Agnes and the Hitman

by Jennifer Crusie

  Garth seemed to take the question seriously for a few moments. “Nah.” He was still looking at the gun. “You got one for me?”

  Shane surveyed Garth. He appeared lost in the coveralls Carpenter had given him, the cuffs rolled up around his ankles, his bony arms sticking out. Reluctantly, Shane pulled out a paintball pistol and loaded it. “You’ve got ten rounds,” he told Garth as he handed it to him. “So don’t waste your shots. And use it only if someone’s threatening you. And don’t shoot unless I do.”

  “I’ve shot a gun before,” Garth said indignantly as he brought the gun up and aimed into the swamp. “Pow, pow, pow.”

  “Let’s go.” Shane moved forward toward the trail. He had the stock of the gun tight against his shoulder, scanning, the muzzle following his eyes, finger on the trigger.

  “I’ve got to tell you something,” Garth said in a harsh whisper.

  “What’s that?” Shane was sliding his left foot forward when he sensed something. He looked down and noted a thin piece of fishing wire across the trail. “There are booby traps,” Shane said without looking over his shoulder. “That what you wanted to tell me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you were waiting to tell me because?” Shane didn’t expect an answer. He knelt and traced the fishing line with his eyes. On the right side it disappeared into a bush at the base of a tree. “What’s it hooked to?”

  “Branch with spikes, most likely.”

  “No alarm? Can tied to a string, that sort of thing?” Shane looked up and saw that someone had pulled back a branch, tying it off with more line. Several sharp sticks were tied off to the branch. Cheap, rudimentary, but it would hurt like hell if it hit you.

  “Nah. Grandpa don’t kill people, he just don’t want no strangers sneaking up on him without them getting hurt. He figures the screams when they get stuck’d be enough warning. Jimmie, he got stuck once, and boy did he scream. I told you this weren’t no good idea.”

  “Step back.” Shane triggered the line with the tip of gun. The branch whooshed across the trail just in front of him and then came to a halt. “Any more traps you know about ahead?”

  “My cousin Fred sets ‘em,” Garth said. “He ain’t much good for much else, but he’s a good trapper. Caught a gator once.”

  “I take that as, you don’t know whether there are more and where they are.”

  “That’s what I said. Fred knows. But Fred don’t like me none. Once he-”

  “Silence.” Shane moved forward, eyes moving, body light as he walked on the balls of his feet. He was sliding his feet along, not lifting them, alert for the slightest abnormality.

  He safely sprang two more traps in the next quarter mile as they went farther into what Shane wouldn’t exactly call the heart of darkness-more like the bowels.

  “There’s Fred’s place,” Garth said after Shane had disarmed the third one.

  A battered trailer sat forlornly underneath a large oak tree. There was no sign of life.

  “Fred usually sleeps during the day,” Garth said. “The rest of the family is spread out from here to Grandpa’s place. There shouldn’t be no more traps.”

  “All right,” Shane said. “You lead the way to your grandpa’s place.”

  Garth held the paintball pistol out in front of him, dramatically sweeping it back and forth in front of him, half the time the gun pointing one way while his eyes were looking another. Too many cop movies, Shane thought. More broken and battered trailers appeared, spread out in the thick green vegetation like alien pods. A poor alien race that loved cheap beer and booze, based on the number of empty cans and bottles scattered about.

  Shane caught movement out of the corner of his right eye and smoothly turned. A skinny young man with a shotgun in his hands was bringing the weapon up to his shoulder when Shane pulled the trigger, firing a burst of five, the projectiles hitting the guy in the chest and exploding in puffs of hot pepper.

  The youngster cursed, dropping the shotgun as his hands went to his chest, where he’d have ugly welts developing soon. Of more immediate concern was the gas that clung to him. He doubled over and began hacking and coughing.

  “Let’s go,” Shane ordered, shoving Garth forward.

  “That’s Jimmie,” Garth said. “He ain’t gonna be happy.”

  “I’m not happy,” Shane muttered. “Worry about me.”

  Someone stepped out of a trailer to their right, and Shane fired another quick burst, hitting the man, causing him to disappear back inside as fast as he’d appeared.

  A half-burned trailer was on their left, and Garth skidded to a halt as he saw a scrawny, middle-aged woman appear like a wraith in the burned-out portion. “Mary-Louise!” Garth hissed. “What’re you doing in my house?”

  The woman blinked, rubbed bleary eyes, saw Garth and Shane, and then screamed at the top of her lungs. Shane cursed, then fired, hitting her in the stomach with three rounds. The screaming was abruptly cut off and she staggered backward into the darkness of the intact part of the trailer.

