Cork said, “Couldn’t become a rich man by prospecting so you took an easier route?”
“Got a wife with expensive tastes. Money makes her happy. Makes me happy, too.”
“People have died for your happiness, Dewey.”
“People die for all kinds of stupid reasons, Cork. By the way,” he said to his cohorts, “O’Connor’s wife isn’t in there.”
Gully shot him an evil look. “The fuck you saying?”
“I’m saying she’s not in there. She should be there, dead like the others, but she’s not.”
“Mike, check it out.”
Mike took his lean, poetic-looking self into the pit. He was gone a minute, and when he returned he came with a string of words few poets would normally use in rhyme. He walked toward Gully with his hands open and empty and his face confounded. “Bitch isn’t there, Gully. Just like Quinn says.”
With his free hand, Gully slapped his partner’s shoulder hard. “Goddamn it, I told you to cap her.”
“I did. I just couldn’t shoot her in the face. I told you, she looked too much like Rita. So I put one in her heart. Hell, if that didn’t kill her, I figured she’d suffocate.”
“Obviously she didn’t. Fuck!”
“What do we do?” Quinn asked.
“Get rid of these two and cut our losses,” Mike said. “We’ll put ’em inside with the others and bury the plane again. Then see if we can figure how the woman did the Houdini thing.”
The two thugs were less than a dozen feet away. If they were any good with their weapons, Cork didn’t stand a chance of reaching the rifle in the pit before they nailed him. But he figured at this point, he had nothing to lose. He was just about to make his move when two shots rang out from the top of the canyon wall and two rounds burrowed into the dirt near the killers’ feet. The men spun and crouched, swinging their weapons toward the line where the top of the canyon wall met the sky. Cork grabbed Parmer, and they both dove for the pit. They weren’t alone. Dewey Quinn leaped in after them.
Cork took Quinn. He grabbed the man and heaved him against the pit wall. Quinn lashed out with a fast fist that caught Cork just below his left eye. Cork took the blow, then lunged forward, burying his shoulder in Quinn’s gut, and he wrapped his arms around the deputy. Quinn tried to dig his knee into Cork’s stomach and hammered at the back of his head, but Cork held on. He lifted Quinn off his feet and threw him to the ground. Quinn tried to come up. The toe of Cork’s boot buried itself in the soft tissue below Quinn’s jaw, and the man’s head snapped back. It hit the fuselage with a hollow thud. Quinn lay on the ground, facedown. He moaned and struggled to rise, but Cork sat on his back, pinning him in the dirt.
He’d been vaguely aware of gunfire. And now he saw that Parmer had the rifle, had positioned himself on the steps, and was pulling off rounds over the edge of the pit. At the moment, there wasn’t any return fire. Parmer held off squeezing the trigger. He glanced down at Cork.
“They both got away,” he said. “Do we go after them?”
“What about the shooter on the wall?” Cork asked.
“Nothing since those first two rounds. How’s Benedict Arnold there?”
“Just the way I want him. Alive and rattled.” Cork got up and grabbed one of the shovels. He rolled Quinn over and put the digging edge of the blade to the man’s throat. “I’m very much inclined to separate your head from the rest of you, Dewey. Then I’ll just throw the two pieces in that plane and bury it again. Nobody’ll ever know.”
Quinn looked up at him. It wasn’t fear in his eyes so much as resignation.
“Tell me what you know,” Cork said.
Quinn began to talk.
THIRTY-EIGHT
They drove back the way they’d come. When they reached the junction with the road they’d traveled the day before, they took it southwest, following the line of the mountains toward Nightwind’s ranch.
With the shovel blade at his throat, Dewey Quinn had told them everything. There’d been no report of mysterious activity on the rez involving heavy equipment. He’d concocted the story to draw them out to the canyon where they were to be dealt with. As far as he knew, Kosmo and No Voice weren’t involved, but Nightwind was, and Ellyn Grant. He didn’t know anyone higher up the food chain than Gully and Mike. Their last names? He didn’t know that either. They never dealt in last names. He blamed his wife for his involvement.
“You got any idea how tough it is keeping a spoiled woman happy? Christ, I was in debt up to my eyeballs.”
“And then Gully and Mike came along and offered you a way out.”
“Nightwind sent them. That guy’s like the devil. He knows how to get to you.”
“What did they want you for?” Parmer asked.
It was Cork who answered. “They needed a man on the inside of the department, a guy who could keep them informed and if necessary remove the complications of the law. Who better for that than the officer responsible for the investigation of major crimes in Owl Creek County? When Felicia Gray’s car took that plunge, I’m sure Dewey here was quick on the official determination of cause. A tragic accident. And all it took to buy his soul was money. Hell, Dewey, I thought you had your eyes on a job with the FBI.”
“There’s no cop job in the world pays like they were paying me.” Despite his disgrace, he’d eyed Hugh Parmer and managed a look of disdain. “Not all of us have the luxury of being rich.”
Quinn sat between them now. They’d tied his hands with twine from his toolbox, and they’d bound his ankles as well.
Cork used Parmer’s cell phone to call Jim Kosmo and tell him about the plane buried in the canyon under Eagle Cloud. When the sheriff asked where he and Parmer were at that moment, Cork wouldn’t say. Which didn’t sit at all well with Kosmo. Big surprise.
The compound lay in the blue shadow of the foothills. Cork parked Quinn’s truck, took the binoculars from the knapsack, and got out. Parmer joined him, and for several minutes they studied their objective.
The place seemed deserted. Cork spotted the pickup that the Arapaho kid had driven the day before, parked in front of the barn. Although he couldn’t see anyone moving about, the barn door was clearly open.
“Well?” Parmer said.
“There may be someone in the barn.”
“How do we handle this?”
“Approach on foot, do our best to surprise him.”
“What about Quinn?”
“We leave him with the truck.”
“What if he tries to get away?”
Cork hauled Quinn out of the cab. He hopped the deputy to the front of the truck and sat him on the bumper. “Toss me that roll of twine,” he said to Parmer. He bound Quinn to the grille. When he stepped back, he said, “Dewey, we come back and I find you gone, I’ll hunt you down and shoot you like a rabbit, don’t think I won’t.”
Cork grabbed Quinn’s Winchester from the rack in the cab. Parmer, who was holding his Ruger, gave a long look at the rifle, then another long look at Cork. But he said nothing.
They made their way down the slope, which was covered with short, coarse grass and punctuated by large rocks that protruded from the earth like the bows of sinking ships. Moving carefully rock to rock, they took several minutes to reach the barn. From inside came the sound of someone whistling. A Roy Orbison tune. “Running Scared.” Cork peered around the edge of the open door. The older Arapaho who’d greeted them on their first visit to the ranch was standing at a worktable, a screwdriver in his hand, laboring over a piece of sheet metal. Cork saw no one else. He signaled to Parmer, and the two men slipped inside. They approached the Arapaho, who suddenly stopped his work and spun. When he saw them, he reached toward a rifle that lay on the bench next to the worktable.
“Hold it right there,” Cork said.
The Arapaho froze, a foot of empty air between his hand and the weapon he’d gone for.
“Move away from the firearm,” Cork ordered.
The Arapaho sidled a yard to his right.