Authors: Andrew Gross
“Part of what we signed up for, Mr. McKay. Just like back in the service. Only the pay is a whole lot better.”
“And earned.” McKay nodded. “So that only leaves one thing unattended to, in my view, and we’ll see where the chips end up falling …”
Robertson turned off the engine in front of the giant, hissing pump head.
McKay jumped out from the back and opened Hauck’s door. “You, Mr. Hauck. And where there’s no body, there’s often no proof of a crime, isn’t that right? You’re an old detective, I’m told. And I promise, where you’re going, a hundred years from now there still won’t be a trace of any part of you. Even an earthquake won’t be able to alter that. Get him out there,” McKay said to Robertson, opening his door. “I’ll be inside.”
A bright, intense light came up the road from behind them, momentarily blinding Hauck. Robertson shielded his eyes. Another vehicle, a black Jeep this time. One of the vehicles that was at the farm. The guy behind the wheel was the one who had circled behind Hauck there.
“Take the car and wait down by the road,” McKay instructed him. “No one comes up. And I mean no one.”
“Yes, Mr. McKay,” the operative said. He executed a three-point turn and headed back down the hill.
“So, c’mon now, Mr. Hauck.” Robertson swung around and took out a Colt 9 mm army issue. “Out of the car. I don’t have to explain how this all works all over again, do I? I’ve heard you already had the tour.”
Hauck didn’t move, ratcheting through the possibilities of how he could remove the gun from this former Special Forces guy with his own hands bound and his right shoulder limp and aching. They weren’t promising.
“I said, get out!” Robertson said again, digging the gun into Hauck’s shoulder like a cattle prod.
Pain shot through him. He bent over. Robertson reached for the binds and dragged Hauck out of the car seat onto the ground.
“C’mon, get up now,” Robertson said. “Quit being such an old hen. Everyone told me you were tough.”
“Tough enough to have gotten that gun from you back at the barn.” Hauck pushed up to a knee. “With only one arm.”
“Yeah, well even my eighty-year-old grandfather gets a boner every once in a while. Don’t dream on it. Won’t be happening again.”
He kicked Hauck forward, in the direction of the well, its large horse head pump bobbing up and down in a steady, hissing rhythm—
ka-chung, ka-chung, ka-chung
.
“Three hundred and fifty barrels a day,” Robertson said. He pushed Hauck toward it with his boot. “Seven days a week. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year. For almost two years …”
Hauck got to a knee and forced himself up to his feet. Every time he put pressure on his arm to balance, he winced, pain shooting through him.
“But that’s all she had. Sad, huh? We’re closing her up. You see those trucks?” He motioned to two large round-bellied trucks. “Filled with cement. Enough to go down about a thousand feet below the water table and plug this mother up so that even a worm wouldn’t have enough to breathe. Starting to get the picture now …? That’s what Mr. McKay meant by no one will find you for a hundred years. Maybe a thousand. Tomorrow, you’ll be like a fossil. What do you think of that, Mr. Hauck?” He pushed Hauck over to the wellhead, its pump sucking up the last barrels of whatever the old well had to give, its hydraulic coils dropping loosely below the bobbing horse head, up and down.
Ka-chung. Ka-chung.
“A hundred years from now there’ll be some earthquake, or some reason to go down into this old chute, and it’ll be like, who the fuck is this? You might even be famous. Kinda gets you thinking, right …?”
Hauck stood there, covered in blood and dirt, his right arm slumped. The opening in the wellhead was about three feet in diameter. Just enough for a body if the pumping tubes were removed. The area was protected by a circular railing. A beeper began to sound and suddenly the cap began to widen—McKay clearly at the controls—until it grew to around four feet wide, enough for a body to be stuffed down.
The signal stopped.
“Well, I’d like to say it all just ends here with you and we could all just go home and be done with it …” Robertson knelt and opened the well cap. “But, of course, that’s not the way it goes.”
Hauck said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean the girl, of course. Your niece. Or whatever she is. Cute one, though.”
“Just let her alone,” Hauck said. “Let it end with me.”
