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Blam.

I shot him in the face, and he blew backwards out of his leather office chair. His head splattered apart like a rotten tomato. Blood and brains splattered up the wall and onto a nice piece of artwork.

The boss going down caused a chain reaction of sorts. Weapons were drawn from all quarters and more shots were fired.

“Down, Harlan,” I hollered as I pushed him out of the way.

Blam. Blam.

I was forced to shoot two more guys than I had intended, but they shot at me and Harlan first. The boss’s office was a bloodbath.

Three dead, including Joe Mendenhall. Kind of disappointing that I had to cap Joe, because I wanted to work my way up the drug ladder and now the middleman was dead.

In custody we had two prisoners, plus the recovering Clay Peterson. He wore a stunned look on his normally stupid face. I guess he figured he was safe in the arms of Jesus if he was in his boss’s house.

While we waited for Doctor Olson to drive from Cut Bank to Conrad, Harlan and I secured Clay Peterson and his two drug buddies in the back of the squad. I set Max and Sarge on duty in the hatch to watch them.

Harlan leaned on the front of the Bronco and lit up a smoke.

“You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

“Not much.”

“What does that mean? Did you catch a graze?”

“Blade swipe from one of the bikers caught my side. Don’t think it broke the skin.”

“Show me.”

Harlan pulled up his t-shirt and there was a long red mark across his side. The skin was broken at one end, and a few drops of blood had trickled. It would be one long blue bruise by the end of the day.

It was an hour and several cigarettes before Olson came and I said to Harlan, “He fuckin hates shotgun deaths. They’re so messy.”

“Jeeze, you shot three of them in the face.”

“Yeah, he ain’t gonna be a bit happy.”

It took another hour before the doctor processed the dead, and during that time, I called the DEA guy, Brian Palliser, and gave him the address.

By the time Harlan and I left the scene with the prisoners, Special Agent Palliser came from Great Falls along with a couple of his buddies. The three of them took over the scene and taped off Joe Mendenhall’s residence.

“We never touched anything in the house,” I said. “Left it all for you. If you want to talk to my three arrests, come to the station in Coyote Creek.”

“Copy that, Sheriff. Thanks for the bust.”

“No problem. Hope you find what y’all are looking for.”

Boyd Residence. Shelby.

Garth Timleckson dropped Tanya off at her home and she stomped inside full of fury at her husband for not showing up at court for her arraignment.

“Floyd, where are you, you bastard? You’ve got a lot to answer for. You promised to pick me up at the courthouse. Why didn’t you come to get me?”

Tanya didn’t get an answer and she figured Floyd was at the office and she was talking to the wind. Although he had told her he was taking the morning off to come to the arraignment, he might have had an unforeseen emergency.

Trying to calm down, she poured herself a stiff shot of vodka and added a little mixer of grapefruit juice to make the drink more to her liking.

After she had a couple of vodkas and calmed her nerves, she decided to go upstairs and lie down for a while. As she passed Floyd’s office, she noticed the light was on and she pushed the door open wider.