Джон Коннолли - The Dirty South

‘For what it’s worth, I’m leaning toward the same theory, but I’m still interested in the wounds to the animal.’

‘I’ll take a look at the possum. If anyone asks me why I appear to have lost my mind, I’ll refer them to you.’

‘Do that. In the meantime, I’ll try to come up with a name for it.’

‘You’re a strange person, Mr Parker.’

‘I’m not the one about to cut open a possum before breakfast,’ said Parker, ‘so it’s all relative.’

While Parker spoke with Ruth Temple, Cade’s posse was finally moving into position.

Everything about the operation had taken longer than anticipated, because Cade didn’t want to send a bunch of armed civilians into a potentially dangerous situation without all of them understanding their responsibilities, and ensuring that they were clear on the positions they were to take up. Basically, he instructed, their role was to cut off routes of escape, and their weapons should be regarded primarily as tools of intimidation, not harm. If they saw someone unknown approaching, they were to instruct them to drop any weapons and lie on the ground. They were not to fire unless they believed their lives were under imminent threat, even if that meant allowing suspects to go free. Cade didn’t want this turning into some kind of free-fire calamity. He organized them into groups of three, placing one of his men in charge of each, and emphasized the necessity of obeying any orders given by their group leader. Even then, Cade knew he was playing with fire. He had deputized armed men and women, and was introducing them into a confrontation with drug dealers who would themselves be armed. His hope was that the occupants of the farm would mostly be local boys, and reason might prevail once they realized they were surrounded by their own kind, but his experience of life in Burdon County was that reason was often in short supply there.

So, too, on this particular morning, was luck. The dark was reluctant to yield to the day, and the first of the rain began to fall before the convoy had even reached the first meeting point, after which they would proceed on foot for the last half-mile. There was only one road to the farm, and Cade wasn’t convinced that they could travel up it in force without alerting the suspects to their approach. He didn’t want Butcher’s people scattering into the woods, because it would be hard to round them all up again, not to mention risky for his deputies and those with them.

The rain meant that visibility was limited, although it would keep those in the farmhouse from ranging too far, which would make it easier for the posse to close in on them unnoticed. Cade wanted everyone in position before he started negotiating the surrender of the operation’s targets. He had decided against going in hard; his aim was to prevail without bloodshed on either side. He didn’t want to have to tell the wife of one of his deputies that she was now a widow, or a mother that she had lost a son or daughter because of his posse, but neither did he want to make a martyr of Randall Butcher or anyone else on the old Buttrell property. Deaths would also bring bad publicity, which he wanted to avoid. Nice clean arrests would be best for everyone. He’d drummed that into the posse, and checked with each of them in turn to make sure that he or she understood.

Only Leonard Cresil had looked away. It was all Cade could do to talk him into leaving behind the hunting bow and its arrows with their broadhead tips. But Cresil still had a gun, and Cade’s conversation with Charles Shire, and its likely implications, continued to prey on his mind.

Cade raised his hand as soon as he saw the roof of the farmhouse through the trees. Everyone around him stayed silent, even as the posse split up and moved to encircle the building. Cade duck-walked to the edge of the woods, Deputy Mathis close behind. Cade saw the farmhouse, with two trucks and three cars parked in the yard, and one man, armed with a pump-action shotgun, leaning against the shed in which Estella Jackson had been found, its tin roof providing him with shelter from the rain. He had a two-way radio strapped to his shoulder and was eating beans from a can. He appeared to be the only lookout.

The door to the farmhouse opened and Randall Butcher emerged. He had a cup in his right hand, and a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He yawned, stretching his arms.

And someone shot him in the chest.

91

Later, once the smoke had cleared, both literally and figuratively, it would be decided that Leonard Cresil fired the first shot in what became known locally as the Battle of Buttrell’s Farm. For a number of reasons, it would prove impossible conclusively to establish Cresil’s culpability, and therefore a degree of doubt would always remain.

For now, though, all Jurel Cade knew for sure was that a person unknown had just put a hole in Randall Butcher. The lookout with the shotgun, having stood frozen while his boss set about the business of dying, started running for the farmhouse while simultaneously firing random blasts into the forest. Pellets from one of those blasts hit Deputy Erwin Franks in the side of the head, removing most of his right ear and a section of his scalp, and rendering him immediately unconscious. The three deputized civilians assigned to Franks, having concluded, not unreasonably, that their lives were almost certainly under threat, returned fire, and suddenly Cade’s operation was spiraling out of control before it had even properly begun. He was already scrambling for the bullhorn to order everyone to stop shooting when four armed men emerged from the trailers parked at either side of the farmhouse. One of those men was Pruitt Dix.

Dix had many unbecoming qualities, but disloyalty was not among them. He had stood by Randall Butcher’s side for nearly twenty years, and what he felt for him was as close to love as he had ever known. The sight of Butcher writhing on the porch, a blood angel forming beneath him, caused something to break inside his lieutenant. Dix’s only instinct was to try to save Butcher, even as what remained of the logical part of his brain recognized that his employer – his friend – could not and would not survive. But shots were impacting around him. Glass was breaking, and wood splintering. Dix could hear shouting from inside and outside the house, and a voice repeating the words ‘Stop firing! Stop firing!’ over a bullhorn. But this couldn’t have applied to Dix, because he hadn’t yet fired a shot. He was about to rectify that situation.

Dix was carrying a Beretta AR90, one of a number of weapons that had fallen foul of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban signed into law in 1994 by President Bill Clinton – for whom Dix had not voted, and whom he regarded as a disgrace to the state that had birthed him. This particular AR90, with its wire folding stock, was one of three that Dix had acquired from Mexico and was fitted with a hundred-round C-Mag drum, the contents of which Dix now began emptying into the forest. Jurel Cade’s voice was subsumed in the tumult, but by then he had given up on the bullhorn, and – like everyone else around him – had his face buried in the dirt.

On the porch, Randall Butcher stopped writhing.

Because Randall Butcher was dead.

Tilon Ward lifted the hatch in the floor of the RV and dropped to the ground below. He lay unmoving, his ears ringing from the noise of gunfire. He could see Pruitt Dix’s muscles jerking as the assault rifle bucked in his hands, and two of Butcher’s other subordinates shooting from positions of cover. A third was working his way from the rear of the farmhouse when a bullet took him in the right ankle and he went down. At the same moment, the back door burst open and three figures in blue protective overalls commenced a run for the forest. Running had also been Ward’s plan. Initially he was annoyed at these others for doing the same before he could get around to it, thereby attracting unwanted attention, until he realized that their overalls would make them stand out until they could be disposed of, and therefore they, along with Pruitt Dix’s fusillade, could provide just the distraction he required.