Beau rose up, firing wildly at the unknown, five earsplitting booms. The front of his jeans was soaked.
Emil turned and fled.
“Dad,” Beau yelled.
A bullet caught his left shoulder and dropped him.
“Dad.” He kicked his heels, propelling himself backward, trying to return fire. But he’d spent the revolver’s capacity; it hammered loudly on the empty chambers. “Wait.”
He scrambled to his feet and crashed off into the brush right as a third shot plugged into the mud and sent up a splash.
Seventy yards away, Al Bock leaned out from behind a stout tree trunk, began darting from blind to blind.
I yelled, “Clear.”
He hustled toward us. Over his T-shirt and jeans shirt he’d added camouflage body armor and a matching cap. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Regina said. “Hurry.”
He freed us with his hunting knife. I grabbed the SIG Sauer, Regina took the shotgun, and the three of us ran through the woods, skirting a junkyard ambush, spilling into the street.
Emil rocketed past in the Range Rover.
Regina raised the shotgun and blew out his rear window.
He sheered, fishtailed, accelerated away.
“Dad.”
Beau stumbled onto the front lawn, clutching his bleeding shoulder, right in time to see his father escape around the block.
Regina swung the shotgun toward him. “Stop, motherfucker.”
He spun and ran up the driveway.
“Get Emil,” Regina said and took off after Beau.
Al glanced at me, then followed her.
Emil still had my keys, including the one for the Jeep. All that was left was Pelman’s tow truck. I sprinted to it.
The door was unlocked. Keys in the ignition.
It was that kind of town.
I backed into the street and floored it.
The truck was sluggish, and Emil had a two-minute head start. I didn’t know exactly where I was, either, or where he would go. But I had the mountains to orient me and sufficient knowledge of his character to believe he would act to save himself, above all.
I drove toward the entry road.
At the town boundary I crossed the bridge. The paving ended.
Fresh tire tracks sliced uphill through the mud.
One mile on I’d had no further sign of him, and I began to think I should turn back, get to a phone, and call the sheriff.
Then I saw him.
He was driving prudently in deference to the slippery conditions. Through the shot-out rear window I glimpsed the brim of his Stetson like a dark halo.
He checked over his shoulder but didn’t speed up. He had the advantage and he knew it.
We passed the spot where I’d hit Shasta; passed the memorial; took the hairpin at five miles per hour.
At the next flat patch his back tires spun and he lurched ahead.
I leaned over the wheel, urging the truck on, sweat coursing down my bare torso.
The gap between us widened.
He disappeared around a blind curve.
An instant later I heard a massive crash.
I braked hard, slewing to a standstill with my bumper kissing oblivion.
Silence.
Gun drawn, I slipped from the truck, advanced.
A faint hiss became audible.
I cleared the curve.
An incense cedar lay in the road. It had toppled diagonally to expose its rotted root system. Emil had jerked the wheel, but there was nowhere to go, and in trying to avoid the tree he’d plowed into it head-on. I could see his listing silhouette. Metal ticked.
“Put your hands on the dash,” I yelled.
No response.
I orbited in, crunching over glass pebbles.
A branch — eight inches in diameter, still attached to the trunk — had pierced the windshield.
I kept the gun up and opened the driver’s door.
The branch was about twelve feet long. It had been violently shorn of bark, filling the vehicle with the smell of gasoline and pencil shavings. The jagged, broken tip had speared Emil through the abdomen, pinning him to the seat before bursting out the other side.
He sat in a pool of blood, chin to chest, breathing fast and shallow. Blood sprayed the dash and the instrument panel. The ceiling dripped with it. Bits of foam and upholstery blanketed the rear seats. The blood-spattered Stetson was overturned in the footwell.
“Emil.”
He didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.
I said, “Your turn to come clean.”
His chest stopped moving.
I said, “You abandoned your son. Twice. The last memory of you he’s going to have is you running away and leaving him to die. Now he knows what I know, and what everyone else who’s ever met you knows: You’re a coward and a loser.”
His mouth opened as if to speak. A bubble of blood welled out.
It popped.
He slumped.
I touched his neck. Nothing.
I used a twig to recover my possessions from his jacket pockets, mindful not to get blood on my hands.
Back at Gray Fox Run, Al Bock leaned against the Jeep, rifle on his shoulder.
I jumped from the tow truck. “Is she okay?”
“In the barn.”
I limped up the driveway to the junkyard. My knee throbbed. I’d been suppressing the pain; now it was surfacing, with a vengeance.
The barn door was ajar. Regina sat on a folding chair. The shotgun rested on her lap and she was gazing down at Beau Bergstrom’s body.
His chin jutted toward the rafters. Blood saturated the dirt. The entry wound in his chest dwarfed the rifle wound in his shoulder. Definitely a deer slug.
“Emil?” she said.
“Dead.”
“Terrific.”
She stood, grabbed her purse off the wall, and walked out.
Chapter 43
Al had come on foot. We took the Jeep to his house on Black Sand Court. Along the way, I described the crash.
“The road’s blocked.”
“I’ll have a look,” Al said. “Other business first.”
I pulled into the cul-de-sac.
“Stay put,” he said.
While he was gone Regina and I got clean shirts from the trunk and dry-swallowed ibuprofen. I brought her up to speed on Nick.
“Poor kid,” she said.
The gate opened. Al beckoned to us.
Inside the A-frame, DJ Pelman was bent over at the eating table, doughy face in his hands. Jenelle Counts sat beside him, rubbing his back and murmuring to him like he was a child of five rather than a man in his thirties.
Bock brought chairs for Regina and me but remained standing with King Kong at his heel.
“Son,” he said gently.
DJ uncovered his face. His eyes were bloodshot.
Bock said, “Not gonna wiffle and waffle. I’m responsible for your dad being dead. Not these two. You got no quarrel with them. You’re mad, be mad at me. But there was no choice. He was about to slaughter the innocent and after that they’da probably slaughtered him. Got it?”
Silence.
“You understand me, DJ?”
Jenelle said, “He does.”
“Be nice to hear it from him.”
DJ said, “Yeah.”
Bock turned to us. “You also need to know something. You’re alive ’cause of DJ. He told his mom what Beau was up to and she told me. So you got them to thank.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Regina said nothing. I wondered what Beau had done to her. If DJ had participated, prior to his attack of conscience.
Bock said, “Anybody feels the need to get something off their chest, now’s the time. Otherwise we’ll put a fork in it and move on.”