The Carrion Birds (25 page)

Using the shotgun he took the lock out with one
shell, then stood back around the cover of the wall. Nothing moved inside the
office and he broke the rifle open and thumbed out the empty.

T
hrough the department radio Tom and Tollville were listening to the
play-by-play description of what was going on outside the bar. Pierce’s voice
heard strong through the speakers. The loud cacophony of gunshots following
close behind.

Tom standing close enough to the small four-inch
speaker that he heard every gasp and breath the young deputy had made in those
few short minutes, relaying the news to Kelly.

“Jesus, fuck, Jesus,” Pierce kept saying, over and
over again. Kelly trying to calm him, but the boy not listening. The sound of
her sirens heard blaring overhead as she and Hastings rushed back toward
town.

From what Tom had been able to glean from the
frantic transmission, Pierce was a block up the street from the bar in his
cruiser when the truck rolled through the intersection and took out the front
wall of the bar.

Across the office Tollville had his jacket off. He
was rummaging through one of the closets and when he found the sheriff’s
department’s vests, he strapped one down over his shoulders. The gun butt at his
hip exposed against his white dress shirt. “How far away are we?” Tollville
asked, the sound of gunfire snapping his head around as he tried to locate the
source.

“Three blocks.”

“How long will it take Edna to get back to
town?”

Tom hesitated to answer. “Twenty, twenty-five
minutes,” he said, watching Tollville kneel and remove a nine-millimeter Baby
Eagle from the strap at his ankle.

“Are you up for this?” Tollville asked.

Again, Pierce’s voice cut through them in a rush,
his voice catching in the static.

“Stay there,” Kelly said.

Pierce was talking so fast it was hard to hear him,
saying something about a man and a shotgun, and the blasts of light that were
appearing out of what was left of the bar.

“Stay in the car,” Kelly said. “Just stay put.”

Tollville tossed the Baby Eagle to Tom and told him
to grab one of the vests. “You’ve been helping Kelly,” he said, “and now I need
you to help me.”

Tom looked down at the nine-millimeter in his hand.
He had come here to turn Ray in, he’d come here because it was the only thing he
could do. The only hope Ray had for some sort of salvation, but Tom could see
even Ray was beyond salvation now. He knew already it was Ray who had crossed
the street with a shotgun in his hands, walking straight on toward Dario’s bar.
No hope in the world for the men inside, for Ray, or even for the man Tom had
always thought himself to be. He looked down at the gun in his hand, thinking
about all that lay waiting for them three blocks away. And when he looked up, he
said, “We’re going to need more than just the two of us.”

Tollville smiled now, looking at Tom as if
something funny had been said and Tollville had known the punch line all along.
“For what?” Tollville asked. “You know something I don’t know?”

“I’ll do my duty on this,” Tom said. “I’ll put on
the vest and go down there with you, but I’ve got no clearance for the support
you need right now. This whole department isn’t enough for what’s going on down
there.”

Tollville stared at him for only a moment before
picking up the phone. A few seconds later he was on the line with the state
police. Tom waited only long enough to see it was done before he pushed past
Tollville and went up the stairs toward Main Street, Pierce, and the bar ahead.
A sick feeling all the way through him.

With each step he felt himself moving faster and
faster, until he was running. The vest heavy against his body as he moved, his
lungs fighting the material with every breath and the thick weight of the straps
as they shifted on his shoulders. Looking back, he couldn’t see Tollville yet
and he thought he’d bought himself a little time. To do what? He didn’t know,
and he focused again on the street ahead and the bar, and all that lay before
him.

When he came to the cruiser he saw Pierce where he
sat, his hands held tight in front of him on the dash, with his service weapon
closed in his palms. A husk of fear papered thin across his face.

Down the block the truck sat buried halfway through
the front wall of the bar. Even without the plates he knew it instantly. Bent
and scraped, dinged and punched in all along its sides, the truck was Gus’s.

