Cudmore rocked back on his heels with his hands on his hips and hooted. Then he bent toward the whimpering dog and yelled, “Go help your brothers, you coward.”
There were several flashes and thumps and loud yelps as rounds hit the two dogs on top of Boner, then the whimper of a dying creature who’d been thrown to the side by the impact of the bullets. Boner thrashed, rolling, grasping at his face and throat. Blood, bits of flesh, and fur were everywhere.
A harsh spotlight from the top of the MRAP illuminated it all.
Joe was a beat too late when Cudmore drew a weapon he’d had tucked in his waistband under his jacket. The man did it tentatively, as if he were having second thoughts even as the semiauto cleared.
A volley of shots from the deputies cut him down and he fell straight back like a felled tree. A deafening burst from the .50-caliber machine gun on the MRAP ripped through the night and tore a twisted chunk of aluminum off the roof of the trailer. The fourth dog managed to scramble out of the way of Cudmore’s crashing body.
Joe ran to where Tilden Cudmore lay, and he kicked the .357 from the man’s hand. Cudmore grunted from the blow—he was still alive—and Joe wheeled and pressed his shotgun barrel into the man’s doughy cheek.
“Stay right where you are,” Joe said.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere, but I ain’t dyin’, neither,” Cudmore said, revealing a mouthful of long yellow teeth in what was either a grimace or a grin. “I was prepared for your gestapo tactics.”
It was then Joe saw the collar of the body armor vest that Cudmore wore beneath his coat. Although the body armor had prevented rounds from entering his body, their impact had done damage. Cudmore hugged himself and whimpered.
“You’re going to pay for what you did to April,” Joe said, leaning in hard with the shotgun.
In Cudmore’s rheumy eyes was confusion at what Joe had said, then a slow realization.
“So that’s why you’re here,” the man said. “You think I done something to some girl. You people—”
The fourth pit bull charged Cudmore as if to attack him, but feinted at the last second and ran away. It got close enough to scare Cudmore, though. Joe admired the dog and watched it run off into the night.
—
“GET THAT THING OUT OF HERE!” Sheriff Reed yelled, wheeling his chair across the yard until it thumped into the front bumper of the MRAP.
The local cop garbed in camo and an army helmet who had fired the burst with the machine gun that missed Cudmore and nearly the entire trailer, said, “Sheriff—”
“Get that thing the hell out of here or I’ll arrest the lot of you!” Reed shouted. Joe had never seen him so mad.
The MRAP backed away, crushing a snow fence.
—
FIVE MINUTES LATER, with his ears still ringing from the explosion of gunshots, Joe heard Reed fume to Dulcie, “I just about had him in custody without anyone getting hurt. Then Williamson showed up with his goddamned tank.”
—
REED SAID, “If it weren’t for Deputy Boner’s injuries, I might ask the EMTs to slow down on their way out of here, and maybe we grab us some coffee while Cudmore rolls around in pain. But that wouldn’t be right, would it?”
“Um, no,” Dulcie said, her face white with shock at what had just happened.
Reed wheeled over to Joe. “Thank you for your restraint in not shooting him.”
“It didn’t seem right,” Joe said. “I really hated to shoot those dogs, though.”
“That last dog must have really hated him,” Reed said, shaking his head. “He finally got the chance to show him how much, is what I think.”
Joe barely heard him. His nerves jangled from the release of adrenaline and his throat ached from having witnessed—and participated in—such a scene of savagery.
He had his arm around Lucy, who had stayed silent since the shooting was over. He hoped she hadn’t seen much, but he was afraid she had. He wondered what she thought of her father if she’d seen him prodding a shotgun into the face of an injured man lying flat on his back on the ground.
“But we got our man,” Reed said.
Joe took a deep breath and recalled the confusion in Cudmore’s eyes just before he’d been attacked. He said, “Are you sure about that?”
“Maybe this will help,” a deputy named Woods said as he backed out of Cudmore’s Humvee, where he’d been searching the front cab.
He held up a Visa card and an iPhone.
“The credit card belongs to April Pickett,” Woods said. “I found it under the seat.”
Lucy shrugged out of Joe’s arm and approached Woods with her hand out. Woods turned over the phone.
Lucy swiped it on and punched a four-digit code and the phone lit up. She held it up so Joe could see the backlit image of April and Dallas Cates taking a selfie. They were grinning like fools with their cheeks pressed together, looking up at the camera.
7
On Monday morning, Nate Romanowski blinked against the harsh interior lighting of the interrogation room in the Federal Building in downtown Cheyenne. He wore a loose orange jumpsuit stenciled with DOJ over the breast pocket and large red Crocs on his feet. His long blond hair cascaded past his shoulders. His complexion was waxen and pale and his sharp blue eyes looked out as if from behind a mask. His hands and wrists were bound by a Smith & Wesson Cuff-Maxx high-security belly chain and restraints, even though his trip had consisted only of an elevator ride from the basement cell to the seventh floor.
The guard guided him through the door and shut it behind him.
“Was this really necessary?” he asked as he rattled his wrist chains at the bulky man on the other side of the interrogation table. A slim manila folder was on the surface of the table.
“Probably not,” the man answered with a slight grin. He wore a suit jacket, tie, and a white shirt that strained over his belly. His name was Stan Dudley, and he was the FBI special agent in charge of Nate’s case. Dudley was in his mid-forties, with a fleshy bland face and pasted-down light brown hair that would rise away from his scalp as the day went on. He had close-set eyes, a rounded nose, and ancient acne scars beneath his cheekbones. His thick neck bulged over the collar of his shirt, and sometimes when he talked, the swell of fat under his jaw trembled.
“Then why did you bring me up this way?”
“People talk,” Dudley said. “We don’t want the guards and other staff to think we’re letting you walk, do we?”
Nate grunted.
“Have a seat.”
“Do you have a key for these?” Nate asked, thrusting his arms out.
“Someone does. Sit down.”
Dudley liked this, Nate knew. He liked telling Nate what to do and how to do it and when he wanted it done. And he liked stringing him along, reminding Nate who was in charge and who was in custody.
As he repositioned the hard-backed chair with his foot so he could sit down in it, Nate thought how easy it would be to quickly reach across the table and twist Dudley’s ears off. The chain between his wrists was long enough that he could grab both of them.
But because he wanted out and he knew that Dudley would love the excuse to keep him inside, Nate sat.
Dudley reached out and tapped the file. “You know I fought against this, don’t you?”
Nate didn’t respond.
“I think it’s a despicable deal. If it was up to me, I’d unleash the federal prosecutors on you and put you away for a hundred years. I know—and you know—that you’ve been responsible for murder and mayhem across most of the continental U.S. People just can’t go around serving as judge, jury, and executioner based on some kind of personal code. We have laws for that. To that, we can agree.”