The Best American Mystery Stories 2015

Andrew Bourelle Cowboy Justice From Law and Disorder

Jack put four shells of double-ought buck into the twelve-gauge, chambered a round, then added the fifth shell. His breathing was shallow. He wondered how he was going to get through this. Beside him in the passenger seat, David had already loaded the 30.06 and the .270 and seemed to be waiting patiently. A Kenny Chesney song about a guy leaving his summer fling and heading back to Cleveland was playing on the stereo and Jack turned it off.

“I thought you liked Kenny Chesney,” David said.

“He ain’t bad. It just ain’t the right kinda music for now is all.”

David nodded and looked out the window. They were parked in an empty Raley’s parking lot. The sun wasn’t up yet; the black of night was turning gray. They had guessed this might be the best time to make their move. With meth users, it wouldn’t matter if it was three in the morning or three in the afternoon. At least at dawn they’d have some light to shoot by.

“Take this, would you, brother?” Jack said, handing over the shotgun.

David put it next to the rifles, all three leaning against the bench seat between them, butts on the floor, barrels pointed toward the back window of the truck. The two rifles both had black scopes. David would be using them. The shotgun was just backup. On the floor were boxes of ammunition, more than they’d be able to use. Jack picked the Derringer off the seat and checked it. He’d already checked it once. Two shots. That was it. He took a deep breath.

“I still think we should just go in shooting,” David said.

“No,” Jack said. “This is the best way. Just trust me, okay?”

“I trust you. It’s just you could be dead inside before I fire a goddamn shot.”

“Ain’t gonna be that way. These are druggies. Speed freaks. They’re gonna have guns, but they ain’t gonna know how to use them.”

“You said that already.”

“If they ever fired them at all, it was out in the desert at bottles and cans.”

“You said that a hundred times already.”

“Most of them ain’t never shot something real, something moving. Just pretend they’re deer and do what you do when you got a buck in your sights.”

David shook his head. “That don’t change the fact that it’d be better if we just went in together, guns blazing.”

“They got cameras. They’d see us coming and be waiting at the front door with who knows what kind of firepower. We’re gonna be able to shoot better than them but that’s ’cause we’re prepared and they ain’t. If we give them time to be ready, things might be different. We talked about that a hundred times already too.”

David shook his head like he always did when he still disagreed but didn’t want to argue.

“This is the way we’re doing it. It’s the best way.”

Truth was Jack wanted to keep his baby brother as far away from the fight as possible. He didn’t want both his brothers dead. But he couldn’t pull this off by himself. David was a good shot with a rifle — probably better than Jack, even at sixteen — and putting him in the truck would be a relatively safe place.

Jack checked the Derringer again, then promised himself it would be the last time.

“You ready?” he said.

“Yep.”

Jack believed his little brother. But he wasn’t so sure about himself.

“Better go ahead and get down.”

David crouched onto the floor and covered himself with a quilt their grandma had made. He pulled the guns toward him and covered them too. Jack put the Derringer inside his hat, tore off a piece of duct tape from the roll sitting on the seat, and taped the gun inside. He put the hat on. He’d practiced this; the gun fit nicely.

Jack started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot. The five weeks since Jamie’s death had led him to this point. He and David had spent three of those weeks camping at Lake Tahoe, driving down into Carson City every night, asking questions, trying to find people. They were surprised by what they found going on in a town that didn’t seem all that big or special. Which probably meant this kind of stuff was happening everywhere. But their hunt was over. Now was this thing. And by noon they’d be done. David wanted to stop outside the city and get whores at the brothel before heading back to Montana. To celebrate. But Jack said they ought to see how they felt after it was all over. Truthfully, he didn’t know what to expect. He figured he’d never be the same person again after what they were about to do. Never. David neither probably. That is, Jack thought, if we ain’t dead.

“All right,” Jack said as he pulled onto the street where the house was. “We’re here.”

They’d driven down the street a few times in the past week, trying to scope out the neighborhood. On their second drive by, David had seen the camera in the tree, so they waited a couple days before coming back. The last time they’d come, they sprung for a rental car so the drug dealers wouldn’t recognize his truck. They didn’t know how carefully anyone was monitoring the camera (or cameras, if they hadn’t spotted all of them), but they wanted to be cautious.

