by David Wiltse
But there was something at McNeil's house, or rather the absence of something. His car was not there. Tee looked into the garage and saw that the automobile was gone, but the purloined golf trophy was still there, the tip of the golfer's club glinting in the beam of Tee's flashlight. McNeil hadn't moved it, but why should he? He was content that it was secure. Embo Idened, Tee walked around the outside of the house to the bedroom and peered in the window. He could make out a form on the bed but could not identify it. After debating with himself for a moment, he pointed the flashlight and snapped on the beam very briefly.
Mrs. McNeil lay on her back, her mouth open, her limbs splayed across the bed, encroaching on McNeil's side as well as her own. It was hard to tell for sure over the drone of the air conditioner, but Tee thought he heard her snore. He wondered how Mrs. McNeil did it. Marge was awake as soon as he opened his eyelids, much less gone for the night.
He put thoughts of Marge out of his mind and returned to his car and began his long cruise of the night. If McNeil was in his own car now and not the anonymous Caprice, he was vulnerable. Tee might have passed the Caprice any number of times in the past few years, ignoring it where it was parked, scarcely noting it as it drove right past him, a body in the trunk, McNeil laughing to himself behind the tinted windshield. The thought infuriated Tee, but now McNeil had nowhere to hide. If he continued to act as Johnny Appleseed until he replaced the Caprice, he was exposed and Tee would find him, or at least do all he could to try.
Becker had been certain that Johnny would continue his ways, that they meant too much to him to abandon them just because of inconvenience, or even a threat to his security.
From McNeil's house he turned south and worked every street, every cul-de-sac, every private road, patrolling only slowly enough to be sure that he did not miss anything. There were any number of long, hidden driveways that twisted their way through trees and up hills, sometimes forking off to several houses but still unmarked and omitted from the maps. At this time of night it would be simple for Johnny to take his car halfway up such a drive, park it to the side, completely out of sight from either the road or the houses, and walk to his assignation.
Tee investigated the driveways as well. Progress was torturously slow, especially since he was tormented with the thought that the delay in this part of the town was only allowing McNeil to conduct his business somewhere else. But McNeil was out there somewhere, Tee was convinced of that.
It had been many years since he had patrolled the town at this time of night and he was being slowly mesmerized by the unchanging innocence of the drive when his radio crackled to life.
"You still there, ChieP" Metzger asked.
"I'm here."
"I think I've spotted McNeil's car."
"You think you've spotted it?"
"No, I've spotted it. I mean, I'm pretty sure. I don't know his license plate, but it looks like it-"
"Where?" Tee interrupted. "There's this long drivewayjust off of Kettle Creek.. "That's in my neighborhood. I know the one. Is the car there now?"
"Yes sir. Do you want me to-"
"Are you anywhere near it?"
"Well, actually, Chief, I'm parked right beside it."
"Do you see McNeil?"
"No sir."
"Then get away from it, drive away right now. Go to the spot on Hillspoint where we set up the radar trap. Turn off your lights and watch. You can see the entrance to Ketthe Creek from there. If McNeil comes out before I get there, call me and tell me which way he went.
Otherwise, just sit there and watch. If I pass you without pulling up, just stay there. Just keep watching until you hear from me. Clear?"
"Sure, you bet, Chief."
"What are you doing right now, Metzger?"
"Waiting for your instructions."
"I justgave you my instructions. Drive away from his car, now. Go to Hillspoint and wait."
"Right."
"Is your car moving, Metzger?"
There was a slight pause. Tee could imagine Metzger putting his car into gear and pulling back onto the road before answering. "Yes sir," he said.
"I'm on my way," said Tee.
