Avenging Angel (18 page)

“You’re a good hunter.” But he still wasn’t willing to answer directly. “What makes you think my family’s nearby?”

“The farm’s kept up. Do you and your boys come in and work it nights?”

Zenas sighed. If a stranger and Gentile could figure it out, then so could the destroying angels. “I hoped we wouldn’t have to flee our homestead. My family, my children, they haven’t seen the ways of … of strangers, and I don’t wish to lead them into that corruption. But God’s will be done; we are his servants.”

If everything that happened was God’s will, then there was no need for policemen like Wager. But his feeling was that any God there might be didn’t care very much anymore what humans did to each other. That left the responsibility with people. “Maybe we ought to help God out a little bit, Mr. Winston. What did you tell Orrin before he started home?”

The word “God” in the mouth of a Gentile was blasphemy. But it was true that he often moved in dark and mysterious ways, and that he helped those who, with a pure heart, helped themselves. “I told him that I knew where the Kruse family lay hidden from the Antichrist, and that they were safe, God willing.”

“But you didn’t tell him where?”

“He knew better than to ask.”

“Well, I’ve only got the manners of a Gentile—”

“Yea, verily.”

“—and of a cop. We are willing to offer protection to the Kruses until this avenging-angel thing is cleared up.”

“The protection of Gentiles? To our people?”

“Yes.”

Zenas’s narrow lips stretched in a bitter smile. “That would be new under the sun. But this ‘thing’ will live as long as Willis and his followers do. It’s part of the eternal war between the Antichrist and the Chosen.” He gave his head a firm shake. “Against that, your shield is as clay, your sword as wood.”

Despite the thick and close shade they stood in, Wager was hot; he was thirsty from the dry air, which sucked up any sweat as soon as it showed, and his restless sleep at the motel had left him dull and weary when he woke up this morning. Moreover, he was quickly growing tired of biblical phrases which, despite the fixed and glittering eye of a true believer, rang more than once with a note of pretension. “Mr. Winston, we are going to catch the avenging angels. No question about that. But how much more damage they’ll do before we catch them, I don’t know—and neither do you. The Kruses will be safer with police protection, and if you’ve been threatened you’ll need it, too. If you know where they are, tell me so I can arrange that protection. Otherwise, if anything happens to them it’s on your head.”

“My responsibility to my people is glory unto God.” He shook his head once more. “Good-bye.”

“Yeah,” said Wager.

For the long ride back, Wager snapped the canvas top into place across the Jeep’s metal struts. Already he could feel that crinkly dryness of sunburn on his forehead and cheeks, and the heat gathered from the morning’s glare now radiated back from the hot sand and stone to add itself to the burden of the afternoon sun. As he squinted against the desert brightness and half consciously aimed his wheels along the ruts climbing the escarpments, he let his thoughts flow around Orrin’s death. He was certain that the Kruses were hiding with Zenas. Orrin had probably been just as sure, but he wrote nothing about it in his notebook. That was something you whispered into one ear only, not something you told the world in writing that might be seen by any pair of eyes. “Wager.” Call Wager—Orrin wanted whoever found him to call Denver because Wager was supposed to know something or learn something. Well, Wager knew why he sent Orrin out to see Zenas. And now he knew as much as Orrin about the Kruses. What else? Anything else? What did not fit was why Orrin would be killed. Why would the avenging angels shoot someone like Orrin? A message? A warning to Zenas? Why bother? Zenas knew they were after him, and he was already worried enough to hide his family. Was Orrin killed to keep him from getting to Wager? … But Wager could go to the source, too—had gone, for all the good it did. …

Eyes heavy from the heat and wind and glare, Wager nudged the hard tires hissing through the deep sand that kicked against the steering wheel. The sniper had fired from concealment. He had hidden his car behind a ridge of earth like any of a dozen Wager could see right now. But suppose he had left it in the open? Why wouldn’t Orrin, like anybody else, drive unsuspectingly toward it? Curious, maybe; certainly alert. But there was as yet no sign that the avenging angels were out here on the benchland; Mueller’s death had been in those far mountains hidden by distant rimrock. And who would know Orrin had driven out to talk to Zenas? Someone knew, feared, and waited—out of sight of the victim. A hundred yards away from a moving target … How much easier it would have been to drive slowly toward Orrin’s truck down this rough, one-lane road. Just pull over to let Orrin’s laboring vehicle jounce slowly past; wave and smile, and then, with the victim three or four feet away, shoot him with a pistol. Why risk a hundred-yard shot at a moving target? Unless the killer thought Orrin had reason to be afraid and on guard. Maybe in those notebooks … Maybe Mrs. Winston would know if Orrin was afraid of someone. A message? Was Orrin’s death simply a message like the bloody angel scrawled in Beauchamp’s house?