Tom knocked at the passenger side of Pierce’s
cruiser, cautious not to startle him any further as he waited for the window to
come down and Pierce’s eyes to meet his own. “Tollville asked me to help out,”
Tom said. “I’m going to go around back and watch the lot there. You stay here
and watch the front. Tollville is calling in the state police and we’ll hold
tight on this building for the time being.”

Pierce looked shaken, his eyes skittering and
coming up short as they rose and tried to focus.

“I need you on this, Pierce.” The Baby Eagle grown
slick in Tom’s hand. Sweat felt hot in the creases of his palm. The first time
he’d held a gun in almost ten years.

Pierce nodded. Down the street the sound of a
single shotgun blast fell out of the bar and rolled past them. Both men ducked
at the sound. No sign of Tollville or Kelly anywhere as Tom settled himself for
the run across Main, his eyes already picking out the path he would take as he
made his way toward the lot behind Dario’s bar.

T
he
shotgun blast had played Dario’s office door back on its hinges. The lock
completely gone from the wood and the door hanging open a foot into the small
room. All around Dario the smell of cordite was suspended in the air, haunting
him where he crouched with his back to the corner.

Dario held the .45 with two hands, his shoulders
pressed tight together between the file cabinet and the wall. His skin gone
clammy beneath the weight of the vest and a trail of sweat down the small of his
back.

Outside he heard the shotgun shell fall to the
ground and then the hollow sound of another sliding into place. He was watching
the door and his shoulders were beginning to cramp. The ache of his muscles
tense beneath the skin and a raw excitement as he pulled the slide back on the
pistol and waited.

The shotgun barrel came through the door first,
swinging wide to either side of the frame, pushing out the door on its hinges
till the wood played back all the way to the wall. The shotgun searching the
room like a snake, tasting the air.

Dario marked a point two feet above where the
barrel of the shotgun showed, waiting for the singular tell of flesh. He held
the gun straight out now. Sweat brimming his brow before falling into his eyes,
where he blinked it away.

Come on now, he thought, watching the door, the gun
held out and his eyes searching the empty space beyond. Come on.

R
ay
knew someone was inside the office but he couldn’t tell where. He let the
shotgun feel around for a moment, looking in through the door at what little he
could see.

No way of telling where Dario was unless he stepped
through the doorway. The only things he could see a desk at the center of the
room with one buckshot brick wall behind and the two corners of the room to
either side of the desk. Except for the wall behind, the office was penned in by
cheap drywall on a wood frame. Taking a step back from the door, he cracked the
shotgun open and looked in on the shells inside. Buckshot all the way
through.

With the light leaking out of the office and
falling onto the cement floor of the bar, Ray walked a few paces down the hall
to where he judged the end of the office to be and pulled the trigger, blasting
the wall open. Working quickly he walked back through the light coming from the
office and blasted the other wall. Listening as a quick gasp escaped through the
perforated holes in the drywall.

Dario lay wounded on the floor inside the office
when Ray came in. He had one hand held to his neck, a creasing of red beginning
to show between his fingers. His body flat on the office floor as he kicked out
a leg, pushing through dust and pieces of wood with the pain of the shot. A
tempering of buck all along his jacket, where the lead shot had bit through and
caught against the metal plate of the vest. One shot finding Dario’s neck.

Ray bent and picked the .45 from the floor, holding
it loose in his hand. “Clever,” Ray said, as he used the nose of the shotgun to
open Dario’s suit jacket and look in at the vest and the damage done. The man
younger than Ray had expected, a sheen of sweat now glistening on his face,
wetting the edges of his hair.

“I hoped for you,” Dario said, his hand to the
wound on his neck, his own red blood in the creases of his fingers, and his
voice weak.

Dario worked himself up, his head pitched against
the bottom of the desk and his chin forced against his sternum, pinching his
windpipe and causing his breath to whistle in the silence of the room.

“I could have killed you,” Ray said.

“You should have,” Dario said. He was looking up at
Ray from where he lay, the pain showing on his face.

Ray knelt and put the .45 in his waistband where
his own Ruger had been. He took Dario’s hand away from the wound, watching as a
stream of blood erupted onto the office floor. “You’re not in good shape,” Ray
said. “You could live through this but I doubt you will.”