Tee mentally ran through the houses on Kettle Creek that McNeil might possibly be visiting. The road was close to Tee's home; he and Marge had taken Sunday walks there in happier days, indulging in loose fantasies of buying other, grander houses, and together they knew or knew of virtually every homeowner on the road. Tee could think of none who had all pairs. Several of the couples were grandparents, one was a gay couple: two middle-aged men. None of these seemed within Johnny Appleseed's range of interests. The rest of the houses belonged to couples in their thirties and forties, some with preteens and several with adolescents, but none with children young enough to require nannies or mother's helpers or all pairs. The driveway could be just a drop spot for the car, of course. His quarry did not have to be on Kettle Creek. Johnny liked to go through the woods and he could be on a half-dozen other streets in ten minutes via the route through the trees.
Tee drove up the long hill, saw the reflector under Metzger's headlight, sticking out, typically, about eight inches farther than it should. When he came within Metzger's view, the idiot flashed his lights in recognition. Tee denied the impulse to pick up the radio and yell. He drove past the cruiser without glancing at it and turned into Kettle Creek. A shadow raced across the road in front of him and Tee flinched, remembering the deer that he had killed. The shadow was gone almost as soon as he saw it, and he tried to forget about it and concentrate on the problem of McNeil. He slowed as he passed the entrance to the long driveway. There was nothing he could do at the car itself, particularly not while in his cruiser. He would have to park and take to the woods himself, hoping to… The radio crackled again. "Chief? Chief?"
"Go ahead, goddamnit."
"Sorry."
"What is it, Metzger?"
"Somebody just came out of Kettle Creek and ran across the road. "
"McNeil?"
"I couldn't tell. I don't have my headlights on."
"Which way are they going?"
"Up the hill."
Tee reversed the car in a three-point turn and streaked back down Kettle Creek.
"Stay where you are and keep watching for McNeil's car," said Tee, already back at the entrance to the road. Metzger flashed his lights once more. Tee cursed and started up the hill, fast. This time he saw the shadow from behind, caught the shape that cast the shadow for a second before it ducked behind a tree.
Tee kept driving, trying to control his breath. It was a trick of the light, he said. He was seeing things, he told himself.
He topped the hill, turned left until he was out of sight for anyone climbing the rise, and slammed the car into the nearest driveway and doused the lights. Moving clumsily, he cut back on foot at an angle to intersect the person he had overtaken running up the hill. When he reached the spot he wanted he crouched at the base of a tree, panting and praying silently that he was wrong. The noise of the runner came in less than a minute, cutting across lawns, brushing hedges, and taking fences with practiced ease. Tee saw the shadow first, hugely elongated in the moonlight, looking like a monster crossing the town in giant strides, and then the substance, surprisingly petite. His daughter ran gracefully to her bedroom window and hauled herself in without a sound.
She looked as if she had done it hundreds of times. Tee stayed at the base of the tree, not knowing whether to weep or explode.
Metzger flashed his lights again as he saw Tee's cruiser racing down the hill, but this time it was Tee who spoke first on the radio.
"Just stay there," Tee growled. "Do you want backup?" Metzger asked.
"It's just McNeil," Tee said, trying to keep the fury from his voice.
"Why would I need backup?"
"Right you are. What should I do?"
"Just stay there, keep watching the road."
"But McNeil's already left, I told you."
Then stay there un
til he comes back," Tee said, clicking off the transmitter. He did not want backup. He did not want help. He did not want witnesses. Tee slewed the car around the curve leading into Ketterfield Road, a lengthy stretch through one of the few truly flat areas in Clamden, and caught sight of the taillights in the distance. He slammed the accelerator to the floor and turned on his flashing lights.
McNeil saw the cruiser bearing down on him in his rearview mirror. No siren, he noted. Old Tee wants me to see him but he doesn't want the rest of the town to hear him. Not good. He toyed for a moment with thoughts of trying to outrun the cruiser, then dismissed them as pointless. He kept driving at the same safe speed, stalling for time as he pressed a number on his car phone.
Tee knifed the cruiser in front of McNeil's parked automobile and ran back to it, grabbing the driver's-door handle as if he intended to rip it from its frame.
"Hi there, Tee. You're working late."
Tee hit McNeil in the side of the face with his fist, then pulled him out of the car and pushed him to the ground.
"Whoa," said McNeil. "Take it easy."