Wager tried to focus his mind on the questions, but no answers came. Just more possibilities that blurred any clear line of cause and effect that he could work back from the fact of Orrin’s death. A lurching thump sent the Jeep leaning heavily sideways and tossed the sheriff’s logbook from the cowl onto the floor. Wager pulled the wheels back into the ruts and bent to pick up the small book.

With a hollow pop, sharp jets of glass stung into his neck and cheek and left eye. The windshield splattered over his lap in a crumbling blanket of safety glass and Wager swerved sharply off the road to tilt the car high. Flipping off the ignition as he dived from the low side, he already had his pistol in his fist when he hit the ground flat, eye burning and watering with each blink of the stinging lid.

A second shot hit somewhere on the vehicle and this time Wager heard the weapon, the high-velocity crack of a rifle aimed at him from not too far away. Blinking painfully to see, he crawled behind the ridge at the side of the wheel tracks and cautiously peeked toward the sound of the weapon. A blue puff of smoke thinned rapidly in the strong wind and then he heard the crank of a starter, saw the black line of a whip antenna glide and snap just beyond a rise of land. A moment later, a haze of dust caught in the wind and Wager, standing, trying to glimpse the fleeing car, heard the heavy engine strain away.

His eye. The pain had been there all along, but now, with the sniper gone, it suddenly throbbed and burned as though acid had been spilled across it. He fumbled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and blotted at the hot and seeping flesh, trying to keep his twitching lid from burying any glass deeper in the eye. Sniper. Just like Orrin. Wager groped for the radio, pressing the Transmit button despite the silence of his speaker. It might work—sometimes you could transmit when you couldn’t receive. Orrin had had a CB in his truck. He hadn’t had a chance to use it. If Wager hadn’t bent down at that moment—he pressed again, calling for Tice, calling for an intercept at the edge of the benchland. Now he could see the plume of dust from the fleeing car glide above a ridge of brush, and he followed the rising cloud of yellow haze as the sniper fled.

Cranking the engine and cursing as it hung fire, he finally coughed it into life and started after the dust cloud, now rising with increasing speed above the rolling earth. But his steering wheel pulled hard left through the sand, and, holding the handkerchief over his burning eye to try to still the pain, he saw that the second shot had torn a large hole in the knobbed tire. Ahead, the dust plume sped away from the crippled Jeep.

Wager again tried the silent radio. No answer, not even a querying crackle of static. He turned off the engine and groped for the water can strapped to the Jeep’s side. It was sun-warmed and smelled of metal, but the wet handkerchief cooled his burning eye, and he washed the eye gently with water cupped in his hands to dislodge the chips of glass that clung to his eyeball. Safety glass. But when it shattered under a bullet’s impact … And if he had not reached for that fallen book …

There was still glass in his eye and it felt like scorching lumps of gravel, but there was nothing else he could do.

Soaking his handkerchief again, he tied it gently over the hot lid to try to keep from blinking. Gritting his teeth against the burning sting, Wager began to change the tire. Far ahead, the sniper’s car was a dark spot followed by a high yellow tail like a speeding dust devil.

“H
OLD STILL.”

“I’m trying.”

He felt the heat of the lamp against his cheek, and across his clamped-open, drying eye saw the blinding whiteness of the circular mirror. “I thought doctors had stopped wearing those things.”

“Not if they need to use both hands. Hold still now.”

Wager heard Sheriff Tice come back into the clinic’s small examining room behind him, the creak of his pistol belt and his heavy breath loud in the quiet room.

“Did you get her?” Wager asked.

“Please don’t talk.”

“Yep. She’s a lot calmer now. Says we can come over any time and look through whatever we want to.” He heard Tice settle into a chair. “I called your man Doyle, too. He wants you to call him as soon’s you can. He wants to know if you need medical leave or a replacement.”

“No,” said Wager.