  “Leave for just a couple days and they grab your home,” Garth was saying. “No respect.”

  Shane could see why Garth wanted to stay at Two Rivers. He had no time to reflect on this as he saw four people moving toward them among the foliage, weapons in hand. Shane fired, squeezing off three rounds bursts, ignoring a bullet from one of the shooters that cracked by. He hit all four, incapacitating them as Garth blindly blasted away with the pistol, one of the pepper balls exploding on a tree less than five feet in front of him.

  Shane heard a car engine start to his right front. Ignoring Garth, who was still pulling the trigger of the empty paintball gun and coughing from the near round hit, Shane ran forward around a trailer and hurtled over one of the gasping shooters.

  A battered replica of the General Lee was pulling away from a double-wide trailer. Shane was about to drop the paintball gun in exchange for his Glock when he caught movement to his left and the sound of a shot being fired in that direction. He turned, firing, and then released the trigger when his uncle Joey cursed as a pepper ball hit him in the chest and exploded.

  “Damn it!” Joey swatted at the mess on his T-shirt and then began coughing.

  The General Lee disappeared in a cloud of dust and dirt.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Shane demanded.

  “Same thing you,” Joey coughed. “Trying to get Four Wheels. And you just fucked it all up.” He hacked and then spit. “Fucking Brenda told Xavier that Four Wheels and I whacked Frankie.”

  Nothing has gone right since I hit Keyes, Shane thought. He amended that thought-there was Agnes. He shook his head. Mind on mission.

  “Dumb shit is probably heading for Agnes now that we got him riled up,” Joey said.

  Fuck. “Let’s go.” He grabbed Joey, who was reaching up to rub his eyes. “Don’t do that.” He looked around to see a blinded Garth walk into a tree and almost knock himself out.

  “Great.” Shane grabbed Garth with the other hand. “My team.” A Spiritual Humanist cleaner, an old mobster, an addled swamp rat, and an angry food columnist.

  “We’ll get ‘em next time,” Garth said between coughs.

  “Wasn’t all your fault,” Joey said, trying to get his shirttail up to his eyes.

  Go team, Shane thought, and pointed them in the direction of the Defender.

  The tow truck had arrived and pulled the wrecked sand truck out of the crumpled bridge, and as a bonus had taken Brenda away, too; she’d hitched a ride to get her Caddy from town now that she’d moored the Brenda Belle at Two Rivers. Kristy had toured the grounds to “like, take some background shots and get the hang of the place,” and then she’d come back in time to help Agnes get LL’s bourbon-sedated body upstairs into bed to sleep it off, abetted by a curious Rhett, who had followed them up the stairs to see what they were going to do with her. He’s seen way too many bodies moved lately, Agnes thought, and then her cell phone rang and she answered it.

  “Hey
.” Joey said hoarsely. “Somebody might be coming to the house who might be dangerous.”

  “Really?” Agnes said. “Because that almost never happens here. With advance notice. Should I get my frying pan?”

  “No joking, Agnes, it’s Four Wheels.”

  “This would be Grandpa, right? The guy who drove for your robbery and then went out to the swamp to breed the rest of the Wheels?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Great.” Agnes crossed the second-floor hall from Lisa Livia’s room into one of the front bedrooms, now full of Maria’s wedding gifts and the dress form with Maria’s newly arrived white wedding dress, and looked down the lane. Nothing. Rhett peered out the window, too, unperturbed. “It looks peaceful out there now. Should I call the police?”

  “Shane says Carpenter can handle it, and we’re on our way.” A bolt of red came shooting down the lane in a cloud of dust, swerving to make the turn, and Rhett barked. “Whoops.”

  “What?” Joey called out from the phone.

  “Spoke too soon. I think Four Wheels is here,” Agnes said as the car spun out, a decrepit, rusted-out, engine-misfiring red rattletrap, the Stars and Bars painted on the hood.

  “Stay inside and lock the doors,” Joey ordered. “Let Carpenter handle him.”

  “Carpenter’s in the basement, and Doyle’s out there all alone.”

  Doyle walked out onto the front lawn, holding his paint sprayer on his hip like a six-shooter.

  The driver’s door flew open as the car rocked to a halt in front of the ruined bridge, and an old man spilled out onto the gravel, face-first, struggling to get to his feet, a bottle rolling away from him.

  “This might not be the trouble you’re afraid it is,” Agnes said into the phone. “He’s drunk. Standing up seems to be beyond him at the moment.”

  “Is he armed?” Joey asked.

  “I don’t see a gun.”

  Doyle shouted something and stomped across the lawn toward the bridge, waving the paint sprayer.

