Chapter Thirty-seven

It was the lazy part of the early afternoon when we drove through the hills back out toward the game ranch. Still not really hot, but the air was wet, like it picked up half the Gulf and moved it into Texas. I was tired again. Leaning against the seat, closing my eyes from time to time and yawning. I put in a call to Martin Sanchez and we discussed watering and feeding for a while. Any grafting or other biological pairings would be put off until I got back. The thing about Martin was that he was so good with the trees he knew them intuitively. Not trained in any of my work, but he knew what to do without being told. He could look at a tree—see a yellow leaf—and be on the job that minute. As a farm manager, Martin was the best in the business.

Hunter drove in and passed the ranch house, heading instead into the parking places out by the clients’ houses. From there we walked back to where the guides stayed and walked in on three of them having their noonday meal. The three, including Earl James, looked up, surprised. Earl recognized us from the day before and raised a hand in greeting, pointing to the pot of stew on the table and then pointing to a stack of clean white bowls sitting off at the side.

“All had morning hunts,” Earl said after halfway introducing us to the other two, who kept right on eating. “Kind of late eating.”

“Ate already,” Hunter said. “Could you come outside when you’re done? Like to ask you just a few more questions.”

“You find out if that killer from Riverville killed this lady here?” he asked as he took a paper napkin to wipe his chin.

Hunter nodded. “That was him.”

“Wow!” Earl exclaimed as he got up. “Wonder what that was all about?”

The other two men nodded toward us as we headed back for the door, taking no interest in what we were talking about or why we were there.

Out in the lane, in front of all the housing, Hunter turned to Earl and asked him to show us where Sally had been shot.

He hesitated a minute, thinking hard while fumbling in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. That found and lighted, he looked off to the hills, eyes closed to slits, for a long minute.

He pointed to a track leading up, disappearing behind huge boulders.

“Have to climb a bit.” He looked down at the sandals I was wearing and shook his head.

“Maybe better you stay here,” he said.

I wasn’t about to come this far with Hunter and miss the next thing he was after. I said I’d be fine and followed the two men out across the mowed grass to where the trail began and quickly led upward, between rocks, to bigger rocks.

We were at a flat, open area, when Earl James stopped and pointed to a place just ahead. “That’s about it. Wouldn’t go any farther,” he said to me. “Rattlers in there. No boots. Shouldn’t go.”

I agreed, having forgotten about rattlesnakes. I stopped to watch as Hunter and Earl moved on a couple of hundred yards and stopped to look around at the higher hills, probably gauging where a shooter would put himself to get the best shot at people crossing this wide, open place between boulders.

I looked up, too. Not that I was expecting to see anything. Couple of years ago, after all. Doubted anybody was lying in wait, hoping for a second shot.

There was no seeing without putting a hand up to shade my eyes. The sun was at its highest. My sunglasses were back in the truck. Still, I caught a flash of something pretty far up in the hills. Probably a bottle left up there. Even mica in the rocks could give off flashes when the sun hit it right. I stood there hoping to see the flash again and maybe tell Hunter about it, when the flash became something like fireworks, or at least a lot brighter. More like an explosion.

Before I could do any real thinking, something hit me and I was down on the ground, putting a hand to my left shoulder and coming away with a palm full of blood. I was damned mad at first and then the pain hit and all I could do was bend over and groan, then try to roll out of the way of another bullet.

I opened one eye and looked up into Hunter’s face. Scared. Worried. Saying my name and telling me to stay still, right where I was. He was going after the shooter, he told me. Earl was on his way back to the house to call the sheriff and get an ambulance.

I lay there thinking, This is no fun, and then I kind of passed out and came back when the pain hit again and I was yelling that I wanted a doctor while watching the blood spread down my arm and around the fingers I’d clasped over the hole there.

