ED EAGLE WOKE FEELING FRESH AND READY FOR THE new day. He was looking forward to work, something he had not felt since Barbara's decamping. He showered and shaved, and as he looked in the mirror he thought again about the message from the county jail that Joe Big Bear was going to kill him.
It didn't make any more sense this morning than it had the day before. He thought of calling the police or the D.A., but what would he tell them? Joe had not told him the name of the man in jail who had been hired to kill him, and that must have been who made the phone call. And Joe was a free man only because of him, and people tended to be grateful for that kind of help.
He had breakfast and slipped into his suit jacket, and as he was about to leave he stopped at the front door. Better to be safe. He went back to his dressing room and removed the Terry Tussy custom.45 from the safe, slipped off his belt and replaced it with the wider, thicker gun belt, then threaded the holster onto the belt. He checked the magazine and made sure there was one in the chamber, then he cocked and locked the pistol and shoved it into the custom-made Mitch Rosen holster, which held the pistol high against his rib cage, making it easier to conceal. He left by the front door, picking up the
He drove down the driveway and stopped, looking up and down the road. The pistol was digging into a rib, so he took it out of the holster and placed it on the passenger seat between the two newspapers, so it wouldn't get the leather seat oily.
He turned right and started down the mountain, driving in a leisurely fashion, thinking about the day ahead. As he came around a bend he saw a pickup truck pulled over onto the shoulder with the hood up, and he slowed. He'd see if the driver needed help. As he did, a man waving a hand stepped from behind the pickup's raised hood. The man looked familiar.
Then, as the man approached, Eagle belatedly recognized him. Joe Big Bear was smiling and waving with his left hand, seemingly relieved to have some help, and his right hand was behind his back. Eagle pressed the button that automatically lowered the passenger-side window, and as he did, something in the back of his mind told him he was making a mistake.
What came next happened very quickly and yet seemed in slow motion. Big Bear leaned over and put his face in the window, then his right hand came around with something odd-looking in it. A tool, maybe? Not a tool, not the kind needed to repair a broken pickup, anyway Eagle began to operate on pure instinct.
As the shotgun came through the window he grabbed at it as the first barrel fired, then he put a hand under the top newspaper, made contact with the pistol and, without pulling it out or aiming it began firing through the door, his hand coming up with each shot, while the shotgun fired again. The noise from the two weapons was incredible.
Simultaneously, Joe Big Bear's face winced in surprise, as the shotgun in his hand bucked. Eagle's last two rounds went through the open window and blew Big Bear backward, as if he had been jerked by a rope, and he disappeared from view.
Eagle sat, dazed, and tried to figure out what had happened. His windshield had a large hole in it and had crazed, ruining the view forward; there was something warm running down his neck, and he spat something out of his mouth into his hand. It was a single, double-ought buckshot the size of a garden pea and bloody. Eagle turned the rearview mirror so that he could see his reflection. There was a notch in his left earlobe and a black hole in his left cheek, and his face had flecks of black in the skin.
He got out of the car, spat blood, and walked around the vehicle, the.45 still in his hand and held out in front of him. With his left hand he found a handkerchief in his left hip pocket and pressed it to his bleeding ear. His ears were ringing, and the sound of the car door as he closed it seemed to come from far away.
Joe Big Bear was lying on his back, the shotgun near his right hand and his eyes open and staring blankly at the morning sky. Eagle bent over and felt Big Bear's neck where a pulse should be and felt nothing. He suddenly felt a wave of nausea and dizziness, and he vomited on the ground next to Big Bear's body. When he had stopped retching he leaned against the car and took deep breaths.
He regained his composure after a minute or so and clawed the cell phone from its holster on his belt, speed- dialing the district attorney's direct line.
'Martinez,' a voice said.
'Bob, it's Ed Eagle,' he managed to say before he had to spit blood again.
'Morning, Ed. You sound funny. Is anything wrong?'
'You remember my client, Joe Big Bear?'
'I'm afraid so.'
'He just tried to shotgun me on the road, down the hill from my house.'
'Ed, are you hurt?'
'Only a little, but Big Bear is dead. I'd appreciate it if you'd call the sheriff for me and get him out here with a crime scene team and two ambulances, one of them for me. I don't think I can drive.'
'Ed, you're not going to bleed to death or anything before anybody can get there, are you?'
'No, Bob, but please ask them to hurry.'
'I'll call you back in a minute. You're on your cell phone?'
'Yes.'
Martinez hung up, and Eagle sank to the ground, sitting cross-legged and leaning against his car. His cell phone rang.
'Yes?'
'It's Bob. They're on their way, and so am I.' He hung up.
A SHERIFF'S CAR was there in four minutes, by Eagle's watch, and two ambulances and Bob Martinez were right behind him. Eagle insisted on walking them through what had happened before he got into the ambulance.
'You hit him with all four shots,' Martinez said, 'from his right knee to his belly to his chest.'
'I wasn't even aiming,' Eagle said.
AT THE HOSPITAL a young resident did something to his earlobe and stuck a swab into the hole in Eagle's cheek, then he poured some liquid into a small cup and handed it to Eagle.
'Mr. Eagle, I know this is going to sound like an odd treatment, but I want you to take some of this into your mouth, close your lips tightly and spit it out the hole in your cheek.'
Eagle did as he was told, and a stream of clotted blood and antiseptic shot out the hole. It would have hurt like hell, he thought, but for the local anesthetic the man had injected into his cheek.
Then, in short order, an oral surgeon appeared and stitched up the wound inside Eagle's mouth, and a plastic surgeon was next, carefully suturing the wound in his cheek with tiny stitches.
'I want you to keep this on your cheek for as long and as often as you can stand it,' the plastic surgeon said, pressing a wrapped ice pack against his face. 'It'll help prevent swelling, and you'll look more normal.' He put a square of flesh-colored tape on the stitched wound.
When the medics were done, Bob Martinez, who had watched the treatment with interest, drove him home, so that he could change his bloody clothing.
'I had your car flat-bedded to the dealer in Albuquerque,' Martinez said. 'The windshield will have to be replaced, and the door fixed, and the interior will need some attention. Do you have a second car?'
'Thanks, Bob, I've still got Barbara's Range Rover.'
'Where's Barbara?'
'Gone, and for good. There's something I can tell you, Bob, now that Joe Big Bear is dead.'
'What's that?'
'My witness at Big Bear's hearing, Cartwright, was wrong about something. I don't think it was deliberate, but he said that Joe had been at his house the whole time the car was being repaired. I didn't remember it until later, but at our first meeting, Joe told me he had had to leave the job to go to Pep Boys on Cerrillos for a fan belt.'
Martinez's eyebrows went up. 'Ah, opportunity,' he said. 'That matches up nicely with motive and means.'
'Yes, it does. I think Joe did the three murders.'
