Joanie, still humming her song upstairs in the shower, never heard the shot.
Luna had the illegal silencer screwed onto his handgun’s barrel to thank for that.
He crept up the stairs, still fighting the urge to rape the woman before he sent her to meet her husband at… wherever they were destined to be.
And truth was, he still hadn’t made up his mind when he walked into the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain.
She didn’t even have time to scream. She saw him just a split second before his second shot hit her between the breasts, through her heart, and shattered against the shower’s back wall.
It would have been a shame to mess up such a pretty face.
Her knees buckled and she collapsed into a seated position in the bottom of the tub.
He looked at her for a moment, admiring her naked body, and wished he had partaken of it.
But it was too late now.
And he still had work to do anyway.
He collected the shell casing from the floor, just as he’d done in the living room, and slipped it into the pocket of his jeans.
Then he went into the bedroom, and to the night stand.
He slipped open the drawer and took out a snub nosed .38 revolver.
They always kept them in the nightstand. And they almost never took it with them when they got up in the morning.
He smiled again.
He didn’t know how he sized up Bill for a .38 aficionado. He just looked like one.
And it wouldn’t have mattered all that much anyway. If Bill didn’t have a .38 revolver somewhere in the house, Luna would simply have wiped his fingerprints off the shells and dropped them on the floor again. Once in the bathroom, and again in the living room.
Then he’d have left his own gun, also wiped clean, in Bill’s right hand.
That wasn’t necessary now, though. It meant that Luna could keep his own gun, and leave Bill’s behind. If anyone cared to run the serial number, and had a means to, the records would show that Bill was the registered owner and the gun belonged there.
Neat and tidy. Just the way Luna liked it.
He entered the bedroom’s walk-in closet and aimed Bill’s gun toward the corner of the ceiling, then fired off a round.
The roar was deafening, but not to Luna. He’d already placed shooter’s plugs into each ear.
He waited about a minute and fired a second shot into the same corner of the closet’s ceiling, maybe half an inch from the first.
Both bullets would likely be lodged into the attic joists. But even if they made their way through the attic and through the roof, it didn’t matter.
Bill and Joanie were past caring about a little hole in their roof and Luna didn’t give a damn either.
The two shots, fired a minute apart, were important in case someone had been walking by and heard them. The gun needed to be fired twice, and twice in rapid succession wouldn’t do, with the victims on two different floors of the house.
Luna walked back down the stairs at his leisure and closed the drapes before wiping his prints off the gun and placing it in Bill’s hand.
It was just a hunch. But he figured that since the houses in and around Blanco were rather sparsely spaced, that no one would likely hear the shots.
Another hunch told him that if someone had heard them, they probably wouldn’t come running.
Not given the rash of suicides the town had experienced in recent days.
And no one could report the shots to the police because, well, the entire one-man police department was now dead by his own hand.
No, if anyone did hear the shots and figure out where they came from, no one would come until morning.
And they’d come not expecting to find Luna in the house, but to recover and bury two more lost souls.
Luna and Savage had an agreement to split the loot fifty-fifty. But screw Savage. The fat little fool didn’t deserve half of the booty for doing nothing more than handing Luna a lead and writing down an address.
Luna had all night long to search at his leisure for whatever gold and silver they didn’t deposit at the bank. The stuff they kept on hand to barter with.
Luna knew they had some. They were too stupid not to.
And he found it, in a cookie jar on the kitchen counter.
It was only the second place he looked, after Joanie’s lingerie drawer.
Dumb people were so predictable.
Chapter 37
At the daily gathering the next afternoon, no one noticed that Bill and Joanie Cullen were missing. That was because most of the townspeople knew they’d been preppers before the blackout.
And also because they’d missed most of the previous meetings, only showing up occasionally to assess the town’s need for their wares.
Luna stood toward the back of the crowd, as he’d always done before. Savage was a good forty feet away from him, separated by a dozen or more people, yet managed to catch Luna’s eye.
Luna merely glanced toward the bank.
Luna never asked for, nor expected any food. His share of food was factored into Mrs. Montgomery’s daily allocation, and she cooked the meals for him and the other guests.
So he raised no suspicions when he left before the proceedings were over.
As he passed by the bank doors, he furtively took a yellow sticky note from his jacket pocket and stuck it on the door’s glass.
Right between the B and the A.
The note said simply, “Here. 7 p.m.”
A few minutes before seven the sun had just dipped below the horizon and the three streets in Blanco were darkening quickly.
Without the aid of the street lights, which everyone was now accepting would never work again, it was getting increasingly hard to see.
John Savage had to feel for the keyhole with the fingers on his left hand and then guide the key into it.
He opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it again.
Normally he kept the drapes open to allow sunlight in during daylight hours.
