When Styer took out the phone, Winter stepped out thirty feet behind him and aimed at Styer’s head. He assumed since Styer was wearing a coat inside the house he was wearing a ballistic vest under it.
Winter had a clean shot, and a bullet fired from the Reeder would blow a large hole in the mass murderer’s head. He had pictured this moment for years, and he knew he should kill Styer now like the mad dog he was. Winter, standing there, with Styer unaware and empty-handed, could not squeeze the trigger, the reality was so abhorrent.
“Hands behind your head, Styer!” Winter yelled out. “Now!”
“You going to arrest me, Deputy Massey?” Styer asked calmly. “Or shoot me in the back?”
Styer sprang through the living room door, leaving Winter wondering if he’d just made the last mistake of his life.
121
From behind a tree, a scoped AR-15 at the ready, Brad watched the figures of Alexa, Cyn, and Hamp leave the cover of the bushes and run down toward the cruiser and the Jeep. The young deputy sheriff who’d been at the roadblock was behind another tree on the opposite side of the yard, armed with a riot gun.
Brad used a flashlight to set the deputy in motion, and then ran to cover the rear of the house from the southwest corner as Winter had said he should. Winter had told them not to enter until he signaled that it was safe to do so, and to shoot Styer down if he left the house. Winter had wanted a clean area of operation where the only other person moving around inside the house would be Styer.
Help was on the way, but the cruisers and EMS were to keep their blue lights off until Brad told them to move up to the house. All he told them was that a killer was impersonating his father.
The deputy outside with the shotgun had been certain that the man in the truck was Dr. Barnett. Now, with Alexa and the children out successfully and all four sides of the house covered from opposite corners, all they had to do was sit tight and wait.
If Brad got a shot at Styer, he would take it, but firing at his father’s image, even if the man had probably killed his father, wasn’t going to be easy. He sincerely hoped Winter would make that unnecessary.
Brad heard a series of shots fired rapidly inside the house, and clicked off his safety. Watching the kitchen window, he saw a shadow move quickly past the glass. A few seconds later, the interior of the house was plunged into darkness. Styer had thrown the main breaker.
122
Winter knew styer could be anywhere in the rooms that extended along the north side of the house. He had positioned himself at the end of the main hallway where he could see from the front door to the back and down the service hall. With his back to the den door at the base of the service stairs leading up to the second floor, he had Styer hemmed into the north side of the house. If Styer went out through a window to flank his adversary, Brad or the deputy would be positioned at the house’s corners to get a clean shot at him.
With his.45 ready, Winter waited, listening for a floorboard to creak, a shadow from the lighted butler’s pantry, or Styer’s entry into the service hall. Styer suddenly appeared there, faced Winter with a gun in each of his hands, and began firing both at Winter as he moved into the kitchen. Reflexively, Winter rolled back out of the line of sight, but too late, he felt a dull push on his left thigh.
After Styer went in the kitchen, Winter reached down and brought up fingers slicked with his own blood. He could stand, because Styer’s bullet had made a through-and-through wound. Aside from the bleeding, the shot wouldn’t do anything but slow him down and leave a trail of large red drops.
He was about to change position to cover the back and the kitchen doors when he heard a sharp snap and the lights went out.
Winter slipped off his shoes, and with warm blood running down a leg that didn’t want to bear his weight, he started slowly up the rear service steps, holding on to the railing to steady himself.
An explosion followed by the sound of falling glass told him Styer had opened up with one of the handguns, firing at Brad through a window.
If Brad was down, Styer could get away, but Winter knew that fleeing while his arch enemy was alive was the last thing that Paulus Styer would do. Now he had an escape route, which he would use only after he was finished. Winter was going to make him work hard for a kill.
“Gawd alive,” Styer shouted in an exaggerated drawl. “I’ve done gone and kilt my own man-child!”
123
Back in the dark kitchen, Styer reached into the valise to retrieve his night vision goggles, which he slipped on. He snapped on the power switch and the room came alive. He grinned and looked through the window over the sink to admire his handiwork. Barnett’s body was on its back in the grass, the rifle off to one side.
Seconds later, a deputy made the mistake of running to check on his boss. Styer aimed his Glock at the side of the cop’s head and squeezed the trigger twice. Thirty feet away, the young man collapsed into the icy grass like a cardboard cutout hit by a sudden wind. His right boot quaked as his neurons figured out they had been disconnected from their command center.
Styer dropped the mostly spent magazines one at a time, replacing one before going to the next gun in case Massey used the pause to attack. Styer went into the eerie green interior of the service hall, aiming the Glocks before him.
Massey was no longer in the doorway to the den, and Styer looked down to see his abandoned shoes and the dark pool of blood. He followed the large wet drops across the floor and onto the stairs where there was more blood smeared on the handrail. He decided Massey would be moving down the hallway upstairs, in an attempt to flank him. When he found the bound-up Keen and the children, it would slow him. Styer could go upstairs and deal with him there, but he would probably get Keen and the kids outside on the roof. Being the valiant idiot he was, Winter would stay inside and keep moving down the hall using the front stairs to flank his adversary.
