Chapter 17 #2
“So, you do have emotions,” Moffit mused. “I’ll keep that in mind. Am I wrong to assume you came because you believe I have the diamonds?”
Pink stared at him. “Do you?”
“I do not,” Moffit said. “And the fact you came to ask tells me you don’t have them either.”
“What if we just came here to kill you?” Pink asked. “You know, tie up loose ends.”
Duvall, head tilted back, nose pinched with a thumb and forefinger, shot him a mortified side-eye. “Would you shut your mouth!”
“I suppose there is that.” Moffit gestured toward the corner with the barrel of his gun. What Pink had originally mistaken for a crumpled roll of opaque plastic sheeting showed distinct signs of pooling blood among the wrinkles and folds.
Duvall’s mouth sagged open. “Who is tha—”
“The last person who came here to kill me,” Moffit said.
“Seriously?” Pink heard himself say.
“No.” Moffit laughed hard enough to make the Browning bob in his hand.
“That is Hiram Dietrich, the rancher from Eastland who actually owns the diamonds.” Dead serious now, Moffit nodded at the rolled body.
“The poor bastard drove all the way to Fort Worth with the notion that he’d pitch a bitch at the TexSafe company president.
I happened to be coming out of the building and ran into him in the parking lot.
Insurance would have made him whole after a theft, but you know cowboys.
He was still angry. It’s always the principle of the thing with them.
TexSafe lost his diamonds. Someone had to bleed.
He leveled all kinds of accusations. Threatened to sue.
The whole nine yards. I told him I, too, had concerns and planned to go to the police myself.
Convinced him to take a drive with me.” Moffit belly laughed again.
“Events did not turn out as he calculated.”
“Aren’t you afraid the cops will focus on you?” Pink asked. “The last person to see him alive?”
“I like the way you think, young man,” Moffit said.
“That means you’re careful. But no. Dietrich told his wife he was going to visit TexSafe, not me personally.
All our cameras are in the back, covering the armored vehicles.
No one saw us together. … At any rate, what were we talking about?
Oh, that’s right, you were explaining to me how you all had come here to kill me and tie up any loose ends. ”
Duvall glared at Pink again. “That is not why we came!” He didn’t look very intimidating while pinching his nose shut.
“Oh, I’m sure of that,” Moffit said. “Do either of y’all have any experience selling stolen diamonds?”
“I don’t,” Pink said.
Duvall gave a shake of his head. “No.”
“That’s what I thought,” Moffit said.
“Can I put my hands down?” Pink asked.
“As long as we’re of one mind,” Moffit said.
“I think we are,” Pink said.
“Go on, then.” Moffit motioned with the Browning. “Relax.”
“If you don’t have the diamonds, who does?” Pink asked.
“That is a very good question,” Moffit said. “My money is on law enforcement. I personally witnessed my guards lock the diamonds in that strongbox in the back of the armored truck. Did you happen to search their pockets?”
“All but one,” Duvall said, breathy, like a basketball Pink once stabbed with a hunting knife.
“We didn’t search the passenger up front,” Pink said. “But I blew him away as soon as he got out of the truck. He never made it back to where the diamonds were.”
“There must have been some kind of hidden compartment,” Duvall said.
Moffit shook his head. “We’re talking about one of my trucks. There are no hidden compartments. You’re sure Millner didn’t have the stones on him when that sheriff killed him?”
“I guess he could have.” Duvall’s bloody nose had staunched to a trickle, but he still sounded like he had a bad cold. “But it’s unlikely. The cops never said a word.”
“Vince wouldn’t have turned on us,” Pink said. “He stopped there on the highway just so I could get away.”
Moffit gave a concerned nod. “I was sorry to hear they’d killed him.”
“Yeah,” Pink said. “Anyway, the cops went over everything with a fine-tooth comb. They would have found the diamonds if Vince had them.”
“And our law enforcement brethren are all so honest,” Moffit scoffed. “A sack of diamonds can bend a man’s morals quicker than a pretty woman. I never met a cop who didn’t have a pile of bills he needed to pay.”
Moffit switched the Browning Hi-Power to his left hand and kicked off his elephant hide boots to step out of the coveralls. His tight white T-shirt made him more G.I. Joe than Ken doll. Free of the overalls, he holstered the Browning and put his boots back on.
“I watched from the other side of the highway, you know. When that fireplug deputy sheriff murdered Vince Millner. Nothing short of sensational.”
Pink stood up straighter at that. “You saw it?”
“I did indeed,” Moffit said. “I watched that asshole gun down your friend and then lean over his body all calm and cool to search his pockets. He was definitely looking for something. I expect he’s the one who’s been calling my office wanting to talk to me.”
“Cutter,” Pink whispered.
“That’s right,” Moffit said. “D Wayne Cutter. He’s an investigator for the Sheriff’s Department.” He glanced at Duvall. “Go on and grab your pistol. Since you’re here, you two can help me give Mr. Dietrich a ride out to the other side of the lake.”
“Awfully close to your house,” Duvall said.
“We’ll grab a bite to eat first,” Moffit said. “Let it get a little later and then stick to the back roads. Nobody goes over there. There are so many corpses at the bottom of the lake, I imagine he’ll land on top of someone else’s bones.”
“If no one goes over there, how could there be so many corpses?” Pink asked earnestly, like there might actually be an answer to the question.
“Another fair point. But who’s to say those bodies were put there by someone else?” Moffit gave a tired sigh, ready to change the subject. “At any rate, Mr. Pink, if you’d be so kind as to pull that plastic off the wall behind you.”
Ricky Lee turned and gave the sheeting a yank, half expecting to see more burritoed bodies. Instead, the barn’s interior wall turned out to be lined with railroad ties stacked two deep from the concrete floor eight feet high. Four life-size silhouette targets were stapled along the wall.
Duvall had just stooped down on unsteady legs to pick up his gun when Moffit drew his Browning Hi-Power and sent three rounds into each of the four targets.
The supersonic crack of twelve nine-millimeter rounds in the enclosed barn was painfully deafening—and so incredibly fast, the shots sounded as if they’d come from a machine gun.
Duvall cowered at the blast, hands pressed against his ears.
Pink squinted, mesmerized by the perfectly replicated pattern on each target, two to the center of the chest, one to the head—at the bridge of the imaginary nose. Fast and accurate.
Moffit saw him looking and smiled proudly. “My mercenary friend calls this the Mozambique drill. Two to the chest, one to the head, just keep shootin’ until they’re … You can guess the rest of it.”
“Mozambique?”
“A country in Africa,” Moffit said. “There’s a story behind it. I’ll tell it to you over dinner.”
Duvall eyed Moffit suspiciously. “How about a little heads-up before you start blasting next time?”
“Next time will be different,” Moffit said. “Next time, we’ll be shooting at whoever has the diamonds.”
Pink looked benignly from the man to his targets, then back to the man. One thing was sure: If Gerald Moffit ever decided to shoot at them, they damn sure wouldn’t see it coming.