Authors: T. JEFFERSON PARKER

The Triggerman Dance (61 page)

"Mr. Holt, how was this meal prepared?"

"With tender, hating care."

"No, I mean, did you saute the paper, or brown it in an oven?"

"It's newsprint tartar."

"Well. . . let's see how it. . ."

She gets a little mound of shreds on the forktip and looks at it. She brings it to her nose and takes a quick whiff. The wind blows some of it back down to her plate. She breathes deeply, opens her mouth, closes her lips around the fork and looks to John in complete and utter capitulation.

Then she spits the paper toward Holt and hisses: "You killed Rebecca Harris and I know it. You thought she was me." She whirls to face John, her nose inches from the muzzle of the revolver. "Okay, Mr. Sporting Life. You were in love with her. I could see all the way across the office. What are you going to do about her now? How could you throw in with this . . .
pig?
I hope the FBI busts both your asses wide open."

Holt regards John from behind his yellow glasses. He is smiling, but John sees that he knows. The realization has broken on Holt like a wave on a fatal shore. Strangely, there is disappoinment in the big, handsome face. "Well, John. She can't be telling the truth. Wouldn't know how, would she?"

John knows he's out of options, out of stalls. He understands that Joshua has stranded him here in the high lonesome to fend for himself and for an innocent woman who very well might die. Was that his goal, all along?

His heart is thumping. His stomach feels like it's down around his boots. The revolver has grown heavy in his left hand but he eases it four inches to the left of Baum's head and aligns the sights on Partch's chest. He still can't free the .45 from his coat pocket. It is snared in a tangle of strings and folds, and I knows that any hint of this problem will be Partch's cue to draw down.

"The truth is I loved her," says John. "And you killed her in the rain."

Holt stares at John for a long moment. When he speak his voice is tremulous and soft. "Yes, I did. Forty years of law enforcement and never made a mistake like that one. An accdent. Bad one. Forgive me?"

"Never. I'll shoot Partch if he moves. And I'll shoot you by the time your hand reaches that plate. That's my follow-through Mr. Holt."

But the truth of it is that John is too afraid to move. Things seem to be proceeding in slow motion. Every muscle in his body is locked tight, cold, nullified. In the center of his chest is a hard frozen anchor that fastens him in place. He has finally worked the automatic in his coat pocket to point, roughly, at Holt, but his fingers are so numb he can hardly feel it.

"I'm real sorry, John. Could have used you. Here on the Ridge. Everywhere. Tricked my girl, didn't you?"

"I guess I did."

"Can't let you get away with that. Scared now? Bad feeling, gun on a man. Real life."

"Yeah, it's a bad feeling."

"I don't think you can fire."

"I will."

Holt looks over to Partch and nods.

It is pure reaction now. John holds on the middle of Partch silhouetted against the sky, and pulls the trigger. The click is the most final sound he's ever heard in his life.

Then Partch is bending into a shooter's crouch, one hand inside his jacket, just as something shifts on the periphery of John's vision—gold flashing in sunlight. To his left Partch's gun points directly at him. But two phantoms have already materialized from the shadows of the tombs and into the bright day. Two sharp explosions jerk Partch onto his heels and over.

Baum is screaming horrendously and the vibrations of that sound rattle into John's brain. Because for him it's an eternity in a moment as he tries to yank the .45 from his coat pocket. In that second he sees a figure turning a gun toward Holt. And the next thing he knows his whole body is being pulled across the table, his head clamped in Holt's big arm and something hard jamming into his forehead. The world is sideways. Baum is screaming so loud his ears whine. Holt yanks his face into the lunch plate. John feels the arm cutting off his blood and breath while straight in front of his eyes he sees the bullet tips in Holt's revolver, and past them the thick finger locked around the trigger and beyond that the unfocused figures of Joshua Weinstein and Sharon Dumars frozen in sunlight and gold.

Holt's voice reverberates through the arm that chokes him. "My show now, kids. I'll absolutely kill him. Drop the guns. Lie down. Be good boys and girls. Now/."