He had expected more from Massey, and was disappointed in him. Wounded or not, the flanking maneuver was too obvious. Civilian life and a family had slowed his instincts. Styer almost felt sorry for him.
Styer turned and moved slowly down the main hall to wait for Massey to come sneaking along in the dark so he could kill him. Time was getting short. Backup would be coming from town. He would get away, even if an army was surrounding the house, because he had planned for that possibility.
124
Winter figured styer had cut off the electricity because it gave him an edge, and since Styer had to figure that Winter knew the layout of the house better than he did, he had to be prepared to operate in the darkness. Only night vision goggles would explain that.
He put himself in Styer’s head and stopped in his tracks. He knew that Styer could follow his blood trail. If he moved, he could be heading straight into Styer, who might be waiting for him at a point where he could watch both sets of stairs and the hallway.
He opened Hamp’s bedroom door, smiling when the hinges squeaked. Inside, he took out his phone and dialed Leigh’s cell phone. After a brief conversation, he left the room and started toward the front stairs, the clock in his head ticking down.
125
In the living room with the glocks in his hands, Paulus Styer sat in a wing chair with a view of the front stairs. He had heard a creaking as Winter opened the door to the boy’s bedroom and smiled. Three minutes or less to wait. Winter would free Alexa and the brats and stay behind to cover their escape. Styer imagined Alexa and the children straggling across the porch roof, climbing down the lattice, and he figured that Leigh Gardner was probably outside in the Jeep-a frightened sow who would not wander far from her trapped piglets. He didn’t care about her. Massey would soon come to keep Styer busy while they got away. But since Alexa knew about the bomb, he would start to look for him immediately, he would have to kill her before he escaped. Without her to tell the authorities about it, the bomb would take up his pursuers’ time and a nice slice of their budget.
Now his entire focus was on Massey-as he had in
tended from the start. All the rest had just been window dressing. Divine providence, in the form of Kurt Klein, had made it possible.
Styer stifled a yawn with his sleeve, then rested both guns flat against the tops of his legs, ready as a man could be for the next few minutes.
126
Winter was at the top of the front stairs, just out of sight from below.
“Hey, Styer!” Winter yelled down. “You ready to die?”
Styer remained silent, not about to give away his position.
“This is what you wanted, right?” Winter called. “All this death and destruction just for me. Man, you are one sick son of a bitch.”
His taunts were answered only by the ticking grandfather clock.
“Tell you what,” he called. “Turn the lights back on. We stand toe to toe, count to five, and draw. Winner takes all. What do you say? You can’t take me in a fair fight, and you know it, you cowardly sack of shit!”
Winter imagined Styer down there listening, wanting to answer. Winter needed only the first gun flash to give him Styer’s position. He was betting he could fire the.45 and nail Styer before his enemy could get off a second, better-aimed round. Assuming, as was his custom, that Styer was wearing night vision goggles, that would mean the first flash from Styer’s own gun would blind the killer momentarily.
When the grandfather clock started chiming midnight, Winter raised Hamp’s aluminum bat. Five seconds later, the lights in the house came on, and he hurled the bat down the stairs, pleased by the amount of racket it made on the oaken steps. Following the bat’s path, gun in front of him, Winter started down the stairs, leaning against the rail. His wounded leg failed him and he fell, his gun leaving his hand and flying down ahead of him, the stainless steel catching the light as it careened off the polished stairs. The sharp wooden edges of each step battered him as he fell. He was aware of Paulus Styer standing up from a chair, dropping one of the guns to the floor, and clawing at the goggles. Despite that, Styer aimed at the staircase, firing rapidly.
127
Alexa reached the backyard unarmed, and spotted Brad and the deputy lying still in the falling rain. She had gone to them, planning to slow only long enough to get a handgun before going inside as Winter had asked her to do. She saw that both of the men had been shot in their heads. A round had hit Brad’s head at an angle, taking out Brad’s left eye and chipping out a piece of the socket, where rose-colored blood coned down toward the ground. The deputy had two clean holes in his temple. She was lifting the deputy’s coat for his handgun when she saw Brad move his hand and blink his right eye. She could see now that the wound had entered his left eye socket and exited at his temple.
“Can you hear me?” she asked him.
He didn’t respond.
“Wait here and stay still. Can you do that?”
He nodded and closed his eye. She put his cap over his face to protect him from the freezing rain.
Taking his rifle, Alexa ran to the back door and turned the knob. It was locked. No surprise. Using the key Leigh had given her, Alexa unlocked the door and opened it slowly. Stealthily, she slid into the mudroom, feeling the heat as she eased the door shut. Using her hands to feel, she located the door to the utility room, where the breaker box was, and leaned the rifle against the wall. She heard Winter calling out to Styer at the other end of the house. As she opened the door she stopped when her foot struck something large. Reaching farther, she felt the warm figure of Estelle. Alexa found her neck, felt a weak pulse, stood, and stepped over the woman. Using only her hands, she found the open metal door to the breaker box. She followed the row of breakers with her fingertips, found the larger main button, and hearing the bat clattering on the stairs, she flipped it and was rewarded by white light.
