“If it’s dogs, I’ll take your word for it,” she said.
He screwed up his face, opened the door a little farther, and probed with the flashlight beam. “Nothin’ else.” He kneed the door shut and flicked the hasp. “Who the hell would do something like that?”
“I don’t know, but they never get charged with murder,” Estelle said. She retreated a step, then froze as she heard what sounded like the metallic rattle of chain in the distance.
Chapter Thirty-four
“We know who that’s got to be.” Torrez’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “Whyn’t you move out of the spotlight. I’ll go up and have a chat with him. He don’t have to know that both of us are here.”
Moving out of the glare of the spot was simple enough. Estelle had only to make her way toward the side of the pit directly below the Expedition. Doing so without falling face-first into various stinking crevices, without losing footing on things that slid and squished underfoot, was another matter. On top of that, she realized that no matter where she moved, if she was out of sight from the rim of the pit, she was also denied any kind of tactical advantage.
As Estelle made her way toward the sheer east side, Torrez crossed directly toward the slope below the apron. Even as he started up, the embankment so steep that he practically had to climb on all fours on the diagonal, Estelle heard the truck approach and saw the sweep of its lights across the top of the pit.
As Torrez worked his way up toward the rim, Estelle tried to move up toward the rubbish pile, in a moment standing directly below the back bumper of the Expedition. She heard no words exchanged. From her vantage point, it appeared as if the sheriff had lost his footing as he neared the lip of the pit. The movement was accompanied by a loud thwack and a shout of pain. Before she could fully comprehend what had happened, she saw Torrez careering backward down the steep slope.
Standing in the dark protection of the sheer bank side, Estelle’s first thought was to dive toward the flailing Torrez, thirty yards away. Almost immediately, her foot stabbed hard into something sharp and she fell heavily, her chin crashing against metal. Agonizing pain shot through the side of her face and she tasted the hot coppery salt of blood.
Before she could regain her feet, eyes tearing, she saw a man’s form appear near the edge of the pit. Only partially illuminated by the truck’s headlights, he held something in each hand, and Estelle recognized Don Fulkerson’s burly figure. Torrez spun headfirst into a pile of trash bags at the bottom of the slope, and at the same time, Fulkerson dropped the object in his left hand and brought the other to his shoulder.
The report was sharp and staccato as he rapped off three quick shots. One of the rounds whined off into the darkness, and at the same time she heard Torrez gasp an oath. He leaped through the pile of trash ahead of him awkwardly, rolling head over heels into a dark cavern.
Fulkerson stepped first one direction and then another, unsure of his target. Estelle fumbled with her own Beretta at the small of her back. As she did so, Fulkerson raised the rifle again, taking a step to his left. Estelle braced as best she could, blinked to try and clear her eyes, and fired a rapid string of five shots, the reports coming so fast they blended together into one sustained echo.
Rearing backward in surprise, Fulkerson stumbled away from the pit. Unsure if she had hit him, Estelle took one step away from the bank, aimed almost straight up, and fired twice at the spotlight on the side of the Expedition. Glass shattered, raining down on her head. The pit plunged into darkness.
She held her breath, moving in slow motion, one foot at a time. She was twenty yards or more from the slope that would lead her either up and out of the pit, or allow her to cross to Torrez. Above her, Fulkerson’s pickup still idled, its headlights illuminating the back of the Expedition. Estelle hesitated. What was he doing? If he found a flashlight, he could stand back from the edge of the pit out of her range, and with the beam and then a bullet, find where Torrez lay, farther across behind the highest peak of refuse.
Flinching at the sharp metallic snap, she popped the partially expended clip out of the Beretta and slipped it in her back pocket. She pushed the full replacement, heavy with fourteen rounds, into the weapon. Even as she did so, the night cracked open with a new sound.
The big Cat’s diesel cranked only briefly before the engine caught. “Oh, no,” Estelle said, gasping, and before she could take more than two steps or predict what Fulkerson might do, the answer came in a tearing crash of bending metal and shattering glass. The dozer had been parked parallel to and fifteen feet from the edge of the pit. Bob Torrez had parked the county truck between the dozer and the pit edge, with only inches to spare.
Fulkerson pivoted the dozer hard to the right, the blade slamming into the Expedition at the right rear passenger door. A cascade of dirt exploded down from the rim of the pit as the dozer bashed Torrez’s patrol unit sideways. The back tires dropped over the edge first, and Estelle yelped and dove to her right, trying to scramble out of the way. The dozer thundered under full throttle as it spun on its own tracks, catapulting the Expedition over the edge.
Hands and feet flailing, Estelle felt for an agonizing moment that she was swimming upstream through rapids like an injured salmon. Immediately behind her, the Expedition hit the bottom of the pit with a resounding crash, landing on its side like a huge, crushed beetle. Something sharp flew up and smacked Estelle in the right hip so hard that she crashed forward on her face.
Without an instant’s hesitation, Fulkerson jarred the dozer to a halt, then maneuvered abruptly to the left, the tracks sending up a plume of dust in the headlights of the still-idling pickup truck. The ponderous machine clanked around the pickup truck, swinging toward the pit. Even as he turned the machine, Fulkerson switched on its lights. It became a six-eyed beast, the four lights on top of the cab frame washing the scene when the massive blade shielded the beam of the two headlights in the grill.
For a moment, the lights aimed straight out, far above the bottom of the pit, and as she struggled to her feet again, Estelle’s first thought was that Fulkerson was going to use the dozer for cover until he located them and finished the job from a safe range with the rifle. Because of that, she was unprepared for what he did next.
The dozer reached the edge of the steep slope. The blade dropped, the engine throttled back, and with a squealing of dirt-filled rollers and brakes, the huge machine started down. The slope was so steep Estelle would not have thought the maneuver possible.
From her right, a series of flashes burst out of the dark as Bob Torrez cut loose with his.45 automatic, but unless one of the rounds got lucky and struck Fulkerson, he might as well have been throwing rocks. Like a stuntman hanging onto his horse’s reins with one hand and firing with the other, Fulkerson used the flashes to locate Torrez and cut loose with another five quick rounds from the rifle.
Still clutching her handgun but with her flashlight lost somewhere in the trash, Estelle’s fight-or-flight instinct was to plunge out of the pit ahead of the clanking machine so that she couldn’t be cornered. But the dozer bore down on her, lights blazing over her head, before she could turn. Knowing that she could never outrun the machine, she instead lunged off to her left, aware that she was cornering herself behind the crushed Expedition and the steep banks of the pit. Fulkerson had only to brake, pivot right, and crush her to jelly.
Fulkerson was intent on Bob Torrez, and as soon as the machine hit the bottom of the slope, its blade dug into the trash and then surfaced like the bow of a ship in heavy seas. The brakes squealed as he turned to the left. For a moment, his broad body, perched high on the seat, was silhouetted against the lights.