Triple Threat

of the name. The gunslinger/marshal had been murdered, shot in the back of the head by a man he’d beat at poker the day before. But what specifically Pellam was recalling was that Hickok felt bad for Jack McCall, the murderer, and gave him back some of what he’d lost.
    But McCall had thought the gesture condescending, and that was the motive for the murder, not cheating, not arrogance.
    A good deed.
    Pellam shivered in the wind. He moved more slowly now—dusk was thick and moonlight still an hour away. But he saw no signs of anyone.
    But then, a hundred yards away, the flicker of light. From one of the large caverns near the edge of the quarry. Pellam moved quickly toward the cavern where he’d seen it, dodging rocks and scrub oak and wiry balls of tumbleweed. The cavern was in a cul de sac. On one side a sheer wall rose fifty feet into the air, its surface scarred and chopped by the stone cutters. On the other side, the quarry fell into blackness.
    Twenty feet from the entrance to the cavern. The light seemed dimmer now.
    Moving closer, listening. Moving again. Hell, it was noisy, this persistent wind. Like the slipstream roaring through the window of the Winnebago that afternoon.
    Mountain, truck or air…
    He saw nothing other than the dancing light. Was it a fire? Or a lantern?
    And then: What the hell am I doing here?
    A question that was never answered because at that moment a man stepped from the shadows beside him and aimed his pistol at Pellam’s head.
    “Drop that.”
    “Can I set it down?”
    “No.”
    Pellam dropped the gun.
    It wasn’t Taylor. The man had salt-and-pepper hair. He was in his fifties, Pellam estimated, and he was wearing khaki hiking clothes. He gestured Pellam back and retrieved the Peacemaker. Into a cell phone he said, “He’s here.”
    “Where is he?”
    That being the hitchhiker/poet.
    Though Pellam knew the answer to the question: The ramblin’ man was either dead or tied up somewhere nearby.
    Was this fellow in front of him, with the gun, Chris? The husband or partner of green-minded Lis, who had murdered Jonas Barnes near the Devil’s Playground today—presumably because Barnes was going to rape the earth by putting in a shopping center along the spur to the interstate?
    If that was the case, then he reflected that it was rather ironic that they’d nearly run her down as she was returning from her deadly mission.
    And, sure enough, he heard a woman’s voice. “I’m here, it’s me.”
    Glancing toward the sound, Pellam realized that his theory about Barnes’s demise, while logical, was in fact wrong.
    The murderer was not earth-loving Lis.
    It was Hannah Billings.
    Pellam turned to the man with the gun and said, “So, you must be Ed.”
    # # #
    “Does that thing work?” she asked her husband.
    The man was looking over Pellam’s Peacemaker with some admiration. “Nice. I have a collection myself.”
    Pellam had the bizarre thought that Ed Billings was going to start a genial conversation about antique firearms.
    With a neutral glance Pellam’s way, Ed walked into the cavern and hauled Taylor to his feet. He was tied—though not duct-taped—which would, presumably, leave a residue that crime scene folks could detect. They were good at that. Pellam had served time. The police were all over the evidence. Pellam’s extremely expensive defense attorney hadn’t bothered to try to sever the head of that testimony.
    “What the hell is going on here?” he pleaded. “Who are you?”
    Pellam could picture clearly what these two had planned: Oh, damn, we got it wrong, the sheriff would announce. That Pellam fellow wasn’t guilty after all. It was that weird poet who killed Jonas Barnes. A hitchhiker, what did you expect? Pellam tracked him down—to prove he was innocent—and the man jumped him. They fought, they died.
    A shame.
    The poor hitchhiker was as baffled as he was terrified.
    Pellam nodded. “Was it the real estate?”
    Hannah was ignoring him. She was looking over the scenery, approaches, backdrops. Hell, she looked just like a cinematographer blocking out camera angles.
    But Ed was happy to talk. “Barnes had an option to buy the five hundred acres next to Devil’s Playground.”
    “Worth millions to whoever owned the land,” Pellam said. “When the spur was finished.”
    Ed Billings nodded. “Fast food, gasoline and toilets. That kind of describes our country, doesn’t it?”
    Pellam was distracted, since the man’s gun—a very