Sometimes the Wolf (26 page)
“You didn’t think you’d hear from us so soon,” Bean said. He looked to the back and got a thrill to see Drake watching now, listening to Bean’s half of the conversation, trying to appear as if he wasn’t straining to hear what Patrick had to say on the other end. “I wanted to let you know we’re okay now. Me and John Wesley are just fine. I thought we should clear the air on that one.”
“That’s good,” Patrick said. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“Well, I don’t want to take up too much time,” Bean said. “I just thought we owed you a call. We’re sitting here with the deputy and his wife. I wanted you to know that. I wanted to make it very clear to you.”
“I think we all want the same thing.”
“How do you figure?”
“I owe you,” Patrick said. “You know it. I never forgot.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Bean said. “But you know, I can call you back in a couple hours. Don’t want to take up too much of your time.”
“Wait,” Patrick said. “Just hold on. Let me say something to Bobby. That’s all. You understand, don’t you, Bean?”
Bean looked to the back. It was obvious to him that the deputy hadn’t heard anything of what his father was saying. He held the phone off his ear now and he met Drake’s eyes. “You want to tell your father you love him?” Bean asked. “After all these years I know he’d like to hear it.” Bean held the phone to the cage and watched Drake come forward.
“I don’t know,” Drake said. “I guess I just want to say we’ll have to go fishing some other time.” He raised his eyes to Bean and then slipped away from the cage, back to his corner, where he looked out the window again.
Bean studied him for a time. The sound of Patrick breathing on the other end of the line. Bean considered it all, wondering if the risk had been worth it. And then deciding it had not, he closed the phone.
For a long time he sat and watched the centerline come toward them out of the darkness, one yellow dash at a time. “Fuck the speed limit,” Bean said. “Let’s just get there.”
H
E’S GONE,” PATRICK SAID
. He’d come forward in the backseat with his hands cuffed behind him and his ear to the phone. Now he fell away, leaning his weight to the rear seat and watching the road ahead.
Driscoll brought the phone back and stared at the screen. The whole call had taken less than a minute. “The man who called from Bobby’s phone?” Driscoll asked.
“He’s one of them, the more dangerous of the two. He’s one of the men who came into Bobby’s house a few nights ago.”
Driscoll couldn’t decide how to go on. He had Patrick now. It didn’t seem like any of this should be happening. “They didn’t want you?” Driscoll asked.
He saw Patrick thinking it over. “They don’t need me anymore,” he said.
Driscoll looked up at the rearview. “What do you mean by that?”
“I thought if I called you it would all go away,” Patrick said. “I thought they’d give up on me, or they’d come for me. I didn’t think they’d have Bobby or Sheri. I never thought it would happen like this. I mean I knew it was a possibility but I just didn’t—I couldn’t . . .”
“As a former lawman, you of all people have to understand why I’m taking you in.”
Patrick shook his head. He was looking out the window. He wouldn’t look at Driscoll. “You’ve waited a long time for this,” Patrick said. “And you’re going to take me in for a stolen car?”
“It is what it is.”
“That drug money,” Patrick said. “I stole it. I’m telling you right now. I’m confessing it to you. You want that, don’t you? You want to be right after all these years.”
Driscoll had him in the rearview. “Don’t bullshit me.”
“I’m not. I’ll show you where it is. Everyone will know it was you who figured it out. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Driscoll looked up at the mirror again. Patrick was waiting on him. Driscoll thought about the years he’d wanted only this, about the years he’d spent avoiding his family, sacrificing relationships with his wife and daughter so that he could put himself in this moment. And then he thought about what it would mean when there were no more excuses—when one day he might finally go home and sit at the table with his family and have a dinner. And he wondered if he was too late or if maybe there was still time.
“What’s it going to be?” Patrick said.