"You sonofabitch!" Tee knelt on McNeil's back and struck him in the kidney with his hand. McNeil groaned but did not move. "You dirty filthy sonofabitch."
"You wanna talk?" McNeil said, unable to keep the sarcasm from his tone. "Just ask."
Tee put his hand on McNeil's head and forced his face into the pavement.
"She's fifteen, you asshole! Fifteen years old! I'll arrest you for statutory rape."
"You don't want to put her through that," McNeil said, sneering.
"You think you're safe, don't you? You think no one will turn you in because of that, don't you?" Tee pulled his service automatic from its holster and pressed it against McNeil's ear. McNeil went as silent as stone.
"There's another way to deal with scum," Tee said. He cocked the automatic with an audible click. "Resist me, you sonofabitch," Tee growled. McNeil carefully did not move a muscle except to close his eyes.
"Resist me!" Tee leaned his mouth nearly as close as the pistol, roaring into McNeil's ear, spraying him with saliva.
"Resist me! Move, make one fucking move!"
Tee rapped McNeil on the head with the barrel of the gun, then got to his feet. "Get up and move," he said, his voice now gone icily calm.
"I'm going to kill you anyway, you might as well be on your feet."
McNeil lay still with his eyes closed. A trickle of blood cleared the hairline of his scalp and ran across his cheekbone. "Move," Tee repeated. He drew his foot back and kicked McNeil between the legs.
McNeil gasped and instinctively pulled his legs into the fetal position.
Tee kicked him once more in the groin.
"Get up or I'll neuter you first." He kicked McNeil again. McNeil cried out but continued to lie on the road, eyes pressed tightly closed.
"I'll castrate you if you don't get up."
"Tee, you don't understand," McNeil whispered. "Honest to God, you don't understand."
"I understand that my daughter's fifteen years old, I understand that!"
Tee roared. He knelt beside McNeil again, forcing the man's eyelids open with his fingers. "Look at this! Do you see this?" He placed the barrel of the gun on McNeil's nose. "I want you to see what's going to kill you. Now look at me. Look at me!"
McNeil swiveled his eyes to Tee's face, carefully not moving his body.
"I want you to see who's going to kill you," he said. The gun barrel wavered unsteadily in Tee's hand, shaken by the same rage that contorted his face.
"No, Tee, please," McNeil begged. "I didn't do anything."
"I'm not going to do anything either," said Tee. "The gun will." He stood up and took two steps back from McNeil, thinking clearly enough to realize he did not want to be splattered by McNeil's soft tissue when he shot him. Tee leveled the gun at McNeil's ear. His hand was shaking so badly that he steadied it with the other, falling automatically into the shooter's pose. I want to do it, he thought, I want to do it so badly.
This was not like Mrs. Leigh on the cliff, there was strong motive this time, McNeil deserved to die and Tee could get away with it in practical terms, possibly even legally. But he knew that the desire that filled him had no regard for reason or rationale. He wanted to end McNeil's life as a willful act, separate and complete in itself. He wanted to do it because he wanted to do it.
His finger trembled on the trigger and his ears were filled with a vast roaring, as if all the blood in his body were racing through his brain in a torrent, urging him on. He hesitated, barely aware of the keening sound issuing from McNeil, whose whole face was squeezed and bunched as if drawn together by cords. But Tee did not see McNeil's expression, he was concentrating solely on his target. His finger tautened on the trigger, he felt the slack give way and then the final resistance. One sixteenth of an inch farther, one more ounce of pressure, and the gun would explode in his hand. In the frozen second before the weapon fired, Tee felt as if raw power were attached to his arm, he could sense it throbbing there in his hand like a living thing, power. Power. The power to kill and change a life forever, his life, someone else's life.
The roar of the gun was incredibly loud in the stillness of the night, it seemed to rip the very air apart, to make the ground shake with its sudden ferocity. The fire of the muzzle blast against the blackness struck Tee as if he had stared directly at the sun, and for a moment he was lost, disoriented, as if he himself had been shot. After a moment the report still rang in his ears but his eyes focused once more and he saw McNeil lying at his feet. The hole where the bullet had struck the asphalt was as big as an 0 made with his thumb and forefinger, scraped white gravel of the revealed underbed gleaming dully in the headlights, but it was only when Tee stared at it that he could remember the scream of the bullet ricocheting moments earlier.
