Tully heard the tracker shout that he had found several sets of tire tracks. Dave strolled out of the woods. “The freshest one is the last to come out. One or more of our suspects may be long gone. I still haven’t found any sign of a road. The tracks just wind in and out through the trees.”
Tully walked over to Dave and looked at the tracks. “What do you make of them?”
Dave shook his head. “Not much. Looks to me as if the first vehicle had some vague idea about where it was going its first trip in. It wandered around quite a bit. Once it found the the right track, it made three trips in and two trips out. That would seem to mean some of the folks are still in there. What do you think, Bo?”
Tully studied the tracks. “It looks to me as if the people in the first vehicle tried to brush out the first part of their tracks with branches or something. Once the driver of the second vehicle found the tracks of the first one, he didn’t bother hiding his own tracks. I figure the occupants of one of those vehicles shot the old couple to keep them from telling about the hideout. The old woman was a Beeker, if Batim Scragg is correct. So maybe she recognized Horace Beeker. That might be reason enough for either Beeker or Dance to kill her. The old man was just an eyewitness to her murder and had to be disposed of too.”
Susan walked over from the double-wide “So far I’ve checked only one body. My best estimate is she was killed three days ago, maybe even a little earlier. It’s been pretty cold in there, so I’m mostly guessing.”
Tully said, “Two days or earlier fits my time frame. I think their killers may be where we can find them. If you can manage it Susan, you might want to stick around for awhile, save you from making a trip back here.”
“You think there might be more bodies?”
“That’s my intention.”
“I assume you’re talking about the monsters that killed the old couple.”
“Yeah. According to the tracks, they’re still in there, unless they rode out with the second vehicle.”
Susan said, “I’ll send the two bodies we have here back to Blight and follow you in the other van with a couple of assistants. Don’t expect any backup from my guys in a firefight. Following you always turns out to be a big mistake.”
Tully smiled. “Not always, you have to admit.”
Susan smiled back. “I guess you’re right about that, once or twice anyway.”
The caravan of cars consisted of the two red sheriff department Explorers, followed by the M.E.’s van. Vera rode with Lurch and Angie in Tully’s back seat, Dave alongside him in the front seat. Pap rode with Pugh and Ernie in the second vehicle. Dave pointed out the tracks to Tully as their vehicle bumped and slid among the trees. After half an hour the tracks veered sharply off toward the mountains. Soon they could see the Hoodoos rearing up in the morning sun, a blue background flickering through a line of yellow tamaracks. Dave pointed to a stream flowing out of a drainage in the mountains. “An old road winds up through there, but it doesn’t look like anything we or anybody else could navigate. I doubt it goes to Round Top.”
Tully drove through the shallow stream, the tires slipping on mossy rocks. “I see where our friends drove up the other bank there.” The Explorer plowed up the bank and through a dense patch of brush.
Dave laughed. “Brush is always good for a car’s finish. Gives it that natural look.”
“Yeah,” Tully said. “This Explorer’s getting about as natural as it’s possible to get.” He glanced over his shoulder. Pugh’s Explorer had tentatively dipped its front tires into the stream. Susan’s van had stopped, apparently to survey the situation. Tully stopped to wait for them.
Dave opened his door. “I’ll get out and look around a bit.”
“Be my guest.” Tully turned to the backseat. “How you doing back there, Vera?” She looked a bit frazzled.
“Bo, this is the most thrilling adventure I’ve ever had.”
“I thought you’d prefer this to riding back to town in a medical examiner’s van with two dead bodies.”
Vera nodded. “This is wonderful, Bo. I haven’t had this much excitement in years.”
He watched out the back window as the other Explorer clawed its way up out of the creek. “I’m not sure what’s in store for us up ahead. If there’s any shooting, Vera, you hit the floor fast and stay there.”
“Shooting! Oh, dear, I didn’t think it could get any better than this! All my life, Bo, I’ve wanted to have an adventure, and now I’m having one.”
Tully turned and smiled at her. “I’m pleased you’re enjoying it.”
Vera laughed. “Agent Phelps probably has adventures like this all the time.”
Angie forced a smile. “Well, actually, Vera, only when I somehow find myself in the company of Sheriff Tully. He’s a regular magnet for excitement.”
Dave came walking out of the trees and climbed back into the Explorer. “You’re not going to believe this, Bo, but I’ve found something that resembles a road. Has to be an old service road to the lookout. We’ve probably been driving along next to it for the last half hour.”
“Must be. Apparently the folks whose tracks we’ve been following didn’t know about it either. How do we get to it?”
Dave pointed. “Crank her hard to the right, Bo. It just up on the other side of that mound of rock and gravel.”