THE DOOR TO
the woodstove was open partially and Morgan sat with his back to it, his legs up on another chair and an old blanket stretched from his lap to his feet. He was faced toward the door, and out the window, he’d watched the sun descend and then thirty minutes later the light completely go out of the sky. Now only the reflection of the kerosene lamp on the table could be seen in the glass, suspended there in the darkness of the window, and his own shadowed ghost on the periphery.
The books he’d received in the mail were stacked close at hand on the table and he looked at them from time to time but didn’t move from his seat. Again, he thought of the woman and then just as quickly pushed the thought away.
On the floor lay a tin plate with what remained of his meal—taken early in the day, almost as soon as he’d come through the door. Just a bit of fry bread with some cooked meat and some tomatoes he’d grown and then dried over the past summer. He was looking at this, thinking how he needed to get up and wash the plate, when he saw the small pink nose pop from beneath the counter on which he cooked.
He’d seen the mouse before. The sound of it there behind the counter, trying for whatever crumb he’d dropped. And now he sat as still and quiet as he could, watching first the nose appear and then the head. The mouse as big as his thumb and colored brown as the winter fields.
It came out from under the counter and then stood, sniffing the air. The small whiskers twitching and the little claws clutched in front of its chest like a dog watching a ball raised high overhead.
For a time the two of them sat there, the mouse on its haunches and Morgan in his chair. Then as if Morgan was not there at all the mouse moved in a straight line for the plate. The miniature body low as it came across the floor and the black eyes focused solely on the leftover crumbs of Morgan’s meal.
Morgan didn’t stir and he watched the mouse come up short, testing the air again, and then, satisfied, move the remaining foot toward the plate. It sat there on the tin for a minute, holding one of the larger crumbs between its paws, working the bread down like a man eating corn off the cob.
It finished the crumb and moved on to the next. The mouse close enough that Morgan could hear its claws skittering across the tin. He watched and waited. There was no rush and he didn’t want to scare the mouse away.
The animal ate a third crumb and then went sniffing around the edges of the plate. Finding one it came up on its back legs again and stood gnawing at it. Morgan didn’t move, but he saw the ears of the animal turn up. The mouse gone rigid for a moment, standing there, nose poised in the air and ears flaring one way and then another. The tin was the only thing to sound as the mouse flitted back across the floor and disappeared behind the counter. Crumbs left uneaten on the plate and Morgan looking now toward his own reflection in the window glass.
T
HE KILLERS HAD PARKED
the patrol car just beyond the ridge and they went on foot to the summit, looking down on the small cabin. Bean carried the Walther in one hand and Drake’s service weapon in the other. John Wesley carried the shotgun they’d taken from Drake’s cruiser a couple days before. They stood watching the smoke feed up into the air in a blue moonlit plume. Nothing else to see at the base of the slope except the shift of the cottonwoods in the wind.
They stood without speaking and studied the terrain. When they were done they went together down the slope and separated as they came upon the light spilling from within the cabin onto the grasslands.
T
HE DOOR SWUNG OPEN
on its hinges with such force that it bounced back almost completely, leaving a sliver of the night visible beyond and the bulk of John Wesley standing there. Without moving from his seat, Morgan raised the shotgun from beneath the blanket and emptied one barrel into the wood frame of the door, catching John Wesley in the left arm. Splinters of wood all across the floor and the big man taking a step back with the deer shot in his flesh. A look on his face that Morgan could only guess was complete surprise.
John Wesley faltered a bit and then came forward. With his good arm he pushed the door open and stood looking in on Morgan. Morgan’s feet now planted on the floor, the woodstove behind him, and the old bird gun still in his hands. The bore smoking slightly and the blanket fallen to the floor.
John Wesley looked to the window over Morgan’s shoulder and in the same moment Morgan saw a piece of his firewood come through the window. Glass all over the floor and the stove wood rolling to a stop, Bean just beyond clearing the remaining glass from the frame with his pistol.
When Morgan turned back to the door John Wesley was raising his shotgun. Morgan pulled the trigger and the second shell of deer shot went full into the big man’s body, laying him out on the floor.
Morgan was running before he knew it.
