Page 77 of Three-Inch Teeth

Joe knew that the judge disliked shaking hands or just about any form of physical contact, so he reached under the sheets and grasped Hewitt’s hand. It was cool to the touch and it instantly recoiled.

Hewitt suddenly grunted and his eyes focused on Joe.

“He knows I’m here and I think he can hear me,” Joe said. “Judge, what did you see?”

“Please,” the PA said, shouldering Joe aside. “They’re waiting on us.”

Joe was frustrated, but didn’t want an altercation, so he stepped back. The attendant moved to the foot of the gurney to push it outside. The PA opened the double doors and kicked wooden wedges under each one to keep them agape. Outside, the chopper idled on the helipad as its rotors spun ineffectually.

As the gurney passed by him, the PA suddenly leaned down and turned his head so his ear was close to Judge Hewitt’s mouth. He stood back up after the gurney rolled outside.

“Did he say something to you?” Joe asked.

The PA blinked. “He said what sounded like ‘red dot.’”

“Red dot?”

“That’s what I think he said. It could have been something else, though.”

“Like from a rifle scope?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Pickett. Now, if you don’t mind …”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Joe said. “Thanks for your help.”

Red dot?

CHAPTER TWENTY

Cates Compound

DALLAS CATES PACED the length of his former house with an angry stride while firing out occasional air punches and mumbling, “Fuck, fuck, fuck …” His route was so familiar to him he could have done it with his eyes closed: from the front door, through the living room, into and out of the kitchen, and into the back mudroom until he reached the door. Then spinning on his boot heel and doing it again.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck …”

As he did it, Cates recalled episodes of his boyhood when he’d paced the same route before or during significant events in his life. He remembered doing it as a freshman in high school while wearing a wrestling team singlet, psyching himself up to take on the varsity wrestler in his weight class, which he did. Then again, two years later, as he prepared to win his first state championship in wrestling. He recalled nervously pacing a year later as he waited for the local cops to show up because of that sexual assault claim that had been made by a female hanger-on who had accused the entire wrestling squad.

He’d done the same routine in cowboy boots and chaps the day before winning the local rodeo and qualifying for his Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association card, and again when he had to win a go-round to get into the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas.

Back then, Eldon and Brenda had sat passively in their recliners watching him pace and shaking their heads. Eldon shook his head because he thought Dallas was wasting his energy. Brenda shook her head because she was just so darned proud of her youngest boy.

*

THIS TIME, THOUGH, Cates was cursing himself for the epic screwup an hour before. He was especially angry that it had been his fault, and his fault alone. He’d been so concerned that Bobbi would mess up and let a vehicle cruise through the main gate without alerting him, or that LOR’s aiming scheme would give them a false reading, or that Soledad would do something stupid and impulsive, that he hadn’t paid enough attention himself to that ridiculous overhanging branch that had altered the trajectory of the shooting head.

Had that Barney Fife in the sheriff’s department vehicle actually seen them leaving the scene?

And had the shooting head, although slightly diverted, done fatal damage to that bastard of a judge?

*

CATES WAS SO consumed by his anger and self-recriminations that he almost didn’t notice that Bobbi Johnson had entered the house through the mudroom door and now stood quietly with her back against the wall inside the living room. She watched him pace for a while, but he had no doubt she had come in there for a reason, that she had something she felt she needed to say.

“What?” he finally asked, putting his hands on his hips and glaring at her. He was out of breath from exertion.

“Dallas, I …” Her voice faded out. Or her nerve.

“What? Spit it out.”

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