“Well, wish I could. But it’s all gone on a bit far for that now. Anyway, already in the works, I’m afraid, bro.” He kind of winked, clearly enjoying the moment. “I thought that might be a thought you wanted to carry with you to where you’re heading next.” Robertson grinned, pushing up the brim of his army cap with the tip of his gun. “You didn’t think we could just let her go now, after what happened, did you, ol’ buddy?”
A well of anger and futility rose up deep inside Hauck. He balled his fists and dug his wrists against the binds, helpless. “Sonovabitch. Don’t.”
“Too late now. That man’s in a real tight squeeze, I would say. That ol’ sheriff there. Seems like what I told him applies to you as well. You all should’ve thought about all this a bit more carefully before you jumped in headfirst. Know what I mean …”
The horse head pump went down, belching steam. The hydraulic cables drooped as well, hanging loosely. Watching it, Hauck made the mental count to three before the pump went up again. One of the floodlights attached to the trestle canted over Hauck’s shoulder, making a bright white cone on the ground.
“Anyway, I’ve run out of things to say, bro. You got anything …?”
Hauck had been to the edge several times, but had always managed to find a way. He looked back at Robertson.
“I didn’t think so,
bro.
”
“One thing …”
“What’s that?”
The horse head bobbed up and down.
Ka-chung. Ka-chung.
One, two, three seconds …
Hauck took a step sideways in front of the light.
Chief Riddick sat in his office at well past nine that night. He waited glumly for the call. He hadn’t spent the full evening here in years, but this wasn’t like other times. Other times, they’d deal with fires, floods, twisters. Even the time Tom Early’s son went off the handle and killed four people, making the national news.
This time was different, though.
Before, they all banded together against what was happening and everyone knew what to do. Those days everyone here seemed to share the same principles. This time it was like the slow creep of water over an alluvial plain. The bitter taste in your gut of being bought off. The slow erosion of your principles.
Like the river’s bed: One day there’s water there; the next there’s not.
He couldn’t remember when it first began. Maybe when that fancy new town hall was built. Or when the squadron of shiny new Broncos his men we’re riding around in was first proposed, financed fully by RMM.
Maybe it was the day they all realized that due to the drought and the land, their town was drying up.
He’d known Chuck Watkins thirty years. Shit, he’d once dated his sister back in the day. He was a good man. But good men couldn’t make it rain in July. Good men couldn’t turn a parched patch of brush and dirt into millions.
Riddick knew there was bloodshed out there tonight. He knew bad things had likely happened. He knew that the minute Watkins called. It made his stomach feel as empty as if he hadn’t eaten for days, to hang up on him.
No cars to spare right now. We’ll get out to you as soon as we can.
“
Jesus, Joe, do you know what’s happening out here …?
”
Riddick knew he was leaving him out there to die. Twenty of ten; he looked at his watch. It’d been dark for forty minutes now.
Probably all happened by now.
Any minute he ought to get the call. Then he’d drive out to the ranch. Then he’d go out and bury it all.
His wife, Ann, would be ashamed of him.
There was nothing more he could do.
Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by a commotion coming from out in the station. One of his young officers burst in, trying to restrain a group of people behind him that had the feel of a mob. Milt Yarrow was there. And Don Ellis.
And to his total consternation, Chuck Watkins came in.
“What the hell’s going on …?” Riddick barely had time to stand.
“Where is he?” Watkins said.
“Where’s who, Chuck?” Part of Riddick had to admit he was actually glad to see the old farmer still standing. Another part felt like this was the posse that might well take him outside to be lynched. “You can’t just come in here and—”
“Where’d they take him, Joe? I know you know exactly who I’m talking about. McKay and that other guy from Alpha. They took him. They’re going to kill him, Joe. We both know that. And I know you know exactly where they are. Now you may have sat on your hands in here tonight, when the rest of us have been shot at and almost killed. Like you’ve sat on your hands for the past three years. But he’s the one damn person who didn’t. Who stood up for us. And I don’t intend to wait around here one more second trying to explain things to you because that second may well be his last. I know that there was once a decent person inside of you, if you can dig deep down and find him again. So where the hell are they, Joe? Tell me now.”