The doctor breathed “Damnit” and leaned forward again, steel instrument glittering in the white light. “Both you people shut your damn mouths.”

They did, the doctor finally squirting a cooling jelly into the corner of Wager’s eye and taping a gauze pad lightly over it. “I think I got all the glass, but it’ll feel pretty rough for a while. And look a lot rougher when the bandage comes off. Which,” he added, washing his hands in the corner sink, “shouldn’t happen for twenty-four hours. You should visit an ophthalmologist when you’re back in Denver, Detective Wager, just to be sure.”

“No permanent damage, is there, Doc?” asked Tice.

“I don’t think so—most of it was at the side of the eyeball. Discoloration and a lot of discomfort. But if it keeps bothering you, or if your vision doesn’t clear up a few hours after you take the bandage off, be certain to go to an ophthalmologist.”

“Okay.”

Tice grunted himself to his feet. “Well, that’s good. Doyle seemed to want to blame me for you getting cut up.” He led Wager out of the clinic toward the parking lot. “Hell, I told him he wouldn’t have to pay for the windshield. We got comprehensive insurance for things like that.”

“Doyle always sounds like he’s chewing somebody out for something,” said Wager. “That’s just his way.”

“Well, I wondered at the time about sending you out there alone. But with only two deputies for the whole damn county. …” He added, just loudly enough for Wager to hear, “And anyway, if a man wears a badge he should be able to take care of himself.”

“I can,” said Wager. “And I did. It wasn’t your fault—it’s whoever took a shot at me.” It was the fault of whoever saw Wager go out there as Orrin had; whoever knew what kind of vehicle he would be driving and about what time he would be coming back. “But, Sheriff, I do think the case security might be tighter.”

“Security?” He turned over Wager’s meaning as he keyed the ignition. “Oh—I see. By damn, that’s something I hadn’t even got to thinking about yet. But you’re right. Absolutely. Somebody had to know when and where you were going.” The Bronco pulled onto the highway. “Trouble is, that could be half the county. I radioed in the request for a vehicle for you last night; told them you’d be in to pick it up this morning. Every son of a gun with a police scanner—and that’s almost everybody—heard the request.”

“Why so many scanners?”

“Nosiness, I guess. People leave them on all day and night. Like listening in on a party line. Hell,” he said, “half the county knew why you were coming before you got here. The other half knows now.”

He handed Wager a thin newspaper whose ink tended to smear. In some kind of ornate gothic script, the banner read
LOMA VISTA MORNING STAR
, and beneath it in square, solid black print was
LOCAL EDITOR SLAIN
. The story was a long one, covering most of the front page and complete with photographs of Orrin as a smiling young man, an older Orrin with his bolo tie, shaking hands with somebody wearing a dignified suit, and finally Orrin being carried in under a sheet. The reporter had envisioned his story being picked up by the news wires and had given it every angle of coverage he could think of.

“You’re mentioned down there.”

A short paragraph called Wager a homicide specialist from Denver and said he was part of a statewide team investigating an outbreak of killer-angel murders such as the still-unsolved shooting of Frederick Mueller of Rio Piedra and the slaughter of a family in Denver. It could have been worse; the story could have had his photograph and itinerary—except that whoever shot at him already knew that.

“I reckon it was the same one who shot Orrin,” said Tice.

“Same m.o., anyway. Where did Orrin file those notebooks?”

“I didn’t ask. Nelly’ll tell us.”

“When you talked to her,” Wager asked quietly, “was she home alone?”

It took a couple of seconds, but without another word Sheriff Tice flipped on his lights and siren and the Bronco surged forward with a heavy whine as he floored the gas pedal.

Because he, like Wager, figured that someone had shot Orrin because the editor knew something incriminating; he shot at Wager because he was afraid he might have learned it. Now he might believe that Orrin had told his wife.

In a swirl of dust and barking dogs, Tice braked the vehicle in front of a frame house in the middle of a large lot beyond the edge of town. Through the fading light, Wager could see a small orchard of whitewashed fruit trees, a grape arbor near the house’s porte cochere, the peak of a small barn over the roof line, where a mercury vapor light was just beginning to glow a weak purple. The silhouette of a woman stood against the lighted doorway and peered out at the commotion. Tice reached the porch even before Wager. “Hello, Ruth—I’m glad you’re here. How’s Nelly?”