A Thousand Falling Crows (32 page)

They approached the Model A carefully, taking cover at every step, guns drawn, fingers on their triggers.

The sky was white, like a blank canvas, waiting for the rest of the day and weather to arrive. There seemed little question that a storm of any kind was going to blow up any time soon. The air was still and the clouds were high and thin, barely perceptible against the same-colored sky. Once again, darkness had lost the battle against light—but there would be another time for that, as the sun turned away from the earth for just a blink. The war would never end as long as the world kept spinning.

Sonny eased up alongside Frank Hamer, taking each step hopefully but sensing all of his hope had been wasted. It didn't look like anyone could survive what had just happened.

The morning light made the land more navigable, snake holes more defined, and movement in the car—which remained still—clearer.

Jesse had pulled his car down to the spot where the Model A had turned off the road. Jonesy and Hugh Beaverwood had come up, too, bringing their vehicles with them.

A flare, cutting into the soft white sky like a glowing red worm, had been shot to alert the deputies on the other road that they were needed at this scene.

Sonny saw the boy slumped by the steering wheel from ten feet away. He could see the rest of the seats—the back door had popped open on impact—and there was no one there. It was empty.
There should be three of them
, he thought, but didn't say.

Frank Hamer knew that, too, and saw the same thing that Sonny did. He motioned for Sonny to stop, then crouched down and slid up the door of the car, the barrel of his gun leading the way.

“There's only one of them and a girl.” Hamer stood back and waved at the road.

Sonny turned and saw the tall, lanky Hugh Beaverwood jump into action and pull a gurney out of the back of the ambulance.

Hamer rushed around to the other side of the car and yanked the door open. “Looks like this one's still alive, but she's been hit.”

Sonny followed, happy at Frank Hamer's announcement. Upon seeing Carmen, there was no question that she was Aldo's daughter—she looked just like him, only younger, softer.

There had been no time to alert Aldo during the night about Hamer's plan. The Mexican probably would have been unwelcome among the posse, but Sonny still wished that Aldo was there to see his daughter . . . just in case she died before she got to the hospital.

Both doors at the back of the ambulance stood open. Hugh Beaverwood pulled the gurney up over the berm as Jesse pushed it up from the back.

Sonny had hurried alongside Carmen the best he could. She hadn't spoken a word, was not conscious. Her eyes were closed.

Dawn was gone, and morning had arrived with a pure brightness that made it difficult not to see everything clearly, There was no mistaking the blood on Carmen's leg.

Hugh Beaverwood had fashioned a tourniquet to slow the bleeding, but anyone with any battlefield experience at all knew there was little chance that Carmen was going to survive. It looked like an artery had been severed.

With a yank and a pull from both men, the gurney lurched over the berm.

Beaverwood and Jesse hurried to the ambulance and slid Carmen inside. Sonny never left her side, nearly pushing Jesse out of the way from the door.

The sun had popped over the horizon, casting even more light on the cars and the surrounding landscape. The inside of the ambulance was lit up like it had klieg lights on the inside of it.

Carmen's face was pale, and she had yet to move. She was covered up to her neck with a white blanket, like a mummy about to be set into a tomb.

Hugh Beaverwood stood back, closed the door on his side, then looked at Sonny expectantly—who was standing in the way of the other door being closed.

Sonny was focused on Carmen, on the interior of the ambulance.

“Every second counts, Ranger Burton,” the coroner said.

“Right,” Sonny answered, a little distracted. He stood back and slammed the door.

Hugh Beaverwood hurried out of sight, and in a matter of seconds, the ambulance sped away, toward the hospital in Wellington.

Sonny didn't move. He stood in the middle of the road, watching the ambulance disappear down the road.

“What's the matter, Pa?” Jesse had sidled up next to Sonny, followed by Frank Hamer.

Sonny shrugged. “Nothing. I don't think. But maybe something.”

“What?” Hamer said.

Sonny shook his head. “There was a shoe in the back of the ambulance.”

“A shoe?” Jesse said. There was a tone of recognition, of coming trouble in his voice.

“Yes, a shoe. One shoe. Sensible and slightly scuffed,” Sonny said.

“Just like the girl in the field was wearing,” Jesse answered, turning toward his car. “Damn it. I knew it.”

“That's it. Just like the girl in the field was wearing. Son of a bitch. He's been standing in front of us the whole time. One shoe was missing.” Sonny followed after Jesse and jumped into the passenger seat of his car—leaving Frank Hamer in the dust, with a confused look on his face.

CHAPTER 31

The crows were startled awake by the gunshots, roused from the safety of their roost earlier than normal. The sky had been black, black as their wings, but they lifted away from their resting spot in search of safer limbs.

It didn't take long for all of them to figure out that they were not the target of men's guns.

The conflict, the hunt, was man after man, or in this case men after a boy and a girl. What was apparent to the birds, though, was that there would be blood left about, drops to draw other things to the ruckus.

So they stayed close. Watched from a distance and became even more hopeful when they saw the two-legged one that was most like them. The first one to always show up when there was human blood, death, opportunity.

If the man had wings, he'd be their leader, a member of the gang, and they would be all the better for it—rich in food beyond their wildest dreams.

He was dark like them, and they wondered what stories there were about men like him, men with eyes as black as a thousand falling crows.

