Lizardskin (3 page)

McAllister glanced down at his Browning, trying to work out his position in this thing. Knowing he didn’t really
have
a position in whatever happened next.

The mama-dog was up now on her back legs, looking sideways at McAllister. She couldn’t smell him in the car. Her tail flicked and trembled, and the pup at her feet started to move. McAllister could hear it making a little beeping sound.

That was enough for Scratch. He started to slide out of the shadow, like a wave curling across a pond.

McAllister picked up the Browning and thumbed back the hammer.

This was silly—he’d shot more prairie dogs than this snake could eat in three lifetimes. Why was he getting involved now?

Was it because of the two babies? He had babies. Well, not babies. Girls. One grown now, twenty-two and somewhere down in Wyoming at an archaeological dig. And Bobby Lee, six this very day, waiting for him at what used to be his house and was now generally known as the Bitch’s Bungalow.

No turning back now. Scratch was committed. He’d get to within a lunge of the prairie dog, and suddenly he’d be
on
them. You’d never see the move. There’d just be a snake with a dead prairie dog in his jaws. Mama was still thinking about McAllister’s cruiser. She was not paying enough attention to what was going on around her.

Cold little brown eyes on her. She reminded him of Maureen,
which reminded him about his date—no,
appointment
was more like it. His appointment with Maureen to pick up Bobby Lee at six tonight. It was four now, and he still had to get the car into the station house, shower and change, wrap the present.

Maureen did not
like
it when you were
late
. That was
your problem
, Beau. You were always
late
. That isn’t
nice
, Beau. So don’t be
late
, Beau. Thinking on that, he reached down and turned off his radio. What could happen this late on a slow Friday?

Well … just about anything, but they could get into it without any more help from Beau McAllister. He’d pulled his weight long enough to get some slack.

He watched the snake sliding through the grasses, in and out of the sunlight. It was interesting to watch. You could pick a portion of that body and focus on it, and it would be as if that part didn’t move. The pattern there would compress, and the rest of the snake would just flow through that section. It was like watching the light bulbs on the roof of the Cineplex in Billings. You watched the bulbs and you missed the pattern, or you watched the pattern and the bulbs seemed to move.

Scratch was picking up a little speed here. Jesus, these things could really cover the ground. McAllister moved the Browning across his chest and lined the sights up on Scratch’s head, tracking it as it made that little sideways move, back and forth, the tongue out and flickering. A few yards away, a soon-to-be-
ex
-prairie-dog mama continued profoundly misunderstanding her situation. Come
on
, Mom!

Then she seemed to vibrate for a half-second—a flicker and a spurt of dust and she was—
gone
. A rustle in the grass at the far side of the road. A flash of gray tail. Leaving the kids in the roadway.

Christ, what a cold-assed
bitch
!

So much for motherhood.

And here comes Scratch, making his run at the half-blind pups in his path. McAllister tightened his grip and began to pull. He had maybe a couple of seconds.

beep beep beep

Christ! He’d forgotten to shut off his beeper. God-
damn
all beepers! Somebody was trying to get him and knew his radio was off. He flicked the switch to his radio and picked up the handset just as Scratch got to the first pup.

“Five eleven.”

Man. Just like that. A cocktail sausage.

“Beau! Where the hell are you?”

In the background of the transmission, McAllister could hear the tone-beep of the emergency system. Armed robbery, or a gun run. Nice timing, Beau.

“Up on Elbow Hill, a coupla miles, Eustace. What’s up?”

“Well, if it’s not an imposition, maybe you might get yourself down to Joe Bell’s place. He’s got a robbery in progress, wants to know if we feel like helping out.”

McAllister started up the cruiser, not soon enough to distract Scratch from the next pup down the road.

“Why me? That’s a County call. Get the Yellowstone guys onto it. Get the Big Horn guys. Get anybody but me.”

“Bell’s place is on the interstate, last time I looked. That’s us. Quit jerking me around, Beau.”

“Any guns?”

“One thing for sure—Bell’s got one.”

By now, McAllister had the white Ford LTD rocking down the dirt road toward Pompeys Pillar.

“He tell you that?”

“He didn’t have to—I heard him doing it. Ronny’s on the way. And Rita. The rest of the guys are all over the County.”

Shit, thought McAllister. Never answer the phone on a Friday afternoon.