Then I was crying and swearing at the same time and so grateful when men rushed up the path with a stretcher. They cut off my blouse—which was okay because I had a new bra on—and did some poking at the wound with something I figured was to sterilize it, and then I was bound up and on the stretcher and taking a bumpy ride toward a hospital somewhere. I didn’t care where. Just wanted to get there and be knocked out so the pain would stop, which happened right away after the EMT gave me a shot in my other arm.

*   *   *

I woke up in a very nice hospital with a very nice and reassuring doctor’s face above mine.

“How are you feeling?” the face asked.

I said I felt like hell and wanted to know how I got shot in the shoulder.

He said he couldn’t tell me that. The shot was a clean one, he said. “Right through your shoulder. Should be fine. Some bone fragments, but I got them all. Be out of commission for a while, is all.”

I looked around then asked for Hunter when I saw he wasn’t in the room.

“The deputy?” the doctor asked.

I nodded until I winced at the pain. Any movement seemed to set my arm on fire.

“He’s on his way. Been calling the desk every couple of minutes to see how you are. Should be here soon.”

I relaxed back against the pillow and had to pull my arm—in a sling now—over me.

I was shot, I kept telling myself. What for? Who did it? I wasn’t a Wheatley. No value in me to anyone. And then I shut my eyes and fell asleep.

When I awoke the next time, Hunter was sitting in a chair beside my bed. He looked tired and worried. When I opened my eyes, he leaned forward and smiled down at me.

“You’ve got to learn how to duck, Lindy. You’ll never make a cop, standing out there like you’ve got a target painted on you.”

“I wasn’t expecting to get shot. Who’s that mad at me?”

He shrugged. “Couldn’t find him. I climbed right up to where the shot came from. Got the cartridge, is all. Could have a fingerprint on it. The guy was long gone.”

I took a minute to let the pain settle then asked him, “What the heck, Hunter. Why me?”

“We’ll know soon. Unless they’ve got some maniac here in Ralston, too, it should be the same gun that killed Henry Wade.”

“I’m not a Wheatley. I’m not some Marine sharpshooter who killed the Wheatleys. Why would anyone want to shoot me? You think they were after you? Makes more sense. Go after the cop who is working the case.”

He shrugged. “Don’t think it was me he was after. Clean shot, the doctor said. Could have been straight through your head—if that’s what the shooter wanted to happen.”

I moaned because I was thinking I had the right not to be brave through this one. All I could think of was how Meemaw would feel when she heard about me getting shot. And after she sent me up here with Hunter. There was going to be a lot of beating of breasts around here.

Reading my mind, as he could always do, Hunter said, “Your mama and grandma and sister and brother are all on their way. I’ll tell ya, Miss Amelia’s mad as hell. I wouldn’t want to be that shooter when we catch him. Got a feeling she’ll be taking out her own pistol—if she has one—and putting an end to him—whoever he is.”

“When can I get out of here? Maybe we can beat my family to the punch and get on home.”

I barely got the words out when Bethany burst into the room and rushed to my bed, hands to her cheeks, eyes filled with tears. She moaned as she fell to her knees beside me. I figured, if nothing else, I was going to get a lot of TLC from my family.

“How did this happen? Are you going to be okay? We’re all sick about what happened . . .”

Behind Bethany came Meemaw, just about as distraught as Bethany, but in tighter control of herself.

“I should’ve known, Lindy. They’re probably after me. I was supposed to come. That bullet in you should’ve been—”

“Cut it out, Meemaw.” I used the sternest voice I could come up with before Mama was hugging me and Justin was standing behind her talking to Hunter, demanding to know when he was going to get the man who did this.

And that went on for a half an hour before everybody was kicked out.

The next morning I was released with orders to see my own doctor and not to move the arm any more than I had to. I was happy for the prescription for pain pills. What else could a wounded woman ask for in life except maybe not to be told on the way back to Riverville that the gun that shot her was the same gun that killed Henry Wade. I didn’t like being anybody’s target, least of all a sharpshooter who would always know where to find me.

And even worse, we never asked Earl about that mysterious lady.