Breaking Point

your nice cabin here? Did a little bit of fear go through you that I might figure it out?”
    “Really, I don’t have time for this . . .” Blevins said, and stepped back to swing the door closed.
    Nate lurched over Joe’s shoulder and shot his arm out and stopped the closure with the heel of his hand. Nate said, “My friend is talking to you. Don’t be so fucking rude.”
    For the first time, fear flickered across Blevins’s eyes.
    “You didn’t want your view of the lake blocked by the Roberson home,” Joe said. “You got a call from a man who said he could help you if you agreed to keep him informed on the progress of the construction.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    His voice was weak and small, Joe thought, and betrayed exactly the opposite of the words he spoke.
    Joe said, “I wondered how you knew Julio Batista, but he actually contacted you, didn’t he? Because you had a mutual interest? Then you and Batista set things in motion and you just sat back here in your nice cabin and let the system destroy Butch.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” Blevins said.
    “Whatever. But there’s no doubt you lit the Butch Roberson time bomb.”
    “I didn’t know he’d murder anyone. I honestly had no idea that could happen.”
    Joe hesitated, then asked, “Did you see him pull the trigger?”
    “No. I was in town the day it happened.”
    “Convenient,” Joe said. Then: “You never spent a minute getting to know him, did you? As far as you knew, he was a redneck in a ball cap, right? You didn’t know he was a local contractor who had a family, did you? To you he was a stupid gorilla who fired up his loud tractor and wanted to screw up your perfect view of the lake. And when things got out of control, you didn’t do anything to stop it, did you? When Butch showed up here two weeks ago and started up his tractor after a year of leaving you alone, you got right back on the phone, didn’t you?”
    Before Blevins could speak, Nate growled, “What an asshole.”
    Joe said to Blevins, “Five men dead, one man in jail, a good family wrecked. Thousands of animals and birds burned to death. An entire forest incinerated. You’re quite a guy, aren’t you?”
    “Look,” Blevins said, panic in his voice, “I’m not responsible for all the things that happened. I was just making a call.”
    Joe said, “It’ll be interesting when Butch Roberson’s attorneys find out about you and put you on the stand. Once people find out what you did, you’ll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. Right, Nate?”
    “And you might see
me
,” Nate said in a homicidal whisper.
    “You can’t prove any of this,” Blevins said. Beads of perspiration sequined his upper lip. He swiveled his head toward Nate and said, “So who are you?”
    Joe cringed because he’d seen raw red meat tossed to problem grizzlies before—and this was the same thing.
    But there was a hesitation on Nate’s part. Then an explosion. Nate shot his hand out and grasped Blevins’s ear and twisted. The man cried out and bent forward. Nate leaned into him with his huge gun drawn and pressed the muzzle into Blevins’s temple.
    “I can twist your ear off your head or blow your brains to Nebraska,” Nate said evenly. “Or I can do both, one after the other, which is my preference.”
    Blevins mewled and choked, his head down. Joe considered stopping it, but he didn’t want to.
    Nate leaned in closer to Blevins, and thumbed back the hammer of the .50-caliber revolver until it locked.
    Nate said to Blevins, “I’ve torn apart men much better than you with my hands. I’ve twisted their noses and ears off and I’ve ripped their arms and legs out of the sockets and beat them over their heads with them. I
like
doing it to those who deserve it, that’s what you need to understand. You deserve it more than most. So if you don’t start singing
right now
to my friend Joe, you’ll be eating your own nuts in less than ten seconds. Got that?”
    Joe was stunned. But he appreciated it.
    Blevins mewled like a cat, then said, “I called Julio when Roberson showed up with his tractor. I never knew what would happen.”
    “That’s why those agents showed up so fast,” Joe said. “It’s been driving me crazy. So when did you last talk to Batista?”
    “Why is that important?”
    Nate twisted the muzzle into Blevins’s temple, breaking the skin. Blevins cried out.
    “Answer the question,” Joe said.
    “A couple