Jack stopped several houses from their target, parking the truck on a slight curve about a hundred yards away to give David a good shooting lane down the street. They’d discussed this. It would be hard on Jack getting back to the truck after the shooting started, but David’s rifles would be able to reach out a lot farther than anything the guys inside would have. So the distance was in their favor.

“This is it, brother,” Jack said.

“Good luck.” David didn’t stir; he spoke from beneath the blanket.

Jack’s heart beat hard. Sweat slid down his skin inside his button-down shirt.

“I’m leaving the window down,” he said. “You probably won’t be able to hear the Derringer, but listen anyway. Be ready when I come busting out of that place.”

“When you grab a gun,” David said, “don’t get nothing too complicated.”

“I reckon I’ll grab what I can grab.”

“Grab something you know how to use is all I’m saying. You don’t want to be fumbling with the damn safety or figuring out how to get a round in the chamber.”

“I ain’t gonna have time to be choosy, I don’t think.”

“Don’t miss.”

“You neither.”

Jack got out of the Chevy and started walking down the street. His boot heels clicked on the pavement, loud in the morning silence. His hat felt heavy on his head, weighed down by the Derringer. They’d talked about him dressing different, trying to fit in better, but they decided once he opened his mouth, the people in the house would figure him for a redneck anyway. He’d had a shaved head and worn the same green clothes as everyone else in boot camp, but it didn’t stop them from nicknaming him Hillbilly. Might as well make it part of his story.

Jack thought as he approached the house, If we can’t kill the sons of bitches, if it all goes to hell, please just let David get away.

He’d been nervous from the start about bringing David. But just because he was sixteen didn’t mean he had any less right to want to avenge Jamie than Jack did. Jack had never been as close to David as he had been to Jamie, and Jamie had probably been closer to his little brother than his older. Jack was eight years older than David; Jamie had been born right in between them. When Jack had gone into the army, David was a kid still; when he came back, his baby brother was a young man, already shaving and dipping snuff, with a pretty girlfriend and a deer mounted on the wall bigger than any he or Jamie had ever shot. And Jamie was gone to college in Reno. Jack had been in such a hurry to get away from Montana, but when he was away he missed the ranch and the mountains and waking up in the morning in the house and having breakfast with his brothers. When he came back, though, it was all different. And then there was this; how had it gotten so bad that he was here now, walking down some Carson City street with a gun under his hat?

The neighborhood wasn’t bad, some crappy houses and some nice ones. A white cat hurried across the street in front of him. An automated sprinkler kicked on at one house; one nozzle was busted and sprayed water all over the sidewalk. Jack walked right down the center of the street. He thought of a gunfighter in an old western walking down Main Street and into trouble; he told himself this was going to be different from the movies he’d watched growing up.

The house was nondescript. Beige siding. Roof in need of repair. A couple of brown patches in the lawn. A few trees out front, nothing too big.

He ignored the camera. He stepped over a dead bird. He tried to control the shaking in his hands. The door swung open even before he raised his hand to knock. A white guy in a pair of cutoff jeans and a T-shirt. The guy was thin; he had red hair and an unruly beard. Could have been thirty-five, but probably was twenty-five and just worn the hell out. His shirt said Misfits on it in green letters; Jack wondered if that was some kind of rock band. The guy had one hand behind his back. A skinny Mexican kid who couldn’t have been eighteen stood behind him, wearing jeans and no shirt. His ribs stood out like slats on a fence.

“What the hell you want, cowboy?” the redheaded guy asked.

Jack tried to keep his voice confident but reverential. “Sorry to just show up like this, man, but I need some crystal.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said without hesitating.

“Stu Kicking Bird told me this was the place to come. He’s dry, and I can’t wait.”

Misfit looked at him for a moment.

“Come on. Let’s talk inside.”

Jack fought the urge to turn and look down the street toward David.

When the door was shut, the one with the Misfits shirt pulled his hand out from behind his back. He didn’t point the gun at Jack but just showed him that it was there. It was a .357 Magnum with a sandalwood grip, like something a gun collector might have, not a drug dealer. Jack pretended it didn’t bother him.

