“I don’t see him,” Pete said.
“Think we got him?”
“I don’t know.” Pete dropped lower, turned around and squatted, seeming to sag against the wall as he stared into the street.
Larry fumbled fresh cartridges out of his shirt pocket. He started thumbing them into the chambers. The cylinder made quiet clicking sounds as he turned it. Done, he snapped the loading gate shut.
Pete looked at him. “All set?”
“For what?”
“We’re going in, aren’t we?”
“Are we?”
“We’re not going anywhere else, I’ll tell you that much. I’m not changing any fuckin‘ tire with Tonto taking potshots at me.”
“You want us to go in?”
“That’s the idea.” Pete started duck-walking toward him.
“I don’t know about this.”
“What don’t you know?”
“What if he’s waiting?”
“If you’re chicken, I’ll go first.”
“I’m not chicken, but...”
Pete dropped to his knees, crawled past Larry and eased his head past the doorframe. “I think he’s gone.”
“If you catch an arrow in the face, Barbara’s gonna kill me.”
Pete rose slowly until he was standing in the middle of the doorway. Larry turned around and stepped up close beside him. The room was brighter than he’d expected. Light not only poured in from the front door and display window, but also from a smaller window at the rear.
“Bet he took off out the back,” Pete said.
“What about over there?”
Over there was an L-shaped counter with a few bullet holes near its top. Behind it was the closed door of a room that occupied the shop’s right rear quarter.
“If you’re in here,” Pete said in a loud voice, “show yourself right now.”
Nothing happened.
He fired three times, the explosions slamming Larry’s ears as bullets crashed through the counter at knee level.
“Christ! Did you have to do that?”
“Yep.” Even as the word left Pete’s lips, he raced at the counter. He vaulted it. His kick sent the door flying open. He rushed into the back room, then came out shaking his head. “Like I said, he beat it out the window.”
Larry joined up with Pete and they reached the window together.
He yelled, “Shit!”
He shoved Pete. The force of the push sent them both stumbling, separating them, and the arrow sizzled between them.
As he fell to one knee, Larry’s mind held a frozen image of the man he’d seen an instant ago. A man standing in the desert about a hundred feet beyond the back of the building, letting an arrow fly. A savage with wild gray hair, a bushy beard, and a black patch over one eye. Wearing a necklace of garlic cloves, a crucifix that hung in the middle of his chest, an open vest and skirt of gray animal fur, with a knife in the belt at his hip.
“Did you see that?” Pete asked.
Getting up, Larry said, “Uriah?”
“Fuckin‘ wildman of Borneo!”
They both peered out from the sides of the window.
The man was running away, hair streaming out behind him, the bow pumping up and down in his right hand, a quiver of arrows and some kind of cloth bag bouncing against his back.
Pete crouched. He braced his arms on the windowsill and took careful aim.
“You can’t shoot him in the back!”
“Watch me.”
Larry was ready to knock the gun aside, but an image of Bonnie filled his mind. He saw her alive, sleeping in her bed, the weird old man creeping toward her with a hammer and stake.
Pete fired.
His bullet kicked up a puff of dust a yard behind the sprinting lunatic.
His next shot chopped through the bow. The weapon was ripped from the man’s hand, its string flinging the broken ends high, whipping them together.
“All right!” Pete cried out. “Now we’ve got him!”
As they climbed out the window, Larry saw him leap and drop out of sight.
“He’s in the ravine,” Pete said.
“Yeah.” The ravine. The stream bed where they’d found the old jukebox and the campfire with the remains of the coyote.
They started walking toward it, Pete reloading.
“We won’t have to shoot him now,” Larry said.
“Right. We’ll take him alive, ask a few questions. This’ll be great. We’ll take him to the cops. Man, we’ll be the guys that solved the disappearances.”
“Yeah,” Larry muttered. He knew he should feel good. They’d come here for Uriah. Pretty soon, they’d find out whether this was him.
Certainly wasn’t the Uriah of his nightmares.
Probably him, though.
The guy who murdered Bonnie and the other two girls.
They’d have him. Alive. He could tell them everything.
But Larry didn’t feel good. He felt as if he were being strangled by fear.
Pete grinned at him. “You look like shit, pardner. You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing to be scared of, man. What’s he gonna do, throwarrows at us?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t like this.”
“I do. Fantastic!”
Maybe we won’t be able to find him, Larry thought. This is a guy who eats coyotes down there. Probably knows the ravine like the back of his hand. Maybe has special hiding places.
Or, once at the bottom, he might’ve taken off running in either direction. By the time we get there, he could be long gone.
God, I hope so.
Get him for Bonnie. He killed her. Make him pay.
When they were thirty or forty feet from the rim of the gap, Pete waved toward the left. “You go that way.”
“Huh?”
“We’ll split up and box him in.”
“Split up? You outa your mind?”
Halting, Pete scowled at him. “Just do it.”
“No! If we split up, one of us’ll get nailed. Happens in every shitty splatter film I’ve ever seen.”
“This ain’t a fuckin‘ movie.”
“We stick together, and that’s final.”
Looking disgusted, Pete shook his head. “Okay, okay. Shit.”
“Besides, if we aren’t together down there...”
In the corner of Larry’s vision something moved. He jerked his eyes toward the ravine. Glimpsed the head and arm of the one-eyed wildman, the face leering, the arm snapping forward as it hurled a rock. “Watch out!” he shouted.
Ducking, he looked at Pete.
Pete ducked as he brought up his revolver. The rock caught the bridge of his nose, knocked his head back and bounced to the side. His hat flew off. He stumbled backward a few steps like an outfielder going for a high fly ball. Blood spilled over his mustache, dribbled into his open mouth and spread down his chin. The gun fell from his hand. He flopped to the ground. The back of his head thumped a flat slab of granite.
Larry cringed watching all this, as if he could feel the sharp impacts himself.
Then he remembered Uriah. Or whoever it was.
He snapped his head sideways.
The man was gone.
He dashed for the edge of the ravine.
I’m gonna kill you, you rotten bastard! his mind shrieked. Look what you did! What’m I gonna tell Barbara? Shit shit shit! You piece of shit, I’m gonna blow your fucking brains all over the desert! Wasn’t enough you had to kill Bonnie, you goddamn fucking lunatic!
He teetered on the rim and gazed down. The embankment below was steep, cluttered with boulders and scrub brush. But nobody was on it. Nobody was running along the flat bottom of the stream bed.
“Where are you, you shit!” he yelled.
Then he was scrambling down, dodging the rocks and bushes in his way, arms waving for balance, digging his heels into gravel, skidding over the hard-packed earth. Halfway down he slipped. His rump pounded the slope. He slid on the seat of his jeans, throat going tight and tears filling his eyes. A boulder stopped his descent. He pushed himself up, stepped onto the outcropping, blinked his eyes clear and scanned the area below him.