Neil McMahon - Dead Silver

I worked my way around to a tree-sheltered rise that gave me a good perspective of the road and surrounding country toward my cabin, and waited for a longer time. I didn't want to put too much distance between us. If Jessup had seen me take off, he might guess what I was thinking and do the unexpected, like head in another direction.

After three full minutes, there was still no sight or sound of him, or of his vehicle. If I waited too long, I risked losing him.

I started back, this time in diagonal crisscrosses, going slowly in a stealthy crouch and setting each step carefully on the duff-covered ground, like I was zeroing in on an elk or buck. By now twilight was deep enough in the trees that I wasn't much more than a shadow, and I knew the paths where I could pass through noiselessly and still keep cover.

But my tense adrenaline high was cut by the fear that I was moving and he might be laying for me.

Then my straining ears picked up a sound that didn't belong-a metallic clank, coming from the direction of my gate, a few hundred yards ahead. I froze in place, trying to identify it. It was too loud for a pistol being cocked or loaded.

But whatever it was, it had to have come from Jessup.

I'd just started moving again when a much louder noise split the stillness. There was no mistaking this one-the growl of a vehicle engine starting up. I listened in disbelief, stunned that he could have hidden his ride so close to my place without me seeing it.

Then I recognized the rumble of my own pickup truck, familiar as a mother's voice.

That was what he'd been doing. I'd taken the keys out of the ignition, but somebody who knew their shit could hot-wire an old rig like mine in a minute or two.

The sounds kept coming fast-the engine revved, the clutch caught, and the tires spun. He was on his way toward me, fast.

I broke into a sprint for the road. But within a few seconds I realized that he wasn't staying on it-he was cutting off to the west where he could swing a wide loop, weaving through the trees until he got past me. I dug in a bootheel and spun to change direction and intercept him, gauging his progress by the sound.

I caught sight of the pickup just as it was coming abreast of me, thirty yards away, going like hell and bucking like a rodeo bull over the rough ground. It was hard to see clearly through the gloom and fir branches, and I couldn't make out his shape through the windows. I was hit by the abrupt terror that he wasn't even in there, that this was another of his diversions-that he'd wedged down the accelerator and he was really on foot, coming up behind me. But he had to be steering or he'd have piled into a tree by now. Probably he was sunk down in the seat peering over the dash.

I braced my right shoulder against a tree, spread my feet, inhaled deeply, and extended the big pistol with both hands, trying to sight just behind the steering wheel and two feet below the driver's windowsill. Following the bouncing speeding target was like trying to aim from a motorboat barreling through rough water.

It was the damnedest feeling, drawing down on the truck I'd loved and cared for all these years.

I released my breath and started squeezing off shots, letting the kickup of the barrel raise my aim a few inches each time. The.41 didn't make any little spang when it hit the metal. It sounded like John Henry rampaging through a junk-yard with a pickax. The fifth round smashed a fist-sized hole in the window.

But the motherfucker kept right on going like he hadn't been hit by anything but a cloud of gnats.

Out of sheer frustration, I touched off the final round, now at a distance of fifty yards. I could just see a spiderweb of cracks streak the glass of my rear windshield before the old rig disappeared into the trees.

I screamed my rage to the darkening sky, then ran for my cabin. There I discovered that Jessup had cut a chunk out of my phone line.

By then, even the sound of my truck engine was long gone.

Renee's Subaru was still here and she'd left me the keys, but he'd done something to that, too-it was stone dead. My only other motorized transport was a '66 BSA Victor converted to a dirt bike, and I'd pulled the battery and drained the gas out of it last fall, tarped it up, and hadn't looked at it since. My nearest neighbor was a good fifteen-minute run away, and if they weren't home I'd have to break in to call the sheriffs. Splicing my own phone cable would be quickest; I had a partial spool of four-pair wire somewhere in a shed.

Finding it and making the repair took me another ten minutes-probably enough time for Jessup to drive my truck to wherever he'd stashed his own vehicle and get to the highway.

When I finished, I punched Gary Varna's number and braced myself to tell him that I'd had Lon Jessup in my sights for five clear shots, and he'd breezed on out of here as free as a bird.

The flashing red and blue of police beacons was not a sight that I ordinarily would have welcomed, but tonight I waited impatiently for their first distant flicker coming up my road. But time kept on passing-more than I expected, close to an hour. Gary had told me to stay put and he'd be along, but I was starting to fear that I'd misunderstood him.

When I finally glimpsed a vehicle approaching, it showed only headlights and turned out to be a single sheriff's cruiser.

I walked down to the gate to meet it and got there just as Gary climbed out. He looked weary, a little stooped, without his usual crispness.

"You can quit feeling sorry for yourself about your shooting," he said. "He piled up your truck at the bottom of Stumpleg Gulch. Took at least two rounds, smashed him up pretty good inside. Must have held on as long as he could and finally lost it."

I stared at Gary in disbelief. Then my gaze faltered and I turned away. Instead of exultation or even relief, it was like a cold steely hand reached inside me and twisted my guts.

"He's dead?" I said.

"Not yet-we sent him to the ER at St. Pete's. But from what I've heard so far, his odds don't look good."

The radio inside his car was crackling with brief, static-laced messages. Gary leaned back inside and switched it off.

"I know it'll be tough to shake off, Hugh, but you did the right thing," he said. "I wish I could say the same about myself. Before he came here, he killed Evvie."

My stare swung back to him.

"After we finished talking to her this afternoon, she wanted to go home and I let her," Gary said. "I figured Jessup was far away by then, and I never dreamed he'd do something like that, anyway. And I admit, I thought he might get in touch with her-I made her swear to call us if he did. Then when you told us he was still around, we called her and she didn't answer. Deputies went out there and found her shot point-blank."

Gary shook his head with a bleakness that gave me another of those inner clenches.

"It was my decision to let her go," he said again.

We stood there in heavy silence for a moment longer. The night wind was picking up, and not getting any warmer.

"Are you going back to town?" I said.

"Yeah, I better check in on Jessup. We'll need you to walk us through what happened up here, but it can wait till morning."

"Can I catch a ride with you? He shot my cat, too. I need to take him to a vet."

"Sure thing. Go get him, I'll radio ahead and tell them we're coming."

I'd built a fire in my woodstove and settled the tom on a blanket in front of it-the only help I could give him. He was still breathing, but he'd shut down further, eyes closed and no longer purring.

The people at the vet hospital were pleasant and concerned, ready to whisk the tom away to surgery as soon as I brought him in. I watched him go with the helpless feeling of seeing a loved one disappear through those OR doors into a mysterious realm where ordinary people weren't allowed and everything was out of your control, and you knew they might not return alive.