The Explorer bumped and thumped and scraped over the mound, coming to rest in a facsimile of a road. It appeared as though a creek had used it as a bed for a number of years, scouring it down to great slabs of rock, but nevertheless offering better going than the forest had. Tully pulled ahead and waited for the other Explorer and the mortuary van to crash in behind them. He could see Susan in his rearview mirror shaking her head in exasperation.
Tully glanced over his shoulder. Angie was fast asleep. “You doing all right, Vera?”
She laughed. “Bo, this is the most fun I’ve had in years. I think we’ve landed on the road to the lookout. There is a little map in the book, and if I remember correctly the road should start winding up the mountain pretty soon.”
“Great! Once we’re on the mountain we should get hard rock under us, although the road already looks better.”
Dave squinted ahead through the windshield. “We seem to have lost the tracks we were following, but we should pick them up before long, if we’re on the right road.”
The road was much smoother than the tracks among the trees had been. Shortly after the grade increased Tully could see where other vehicles had burst through the embankment to get to the road.
Dave said, “You notice there’s a faint track going down the road, Bo?”
“No, I’ve been having too much fun wrestling the steering wheel.”
Dave leaned far out his window. “As I suspected, one of the vehicles has gone out, using the road part way or at least until it disappears. So there should be only one vehicle left at the lookout.”
Tully shook his head. “I have to admit again, Dave, you are absolutely amazing. I can hardly make out the road, let alone some faint track on it.”
“That’s because you’re not a tracker, Bo.” He turned toward the back seat. “I hope you don’t mind shooting, Vera.”
“You think there might be shooting, Dave? That would be wonderful! I’m almost eighty and never had a shooting.”
Tully looked at Dave and smiled. Dave turned his attention back to Vera. “My point is, some of the shooting might be directed at us. So as soon as the first shot is fired, I want you to lie down on the floor and stay there until the shooting stops.”
“That’s what Sheriff Tully told me, too. Will I need a gun, Dave?”
“If you do, I’ll toss you a pistol. Do you know how to click off the safety?”
“Honey, I’ve been around guns all my life. I’ve never actually shot anyone though, at least not on purpose.” She laughed. “You’d make a wonderful comedian, Dave. I’ve never seen a funnier expression! No, I’ve never shot anyone, period.”
Angie said, “I must have dozed off. What’s all this talk about guns?”
The road suddenly took on a steeper incline, and they began to move up the mountain, sometimes climbing over piles of rock that had washed down from above. Occasionally Tully would attempt to drive around them, knocking other rocks off the road and into the canyon below.
Angie stretched so she could see down into the canyon. “Looks to me if we go over the edge, we’ll be in good shape for the first three hundred feet or so, but then we’ll touch down. After that it’ll be much harder going.”
Vera laughed. “You’re just trying to worry Bo, isn’t she, Dave?”
Tully said, “Worked on me, Angie.”
Up ahead a stream of water poured off an overhanging cliff. The water thundered on the roof as they drove under it. Dave spun around in his seat. “What the . . .!”
Tully laughed. “Just washing off some of the mud we picked up driving through the woods.”
“You might have to back up, and let me stand under it a while,” Dave growled at him.
Vera burst into laughter. “I know what you mean, Dave!”
He turned and frowned at her. “Can’t I get anything by you, Vera? You’re suppose to be a proper, little old lady.”
“I know, Dave, but mostly I’m just a little old lady. Just because I volunteer in a library, that doesn’t mean I’m proper.”
The higher they went on the mountain, the better the road became, but soon they were in snow, already several inches deep and still falling. Tully said, “This gets any deeper, Dave, we may have to chain up.”
“You brought chains?”
“As sheriff of Blight County, I always carry chains, enough for all four wheels.”
“There doesn’t seem to be any place to turn around. So we can’t go back. You think this Explorer can handle the snow?”
“With all four wheels chained up, it can climb trees, although I try to avoid that if I can.”
Tully was beginning to see the curvature of the mountain’s bald top. “I think we’re going to make it, Dave.” He stopped the Explorer. “Vera, there’s a plastic crate in the cargo area with some bullet-proof vests in it. Dig out two of them and hand them up to Dave and me. Take the others for Lurch, yourself, and Angie. Fasten the Velcro strips so that you get it good and tight.” Tully could tell he had just made Vera’s day. In the rearview mirror he watched her put the vest on. It completely enveloped her. If she walked across a floor, her feet would barely stick out the bottom. He couldn’t help but smile.
Vera looked at Angie. “Did I do it right?”
Angie smiled at her. “You did it perfect, Vera. Just remember what Bo said. At the first shot, you hit the floor, and stay there until I tell you it’s okay to get up. Got it?”
