The Carrion Birds (30 page)

“Stop there, Tom.”

Tom stiffened. Ray’s voice close behind.

“Throw the gun out and then step away.”

Tom did as he was told, throwing the gun toward one
of the small clumps of grass, where the metal took up the light from the dawning
sky above. Tom watched Ray move out from behind him, limping from beneath the
shadow of a juniper, his side held tight in one hand. A .45 in his other hand.
When he reached Tom’s gun, he knelt and picked it up, examining it for a second
in his bloodstained palm before slipping it into his waistband. “Come on,” he
said. Waving Tom on with the .45. “I’m not going to be here when that helicopter
comes back. And I’m not leaving you here to signal them.”

“How do you know it’ll come back?” Tom said.

“Listen.”

Tom looked back toward the ridge. He could just see
to the first part of the pass through the trees, scraped to the soil in places
by the winds that rushed across the mountain range. Then, listening, he heard
the beat of the helicopter again, down low on the other side of the mountain,
working up through the altitude, the sound intensifying even as he stood there.
“How long?” Tom asked.

“A couple minutes at most,” Ray said, waving the
gun again, gesturing for Tom to keep moving. “I winged them, though not good
enough to take them down.”

“You could have killed them,” Tom said.

“I could have, but I didn’t. Now, let’s keep
moving.”

“You nearly killed Pierce,” Tom said. “You didn’t
need to do that.”

“Who?”

“The young deputy outside the bar.”

“He’ll live,” Ray said. “I did what I had to.” He
turned his head over his shoulder as the sound of the rotor intensified behind.
The helicopter rising on the other side of the ridge, the first glimmer of light
from the spot reaching up into the sky. “I can shoot you in the leg right here
or you can come with me,” Ray said. “I don’t have any better options for you at
the moment.”

Tom watched Ray where he stood. No idea what to do
and any hope he had of bringing Ray in now gone. He didn’t want to go on with
Ray, but he didn’t want to get shot either. Tom was sorry about the whole damn
business and he stood watching Ray, trying to figure if he would have done
anything differently, and knowing without a doubt that he would be right here on
this ridge, all the same.

The sound of the helicopter again and Ray motioning
for Tom to follow.

T
he
pilot thumbed off the warning lights. There was a smell of burned wires and
blown fuses, but they were still in the air. Dropped almost a thousand feet and
working their way back up the mountain, with Tollville urging the pilot on.
Telling him to climb and get them back up there.

Composing herself, Kelly looked behind her to find
Tollville braced in his seat, one hand held out against the wall for support and
the other wrapped into the webbing overhead, the gun he’d been holding loose on
the floor, jittering back and forth across the metal as the cabin of the
helicopter shook.

A slight ticking now heard from the tail rotor, the
pilot pulling at the stick, trying for control. Every tick a new adjustment for
the pilot to make as Kelly felt the helicopter shift ever so slightly to the
left, then back to the right, climbing still but not completely under their
control.

T
he
ravine led north, closing in around them on both sides. Nowhere to go but down,
Tom leading the way with Ray following behind, still holding the .45 on Tom.

“Would you really have shot me?” Tom asked,
walking. “Up there on the ridge?” He paused to look at Ray where his cousin had
stopped, holding his side as he rested against one of the rock walls.

Ray took his hand back from where he’d kept it
against his side, the blood grown in a wet circle against the material. “Who
says I’m not still thinking about it?” he said, pushing himself off the wall and
motioning Tom on with the muzzle of the gun.

Tom kept walking. Overhead, the sun was up in the
sky and the top of the walls showed the orange slant of light. Every echo of
their movements caught between those two walls as they moved down toward the
plain. “Why keep me alive if you think I betrayed you?” Tom said.

“Let’s just say we’re even now.”

“I didn’t tell them anything about you. I wanted to
but I never got to.”

Ray laughed. “I’d have loved to have heard that
conversation.”

They walked on for a while. Behind, Tom heard the
beat of the helicopter as it ran along the ridge, once even skimming across the
narrow opening of the ravine above. There and then gone in less than a
second.

“So you’re just going to run now?” Tom asked. “Just
like you did before. Leave Billy again?”