They were in a small foyer, closed in by a second thick oak door that looked a heck of a lot more secure than the one in front. Jack hadn’t expected this. He’d wanted to get in, find an opportunity, shoot one or two guys real quick, grab a gun, then head out the door, shooting as he went. A second door was an obstacle. Not a big one, but anything was trouble when he didn’t have much room for mistakes anyway.

“Arms up,” Misfit said.

Jack raised his arms, and the Mexican came in to pat him down. If they checked his hat, he’d have to make a move for Misfit’s gun, but he probably wouldn’t be able to get it. The Mexican was thorough, even checking Jack’s boots, but he ignored the hat.

“I know y’all are a distributor and you wouldn’t normally deal with a guy like me,” Jack said. “But Stu was dry and I ain’t got time to keep looking.”

“Why the hurry?” Misfit said.

“I’m just driving through from L.A.,” Jack said, wanting to get the story out quickly. “My sister was down there using and I’m trying to get her back home to Wyoming where I can get her some help. But I’m a realistic man and I know she can’t just quit. I’m just trying to get enough to get home so I can get her some help.”

Both men stared at him suspiciously.

“I ain’t a user but I ain’t judging y’all. I just want to get my sister through this. I been out looking all night and all I found was Stu. All I want is to get some stuff an y’all won’t never see me no more.”

“Where’s your sister at?” Misfit asked.

“She’s at a motel, sicker’n a dog.”

“Well,” Misfit said, “you’re going to have to talk to Gabe. He makes the decisions.”

Gabe — the name he and David had heard over and over again. That’s the guy, Jack thought. No matter what happens afterward, I’ll get him at least.

The Mexican pounded against the second door; there wasn’t a handle on this side.

“Open up!”

A white guy with a nose ring and a shaved head opened it. As Jack stepped inside the house, the smell of the cooking meth hit him. It stank like chemical cleaners. He was instantly light-headed, like he’d stood too fast. He tried to walk straight, to pretend it wasn’t bothering him. The others didn’t seem to notice.

Misfit led him into the kitchen. A group of people were sitting at a table working. Jack tried to get his bearings, tried to count the people and determine what kind of situation he was in. But his wooziness wasn’t going away — it was getting worse. He felt nauseous, dizzy. Not all that different from the time in boot camp when they had to go into the tear-gas chamber. He saw a table full of equipment: burners, pans, boxes of cleaning supplies. He saw bags of powder on the counter, lots of them. An AK-47 was leaning against the wall and an Uzi was sitting by the sink next to a box of Cheez-Its.

Misfit led him through the house and he followed. A couple guys were sitting on the sofa watching an old Clint Eastwood western. Jack couldn’t tell which one. Beer bottles and ashtrays were all over the coffee table, and a sawed-off shotgun. A pit bull in the corner stood up and started barking at him, then someone — Jack couldn’t figure out who — yelled at it. It sat back down. Jack noticed the dog was lying near a rusty brown stain about the size of a stop sign on the gray carpet. Jack wondered if it was blood.

They went down a hall and Misfit knocked on a door.

“There’s a cowboy here to see you.”

“A what?” It was a girl’s voice.

Misfit cracked the door.

“A cowboy. He’s just passing through. Said Stuart Kicking Bird told him where to go.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” A male voice this time. “Okay. What the fuck ever.”

Misfit opened the door, and Jack looked past him and saw it was a bathroom. A pretty Indian girl sat on a chair facing the tub, where a man was lying in bathwater. Several candles were burning. Incense. A two-by-four lay across the tub, spanning the guy like a bridge. A black rubber strap and an empty syringe sat on the wood. A pistol sat on the linoleum floor by the tub.

“Wow,” the girl said. “He really is a cowboy.”

Jack reached up and tipped his hat.

“Ma’am,” he said.

It wasn’t something he would normally do. He felt giddy.

The guy in the tub shifted to get a better look at Jack. He had brown hair, shaggy and almost to his shoulders. The hair on his face was an unruly mess somewhere between a beard and a few days’ stubble. His eyes were so bloodshot Jack could see the red from where he was.

“Well, come on in, cowboy,” Gabe said, his smile suggesting he found this funny in a way no one else quite would.

The girl stood.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” she said.

She walked past Jack and stared at him as she passed by, so close that he could smell her over the chemicals. She was so pretty he couldn’t believe it. Not pretty in any done-up way. Just cute. Long straight brown hair. Clean almond-colored skin. Eyes dark like rich fertile soil. Why couldn’t he meet a girl like this back home?