Dario grinned, his lips pulled tight toward their
edges with the pain. “Funny how things turn out,” he said. His hand back over
the wound, slippery with blood, and his face a chalk-white color that Ray
figured there was no returning from. “Nothing ever turns out the way you think
it will.”

“No it doesn’t,” Ray said. “But I hear that a lot
in this line of work and the more I hear it the less I try to think about the
outcome.” Standing now, he toed at Dario’s hand with his boot and watched the
blood bubble up between Dario’s fingers. The look in Dario’s eyes like a
gut-shot coyote, full of hate, cut down and lying broken in the dirt.

Ray had already been in the bar far too long and he
looked around the room with wonderment, amazed he was still alive. The blood on
Dario’s hand unbelievably red against the whiteness of his skin.

“You’re going to die,” Ray said. He looked to the
door and then he turned to leave.

“You can’t,” Dario said. His voice quickened and
his eyes pleading with Ray to stop. “I made a deal with Memo. I deserve more
than this. I shouldn’t be the one lying here on this floor.”

Ray stopped at the mention of his boss and looked
to Dario.

“I told him where Burnham would be and at what
time. I set him and Gil up.”

Ray stared down at Dario where he lay. The blood
now all over Dario’s hand and glistening black and wet from the collar of his
jacket.

Dario laughed. His face covered in sweat and a
desperate smile across his lips as he looked up at Ray. “Seems like Memo didn’t
mention that to you. Seems like there’s a lot Memo didn’t mention.”

Ray looked down, trying to understand. Years ago,
Memo had promised Ray everything. He had promised it would all work out, that
all would be fine and that if Ray did the work he would be protected. None of
that had come true and Ray had lost his wife and abandoned his son, believing
somehow the cartel had found him, found his family—all of it unclear in his mind
now. All of it turned upside down.

“Memo’s guarantees aren’t worth a thing,” Dario
said. “No one was supposed to die and none of what has happened should have
happened.” He was watching Ray where he stood, and he tried to push himself up
higher on the desk, but he was too weak and his hand flopped loose on the floor,
useless against his side. “It was a simple plan that went too far.”

“My father is dead.”

“I know,” Dario said.

“He didn’t know anything.”

Dario kept his eyes focused on Ray’s. “I can help
you,” Dario said. “You’re not alone in this. Not anymore. You’ll go after Memo
but you’ll never make it. I can help you. I can help you get there.”

Ray laughed, the sound sudden and cruel in the
silence of the office. He stared at Dario a moment longer before leaving him
there on the floor.

T
om
waited behind the bar. Not knowing what to do, thinking that Tollville must by
now have met up with Pierce, and even at that moment, was probably making his
move on the front of the bar.

Tom had been in the back for almost a minute. His
legs stiff where he leaned against a small cinder-block wall, half his height,
which allowed him a view toward the bar. His ears tuned now to all there was
around him, listening to the night and the strange silence of the town sitting
there with the absence of gunfire.

Two minutes passed before Ray came out the back
door and stood in the moonlight. He was covered in dust, and he carried an old
double-barreled shotgun in his hands.

“Aren’t we a pair,” Ray said when he saw Tom
crouched at the wall, the Baby Eagle in his hand, resting over the top, barrel
pointed toward Ray.

Tom stood, his arm shaky with the gun.

“I see you’ve been deputized,” Ray said, nodding
toward the sheriff’s department vest Tom wore. “Was that what they gave you for
turning me in?”

“I haven’t said one thing against you,” Tom said.
“It’s just me here, you don’t have to worry about anyone else.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ray said. “Not anymore.”

Tom looked from Ray to the back door. He didn’t
know where Tollville was. And he wasn’t quite sure what he would do if the DEA
agent found them there in the back lot of the bar, having a conversation like
two men on a smoke break. “I’m not sure how this is supposed to work,” Tom said.
“I offered you a chance before and you didn’t take it.”

“You should have known it wasn’t going to end that
way for me.”