Robert Crais - Sunset Express

The shotgun boomed twice, slamming buckshot into the corrugated metal about eighteen inches above my head. Mrs Earle made a kind of moaning wail, and Rossi dived across the doorway, popping off caps to force Kerris down.

Pike looked at me. 'I don't think he's scared of the odds.'

'Guess not.'

Rossi edged toward the door and stopped just shy of the jamb, squinting out into the sun. She said, 'Hey, the old man's still alive.'

Mrs Earle stopped wailing. 'Walter?'

I went back to the split and saw Walter Lawrence slowly roll onto his belly, then push up to his knees before falling onto his face.

Mrs Earle started for the door, but Pike pulled her down. 'Stay back, ma'am. Please.'

'But Walter needs help.' She said it loudly, and Pike put his hand over her mouth.

'Don't draw attention to him. If Kerris sees him he's a dead man.'

Her eyes were wide, but she nodded.

Walter Lawrence pushed up again, then looked around as if what he was seeing was new and strange. He saw the guy in the red knit shirt about ten feet in front of him and he saw the guy's pistol, a nice blue metal automatic, lying in the dust. He looked past the guy in the knit shirt and almost certainly saw Kerris hiding behind the Jaguar, pointing the shotgun at us. Walter Lawrence was behind Kerris, and since Kerris was looking at us, he wasn't looking at Walter Lawrence. Mr Walter Lawrence began crawling for the pistol. I said, 'Rossi.'

'I see him.'

I watched through the split jamb, and could see the hills and the pumpers and the rough service roads below, and as I watched a dark sedan appeared on the road between the pumpers, heading our way, kicking up a great gray roostertail of dust. Rossi saw it, too. I said, 'Is that Tomsic?'

She ejected her Browning's clip, checked the number of bullets left, then put it back in her gun. 'I can't tell.'

I glanced at Pike and Pike shrugged. Guess it didn't matter to him. Guess he figured the more the merrier.

Walter Lawrence crept toward the gun like a drunken infant, weaving on his hands and knees, bloody shirt hanging loose and sodden between his arms. He reached the pistol and sat heavily, but he did not touch the gun. As if simply reaching it had taken all of his energy. Rossi said, 'In a couple of seconds we're going to be able to hear the car. If Kerris looks that way, the old man's dead.'

I looked at Pike and Pike nodded. I took a breath, and peered out the split again. Kerris had taken up a position behind the Jaguar's front end. You could see about a quarter of his face behind the left front tire. The tire was probably a steel-belted Pirelli. Might be able to shoot through it, but it wasn't much of a target. 'Kerris? Truly's dying. He needs a doctor.'

'It's the cost of doing business.' All heart.

I stood. 'Listen, Kerris! Maybe we can work something out.' I sprinted past the open door to the other side of the shed. When I flashed past the door, the shotgun boomed again, but the buckshot hit the wall behind me.

Pike said, 'Lucky.'

I yelled, 'I didn't sign on to this job to get killed, and neither did Pike. You want the old lady, we.just want to go home. You hear what I'm saying?' I hopped past the door in the opposite direction. Kerris fired twice more, once behind me through the doorway and once high through the wall. Maybe I could just keep running back and forth until he ran out of ammo.

Kerris said, 'Bullshit, Cole. I checked out you and your partner, remember? You aren't built that way.'

Another boom, and this time the number four slammed through the wall just over Joe's back.

I crawled across him to the split again and looked out. Walter Lawrence had once more focused on the gun. He leaned forward from the waist, picked it up, then held it as if he had never held a gun before in his life. Maybe he hadn't. He cupped it in both hands and pointed it at Kerris, but the gun wavered wildly. He lowered the gun. I yelled, 'I'm serious, Kerris. What's all this to me?'

'If you're so goddamned serious, throw out your guns and come out.'

'Forget that.'

'Then let's wait it out.'

The car was close, now, and if I strained I thought that I might hear it. Walter Lawrence raised the gun again. Rossi said, 'That's Tomsic!'

I yelled, 'Okay, Kerris. Let's talk.'

I stepped into the door, and as I did Mr Walter Lawrence pulled the trigger. There was a loud BANG and his shot slammed into the Jaguar's rear fender and Kerris jumped back from the wheel, yelling, 'Sonofabitch!'

Walter Lawrence fired again, and again the shot went wide, and Kerris swung the shotgun toward him but as he did Angela Rossi shouted, 'No!' and she and Joe Pike and I launched out the door, firing as fast as we could.

Kerris brought the shotgun back, pulling the trigger BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM as our bullets caught him and lifted him, and then slammed him into the soft gray earth, and then the noise was gone and it was over and there was only the sound of Louise Earle crying.

Mr Walter Lawrence fell onto his back and kept trying to right himself the way a turtle might, clawing at the air with his arms and legs. I took the gun from him and told him to lie still, but he wouldn't until Louise Earle hurried out from the shed and made him.

Linc Gibbs and Dan Tomsic pulled up in a cloud of dry gray dust, then ran over with their guns out. Tomsic said, 'Who's this?'

'One of the good guys. Get an ambulance, for Christ's sake. We've got another wounded in the shed.'

Linc Gibbs made the call while Tomsic ran for the first aid kit that every cop keeps in his trunk. The crew cut had put one high into the left side of Mr Lawrence's chest. His shirt and jacket were soaked red, and he felt cold to the touch. The blood loss was extreme. When Tomsic came with the kit, we put a compress bandage over the wound and held it in place. Mrs Earle held it. While Tomsic was working with the bandage he glanced at Angela Rossi. 'You okay, Slick?'

She made an uncertain smile. 'Yeah.'

When Mr Lawrence was bandaged we ran into the shed, but Elliot Truly was dead. Tomsic looked close at Truly as if he wanted to be sure of what he was seeing. 'Is this who I think it is?'

'Unh-huh.'

'Sonofabitch.'

Gibbs had them send a medivac helicopter, and while we waited, we secured the scene. There wasn't much to secure. Both the guy with the crew cut and the guy in the knit shirt were dead. Kerris was dead, too. Tomsic said, 'Do all of these guys work for Green?'

'Kerris was his chief investigator. I think these other two worked for Kerris. I saw the black guy at Green's home.'

Tomsic shook his head and stared at the bodies. 'Man, you really wrack'm up.'

I frowned at him. 'Do you have a spare shirt in your car?' My shirt was still a bloody wad on Elliot Truly's chest.

'Think I might have something.' Most cops keep a spare shirt for just such occasions.

He had a plain blue cotton dress shirt still in its original plastic bag stowed in his trunk. It had probably been there for years. 'Thanks, Tomsic.' When I put it on, it was like wearing a tent. Two sizes too big.

The medivac chopper came in from the north and settled to a rest well away from the radio towers. Two paramedics hustled out with a stretcher and loaded Mr Lawrence into the helicopter's bay. They told us that they were going to lift him to Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital, which would be a five-minute flight, and Mrs Earle wanted to go. They refused to take her until Angela Rossi volunteered to go with her. Lincoln Gibbs told Rossi that we would pick her up at the hospital.

When the helicopter had lifted away and disappeared over the hills, Gibbs looked at me and Pike, and said, 'Well?' The first of the black-and-whites was just now kicking up dust on the roads below.