No One Else to Kill (Jim West Series) (34 page)

Vic didn’t answer.
 
He didn’t look up.

“It’s still attached,” I said.

The other patrolman returned, took the cutlass, and then
retrieved the revolver.
 
I heard more
voices outside and my house soon became the center of a lot of attention.
 
I finally had to put Chubbs back into my
bedroom.

They had a real dilemma to solve before they could
transport Vic to the hospital. Protocol required some form of wrist restraints,
but handcuffs seemed out of the question.
 
They took me to another room to get my statement, so I never did see how
they restrained him before moving him.
 
I
don’t think he had any fight left in him anyway. He had lost a lot of blood,
but no one seemed to care.

The police chief eventually showed up at my house.
 
I had met him a few times and we got along.

“I knew that sooner or later you’d bring one of your
messes back here to Clovis,” he said. I knew he wasn’t kidding and I couldn’t blame
him.

“I didn’t bring anything here.
 
It came after me and it makes no sense to
me.”

“I’ve been in touch with the state police and the
sheriff’s office that issued the lookout for this guy.
 
Needless to say, they’re all extremely happy
that this guy is off the streets.”

“Me, too.”

“Why do you think he came after you?”

“I don’t know.
 
A rather stupid thing for him to do.”

“To me, murder is always stupid,” the chief said.

“Can’t argue that.”

He looked around my house without explaining why.
 
I followed him in silence.
 
After he satisfied whatever it was that drove
him to want to inspect my house, he walked out front and talked to a couple of
his men.

“Jim, have a good one,” he said and walked off to his car.

I waved.

he next day, I hired a crew to
come out and clean my entire house, with particular attention paid to the
utility room.
 
Getting blood off the
walls and floors has never been my cup of tea.

I refused to talk to the local press, referring them to
the police for any information about the break in at my house or its
relationship with the two murders.
 
The
editor of the local paper personally called me, but I declined comment which
understandably irritated him.
 
I knew he
was simply doing his job and I didn’t get angry with him. I also realized that
my refusal might come back and bite me some day.
 
It never did anyone any good to get on the
bad side of the press.

A strange request came to me on the second day after Vic’s
attempt to kill me which I did accept.
 
About three in the afternoon, I had a call from the local police asking
me to come
down to their offices.
 
They had made no progress in getting
any comment from Vic.
 
Later that evening
he would be shipped up
to Santa Fe.
 
The local authorities had made a consensus
decision to have me talk to Vic before he left town.
 
I would be alone with him in the interview
room, but a number of witnesses would be monitoring any conversation we might
have.

“Has he asked for an attorney?” I asked when I arrived at
the police department.

“He hasn’t said anything to us about anything,” the chief
said.

“Not a single word,” echoed another man in civilian
clothes who I thought was with the District Attorney’s office.

“What do you want me to get him to say?”

“Anything.
 
We’d like for him to open up and say
something.”

“I’ll give it a shot, but I doubt if he’ll say anything to
me either.
 
We weren’t exactly best
friends.”

“Hey, we’ve got nothing to lose.
 
At some point he’ll lawyer up, and then we’ll
lose any chance we have at all.”

They walked me to an interview room, and I went in. Vic
sat there alone, his right forearm and hand in a cast.
 
He stared down at the table in front of him.
I wondered if the effects of any medication he might be on were bothering him.

“At least you’re not going to lose the hand,” I said as I
sat down across from him.

He looked up, and I got the sense that my presence had
surprised him.

His lips curled.
 
“So you are a cop after all.”

“No, I’m not.
 
Why
did you break into my house the other night, Vic?”

He looked at me with suspicion for a few seconds before he
spoke.
 
“I just wanted to talk to you.”

Might not have been the biggest lie I’d ever heard, but it
was definitely in the competition.

“About what?”

“I didn’t kill anyone up there at the lodge.
 
I just wanted to talk some sense into
you.
 
I figured if I could convince you
to get off my back, then Geri probably wouldn’t testify.”

His remarks surprised me, but maybe they shouldn’t
have.
 
I had no doubt he murdered Cross
and Randi. He had already confessed it to both Geri and me, but this approach
was for the police who he knew had to be listening in. If you simply changed
the word convince to kill, what he said made sense.
 
With me murdered, he might have been able to
intimidate Geri into staying silent.

“The police will never find the evidence needed to convict
me, but with you and Geri lying about me who knows what a jury might believe.”

