'This here is Rubin Solis,' Aguirre said.
'That's what I figured. Shep Moran and I are already old friends. What happened to the guards out front?'
'I gave them twenty bucks and sent them for beer.'
Brass laughed. 'Is that how it works around here?'
'You have to know your audience. I happened to know these guys.'
Shep Moran spat. 'Dudes signed their own death warrants.'
'Speaking of warrants,' Brass said, 'Richie, you want to do the honors?'
'Sure,' Aguirre said. 'Ruben Solis, Shep Moran, you're under arrest.'
'For what?' Solis demanded.
'For being stupid,' Aguirre said. 'Also, for shooting a bunch of folks at Meoqui's place. So let's see, we've got murder, attempted murder, and assault with a deadly weapon, for starters. Okay with you, Ruben?'
Solis shrugged, as well as he could with Aguirre hanging on to his arm.
'Let's go someplace and talk,' Aguirre said. 'I think we have a lot to talk about, don't you?'
'We got nothing to say to you.'
'Oh, I have a feeling you'll feel differently in a little while. In fact, I'm pretty sure of it.'
Aguirre backed out the front door, dragging Solis along with him. Brass prodded Moran, hands cuffed behind his back, head hanging down, along with them.
The two tribal cops hadn't been sent for drinks after all. They were still there in the driveway. But instead of chilling in the shade, they were standing on either side of the pickup's cab, arms stretched inside through open windows, cuffed to each other. The cab's rear window was open, too, probably how Aguirre had cuffed them together. Their weapons were piled in the driveway in front of the truck, well out of reach. The men glared at Aguirre with hatred etched on their faces.
'I thought you sent them to get some beer,' Brass said.
Aguirre gave him a big grin. 'Yeah, I lied about that. It's a bad habit of mine. But I just didn't think I could trust them with twenty bucks.'
27
The two bodies were sprawled on the floor outside an open doorway. Nick stood on the far side of the swinging door for a moment. He didn't know if those men on the floor were alive or dead. He didn't know for sure if Torres was on the other side of that opening. He didn't know how many attackers were inside or if they had finished their work and gone.
But he didn't have much time to find out. Blood was just beginning to flow down the hall, spreading out from the fallen. Nick eased through the swinging door. The smell of gunpowder hung heavy in the air. He hurried down the hall, trying to balance haste with the need to be quiet.
It was unlikely that they'd hear him anyway. Once he was through the door, he heard voices from inside the open room. '… whatever you want with me, but leave him alone! If this rez had ten times more like him instead of people like us, it'd be a better place.'
'I don't want to hurt any doctors,' another voice answered.
'No witnesses,' another one insisted. 'That's the rule.'
Nick knew that when he showed himself in the doorway, he would be exposed to whoever was inside. There would be no cover. But if he didn't move fast, anything could happen in that room. From the sound of things, there were two people alive, but threatened. Quick and definitive action was needed. If only he had a SWAT team or even a gas grenade.
He decided he had to use surprise to take them off guard. Nick covered the last few feet to the doorway in a few steps and swung around inside. 'Police!' he shouted in a commanding tone. 'Everybody on the floor, now!'
He saw two men standing around Meoqui Torres, who was on his back in a hospital bed, his feet facing the door, and a fourth man, apparently the doctor in question, pressed into a corner on Torres's left, trying hard to make himself one with the wall. One of the men Nick recognized from Torres's house, while the other one, a few years older, wearing expensive Western-style clothes and pointed boots, he didn't know. The smell of alcohol- soaked sweat rolled off him, and both men reeked of tobacco smoke, those odors blotting out the disinfectant and the gunpowder and blood from the hallway. The doctor was Native American, too, his gray hair neatly combed, blue scrubs wrinkled from the day's work, trembling so hard the stethoscope around his neck danced against his chest.
What Nick hadn't seen was the fifth man in the room, back in the corner behind the door. He didn't know that man was there until Torres raised a hand and pointed, and then the familiar chunk of a weapon's hammer being drawn back sounded behind him. 'Drop that piece, lawman,' the man said.
'I don't think so,' Nick said. He froze where he was, keeping his weapon trained on the older of the two men beside Torres.
Nick wasn't a police officer, but he was qualified to use his sidearm, and one of the first rules a cop learned was that you never surrender your weapon. If someone gets the drop on you, you try to talk your way out of it, or you take a bullet. But if you surrender your weapon, the instructors taught, you are going to die, and you'll probably be killed with your own gun. He'd already made one bad mistake; he didn't plan to compound it with another.
'I'm not fooling around here,' the man said.
'A doctor and a cop?' Torres said from the bed. His voice was shaky, his face wan. Nick guessed that he hadn't been awake for long before these guys came into the room. There was a tray on a swiveling stand close beside him with a pitcher of water and a plastic cup on it. A few ice cubes floated in the pitcher. 'Is that really how you want to spend your day, killing decent men who try to help people?'
'Guys, let's all chill out,' Nick said calmly, picking up on Torres's effort. He hadn't moved his gun yet but held absolutely still, not giving the man behind him any reason to worry. 'There's no need for anyone else to get hurt here. We've got a standoff here. We could all start shooting, but what'll be left when the smoke clears might not be what we're looking for.'
One of the men standing by Torres shifted his guns toward Nick. The other – the one who had been part of Torres's entourage – kept his trained on the man in the bed. It would be easy enough for him to lift the barrel an inch or so, to shoot over Torres and hit the doctor in the corner. 'What the hell are you?' one of the older men asked. 'You're not a regular cop.'
'LVPD Crime Lab,' Nick said. 'I think I know what you guys are doing here, but I can tell you definitively that Meoqui Torres didn't kill Chairman Domingo.' He hoped he had read the situation right, that the two older men were some of Domingo's enforcers, and the younger guy, the one who had been part of Torres's entourage, was secretly in Domingo's pocket.
'You know who did, why ain't you off arresting him?' Torres's supposed friend challenged.
'Let the man speak,' the doctor urged.
'How do you know this?' the older man asked. Traces of white flecked his neatly combed black hair. He had a mole under his left eye that made him look as if he was half-squinting. He and Nick had their weapons aimed at each other, but Nick hadn't forgotten the other gun, the one behind him. If shooting started, he would take two rounds. At these ranges, the men weren't likely to miss.
'Because Domingo was killed by a white man with blond hair,' Nick said. 'We don't know who yet, but we know it wasn't Torres.'
'Damn straight,' Torres said, flipping his jet-black hair back with his hand.
'You sure about that?' Torres's hanger-on asked. Almost as if reminding the two older men, he added, 'Torres