Leaving the utility room to the sound of gunfire, Alexa shouldered the rifle and moved into the main hallway. When Styer moved into view, she realized her scope lens was iced over and fogged. She looked over it and squeezed the trigger, missing wide, the bullet shattering the glass in the front door behind him.
Still facing forty-five degrees from her, Styer swung the gun across his chest and aimed it at her.
Alexa kept firing, adjusting her aim.
Styer was hit and fell, dropping the gun as he went down.
As she came up the hall, her barrel pointed at him, he rolled onto his back and laughed, rose-colored bubbles issuing from his nostrils and mouth. The bullet must have entered his chest after passing through his left shoulder.
As she got to him, she kicked the Glocks away and turned to see Winter getting to his feet and bending down to get his gun.
“You all right?” she asked him. Her ears were ringing from the gunshots.
“No,” he said, limping painfully to lean against the handrail.
“Well, I guess you are going to have to arrest me after all,” Styer said from the ground below her as he groaned in pain. When he spoke, his words sounded wet, lubricated by the blood rising from his punctured lungs. “You know, Massey-”
His words ended in an explosion from the gun in Winter’s hand. Through the new ringing in her ears, she heard the crisp sound of a shell casing click on the floor.
Looking down, she saw that Styer was still smiling despite the new black hole below his chin. Whatever thoughts he’d had were scrambled somewhere in the knot of brains that trailed across the shiny floor beyond the exploded top of his head.
“Jesus Christ, Massey!” Alexa screamed. “Why did you do that?”
Winter shook his head.
Then she saw the small black object in Styer’s right hand, his thumb resting on the button. She reached down and carefully took the cell phone in her hands, snapped open the back of it, and, using her fingernail, removed and disconnected the battery.
“The remote,” she said. “Cell phone remote.”
“The remote?” he asked in total seriousness.
“To detonate the bomb.” She stared at him speechless for a long few seconds, shaking her head slowly. “I’d forgotten about it. Thank God you remembered. You did remember, right?”
Winter winced, snapped the safety on the Reeder up, pushed it into its holster, and sat down on the bottom stair, his face reflecting only a portion of the agony she knew he was feeling. Alexa walked over, plopped on the stair beside Winter, and put her arm on his shoulder.
“Christ,” she said. “Thank you.”
It hit her that Winter hadn’t seen the phone, nor had he remembered the bomb below them. It came to her as surely as if he opened his mouth and explained it to her. He had shot an obviously dying Styer because he didn’t want Alexa to have even a monster like Styer’s death on her conscience. As it was, she had merely wounded Styer to save Winter’s life. His bullet had removed the killer’s death from her gun and her conscience.
Winter had often told her that killing a felon, even in the line of duty, was only a little less damaging than dying yourself.
128
SUNDAY
The reinforcements had arrived half an hour after Styer died. They took Estelle out to a waiting ambulance and put Brad in another, both headed to a Memphis trauma center. Both Estelle and Brad needed better medical care than they could have gotten locally. Winter rode to Memphis in a cruiser. Alexa stayed at the house.
FBI and ATF agents arrived, fresh from the equipment barn, and everybody waited in a shed away from the house while the ATF found the bomb in the basement, disarmed it, and carted it away.
It was almost noon on Sunday before the doctors at Baptist Memorial in Memphis told Leigh and the children that Brad was going to be as good as ever-except he would only have one eye. Hamp said it was a lucky thing he hadn’t lost the eye he aimed with.
Estelle had two.22-caliber bullets removed and the doctors were hopeful of her full recovery if there were no complications like migrating blood clots or infections. One of the bullets had hit her in the back of her head and knocked her out, and the second was stopped by her spine, thankfully not s
evering her cord. After the operation she had regained consciousness and had promptly asked for a Coke.
The FBI had found Jason Parr’s corpse in his suite at the Roundtable. Pierce Mulvane’s body was found near the exploded equipment shed. Best they could figure, he was dead from a gunshot wound in his forehead. He had been in the trunk of the limousine when the blast hurled his corpse fifty feet into a pile of tree limbs, where he’d hung across a branch like a Christmas-tree ornament. Woody had located Dr. Barnett’s body in a closet in his home.
Kurt Klein had left for Europe that morning after he’d given a statement. All he knew was that Mulvane had missed a planned dinner, and he was asleep in bed when the sheriff from the next county had awakened him.
Winter’s hip was sore from the bullet wound and he had three fractured ribs from his fall down the stairs. He ate a late breakfast in the hospital cafeteria and looked at the television screen, where a newscaster was getting about ninety percent of the facts wrong on the events in Tunica County. It was something he was accustomed to.
Sean had wanted to come back to Memphis, but he’d convinced her to wait for him to return to Concord.
Winter suddenly felt a presence over his shoulder and sipped his coffee as a man he thought he’d never lay eyes on again sat down across from him. The cutout put his coffee cup down on the table.
“Been a while,” he said.
“A year,” Winter said to the man whose name he had never gotten when they’d met at a small airport in Arkansas to discuss Paulus Styer.
“How’s the leg?” the man asked.
“I’ve had worse,” Winter said.
“We didn’t imagine you’d come out of this in one piece,” he said. “You never fail to surprise, Massey.”
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