“And we’ll work through this, Gus.” Gastner made it sound as if they were engaged in “working through” a simple neighborhood fence spat, Estelle thought. His mellow voice and grandfatherly manner could be a grand defuser, and she guessed that was his intent.
“That’s pretty damn easy for you to say.” Prescott looked as if he wanted to say something else, but it stuck in his throat. His gaze wandered off again toward his daughters, and Estelle saw a deep sadness there, more than the beer or rum-soaked depression of the chronic drinker during a moment of self-recrimination.
“Lemme get my keys,” he mumbled, and turned to his truck. Estelle stood a pace or two in front of the right front fender holding the carbine, while Sheriff Torrez now approached from the right rear. As the rancher turned to round the left front fender, Gastner took a step toward him, a casual enough move that kept him close. Gus opened the driver’s door and slipped inside, and did two maneuvers at once. The ignition key hung from the column, and instead of removing it, he twisted it forward, the big diesel starting with a sharp bark.
Without an instant’s hesitation, he yanked the gear lever into reverse and swung the door first toward him as if to close it, but then banged it hard open, aiming for Gastner.
The older man pivoted back a step, almost losing his balance. With a spray of gravel and dirt, the truck shot backward, its massive back bumper crashing into the left front fender of the Sheriff’s Expedition. Bodywork crumpled backward like tissue, jamming into the front wheel. Even as the crash resounded, Prescott yanked the gear lever into drive and accelerated hard, the homemade, welded iron grill guard catching the left front wheel, tire, and fender of Estelle’s Crown Victoria.
The undersheriff dove off to one side, sailing over the sedan’s hood to crash to the ground, the carbine skidding away. She felt more than saw the pickup swerve past her, and scrambled to her feet, yanking out her automatic.
Sheriff Torrez had reacted faster. As soon as the truck had driven clear of both Gastner and Estelle, he fired quickly, holding his.45 in both hands. The back window of Prescott’s pickup dissolved in a shower of glass, and Estelle could see the holes punching down the side of the truck even as it sped away. One of the rounds struck a back tire and howled away toward the west.
Both girls had dived to the ground by the fence, and the horses whirled in panic, nickering loudly. Christine’s arm was clamped around her younger sister, but Casey broke loose and dashed after the fleeing pickup truck.
“Daddy!” she screamed. Estelle twisted to yell a warning at Torrez, but saw that the sheriff was already holstering his weapon.
“Everybody all right?” Gastner sounded as excited as if somebody had dropped a box of books.
“Yes,” Estelle replied. She stepped around the mangled front of her car. The left front wheel was jammed inside the crumpled fender, pointing off in a direction all its own.
“Give a hand here,” Torrez shouted. He was yanking at the Expedition’s bodywork, then backed away. “Need something to pry with.” In a few seconds he returned with the handle from his handiman jack, and he and Gastner heaved at the stubborn sheet metal.
As they worked, Estelle watched the retreating pickup, heading out the same trail she had taken to meet with Casey at the windmill. There was no open road out there, no back trail to refuge. The undersheriff pulled her phone from her pocket and touched the speed dial. Gayle Torrez’s response was immediate.
“Gayle, Bobby and I are down at the Prescott ranch and need assistance from a uniformed deputy ASAP.”
“Pasquale is on the road just west of town. I’ll have him swing down that way.”
“We’ll be apprehending a single male subject who is armed and may be dangerous.” She hesitated. What did Gus Prescott think he could accomplish? Did he think the law would simply let him go? Did he think he could evade a manhunt? Judging by his effective performance as a truck driver, he wasn’t as inebriated as might first appear. Run, she thought. Panic and run. “Tell Thomas to alert us when he swings off the highway at Moore.”
“Affirmative.”
She felt the hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach as she watched Bob Torrez take the heavy steel bar and thrash the fender into submission. His face was flushed with both effort and anger. For his part, Gus Prescott was not going to change his mind and drive meekly back to them.
“And Gayle, you might as well have an ambulance en route. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be a wasted trip for them.”
“Affirmative. You want a heads-up to the state police? And Jackie Taber is in the deputies office doing paperwork. I can send her.”
“Affirmative on the SP’s, Gayle. And go ahead and send Jackie. This is going to be a confrontation thing, not a chase. There’s nowhere the suspect can go.”
”You guys be careful.”
“Absolutely.”
She snapped off the phone in time to see Torrez give a mighty heave that seemed likely to tip the Expedition on its side. Something cracked and the sheriff nodded. “Now we go,” he said, panting with the exertion.
“Casey!” Estelle shouted. The girl had lugged saddle and tack out of the small barn, and was in the process of rigging the mare, who’d been wearing only the hand-woven rope hackamore. Estelle jogged over toward the girls. She could see that Christine was confronting her sister, and had taken the bridle from her. Their conversation was intense and private, their faces just inches from each other.
“Casey,” Estelle said, “Do you know where your father is going?”
The girl was crying, and she waved a hand hopelessly, taking in the open country to the north and east.
“His favorite spots are the breaks over east, out beyond the windmill,” Christine said. She reached out a hand and gripped Estelle’s. “Don’t let him hurt himself,” she whispered.
“I’ll try my best. You girls need to stay here with your mother.” If Jewell Prescott had heard the gunshots and ruckus, there was no sign.
“The sheriff tried to shoot him,” Casey cried.
“No, he only wanted to stop the truck,” Estelle said. Behind her, the Expedition fired up, and she turned. “Promise me?” Christine nodded, but Casey was having none of it.
“If I can find him, I can make him listen,” she wept, and swung up on the mare. She didn’t wait for the bridle, but seized the hackamore and twisted the mare’s head around, away from her sister’s reach. The gate had been drawn to one side, and the mare made for it, the unsaddled gelding in hot pursuit.
Chapter Forty-two
Now that he was underway, Sheriff Robert Torrez drove with no particular sense of urgency. He let the battered SUV heave along the rough two-track out toward Lewis Wells, and occasionally in the distance they could see the dust cloud raised by Casey’s mare. The gelding kept easy pace, no doubt reveling in free running with no human to kick his ribs or jerk his mouth.
“So what’s he gonna do?” Torrez asked. “He don’t have nowheres to go.”
“We can hope just what Christine said…go out and find a quiet place to sit down and think.”
“He’s going to have a lot of time to do that,” Gastner said from the back seat. “You have to wonder,” he added, and braced himself as Torrez maneuvered over a short patch of slick rock bordering a small arroyo. “Is there a back road out of here?”
“Nope.” The sheriff shook his head. “Unless he wants to try driving cross-country. The arroyos ain’t going to let him do that.”
The windmill appeared first as a speck on the horizon, then gently turning, the rudder swinging the blades to track into the fitful breeze. Lewis Wells sprouted out of a swale, a slight depression where the cattle had trampled the grass to dust.
“That well was drilled in 1951,” Gastner announced as they approached the last slight rise before the swale. “I wish I could remember the homesteader’s name. It’ll come to me. Lewis bought the property, but he didn’t do the drilling.”