“Be nice to him,” she said to Gabe, not taking her eyes off Jack. “He’s a cute cowboy.”

Jack smiled at her. He wondered if there was still hope for her. He thought about not going through with it all, then he stepped into the bathroom, telling himself to get his head straight.

“Pedro frisked him,” Misfit said. “Motherfucker’s clean.”

Misfit shut the door behind him, leaving Jack alone with Gabe.

“Sit down,” Gabe said, picking up the pistol, a Glock, and laying it on the two-by-four.

Jack sat.

Jack stared, unblinking, at the campfire. He and David had hardly spoken all evening. They built the fire, cooked hot dogs over the flames, and sipped beers in a sort of robotic daze. Now a mound of red and orange coals lay beneath the few logs. The coals were hot, twisting with orange and red and black shapes. Jack could see images in the coals, like flaming clouds. Faces, tortured visages. But he couldn’t seem to make himself look away. He felt almost like he was losing his mind. He’d looked at his brother’s dead body in the Carson City morgue that afternoon, and now he couldn’t quite make sense of anything.

Across the fire, David pulled out his can of Kodiak, hit it against his palm to pack it, and then put a pinch in his lip. He spit into the fire.

“Want some?” he said.

Jack shook his head no.

David took a deep breath. “I tell you what,” he said.

Jack knew immediately that his brother had been planning to say what he was about to, had been mulling it over all evening, waiting for the right moment.

“That lawman ain’t gonna do a goddamn thing,” he said.

“Nope.” Jack put another log on the fire without looking at David. The wood caught immediately, and the flames rose. The night was chilly — it was summer, but they were in the mountains — and Jack’s back was cold while his knees, close to the fire, were hot.

“He might as well have said, ‘He’s just some drug dealer; it ain’t like he was somebody who mattered.’” David spat onto the log. The tobacco juice sizzled like hot grease. “Like they got better things to do. This is Carson City. How many murders they got here?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said, taking his hat off, setting it on a log.

He put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, running his fingers back and forth through his hair. He closed his eyes but could still see flashes of orange on the inside of his black lids. The fire was dry against his face and hands. All he could think about was what he should have done differently. He’d seen something was wrong with Jamie when he was home for Christmas, and he suspected it was drugs. But he never guessed how far Jamie must have been involved in that world. He’d wanted to say something, take him aside and give him a good talking-to. Instead, though, when he drove him to the airport, they were silent most of the way, and as he shook his hand and said goodbye, all he’d said was, “If you ever need anything, let me know, okay?” Jamie nodded and that was it. The last time he saw his brother alive.

“Well, if the law ain’t gonna do nothing,” David said, “I think we should.”

Jack looked into the fire again and not at David. He’d been thinking the same thing, speculating on how realistic it would be for him to ask around town and track down who Jamie had been hanging around with. Then, if he could figure it out, could he go through with killing those who’d done in his brother? Jack’s four years in the army fell between the two Gulf wars; he’d never been in combat but felt confident he’d be able to handle himself.

“I say we go home, get some shit — guns — and come back and start asking questions.” David spat. “What do you think?”

“I been thinking the same thing.” Jack paused for a long time and then, still looking into the fire, said, “Only just me, not you.”

“He was my brother too,” David said.

He was right. Even at sixteen, David was old enough to want his brother’s murderers brought to justice.

“I know,” Jack said. “Still.”

“I ain’t a kid no more. I can shoot as well as you. I—”

“Just shut up and let me think,” Jack said.

Jack thought about going home, telling his ma and pa what happened, and trying to put the whole thing behind him like a bad memory. But he already had memories in his mind that he couldn’t push away, things he wished he’d done to help Jamie before it got this far. He hadn’t said anything when Jamie failed out of the University of Nevada and moved to Carson City with friends. He just figured it was his brother’s life to do what he wanted with. And then at Christmas, with Jamie looking so pale and as thin as a post, Jack hadn’t done anything. Jamie had smiled just like always, like nothing bothered him. His grin had always been infectious, but in December all Jack could think about was how yellow his teeth seemed to look. And yet he still didn’t say anything.

So, he thought, staring into the fire, you gonna fail your brother again?

