Chapter Sixteen
Later that night, after being humiliated by the Pickett girls on the road to the game warden station, Dorn Peddy and Hillbilly Jimmy D.
O’Bryan sat in their borrowed pickup on a remote county road fifteen miles outside of Saddlestring.
Peddy ran the heater inside the cab and O’Bryan silently fumed in the passenger seat.
When O’Bryan didn’t respond, Peddy said, “Look on your phone and make sure we’re on Skull Ridge Road.”
“Look on your own damned phone,” O’Bryan said finally. Then: “Marion Barber and Jason Witten? What in the hell were you thinking?”
“They were the first two names that came to mind,” Peddy said.
“I used to be a huge Cowboys fan when I was growing up in New Mexico. Since we don’t have a team of our own and the Lobos are lame, the state is divided up kind of weird.
There are a few Arizona Cardinals fans in the western part of the state, and there are Bronco fans in the north.
The eastern part that’s closest to Texas is all Cowboys fans.
Where I grew up in Albuquerque, we were all Cowboys fans. Santa Fe, Roswell, Clovis—all Cowboys.”
“That’s a lot of information I don’t need,” O’Bryan said.
“Those girls didn’t know,” Peddy said. “They didn’t have a clue I was bluffing them.”
O’Bryan looked out the passenger window and sighed. He couldn’t make himself look at Peddy behind the wheel.
What he could see, far below the mountain where Skull Ridge Road was located, were the few city lights of Winchester.
Beyond that smattering of streetlights laid out in a pattern that best resembled a tic-tac-toe blank, there was total darkness in every direction.
Most of the stars were obscured by a horizontal blanket of clouds that had moved across the sky in the last half hour.
O’Bryan stared into the mirror on his side of the truck.
The ground was covered by pine needles tinged pink by the single taillight that remained functional on the pickup.
The other light had been smashed when they backed up too fast and hit the moose.
So was the tailgate, which was buckled in the middle by the force of the impact.
The rear bumper was holding on by a single bracket, and the tailpipe was collapsed like an exhausted accordion.
The journey from the valley floor to Skull Ridge Road had been harrowing, O’Bryan thought.
It consisted of switchbacks and hairpin turns up the mountain and there’d been no guardrails.
O’Bryan didn’t trust Peddy’s driving skills, even though the man bragged about the mountain driving he’d done in New Mexico while growing up there.
And it didn’t help O’Bryan’s mood that Peddy sipped on a pint flask of Jim Beam while he drove.
Peddy fished his phone out of his coat and stared at the screen. “He hasn’t tried to call me since we’ve been up here. So we must be at the right place.”
“Why don’t you call him?” O’Bryan asked.
“Because he told me not to,” Peddy said. “He don’t want us calling him. That’s not how it works. He calls me. Got that?”
“Whatever.”
It continually annoyed O’Bryan that Peddy always made sure to mention that their employers had hired him first and provided the initial brief, and that O’Bryan had been brought in as a backup.
Peddy liked to lord it over O’Bryan that he was the conduit to their employers, and that O’Bryan needed to know his place in the scheme.
It would be different, O’Bryan thought, if he trusted Peddy. But the man had screwed up time after time, and he’d proven his judgment to be skewed and mistaken. O’Bryan didn’t like it that his life—and his eventual payout—were in Peddy’s hands.
—
Ten minutes later, O’Bryan saw a flash of headlights below them on the mountain road. Someone was coming after all.
As the vehicle made the final turn on the switchback and came toward them, Peddy screwed the cap on his bottle and quickly deposited it under his seat. That way, O’Bryan guessed, Peddy wouldn’t be caught drinking when the headlights of the oncoming car flooded their pickup cab.
O’Bryan squinted and raised his hand to shadow his eyes from the lights, as did Peddy.
The vehicle pulled within twenty feet and stopped.
Then the driver doused his headlights. O’Bryan was surprised to see that the SUV in front of them had a light bar on top and a fortified grille guard on the front for pushing stalled vehicles out of the way.
No doubt, it was a law enforcement vehicle.
He looked over to Peddy with alarm, but Peddy waved him off.
“Relax. This is our guy,” Peddy said.
“Are we supposed to go to him?” O’Bryan asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t see a damned thing after being blinded by those lights.”
A moment later, the Yukon’s back door opened and the cab lights blinked on.
O’Bryan could see that the man entering their truck was in a brown and beige uniform, and that he was wearing a badge over his left breast pocket.
He was a big man with a squarish block of a head topped by a brimmed cap that read Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department.
“This is Deputy Bowkley,” Peddy said to O’Bryan. “He’s on our side. He recommended us to do this.”
O’Bryan nodded to the deputy as the man crawled into the back seat and closed the door. Bowkley didn’t return the gesture.
“I spent the whole fucking day at the scene of a camper trailer fire,” Bowkley said. “I don’t suppose you boys know anything about that?”
O’Bryan held his tongue.
But Peddy said, “It had to be done. The guy inside could have ID’d us and blown our cover. We had to keep him quiet.”
Bowkley said nothing for thirty seconds, and O’Bryan felt the tension rise. Peddy seemed oblivious to it.
“Is that what you think?” Bowkley asked Peddy. “How did you know it was the right guy?”
“He gave himself away. I’ve got a nose for those kinds of things.”
“So you killed him and burned his trailer down,” Bowkley said. It wasn’t a question.
