Threepersons Hunt (28 page)

“Maria,” Watchman said. “She could have had it.”

“What?”

“My hypothesis this time. Suppose somebody was to plant the confession among Maria's effects where some eager-beaver County Attorney could find it. She was using it to blackmail Kendrick, see, and that'll also explain why Kendrick paid her all that money.”

“Kind of irregular, Trooper.”

“You got a better idea?”

“Not a one.”

“All right, where is it?”

“Not here. It's in a safe deposit box in Phoenix. I'll get it to you.”

“Get it to Victorio. I don't want to lay eyes on it until it's been discovered legally.”

“All right, I'll do that. And I'll get to Masterman first thing in the morning and tell him to start writing up the papers for an out-of-court settlement on a nine-to-one basis. If the tribe accepts it I'll deliver Kendrick's confession to Victorio.”

“There's one other thing,” Watchman said. He was very tired now and it amazed him the sun was still shining in the window. It was only half-past three.

“Such as?”

“Joe Threepersons.”

“He's your problem.”

“You're the one he's gunning for. You can help us with him.”

“How?”

“Bait, Mr. Rand.”

Rand thought it over. “I don't like that much.”

“You owe him a lot more than that.”

“Let the son of a bitch sue me.”

“Come on,” Watchman whispered. “Come on.”

“Shit,” Rand said.

“Let's go.”

In the office Kendrick sat as if a spring were coiled beneath him. Watchman said to Buck Stevens, “Locate Pete Porvo—he's the local cop. Tell him to put Kendrick on ice until we come back for him.”

Kendrick said, “Wait a minute, you can't—”

“Can it, Dwight,” Rand said, and the tone of his voice told Kendrick all he needed to know. Kendrick sagged but his eyes lay against Rand with an incredible force of hatred.

Victorio said, “I'd like to ask him some more questions.”

“I don't need his answers,” Watchman said. “He's sewed up. Come on, Tom. We've still got to catch Joe Threepersons before somebody gets killed.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HEY WENT
up to Rand's ranch in two cars, the Bentley and Victorio's Volkswagen; Watchman didn't want Stevens' cruiser to be seen there.

They parked in the driveway. Rand got out and looked past the house into the trees. In his consternation he turned a full circle, searching; the pressure of possibilities sucked sweat onto his forehead. He stood there for a moment like a floor lamp and then abruptly said, “Let's go inside.”

Watchman trailed Stevens and Victorio inside after him. Rand closed the door and led the way into the back room. It was getting gloomy outside; the storm clouds were moving in—they'd just driven through it a few miles back. Rand reached for the desk lamp but then withdrew his hand from the switch and went to the drapes; he drew them shut and only then turned on the lights.

“All right. I'm supposed to be bait.”

“You,” Watchman said, “or somebody to double for you.”

“You mean somebody to play the part of the duck in Threepersons' shooting gallery.”

“Yeah. He'll come here with that magnum rifle. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. But he'll be here.”

“And I'm supposed to wait around and get shot so you can arrest him afterward. That's a hell of a brand of law enforcement you boys practice. I wouldn't—”

“Nobody's asking you to be the bait. Just give us the trap, we'll provide the bait. Let us use some of your clothes.”

Rand's square fingers were at war.

Watchman said, “Just keep away from windows. Now I could use one of those tailored jackets of yours and a pair of your sunglasses.”

Buck Stevens murmured, “You'd never pass, Sam. I'm about his build, better let me do it.”

Tom Victorio chewed his lip; Rand stared at Stevens and then withered a little, as if the reality of it were slowly reaching him.

“Sam, you know it's got to be me,” Stevens said. “I won't be a sitting duck for him. I'll show myself but I'll keep moving. It's the only way to do it.”

The silence was such that Watchman heard Rand's lips pull apart with a sticky gumming sound.

Watchman gave him a reluctant nod. “All right. Better bring the artillery from the car, and let's get both cars out of sight.” He handed the Volvo keys to Stevens and turned to Rand. “We've got one rifle. I could use the loan of another one.”