“You know that’s not how it is,” Ray said. “I
wanted to come back. I’ve always wanted to. But I see it’s just not for me.”

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “I don’t know anything
about you anymore.”

“I’ve tried to be the same as I was ten years ago,
before Marianne died. But it’s never worked,” Ray said. “Every day I try to hold
on to my past it just seems to fall farther away.”

Tom went on, he could see the city before them. A
sliver showed through the ravine opening ahead, the blue-yellow lights of a city
at dawn.

“I’ve been getting played this whole time,” Ray
said. “I’ve been getting played for over ten years and never knew it. After
everything I did back there, it turns out it wasn’t the cartel I needed to be
worried about at all.”

H
ere,” Tollville said. “Put it down here.” His voice heard loud through
Kelly’s helmet. The helicopter wavering over the open, rock-strewn pass and the
pilot fighting to bring the skids even. “You ready?” Tollville asked. His hand
held out on Kelly’s shoulder as he leaned forward, checking the pilot’s
progress.

Kelly felt the skids hit ground. The pilot cut the
engine, going down through the switches, as the blades wound to a stop above.
Tollville opened the side door and got out onto the ground, urging Kelly to
follow.

“Can you get your deputy on that radio?” Tollville
asked once they were away from the rotor wash.

Kelly took the radio from her belt and as soon as
Hastings’s voice came through Tollville was telling her what to say. Relaying
their location and asking Hastings to talk with the state police. “You ready?”
Tollville asked as soon as she’d put the radio back on her hip.

“You making this up as you go along?” she said.

W
hat
will it take?” Tom asked. He was watching Ray where they’d stopped to sit for a
moment. Ray’s breath ragged in his chest, his back to one side of the wall,
while Tom sat opposite. Ray had laid everything out now—getting the job from
Memo, Sanchez, Gil Suarez, Burnham—all of it, going all the way back to the
death of his wife and leaving Billy with Gus.

“To stop all this?” Ray said. “I don’t know, I
thought I’d finished all this years ago, but I can see it was never done.

“You’re going after your boss, then? You think it
was him this whole time, setting you up against the cartel?”

“I don’t know,” Ray said. “I don’t know anything
anymore. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life. Things that I can’t take
back, but at one time thought were for a good reason. I don’t think that
anymore. I don’t know if I ever will again.”

“Whatever you do, Ray, none of it will bring back
Marianne or the life you had.”

“A lot of people have been hurt by me,” Ray said.
“There’s a lot I need to make up for, even if it is in my own way.” Ray coughed
and looked down at his hand, where there was a speckling of blood on his palm.
He coughed again and spit into the dirt at his feet. “Come on,” he said, looking
to Tom and waving him on with the gun. Another thousand feet before they would
come out onto the plain below.

Tom just sat there, unsure now where he was in all
this. Why he’d come. Had he ever really intended to take Ray back with him, give
him over to Kelly like any other criminal on the run?

Deputy Pierce would be okay, Tom had known it all
along. Chasing after Ray had never really been about Pierce, never about anyone
but himself and the person he’d once been. No idea now where he belonged in all
this. He’d wanted back in with the department, meeting Kelly that evening
outside the hospital, he’d wanted a small piece of a life he could no longer
have. Claire calling him every ten minutes because of a past he no longer wanted
any part of. It was his fault and he knew it. There was no avoiding that now,
though he’d tried.

Where had it led him? Just hours before he’d felt
just as sure about wanting Dario dead as Ray was about going through with it.
Now, Tom didn’t know where he stood. Dario lying there on his office floor,
white in the face, with blood leaking from the wound in his neck at an alarming
pace. Tom hadn’t wanted that. Had he?

Shouldn’t Tom want to see Memo get the same
punishment he’d been so certain Dario deserved? Pierce had been shot because of
him, because Tom had looked the other way.

“Ray,” Tom said. “I can’t go any farther with
you.”

The look on Ray’s face washed away slowly, then
solidified. A blank expression Tom didn’t know how to read. Would he be murdered
right there or set free?

“I know I should want to go with you,” Tom said.
“Gus meant a lot to me. I should want what you want on this, but I can’t just
stand by for this one, pretending that other people won’t be hurt in the
process.”

