Chump Change (22 page)

Morgan jerked a thumb in the direction of the AX9. “The Israeli meat grinder stays here, until you two leave town. The rest of your shit, you can pack up and get out of here.” Morgan turned on his heel and marched out of the room. Wilder, apparently, wanted the last word. “I’ve got three units covering Clarkston, until we can find a replacement for Deputy Moon,” Wilder said. “You have any trouble with anybody, I expect you to let them handle it.” He looked at both of us. “Are we clear on that?”

We said it was.

“I’ll have the garage bring your car around front. Do yourselves a favor. Go home. Wreak havoc in your own backyard. Far as I’m concerned, three dead bodies is about your limit around here.”

He pinned us with a final flinty stare, snatched the AX9 from the table, and walked out, leaving Keith and me alone in the room.

“Barn’s insured,” Sarah Jane said. “You gonna sleep ranch hands in it, you gotta have it insured, else workman’s comp won’t pay.”

“Glad to hear that,” I said.

“Probably get way more out of the settlement than the damn building was worth.”

She looked down the hall toward Olley’s room. Sighed and looked down at her boots. “They ain’t sayin so out loud, but don’t none of these hospital people think Olley’s ever going back to the ranch. They’re too polite to say so, but that’s what they’re thinkin.” She looked up at me. “Might be best we just let Keeler have the damn ground.”

“We’re close here,” I said. “We got em on the run. If we can just hang in there for a while, I think we can break em.”

“House where I’m stayin is for sale,” she said.

I kept my mouth shut.

“Pretty little place. Easy to take care of.”

“I told you when we started . . . anytime you want the ranch back, it’s yours. We’ll work out the details later. All you got to do is say the word.”

“I’m gonna talk to Fred about it later today,” she said.

When, once again, I didn’t say anything, she asked, “Where’s your friend?”

“Out in the car yakking with his girlfriend.”

“Ginny Coulter? From over at the cafe?”

“That’s the one,” I said. “I’m gonna take a run out to the ranch. You wanna come along?”

She shook her head. “Olley might . . .” And then she stopped herself. “I probably better stay here,” she said. “Case he needs me.”

We stood up together. She seemed to have lost some of the spring in her step as she walked down the hallway toward the nurses’ station. I watched her go, then headed upstairs to get my bowser bandage looked at.

“You’ve reached the message center for Rachel Thoms. Please leave a message after the tone, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.” Beep. I’d been getting the machine all morning, which meant either she had a full day of clients or she wasn’t working at all. Either way, everything was going directly to the machine.

“It’s me,” I said. “Give me a jingle.” Beep.

I jammed the phone into my pocket and walked around to the back of the house and sat down next to Keith.

“Stinks,” Keith said, fanning the air in front of his face.

He had a point. All that remained of the barn was a pile of charred rubble and nine blackened hunks of porcelain. Three sinks, three urinals, and three commodes. That and the acrid smell of fire that loitered like a vagrant in the morning air.

We were sitting side by side on a handmade picnic table in the Hardvigsens’ backyard. We’d rounded up the sleeping bags and the cooler and packed them into the Blazer. The flattened grass said somebody’d gone through the yard with a metal detector and picked up all the spent shell casings. Yellow crime-scene tape was strung around the house like a demented Christmas ribbon. Maybe not the cheeriest sight I’d ever seen.

“What now?” Keith asked.

“Don’t know,” I said.

“No point camping out here anymore.”

“Nope.”

We settled into silence. The swirling breeze lifted a mini-twister of soot and ash into the air. The yellow tape snapped in the wind.

“You
could
give the lady back her ranch.”

“Just talked with her about doing that. I was thinking maybe I’d—”

A cell phone began to ring. I reached for my pocket before realizing the ring wasn’t mine.

“Hey,” Keith said into his phone.

I started to climb down from the table. Leave him a little space so he could properly schmooze with the girlfriend, but his tone of voice stopped me in my tracks.

“I’m on the way. Yeah . . . yeah . . . I’m coming.”

He snapped the phone closed.

“Boyd,” he said. “He’s got Ginny.”

We sprinted for the car.

The Chat ’n’ Chew Cafe looked like it was hosting a cop convention. Must have been half a dozen police cruisers strewn about the street. Cops of all makes and models squatted behind the cars, shouting instructions and checking their weapons.

Keith and I stayed low, using parked vehicles for protection as we duckwalked along the line of cars. I could see Irene a couple of vehicles up. Sitting with her back against the car, talking into a phone, and running a nervous hand through her hair.

The bad news was that Chief Nathan Wilder was manning the bullhorn on her immediate left. The look on his face when he saw us confirmed what I already knew: As far as the chief was concerned, we could well be the last two people on earth he wanted to see. Ever. Not to mention now.

“What in holy hell—” was as far as he got before Irene crabbed over to us.

“He’s got a gun,” Irene said to Keith. “Made all of us get out.”

Wilder was a quick study. “This is Ginny’s . . . this is who you wanted to call? . . . him?”

Irene nodded. “They been seeing each other,” she said.