McNeil lay as still as death, only the dripping of tears from his cheeks onto the asphalt giving him away.
"Now do you believe you're going to die?" Tee asked. fr "Christ oh Christ oh Christ," McNeil murmured, sounding like a penitent at prayer.
"You believe now, don't you?" But in fact it was Tee who had been convinced by the first shot. Some tension seemed to have passed away in the weapon's blast, the last resistance to what he was going to do. He knew now not only that he wanted to kill McNeil, but that he could kill him. And that he would. All the doubts had fallen away and he was calm as he raised the gun this time. Eager, but in control of himself.
He saw the beam of the headlights of the distant car as they raced toward him, he was aware of the great speed at which they approached, but he knew he had plenty of time, there was no way for anything to outrace the bullet that was aimed this time for McNeil's head.
"I never told anyone about Mrs. Leigh," McNeil said suddenly.
Tee hesitated. "Mrs. Leigh? Mrs. Leigh? You think I'm killing you because of Mrs. Leigh, you half-wit?"
"I never told anyone, I never would."
"Are you trying to trade my daughter for Mrs. Leigh?"
"Someone's coming," McNeil said eagerly, hopefully. They both could hear the blare of the oncoming horn. The headlights were now flashing from high to low beam, and back to high again. Still holding the gun pointed at McNeil, Tee waved the car on, indicating that it should pass.
But the car skidded to a halt within a few feet of Tee and McNeil, and Becker leapt out. "Don't do it, Tee!"
"John?"
"Put the gun away, Tee, you don't need it on him."
Becker was naked except for his shorts. He walked barefooted across the pavement to stand by his friend. The flesh of his legs looked obscenely white in the headlight beam.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"He called me," Becker said, pointing at the man at Tee's feet.
"McNeil? McNeil called you?"
"He said you were going to kill him."
"He was right." Although Tee looked at Becker when he spoke, his two-fisted grip on the pistol continued to point
at his intended victim.
"Put it down, Tee. Put the gun away."
"Do you know what he did?"
"Tell me."
"It's a misunderstanding," McNeil whined. "I didn't do anything, Becker, honest to God."
"Shut up," Becker said. "What did he do, Tee?"
"I didn't do anything, I swear to you…"
Becker kicked McNeil in the nose with his heel, then stepped over so that he stood between McNeil and Tee's gun.
"You're in my way, John."
"Tell me what he did."
"Stand aside."
"Just tell me why you're going to kill him."
"He knows."
Careful not to move enough to alarm Tee, McNeil tried to stanch the flow of blood from his nose into his mouth.
"I don't want to hear it from him. I want you to tell me so that I can understand it."
"I… can't talk about it."
"Okay."
"I have very good reasons."
"Have you ever killed anyone, Tee?"
"Not quite."
It might not be something you want to get into." 'Are you going to move, John?"
"Not unless you're going to shoot me. I wouldn't want to get shot just so you could shoot McNeil."
"I'm not going to shoot you. You haven't got any clothes on. You sleep like that, in your underpants?"
"Sure, how do you sleep?"
"In pajamas," Tee said.
"Seriously? In this heat?"
"Shorty pajamas. The bedroom is air-conditioned… What's the worst thing that could happen if I kill him?"
"You could like it."
"No nonsense about turning me in, federal charges, ruining my life, all that shit?"
"For killing McNeil?" Becker asked. "He was resisting arrest, he was armed and dangerous…"
"I'm not armed," McNeil moaned. Becker kicked backward with his heel, catching McNeil in the mouth. "We could arm him," Becker said. "I can testify to all of this, you wouldn't have legal problems. That isn't the point. The point is, what will it do to you? You're my friend, you're the one I care about. I don't want you to start something you might find you like."
I know I would."