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll come back and ask some questions, see what happens.”

“And kill them that killed Jamie?”

He looked up from the flames at David. “If we can.”

David smiled. His face was stained with shadows cast upward from the fire. His eye sockets were dark holes; his forehead was in darkness. Only his grin was aglow from the orange flames. Jack shuddered, wondering if he’d just made a mistake. David spat into the fire, and the juice sizzled.

The air was clearer in the bathroom and Jack immediately began to feel better.

“What brings you to my home?” Gabe asked, settling back into the water. He didn’t seem to care that he was meeting a stranger while naked in a bathtub.

Jack looked around. There was a big window above the tub, stained white with shower scum but not covered by any curtain. The mirror over the sink was cracked. The toilet was open and the water inside was yellow. A double-barrel shotgun leaned against the wall by a pile of Penthouse magazines.

“Uh,” Jack said, looking into the tub. He saw Gabe’s penis, floating in the water, pointing up. He saw the dark hair on the man’s stomach and chest swaying in the water like weeds in a pond. He looked Gabe in the face. He was afraid and he didn’t want to be.

“Uh,” he said again, taking off his hat, careful not to show the gun, and shaking his head. “I’m sorry. My head’s spinning a bit from the chemicals in the air. I’m sure y’all don’t notice, but I’m a virgin when it comes to this stuff.”

“Pure in heart and soul,” Gabe said, grinning. “A real fucking cowboy.”

“I don’t know about pure,” Jack said. “Just unfamiliar is all.”

He was feeling better and better.

“Where you from, boy?” Gabe said, imitating Jack’s accent.

Jack opened his mouth and almost said Montana. He caught himself and said, “Wyoming. I’m coming back from L.A., where my little sister was into some stuff. I’m taking her home, but I just need to get her a quick fix so I can get her back and into a program of some sort.”

Gabe just looked at him.

“I’m sorry to show up at your door like this. I just need enough to get her through till Wyoming. She’s pretty sick right now.”

Holding his hat in his lap, Jack reached in and fingered the Derringer. He wished he’d brought a knife. He’d never guessed he’d get an opportunity to be alone with this guy.

Gabe shifted in the water, getting more comfortable. “You remind me of a friend of mine,” he said.

The Glock sat on the board, but both the guy’s hands were in the water.

“Yeah,” Jack said.

“Had an accent like yours. Probably a lot like your sister. From the middle of nowhere. Got involved in some shit he wasn’t ready for. Good kid, though. He was a fucking hoot.”

“Yeah.”

“I could just listen to him talk all night long, man. Just get high and listen to him.”

“What was his name?”

“Jamie,” Gabe said. “From Montana.”

Jack half thought the guy was messing with him and any second he would grab the Glock and point it at him.

“What happened to him?” Jack asked.

“Jamie. He pissed me off. We’re not on speaking terms right now.”

Jack remembered his brother: napping on the couch, smiling with pure happiness after taking a big trout out of the river, sneaking in drunk at two in the morning and unable to keep himself from laughing while Pa yelled at him, wiping sweat from his face and complaining while they made hay in the barn. He saw Jamie hooting as the two of them rode through the pasture together, pushing their horses into a lope and heading home for supper. Jack saw his brother’s face, expressionless and plastic, on the slab in the morgue, his throat open like a second wide grinning mouth, his windpipe visible like a limp white tongue.

“Say something country, man,” Gabe said. “Say something like, tighter than a bull’s ass in fly season. Or hotter than a whore on dollar day. As nervous as a fart in a windstorm. Say something country and I’ll sell you what you came for.”

“I got one,” Jack said. “I got one y’all are gonna love.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jack said.

He pulled out the Derringer and lunged forward, sending his hat flying. He put his left hand over the Glock, holding it down, and thrust the Derringer into Gabe’s face. Gabe pulled back against the porcelain wall behind him and Jack jammed the gun into his eye. Jack saw terror on Gabe’s face and felt a thrill from it.

“James Fisher was my brother,” he said, and squeezed the trigger.

He’d shot enough deer to know that bullet wounds didn’t look like they do in the movies. This was no different. He’d shot Gabe in the left eye, but blood was coming out both sockets. And his nose and his ears. Like a grenade had gone off inside the man’s brain.