Jesse punched the accelerator and gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned red.

“You knew?” Sonny asked.

“Don't start, Pa.” Jesse's eyes were focused on the road. There was no sign of the ambulance.

“Hugh Beaverwood,” Sonny said, with a frustrated exhale.

“Maybe. Yes. I didn't have a clue until late yesterday.”

Sonny looked at Jesse, then back at the road. There was still no sign of the ambulance. “You best tell me what you know.”

Jesse set his jaw, gritted his teeth, fought off whatever he was feeling. “Betty Maxwell called me after you left the hospital yesterday. She was nearly hysterical, afraid.”

Sonny immediately recalled the conversation with Nurse Betty and felt bad all over again. “I was rude,” he said.

“You were. You saw that she was pregnant, or had been, and then there was no child, no baby to show for it. That's what set her off, got her thinking.”

“What's this have to do with Hugh Beaverwood, Jesse?” Sonny looked up the road, and in the distance he saw a plume of dust rising in the air. “That it might be him?”

Jesse nodded, then looked over at Sonny. “She's a grown woman with a son, single, and under enough scrutiny as it is, just for that. Working at the hospital gives her a little bit of credibility in this town, but folks are uncomfortable with their secrets bein' known. If she came up pregnant and not married, she'd lose what she had. She didn't have a choice.”

“A choice?” Sonny pulled the .45 out from his back and held it in his left hand.

“She had to take care of it,” Jesse said.

Sonny didn't say anything. They were still a good distance from the ambulance—which was driving at its flat-out speed—but it was no match for Jesse's newer-model sedan. “So, she went to Hugh Beaverwood?”

“Seems that way. She asked me about the two dead girls, if they'd been pregnant. I confirmed that and told her about the third girl, and it was like the lights just came on. She told me everything then, that it was Hugh Beaverwood who took care of the girls that came to town and didn't go out to the Jorgensons to have their babies.”

Jesse shot Sonny a terse glance, then let it fade it away as quickly as it had come on. “She didn't know, Pa. She didn't understand the consequences of silence. None of us do until it's too late to change things.”

“I rushed out of there and started asking him questions, and he denied everything. He wasn't nervous at all. Just went about his business, closed everything up, and went inside. Just left me there, feeling like I had insulted him. I was going to go to the judge first thing this morning for a search warrant, but Hamer's call came in. Things happened so fast I didn't have time.”

Sonny chambered a round in the .45. “You rattled him. He knew you were on his scent.”

Jesse glanced over to Sonny, then back to the road. “Hold on, there's a dip comin'.”

Sonny braced himself by jamming his wood arm into the door, letting go of the .45, and gripping the seat with his left hand. It was a hard bounce, and the gun fell to the floorboard, but he maintained his balance.

Sonny reached down to get the gun, then sat back up. When he did, he saw the rear end of the ambulance about two hundred yards ahead of them.

Jesse maintained control of the sedan and pressed down the accelerator even more, demanding as much as he could from the V-8. “Hugh talked to Betty on occasion. He didn't have a whole lot of friends. She had known for a long time that girls went to Hugh, but she never thought it was something she would do. She understood that those things happen. It wasn't any of her business. She turned her head because nobody was getting hurt, and those girls were getting a second chance at life. At least, that's what she thought. She was just keepin' one more secret. It was a habit to look the other way.”

Sonny bounced in the seat and let his mind wander away from Jesse's voice for a second, then said, “We might have a bigger problem than the one that's right before us, if that's the case,” Sonny said. “If you're on the money about Hugh Beaverwood.”

“What?” There was panic in Jesse's voice.

“Have you talked to Betty since you went to talk to Hugh?”

Jesse shook his head. “No.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

Jesse's lip quivered. “He went after Betty?”

“I‘m afraid he might have, Jesse,” Sonny said. “I‘m just afraid he might have, if he thought Betty tipped you off.”

CHAPTER 32

There was no way the ambulance was going to outrun Jesse's Plymouth sedan. In the blink of an eye, they were on the bumper of the vehicle, giving Sonny little time to think things through, even though he knew what he had to do—he just wasn't sure how he was going to do it.

“He knows it's us,” Jesse said.

“He's not going to stop.” Sonny leaned forward with the prosthetic and put the hook on the dashboard. Metal against metal, jostled about by the forward motion of the vehicle, the hook slid off, and there was no way to stop it. “Damn it.”

Jesse looked over to Sonny. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out how to get a good shot.” Sonny made another attempt, only this time, he leaned into the dashboard and butted the hook against it. With the wood arm extended, it was like a steady bridge.

Hugh Beaverwood was driving erratically now, outmaneuvering Jesse at every turn. The coroner was good at playing cat and mouse, anticipating the Ranger's intentions to go around him.

Sonny let his wood-arm relax, leaned over, swaying and dodging the whole time, and rolled down the window. “Get up alongside him,” he said to Jesse.

“I‘m tryin', Pa.” Jesse's face was drawn tight with focus and frustration at the same time.

There was no way that Sonny couldn't see the child in the man, trying and failing, but refusing to give up. One thing about Jesse, he had never cried when he fell off a horse, off of old Snag. He dusted himself off and climbed back up on the saddle. That determination had served him well as a man—mostly.