Joe Bell was a retired railroad man who ran Bell’s Oasis, a huge truck stop and Shell gas station on I-94, at the east end of Pompeys Pillar. Bell’s Oasis was
the
major business of Pompeys Pillar. Joe Bell was a big bald cracker with his hand in all sorts of pockets around Yellowstone County. Like everybody in Montana, Bell had a do-it-yourself attitude about law enforcement, and he seemed to be doing it himself right now. McAllister had the Ford shuddering over a washboard track as the radio popped and snarled with chatter.

“Four nine nine, come on?”

“Yes, Sergeant?”

“Where’re you, Rita?”

“I’m behind an RV, ’bout a mile out. No—wait—
shit
!”

“Rita? Rita?”

“I’m fine—I just took him on the shoulder there.”

McAllister could hear the siren in the background as she talked. Rita was new and very intense.

Eustace Meagher was back on the air. “Rita, cut the chatter. Beau, you there?”

“I’m here, Eustace.”

“It looks like Joe’s out there by the pumps, shooting the buttons off everything.”

Christ.

“By the pumps?”

“Yeah—I called Fire and Rain. ETA is ten minutes.”

“I’m just about there.”

“Sergeant?”

“Rita?”

“Yeah—I can see it now. You want me to wait for you?”

“You block the east end. Where the hell is Thornton?”

There was an explosion of static and then Ronny’s voice, breathless and wired up.

“This is 495. You’re gonna blow right by me.”

McAllister could see the town now, a ragged line of low buildings set in the lee of a dry wash. The Shell sign was the tallest thing in town. At the point where the gravel road hit the pavement, McAllister could see Ron Thornton’s cruiser.

“Sarge, I can see you!”

“Yeah. Rita, stay put! We’ll come east on the service road. You block the far end. Ronny, when we get there, keep that goddamned werewolf in the car. We don’t need him ripping up the citizens. Rita, you read me five by five?”

“Ten-four, sir. I’ll hold.”

McAllister was doing a flat eighty as he flew by Ronny’s cruiser. Ron Thornton was a heavy-set, barrel-bodied youngster with a pencil-thin moustache that made him look like a Mexican pimp. His dark face was hot and bright. Through the
slots in an aluminum barrier, McAllister could hear Ronny’s police dog howling and snarling.

Ronny stayed right on McAllister’s bumper all the way up the main street of Pompeys Pillar, sirens yipping and the people all lined up on the walkways. Bell’s Oasis was at the far end of town. At a hundred yards out they heard the solid percussive boom of a shotgun.

Ronny and McAllister slid to a stop in the lee of a J. B. Hunt tractor-trailer. The driver was already flattened up against the wheels. He grinned weakly as they ran over and got their backs up against the trailer.

“What the
hell’s
goin’ on here?” McAllister asked the driver.

“Beats me, Sergeant,” said the driver. “All’s I know is, one minute I’m sitting in my cab, and the next Joe’s shooting the shit outta a bunch of Indians at the pumps.”

“Indians? What kind?”

The trucker’s lean face split along his worry lines. “Jeez, man! Indians! Crows, likely, or Cheyenne from Busby. Bell give one of ’em a bellyfull of shot, I know
that
!”

McAllister ducked down to take a look under the trailer bed.

Across the tarmac, Joe Bell was crouched down beside a line of gas pumps, head down, feeding shells into a semiauto twelve-gauge Winchester shotgun.

Twenty feet away, a dark-skinned boy in faded jeans and a blue plaid shirt lay on his back in a widening lake of thickening blood. One of his boots was off. It was standing, oddly, upright. A black Stetson with one eagle feather lay on its peak a foot away. Most of the boy’s side was scattered in a pulpy red fan over the pavement. McAllister could see his chest rising and falling. Still alive.

“Ronny, you get back to the car, you tell Fire to bring the paramedic van and not to screw around doing it!” Fire and Rain was what they called the Emergency Service Unit.

Ronny jumped and ran. McAllister peeked back around the end of the van. A dusty blue Chevy pickup was parked at the pumps. Its hood was up, and the oil dipstick was on the ground in front of the truck. Jubal’s pickup.

“Hey, Bell!”

Bell pivoted with the shotgun, shouldered it, and fired in the direction of Beau’s voice. The back of the trailer rocked, and a license plate flew fifty feet into the ditch.

