Thick as Thieves(78)

“You’re looking for trouble.”

“No, he was, and now he’s got it.”

Don hesitated, then muttered, “Hell.”



The place looked almost too derelict to be real, more like a stage or movie set crowded with props to make it appear as squalid as possible. Floodlights mounted on metal poles formed a perimeter and shone down on the property, contributing to the movie set feel.

The house was as ramshackle as the various outbuildings, one of which was missing half its roof. The disemboweled, rusted-out vehicles scattered about were a cliché. Two mismatched upholstered chairs squatted on the porch under the overhang. Arden didn’t even want to think about the vermin that nested in them.

Off to one side of the dirt yard was a row of cages, crudely constructed of weathered scrap lumber and cyclone fencing. They were filthy and overpopulated with dogs trained to fight to the death if necessary.

As Ledge drove the pickup into the clearing, the pack set up a ruckus so savage, it was bloodcurdling. Arden vacillated between pity for the animals over the egregious mistreatment and terror of them.

Ledge pulled to a stop and took several moments to assess the scene. Then he reached beneath his seat and came up with a leather holster. The pistol in it looked like something Wyatt Earp would have owned. He checked the cylinder to see that it was fully loaded, then set it on the console.

He reached behind him to the floorboard of the back seat and produced a rifle. With stern concentration, he went through a preparedness routine that involved several moving parts, a clicking of this mechanism, a clacking of that one. All of it he did with precision and caution and know-how, which was both assuring and disconcerting.

“Lock the doors behind me,” he said, his features chiseled with resolve. “I’m going to keep the motor running in case you have to get out of here in a hurry. Do not hesitate. I mean it, Arden. If this goes tits up, get the hell out of here. No matter what happens, you are not to set foot out of this truck. If you’re forced to use that,” he said, nodding down at the revolver, “point it and pull the trigger. It’s a hand cannon. If you don’t hit something, you’ll stop it in its tracks.”

He gave her one last, hard look. “This son of a bitch tried to kill us, and he still might. If he makes a move, don’t wait to see what’ll happen next. Throw the truck into reverse and floorboard it.”

He opened the driver’s door and got out. He waited to hear the doors lock, then started walking toward the house, the rifle held at his side, barrel down. She marveled at his seeming calm. Her heart was pounding. She could barely draw breath.

The screen door of the house was pushed open, and a young man with stringy, shoulder-length hair stepped out onto the porch, barefoot. He was wearing a dingy white t-shirt and dirty blue jeans that hung onto his jutting hip bones by a thread. He carried a double-barrel shotgun.

When he snapped it up and aimed it directly at Ledge, Arden made a small, fearful sound, which even she couldn’t hear above the deafening barking coming from the dog pens.

Dwayne Hawkins walked as far as the uneven edge of his porch. “You’re Burnet, ain’t cha?”

Ledge didn’t say anything, just continued toward the house in an unhurried, measured tread.

“You deaf or something?”

Ledge kept walking.

Hawkins stepped off the porch and walked toward Ledge, then stopped and assumed a belligerent stance. “You come here to shoot my dogs?”

“No, I came here to shoot you.”

It happened in a blur of motion. Ledge swung the rifle up to waist level. The barrage lasted for only a few seconds, but it seemed to Arden to go on forever. The reverberation did. The dogs went crazy.

Dwayne Hawkins lay sprawled on his back in the dirt. The shotgun had landed yards away from his outstretched arm.

“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.” Arden didn’t stop to think about Ledge’s dire warnings and emphatic instructions. The door unlocked when she opened it and all but fell out. As she ran across the yard, she held her hands over her ears to mute the din coming from the cages.

Ledge seemed impervious to the dogs, to her, to everything. He walked over to Hawkins’s prone form and pressed the muzzle of the rifle against the center of his forehead. In horror, she stumbled toward him, calling his name. He didn’t react.

It wasn’t until she got to within feet of him that she realized Hawkins wasn’t dead. He wasn’t even bleeding. He hadn’t been touched. He lay between the arms of a V, neatly stitched into the dirt by bullets. His eyes were open and blinking rapidly. His rib cage was sawing up and down. Otherwise he was frozen with fright.

Ledge said, “You sicced your dogs on us?”

“I got nothing against you. Honest. Swear. Don’t kill me,” he pled, then began to blubber.

“Who put you up to it?”

“That asshole DA. Dyle.”

“What did he pay you?”

“Nuthin’. We made a deal.”

“What did you get in return, Dwayne?”

“He let me off for…I got this hobby.”

“Dogfighting. Some hobby, Dwayne.”

“You got no call to—”

“Did the DA tell you why he wanted to harm Ms. Maxwell?”

Dwayne didn’t move, but his eyes cut to her. “That her?”