Bull Mountain(72)

9.

Holly stepped over the twisted metal and broken glass and onto the street. Clayton followed. Both men squatted down at Halford’s covered body, sprawled lifeless on the sidewalk. Holly gripped the edge of the sheet to pull it back, but waited for the sheriff’s approval. Clayton nodded. Halford’s eyes were no different in death than they’d been in life. No colder. No blacker. No more absent of a soul than a man who could rest easy while another man burned alive, or a man who could hold a sawed-off scattergun to the head of an innocent girl. Clayton could hear the hornets screaming. He fought back the sudden rush of anxiety that peppered his peripheral vision with sunspots, and squeezed his eyes shut until the feeling of nausea began to fade. He thumbed his brother’s eyelids shut and put his gun hand on the dead man’s chest—a few inches above the three holes in his shirt—and offered an unspoken good-bye. Holly said nothing. Instead, he stood, offered his hand, and helped Clayton to his feet for a second time.

Cricket thought she was all out of tears until Clayton and Holly approached the ambulance. The paramedics backed off when they saw the men coming and began to repack unused supplies into their jump bag. The sheriff sat down next to Cricket on the bumper. She grabbed his arm through the sheet she was wrapped in and cried gently on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Sheriff. I didn’t know what to do. He came in so fast. I didn’t think he was . . . he was . . .”

“It’s okay, Cricket, you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m the one who should be sorry for dragging you into my family drama. It’s my fault. I almost got you killed.”

Cricket backed her face off his shoulder and caught his eyes. “You saved my life, Sheriff.”

“You’re damn right he did,” Holly chimed in. He had his cell phone to his ear and was holding one finger in the air as a signal to Clayton that he would be right back, and then he stepped off to the side of the ambulance to focus on his call.

“You did,” Cricket continued. “I know doing what you did must’ve been hard for you. Probably the hardest thing ever, but you did it and I’m alive because of it. I owe you my life.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

Cricket said something else, but Clayton didn’t hear it. Instead, he caught a familiar voice through the crowded street and focused on it. It was the voice of the one person he really needed to see.

“Kate,” he said, and stood to wave her over. She was standing behind the yellow caution tape, her face ghost-white. A couple of state police were giving her some resistance about entering the scene, but once she caught her husband’s eye, she barreled through them like a freight train.

“Let her in, she’s my—”

Kate knocked the words and the wind out of him with a crushing hug that pushed him back against the ambulance hard enough to rock it. A paramedic turned and opened his mouth with the intention of saying something but thought better of it once he saw Kate’s face. Clayton winced but hugged her back. She let him go and looked him over from head to toe to head again. “Oh my God, Clayton. Are you okay? What happened?”

“I’m fine. Who called you?”

“No one called me. I was on my way here to meet you for my doctor’s appointment, and I saw all this. What the hell happened?”

“Halford’s dead.” He motioned to his brother’s enormous corpse. Darby, two paramedics, and the deputy coroner were all trying to help load it into a second ambulance. She looked to the men, then back to her husband, and all the remaining color in her face faded with the realization. “Did . . . you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, baby. Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”

“He saved my life,” Cricket said.

“He saved both their lives,” Holly said, rounding the ambulance, tucking his phone in his pocket. Kate went from pale and sympathetic to flushed red and angry on a dime.

“This is your fault.” She shoved an accusatory index finger into Holly’s chest. “You brought all this down on us.”

“Yes, ma’am, I know you feel that way.”

“Are you happy now? Are you?”

“No, ma’am,” Holly said.

“Fuck you, and your ‘yes, ma’am/no, ma’am’ shit.”

“Kate, calm down.” Clayton took his wife’s arm, but she pulled it free.

“No, I won’t calm down. Three days ago we lived in a quiet little valley far removed from all this, and now look around.” Kate lifted both her arms and spun back toward Holly. “Dead people and chaos for us mountain folk, and a plane ticket home for this *. Right, *?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Holly said.

Kate drew back to deck him, but Clayton grabbed her arm again, and this time didn’t let go. “Simon didn’t make Halford come into my office toting a shotgun, Kate, and he certainly didn’t make him press it to Cricket’s head. That was all Halford. If anything, I’m to blame for provoking him and I’m the one who has to live with what happened here.”

“That’s not entirely true, Clayton. We both have to live with this. We all do,” she said, and pushed a strand of Cricket’s hair back behind her ear.

Clayton pulled her into his chest. “You’re not helping things, woman. Let me talk to the staties over there and give a statement. The sooner I can sort out what needs sorting, the sooner we can go home.”