Double Prey

Chapter Forty-two

Now that he was underway, Sheriff Robert Torrez drove with no particular sense of urgency. He let the battered SUV heave along the rough two-track out toward Lewis Wells, and occasionally in the distance they could see the dust cloud raised by Casey’s mare. The gelding kept easy pace, no doubt reveling in free running with no human to kick his ribs or jerk his mouth.

“So what’s he gonna do?” Torrez asked. “He don’t have nowheres to go.”

“We can hope just what Christine said…go out and find a quiet place to sit down and think.”

“He’s going to have a lot of time to do that,” Gastner said from the back seat. “You have to wonder,” he added, and braced himself as Torrez maneuvered over a short patch of slick rock bordering a small arroyo. “Is there a back road out of here?”

“Nope.” The sheriff shook his head. “Unless he wants to try driving cross-country. The arroyos ain’t going to let him do that.”

The windmill appeared first as a speck on the horizon, then gently turning, the rudder swinging the blades to track into the fitful breeze. Lewis Wells sprouted out of a swale, a slight depression where the cattle had trampled the grass to dust.

“That well was drilled in 1951,” Gastner announced as they approached the last slight rise before the swale. “I wish I could remember the homesteader’s name. It’ll come to me. Lewis bought the property, but he didn’t do the drilling.”

Torrez leaned forward as he drove, both arms on the steering wheel. To the north and east of the windmill, the country looked as if a giant had snapped folds into a tawny, rock-studded blanket.

“There she is.” Estelle pointed. She pulled the binoculars out of their case and found the image. Casey was urging her mare up a rough slope, the gelding following close.

“Over to the left,” Torrez added. She swung the binoculars and the pickup truck burst into focus. Prescott had pulled the vehicle near a copse of ragged, stunted elms, opportunistic little trees that responded to even the hope of water. They managed to tower over the sharp-spined acacias.

“Stop here,” Estelle said suddenly, and Torrez looked at her, puzzled. “No. Stop here, Bobby. Stop.” He did so, and she handed him the binoculars. “If we drive in on them, we’re going to push him to do something. We don’t want to do that, not with Casey over there. There’s no point in forcing his hand. He has nowhere to go.”

“You got that right,” Gastner leaned forward, his fingers clutching the prisoner grill that separated front from back.

Estelle popped the door. “I’m going to watch from here,” Torrez said. Estelle knew exactly what he meant even before he hefted the compact, scoped rifle from the rack that stood vertically beside the transmission hump. He could sweep the hillside four hundred yards away. “He ain’t going to want to talk to me anyway.”

“I think I should go,” Gastner said.

The undersheriff slipped out of the truck and opened Gastner’s locked, prisoner-proof door. “You’re feeling like a stroll, sir?”

“A stroll, yes. I don’t think Gus sees me as much of a threat.”

They watched Torrez arrange a folded jacket on the hood of the truck, with a heavy bean bag in front of that. He settled behind the rifle, working this way and that so that weapon didn’t rock on its short magazine. For a moment he visually roamed the hillside, eye close to the scope objective. The bolt of the rifle rode open.

“Casey’s tied her horse to a stump behind the acacia grove,” he said. “She’s makin’ her way up the slope.” Estelle saw the barrel of the rifle tilt upward, then drift from side to side before freezing. “He’s sittin’ on a big slab of sandstone,” the sheriff said. “Range finder says four hundred and twenty yards.”

“He’s in the open?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Then that’s where we’re going,” Estelle said. Of all the people in the world who might be behind the rifle, she felt absolute confidence in Robert Torrez, but the ghost of apprehension still raised its head.

“He’s got the shotgun with him,” Torrez said. “He’s holdin’ it between his legs, stock down.”

“Ay, ” Estelle whispered.

“Pay attention,” Torrez instructed. “I ain’t going to wait this time.” She knew exactly what he meant. It had been three years, and her side still ached on occasion where a nine millimeter slug had taken her through the margin of her vest. An instant after the pistol’s trigger had been pulled, Sheriff Robert Torrez had fired, a hundred yard shot that the.308 rifle bullet had covered in a tenth of a second…an instant too late. “If he makes a motion to point that shotgun your way, he’s a dead man.”

There was no comfort in leaving the decision making to Gus Prescott.