Rand pivoted toward the door. “Rig him for a crossfire. Sounds good to me. I've got a pretty good 'Ought-Six, that do?” He left the room without waiting a reply.

2.

There was rain.

It came with a slow heavy beat against the roof. It was only just past five o'clock but the daylight had drained out of the sky and the house was dismal in gloom. Wearing one of Rand's tailored rodeo jackets and a pair of Rand's tinted glasses Buck Stevens went around the house switching on lights, taking risks but moving fast enough to discourage a chance gunshot from any window.

Rand had explained the emptiness of the house. His current wife was a film actress currently on location in Spain; in her absence Rand had wanted solitude and dispatched the house staff for a long weekend in Las Vegas. None of the ranch crew was likely to come up to the main house; Rand's privacy was respected by those who worked for him.

Rand restricted his movements to those rooms in which they had drawn the drapes tight. Stevens played Rand in the rest of the house. Victorio raided the kitchen for cold roast beef and lettuce and went around distributing sandwiches and beer; Watchman wolfed down two sandwiches and wondered when he was ever going to put his belly around a decent meal.

He phoned Angelina. “I had him but he got away from me. He's got a little dysentery but he's all right. So far.”

“What's going to happen, Sam?”

“I can't tell you anything happy,” he said. “We'll try to take him alive, that goes without saying. It's mainly up to him.”

“My dumb brother.” There was a depth of concern and affection in her voice. “Isn't there anything at all we can do to clear him?”

“He's already cleared. We arrested Dwight Kendrick for the murders. But Joe's got a poison in him, he wants to kill.”

The line crackled; it was a broken interval of time, not susceptible to measurement. At the end of it she said, “Try to keep anybody from getting hurt, Sam. Joe or anybody else.”

He pictured her face, the hair falling around it. He sketched for her what had happened. She asked a few questions but he cut her short. “I'll call you later. Maybe have some good news.”

“I hope so. I haven't prayed in a long time, Sam. But I don't want anybody hurt. Anybody.”

“Then praying can't hurt. I'll see you.”

When the connection broke he stood with his hand on the receiver and felt the sweat of it.

3.

The rain beat at the window. Watchman checked the time. Nearly five-thirty. Buck Stevens walked past the window, past the ten-inch gap between half-drawn drapes; he sat down at the side of the window, out of the line of fire. “What if he doesn't come?”

“The little hairs on the back of my neck tell me he's around here right now.”

“Come on. There's a limit to that stuff, Sam.”

“Well it's not just instinct. Joe knows things today that he didn't know yesterday. He talked to me this morning, he knows I know he's going after Rand. It stands to reason he'd either abandon the whole thing or try to get here before I could get Rand out of his way. So if he's coming at all he'll come now. And he's coming because if he wasn't he wouldn't have walked away from me this morning.”

It took great effort of will to maintain the patient waiting. Finally he put down the beer can and slid along the wall to pull the drawstring and close the drapes. “I'd like to speed this up. Let's take a little chance.”

“I'm just as tired of this as you are,” Stevens said. “Name it.”

“Let me have that jacket you're wearing.”

“Hold on a minute. You know he'll never buy that. You're too thin, you're too dark. You don't look anything like Rand.”

“Outside in the rain he'll never spot the difference.” Watchman took one of Rand's white cowboy hats off the rack and settled it above his ears. “Come on.” He beckoned and Stevens reluctantly shrugged out of the jacket and handed it over. It hung a little loose on Watchman's shoulders. There was a transparent plastic rain-slicker hanging on the peg and he put that on. “Get Victorio in here.”

“You sure about this, Sam?”

“It'll smoke him out if he's around here, I'm sure about that.”

Stevens left the room with a brooding face. Watchman checked the loads in the .30-'06 and worked the bolt to slide the top cartridge into the chamber. He left the safety off.

