Breaking Point

handle.
    “You can stay right here. I’ll be back in a few minutes, I suspect.”
    “No,” she said. “I want to see this. I want to see what my game wardens do. I can’t be a proper director if I don’t know how things work in the field.”
    “Deal,” Joe said, swinging out and clamping his hat on his head. “You can be my backup.”
    She grinned nervously at that.
    —
    T HE MORNING WAS HEATING UP into another warm August day. Tufts of translucent cotton from the ancient cottonwood trees were poised on the tips of the grass, awaiting a breath of wind to transport them somewhere. As he approached the broken gate, he instinctively reached down and brushed his fingertips across the top of his Glock, his cuffs, and the canister of bear spray on his belt, just to assure himself his equipment was there. The hinges on the gate moaned as he pushed it open. Lisa Greene-Dempsey maintained a ten-foot distance behind him, and followed him cautiously into the yard.
    He was wondering about the burned splotches in the grass on the left side of the shared yard when a woman pushed the screen door open on the right side and stood behind it.
    “Are you here about the cat urine?” she asked. “It’s about time.”
    She looked to be in her seventies, and wore a thick robe and pink slippers. She had a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
    “Pardon?” Joe said.
    “It reeks like cat urine,” she said, gesturing next door with a tilt of her head. “When it’s calm like this, the smell just about makes me sick. I’ve told them to clean it up, but they just laugh at me and tell me they don’t own no cats.”
    Then Joe smelled it, the whiff of ammonia.
    “I’m surprised they sent the game warden,” she said, “but I’m not complaining. I expected the sheriff, but I guess you’re in charge of animals around here.”
    “Sort of,” Joe said. “But I’m here on another matter.”
    “Figures,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Nobody seems to care that much about my problems. Even the guy who owns the place just shrugs and tells me he won’t do anything because they pay the rent on time. I showed him where in the lease it said you can’t have pets, but he just doesn’t care.”
    “I’m sorry,” Joe said. “I’m not here for that.”
    “Just make sure to ask them about the cats.”
    “Okay,” Joe said.
    She stepped back and closed the door in front of her. A moment later, Joe saw the floral curtains part an inch so she could watch what happened next.
    He turned to Greene-Dempsey and shrugged. She looked nervously at the front door of the left side of the duplex.
    “You can still wait in the truck,” he said.
    She shook her head no.
    “Then make sure you stay back and to the side, please,” he said.
    —
    T HE ODOR GOT STRONGER on the porch when he knocked on the door. Because of the Ford pickup in front, he assumed somebody was home. When he leaned his head close to the door, he could hear and feel the thumping of bass notes from a radio or music player of some kind.
    He knocked again, and heard the scuffling of feet. To his right, there was a glimpse of a face in the dirty window, and he waved at it as if to say
gotcha
.
    Then, after some low murmuring on the other side of the door that indicated there was more than one person inside, a series of bolts were thrown. Joe thought,
Bolts?
    And Bryce Pendergast was standing in front of him with the door halfway open, his face contorted into a pulled-back grimace. Pendergast was naked from the waist up, severely thin, with a sleeve tattoo on the arm. He had long, stringy hair that glistened with hair product—or grease. The tendons in his neck looked to be as taut as guitar strings, and his breathing was quick and shallow. The right side of Pendergast’s body was hidden behind the door. A strong whoosh of the odor enveloped Joe on the porch.
    “What do you want?” Pendergast asked, his voice high and strained.
    Joe smiled and said in a friendly tone, “I guess you know why I’m here, Bryce.”
    “I guess I do,” Pendergast said.
    And in the instant it took for Joe to realize that the cat-urine smell was in fact raw ammonia from inside and the burns in the grass were from meth-making chemicals, Pendergast threw open the door and Joe saw the big pistol in Bryce’s right hand that had been out of sight behind the door. The pistol suddenly swung up toward his face.
    Behind him, Joe heard Greene-Dempsey gasp—and Joe ducked and