Done in One (9781466857841) Read online

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  For Victor R. Daniel

  and

  For “Woodrow” Thomas

  My half, my hope, my heart, my hero

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Grant Jerkins

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  There’s no living with a killing. There’s no goin’ back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand … a brand sticks. There’s no goin’ back.

  — Shane

  Screenplay by A. B. Guthrie Jr., additional dialogue by Jack Sher, based on the novel by Jack Schaefer

  White. Nothing but white. Stretching to the horizon in every direction, infinite and limitless and as full of potential as an unpainted canvas or a child’s soul—pure, clean, unsoiled. But that will change.

  The boy and the man, dark figures, break through the snow. It has a quarter-inch crust of ice on top, while the powder underneath yields to the energy of youth and the substance of maturity. It comes to the man’s calves, just deep enough to be above the tops of his boots. The powder falls inside where it melts. But his icy sodden feet do not bother him. He is a hard man. He would think nothing of asking his wife to fetch his old flush-cut pliers from the toolbox to snip off a frostbitten toe. She has done this for him three times over the hard years of their marriage.

  The snow reaches to the boy’s thighs, and he finds it hard to break through the crust. But he does not walk behind the man, following a path that had been broken for him; he prefers to forge his own way, to walk beside his father, not behind him.

  Because of the depth of the snow, the boy has to hold his rifle unnaturally. Sometimes he holds it high at his side, under his armpit, or slung over his shoulder, or even raised two handed above his head when he feels in peril of stumbling. It is a bolt action .22 caliber. Purchased used last spring for the boy’s tenth birthday from the gunshop in town. “It’s time,” was what his father had said to him. It was a monumental thing. By far the most significant event of his short life. It was not the rifle itself—even though the rifle was the physical manifestation of it—that was so monumental. What was significant was that, although it was inferred, this was the only praise he had ever received from his father.

  It’s time.

  The man had even paid extra for a small 3 X 9 scope to mount on it, and his father did not spend money on frivolities.

  The boy obsessed over the rifle. He had it for three days before he ever discharged it. His bedroom was located in the oldest part of the house—the nucleus from which more modern additions grew. He spread a white towel over the wide gaps in the quarter-sawn white oak flooring laid down by his long-dead grandfather, bearers and joists visible underneath, and he took the weapon apart, amazed at how few parts it consisted of and how easy it was to put them back together. He wiped dirty black grease from the internal pieces and returned them to place with fresh light coats of 3-in-One Oil.

  The stock was constructed from a solid piece of walnut, dark stained. The butt plate was of checkered black plastic and was held on by two pan screws. Stamped on the blued steel barrel were the words Revelation—Model 120 Western Auto Supply Co. CAL. .22 L.R. His father noted that other than the brass dot front sight, it was the exact same rifle as the Marlin Model 60, but priced less and therefore a good deal. It was lovely. It was his. It was proof that his father believed in him.

  The .22 was not really appropriate for the objective of today. The .22 was for target shooting and small game hunting. It was for squirrels and rabbits and blue jays. But he had not shot any of those things. He had not killed any live thing. Not yet. Just cans and bottles and pictures torn out of a magazine. He was a good shot. Natural born. A few words of safety had been spoken, but his father had not yet instructed him in the art of shooting. The art of killing.

  Still, while the cartridge chamber is empty, the brass inner magazine tube that rests flush to the barrel is full with fifteen rounds, each LR cartridge extracted from a compact red, white, and blue Mini Group CCI box, carefully fed in by the boy before they left the house. But the boy does not yet know that his father is going to instruct him to squeeze the trigger today. And the father does not yet know that he will tell his son to do so. Their minds and their intentions are as infinite and limitless as the snow. And as prone to corruption.

  They come to a barbed wire fence, which because of the bright morning sun reflecting off the ice crust, is not visible until they are upon it. The man lays his Ruger on the frozen rind (it slides two feet across the gently sloping ice before it stops) and plunges his hand through the snow at the foot of the fence. His fingers find the bottom strand of the rusty wire and lift it up. He uses his other hand to sweep away the snow, creating a burrow for the boy to wiggle through. Once the boy is safely on the other side, the man raises his long legs and scissors himself across the top of the fence, both of their rifles held at his side.

  The father’s rig is a Ruger No. 1S Medium Sporter. The checkered walnut stock is solid and substantial. While the bluing of the barrel is worn in places from regular care, there is not a hint of corruption. Many men (he knew because he had heard them say it) found the Medium Sporter—particularly with the addition of a scope—too heavy to carry comfortably for long distances, but he did not. The chamber held a single round. A .45-70 Government, Federal Fusion cartridge. Soft point with a fused lead core. It would just about knock down a building. Recoil was not an issue. And there was no magazine to the Ruger. A single shot was all you got. That was sufficient. It otherwise tempted prodigal ways. Sloppiness. Brutality. He was not a brutal man. He disliked suffering. Could not abide it. Animal or human, he just could not abide suffering.

