SIX
Sometime after midnight, Renfro and I were standing on the sixth green of a very dark golf course somewhere on the south side of the string of lakes along the Colorado River north and west of Austin, so far from town that the city lights were only a faint smudge against the low ceiling of the clouds. The sixth hole was raised and bunkered, nestled on the verge of a live oak motte. The norther still pumped a cold misty wind across the Hill Country, spiced with occasional bursts of even colder raindrops the size of dimes, which clattered like hail off our vests. We listened quietly as the wind rattled the live oaks madly. Renfro had insisted that if he couldn't have a weapon, he should at least have a flak jacket. The flag marking the hole flapped like a lost bird. The Browning Hi- Power felt oddly heavy under my arm, less comforting than I hoped.
'It's so dark I couldn't see my ass, if my head was up it,' I said. 'And she's a half-hour late.'
'She's always late,' Renfro whispered nervously. 'I wish I could afford to get away. Sissy's great fun to travel with. Completely insane and terribly organized.'
'Well, I won't give her the money,' I said, 'unless she promises to take you along.'
The tall man nodded again.
Renfro had been very interested when I jerked the DA's location beeper off the Beast and stuck it under one of the Lodge's vans, but he didn't ask any questions. And during the detour to pick up the Browning, a couple of extra magazines, and my Kevlar vest, Renfro hadn't even commented. Except to insist on a vest, which I didn't much like, and to give me directions through the dark back roads.
'You think she's coming?'
'Of course,' Renfro said, giggling. 'She'll be late for her own funeral, but she'll be there with bells on… What the hell?'
Renfro started slapping at his chest, then at his other hand, muttering curses.
The red dot on the back of his glove exploded in a fluff of fake rabbit fur as I shoved him down and dove in the same direction, shamelessly using Renfro's bulk as cover and scrabbling for the Browning. Two more silenced subsonic rounds thumped into Renfro's vest as we rolled toward the nearest bunker. I fired back along the line of the laser sight glistening in the rainy mist. One round hit what sounded like a car; another snapped through glass; the third, fourth, fifth rounds disappeared into the heart of the dark wind.
But the sniper wasn't deterred. His rounds scattered divots from the green. As I shoved Renfro's unconscious bulk into the safety of the deep bunker, then rolled in behind him, a round skipped off the Kevlar vest over my left shoulder blade. It felt as if I'd been hit with a twelve-pound sledge. I pressed against the sand beneath the lip of the bunker as another half-dozen rounds chopped at the edge of the green above it. The sniper just wanted me to know that he knew where I was. My whole left side felt paralyzed, as if all the bones on that side of my body had been shattered as I flopped into the bunker.
Across the golf course, I heard the grumbling slide and clunk as a van door shut. Then it drove rather sedately off into the stormy night. Without lights.
I crawled up to the edge of the green, both hands on the Browning, and counted to a hundred before I checked on Renfro, who gasped at the cold air with shallow breaths and had a faint feathery pulse in his cold neck. I propped his feet high against the bunker, then slithered into the tangled oaks, where I waited on my knees for another hundred count. Impatience had killed a lot of people, and I didn't plan to be one of them. I had used up all my luck when the sniper decided he didn't want the sound of rifle shots in the night. If the rounds hadn't been suppressed and subsonic, the vests would have been useless.
Even with his, Renfro still might die of internal injuries. And without
When I finally stopped shaking, I stood up as slowly and quietly as my battered back would let me, then pussyfooted through the motte, and eased into my car, turned the key, and ran down the windows in the hope that I would hear the killer's approach under the gusting wind. I waited a full five minutes by the lighted digital clock before I started the car and switched the heater on high. While I waited to warm up, I considered my problems.
Since I had followed Renfro's directions through the dark without paying much attention to them, I didn't know exactly where we were, and I didn't much fancy just driving off into the night. Even if Renfro was dead, my spent shell casings would be hell to find in the dark, even with a flashlight. If worst came to worst I could change the firing pin in the Browning, or melt the piece down. But there would be telephone records connecting me with Renfro, plus witnesses in the bar who had seen us leave together.
No way I could walk away from this, and being surrounded by police didn't sound like such a bad idea. Hell, even a jail cell didn't sound too bad at this moment. As long as it wasn't in Gatlin County.
So I dug Gannon's card out of my billfold, then called him at home. He answered on the first ring. He didn't sound like a man who had just been dragged out of a deep sleep at two-thirty in the morning. 'What now?' he asked. He sounded wide awake and very annoyed.
'Sorry if I woke you,' I said. 'It's Milodragovitch and I've got a bit of a problem.'
'Milo?' Gannon said, not happily. 'You didn't wake me up. Somebody reported gunfire at the Arrowhead Country Club.'
'That would be my problem,' I interrupted. 'I'll meet you on the sixth green with another body.'
'You ever think of becoming a mortician?'
'Too late to change careers at my age,' I said, 'and this one may not be quite dead.' Then I hung up. I grabbed a down vest and a clean T-shirt out of my travel gear, then a survival blanket out of the winter gear junk box I kept out of a long Montana habit, then trudged back to the bunker, wrapped Renfro's shattered hand as tightly as I could, then bundled him in the vest and the blanket. Then I just crouched there, waiting in the cold, wet wind. But I didn't unload the Browning and set it on the green until the first unit, complete with lights and sirens, roared down the cart path toward the green where I stood next to the flapping flag, my hands raised.
'Not you again,' the deputy groaned as he climbed out of the unit and trudged up the bank. His face was shadowed under the plastic-covered cowboy hat, but I recognized the voice from the jail cell. The kid followed procedure, put me on my knees and cuffed my hands behind me, then checked on Renfro. But as the kid helped me to his feet, he muttered something under his breath.
'What's that?' I said, preparing myself for the worst.
'I said, 'Thanks.''
'What the hell for?'
'For not snitching me off the other day,' the kid said. 'Looks like maybe I was a little bit out of hand.'
'I was an asshole,' I admitted, 'so I've got no complaint. What's your name?'
'Bob Culbertson,' he said quietly. 'No hard feelings?'
'Not a one, Bob,' I said. 'You're the one working nights.'
'Forever and a night, the captain said.'
'I'd shake your hand, kid, but I seem to be tied up.'
'Sorry,' the kid said. 'Procedure.'
'Not a problem.'
'I'd ask you what happened,' Culbertson said, 'but I'm sure the captain would want me to wait.'
'This time,' I said, 'I ain't answering no questions until my lawyer is standing close by my side.'
'That's sure as hell the way I'd play it,' Culbertson said, smiling. Like most cops, if he was in trouble, he wouldn't talk to his mother without a lawyer present. Then he stuffed me in his unit one more time, and called a chopper for a Medevac.
The norther had finally blown itself out by daylight. Dawn came to a wide clear blue sky and cool, dry air. It could have been spring in eastern Montana. From the green, I could see the flagstone clubhouse where groups of irritated early morning golfers milled around their fancy carts and were obviously bitching about losing their tee times. Like cocaine junkies who had too much money and nothing to do with themselves.
'You ever play golf?' Gannon asked me as he led me up to the top of the green as the crime scene