“Got it, Angie.”
Tully opened his door and got out. He could see the front end of the silver Land Rover poking out from the other side of the tower. The other Explorer growled up behind them and stopped. Tully waited for the M.E.‘s van to arrive. He walked back and opened the hatch door to the cargo area and took out Dave’s rifle and his own. Pap came up and claimed his. Angie was checking her automatic. She worked the slide to chamber a round.
Pap said, “The four of us going to walk up to the tower side by side like the shootout at the OK Corral?”
Tully said, “I don’t think so. They could have heard us climbing the mountain for the last half hour. We have the road blocked, so there’s no way they can get out. I suspect they’ll be waiting for us. Angie, you and Pap take rifles and cover Dave and me as we move up toward the tower. That lookout cabin isn’t going to give our friends up there much cover in a shootout, and I hope they know that. There’s a walkway all around the cabin, and there are large windows on all four sides. In order to get a shot at Dave and me, they’ll have to come out on the walkway. You know what to do if they come out armed. FBI, you’d better use Dave’s rifle and let him use your automatic.”
Angie handed the pistol to Dave and took his rifle.
“You know how to run one of these?” Dave asked Angie.
“Just point and shoot, right? It’s been a while, but I can figure it out. Let’s see, the bullet comes out the little round hole at the other end, right?”
Angie levered a shell into the chamber. She and Pap walked up to the front of the Explorer so they could brace their arms on the hood.
Walking cross the open area below the tower seemed to Tully like the longest walk he had ever taken in his life. The one good sign he noticed, no smoke came out of the cabin’s chimney. Either the occupants were asleep or had somehow snuffed out the fire when they heard the little caravan coming up the mountain. They reached the tower stairs.
He glanced at Dave. “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About climbing the stairs?”
Dave scratched his chin. “Well, Sheriff, now that I think about it, I’d like you to go first. I’ll be right behind you, covering your butt.”
“It’s not my butt I’m worried about.”
“What are you worried about? Usually, I’m not all that interested in your worries, but in this case, they might affect me.”
“I’m worried about some ignoramus lunging out of the cabin and spraying these stairs with an automatic weapon.”
Dave appeared to be turning this over in his mind. “In that case, maybe I should wait at the bottom of the tower.”
Tully jerked his Colt Commander from his shoulder holster and started up the stairs, walking on the toes of his boots. He could hear Dave close behind, walking on the toes of his boots, even though the suspects could have heard them coming for the last hour. They reached the walkway with no threat from inside. Then Tully saw the cabin door had been kicked in, its glass broken, the wood frame splintered where the lock had been torn loose.
He stuck his boot out and shoved the door wide open. Snow had drifted in and left a streak of white across the floor. He stepped in quickly, pistol leveled, his finger on the trigger.
Horace Beeker and Ed Dance were seated on a cot, their heads leaning back against a window sill, their mouths gaping. Their upper halves were soaked with blood. Each had been shot multiple times. Beeker had a pistol clutched in his hand. Dance had one in his lap.
Tully straightened up. Dave walked up alongside him. “Well, I guess we didn’t have to worry so much about these two.”
Tully looked slowly around the cabin. “Well, no sign of the loot. I suspect that may have been the motive for killing our two friends here.” Dave reached out with the automatic and used it to lift a jacket lying between Beeker and Dance. Another pistol was under the jacket. They had obviously been taken by surprise, eating a meager meal from a can of pork’n’beans they had been passing back and forth. Dirty spoons lay beside them.
“I’ll probably never eat pork’n’beans again,” Dave said.
“Me neither.” Tully pointed at the pistols. “I suspect one of those was used to kill the old couple. What do you think, Dave?”
“You don’t think the same guy did these two?”
“Could be, but I don’t think so. Lurch should be able to tell us who shot whom, when we get the bullets from Susan. I suspect our dead friends here did the old couple, probably to keep us from knowing about the tower.” He pointed to two rifles leaning against the wall. “If those are both seven millimeter, we may have the weapon that killed Vergil. Lurch should be able to figure out from the fingerprints which rifle belonged to Beeker and which to Dance, and then we’ll know which one of them shot Vergil.”
“You’re pretty sure one of them did?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
Tully heard a sound at the door and spun around. Vera was standing there with Susan. “Oh, my goodness!” she gasped. “I am just so glad you let me come along. Thank you, Bo, thank you! This is my first crime scene ever!”
“No problem,” Tully said. He thought maybe he should hire Vera for the department. Most of his deputies were wimps. It might be good to have someone in the department who was actually bloodthirsty.