  The man did not say much to his son, did not offer him a great deal of fatherly instruction, but when he took the boy hunting he usually spoke aloud after he fired his weapon—never before. He prided himself (although he would never admit to that sin) on killing with a single shot. Done in one is what he said after squeezing the trigger, but really he was saying it for the boy to hear. That was the instruction. Done in one. It was Godly.

  And it was always true.

  Until today. Until this morning.

  He wants to do better by the boy. Must be getting older and softer he reckons. But the boy is getting older, too. It’s time. Time to be a better father. To teach his son the hard lessons. Because life was hard. It was goddamn hard. It was hard like the sheep blood and entrails he’d kicked snow over this morning. It was hard like the anger he’d felt at losing another
one. Had the anger altered his shot? Of course it had. He knew better than to shoot with emotion. Anger was the only emotion he indulged in. And he regretted it. Life was hard.

  Now on the other side of the barbed wire, the man and the boy take stock. The boy’s eyes have become acclimated to the white glare. Before, they had been moving too fast, and the glare had been too great for him to see anything but white. Now he could see the tracks his father had been following all along. Shadows where the snow was disturbed. And the shadows conceal traces of something even darker. Something red.

  He had never witnessed his father miss his target before. Yet of course he did not miss, he had hit what he was aiming at, but he had failed to kill with a single shot. And that was the same thing as missing. He knew his father was mad. Mad about missing and mad about losing yet another of his sheep. To the same predator. It was in the way he’d kicked the snow over the torn apart animal.

  His father squats down beside him, and this disturbs the boy, because his father is not a man to hunker down with a child. But he does. And the boy looks off in the distance in the direction the man’s thick, rough-hewn finger is pointing. He doesn’t see anything. He tries and he wants to see, he so much wants to see, because he wants to be the good son. He wants to reward his father’s lowering of himself to his level. To earn it. But he knows better than to try and fool the man. He knows not to nod or otherwise acknowledge what he does not really see or understand.

  But then he sees. It comes into focus. He nods without looking at his father, and it is in the act of not looking at him that the father knows it’s true. The boy sees.

  Off in the distance, merging into the horizon, is the wolf.

  The gray wolf.

  It’s time.

  Dark figures, they pursue.

  CHAPTER 1

  In seven years or so, Deputy Maddox Brinkley would be known amongst his Cameron County Sheriff’s Office peers as “Mad Dog” (shortened from “Mad Dog on the Brink” Brinkley), for the proclivity to violence this job would awaken in him. But that was in the future. Tonight the mad dog was just a puppy. It was only his third night of active duty, and he was as green as spring grass. A tall, skinny young man, the only fat on him was in his baby pink cheeks.

  He was riding the night-darkened summer streets of Vista Canyon with his FTO—Field Training Officer—Donovan Carpenter. Vista Canyon was just east of Folsom and its fabled prison, and fell squarely into the jurisdiction of the Cameron County S.O.—the Sheriff’s office.

  FTO Carpenter was known as “The Builder” but other than playing off his surname, Brinkley didn’t yet know why they called him that. Maybe it was because he was as big as a building. He really was. That big. Maybe he’d misheard and “Building” was what they called him. The man was a fat, doughnut-eating stereotype. And a smoker. Brinkley hated cigarette smoke. The first night, Carpenter had fired up a Winston 100 right in the patrol car, cracked his window wide enough to maybe slide a sheet of notebook paper through, and said, “Mind if I smoke?” Brinkley had not seen him without a lit cigarette dangling from his lips since then. The guy was a heart attack waiting to happen. Each night, thirty minutes before the end of their graveyard shift, Carpenter pulled the cruiser into a U Wash It and vacuumed up the pastry crumbs and shot three doses of a deodorizer called Ozium into the vehicle’s interior. The stuff worked pretty good, because it completely obliterated the burned tobacco odor. Brinkley wished he could figure out how to get the odor out of his uniform without washing it every night.

  The Builder or The Building, or whatever the fuck he was called, pulled into a Jiffy Kwik just off Green Valley Road. This was the third convenience store they had stopped at this shift. Maddox sighed. To himself. Not out loud. He still had a hell of a long way to go before he became a mad dog.

  The vehicle rocked as Carpenter climbed out of the driver’s seat and into the pool of illumination thrown by the store’s lighting. There were no other cars in the parking lot. It was only 9:30, but Vista Canyon tended to roll up its sidewalks once the sun set. The asphalt lot was still radiating heat it had absorbed during the day.

  Carpenter turned back to the patrol cruiser and asked, “Need anything?”

  “Pack of smokes,” Maddox said.

  “Thought you didn’t smoke.”

  “They’re a gift. For you. Christmas in July.”

  * * *

  Fucking punk, The Builder thought, as he navigated the bright aisles of the Jiffy Kwik. Getting a mouth on him. “Christmas in July.” Needs a lesson. Maybe take him to patrol the Sierra Nevadas. Out to Camptown, six-toe country, after dark, where they’d tell him, “You got a purty mouth.” Teach him how to use it. Get all James Dickey on his ass. Fucking punk. Teach him to fuck with The Builder.

