I pulled up behind the cop cars, double tapped the horn, stepped out, waved. Sofia jumped forward and a deputy caught her. Steve squeaked like a groupie. They were on me. Two big local cops, I knew their families most likely. Hands on your head, turn around please. Okay hands on the hood. Please spread your legs . Fast frisk, hard against the junk. Wheezy wheezed,
“Okay, good, thanks, step back.” This to his boys.
“No arrest?” I said.
Wheezy’s sad smile. “Not today.”
He looked me up and down, glanced over the truck. I followed his eyes. My knees and shins were skinned, there was mud all over my shorts, and there were leaves stuck in the gap between the camper shell and the truck cab.
“Rough night?”
“No arrest?” I said. “What then? You wanna come up to the room and have a Coke? I made a new painting, think you’d like it.”
His smile.
“We already tossed the room. Nothing violent. I saw the boat painting. Nice. The brothers again?”
“Probably. Art is weird.”
“That’s a fact.” His smile widening. “You made two. Steve here has already hung the horse and the crow. I’d buy it if I could afford it. Couldn’t get to him before he put the sticker on it.”
“I can tell him to give it to you. Seriously.”
Shake of his big head. “Conflict of interest.”
“You wanna toss the truck?”
He nodded.
“You’re wondering about that gun again?”
No reason to cat and mouse him. They either had enough to put me away or they didn’t. He wasn’t smiling now. Tipped back the last of his Starbucks, held out his hand and one of the cops took the cup. Wheezy nodded.
“Yep, the gun again.”
I said: “If I did the things you think I did, be pretty dumb to keep the gun, wouldn’t it?”
“Criminals can be really dumb. Not saying you are, don’t sue me. Okay, you’re gonna have to sit in the car while we do this, if you don’t mind. Not detaining you, just creating a little space. Also, I figured you may not be ready to talk to your posse yet.” He tipped his head toward Steve and Sofia.
I nodded. Note to self: when you are in the pen serving twenty to life make sure you make him some killer pictures.
“You got some new information I guess?”
He held up a hand, held the cops off.
“Yup, found somebody you might know. The shooting up at the Pantelas’ was an escalation that frankly didn’t please anybody in the department. And then both your trucks dropped off the map. Got a warrant from a sympathetic judge and tracked your phone until we lost the signal. Tracked it back the next morning. That left only three ranch roads that were real roads, that a man might head down to camp if he were tired. After that it was a cinch. Three miles up the northernmost road was a lot of beaten down grass and sage off the shoulder and fresh tracks headed straight into the mesquite. Straight for a gully. Arroyo I guess you’d call it. If we had missed the tracks we wouldn’t have missed the buzzards.”
Buzzards. Hadn’t thought of that. I wanted to tell Wheezy that criminals weren’t really dumb, they just sometimes didn’t think of everything.
“Guess what was down there?”
“A bunch of crows.”
“That, too.”
Now he looked at me really serious.
Wheezy said: “Grant had a loaded and racked .223 ranch rifle in his front seat. With a night scope. He had a spotlight out his window. He was wearing a .45 with a tac light and red dot sight. He had a .41 magnum slug in the side of his truck, shot from long range. Very long. He was hunting somebody, somebody he may have shot at a couple of days ago, we’re still waiting on ballistics. Somebody whose life he may have threatened on the phone. As he had threatened this somebody’s neighbor just minutes before as the neighbor tells it in a sworn statement. It is my understanding that his killing was most likely an act of self-defense. You with me?”
“I think I understand.”
“It is also my understanding that whatever happened on that creek in Delta County in the middle of the night could also be reasonably construed as self-defense. Bad blood, a fight the day before, signs of a scuffle. Dellwood much bigger and stronger than even, say, you. And armed, by the way: both a .44 and a Bowie knife on his belt. Actually, just the sheath, clear that Dellwood had already drawn the knife first on whoever hit him with, say, a rock. It is my further understanding that whoever might have killed the Siminoe brothers might come clean and make a very compelling case of self-defense in both deaths. I have had long chats with the lead investigator in Colorado and the DAs both here and in Colorado—”
“Sport.”
“What?”
“Sorry. You talked to Sport.”
Wheezy winced at me, wheezed a few breaths and refound his thread.
“And”— wheeze —“and furthermore, the longer whoever it is killed these men delays in coming forward with the truth, the less compelling the case for self-defense becomes. It would behoove this individual to come back with me to the station and write out a formal statement just as soon as we toss this gentle soul’s truck and probably not find the handgun that would, if we could find it, probably exactly match the slug buried in Grant Siminoe’s truck.”
He wheezed hard, licked his lips, and locked eyes. “Think about it,” he said. He put out his pudgy hand and touched my elbow.
“It’s not a betting proposition, Jim. I’m not joking. There’s a clear path here. You own what you’ve done and what you never did”—he paused, let that burn into my viscera—“you do your time or not. Whatever happens at trial”— wheeze —“and that’s not up to you. Remember what I said about secrets eating away at us. They do. I mean it. Can eat a man’s life away like a cancer. I’ve seen it more than a few times.”
I nodded. Christ, he almost had me jumping to confess. He was either a really good man or a really good cop. Maybe both.
“You get a lawyer yet?” he said. I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“I’ve been busy.”
He nodded. “Get one. Okay, go sit in the car.” He nodded at the cops and I followed them back. I couldn’t look at Sofia and Steve just then. I had a lot on my mind.
Didn’t take them long. They knew all the places to hide a pistol in a pickup. Good for me that I thought to bury the box of shells as well. No incriminating notes, no pools of dried blood. They did come up with a few crumbs of broken windshield glass which they took out with tweezers and put in a Visqueen envelope. Wheezy held it up to the light of midday and looked uncharacteristically thoughtful. He glanced at me, back at the glass, worked the scenarios in his mind, I could tell. That tightened my guts. He would be back up the highway maybe this afternoon, looking for matching crumbs at the site of Grant’s shooting. Does window glass match up like bullets? When they were done with the inside of the truck they took imprints of the tires.
Huh. They could place me there, I was sure, already had put me nearby with the phone. Proximity. Probably not enough to convict. A lot might depend on how close they could put me to Grant’s body. And what he’d said about self-defense. Would a DA really want to get into a complex murder trial and then have the suspect turn around and claim a clear case of self-defense?
Can you please explain to the court why you didn’t come forward before?
Because I just can’t stand courtrooms, no offense. Jails aren’t much fun either .
But. But. Always the but. Would the but haunt me? Like Wheezy said?
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