When Victorio followed Stevens into the room Watchman handed the rifle to the lawyer. “It's ready to go, the safety's off. Can you handle it?”

“I'm fair, that's all. Just fair.”

“Don't kill him if you can help it.”

Stevens said, “What's the script?”

“You take the window on the porch at the corner out in the front room there. Tom takes the window on the side of the house, same corner. No lights in the room behind you. Between you you'll cover that whole quarter from the house. Keep your eyes on the trees between here and the bunkhouse because that's where he'll show himself.”

“He will?” Victorio said. “Why should he?”

“It's a rotten light for shooting. That 'scope won't be any good to him. He'll have to get in close to make sure he doesn't miss.”

“And you're just going to stand out there and wait for him to pick you off?”

“I don't know about you no-account Apaches,” Watchman drawled, “but up where I come from we don't believe in suicide. No, I'm not going to stand there and let him pot me.”

There was a
Western Horseman
magazine on the table by the office door. He picked it up and folded it open. “This'll do. Some papers in my hand, that's what I want him to see.”

He led them forward through the house. At the end of the hall he reached around through the doorway and hit the wall switch inside the front room. It plunged the room into near blackness.

Rand's voice came out of the dark television room. “How the hell long do I sit in here?”

“It won't be long now,” Watchman said. “Just stay put ten minutes.”

He went into the front room with Stevens and Victorio and posted them at the corner windows. Slowly they raised the sashes. Rain sprayed in, bouncing on the sills.

Watchman said, “I'm going to make a run for the bunk-house with this paper in my hand. I'll go inside and pass the time of day with whoever I find in there. That should give Joe time enough to work his way down in the trees here. Right now he's probably up behind the house someplace, looking for a way in, but he'll see me run across and he'll come down and wait for me to come out of the bunkhouse and back to the house here. That's when he'll make his play.”

Stevens said, “Jesus. He'll nail you cold.”

“I won't give him the chance.”

“Shouldn't one of us be out there in the trees, wait for him to come down and get in behind him when he shows up?”

“He won't show himself. He's careful. And if anybody leaves the house right now he'll spot it. This'll have to do.”

“You better zig and zag like a son of a bitch.”

“Bet your bottom.”

4.

Moving as if he had lead in his shoes he dropped off the porch and jogged toward the fountain, the plastic oilskin flapping around him. With the hat pulled low over his face it was hard to see much of the trees but there wasn't much chance Joe was anywhere near here yet.

He skirted the grass by the fountain and made an abrupt turn; just in case. Ran on toward the bunkhouse, then stopped suddenly as if he had forgotten something; shook his head in exasperation and ran on. The performance was designed merely to destroy Joe's timing if in fact Joe was close enough to be aiming at him.

The rain seemed to be letting up a little but the light hadn't improved yet. He kept his shoulders back the way Rand always did; he had the automatic pistol clenched in his right hand out of sight and the open magazine in his left, visible but covered by the transparent plastic poncho. Twice as he trotted up to the bunkhouse porch he swept the line of trees than ran from the side of the bunkhouse along to the back of the house but nothing moved in the rain except the wind-tousled treetops. He crossed the last corner of lawn and went up the steps two at a time, fumbled for the door latch and almost dropped the magazine; and twisted inside.

He slammed the door behind him with his foot. Two card players bounced to their feet like soldiers and showed their surprise when Watchman took his hat off and wasn't Charlie Rand.

He said, “Highway Patrol.” His eyes picked out the locations of the windows and he stepped into the corner where the only visible windows were on the far side of the building, the far front corner; Joe wouldn't expose himself outside by going around to those windows.

He flashed the badge in his wallet. The two men just stared: at Watchman and at each other.

He said, “There may be a man out there with a rifle. Be a little safer if you two went in the back of the place for a while.”

He dropped the magazine on the seat of the chair behind him. One of the cowhands said, “Who's got a rifle?”

“Just a fugitive. We think he's around here. Best to keep your heads down until we've arrested him.”

“Mr. Rand know about this?”