Ray stood five feet away, the gun in his hand
still, offering nothing but a blank, unreadable stare.

“You’re not going to make it,” Tom said.

“I can’t let you go.”

“Shoot me if you have to, but I’m not going any
farther.”

Ray took Tollville’s Baby Eagle from where he’d
stashed it in the waist of his pants. Replacing his own .45 in his waistband, he
slid the magazine into his hand and then put it into his pocket. “You asked me
to do the right thing once,” Ray said.

“I wanted you to turn yourself in.”

“I don’t have much left,” Ray said. “I’m not going
to turn myself in, not anymore. I’m past that now. But I can try for once to do
a good thing.”

“Killing your boss?”

“No,” Ray said. “It doesn’t matter much now, but
maybe it will mean something down the road. If you go back to the Sullivan
house, you’ll find what this has all been about, buried twenty paces straight
out from the back stairs.”

“You’re talking about the drugs?”

“It’s not much,” Ray said. “But maybe it will help
you get clear of all this.” From where they stood, five feet apart, Ray
underhanded the Baby Eagle to Tom. “I hope it works out for you,” Ray said. “In
everything.”

“Don’t do this, Ray. You need medical attention.
You need to come back with me at least.”

“I’ve already come this far.”

“You’re not going to make it.”

Ray grinned. “Tell Billy I’m sorry and say hi to
Luis for me.”

“You tell Gus the same,” Tom said.

The flash of a smile from Ray. “This it, then?”

“I think so.”

“Good-bye, Ray.”

“Good-bye, Tom.”

Tom watched Ray turn and leave, heading down the
ravine, the rock tight around him on both sides, and the city lights from Deming
shining below across the desert.

Tom turned and walked up the ravine, feeling every
step now and questioning whether he’d made the right decision leaving Ray like
that. Perhaps he could have talked him out of it. Perhaps he could have helped
Ray in some small way, trying to get him to let this go. There was no way now of
knowing something like that.

Pausing to catch his breath, he sat on a rock, the
ravine walls not as tall as they’d been below. Those walls now seeming more like
a canyon than any kind of ravine, and he imagined Ray now, heading down, taking
his steps with care as he went on between the two sharp-faced walls.

He waited, sweat cooling on his skin, until Kelly
and Tollville showed a few hundred feet above him, working their way down.

“Are you okay?” Kelly asked when she’d drawn even
with Tom. A crescent of sweat under each of her arms, just like he remembered
from their meeting on the road four days before.

“Tired, but fine,” Tom said.

Tollville stood behind Kelly, checking his watch
and looking down the ravine. “Where’s Ray, Tom?”

“How’s Pierce?” Tom asked. “Is he stable?”

“He lost a lot of blood,” Tollville said, his gray
hair matted with sweat at the sides of his temples. “I’ve seen people live
through worse.”

Tom nodded. He wanted to ask about Dario, but he
didn’t want to hear the answer. Nothing mattered anymore and Tom knew now he
would never wear the star again. His own hopes already given up and a certainty
he would do time for what he’d done already to help out his cousin.

“This has gone too far, Tom,” Kelly said. “We
already talked to Luis. We know about Gus and everything else. You need to help
us here.”

“I know that, now,” Tom said. “He’s headed down
this ravine, working his way toward the valley.”

“I’m going on,” Tollville said. “Call us in to
Hastings and tell them I’m going to drive him out onto the plain below.”

Kelly turned to look at him, but he was already
moving. When she turned back, Tom didn’t have anything to say. “You trusted him,
didn’t you?” Kelly said.

“Yes,” Tom said. “I always have.”

Kelly watched him for a moment longer, then raised
the radio to her lips and told Hastings their location, then where to set up the
patrolmen below.

R
ay
broke out onto the plain. He was limping badly now, still holding his side where
the bullet had gone in. But he felt strong, stronger than he’d felt in a long
time, and he knew all his training had been for this. There was a surety there,
a certainty he couldn’t just give up on. He needed to believe all that had come
before counted toward where he was now, crossing the plain in the early-morning
light, with the low-lying shape of the city before him.