He called us to get a message to you. He wanted you to call him right away.”

And Wager had not been there. The last entry in the book, on a dog-eared page, was in handwriting barely resembling the others. Two words sprawled shakily across the pale-blue lines, as if written with closed eyes and measured by a groping thumb. One was at the top of the page, the other near the bottom: “water” and “Wager.”

“How’s Mrs. Winston now?”

“Doc’s give her a sedative and some neighbors are looking after her.” Tice pulled the rubber sheet over Orrin’s face. “You’ll want to see Orrin’s last notebooks?”

He did, but that would have to wait for his return from the benchland, and Mrs. Winston’s return from exhausted hysteria.

Wager shifted down as the stiffly sprung vehicle jolted across a series of ruts. According to the map sketched by Tice, the site of Winston’s murder should be somewhere within the next two- or three-tenths of a mile. Wager slowed and scanned the line of the road, squinting through the heat that already formed shimmering mirages in the distance. There it was—a pale glint of new wood with a dot of shiny red winking at its top: a strip of fluorescent cloth fluttering in the wind. Stopping the Jeep, Wager surveyed the scene from the slight elevation he had. Orrin’s truck had been headed this way; the sniper was hidden on the right side of the road. Probably the small gulley that angled off from the road’s shoulder just in front of Wager. It wound behind the low, sandy ridge and then roughly parallel to the road. Here a vehicle could swing into the soft sand of that wash. Wager dropped into four-wheel drive and lurched across the ill-defined shoulder and into the sand.

Slower than a walk, the Jeep nosed down the wind-rippled wash, and Wager noted how the fluted dirt walls rose and fell between him and the distant stake. And, beyond, how the empty road, a pale streak through the low desert brush, could be seen clearly for ten miles before it twisted down to the next broad shelf. You would have plenty of time to get ready, would see the wind-flattened plume of dust coming, maybe the white flash of sun on a windshield. You could leave your vehicle somewhere along here, a four-wheel drive—it would have to be that—and wait until you saw Orrin coming. Wager stopped the Jeep behind a shoulder-high rise in the bank and got out, listening for a moment to the hissing whisper of the wind as it skipped among the stiff, low twigs. You would watch the slow approach of the dust, would walk down this wash, its slice of earth hiding both the waiting vehicle and you from Orrin’s eyes. Here the soft sand bed twisted back toward the road, following the steepest fall of land. By stretching a bit, Wager could glimpse the stake over the embankment, closer now; and he began to look with a rifleman’s eye for the clearest line of fire and the most stable rest for a prone shot. He found it where the gully bent nearest the road and turned sharply away: a high bank whose crumbling, rock-filled face let boots find a grip to scramble up to the edge and see, about a hundred yards distant, the red flutter of tape and a long, level stretch of road leading up to it.

According to the map, Tice also thought this was the spot. Wager lay there a few seconds, gazing down and imagining the approaching truck jouncing along at about thirty miles an hour almost straight toward this spot. You would see Winston’s shirt, pale in the cab’s shade. The driver’s head would be outlined against the back window. A telescopic sight would bring Winston’s hot face full into the circle of glass, and the cross hairs would steady with a smooth, gliding motion of the rifle. One hundred yards at an approaching target: not overly difficult if you’re any good with a rifle. But not a beginner’s shot, either; not one you would want to snap off too quickly. So you might use a sling, scrape a small hole to rest your elbow; long inhale and hold and squeeze gently the way the rifle instructors chanted at boot camp.
Thump
. A quick flip with the lever, rock solidly back into position, and one second later the next round on its way. Two shots, that quick and that tight in the target area—definitely not a beginner, definitely shots with some risk to them. Pick up the spent brass, a single golden tube, still hot but within arm’s reach. Down to the skewed truck to make sure.

Wager rose and brushed the sand from his clothes and walked down to the stake. He paused to look back at his line of tracks wavering between brush and rocks. If Orrin had been able to see, the killer would have come straight toward him, a figure squinting against the sun in his face. But far enough away not to be recognized yet—not by a man who had just been shot twice and who, under the stunning impact, knew he was dying fast. Twenty, at most thirty seconds to fumble out the notebook and write those two words. Half again that long to pick up the brass and jog the hundred yards up to the truck window. Probably slow down a step or two away, rifle at port arms just in case, hungry to see the victim totally motionless. Maybe a trifle frightened. Wager hoped so. He would like it if the killer had felt at least a twitch of fear when he leaned into the hot cab of the truck to slip the avenging angel between Winston’s still-warm fingers.

He reached Zenas’s ranch near midday, and under the numbing weight of noon sun the sandstone building seemed emptier than the last time. No one opened the blank wooden door to welcome him; no piping child’s voice carried like the call of far-off birds through the waterfall sound of the cottonwoods. Instead, Wager stood alone on the tiny concrete slab with its embedded colored stones and knocked loudly. When no one answered, he walked around into the Cottonwood shade and across the sandy yard toward the barn that dominated the packed earth and rail fences of the animal pens. A quiet voice from behind a screen of pungent mountain willow said “Hello,” and Wager, the hairs prickling up his nape, froze.

“You’re that Denver policeman.” Zenas, a rifle hanging comfortably in the crook of his arm, stood up among the tangle of willow branches. “Where’s Orrin at?”

“He’s been killed. He was shot two days ago on the way back to Loma Vista.”

The man’s flat, wide shoulders sagged but his face remained as closed as a fist. “The destroying angels?”

“Yes. Sheriff Tice found a drawing just like the others.”

Zenas let his gaze shift from Wager to the yellow Jeep and back up the road to the notch carved like a rifle sight in the wall of red sandstone. “You best come into the trees.”

Wager, too, glanced around the etched line of slick rock that towered over this corner of the river bottom. On the first trip, those walls seemed to keep strangers out; now they seemed to gaze inward to pin down any figure standing, like Wager, in plain view of the rim. He stepped quickly into the mottled green of tangled willow; wordless, Zenas led him a few steps along a dim trail to where even the hard blue sky was masked by peppery-smelling leaves.

“You think they know you’re here?” Wager asked.

His jaw moved slightly before he spoke, as if the words needed a running start to overcome his dislike of talking to a Gentile. “Willis visited with us before him and Ervil started their fight.”

“And he knows that you sided with Ervil?”

“He does.”

“Have you had any trouble lately?”

“Not yet.”

Wager listened to the high whine of an insect dodging among the pale leaves and veering sharply away from their two motionless figures. “Have you got the Kruse family hidden out here?”

Zenas’s dark eyes widened slightly. He was not used to lying; by avoiding Gentiles, he had no pressures to lie. But he didn’t have to answer clearly, either. “Why do you ask that?”

“The last time I was here, Willis knew whose side you were on—that’s why you had Orrin bring me out here with those pictures. But you weren’t worried for yourself then. Now you’re worried enough to hide your family somewhere around here, and I think it’s because you’ve done something that Willis wants to get even with you for—taken the Kruse family in, maybe.”