Page 80 of Three-Inch Teeth

Cates nodded.

“When we got back from the club this morning, I got to thinking. We left that golf course in such a damned hurry. I know it couldn’t be helped under the circumstances.”

“Yes.”

“So we had no time to finish the job properly, and we didn’t have time to cover our tracks. And when I say cover our tracks, I mean exactly that.”

Cates felt a chill go through him. Not only were there probably tire tracks from Johnson’s pickup in the soft mulch, but he’d walked around in the alcove himself.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck …” he whispered.

Soledad said, “Don’t worry about it, Dallas. We’re golden.”

“But how? Did you go back to the club?”

“Of course not,” Soledad said. “I figured the place was crawling with cops. So I borrowed a rifle from our California friends and took their car into town. Let’s just say I created a diversion serious enough to pull all those cops straight off the golf course.”

Soledad said, “Random violence screws them up, and they run around like chickens with their heads chopped off. I know about this from experience in the field. If you want to create an absolute clusterfuck, you do something with no motive, no rhyme or reason.

“The cops will start with the victim and work out from there. Who was she? Did she have enemies? Is there some kind of gang war going on at the school? Did the shooter have another target in mind? Those are the questions they’ll ask. Then they’ll chase their tails around like puppies and get absolutely nowhere fast. But what they won’t do,” Soledad said, “is think to go back to the original crime scene right away.”

“She?” Cates said. “The school?”

“I’ll give you all the details later,” he said with a cold smile. “Just be happy that it worked like a charm.”

As Cates started to put it together with equal measures of horror and admiration, Soledad said, “We’ll need to get back up to the club tonight and take a couple of rakes. Then we can finish this thing in one fell swoop and get the hell out of Wyoming.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Never Summer Ranch

FOR SHERIDAN, BREAKFAST was very uncomfortable and not just because she’d arrived late to the Never Summer Ranch. She’d been held up because it took longer than she’d estimated to feed and load all her falcons into her vehicle, as well as to pack up her belongings. And when DeWayne Kolb wasn’t behind the front desk like he’d told her he’d be, she’d had to go out and find him at a diner down the block to return the room key and get his assurances that he’d adjust the cost of the room to reflect her stay.

“I hope that lunatic Bottom didn’t drive you away,” Kolb said, mainly for the benefit of the other local men at the table. “You were barely here long enough to experience the place.”

“I finished my job,” she told him. “Now I’m going home.”

“Come back,” Kolb said. “You should see this place in the summer.”

“All five days of it,” another man said with a chuckle. “It’s wonderful.”

*

LEON BOTTOM WAS a little cool at first when Sheridan arrived, but his mood improved rapidly when Katy Cotton delivered plate after plate of steaming food from the kitchen adjacent to the dining room. He dug into fried eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, syrup, wheat toast, strawberry jam, and fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Cotton retreated to the kitchen after the first round and eased the door closed. She’d made a point of not making eye contact with Sheridan as she served the food.

Sheridan was fascinated with watching the man eat. He did so with total focus, his fork working from the plate to his mouth like a piston, and not until he cleared his plate did he look up at her.

“I went into the barn this morning,” he said, going for seconds. “There wasn’t a starling in sight.”

“Excellent.”

“Where do you think they all went?” he asked. “Not that I care, but I’m curious.”

She said, “By now, those starlings have found a new place to invade. I’m pretty sure they won’t come back, but I thought it made sense to hang around here until about noon. There might be a few stragglers who return, not knowing the big group was chased off.”

“You can stay longer than that if you’d like,” Bottom said.

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