“Fingering me for what? You’re talking crazy.”
“Am I? He told me Bankey had a federal agent feeding him information on the robbery. He said it was a fed with intimate knowledge about the players moving the money.”
Holly looked at the bags of cash. “And you think that agent is me?”
“I know you just killed the only man capable of helping me make that distinction.”
Holly slowly held the shotgun out with both hands, bent over, and slid it across the floor to Clayton. “Well, that’s insane, but if you want to play out this little fairy tale, so be it. Here . . .” He removed his sidearm and slid that over to Clayton, too. The sheriff stopped it with his boot and kicked it out the back door. He holstered his Colt and picked up the shotgun. “Now let’s take a ride.”
“I’m your friend, Clayton. You’re making a mistake.”
“If I am, I’ll apologize, but right now, you and me are going to drive to Waymore and have a chat with the Bureau, and see if I can sort all this out.” He motioned the barrel of the gun toward the front door. Holly started to walk.
“What about all your money?” he said.
“It ain’t my money.”
“So you’re just going to leave it there, sitting in your boy’s blood?”
“You’re going to pay for that boy’s murder,” Clayton said.
Holly sighed and turned around to face the sheriff. His eyes were different now. That shark smile was back and every sense of urgency had left him. If anything, Clayton thought he looked disappointed.
“Why am I the one going to pay?” Holly said. “You’re the one that killed him. You came in here and decided that all the money was better than half the money, so you executed the poor bastard with his own shotgun. That’s pretty brutal, man.”
“Nobody is going to believe that.”
“Of course they will. I mean, come on. When Halford found out it was you that ripped him off, he was so pissed he brought his big ass down the mountain personally to kill you. He hasn’t come off the mountain in years. Everyone in that shithole dust farm you live in saw that. They also saw you kill him.”
“And that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“Either way would have been fine by me. You kill him. He kills you. If it would’ve worked out the other way, I just would’ve called the big son of a bitch and told him his money was in here with the dipshit Indian that stole it. One way or another, I’d still be standing here, and one of you bags of shit would be standing there.”
“So everything you said about a bloodless takedown was bullshit.”
“Nobody bled that didn’t need it comin’.” Holly glanced down at the headless corpse of Deputy Frasier. “Except maybe him.”
“All this for a couple hundred grand?”
Holly laughed. “You really are dumber than you look, Clayton.”
Clayton felt a nerve in his eyelid twitch and gripped the shotgun with white knuckles. “It was all bullshit. You never had anything on Halford. No task force. No knowledge of his operations.”
“No, some of that was true. There was never any plan to move against your brother, but I do know everything about his empire.” Holly smiled wider and his eyes darkened. “You want to know how I found out?”
Clayton mashed his teeth.
“Your brother Buckley told me, before I killed him.”
“You’re a fucking liar.”
“Before I set him up to have my team put several hundred bullets in him, I picked him up for a little one-on-one and convinced him to talk to me. After three days of withdrawal from your family’s honeypot, he told me all kinds of shit about Halford, you, this place, this cabin, times, locations, all of it. That idiot knew it all and gave it up just to keep a steady flow of crank in his veins. It sucks having a junkie in the family. There’s no telling what they’ll do to stay high. Believe me, I know. I bet that retard would’ve blown me if I’d wanted him to.”
“I ought to kill you where you stand.”
“Well, do it, then, Sheriff Burroughs.” Holly dragged out his words, mocking the title of sheriff. “Stop pretending you’re something you’re not. You’re a piece-of-shit hillbilly gangster like your dead daddy and all your dead brothers, but you know what? You’re the worst of them all because you hide behind that star and think it masks who you really are. Buckley gave you up, too. He told me all about his brother the sheriff, who turned a blind eye to everything going on up here. At least the rest of them admitted to being outlaws. You’re just another criminal who thinks he can dress up like one of the good guys and that washes the stink off him.”
Clayton glared at Holly. “Nothing like you, huh?”
“We’re more alike than you think, Clayton.” Holly reached around into the small of his back.
Clayton pulled the trigger.
Click.