When Joe paused, Pendergast opened his bloodshot eyes and looked up. Joe quickly held the canister out and blasted the man in the face with a red burst of bear spray.

—

TEN MINUTES LATER, with Pendergast cuffed facedown and howling in the grass, Joe leaned against the grille of his pickup, dabbing his eyes with a moist cloth provided by the woman in the right duplex. She’d called 911, she said. He’d gotten a whiff of the bear spray’s blowback himself, and it seemed like every fluid in his body was trying to pour out of his nose.

Lisa Greene-Dempsey stood a few feet away, shaken. She glared at him with her hands on her hips.

When he was able to make out her blurry image, Joe said, “You saw all that, right?”

“Of course I saw it,” she said, angry. “I saw the whole damned thing. You could have gotten yourself killed.”

“You didn’t get hit with any of the bear spray, did you?”

“No.”

“Good. It’s nasty stuff.”

He knew bear spray contained much more oleoresin capsicum than standard law enforcement personal-defense pepper spray, and it could turn a charging grizzly. It wasn’t designed for use on humans, but at that moment Joe didn’t care.

“I hope we don’t have a lawsuit on our hands,” she said.

“How you doing, Bryce?” Joe called out.

“I’m blind! I’m fucking blind!” Pendergast cried.

“Let him sue,” Joe said. “I thought he was going to kill me, and the bear spray was the first thing I could grab onto.”

She said, “I saw his partner run out the back and keep running down the alley.”

“Was it McDermott?”

“How should I know?” she said, her voice rising.

“We’ll find him,” Joe said. His cheek burned where the gun had gone off, and his eyes, nose, and mouth were on fire from the blowback. There was a high whistle inside his right ear that blocked out any other sound.

“Excuse me,” he said to Greene-Dempsey, and staggered past her toward the cab on his truck. “I’ve got to get on the radio and let everybody know to keep an eye out for McDermott. He won’t get far on foot.”

When he was done and hung up the mic, he turned to find Greene-Dempsey blocking his path.

“You could have been killed,” she said again, shaken. “I could have been killed.”

“I know,” he said. “This isn’t how it usually plays out. I had no idea things would get western.”

He could feel adrenaline painfully dissipating from his muscles. He imagined she felt the same way and her method of dealing with the comedown was to upbraid him.

He said, “They were cooking meth—or trying to cook it. I don’t think they had it figured out yet, judging by Bryce’s reaction. I should have known by the smell and the chemical burns in the grass.”

In the distance, several blocks away, he heard the whoop of a siren.

“Maybe they found McDermott,” Joe said.

“I hope so,” Greene-Dempsey said.

“They’re not all meth heads,” Joe said defensively, to a point she hadn’t raised. To Pendergast, still crying on the ground, “You’re not all bad, are you, Bryce?”

“Fuck you, I’m blind!” Pendergast shouted back.

Greene-Dempsey looked from Joe to the suspect, her anger replaced by caution.

“Joe . . .” she said worriedly.

Joe grunted and stepped around her and walked toward Pendergast in the yard. Pendergast continued to rage on that he was blind, and Joe stepped around him and retrieved the .45 and stuffed it in his belt. As he returned to the truck, he wheeled near Pendergast and reached again for the holstered canister of bear spray.

“No, no!” Pendergast screamed. “Put that back!” He tried to wriggle away in the direction of the house.

Joe turned and shrugged to Greene-Dempsey. “See, he’s not blind.”

She started to say something when the iPhone in her hand chimed. Joe watched her check the screen, and she looked up and said “Julio Batista” before taking the call. As she listened, her demeanor changed to one of utter seriousness, he thought.

Greene-Dempsey signed off, lowered the phone, and said, “They’re ready for you now. You’re supposed to meet them at some ranch outside of town, and he said you knew the place.”

“Big Stream Ranch,” Joe said dourly.

“That’s the one,” she said.

12

DAVE FARKUS FELT LIKE HE WAS BEING SHAKEN TO death, like his teeth were going to vibrate out of their sockets, and he asked ex-Sheriff Kyle McLanahan, who was at the wheel of the three-quarter-ton pickup towing the long six-horse trailer, if he was going to slow down soon. They were on an ancient two-track fire road that was washboarded and marred by cross-trenches caused by spring runoff. The center strip consisted of bumper-high sagebrush that scratched along the undercarriage of the pickup like long fingernails on a blackboard. A long roll of dust followed the rig.

“Why?” McLanahan asked.

“We’ve been on bad roads for an hour,” Farkus said, looking out at the dust-covered hood between the shoulders and heads of the two men in the front seat. “I feel like I’m gonna get sick.”

Spare tools and beer bottle caps skittered about at Farkus’s feet in the back.

“We’re in a hurry, Farkus.”

Then McLanahan turned to the man in the passenger seat of the crew cab, a dark man Farkus had met for the first time when McLanahan picked him up, and who hadn’t said two words in the past two hours.

“Jimmy, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Sollis said.

“Jimmy’s fine,” McLanahan said to Farkus, making eye contact via the rearview mirror. “Time to strap in and cowboy up, buckaroo.”

Farkus turned away and stared out the side window at the sagebrush flats. They were vibrating as far as he could see.

—

THE IDEA, McLanahan had said when he arrived at Farkus’s mobile home with the horse trailer attached to his pickup and the mystery man in the passenger seat, was to drive north on the interstate, cut off at Winchester, and approach from the west the range of mountains where Butch Roberson was last seen.

“Those federal yahoos,” McLanahan said, “are going to mass on the east slope at Big Stream Ranch and push west. When ol’ Butch, he realizes the Feds are coming—I figure those boys will make a lot of noise and racket moving through the timber—Butch won’t be stupid enough to try and make a stand. Instead, he’ll stay ahead of ’em and work his way west. There are only a couple of possibilities how he’ll come out, and I’m guessing he’ll use the most direct route and the one he’s most familiar with. That’s where we’ll set up and intercept him.”

Farkus had nodded, not able to visualize the route McLanahan had in mind. Apparently, his puzzlement was written on his face, and it was obvious to the ex-sheriff.

“That’s where you hunted with him, right?” McLanahan said. “Up there on the west side on those saddle slopes and in those canyons?”

“I think so,” Farkus had said, “but we came from the other side, from the ranch. We never went up there from the west side.”

McLanahan had rolled his eyes and said, “It’s the same mountain, Farkus. The features don’t change because you’re looking at them from a different direction.”

“It’s wild country up there,” Farkus said. “It’s easy to get turned around.”

Inside the cab of the pickup, Farkus had heard the mystery man snort a derisive laugh.

“Who is that?” Farkus asked, chinning the direction of the pickup.

“Jimmy Sollis. His brother used to be a deputy of mine, a good loyal guy. He was killed in the line of duty when Wheelchair Dick got it. I’ll always be regretful it wasn’t the other way around.”

Farkus looked up, trying to connect the dots.

“He’s a prize-winning long-distance shooter,” McLanahan said. “He travels the country winning tournaments. He’s got some kind of custom rifle and scope, and he knocks the center out of targets at a thousand-plus yards. I figure he’s a good man to have along, and he wants to test his skill.”