Jack forced himself to stop looking. The sound had been more a pop than a loud blast, but Jack knew it would be enough to get the attention of everyone else in the house. He tried to move as fast as he could. He shoved the Glock into his waistband, then locked the door. It was cheap fiberboard and could be busted apart in seconds, but it might buy him some time. He grabbed the shotgun.

“What the hell’s going on in there?” The voice sounded like Misfit. Right on the other side of the door.

Jack glanced at Gabe. Half the water was red now, and Jack’s hat was floating at Gabe’s crotch.

Something crashed against the door. The lock held, but Jack heard wood splinter. He didn’t think it would take many more hits like that. He pointed the shotgun at the window above the tub and squeezed both triggers. There was a double click. He broke the gun and saw both barrels were empty.

“Damn,” he said, and tossed the gun into the bathwater.

Misfit crashed against the door again. More splintering.

“Hey, Misfit,” Jack yelled, pulling out the Glock.

“Huh?”

Jack pointed the Glock at the door where he thought Misfit would be and started pulling the trigger. He lost count at four rounds and stopped himself a few shots later. The noise was deafening in the little room. His ears rang. Gunsmoke filled the air in a thick cloud. He pointed the Derringer at the window and fired. It only put a small hole in the glass, so he shot it again with the Glock. Glass came down onto Gabe and into the red water.

Jack heard shouting from behind the door. Screaming. The dog was barking. A baby started crying.

What the hell they got a baby in a place like this for? Jack thought.

His heart was pounding hard, even harder than when he jumped out of an airplane for the first time. He put one foot on the tub, kicking the two-by-four and a candle into the water, then stopped. How many bullets do I got left? Two? One? None?

He stepped away from the tub. He unlocked the door and yanked it open. Misfit lay on the floor, bleeding into the carpet like a gutted deer staining the snow. Two men were down at the end of the hall, both with guns. Jack fired at them and they jumped for cover. His gun went click click click. He dropped the Glock, grabbed Misfit’s .357, and darted back into the bathroom. The AK-47 started up like a buzz saw and ripped into the door. Chunks of wood exploded into the bathroom. Jack jumped out the window headfirst, diving over Gabe and the tub. He heard bullets whine by. He hit the ground hard. He felt pain — in his knees, elbows, chest — and he thought he might not be able to get up in time. He took a deep breath; he tasted fresh air. Then he ignored the hurt and was up and running.

Jack had been the fastest running back in the state in high school, but he’d never run with the football like he ran now. He felt like he was almost flying as he sped around the house, through the yard, and across the street. He jumped and slid across the hood of an LTD. The AK-47 started firing again behind him, and he fell onto the sidewalk, scraping his elbows and forearms on the concrete. He still held the Derringer in one hand, the .357 in the other. He hid behind the wheel, and heard more shots. A shotgun. A pistol. The shooting stopped for a second, and he tried to peek up over the hood. He heard the bullet zip by his head before he heard the blast of the gun. He jerked back down, and more gunfire began. The Ford shook from the bullets slamming into it.

Then Jack heard the familiar crack of David’s 30.06. There was screaming, then a second crack, then the screaming stopped.

Jack felt a swelling of pride about David’s shooting skill, then he wondered if this was something he should be proud of.

After the third crack of the rifle, all shooting stopped.

Did he get two or three already?

Jack pointed Misfit’s revolver at the passenger-side mirror and squeezed the trigger. He jammed the Derringer into his pocket and picked up the biggest chunk of mirror he could find and held it up. It took him a few seconds to orient himself through the glass, but then he spotted two bodies, one slumped over in a bush, the other lying in the yard. Then he glimpsed a figure crouched behind a tree. The person had no shirt on — the Mexican kid who’d frisked him? Others were hiding inside the front doorway. There was another crack, and the guy behind the tree went down. The figures in the doorway backed up into the house. He saw, in the side yard, one of the victims of David’s shooting had been the pretty Indian girl. She was lying facedown in the grass, her brown hair spread around her in tendrils.

He realized what they were doing in a way he hadn’t before. It punched him in the gut. Jack wanted this to be over. He wanted to go back in time and make a different decision.

Then he heard the crack of David’s .270. He’d switched rifles, which had been the plan all along. Don’t bother to reload until both were empty. Another crack. Falling glass. David was shooting at the house now.

