Crease watched them arguing like a couple that's been married twenty years. They seemed made for each other. The two of them going back and forth about the measly cash. Reb started complaining that she could use the money to fix the place up and Edwards began yelling about Jimmy Devlin and her other dalliances. He actually used the word dalliances. It wasn't a word you ever expected to hear when you were cuffed to a chair, but there it was.
Crease picked up another sound too.
It was the subtle clack of the tilted screen door hitting the jamb. But the front door was locked. Crease strained to listen. He wasn't sure if he heard plodding footsteps going around to the back or was only imagining them. The whiff of rain strengthened. The pain in his skull lingered.
Whoever it was knocked over the stack of cordwood Crease had put out back. It wasn't loud enough for Reb and Edwards to quit snapping at each other. They had to burn out soon. They were just hissing like cats now, going on and on about past circumstances. Reb's bad cooking, the sheriff drinking too much to make it in bed. Crease shifted in the chair a bit and was able to see through the kitchen to the back door.
Cruez had slipped his leash. He was trying to make it inside, acting like a sneaky second-story cat burglar. He could barely fit through the door. He let out a soft grunt as he bumped into the jutting metal cabinet with the flour and sugar jars on it.
These people, jazzed up, jonesing, and jinxed to the max, but they didn't hear size sixteen feet come clomping in the kitchen. Crease swallowed down a groan of frustration. He wasn't sure how best to play this turn. Try to snap Edwards' attention back to the moment or look over at Cruez to see what he was after, maybe get him to help out here for a second. You could never tell with somebody like Cruez if the guy wanted bloodshed or just a pat on the head and a T-bone.
From this angle, Cruez could only see Crease, couldn't look at the rest of the room where Edwards was now pouting and Reb was ramping herself up to do much nastier things to Crease than she'd done when they were teenagers. He shouldn't have put down her cooking.
Cruez swept his eyes across Crease in the chair, not quite smart enough to put the whole scene together. All he saw was the target, didn't notice the blood on Crease's face, the way his arms were drawn back. Like this was how he might be relaxing on any weeknight. Jesus.
So it was obvious Cruez hadn't even taken the time to peek in a window. He'd just marched around the house thinking he was slick, expecting to find Crease and Reb settled in for the night. Out on the couch or upstairs in a knotted tangle. A smile started to cross his rough, lumpy face and got lost in crazy ways among the scarred features.
"I'm the right hand," he said and started to pull his Magnum.
Okay, so that answered that question.
Crease shouted, "Sheriff, this man wants to smuggle llamas over the Canadian border! Arrest him! I'll take the stand against him!"
Edwards was still wrapped up inside his own head but when Cruez's shadow preceded him out into the dining room, and Edwards got a gander of the behemoth extracting that long, way goddamn long-barreled. 357, he got back in cop mode fast.
He hopped up and ran forward as Cruez broke completely from the darkness of the kitchen. Edwards whispered, "Christ."
Cruez's expression contorted and his facial muscles ground together into a frown. "We didn't see any llamas. We saw cows."
The front sight of the Magnum had snagged on the bottom of his shoulder holster. That was another reason not to carry the damn things, no holster was long enough to hold them properly.
Reb did the best thing she could've done under the circumstances. With Crease sitting there bleeding, the sheriff failing to come up with the fifteen g's, now some piece of a mountain climbing into her house, she just cut loose. It was weird, definitely proving she had some schizoid tendencies of her own. She let out a wickedly eerie laugh that sent the creeps up Crease's spine.
It was a titter tinged with desperation, guilt, fear, and the underlying wish to take everything back from the last twenty years or so.
Good thing Edwards was ready to shoot somebody this time. He pulled his gun and pressed the barrel of his. 38 on Cruez's Adam's apple and shoved hard.
It was a move that would've put a normal guy down, but Cruez was wired differently. His thoughts banged around inside that skull and became blunt and lost all their force. He didn't feel pain like other people. He was still yanking at the Magnum.
Edwards said, "That what you planning to do, you llama thief? You go to hell, Canadian!"
Rebecca's cackle had died down but was still sputtering at the back of her throat. She looked drunk, out of it. Crease said, "Reb, the keys, okay?"
"I don't know where they are!"
"They're right there on the table."
Edwards had a little more steel and sand to him than Crease had thought. The sheriff didn't want to just blow Cruez away. He stood his ground. He thumped the monolith in the throat again, and then pistol-whipped him. Three, four, five times, the. 38 coming down hard across Cruez's nose, his chin, his forehead. Spatters of blood whipped against the wall. Cruez was still reaching, and now the barrel was finally starting to come free.
Crease was this close to letting out that cackle himself. His cool was mostly gone, but sometimes the coolest thing you could do was get off a chuckle at the right time.
Reb fumbled for the handcuff keys. She wasn't going to get to him in time. The sheriff had played it wrong, he shouldn't have tried to chip away at Cruez. He could've bashed the guy in the head with a shovel all day long and not left a dent.
Cruez, the moron, could've easily swatted the sheriff aside but he was too intent on drawing his weapon. He wasn't exactly the most adaptable guy in the world.
Yeah, that laugh, everybody made it now and again. There always came a time when you had a what the hell moment of clarity and realized just how ridiculous your life had made you. Like him yelling about llamas.
Oh yeah, you had to laugh.
Crease's hands were starting to do their thing. They were pulling at the back of the chair and the wood had begun to splinter, cracking as loudly as rifle shots. The chair gave out and Crease went with it, hit the floor and tucked himself in tight, working his arms down around his thighs, his legs, his shoes. Cruez was bringing the Magnum out while Edwards continued to clobber him.
Crease's bundle was on the table. His gun, the butterfly blade, the Bowie knife. He got his cuffed arms all the way around and out in front of him and jumped to his feet. He wasn't sure he was going to be fast enough. His hands were flashing out, the left taking the Bowie, the right the pistol. Cruez had the Magnum out but Edwards was too close to him, he couldn't quite get it pointed the right way. The sheriff finally realized he'd made a mistake and turned his own gun around in his hand, ready to blast Cruez. But the butt was slippery with blood and he couldn't get a good enough grip on it.
And here you were thinking today that a fire would be nice. Some wine, the smell of fall wafting in around you.
Crease tapped the point of the Bowie against the back of Edwards' hand hard enough to make him drop his slick gun. Crease gestured him away towards the couch. Then he pushed the. 38 against Cruez's crotch and said, "Okay, that's enough, let's settle down now."
"What?"
That was about as much as you were going to get out of Cruez at a time like this.
"Talk to me. Why are you here?"
"I'm not left-handed."
"I know that," Crease said. But he realized Cruez was trying to tell him more but couldn't find the words. The eyes in that bloody, misshapen head looked like holes poked into clay with a stick.
"Tucco know you're here?"
"No."
"How's Morena?"
"What?"