Murder Takes a Break (24 page)

I stopped and crouched down.
 
There was no sign of a moon or stars, just a thick layer of black clouds that slid across the sky above me like a mile-long blackboard.

In the pasture there were a few bushes that stuck above the surrounding weeds, but they were just vague dark shapes.
 
Nothing was moving.

I could see the headlights of a car far down the road, coming in my direction.
 
I waited as the lights got closer and closer, finally coming even with me and then going on past.
 

They didn't reveal anyone in precipitous flight, and they didn't show me anyone hiding in the bushes, but they did show me something else: a car that was parked on the shoulder of the road.

I couldn't tell what kind of car it was, but its presence opened up a couple of possibilities.
 

One was that the car just happened to have been abandoned in that particular spot.
 
I didn't much believe in that kind of coincidence.

And if the car wasn't there by coincidence, a second possibility was that the shooter was skulking around one of those bushes ahead of me, waiting to take a shot at me before he made a run for the car.
 

The bushes were thick and still had leaves on them.
 
Excellent places for skulking.

That led to a third possibility: that it wasn't Henry J. who'd shot Dino.
 
It was someone else, someone who had what he, or, to be fair about it, she considered a legitimate reason for skulking around Henry J.'s house.

Whoever it was had a fine chance of getting to the car before I could do a thing about it.
 
He was between me and the car, and he was carrying something that was either a pistol or a flashlight.
 
I was willing to bet a Big Red that it wasn't a flashlight.

Of course there was always a fourth possibility: that I could somehow sneak through the weeds, locate the shooter, and prevent him from getting to the car.

I could also win the Texas Lotto, though even the administrators of that little game had estimated that chances of a person's winning it were roughly the same as that same person's chances of getting attacked by a hammerhead shark on the streets of Lubbock at high noon in July.
 
Or something like that.
 
At any rate, the chances weren't good.

Still, I thought I had to do something, even if it was wrong, so I dropped to my belly and started inching my way along the ground.
 
I might not be able to see anyone from that position, but no one could see me, either.

My idea was simply to head for the bush that was closest to the car.
 
That was where I'd go if I were running from someone, which didn't really mean a thing, but it was at least a plan of action.

The ground was muddy, and I was getting as wet as I'd gotten in the previous day's rainstorm, but I wasn't going to stand up, not until I got near enough to the bush to have a decent shot at anyone hiding behind it.

It took me a while, but I finally got to within about twenty yards of the bush.
 
I hoped I'd guessed right.
 
If I hadn't, I was about to make a mistake that might get me killed.
 
But it was certainly too late to worry about things if I were wrong.

I felt the ground around me and came up with a rock about the size of a regulation hardball.
 
It was the oldest trick in the book, but it might work.

I came up to my knees and threw the rock to my right before ducking back down to wait for some kind of reaction, a rifle shot, the sound of running feet, anything.

I waited for at least a full minute.
 
There was no reaction at all.
 
Either I'd picked the wrong bush, or no one was anywhere around, or whoever was skulking there was too smart to fall for the oldest trick in the book.

I thought things over for a second or two.
 
I didn't want to spend the night crouched in the mud, surrounded by wet weeds, and sooner or later I was going to have to take Dino to the hospital, so I had to do something.

Nothing had worked out so far, so I decided to do something really stupid.

I stood straight up and fired three rounds as fast as I could at the car that was parked on the road.

The car was too far for accurate shooting with a pistol, but I heard a kind of twanging sound, and I think I actually hit it once.
 
Hitting it wasn't my real purpose, however.
 
My purpose was to give the skulker something to worry about, not to mention some nice bright muzzle flashes to shoot at, with the hope that he wouldn't hit me.

If he didn't, then I'd know for sure where he was.

If he did, well, I'd still know where he was, though it most likely wouldn't do me much good.

I'd been right all along.
 
He was behind the bush.

It took him just long enough to recover from his surprise at the shooting for me to fall back down in the mud.
 
Almost before I hit the ground, he got off a return shot.
 
It was a near thing, but he missed me.
 
I imagined the bullet tunneling through the air exactly where my heart would have been if I'd remained standing.

Shooting scares me, especially if I'm the target and especially if the bullet comes close to me, close being defined as about a hundred yards, so I felt a little trembly in the stomach.
 
I ignored the feeling, got to my knees and triggered off two shots at his muzzle flash.
 
The shooter was thinking fast, however, and he'd started to run as soon as he'd fired.
 
I missed by a mile.

He wasn't going to shoot again.
 
He was in an all out run for the car, so I jumped up and went after him.

He was faster than I was, and more agile.
 
I didn't know whether he could see better than I could, but he somehow avoided the hole I stepped in.
 
It wasn't a big hole, but it was big enough to swallow my entire foot.
 

I fell sprawling, and the Mauser flew out of my hand.

I was up soon enough, but I fell right back down, having not only stepped in a hole but having managed to twist my bad knee in the process.
 
It felt as if someone were doing surgery on it with a red-hot crowbar.
 