“We handled things,” Peddy said. “There’s no reason to get worked up about it.”
Again, there was a long pause from the back. Then Bowkley said, “You got the wrong guy.”
“What?”
“He was just a random hunter from Casper,” Bowkley said. “We confirmed that today. He wasn’t the guy who called the sheriff’s department.”
“How do you know that?” Peddy asked. O’Bryan noted a hint of panic in his tone.
Bowkley said, “Because the guy who actually called it in was in the sheriff’s office earlier tonight. He gave a long statement, and I heard the gist of it. His name is Earl Wright.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“No, Dorn. I’m not shitting you. And Wright described you and your partner to a T. Now you’re on the sheriff’s radar, and you might have just fucked everything up.”
For once, Peddy didn’t respond.
“And not only that,” Bowkley said, “you didn’t finish the job yesterday like you bragged to our boss.”
“What do you mean?”
Peddy was on the verge of panic, O’Bryan thought. He had no compunction to intervene and bail the man out.
Bowkley leaned forward so he spoke almost directly into Peddy’s ear. O’Bryan observed that as Bowkley leaned forward he’d dropped his hands down between his knees.
“Joe Pickett is still alive as of this evening. He was airlifted to a hospital in Billings.”
“That’s not possible,” Peddy said.
“Did you check him?” Bowkley asked. “Did you make sure?”
“Of course.”
Bowkley turned to O’Bryan. “Let me ask you a question and you better not lie to me like your partner. Did you check on Pickett after the ambush?”
“No,” O’Bryan said. “I tried to persuade him, but he wouldn’t listen.” O’Bryan could feel the white-hot glare of Peddy’s eyes on him as he said it. Then Peddy turned his head and stared out the windshield. He apparently didn’t want to look into Bowkley’s eyes.
“So in two days,” Bowkley said, “you geniuses fucked up the ambush, then you killed a random hunter and burned down his trailer. Then you drive up this mountain to meet me with your breath smelling of booze. This isn’t exactly going according to plan.”
“There’s no way Pickett made it,” Peddy said defiantly. “I saw the bullet holes in the windshield. I know where I aimed.”
“Our employers know everything,” Bowkley said. “Because I told them.”
“Why did you have to go and do that?” Peddy whined. O’Bryan could see that there were tears forming in the man’s eyes. For the first time since they’d been together, O’Bryan was grateful that it wasn’t him making the decisions. This was all on Peddy.
It was at that moment that O’Bryan realized why Bowkley had leaned forward. It was so he could hike up his pant leg and retrieve a pistol from an ankle holster.
O’Bryan reflexively burrowed into the passenger door as Bowkley raised the small-caliber revolver and held the snub-nosed muzzle an inch behind Peddy’s right ear.
Pop-pop-pop-pop.
The rapid gunshots were loud within the cab.
Peddy’s head rocked with the first round and bounced with each subsequent shot.
Then he slumped forward until his forehead pressed against the top of the steering wheel.
His face, a mask of surprise and terror, was frozen in place and aimed at O’Bryan.
There was a final, rattling breath and then he was still. The cab smelled sharply of gunpowder.
O’Bryan inched his right hand to his side, where his handgun was located in his coat pocket. He didn’t want to be next. But Bowkley didn’t swing the revolver in his direction. Instead, he withdrew it entirely.
Through the ringing in his ears, he heard Bowkley say, “Four pops with .22 Shorts. The rounds bounce around inside the skull and they don’t make an ugly exit wound. But they do the trick, don’t they?”
“Yes,” O’Bryan said. His mouth was dry.
“Should you be next?”
“I hope not.”
Bowkley chuckled. “The word came down that we couldn’t let him do any more damage. I’m taking over, even though I wanted to stay arm’s length from the whole operation. But your buddy gave us no choice. Are you on board with that?”
O’Bryan nodded. “He wasn’t my buddy. He was an asshole.”
“Good to hear. So here’s what we’re going to do next,” Bowkley said as he removed the black nitrile gloves from his hands and stuffed them into his trouser pocket.
“You push him out of the way and get behind the wheel. Then you’ll follow my car to the top of this mountain a ways down the other side to a place called Savage Run Canyon.
It’s a hell of a steep canyon, believe me.
“You’ll drive to the rim and leave the transmission in neutral and get the hell out. I’ll push this truck over the edge. That canyon is so remote it could be years before anyone finds the wreck.
“Then you can hitch a ride back into Winchester with me, where we’ll check you into the Wagon Wheel Motel.
I don’t want anyone to see you around Saddlestring, especially the sheriff.
The Wagon Wheel is a dump, but it’s a place the cops use to stash drunks and dopers for the night.
They don’t ask questions there. Got all that? ”
O’Bryan said he did.
“I’ll get rid of this peashooter up there, too. I borrowed it from the evidence room and I don’t think they’ll miss it.”
“Okay,” O’Bryan said. “Then what? Am I still gonna get paid?”
“Is the job done?” Bowkley asked.
“Not exactly.”
“That’s right, buddy. You’ll get paid when the job is done.”
“What’s that mean?”
Bowkley again leaned forward in his seat, and O’Bryan flinched a little.
“I’ve got some time off to move the rest of my shit from Gillette to Saddlestring,” Bowkley said. “Are you up for a little trip north to Billings, Montana?”