Riddick had known Watkins a long time but had never seen so much fire in him. In all of them. He’d always found ways to keep things together, even when that ugly lawsuit reared up and damn near tore the town in two. He’d hadn’t had a damn thing to do with Watkins’s son being killed, if that’s what happened. Though inwardly, when he heard the news, he guessed he knew it was true. He knew it had all gone too far. He just didn’t know how to stop it now. That slow creep of your principles washed away in the soil was now like a mudslide dragging everything down with it, and he knew, once he stood up and tried to turn it all back, everything would come crashing down and swallow him as well.
“Chuck, Milt, look, I—”
“
You what, Joe?
You don’t have enough guts to do what’s right? I’m not waiting one more second. Or for God’s sake, maybe you intend to do what here, arrest us all? Taking their money was one thing. But I lost a son, Joe. And we almost lost a whole lot more tonight. What kind of town do we live in anymore? What do we stand for now?”
Watkins looked at him and Riddick as the last of that slide went over the edge. “
Where’d they take him, Joe?
”
Hauck stepped to the right, the bright floodlights on the trestle beaming over his shoulder. He knew he had only seconds.
Instinctively, Robertson took a step along with him to give him a target dead-on. The cone of targeted light fell on him, blinding him momentarily.
He put a hand up toward his eyes.
Hauck shot his leg up, driving his foot into Robertson’s extended arm, forcing his gun hand skyward. In almost the same instant Hauck bull-rushed him, lowering his shoulder and driving the Alpha man back against the iron well cap railing. Robertson emitted a grunt, his back bent over the bar. Hauck swung his elbows and struck him in his jaw, keeping his arm pinned, and pounded the Alpha man’s gun hand against the railing—two, three, four times, fighting back the searing pain that tore through his shoulder. Hauck knew that if the man’s gun hand was freed, he could groan about his shoulder for the rest of time, a thousand feet down in that well.
Robertson reached around and peeled Hauck’s face back with his free hand, digging into his eyes and nose, as if trying to tear them off. Hauck continued to ram the Alpha man’s gun hand against the railing, twisting his wrist back at a severe angle until it was about to crack, summoning every sinew of his strength to try to break it, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and face.
The gun finally fell free.
Hauck’s only hope was to get to it first. In his weakened state, with his hands bound and ribs aching, there was no way he could hold off the younger, more agile ex-Special Forces man for long. Robertson kneed him and swung around and came at Hauck from behind, wrapping Hauck’s head in a viselike hold and trying to jerk it sideways, to snap his neck. Hauck tumbled over the railing, attempting to roll Robertson over with him.
If he gave Robertson leverage even for a moment his neck would break.
It worked. Hauck dove over the railing and Robertson fell over with him onto his back. Hauck reached for the gun; as he extended his arm his shoulder screaming with pain. He got his bound hands on the handle and spun but Robertson scrambled over and kicked it out of Hauck’s hands. Grunting, they both lunged for it, and suddenly they were grappling. Robertson on Hauck’s shoulders, Hauck’s head hitting against the steel cap of the open well about a foot from the tubing pump that was churning up and down, the large horse head looming above them. The hydraulic belching in Hauck’s ears roared like a train going through a tunnel:
Ka-chung. Ka-chun
g.
Ka-chung
.
“You’re fucking done now,” Robertson grunted only inches away, his eyes ablaze. He dug his elbow into Hauck’s wound until Hauck screamed, almost passing out, and then he rammed the back of Hauck’s head against the metal well cap rim. He did it again, Hauck trying with whatever he had left to fight him off, but his strength was evaporating with every second, and the impact against his head was like being checked into the boards of a hockey rink over and over without a helmet. At some point he knew he’d black out.
Seething, Robertson kept ramming him.
The Alpha man was younger and stronger. He lifted Hauck up and drove him onto the well pad closer to the pump shaft, the heated tubing hanging loosely, bobbing up and down. As he got closer to it, Hauck realized that if he came in contact with it, besides the scorching heat, the force of the bolts and seals would surely rip his skull open.
The pain in his shoulder was almost unbearable now. The Alpha man kept inching him closer to the rising and falling horse head. He was now no more than a foot away and he could feel the heat against him. He couldn’t keep Robertson from forcing him closer. Above him, the giant horse head bore down on them and then back up, the hydraulic cables looping lower, almost within his grasp. The churning, hissing noise sounded in his ears, the belching of the well pump almost reverberating through him.