Ridley Pearson - In Harm's Way

Then, from behind her, came the mountain man like a specter. He emerged through the darkness, drawn by Walt’s shriek or out of some sixth sense that made him aware of Fiona’s presence. Whether a lunatic or a calculating murderer who understood the value of a hostage, he moved straight for Fiona, who was herself too absorbed in her own mishap to have any awareness of him. But it wasn’t Fiona he wanted.

She screamed and rolled away, releasing the bat as the man seized hold of it. It hung at his side like the bat of a hitter stepping up to home plate staring down the pitcher-Walt.

Whether traumatized or demonized, vengeful, or drugged and demented, both men knew what the mountain man intended to do with the bat as he took another step closer. Fiona, who had scooted away on her back, thrusting herself along the forest floor by digging in her heels, who had moved a good five yards away, also saw the future-where the next ten seconds were headed. Whether to protect him, or herself-Walt couldn’t fathom such thoughts, still gripped in his pain-she rolled to her knees and began sweeping her arms through the pine straw, in what at first appeared such a lame and odd behavior. The gun, he realized in a flash of lucidity. She was going for his gun.

Movement caught the edges of Walt’s wavering peripheral vision. Beatrice limped onto the path holding her right front paw aloft, her expression-did he imagine it or actually see it clearly in the dark?-one of remorse and grave concern as her master lay writhing in the dirt, a camouflaged giant glowering over him.

Walt, who couldn’t hear anything beyond the rush of his own blood past his ears, who sensed Fiona clambering in the underbrush, raking left and right in search of his handgun, who saw Martel Gale’s and Gilly Menquez’s killer turn toward the woman, clearly sensing she presented the greatest threat, managed a single word to rise up through the pain.

“Defend!”

Beatrice squealed again as she lighted onto her injured paw, bounding some four feet through air like a projected missile-a dozen bared and flashing white teeth.

Walt found the wheelchair an embarrassment, never mind a necessity. The orthopedist told him that despite the lack of any fractures, he wouldn’t walk for a week. He spent as much time as possible behind his desk, because it hid his disability, his condition forcing him to reassess what formed his self-identity.

Nancy came in to wheel him. “I can do it myself,” he barked.

“You’re going to be a delight in your old age, you know that?”

“Maybe I won’t get there.”

“Not if you work without backup.”

“That was supposed to be my fault?”

“Was there somebody else out there in the woods with you? Did I miss something?” She grabbed the wheelchair’s handles and Walt didn’t object. She rolled her eyes behind his back.

“Yeah… well…” he said, lacking any decent retort. He hated her sometimes.

“You sure you’re up for this?”

“I’m fine.” He loved her at other times.

“It can wait.”

“No, it can’t. I can’t. He can’t. It has to happen now.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Shut up.”

“Yes, boss.”

She delivered him to Interview 1, as charmless and bland as Interview 2, but one door closer to reception.

He thought it some aspect of Intelligent Design that he should be the one conducting the interview and she the one behind the video camera. All they lacked was Beatrice, currently bandaged and on the floor of his office asleep. She’d taken a piece of cheat grass in the pad of her front paw, had run on it, leaped on it, and driven it in so far that Mark Aker had to remove it surgically.

The accused, in the jail’s blue jumpsuit, won the Charles Manson look-alike contest. Curly black, tangled hair. Unshaven. Basset-hound brown eyes. Peter Arian had wisely ducked this one, letting a wet-behind-the-ears public defender by the name of Crawford sit in the attorney’s chair. Crawford worked to lose his neophyte’s startled look, making him appear to be the one accused of homicide.

“Sheriff,” Crawford began, “my client objects to any alleged victim of his-”

“You! Shut the fuck up,” said the accused. Handcuffed, he couldn’t add the punctuation he would have clearly liked.

Walt appreciated the reprimand. Crawford was now officially a spectator. The attorney glanced in the direction of the video camera and Fiona, but then thought better of making any further protest.

“I don’t care who you are,” the accused stated dryly. “Why should I? It’s not like I killed you.” He smiled. He might have had decent teeth once. He looked directly at Fiona, and therefore directly into the camera lens. “I wasn’t going to let him push you around. Him knocking you down like that.”

Walt had some housekeeping to take care of: name, age, current residence; but he let it go for now. Fiona had been warned not to engage with the man.

“Is it running?” Walt asked her.

She nodded.

“You can leave the room.”

She slipped from behind the tripod and past the wheelchair. She leaned down and whispered, “I wasn’t pushed.” Walt nodded. She closed the door gently. Her presence had accomplished what he’d hoped; he wasn’t going to put her through anything more.

Walt said, “You shot one of my deputies. We have your prints off the chair you threw through the window, and they’re going to match your prints at booking, and that’s going to buy you a long, long time in maximum. The State of Idaho doesn’t take kindly to people shooting its peace officers. So you might as well tell me everything.”

To Walt’s surprise, Randy Dowling then confessed to the two murders and Brandon’s shooting. He’d killed Gale in a fit of rage at him pushing Fiona and hurting her-the way it had looked from his vantage point behind a living room window. “My own wife walked out on me. You probably know that much, am I right? Me being the loser I am? That’s what you’re thinking, am I right? Takes the kids with her. All because of money. Because I lose my stinking job. I’m a CPA. I’ll bet you know that. A guy like you knows everything, right? You bet you do. But you don’t know me. I’m not the guy you think I am. College of Central Utah. Top twenty-five of my class. You know all this, I’m not telling you anything new. I’m putting it down on tape. I was this guy,” he said, pointing his two cuffed hands at Crawford, who recoiled. “Even looked like him. You’d a bought insurance from me, the way I looked. But a guy that big pushing a fine-looking woman like that one. Gave him the old Louisville Slugger up top of the head. Beaned him. Thought it was lights out till the prick got up and came at me like Frankenstein. Jesus. Like trying to chainsaw a sequoia. Guy takes these steps toward me, and me, I’m backing up lockstep. I couldn’t believe he’d gotten back up. His eyes are staring straight ahead-I swear he doesn’t see me-and right as I think he’s about to do me, he drops to his knees and then face-plants into the garden. Down for the count. Like a zombie. Night of the Living Dead. I couldn’t believe it.”

Walt had witnessed other confessions where the guilty party proved himself eager to purge, but honestly hadn’t expected it of this one. He’d initially appraised the man’s wild looks, deciding he had an ignorant lunatic on his hands. When Nancy had brought what little they could find on him, Walt had ordered it double-checked. But now the man was confirming what they’d learned about him. Somewhere down the line he’d be deemed a victim of the economy by a sympathetic press or a politician seeking additional funding. A poster boy for all that can go wrong.

“You cooked meth,” Walt said, seeing it as a conversation starter.