“Why would we want to lie about you?”

“So you two can have all the money and each other,” he
said.

“She never wanted me, and you know she doesn’t want the
money.
 
Besides, I think she has her eyes
on someone else already.”

His eyes focused sharply on me again.
 
I knew he wanted to ask me who, but he
didn’t.

“You know you left a trail a mile wide for the police to
follow.
 
Now that they have you to focus
on, everything you’ve done in the last year will paint
all
the
picture they need to convict you.”

He didn’t say anything, and I thought he had retreated
back into his shell of silence.

“Do you want to know where you went wrong, Vic?”

“I know where I went wrong, asshole.”
 
He leaned close to me and lowered his voice
to a whisper. “Next time you’ll never see me coming.
 
You’re a dead man.
 
You just don’t know it yet.”

“Sorry, man, but I don’t think you get a next time.”

He sat back, clamped his jaw shut, and closed his eyes.

I stared at him for a full minute.
 
I knew he wouldn’t have anything else to
say.
 
I stood up, and the door behind me
opened.

“Not sure if I got anything worthwhile,” I said to the
chief.

“You got more than we did.”

“Did you hear the threat there at the end when he was
whispering?”

“Sure. The mikes we have these days are quite good.”

“Chief, you’ve got a call you might want to take,” a
uniformed police sergeant said from the doorway to the hall.

“Can you stick around until after this call?” he asked
me.
 
Before I could answer, he had turned
back to the sergeant, “Skip, get Jim a cup of coffee.”

I didn’t have anything better to do anyway.
 
The coffee tasted like the coffee I had spent
years drinking in the military: strong, stale and with just the right amount of
grounds floating around in it.
 
I
wondered if the guest mugs were cleaned just as inefficiently.

I began to think that the chief may have forgotten
me.
 
When he finally appeared, his grin
indicated something big had happened.

“They found the .22 rifle they think he used to kill one
of the victims up there,” he said.

“They did?
 
Where
was it?”

“In the rifle case.”

“What?
 
I don’t
follow you? Whose rifle case are we talking about?”

It was his turn to look a little confused.
 
“How many rifle cases were there?”

Not being there, he hadn’t seen the eight, maybe more,
rifle cases that Cross’ hunting group had brought with them to the lodge.

“A whole bunch, but I guess you mean it was found in one
of Vic’s.”

“Yes.
 
The case was
a fancy one. It was large enough for a high caliber hunting rifle, but
apparently it also had a false bottom to it.
 
The .22 rifle had been tightly secured in a small second
compartment.
 
When they searched the
rifle cases originally, I guess when they seized all the hunting rifles as you
say, they never suspected that there might have been a hidden compartment in
any of the cases.”

“That makes sense and clears up one of the little
mysteries surrounding this whole mess,” I said.

hen I arrived back home, I had a
message on my machine from Detective Bruno.
 
In the message, Bruno said that my cell phone had been mailed to me and
that they had discovered the murder weapon.
 
He also said to call if I wanted to chat.

I thought about it for a while but decided against calling
him.
 
I wanted to put some distance
between me and the entire investigation.
 
I didn’t think I’d be allowed to stay away from it for very long, so it
therefore surprised me about a month later when I heard Vic and his lawyer were
working to cut a deal with the prosecution. It was early in the process, but
the prosecutor wanted a minimum of twenty years without a chance for parole,
and it sounded like Vic was willing to accept that. The discovery of the weapon
used to kill Cross had dampened Vic’s confidence that he could beat the rap.

I also heard later from Sean that Geri and he had a nice
holiday in New York.
 
For some reason, I
felt they would make a good match for each other.

I never heard from Bev, but I considered that to be a good
thing. I feared any note that I received from Bev would be to tell me it hadn’t
worked out.
 
Bev needed to settle down
with someone who was right for her and to be happy.
 
Her rancher friend had sounded like a good
choice.
 
And, while it was nice to hear
that Sean and Geri were doing well, no news from Bev was just fine.
 
Like the old saying goes, no news is good
news.

Chubbs dropped the ball he had retrieved after I had
thrown it in our backyard and ran to the gate of the fence.
 
He watched in interest as a small white
poodle and its master walked down the sidewalk.

“What do you think, buddy? Is she the one for you?” I
asked.

He barked once but came back to me and our game of fetch.
I took the ball and scratched him behind his ears.

“That’s alright.
 
There’s always you and me, buddy, always you
and me.”