I watched as Chief Wilder resisted a powerful urge to just shoot both of us and be done with it. “Boyd’s threatening to kill them both,” the chief said. “Says if he don’t have Ginny, nobody else is gonna have her either.”

“He have a history of violence?” I asked.

“Nothing serious,” the chief said. “Mostly he’s just a pain in the ass. Gets drunk. Makes a nuisance of himself. We throw him in jail till he sobers up. But nothing like this. Nothing violent.”

“I’ll go in,” Keith said out of the blue.

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” the chief growled. “Boyd’s drunk as a skunk and waving a gun around. We’re going to sit tight and give him a chance to sober up a bit. See if maybe he don’t come to his senses.”

“That’s my daughter in there,” Irene pleaded. “Do something. Please.”

Keith’s eyes looked like they were about to start rolling in his head, like a spooked horse. I put my hand on his arm. He flinched hard.

“The chief’s right,” I said. “He’ll sober up. Nobody’ll get hurt.”

“We can’t just sit out here and do nothing,” Keith said with a bit more resolve than I liked the sound of.

When he stood up, so did I. And then, in the second before I figured I was going to have to stop him from doing something stupid, the fates intervened. Wilder’s shoulder radio crackled.

“He’s bringin her out the back,” a voice said.

And then everybody was moving at once. I grabbed Irene by the arm and began to jog along behind the chief and a couple of large men carrying shotguns. Above the slap of our feet on the concrete, I could hear somebody yelling. Somebody all slurry and drunk. When you keep the kind of company I do, you develop an ear for the one-word sentence. SweartogodIonlyhadonedrinkonmysaintedmother’sgravejustone.

I checked over my shoulder as I loped along. Shoulda figured . . . Keith had other plans. He was high-stepping it straight for the front door of the Chat ’n’ Chew. Musta figured the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. Imagine that.

A narrow, two-garbage-can alley ran between the restaurant and Lewiston Plumbing Supply. We picked our way through bottles and bricks down to the far end.

I could see Boyd and Ginny now. He had her around the neck and was using his knee to force her down the back stairs. She was bleeding heavily from the nose and was working up a world-class shiner around her right eye.

And yup . . . he had a gun all right. Not pointed directly at her. Not pointed directly at himself either. Sort of in the middle somewhere. Almost as if he couldn’t decide which of them he wanted to shoot more.

Chief Wilder set the bullhorn on a garbage can, shouldered his way between the shotgun cops, and stepped out into the back parking lot. Couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet from the happy couple.

“Let her go, Boyd,” he said. “Before this gets to be something ain’t ever gonna go away, you let go of that girl, and we’ll sit down and talk about this like men.”

Wilder had balls. I’ll say that for him. Boyd pointed the gun directly at his face, and screamed, “Get the fuck outta here! I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch! Get the fuck outta here.” He was waving the gun around like a conductor’s baton.

The chief never so much as blinked. “Give me the gun, son,” he said.

And that’s just what ol Boyd did. He gave Ginny a giant push forward, staggering her right up into Wilder’s chest. Then reached around, put the barrel of the gun on Chief Wilder’s forehead, and pulled back the hammer.

“You son of a bitch!” he screamed. And then he pulled the trigger.

Boom.
Everybody in sight winced and then dove for cover.

The chief staggered back, his disbelieving hands cradling his head as he tripped over his own feet and fell heavily onto the ground. He pulled his hands back and then sat there staring down, expecting to see his palms covered with blood, brain matter, and bone. Except they weren’t.

I quickstepped forward, grabbed the chief under the arms, dragged him into the mouth of the alley and out of the line of fire. He looked up at me as if to ask why he wasn’t dead. He had a black powder burn on his right cheek, but seemed otherwise unscathed. I felt around on his head, front, back, sides, but nothing.

He was still staring into my eyes, looking for confirmation.

“I think he missed,” I said.

He took his own tour of his noggin and came to the same conclusion.

“Damn” was all he said as he pushed himself back to his feet.

He stumbled to the mouth of the alley on unsteady legs.

Boyd had his back against the cafe wall and Ginny pinned tightly to his chest. He was sweeping the gun back and forth like a searchlight.

“Hold your fire,” Wilder shouted.

And then I saw the moving shadow and looked up. Keith was on the cafe roof. Walking along behind the gutter. Directly above Boyd and Ginny.

From there on, the scene unfolded like a bizarre piece of dance choreography. The chief stepped forward again, providing the perfect distraction. Boyd caught the chief’s movement in his peripheral vision and turned that way. From the stupefied look on his face, I’d say he couldn’t believe he’d missed Chief Wilder either. He raised the gun.

That’s when Keith landed in the middle of his back with both feet. From where I stood, it looked like Boyd had been hit by a grand piano. The force of a hundred ninety pounds falling from the sky drove him down onto the pavement with a wet, sickening smack. Ginny went along for the ride. The gun didn’t. It went clattering along the pavement and came to rest at the feet of one of Lewiston’s finest, who gingerly picked it up by the trigger guard.