Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [63]
Morse looked nervous for the first time. “Check this out. I brought a token of goodwill. I don’t have to do this, and in fact, if you want the God’s honest truth, they told me not to, but I’m going to give you the only weapon we have in our camp. My gift to you. Okay? As proof that we don’t mean any harm.”
Morse pulled a pistol out of the back of his waistband and offered it to Kasey, barrel first. Kasey, who thought for a split second he was about to be shot, realized Morse wasn’t threatening him but was offering the gun—a revolver, large and heavy and silver, as lethal as anything Kasey had ever seen.
A rifle shot split the morning. Simultaneous with the noise Morse jumped into the air and landed in the road on his rump, a large patch of blood spreading across the front of his shirt. Kasey could see the hole in his rib cage when the wind blew the shirt aside. Kasey had never seen anyone more surprised than Morse, sitting in the road looking at Kasey as if he had fired the shot. Then, for whatever reason, Morse raised the pistol once again, and as he did so a second shot rent the quiet morning and a particle of Morse’s skull flew away like a bat wing. The second bullet slammed the upper half of his body to the ground.
Fred, who had fired the shots from behind the truck, ran out to the road, pointed the rifle up the hill, and said, “You better get on back in before they start returning fire.”
Ryan Perry darted out from behind his truck in a panic. “What did you do that for?”
“He was going to kill Kasey,” Fred said through gritted teeth. “Maybe all of you.”
“Jesus.”
“He was talking shit,” said Scooter, more concerned with Morse’s story than his death. “Everything he said was a lie.”
Bloomquist was shaking and cowering behind the Porsche. Perry appeared about to faint. Jennifer was crying again. Kasey felt like vomiting.
“Fred, I can’t believe you did that,” said Jennifer. “He was just trying to—”
“Kill us,” said Kasey, wondering where the words came from. “Fred’s right. He pulled that gun and pointed it at my apple sack. The cops would have mowed him down long before Fred did. You don’t ever let a man point a loaded gun at you. Especially a man who was just involved in the death of one of your friends.”
27
“Jesus Christ,” said Stephens. “Did you see that?”
They’d all seen it. Morse had been conversing, standing a good ten feet away from the nearest man in the Jeep group when he calmly removed the pistol from his waistband and tried to hand it to Kasey Newcastle. Before he even had the pistol all the way extended, two gunshots rang out and he fell backward. Without going down to check on him, they all knew instinctively that he was dead. Moments later Fred Finnigan came out to the road and pointed a rifle up the mountain at them. Before he could fire a third shot, they all scrambled to take cover.
“It had to have been an accident. I mean, nobody shoots a…well, you know, there was no animosity in Morse. He wasn’t somebody who…I don’t think he was ever in a fight in his life…”
Giancarlo crept to a pile of rocks and peered down the hill through the brush. “Two accidents, in case you’re counting. One to the chest and one to the brain. A third accident aimed our way right now.”
“He was pointing the gun at them,” Zak observed. “Morse was.”
“They didn’t have to shoot him. I mean, you think about…the gun was empty.” Near tears, Stephens made a choking noise that under different circumstances might have sounded like laughter. “The gun wasn’t loaded.”
“You don’t point a gun at anything you’re not planning to kill,” said Giancarlo. “And every gun is loaded. Simple rules to live by.”
“He stole it,” said Muldaur. “That’s what he did.”
“Hey, now wait a minute,” said Stephens, creeping over to where Zak, Muldaur, and Giancarlo were peering down the slope at Morse’s body from a point of concealment. “Don’t you guys be putting this on Morse. Morse was a skillful negotiator. One of the best.