Tears came into my eyes, and I bit down on my lip to keep from yelling.

There was a kind of roaring in my head, but not so loud that I couldn't hear the car starting, and then I could hear it backing and filling to make a U-ey before it drove away.

I didn't try to go after it.
 
I just sat there for a while, waiting for the pain to lessen.

I don't know how long it took, maybe five minutes, maybe more.
 
I tried standing up without putting too much pressure on the knee.
 
It was going to be OK.
 
It didn't feel any worse than it would have if someone had been hitting it with the rounded part of a ballpeen hammer every time I took a step.

I looked around for the Mauser, found it a few feet from where I'd fallen, and picked it up.
 
I wiped it off on my sweatshirt as best I could and stuck it back in my waistband.

Then I started back toward the house to see how Dino was.

H
e was sitting with his back against the palm tree when I walked up to him.

"I knew it was you when you came over the fence," he said.
 
"You're a really graceful guy, you know that?"

I'd been about as graceful as a cat.
 
A cat with its tail and three of its legs in splints, that is.

"Did you get that bastard?" Dino asked.

"No.
 
He had a car parked over there on the road.
 
He got away."

"Get a look at him?"

I'd gotten a look, but all I'd seen was a bulky blur.

"It was someone big," I said.
 
"Or maybe just tall.
 
That's about all I could tell you."

"I heard shooting.
 
Was that you or him?"

"Both," I said.

"Did you hit him?"

"I don't think so."

"Too bad."
 
Dino stood up, bracing himself on the tree bole.
 
"I thought you said you didn't have a gun."

"I lied."

"I figured that out."

"How bad's your shoulder?"

"Judging from the way you were walking, it's probably not as bad as your knee.
 
What happened?"

"I stepped in a hole and fell down."

"Like I said, a really graceful guy.
 
Oh, well.
 
Falling down's better than being shot, I guess."

"I think so," I said.
 
"You feel like walking to the house now?"

"You don't think that was Henry J. out there in the pasture?"

"Do you?"

"Nah.
 
He wouldn't have had a car waiting.
 
I don't think Henry J.'s gonna to be in the house, though."

I didn't agree.
 
I was afraid Henry J. was going to be there, all right.
 
Dino was, too.
 
He just didn't want to say what he really meant.

We walked to the house, or rather I hobbled, and Dino sort of shuffled.
 
We were quite a pair.

The back door was open, just as I'd thought it would be.
 
I turned on a light that revealed we were standing in the kitchen.
 
It was very clean and didn't look as if it got much use.

We went through the kitchen into the den, where the light was already on, and that's where we found Henry J.

He was lying in the middle of the brown rug, and there was a dark stain underneath him.

I limped over to the window, tracking mud all the way.
 
Henry J. wouldn't mind.
 

The window wasn't shattered like the one in Sharon's door, but there was a neat round hole in it, with three thin cracks spreading out from its edges.

"Stay here for a second," I told Dino and went back into the kitchen to check the back door.
 

The lock had been shot off.
 
I thought that Henry J. had been shot from outside, and then the killer had come inside to make sure of him.
 

The situation with Sharon had been different.
 
She lived in a crowded part of town, and someone might have happened on the scene at any moment.
 
Checking on her would have been too big a risk.
 
For all the killer knew, unless he knew her well, she might even have been dialing 9-1-1.

I went back to where Dino was standing, looking down at the body.
 
He touched it with his toe.

"I never much liked Henry J.," he said.
 
"I even thought he tried to kill Sharon.
 
So why do I feel sorry for him now?"

I felt the same way, but it wasn't anything I could explain.
 
It's just a lot easier for most of us to dislike a living person than a dead one.

"Do you think the same person who shot at Sharon killed Henry J." Dino asked.

"Yeah.
 
It would be too much of a coincidence for it to be any other way."

"So where does that leave us?"

I wasn't sure.
 
It shot the hell out of one of my earlier theories, however.
 
I was beginning to develop a new theory, but I wasn't quite ready to put it into words.

So I said, "We have to call the police."

Dino frowned.
 
"I had a feeling you were going to say that," he said.

H
e tried to talk me out of it, but we didn't argue for very long.
 
Even Dino knew that this time we had to call the cops.
 
The surprise was who they sent along with the evidence team: Bob Lattner.
 
He wasn't exactly the person I wanted most to see.

He wasn't pleased to see me, either, especially not with the body of Henry J. on the floor between us.

"Why'd you and Dino kill him, Smith?" Lattner asked casually, as if he were asking what we'd had for breakfast.

Dino looked at me as if to say
see what comes from calling the cops?

"We didn't kill anyone," I told Lattner.
 
"We came here to talk to Henry J., and we found him lying on the floor right here."

"You got any proof of that?"

"There was someone else here when we got here.
 
We chased him, and he shot Dino in the shoulder.
 
You should save the questioning and let the paramedics have a look at Dino now."I'd called for an ambulance as soon as I'd called the police, and the paramedics were waiting right outside.
 
Lattner wouldn't let them come in.
 
He didn't want his crime scene disturbed.