What came next happened very quickly and yet seemed in slow motion. Big Bear leaned over and put his face in the window, then his right hand came around with something odd-looking in it. A tool, maybe? Not a tool, not the kind needed to repair a broken pickup, anyway Eagle began to operate on pure instinct.
As the shotgun came through the window he grabbed at it as the first barrel fired, then he put a hand under the top newspaper, made contact with the pistol and, without pulling it out or aiming it began firing through the door, his hand coming up with each shot, while the shotgun fired again. The noise from the two weapons was incredible.
Simultaneously, Joe Big Bear's face winced in surprise, as the shotgun in his hand bucked. Eagle's last two rounds went through the open window and blew Big Bear backward, as if he had been jerked by a rope, and he disappeared from view.
Eagle sat, dazed, and tried to figure out what had happened. His windshield had a large hole in it and had crazed, ruining the view forward; there was something warm running down his neck, and he spat something out of his mouth into his hand. It was a single, double-ought buckshot the size of a garden pea and bloody. Eagle turned the rearview mirror so that he could see his reflection. There was a notch in his left earlobe and a black hole in his left cheek, and his face had flecks of black in the skin.
He got out of the car, spat blood, and walked around the vehicle, the.45 still in his hand and held out in front of him. With his left hand he found a handkerchief in his left hip pocket and pressed it to his bleeding ear. His ears were ringing, and the sound of the car door as he closed it seemed to come from far away.
Joe Big Bear was lying on his back, the shotgun near his right hand and his eyes open and staring blankly at the morning sky. Eagle bent over and felt Big Bear's neck where a pulse should be and felt nothing. He suddenly felt a wave of nausea and dizziness, and he vomited on the ground next to Big Bear's body. When he had stopped retching he leaned against the car and took deep breaths.
He regained his composure after a minute or so and clawed the cell phone from its holster on his belt, speed-dialing the district attorney's direct line.
"Martinez," a voice said.
"Bob, it's Ed Eagle," he managed to say before he had to spit blood again.
"Morning, Ed. You sound funny. Is anything wrong?"
"You remember my client, Joe Big Bear?"
"I'm afraid so."
"He just tried to shotgun me on the road, down the hill from my house."
"Ed, are you hurt?"
"Only a little, but Big Bear is dead. I'd appreciate it if you'd call the sheriff for me and get him out here with a crime scene team and two ambulances, one of them for me. I don't think I can drive."
"Ed, you're not going to bleed to death or anything before anybody can get there, are you?"
"No, Bob, but please ask them to hurry."
"I'll call you back in a minute. You're on your cell phone?"
"Yes."
Martinez hung up, and Eagle sank to the ground, sitting cross-legged and leaning against his car. His cell phone rang.
"Yes?"
"It's Bob. They're on their way, and so am I." He hung up.
A SHERIFF'S CAR was there in four minutes, by Eagle's watch, and two ambulances and Bob Martinez were right behind him. Eagle insisted on walking them through what had happened before he got into the ambulance.
"You hit him with all four shots," Martinez said, "from his right knee to his belly to his chest."
"I wasn't even aiming," Eagle said.
AT THE HOSPITAL a young resident did something to his earlobe and stuck a swab into the hole in Eagle's cheek, then he poured some liquid into a small cup and handed it to Eagle.
"Mr. Eagle, I know this is going to sound like an odd treatment, but I want you to take some of this into your mouth, close your lips tightly and spit it out the hole in your cheek."
Eagle did as he was told, and a stream of clotted blood and antiseptic shot out the hole. It would have hurt like hell, he thought, but for the local anesthetic the man had injected into his cheek.
Then, in short order, an oral surgeon appeared and stitched up the wound inside Eagle's mouth, and a plastic surgeon was next, carefully suturing the wound in his cheek with tiny stitches.
"I want you to keep this on your cheek for as long and as often as you can stand it," the plastic surgeon said, pressing a wrapped ice pack against his face. "It'll help prevent swelling, and you'll look more normal." He put a square of flesh-colored tape on the stitched wound.
When the medics were done, Bob Martinez, who had watched the treatment with interest, drove him home, so that he could change his bloody clothing.
"I had your car flat-bedded to the dealer in Albuquerque," Martinez said. "The windshield will have to be replaced, and the door fixed, and the interior will need some attention. Do you have a second car?"
"Thanks, Bob, I've still got Barbara's Range Rover."
"Where's Barbara?"
"Gone, and for good. There's something I can tell you, Bob, now that Joe Big Bear is dead."
"What's that?"
"My witness at Big Bear's hearing, Cartwright, was wrong about something. I don't think it was deliberate, but he said that Joe had been at his house the whole time the car was being repaired. I didn't remember it until later, but at our first meeting, Joe told me he had had to leave the job to go to Pep Boys on Cerrillos for a fan belt."
Martinez's eyebrows went up. "Ah, opportunity," he said. "That matches up nicely with motive and means."
"Yes, it does. I think Joe did the three murders."
"Well, I can clear that case," Martinez said as he pulled into Eagle's driveway.
Eagle got out, thanked Martinez again, and went inside. He called Betty and said that he wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be in that day, then he stripped off his bloody clothes, took another shower and got into bed. He didn't wake up until Susannah Wilde called in the late afternoon from the Centurion jet to say that she'd be landing in Santa Fe at six o'clock.
Thirty-six
EAGLE MET THE CENTURION GULFSTREAM IV AT THE SANTA Fe Jet Center, feeling like shit, hurting all over as if he had been beaten up. The ice had helped, but his face was still swollen, and his left eye was black.
When the jet taxied up to the ramp, Eagle walked out to meet it as the door opened, and several people came down the airstair. Susannah was first off, followed by a rather handsome, if elderly, man.
"Oh, Ed, what happened to you?" she asked, looking alarmed.
"Just a little accident; nothing to worry about."
"Ed, let me introduce Rick Barron, the chairman of Centurion Studios."
"Ed, how are you?" the elderly man asked.
"Very well, Mr. Barron."
"Please call me Rick."
"Thank you."
"Susannah, it looks as though you don't need a lift into town," Barron said.
"No, I'm fine, Rick. Thank you so much for the ride; it's so much easier than flying commercial to Albuquerque and driving from there."
"Any time. We're returning Sunday evening, if you need a round trip."
"No, I'll be staying to get my new house in order." She kissed him on the cheek, Eagle took her luggage from a flight attendant and they walked to the Range Rover.
As soon as they were in the car, before he could even start it, she put a hand on his arm. "All right, now tell me what really happened. Did you get into a fight?"
"In a manner of speaking," Eagle replied. "I want you to understand that incidents like this are not a normal or regular part of my life."
"Understood. Now what happened?"
"A man, a former client, tried to kill me with a sawed-off shotgun. Fortunately, it didn't turn out as he had planned." He explained the circumstances as fully as he could.