“Christ, Bell! It’s Beau McAllister!”

Joe Bell’s bald head and heavy red beard rose up above the top of a gas pump.

“Beau?”

“Yes! For chrissake, Bell!”

“You see ’em, Beau? Over by the propane tank?”

Oh, great, thought McAllister. About fifty yards away, there was a big enclosure marked off by a Lundy fence. Inside, a huge white torpedo tank sat atop a series of concrete supports. He could just see some huddled shapes through the support pillars.

“First thing, Bell, you stop firing at that thing. You hit that tank right, we’re all gonna go way up high and come back down as pink rain.”

“It was just grazing fire, Beau. I know what I’m doing!”

Sure, thought McAllister. You sure grazed that boy pretty good, didn’t you? “What the hell’s goin on, Bell?”

“There’s five of them. Look like reservation Indians. I got this one. There’s three men and a girl. They come in with that old blue pickup there, and I braced ’em. Then they go for the weapons.”

“What kind?”

“A knife. A
big
one. Other weird shit. I didn’t stop to make a fuckin’
list
!”

“What’d they do?”

“
Do?
They go for weapons, I figure it’s a fight!”

McAllister turned to Ronny, who was once more pressed close to the truck. “Go get me the hailer, Ronny. I’m gonna see if we can talk our way outta something here. I don’t have time for this shit.”

Ronny came back with the Motorola hailer. McAllister crawled back to the end of the tractor-trailer. “You there, by the tank!”

Nothing. Maybe some movement.

“This is the po—”

Something went
thoong
and then—unbelievably—there was the whirring sound of—a kind of whistle—what the?—then a huge metallic clang hit the tractor-trailer near Beau.

There was—there was a god-
dammed arrow
stuck ten inches into the back of the tractor-trailer. It had pretty blue feathers and a dark metal shaft, stuck in there good and solid. McAllister stared at it for maybe five seconds, not ready to believe what he was seeing.

“Ronny, are you seeing what I’m—”

Another basso
thoong
sound. McAllister scrambled back into the cover beside the driver and Ronny. The trailer caught another shaft. It hit the outside wall like a hammer blow.

Arrows, McAllister was thinking. He couldn’t get his mind around it. Somebody was shooting
arrows
at him.

Two more
thoong
sounds, and two more shrill whirrings.

Chunk!

Chunk!

Joe Bell felt the need to respond. The three of them heard Bell pull his slide back.

“No!” McAllister shouted. Ron and the J. B. Hunt driver were already running for the ditch at the side of the road.

“I’m just gonna—” That sound again, and the whistling whirring. Joe Bell was up and leaning across the pump. The shaft came in like judgment, sliced into his left shoulder. Beau could see the plaid shirt open up and the vivid red flesh underneath.

Bell stood up and bellowed once. He still had the shotgun in his right fist. That gun had everybody’s full attention now, the arrow stuck in his shoulder. Round and round she goes, thought McAllister, not able to drop, just watching the barrel and watching Joe Bell stagger around the end of the pump island, watching him come forward now, blood running from the slice in his upper arm—Christ, that would hurt. Everybody in the area who could see what was going on tried to dig a little farther into the dirt or tiles on the snack-bar floor or the bottom of the truck cab—but Bell wasn’t dropping that goddamned Winchester.

Bell squeezed one off. The big gun kicked back in his hand.

A swarm of fat black bees hurtled off into the blue.

Jesus, thought Beau. He’s got double-ought in there. Twelve steel balls as big as marbles.

So it came to McAllister that maybe he should just plain shoot Joe Bell. Otherwise they were all going to die.

“Bell! Put the gun down!”

Bell was out there, beyond control. His face was sweaty and bright as a road flare as he came out in the open now, bringing that big barrel around one more time, leaning back in his Tony Lamas, his big white belly out over the top of his jeans, his shirt ripped and flapping in the wind, his mouth wide open in the middle of that huge red beard.

Beau pulled the Browning out and lined the red foresight up over Joe Bell’s right foot.

“Bell! You gotta stop firing!”

Boom!
Bell got off another shell. Maybe he had visions of Wyatt Earp in his head. Maybe he was seeing it all on
Eyewitness News
. This one zipped and zanged into the gravel about ten feet to one side of the propane tank. Steel shot skittered crazily off across the highway.