John's hand is still in his pocket and he knows it's still in his pocket but there's nothing getting to his brain or lungs and the world is getting fuzzy, warm and distant. He tries to focus on the agents but can only see the bullets right in front of his eyes. Are they starting to rotate? Then there's a roaring, percussive cluster of blasts and John feels his flesh shudder with the impact, feels the crack and splinter of bone around his face and the sudden splatter of blood into his eyes, and the terrible surge of something weighty and pressurized exploding. John falls thinking, so this is how it feels. You fall. Just like I thought. The next thing he knows he's on his back staring up at a clear blue sky and there's a warm breeze on his face and the air is rushing back into his lungs and someone is screaming
call the ambulance, call thefuckingambulancejosh
while her fingers dig into his neck. He can smell something metallic and wet on his face cooling in the breeze. A lot of it. But he realizes that he still has his hand on the gun. He grabs Sharon's arm with his free hand, climbs to his feet and finally draws it. It doesn't take him long to find what he's after. To get the sonofabitch in his sights. No. Because Holt is right there at John's feet with a blank look in his eyes and a big black hole between them, just above the frame of his glasses, another one in the middle of his forehead and another one an inch from that John feels himself swaying. He tries to follow the sight of the automatic passing back and forth across Holt's chest.

"Easy, John," someone is saying. "Easy, John. We got him, You did your job. It's over."

He stands there and for a moment feels above it all, sees himself from above looking down at himself standing over a dead body and pocketing his gun, looking down at a young man sprawled on the gravel with an automatic beside him, at a woman with dark hair and blood on her blouse and a lithe little guy with a pale face and a telephone in his hand, speaking but making no sound.

I'm still alive, he thinks, but I've gone to hell anyway.

A few moments later a red Jeep flies over the rise and skids to a stop. Valerie Holt stares at him from the driver's seat. Fargo sits next to her.

The sight of her brings John back to himself. He strips off his coat and covers Holt. He steps to meet her as she breaks into a run. She pulls up just short of him and glares at Dumars and Joshua. Then she brings her full attention to what lies on the ground.

"Oh," she says. "No? No."

John sees her confusion turn to horror as she raises her eyes and beholds his face. He tries to guide her to the Jeep but she slugs and kicks her way past him. Joshua and Dumars converge, badges flashing. Then Joshua is barking his Bureauspeak while he and Sharon defend their prey. Fargo joins in, helping them drag Valerie back to her vehicle. Her arm trails out, hand open and fingers stretched, reaching back toward her father. As they pass John, Valerie fixes him with an utterly comprehending stare and Fargo adds his own malevolent gaze. "We have a date now, friend," he says.

John stands there, watching them stuff Valerie back into her Jeep. The tablecloth skids across the gravel in the wind. The silver domes and china lie on the ground like old treasures. Susan Baum still sits at the table, silent, shivering and unseeing beneath the monumental bronzes of the Holt family.

Fargo drives the Jeep away.

You did your job.

A while later a helicopter descends toward Top of the World in a lazy spiral and three Bureau sedans trail their way up from the road below.

John is sitting on the stone bench next to Baum when the cars make the summit. Though he has an arm around her shaking body and though he mutters words of comfort to her, John feels nothing but darkness inside. And as he gazes out at the autumn splendor of Liberty Ridge, he sees nothing but darkness there, too.

CHAPTER 41

Late that afternoon he packed up his things and set them on the breakfast counter of the cottage. Not that he had much: his personal effects, the clothes that he and Valerie had bought, half sack of dog food, his birdgun and a couple .boxes of shells. He stood for a while in the little kitchen and looked out at the lake watching his dogs in the water fighting over a ball. He slipped shell into the shotgun, let the action snap shut and put on the safety, leaving it on the bar, pointed toward the door. He took the .45 from his coat pocket and set it on the bag of kibbles.

For the third time that day he walked across the meadow to the Big House. But for the first time, Lane Fargo was not there to turn him away at the door. He brushed his way past one of the cooks and walked down the tiled entryway, beneath the big timber beams, past the wrought iron candleholders and the oil paintings of the rancho days.

Valerie was in the living room, sitting before a small fire that flickered in the cavernous fireplace, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a cup of something on the rough-hewn table in front of her.

If she saw him come in, she didn't show it.

"May I?" he asked.

She looked at him for a long time, then nodded. He walked far around her and sat on a steerhide sofa on the other side of the table.

"Is there anything I can get you?"

She looked at him again, shook her head, then returned her gaze to the fire. "Mom doesn't comprehend. I tell her, but she doesn't get it. Says, 'oh, no—wait 'til Vanny hears.' "

John sat there for a long while, listening to the pop and hiss of burning wood. He watched Valerie in profile, her unblinking eyes vacantly attuned to the embers.

"Agent Dumars explained it to me," she said, without expression. "Who you are. What Dad did. I didn't understand why. I didn't understand why you did what you did to him."