B
EAN WAS HALFWAY THROUGH
the window when Morgan took off. All he’d wanted was a chance to talk with Morgan. He didn’t want to kill the man, at least not until he’d gotten the money.
He had one hand on the sill and a leg through the opening and he was trying to keep his cool. But the only friend he had in the world, John Wesley, was laid out there on the floor and he wasn’t moving. Bean got the other leg over and he went through into the room just as Morgan came off the porch. Off balance and running, Bean raised the Walther and took aim.
Morgan there ten feet from the stairs, the light from the open door spilling onto the prairie. Morgan moving for the shadows. Bean pulled the trigger and felt the gun buck slightly. Morgan fell out of the light and into the darkness. Bean had no idea if he’d hit the man or not.
He came down off the porch with the pistol still pointed out on the prairie, Drake’s own service weapon now tucked into the waistband of his pants.
Grass moved in the wind, and farther on the sound of the high thin branches of the cottonwoods clacking together. Bean’s eyes trying to adjust. He came to the edge of the light and stood with the gun in a sweep of the land.
Nothing but the high grass to see.
For what felt like an hour he stood there looking out on the night. And then he backed away, his finger still held down on the trigger, the gun warmed in his grip. He came back into the cabin and sat for what seemed a long time with John Wesley. Bean’s legs crossed and the tail of his suit jacket spread behind him on the floor. One hand with the Walther in his lap and the other laid palm down on John Wesley’s back. The big man still warm and his face away from Bean, cheek down on the floor.
Nothing Bean could do.
Bean was rocking slightly and watching the open door and the night beyond when he rose and left his friend behind on the floor of the cabin.
D
RAKE AND SHERI PUT
their backs to the seat and kicked at the cage. Drake counted down the time and then both of them shot out their soles at the cage a final time. Nothing moved. The car sat there rocking slightly on its springs and the sound of their breath was the only thing to be heard there in the darkness.
He looked over at her but there was little to see. The silver light of the moon luminescent on her features, the bruises the men had left nothing but dark marks on her white skin. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I trusted Patrick, too,” Sheri said. “It wasn’t just you.”
They’d heard three shots come from over the edge of the hill and then nothing for a very long time. He moved and kicked at the glass of the side window, feeling the body of the car shake. The bottom of his foot felt numb from the twenty or more times he’d tried to push through the rear cage.
He stopped to catch his breath. The night cold had seeped into the car. His lungs pumping in his chest and the steam rising, then disappearing in the air before him. Free to move, he went to the window and looked out on the night as if he might find some help there.
All he’d told the two men was that the money was down there. There was no other choice. It was all he could think of to buy time, and he looked out on the crest of the hill, hoping Morgan had taken his advice to clear out for a day or two. Just go on into town and see if his friend could give him a place to sit this all out. But the guns going off down the hill suggested otherwise.
Sometime on the ride over he’d managed to get his hands free and he’d loosened the tape from around Sheri’s wrist as soon as the two killers had disappeared from sight. Now he tried to pry away the clear glass-like polycarbonate separating the front seat from the back. All of it supported on a metal frame that had been bolted to the floor at his feet. He didn’t have anything but his own strength to rely on and his strength wasn’t enough.
WHEN BEAN FOUND
Morgan he sat at the bottom of the cut with his back to a cottonwood trunk and his legs splayed out on the ground. He’d broken the bird gun open and it lay on his lap with the chambers exposed and the two empty shells in the dirt to his right. There was a pain in his shoulder like a knife blade any time he moved and he sat there trying to calm it away with one hand raised to the meat at his breast and the other out on the ground like an anchor.
He looked up at Bean as he came out of the trees, moving down the slight incline to where Morgan rested. Bean carried a pistol before him and he stopped five feet away from Morgan, the barrel of the gun aimed off to the side. Morgan could see Bean was looking him over and making his judgments.
“You were just sitting up waiting for us,” Bean said. He moved a little closer, squatting so that they could look each other over at the same level. The gun still in his hand.