He looked up to see Marybeth rising from the table and Nate striding across the living room. He’d hidden his .454 on the top shelf of the coat closet.
Joe bypassed the .40 Glock in his office drawer and snatched a 12-gauge Mossberg pump from his gun rack. He used the piece for goose hunting since it took 3-inch Magnum shells, and he jammed three into the magazine and worked the slide to put one in the chamber. His six-battery steel Maglite slipped into his belt.
Joe turned to Marybeth, who hovered in the hallway as if positioning herself between her daughters and any outside threat. He said, “Make sure the curtains are closed in the back bedrooms and the girls are in our room in the front of the house.”
He waited while Marybeth shooed Sheridan, April, and Lucy across the hall in their nightgowns into the master bedroom. April sulked, Lucy went willingly—practically skipping—and Sheridan shot a look at Joe and Nate as if she wished she were with them instead of with her sisters and mom. When the girls were across the hallway, Marybeth leaned out and silently mouthed, “Okay.”
Although the operation had gone quickly and smoothly, Joe thought again of what his mother-in-law had said to him. How his job endangered his family. Here it was again. His girls were used to this sort of thing, and that wasn’t normal or right, was it?
Nate said, “Let’s go out the front and come around to the back on both sides.”
Joe nodded, said, “I’ll take the left side.”
As they slipped out the front door into the dark, Joe whispered over his shoulder, “Take it real easy, Nate. I live in this place. No shooting or pulling off ears if it can be avoided.”
Nate grunted his understanding. Then: “When we get in position, I’ll make a noise to get their attention. You be ready on the back side and come up behind them.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s take this slow.”
“Of course.”
JOE KEPT LOW TO AVOID being illuminated by the house windows and the lone streetlamp on the corner of the block. He went left, reminded painfully of the injuries in his legs. Once he was on the side of the house, he’d be in shadow. He avoided the concrete path and kept to the grass to avoid making noise. There was a narrow strip of grass between his house and Ed Nedney’s, and he’d turn at a ninety-degree angle at the corner and follow it to a six-foot wooden gate that led to his backyard. There, he’d wait for Nate’s distraction before opening the gate.
He turned the corner. Ed Nedney’s front porch light clicked on and Nedney stepped out on his landing, apparently to light his pipe. A match flared and lit up Nedney’s face, and he turned his head and saw Joe with the shotgun. Nedney froze, the match paused a few inches from the bowl of tobacco. He started to speak, but Joe held his index finger to his lips and hissed, “Shhhhh.”
Nedney’s eyes were wide. Joe thought, he has a decision to make: obey Joe’s command or say what he was going to say. The match burned down in Nedney’s fingers. Another time, two years ago, his neighbor had come outside to find Joe marching another man across his yard at gunpoint. Nedney hadn’t liked the experience one bit.
His neighbor inhaled to speak, but Joe shot his arm out and pointed his finger at him, gesturing for him to go back inside. Although he was clearly angry, Nedney tossed the match aside, turned on his heel, and scuttled into his house. Probably to call the police or start drafting covenants for the neighborhood forbidding residents from lurking around in the dark with shotguns, Joe thought. Joe hoped Nate was in position so whatever was going to happen would happen quickly and he could warn Nate to keep out of sight in case the police were coming.
He paused at the back gate and tried to see into the backyard through gaps in the wood slats. He got a glimpse of the two large cottonwood trunks, Lucy’s bike propped up against a planter, and a small swatch of the cracked concrete porch. He couldn’t see who had made the noise, but the hairs on the back of his neck were up and he was sure someone or something was back there.
Of course, he thought, it could be innocent. Possibly neighborhood kids playing around. Or an animal—a stray dog, a coyote down from the foothills, a badger looking for dog food to eat, even a deer or bear. A few years before, Joe had been called out to shoot tranquilizer darts at a mountain lion perched in the fork of a mountain ash tree. And there was the occasional moose, elk, antelope, wolverine . . .
Behind the fence in the backyard was an empty field dotted with sagebrush that smelled sweet in the late summer and perfumed the dry air. That was the way Nate had approached their house earlier and Joe peered through the gap in the fence to see if the back gate was open. It was. He knew Nate had closed it earlier, which eliminated the animal options and indicated someone was back there. Whether the intruder had slipped out while he and Nate armed up and sneaked around or was still there was yet to be determined.
Then Joe heard it, a rhythmic wheezing sound. Somebody breathing, but not easily. Whoever it was remained in the backyard, but Joe couldn’t get an angle through the fence to see him.
From the other side of the house came an eerie high-pitched call mimicking the sound of an angry hawk: skree-skree-skree-skree.
Joe quickly pushed through the gate and was startled when the hinges moaned angrily from lack of oil. He dashed through the opening into the backyard, putting distance between the open gate and himself in case whoever was back there had been as surprised by the rusty hinges as he’d been. There was only one human form he could see, and the man was standing in the muted light beneath the kitchen window with his back to Joe, looking in the direction of the hawk sound. The man was big and blocky, wearing a cowboy hat, an oversized canvas Carhartt ranch coat, and jeans. The left cuff was carelessly pulled outside a cowboy boot and bunched on the top of the boot. What looked like an M1911 .45 ACP semiautomatic pistol was hanging down in his right hand along the hem of the ranch jacket.
Joe said, “Freeze where you stand or I’ll cut you in half with this shotgun.”
Joe recognized the hat, boots, and pistol. He raised his Maglite alongside the barrel of his shotgun after twisting it on so he could see clearly down the sights while aiming. The beam was choked down to the minimum size, and he trained it on the man’s head and shoulders.
He said, “Bud, is that you?”
Bud Longbrake, Missy’s ex-husband and Joe’s ex-father-in-law, stood like a bronze statue of a washed-up cowboy caught in a spotlight. Slowly, Bud turned his head a little so he could talk to Joe over his shoulder. “Hey, Joe. I didn’t know you were home.”
His voice was bass and resigned, and his words were slurred.
“I live here, Bud,” Joe said. “You know that. So what are you doing sneaking around in my backyard? Oh, and drop the Colt.”
Bud said, “If I drop it on the concrete, it might go off.”
“Then bend over and put it at your feet and kick it away, Bud.”
“Oh, all right.” It took him a moment to bend all the way over, and he grunted while he did it. He gave the weapon a kick with his boot. Joe thought Bud had gained quite a bit of weight since he’d last seen him, and his movements were stiff as if his joints hurt.
“Okay, turn around slowly,” Joe said. “Keep the palms of your hands up so I can see them.”
Bud did, and Joe put the beam of his flashlight on Bud’s face. He was shocked by what he saw. Bud’s eyes were rimmed with red and his cheeks were puffy and pale and spiderwebbed with thin blue veins. His nose was bulbous and looked as if it had been rubbed gray with woodstove ash. A three-day growth of beard sparkled like silver sequins in the beam of the flashlight.