That’s all they knew, and Joe was relieved. They hadn’t seen what happened inside.
“Have you seen Keeley since?” Joe asked, “I mean Bill Monroe,” he said, to avoid confusion.
“Keeley?” Sheridan asked. “Like April? The same name?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Sheridan and Lucy exchanged glances. “I told you his face was familiar. He has April’s eyes,” Sheridan said to Lucy, referring to her stepsister.
Joe shook his head, then looked at Julie who sat silent and alone at the end of the couch. She had no idea she’d lost her uncle and her father. Thank God her mother was there.
He stood.
“Keep the door locked, just like Uncle Wyatt told you. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Doris said, “Please be careful. Don’t let Bill Monroe find us.”
Her voice trembled as she said it, and Joe could see how terrified she was. “Can’t you stay with us?”
Joe considered it, but shook his head. He couldn’t assume Keeley had bled to death. And even if he had, Joe needed to see the body. “I need to be sure he can’t threaten anyone again,” he said.
“Then can we go home?” Lucy asked.
Joe didn’t ask which home she meant. “Yes,” he said.
ALL HIS THOUGHTS and feelings channeled into one: revenge.
Joe returned to the front porch of the house and studied the concrete. Although rain had washed most of it away, he could still see traces of blood. Nate must have missed it in his haste on the way in. He backed off the porch and looked around on the wet loam. A spot here, a splash there. Headed in the direction of the barn.
It was like following a wounded game animal, Joe thought. He looked not only for blood flecks but for churned up earth, footprints, places where Keeley had fallen as he staggered away.
There was a depression in the grass where Keeley must have collapsed, his shoulder punching a dent into the turf that was now filling with water and a swirl of blood.
Keeley hadn’t made it all the way inside the barn. He sat slumped against the outside door, next to a boat that was propped up against the wall. Joe guessed Keeley was going for the boat when he collapsed. Keeley’s legs were straight out in front of him. He held the stump of his left arm with his right hand, covering the socket tight with bone-white fingers. Still, blood pumped out between his joints with every weakening heartbeat. Joe couldn’t see a weapon on Keeley or near him as he approached. But Keeley watched Joe the whole time, his eyes sharp, his mouth twisted with hate.
“That Wyatt, he is the one I never thought about,” Keeley said. “He is one strong son-of-a-bitch.”
“Yup,” Joe said, remembering when Wyatt snapped the Flex-Cuffs.
Keeley looked up. His eyes were black and dead. “You destroyed my family. My brother, my sister-in-law, my baby girl.”
“What do you mean, your baby girl?”
“She was my daughter,” Keeley said, and his eyes flashed.
“You mean, you and Jeannie . . .”
“Damned right, me and Jeannie. Ote was gone a lot.”
“So that’s why you did all of this? To get back at me?”
Keeley nodded.
“I did all I could to save April,” Joe said, angry. “We loved her like our own.”
“Horseshit. Not like a father loves a daughter.”
Joe clenched his fists so hard his nails broke the skin on his palms. He wanted to hurl himself at Keeley and start swinging. Instead, he felt his right hand relax enough to undo the safety strap on his service weapon.
“What the hell would you know about being a father?” Joe said. “You were just the sperm donor.”
“Fuck you,” Keeley spat.
Joe stood over him, looking down, his fingers curling around the pistol grip. “Is there any point in talking to you? Telling you I had nothing to do with the death of your daughter or your brother?”
“I know what I know,” Keeley said. “You and Wacey Hedeman were involved in my brother getting killed. You were there when April was assassinated.”
Joe shook his head, speaking calmly. “You were the one who poisoned Wacey then too?”
“Yup.”
“And the cowboy? The one who got shot on Shirley Rim?”
“That one was the best of all.”
Keeley made a cold smile with his mouth but his eyes remained steady on Joe. “I wish I’da taken care of your daughters. I should have. They were right there. I got greedy, though. I got stupid. I wanted to make Arlen live up to his word to pay up.”
Joe squatted so he could look at Keeley’s face at eye level. What he saw disgusted him, terrified him. He thought of what Keeley had done to his family. What he had done to Wyatt. What he could do to him and others if he recovered, as unlikely as that seemed. J. W. Keeley would always be a threat to him and to everyone around him.
“I need a doc,” Keeley said. “Call me a doc. I ain’t got long like this.”
Joe said, “Six years ago Wacey Hedeman was in a situation just like yours. He was down on the ground bleeding. I let him go. It was the wrong decision.”
Keeley studied Joe and sneered, “You got a badge. You can’t just do that.”
Joe said, “Not anymore,” and raised the Glock, pressed it against Keeley’s forehead.
Behind him, Nate called out, “Joe! Don’t!”
Joe pulled the trigger. Keeley’s head kicked back against the barn door and he slumped over to the side, dead. Even Joe couldn’t miss from an inch away.
WHEN JOE STOOD and turned, he saw Nate stumbling across the grass toward him. Nate was hurt.
“The son-of-a-bitch Wyatt coldcocked me when I looked away,” Nate said unsteadily. There was blood on the side of his head.
“Wyatt did that?” Joe asked, his voice disembodied due to what he had just done. He didn’t feel triumphant, or guilty. He didn’t know how he felt yet.
Behind Nate, a curl of smoke came out of an upstairs window of the ranch house. Then another. And the windows lit up with flame inside.
Joe approached Nate, his gun hanging limply at his side. He was numb everywhere. Although he knew what he was watching, it seemed as if it were on a movie screen; it didn’t seem real. He could still feel the sharp recoil of the gun in his hand, feel the shock waves shoot up his arm from the shot. Thought about the way Keeley had simply collapsed on himself and pitched to the side, like a side of beef, the evil spark gone that had once lit him up.
Thinking: Killing is easier than it should be. John Wayne Keeley probably had the same thought.
Then: What has happened to me? How could he have dared to threaten my daughters?
FLAMES WERE LICKING through the windows and front door, the roof was burning. Joe could smell the smoke, hear 120-year-old wooden beams popping inside the structure.
“Where’s Wyatt?” Joe asked, his voice seeming hollow, lifeless.
“I think he got out,” Nate said, now recovered enough to stand next to Joe.
“Nope,” Joe said, pointing. “There he is.”
Wyatt appeared on the side of the house through the smoke. He was hard to see clearly because of the pulsing waves of heat. But it was big-shouldered Wyatt, walking straight toward the house with something over his shoulder.
Opal. Stiff as a board.
Wyatt carried the mount of his mother through the front door, straight into the teeth of the fire.
“My God,” Nate said. “He’s making a funeral pyre.”
“I was sure wrong about Opal,” Joe said, his voice tinny and distant.
Nate said, “Before he thumped me, Wyatt told me his mother died of a heart attack that morning after some guide named Wayman threw her in the river. She died peacefully, and Arlen found her. Arlen buried her in secret because he knew about the will giving Hank the ranch, but Wyatt saw him and dug her up. Wyatt made her into what she always wanted to be—immortal. And what he always wanted her to be.”