Don’t do that, Jack thought. There’s a baby in there.

Jack took off running, hunched low. David kept shooting, but no one returned fire from the house.

Only about twenty-five yards away now. He saw a figure coming round the back of the truck, sneaking up behind David. His brother was hanging out the driver’s side window, using the window frame to rest his elbow and steady his gun. Who was the guy? Someone he hadn’t seen before. Someone who hadn’t been in the house maybe. Just coming home.

“Davey,” Jack tried to yell, but his voice was just a hoarse whisper. “Davey,” he tried again, but it wasn’t much louder.

“Goddamn drug dealers,” the man said, and shot.

David jerked into the truck. His rifle fell to the pavement. The barrel made a dinging sound when it hit. Jack ran full speed into the street.

The man, wearing pajama bottoms and a tank top, saw him and raised his pistol. He fired but missed. He was middle-aged, with a mustache and a gut. Jack swung his revolver up. He had the flash of a memory of going out into the field with Jamie and David and seeing how fast they could draw and shoot like cowboys. He’d been the best of the three, even good enough to shoot from his hip and hit a bottle thrown into the air. He pointed the gun at the man and held down the trigger and fanned the hammer with his left hand, shooting the guy five times, all in the chest, and kept on firing until the gun clicked three times. The guy went to his knees first, then fell over in the street. Jack had seen people die just like that in the movies — Hollywood had got it right on that one. Behind the man, Jack could see the sun just coming up over the hills to the east, bright, orange, red.

Jack sprinted to the truck, out of breath, a lump in his throat just like the one he’d had when the Nevada policeman called to tell him Jamie was found in a dumpster, his throat slit.

“Davey,” he said, coming around and looking in the window.

“Damn it,” David said.

He was slumped against the other door, holding his head with one hand. David’s fingers were red, and his hair was wet.

“It hurts,” David said.

“Ah hell,” Jack said, yanking the door open and getting in. He tossed the .357 on the seat. “Talk to me, Davey.”

“Shot me in the head,” David muttered.

Please, Jack thought. Please let it be one of those miracle shots where the bullet didn’t hurt his brain. Please.

“Did we win?” David asked.

“We sure did,” Jack said, starting the truck.

He heard a scream and looked up to see a woman running through a yard, heading his way, her eyes focused on the guy lying in the street. She was wailing. Jack grabbed the shotgun and pointed it out the window. He saw she wasn’t armed, but he shot anyway. The woman crumpled into the street. She had graying hair, sweatpants, a Mickey Mouse T-shirt that was turning red. Jack looked at the man lying by her feet. Some regular Joe fed up with a drug war happening on his street, playing vigilante. And the lady was his wife.

For a moment the neighborhood was completely quiet. Jack had never heard such silence in his life. Then he heard the sound of the sprinkler. He heard a dog barking. He heard a screen door slam. He heard screaming. He heard sirens.

“Hellfire and damnation,” Jack said, and stomped on the gas.

He yanked the wheel to do a U-turn and almost ran over the bodies of the man and woman lying in the street. The back wheels spun, screeching on the pavement, then tearing up over the curb and spitting dirt and grass. The truck jerked like when he took it off-roading, then all four tires were on pavement and he sped away. The sirens were loud now. Behind him, someone ran into the street and shot once at the truck. But the truck was too far away.

“Keep talking,” Jack said, glancing at his brother as he ran a stop sign.

“I’m okay,” David muttered, but his hand fell away, and his head rolled down so his chin almost rested on his chest. He looked like a drunk unable to keep from passing out. Blood dripped out of his hair and streaked down his face, bright red against his pale skin.

“You’re going to be okay, Davey,” Jack said, but he heard the panic in his voice. “Trust me, little brother. Just trust me.”

Jack’s hands shook. His eyes were blurry with tears. He was having trouble seeing. He didn’t know where he was going. He screeched around a corner onto Highway 50 and floored the gas, heading east, not knowing why.

“Talk to me, Davey.”

Jack’s brother muttered something incomprehensible.

Jack pushed the truck to a hundred miles an hour, zipping around cars on the four-lane highway. The sun was up now, a bright, almost blinding blood-red bullet hole in the blue sky in front of him. He realized no police were following him. No drug dealers. But he didn’t slow down.