On this night he drew them closed, ensuring there were no gaps anyone on the outside could peek through.
Then he took a blue Bic lighter from his pocket, lit a small candle, and placed it in the center of his desk.
Several minutes later there was a knock on the door.
“Come in.”
Luna went directly to the meat of his concerns.
“No one noticed they were gone.”
“Are they? Gone, I mean.”
“Yes. Last night.”
Savage hadn’t foreseen this particular problem. The other suicides were noticed almost immediately, when the deceased failed to show up for their daily rations.
“No one noticed them missing because they usually don’t attend the meetings.”
“Any ideas?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Figure it out quickly. I want to go in tomorrow night to divide up their stuff and to move their pickup elsewhere. Before somebody else finds it and takes it.”
“Why don’t you move it tonight? There’s no moon and it’s overcast. Nothing like a dark night to help hide things.”
“I thought of that, Savage. But when they go to bury the bodies, if someone notices their pickup is missing, it’s likely to change from a double suicide to two counts of capital murder.”
“And who is going to investigate it? We had a one man police force, and he shot himself, remember?”
“It’s not the police I’m worried about. It’s a posse of vigilantes.”
“Good point.”
“And now’s not the time to get sloppy. If any suspicions are raised that they might not have killed themselves, the rest of the plan is off. Someone might start watching their place. Which means we can’t go in there and see what goodies they have.
“And it also means you can’t foreclose on their land and keep it for yourself. Or someone might put two and two together and decide you had the most to gain from their dea
ths.
“Anyway, I’ve come to collect for the job.”
Savage looked puzzled.
“Collect what?”
“The gold and silver they left with you. That was our agreement, remember?”
“But they left it in a safe deposit box. I only have one key. They have the other.”
“Not anymore.”
Luna took a large key from his shirt pocket and passed it across the desk to Savage.
“It was on his key ring, in his pocket. He wasn’t very smart.”
Savage stood and picked up the candle.
He led Luna over to his vault and placed his fingers on the dial. Then he realized Luna was watching him and stopped.
“Do you mind?”
“Oh, sorry.”
Luna turned his back and Savage continued.
The truth was, Luna had no desire to steal the combination to Savage’s bank vault. The cash stacked inside was worthless now.
Sure, the combination would give him access to the safe deposit boxes of Blanco’s more wealthy residents. But that access was worthless without the second keys that those residents retained.
They walked through the vault, past several bags of coins from the U.S. mint, and several trays of money from the teller windows.
In the back of the vault, they entered a small room.
Luna was struck by how tiny the room was. It was little more than a walk-in closet, with a tiny table and chair in the center of the room.
Savage seemed to read his mind and offered, by way of explanation, “It’s a small town. We don’t have many residents who have need of a safe deposit box.”
And to be sure, only one wall featured the boxes. They were all of uniform size, the doors roughly the size and shape of an eight by ten picture frame.
There were five rows of five boxes each. Twenty five in all. And all but nine had two keys already in their locks.
Apparently they were available for rent.
Together they opened number six. The Cullens’ box.
Inside were thirty tiny bars of gold, two hundred and ten gold coins, and a like number of silver ingots. Another bag contained one hundred and fourteen Morgan silver dollars from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“They said they’d been collecting this stuff for years, and that her grandfather left some of it to them. I haven’t had it appraised yet to find out what the value is because I haven’t had free access to it before now.”
“Don’t worry about the appraisal. Just put it on the table and divide it into two equal piles. Do you have a heavy bag?”
“Yes. Right there on the shelf behind you.”
A few minutes later the pair secured the vault and walked back to the lobby.
The tiny flame from the candle barely put out enough light to keep them from bumping into things along the way.
“Find a way to get those bodies out of there, and we’ll meet at the Cullen place tomorrow night at eight.”
“But we have to figure out how to get a key.”
“You won’t need one.”
Luna peeked out the bank’s door to make sure no one would see him leaving.
He needn’t have worried. The street was inky black and deserted.
All the good folks of Blanco were already at home and most were in bed.
Those who weren’t were probably on their knees at bedside, begging God to bring back the power and end their misery.
The night belonged to men like Savage and Luna.
As they parted ways that night, they each had a secret they were keeping.
Contrary to his claims, Savage did indeed have a duplicate for the Cullens’ safe deposit box key. He had duplicates for all his customers’ keys, so he could go in late at night and rifle through their things.
In the Cullens’ case, Savage had already gone into their box the day before and removed about eighty percent of the gold and silver located there.
But it went both ways.
Before he left the Cullens’ house the night before, Luna had removed thirty other bars of gold, a bag of gold shavings and a small bag of loose gems from the Cullens’ cookie jar and stashed it in his luggage at the boarding house.
