by Jack Ketchum
The snap of neck was louder than the snap of wrist had been. She could hear bone grind bone inside him. His legs jerked and spasmed and then he was quiet, swaying, drooling pulsing waves of blood and pissing the length of his jeans.
Harpe turned to her and smiled. “Hole-in-the-Wall,” he said. “A little frontier justice.”
She was nearly to the turnoff to the main road when she saw the headlights coming toward her—on a night filled with blazing headlights searing into her, two more now, like lasers burning through the most awful headache of her life and she fell dizzy to her knees before them.
Too much, she thought, too damn much and then she heard car doors slam and feet pound the dirt and then he was calling her name.
“So that’s it,” Alan said. The Turtle Brook was busy with the lunch crowd for a change. He wiped some burger juice off his chin and wondered why they had to make these things so thick no normal mouth could close over them.
“Thanks to you and your late friend Marion they finally got to close the place down. Harrison gets indicted on four counts of murder for the kid, who turns out to be your basic runaway by the way and for Marion, Short and Rothert, with Thaw and Coombs as co-conspirators since they run the place. Thaw and Coombs? They may very well beat the rap or take a plea. Hole-in-the-Wall’s a big place to supervise and you can’t be everywhere at once. You know, that kind of thing. The Church of Final Judgment keeps no records and it looks like takes no prisoners and nobody thinks Harrison will do a whole lot of talking, so that’s probably all they’ll get. Too bad it took a day to get that goddamn search warrant.”
“Why couldn’t you get the warrant?” she said. “I thought you and Judge Lardner were thick as thieves.”
You should only know, he thought. He hadn’t called her in months, that was why. It pissed her off. Simple as that. She wouldn’t even talk to him. And he couldn’t do much begging with Frommer standing by. He shrugged and bit into his burger.
“So there’s nothing at all on Micah Harpe.”
“Nothing,” he said. “Vanished.”
“Good,” she said and smiled.
She looked terrific in the turban, he thought. Hell, she’d even looked terrific in the bandages last night. The bandages and nothing else. Stark white against tanned smooth skin. She was quite a goddamn woman to have gone through all of that and come out of it the way she did. He was going to have to marry her soon before somebody else beat him there. If he didn’t know that before, he sure did now.
“Good? Why’s that?” he said.
Her smile broadened. “Don’t worry. You’ll see.”
Arthur “Little” Harpe sat on a bench in the hall flanked by guards on either side. He got up when he saw Janet and her new co-council Linda Morrison striding in his direction and smiled that shaky, snaky little smile of his that she used to wish she could dissuade him from using in the courtroom.
“Hi, Janet,” he said. “Feeling better today?”
“Much better, thank you.”
“What was the problem? I mean, if you don’t mind my asking. All’s they told me was you weren’t so hot.”
“Nothing to worry about, Arthur.”
He didn’t need to know about the nightmares. God, no. Certainly not Arthur Harpe. He didn’t need to know about that poor little girl twisting in a sudden gale of gunfire.
“Come on,” she said. “We’re going to see if we can’t get you out of here today.”
The smile this time was absolutely genuine. The little worm probably had never hoped for such luck. The fact that it wasn’t luck—that she’d be lying when she got up there on the witness stand and told the jury that Micah Harpe had confessed to the Willis murders to her back in Hole-in-the-Wall—that was something he didn’t need to know either.
Linda opened the door to the courtroom for them and they stepped on through.
“By the way,” she said, “I have a message for you. From your brother.”
The look of alarm on his face nearly made her smile. But it wouldn’t do to smile. Instead she put her hand on his shoulder and turned him toward the defense table.
“But that can wait for now,” she said, “can’t it?”