C Box - Blue Heaven

“Where would we go?”

Hearne thought for a second. “Maybe if the sheriff saw everyone together…”

Jess shook his head. “What if we can’t find him? What if he calls in Singer? No, I feel safer here until we know what’s going on. All we have to do is hunker down and wait until the morning, from what you’re telling me. We can explain everything to the Feds when they get here.”

Hearne said, “Maybe we could go to my house?”

“Either way, we would need to drive straight down the state highway, right in front of Swann’s place. What if they put up a roadblock? Or have a couple of men in the trees waiting for us?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Hearne said sullenly.

“I know one thing,” Jess said, standing up and tossing the rest of his coffee into the sink. “I don’t like speculation. We’ll just drive ourselves crazy with it.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to see what those boys are up to,” Jess said.

JESS HEARD Hearne come outside behind him. He turned, said, “Keep that shotgun handy while I’m gone.”

“You’re going up there? To Swann’s house? What if they see you coming?”

Jess grinned. “I’m not going to drive.”

It took Hearne a few beats to understand. Then: “I’ll help you saddle up.”

IN THE BARN, Jess shoved his rifle into the saddle scabbard and swung up on Chile. Hearne stepped aside, nearly backing into the pregnant cow in the stall.

“I can get there quicker overland,” Jess said, turning his horse toward the open stall door. “Straight across my meadows and up into the timber on the side of Swann’s place. They’ll be looking for headlights, not a rider.”

“If you aren’t back in an hour,” Hearne said, “I’m going to pile the Taylors into my car and go to town.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Jess said over his shoulder as he walked the red dun out of the barn. “Hand me that length of chain there so I can lock the gate on my way. And in the meanwhile, keep an eye on that cow. She’s ready to pop.”

AFTER LOOPING the chain around the gate and snapping two big locks through the links, Jess turned Chile around and goosed her into the trees until they emerged in a meadow, where he spurred her on. The sound of hoofbeats in the dark lulled and energized Jess at the same time. He asked Chile to settle into a slow lope, trusting his horse to see in the dark better than he could. Nevertheless, he clamped his hat down tight and hunched forward in the saddle in case a tree branch tried to dismount him. The rain had begun to drizzle again.

He rode across the meadow and up into the dripping pine trees. As they climbed, he glanced over his shoulder at his house down in the saddle slope, picturing the Taylors on the couch in the dark and Hearne sitting on the porch with the shotgun across his lap, looking very much not like a banker.

THE LITTLE CAR made it up the hill and the road leveled out. Villatoro could see the lone porch light of a house blinking through the trees. He could no longer feel his fingers, or his feet. A sense of utter calm sedated him.

“Stop here,” Newkirk said.

When he did, Newkirk leaned over him and pulled out the keys. “Get out.”

Villatoro opened the door and unfolded himself. Cold rain stung his face and sizzled through the trees. There was some kind of pen in front of him, and huge, dark forms scuttled behind the slats of a fence. He heard a grunting noise that sounded like a man, then a squeal. Pigs. They were pigs.

A big man, Gonzalez, wearing a raincoat and pointing a pistol at him, stepped out from the shadows near a shed.

Gonzalez said, “Good job, Newkirk.”

“I’ve got a wife and a daughter,” Villatoro said. His voice seemed to be coming from someone else.

Gonzalez stopped and leveled his gun with two hands, the muzzle a few feet from Villatoro’s face.

He heard Newkirk say, “Sorry, man.”

He heard Gonzalez say, “You going to do this or am I?”

He heard Newkirk say, with a choke in his voice, “You do it.”

“You never should have come out here, old man,” Gonzalez said to Villatoro. “You should have stayed in the minor leagues. Shit, you’re retired, right? What’s wrong with you?”

Villatoro looked up and saw a silver ring hanging in the dark inches from his eye. It was the mouth of the muzzle. He wondered if he should strike out, try to hit someone, try to kick someone, try to run. But he had never been a fighter. The two fights he had had as a youth had both ended badly, with him cowering on the ground while being punched and spit upon. He didn’t have the mind of a fighter, preferring reason to force. In thirty years, he’d never been attacked or forced to draw his weapon. Oh , he thought, if I could live my life again I would learn how to fight! He had a strange thought: Do I keep my eyes open or do I close them? Hot tears stung his eyes, and he angrily wiped them away.

“Fuck this,” Gonzalez said, and the ring dropped away. “You need to finish the job you started. That’s what the lieutenant told you, right?”

“I guess,” Newkirk said, sighing.

“Then finish it.”

Villatoro felt his stomach begin to boil sourly and hoped he wouldn’t get sick.

“Take care of this guy,” Gonzalez said, turning toward the house and walking away. “Take care of this fake cop.” Then he laughed softly. Villatoro was humiliated, and angry. But most of all, he was terrified.

Villatoro felt Newkirk’s gun in the small of his back, pushing him forward.

“Walk down to the end of the pen along the rails,” Newkirk said, his voice weak. “And don’t look back at me.”

He’s going to shoot me in the back of the head. That’s better than in the face.

As he stumbled forward, he sensed one of the hogs, the huge one, walking along with him on the other side of the fence. He could hear the pig grunt a little with each breath.

Villatoro’s shoe caught in a root, and he staggered, but Newkirk grabbed the collar of his shirt and held him up. “Watch where you’re going, goddamn you.”

“Sorry.”

“Shut up!”

Newkirk pushed him ahead until they were under a canopy of trees at the corner of the corral. He kept his hand on Villatoro’s collar, guiding him ahead. It was dry there. Villatoro could feel the crunch of pine needles under his soles although the tree dripped all around them.

Any second now . He could barely hear the drip of the trees because of the roar in his ears. And something else…

“Mister, I’m ready to shoot your eye out of the back of your head.” It was not Newkirk who spoke, Villatoro realized. It was a voice from the trees, from the dark. The voice was deep and familiar, but Villatoro couldn’t place it, and for a moment he thought it was his own imagination, his brain trying to give him a second or two of false hope.

But Villatoro felt the gun twitch on the small of his back and heard Newkirk say, “Who is it?”

Another sound, the snort of a horse somewhere in the dark cover of the trees.

“The guy who’s about to blow your head off.”

Villatoro felt Newkirk’s grip harden on his collar, but the gun left his back. There really was someone out there! And the voice, it was that rancher he had talked to at breakfast. Rawlins.

The gun returned, this time pressed to Villatoro’s temple.

“I don’t know who you are,” Newkirk said, his voice rising, “but if you don’t back off, he’s a dead man.”

“He’s a dead man anyway from the look of things,” the rancher said. “So fire away. Then there’ll be two dead. Simple as that.”