Estelle fell to her knees and held the automatic in both hands, trying to find some sort of sight picture in the haze of tears and blood. She hardly felt the recoil as it punched her hands. The empties spewed out of the Beretta in a stream until the slide locked back. The bulldozer continued inexorably. Dumping out the empty clip, Estelle rammed the second full one into the gun and slammed the slide into the battery.
The dozer rumbled away from her, its slow, ponderous course fixed on Torrez’s position. Before she could bring her sights to bear again, she saw flashes from off to the side, five, six, perhaps seven rounds. One of them ricocheted off something and screamed over her head to smack into the bank above her.
The figure of Don Fulkerson had sagged to one side in the seat, but otherwise appeared undeterred. The dozer crossed the sea of garbage diagonally and dug the corner of its blade into the pit’s far wall. Estelle heard the engine note change with the force of the impact, and for a moment dozer and dirt cliff appeared to tussle. Then the blade broke loose, and the machine veered right and clanked down the length of the pit.
When it became obvious that Fulkerson wasn’t going to spin the dozer in its own length and charge back at them, she shifted position, trying to pick her way in the darkness. She fell hard again, letting out a strangled cry that she bit off in frustration.
“Let him go!” she heard Bob Torrez shout.
Rising to her knees, Estelle shifted the Beretta to her left hand and dug the cell phone out of her jacket pocket. The face was dark, and with her thumb she could feel the smashed plastic. The mutter of the bulldozer’s diesel, in concert with the rhythmic, steady clanking of its treads, continued down the pit. Estelle stopped, breathing hard, watching. Away was good.
Reaching the slope up at the far end, the dozer lurched onward, climbing the mountain of dirt. Its lights stabbed up into the sky as it climbed. Estelle saw that as it neared the top, Fulkerson had attacked the pile too far to one side. The right tread dropped off the ramp, and for just a moment it high-centered on the pile until its tracks swam it forward enough that it slid sideways.
With its weight shifted in the one direction in which the massive machine was the most unstable, the dozer executed a slow roll onto its side, then continued all the way over onto its top until the windowless framework of the cab crushed flat. Without enough momentum to continue the roll, it slid on its top for a foot or two, the tracks still methodically turning. Upside down and jangled, the diesel uttered a strangled cough and died. The headlights continued to burn, lighting the prairie north of the landfill.
“Good shot,” Torrez said from somewhere on the other side of the rubbish pile.
A flood of relief turned her joints to pudding. “Are you okay?” Her words came out as little more than a croak, and she coughed and tried again.
“Nope,” Torrez said conversationally. “But I’m a hell of a lot better than he is. How about you?”
“I’m okay. Don’t move, then. I’m coming over.”
“I ain’t going nowhere.”
A light stabbed toward her. “Leave it off,” she said. “I can do better without it.”
“That son of a bitch ruined my truck.” He coughed and from her vantage point it sounded painful and liquid. “You got your phone?” he asked.
“It’s broken.”
“Well, shit, that’s good.”
“Yours?”
“It’s in the truck,” he said.
“We’re a pair,” she muttered.
“Just go up and use the one in Fulkerson’s office. He won’t mind.”
“That’s the next stop.”
“Just go ahead and do that,” Torrez said. “I’m okay. I think I got the bleedin’ stopped.”
“Turn on the light now,” Estelle said, and this time she saw that Torrez’s location was only a small mountain of trash ahead. The light reflected through the skeleton of an old set of box springs.
Bob Torrez lay on his side, curled awkwardly. “This is a good thing to hide behind,” Estelle said. “This is going to stop a bulldozer, all right.”
“Hey, I didn’t choose it,” Torrez said, then sucked in a breath. “Be careful where you step.”
“He hit you, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he hit me. Goddamn son of a bitch.”
“Let me have the light.”
Torrez didn’t relinquish it immediately. “Go use the goddamn phone and get us some help.” The beam crossed her face. “Jesus, what’d he do, drive right over the top of you?”
“I’m fine. Let me have the light.”
He slid it toward her, and Estelle could see that he wasn’t moving his right arm. She gripped the light and he flinched. “Son of a bitch swung that pipe at me, and I broke the swing with my arm.”
“Broke is right,” Estelle said. His right wrist angled off in a creative, anatomically impossible direction.
“And then when I went down the hill, I caught my leg on something.” She played the light down, but stopped at the blood soaking the back of his trousers.
“More than caught,” she said. “He shot you through the butt.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“And your leg’s broken.”
“Yep. Go use the phone.”
“I need to see if I can stop that bleeding.”
“Just go find the phone. My goddamn ass will wait.”
Estelle stripped off her jacket and wadded it as neatly as she could. There was no way to pad everything. The rifle shot had entered on the right side just behind Torrez’s hip bone and punched through, exploding out the left cheek, leaving a nasty walnut-sized hole. There was no flash of bright arterial blood, but internal damage could be massive. Torrez’s face was already gray and chalky.
“I’ll be right back,” Estelle said. “Just hang on.”
“Like I said, I ain’t going anywhere.” Estelle started to stand up, but Torrez grunted in protest. “I need the other clip.”
He fumbled and found the.45 automatic, holding it up in his left hand. With a grimace, he pressed the clip release. “It’s somewhere around here.”
Estelle pulled the loaded clip out of his belt, took the heavy automatic and slammed the clip in, then released the slide. “The safety’s on. Don’t shoot yourself.”
“Just in case the rats start comin’ in,” he said weakly, and it didn’t sound as if he were joking. “Don’t be takin’ your time, now.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s right hand stroked across the top of William Page’s shoulder as the two of them watched the four EMTs starting up and out of the landfill pit. The rescue team made their way carefully, the gurney carrying Kevin Zeigler’s body between them. Page stood quietly, but Estelle could feel the trembling and tension, as if he were ready to bolt.
“I’m truly sorry,” Estelle said. The words were painful through swollen, stitched lips-and meaningless, too, she knew. Page reached up and covered her hand with his own.
“Thanks for what you did,” he whispered, and dropped his hand. She had called him from the hospital shortly after 3 AM, more than five hours before. He had sounded disoriented, both jarred from a rare, deep sleep and trying to understand Estelle’s curious diction. The generous local anesthetic that Dr. Alan Perrone had used when he’d repaired her face hadn’t yet worn off when she had made the call. A few minutes before, District Attorney Dan Schroeder had told her that she sounded like a mumbling drunk. She certainly felt like one.
Since 4:30 AM, Page had kept her company at the county landfill. Estelle made sure that Page stayed out of the way, refusing to let him down into the pit later, when Zeigler’s body had been discovered. Aching from the beating she had taken, dizzy from the painkillers, Estelle slumped against Jackie Taber’s unit, content to leave the investigation to Eddie Mitchell, Sgt. Tom Mears, and a host of volunteers. But it was impossible not to watch from a distance.
Page and Estelle had talked little, and that was just as well, since Estelle had collapsed down from her adrenalin high and slumped pale and exhausted against the car. Dr. Perrone had objected to her going anywhere but home to bed, but it had been her husband who had negotiated a compromise. Even as he’d slipped the tetanus booster shot into her shoulder, Francis had looked again at her battered face.