It turned out there really was no honor among thieves.
Chapter 38
The next morning John Savage walked over to the hardware store.
Butch had continued to open the store daily since the blackout.
Life went on, after all, despite the lack of power.
His friends and neighbors still needed axes to chop firewood. Lumber to build things.
Shovels to dig graves.
And many of them needed tools, in a stubborn attempt to get their cars and pickups running again.
Even a lot of the men who believed the damage was permanent worked on their cars anyway. It was partly because they didn’t want to admit defeat to themselves, and partly because they needed something to do.
In a world without televisions, radios and telephones, they were bored and needed something… anything, to occupy their time.
Townspeople in need of such items no longer had the option of jumping behind the wheel and driving a few miles to Austin to shop at one of the big box stores.
No. The only option for hardware items now was Butch’s store.
So ever since the blackout, Butch occupied a chair just inside the doors of his store, with the front and back doors propped open to circulate air.
On nice days he moved the chair outside to the sidewalk.
Many of the town’s residents approached timidly, hat in hand. They knew they had no means of paying for the items they needed.
But Butch believed in the barter system.
“Don’t worry about the money. Just tell me what you need, and I’ll get it for you. It’s safer that way, because the store is very dark. The warehouse in the back is even darker, and I know a lot better than you where everything is. Once I gather it up, we’ll see if we can come to an agreement.”
Mrs. Stanley, the owner of the town’s only bakery, agreed to pay Butch ten dozen cookies at a later date in exchange for some garden tools. Since she couldn’t open her bakery anymore, and couldn’t bake without her electric ovens, she needed to do something different with her time.
So she decided to garden, and perhaps grow enough fruits and vegetables to can and help her survive the winter months.
Butch willingly made the deal, knowing full well that he’d probably never see the cookies.
But that was all right. Because he knew Mrs. Stanley well. And Mrs. Stanley would certainly bring him green beans and tomatoes and potatoes when her crops came in.
Mrs. Stanley was walking out of the store as John Savage walked in.
“Still doing business, Butch?”
“Yep. People still need things, even in a very dark world.”
“But how do they pay you?”
“Some barter for things. Others have nothing to trade, so they give me IOUs.”
“IOUs that are as worthless as the old U.S. dollar.”
“Perhaps.”
“And it doesn’t bother you that you’ll never get paid for much of the merchandize that’s going out your door?”
“Maybe a bit. But it would bother me more if I refused to help a neighbor in need.”
“I don’t understand you, Butch. I’m a banker and an accountant. To me, the world revolves around money. And in the absence of money, it revolves around other things of value that can be used in place of money. I just don’t understand a businessman who’s willing to just give things away for free.”
“Maybe that’s the problem, John. Maybe you’ve been a banker and accountant for so long, you’ve lost sight of the fact that some things are more important than money.”
“Perhaps. But I just don’t see it.”
“And what about you, John? Is there anything you need today? Or did you just come by to chat?”
“Actually, I don’t really need anything. But I’m afraid I’m in a b
it of a quandary and I need some advice.”
“Oh? How can I help?”
“Are you familiar with Bill and Joanie Cullen?”
“Yes, of course. They’ve been my regular customers for years. I went up there a few months ago to help them measure the site for an underground bunker they were building. Then I ordered the materials they needed and arranged for their delivery to them.
“Why do you ask?”
“They were in town a few days ago and came to see me. They said they were going to sell off a subsection of their property and asked if I knew of anyone who might want to buy it.
“I told them I’d ask around, and to come back and see me yesterday to find out if I’d found a buyer.
“We had an appointment yesterday at three p.m., and they didn’t show up.
“That in itself is no big problem. People miss appointments all the time.
“But after the daily meeting yesterday, a friend paid me a visit. A friend who asked me not to reveal her name, in case she was wrong.”
“Wrong about what, John?”
“About the gunshots she heard the night before last. She said they came from the Cullen place.”
Butch’s face became ashen. Although many of the townsfolk considered the Cullens rather standoffish and antisocial, Butch liked them. He considered them not just good customers, but friends as well.
Savage said, “Anyway, I’d go over there myself to check on them. But I’m so squeamish and I’m terrified of what I might find there.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll go check on them and make sure they’re okay. Just because someone heard gunshots doesn’t automatically mean the worst. Maybe Bill was shooting a possum or trying to scare off a prowler.”
“Yes, of course. That’s it, I’m sure. I just wasn’t sure what to do with the information, that’s all.”
Savage turned to leave, saying “Thank you for your time, Mr. Poston.”
“No problem.”
Chapter 39
Ten seconds after Savage walked out the door, Red came walking in.
Red: The Adventure Begins Page 11