Smedley wondered: Did she just say.35-caliber? Smedley was putting it all together, thinking that Sal Mameli was the only person he knew who owned a.35, when-
WOOOOM!
The trailer was rocked by the most enormous explosion Smedley had ever felt. It was followed by another. And another. And another-until Smedley thought the assault would never end. Finally, the explosions did stop, and now all three men were lying on the floor of the trailer, in a stupor, like G.I.s after a mortar attack. The interior of the trailer was bathed in an eerie orange glow.
“What in the fuck was that?” Red said, as he struggled to his feet.
Smedley began to grunt urgently, the tape still over his mouth, trying to capture the men’s attention. Surely they would have the good sense to turn him loose before something worse happened.
Red swung the front door open and Smedley could feel the heat from the fires burning outside.
“Oh, Jesus,” Red said, staring out the door as if aliens had just landed. “Billy Don, come take a look at this.”
But Billy Don wasn’t listening. Smedley was elated and grateful and relieved to see Billy Don coming toward him with a pair of scissors.
Red simply could not believe what he was seeing. The BrushBusters were on fire. All of them. With flames shooting thirty feet high, big goddamn clouds of black smoke rolling into the sky.
Then he saw that he was mistaken. There was one solitary BrushBuster that wasn’t on fire. And there was a man sitting in the driver’s seat. Red couldn’t be sure, because the fires were roaring pretty loud-but he thought he heard the BrushBuster’s engine running.
Just then, their prisoner, Smedley, went pushing past Red into the night. Red didn’t even try to stop him. He had much larger problems on his hands now.
Billy Don came up behind him and they stepped out onto the front porch. They watched as the man tried to operate the BrushBuster, first going forward, then putting it into reverse, backing away from the flames.
“Grab my forty-five,” Red said. “On the kitchen counter.”
“But Red-”
“Do it!”
Billy Don turned and went into the trailer. The BrushBuster made a left turn and seemed to be heading away from the trailer. He’s stealing my last goddamn machine, Red thought. That lousy sumbitch. Then the man slowly swung around and came to a halt, eighty yards away.
Billy Don returned and handed the gun to Red.
“What the hell’s he doing?” Billy Don asked.
Red shook his head, thoroughly confused.
The man seemed to be staring right at them, just watching them.
“You know, there’s that mental hospital right up the road,” Billy Don said. “Maybe he-”
Red held up his hand for silence.
Then there was a gnashing of gears as the man put the tree-cutter into DRIVE. He started slowly, then picked up speed. He was heading straight for the trailer.
“What’s wrong with that crazy fucker?” Red said.
The BrushBuster was forty yards away now, and closing fast.
Red and Billy Don began to yell, waving their arms as if they could somehow ward him off.
The machine kept coming.
Red lowered his gun and fired a round at the machine.
Twenty yards.
Red fired again.
Ten yards.
And then they both dove for the inside of the trailer as the BrushBuster came smashing through the front door.
The chaos was incredible. Tremendous wrenching sounds as metal was twisted and torn. The sound of the tree-cutter’s engine whining as it tried to plow forward. Red felt himself being tossed and jostled, like he was riding an inner tube down the rapids of a flooded river. He was aware of a tremendous pain in his leg.
Finally, the noise came to an end as the BrushBuster’s engine sputtered and died. The tree-cutter was now sitting inside of the trailer, the floor sagging beneath it, the ceiling above crumpled.
Red looked down and saw that his left leg had been gashed by a ragged sheet of metal. He heard Billy Don moaning on the other side of the machine.
Billy Don knew his arm was seriously damaged, pinned under the BrushBuster’s front wheel. But for some reason-maybe he was going into shock-he found himself mesmerized by the metal plate that was right in front of him, riveted to the machine’s frame. He had never noticed it before. The plate was well lit by the fires burning outside.
“Billy Don, you okay?” Red called.
“I think I’ll be all right.” Billy Don said, still staring at the plate. On it, he could see all kinds of information about this particular model of BrushBuster. There was a serial number. Net vehicle weight. The size of tires you were supposed to use. Even the amount of gas the tank held. And at the bottom, there it was: the pounds-per-square-inch that the pincers applied.
“Hey, Red,” Billy Don called.
“Yeah?” Red answered, grunting as he extracted himself from the wreckage.
“I know what the ‘3000’ stands for now.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Bobby Garza, the two deputies, and Marlin were sitting around the table now, drinking coffee, brainstorming about the Mameli case. They had stopped calling it “the Slaton case”; they were that certain one of the Mamelis was involved.
Ten minutes earlier, a lab tech from Austin had called with disappointing news. Both of the handguns in the Porsche had been dusted for prints. Both were clean. Likewise, Bobby Garza had thrown out the name Roberto Ragusa, but none of the deputies recognized it. They had run the name through the computers, and it was like the man had fallen off the face of the Earth. His last known address was in New Jersey, but that had been more than three years ago. Since then, there was nothing in the public records for Ragusa. He hadn’t voted, renewed his driver’s license, or even filed a tax return. The man was a ghost. Garza planned to make some calls to New Jersey in the morning, to see what he could find out. In the meantime, the deputies were rapidly running out of ideas.
“What about a warrant to search Mameli’s house?” Marlin asked. Marlin was surprised nobody had suggested it yet.
“We don’t have enough,” Garza said. “You have to specify exactly what you’re searching for and why you think you’ll find it there. We don’t even know what we’d be looking for.”
The search-and-seizure laws were obviously more complex than the ones that allowed Marlin to search a poacher’s vehicle.
“The question is,” Bill Tatum said, “why would Vinnie make up all that crap? And why would Sal throw in that stuff about T.J. stealing from their home?”
“Misdirection?” Rachel Cowan suggested.
Garza stretched and yawned in his chair. “I think if we figure that out, we’ll blow the case wide open,” he said.
After another ten minutes and no forward progress, Garza pushed back his chair and said, “It’s nearly eleven now. I say we call it a night. We’re gonna have to keep digging on this, and I want you all fresh in the morning. Let’s regroup at six A.M.”
The deputies murmured agreement and began to stand.
“Of course, Marlin, I don’t expect-”
“I’ll be here,” Marlin said, surprising himself.
Garza smiled. “Okay, then.”
The deputies left the interview room, walked through the main room of the department, and stepped out the front door.
Bill Tatum started to say something, but Garza signaled for him to be quiet. A large engine could be heard in the distance. Tires squealed as the vehicle turned the corner onto Main Street, one block down from the sheriff’s office. A few seconds later, headlights appeared and swung into the parking lot. Marlin recognized Red O’Brien’s old Ford truck racing their way, more banged up than before.