  When he thought of himself, which was often, The Builder thought of himself as The Builder. He liked it. He knew the punk was working up the nerve to ask him why they called him that. What he’d told all the other punks he’d broken in over the years—when they worked up the nerve to ask—was that he couldn’t tell them the story behind his nickname until after they’d proven themselves. The truth was that he’d made it up himself and worked it into conversations to get it set in people’s heads. “They know better than to fuck with The Builder,” he’d say. And sooner or later someone else would repeat it. And Donovan “The Builder” Carpenter was thus born.

  He felt like a burrito tonight. Something healthy. He knew all those doughnuts and Debbie Pies were making him fat. He was trying to do better. A burrito was just the thing. Lots of protein. Healthy.

  They had some under a heat lamp next to some hot dog wieners going round and round in a rotisserie contraption like exhausted hamsters on an exercise wheel. But it all looked too old, too tired, so he pulled one from the freezer case, an Amy’s Organic Beans & Rice Burrito—organic was very healthy—and tossed it in the microwave set up near the coffee. While it was being zapped, Carpenter scanned the store.

  There was a monitor mounted above the sales counter, right over the cashier’s head, that showed the closed-circuit security feed. It flashed different perspectives from the various cameras posted around the premises. Carpenter wholly endorsed such systems because they were not only a good deterrent to crime, but often proved essential in solving crimes later. He watched it beam an image of the deserted gas pumps outside, then the area behind the store, then an empty aisle inside the store, then it showed Carpenter himself standing in the hot-food area. He couldn’t believe how fat he had let himself get. This is no way for a Field Training Officer to carry himself. My God, I’ve let myself go, he thought, and looked away from his image. Which was a pity. Because if Officer Carpenter hadn’t looked away, he would have seen the live feed from the camera mounted directly above the cash register. And in that image he would have seen that something was very, very wrong in the Vista Canyon Jiffy Kwik. In fact, if Carpenter had not averted his eyes from the monitor, he almost certainly would have lived through this night. But he didn’t. And the legend that was The Builder would be bleeding out on the Jiffy Kwik floor in just five minutes.

  What he chose to look at rather than the monitor was the sales clerk. The cashier, a greasy, long-haired punk, was up front, behind the counter, ignoring Carpenter. It used to be that when an officer of the law came into an establishment, he was waited on. He was treated with respect. Owners and staff were grateful that the officer had chosen their establishment to patronize and thus make safer with his or her presence. Not anymore. Not these days. No sir. Not only was the cashier pointedly ignoring Carpenter, the greaseball was thumbing through a porno mag. A Hustler. Or maybe it was High Society or Swank or Barely Legal. It was all trash. The point was that even from back here, Carpenter could see pink. Full-on beaver shots. Not womanly mounds of dense pubic hair like back in the day (which admittedly was a little too wild and wooly even back then) but slick-shaved extreme close-ups that seemed more clinical than erotic. And with the Internet, who even paid for porn anymore? Couldn�
�t you get it for free now?

  The microwave beeped at him, and Carpenter pulled the burrito out, tossing it from hand to hand like a, well, like a hot burrito. He wrapped it in a napkin to insulate it. He poured himself a large cup of coffee, but it looked awfully black to be their light blend. He lifted the cup to his nose and took a whiff. It smelled burnt and sour.

  He called up to the guy at the counter, “Hey, how old’s this stuff?”

  The greaseball did him the courtesy of looking up from his skin mag and said, “’Bout an hour. It’s still some good.” Then his head dipped back down to the matter at hand.

  Probably studying to be a gynecologist, Carpenter thought.

  He could have poured it out and grabbed some of the blueberry or cinnamon or pumpkin spice or vanilla nut brew they had on tap, but Officer Carpenter considered himself to be something of a coffee purist. And even though there was no way this brew was just an hour old, he would still rather have regular joe, old and funky, than the flavored crap. Calling this swill an hour old was complete BS. But he wasn’t going to push the point. He was ready to go. He needed a smoke. He figured he would have a Winston and sip his coffee while he drove. The cigarette would go a long way to masking the sour taste of the coffee. Then he would eat the burrito—the organic burrito, he reminded himself—then have another smoke, because he always liked to light up after a meal.

  He dosed the coffee with real sugar—that artificial stuff could give you multiple sclerosis—and powdered creamer, put one of those little cardboard collars on the cup to keep it from burning his hand, and headed to the front to pay up.

  He put his bounty on the counter right next to a photo layout of a young woman. A photographic study that he bet the young woman prayed her father would never see. It wasn’t the pornography that Carpenter objected to—to each his own as far as he was concerned—it was the fact that the guy felt comfortable just paging through it like it was Reader’s Digest or The Christian Science Monitor. Well, it wasn’t. And he was going to say something about it.