  “Oh, hell,” Agnes said. “Doyle’s going after him. Hurry up, Joey.” She turned off the cell phone, told Kristy to stay inside with LL and keep Rhett with her, and ran down the stairs to save her handyman, yelling for Carpenter as she went.

  “I ain’t tellin’ you again,” Doyle was yelling as she came out the front door. “Get off me lass’s land or I’ll pummel you.”

  The old man had managed to pull himself up to one knee. He was bleary eyed and blinking, trying to focus.

  Another car turned down the lane: Brenda Dupres coming back to Two Rivers in her baby blue Caddy.

  “Fabulous,” Agnes said, and then yelled, “Doyle, get back here!” as the handyman walked across the remaining support beam of the bridge.

  “Where the hell is-” Four Wheels bellowed. “Where the- Where is-” He kept stalling out, his brain refusing to get in gear. Agnes saw him look up into Doyle’s face and blink. “Who?”

  Doyle grabbed the old man’s overalls in one meaty fist and hauled him upright, pointing the sprayer at him. “Where’s what, boyo?”

  Four Wheels seemed to gain some degree of sobriety as he lost the flow of oxygen to his brain, and he grabbed a shotgun from inside the door and swung it into Doyle’s groin. The Irishman grunted and dropped the old crook and the sprayer, and Four Wheels shoved him hard, toppling him past the smashed bridge and into the inlet. Agnes yelled, “Doyle,” and ran for the cut just as Brenda turned her big car in a wide loop and pointed it at them.

  Four Wheels spun about, shotgun in hand, screaming, “Who the fuck is Agnes?”

  Agnes reached the muddy inlet and looked down to see Doyle trying to climb up the side, still gasping from the blow to the groin. “Stay there, Doyle,” Agnes said. “He’s got a gun.” Four Wheels shifted the large double muzzle so it was pointing down at Doyle. “Try it, you dumb mick. I’ll blow your ugly mug right off.”

  Doyle stopped, breathing hard, his nostrils flaring in anger, but he smartly took several steps back down into the cut. Agnes saw Brenda’s car creep a little closer and then stop again, about forty feet away, Brenda invisible behind her tinted glass, probably praying that Four Wheels would pick off Agnes.

  Oh, hell, Agnes thought, realizing for the first time that this could be her plan. She might even have sent the old drunk to Two Rivers, and if she had, she was going to be sorry, the dumb bitch-

  Oh, shut up and be smart, Agnes. You’ve wasted enough time swaggering around stupid.

  Dr. Garvin?

  Four Wheels straightened and looked at her and then slowly brought the shotgun up and pointed it at her. Calm and smart, Agnes. Think.

  “Hi,” Agnes said to Four Wheels. “I’m Lisa Livia Fortunato.” The sound of wheels on the dirt road made them both look around, and she saw Shane’s truck coming down the lane. She heard footfalls behind her and looked over her shoulder and saw Carpenter running across the lawn toward her. Okay, better odds.

  The relief was gone as the shotgun swung back toward her. “You ain’t Lisa Livia. You’re that Agnes. I seen your picture in the paper.”

  “Uh…”

  “You killed my grandson.”

  “No, I didn’t. He fell.” Agnes took a step closer. “It was an accident, I swear. I’m really sorry for your loss.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Doyle start to climb up the bank toward Four Wheels.

  “Bullshit.” Four Wheels twisted his head as he heard Shane’s truck stop.

  Shane opened the driver’s door and got out, gun pointed at Four Wheels. Joey got out of the passenger side, gun pointed at Four Wheels. Carpenter was at Agnes’s side, gun pointed at Four Wheels.

  Agnes looked at Four Wheels and wondered if he was in any condition to gauge odds.

  Carpenter put his hand on her shoulder and pulled her back.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Joey?” Four Wheels called out.

  “You leave my little Agnes alone,” Joey yelled. He was moving to Four Wheels’s right while Shane was moving to the left and toward them. And Doyle was taking another shuffling step up the embankment.

  Four Wheels staggered slightly, the muzzle of the shotgun wavering. He got a tighter grip on his cane as his head swiveled, back and forth, trying to keep track of everyone. “Everyone just fucking stay still!”

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” Joey said. “You got two shots, and I bet it’s just buckshot anyway. Then you’re done.”

  “And you’ll never get the first one off.” Shane had his pistol up at eye level, aimed right at Four Wheels. The muzzle of his gun wasn’t wavering at all.

  The old man was perspiring now, booze and sweat, his eyes wide. “I just want some answers. Where’s Three Wheels? What’d you do with him?”

  “He’s fine,” Shane said, still heading her way. “Put the shotgun down and tell us why you sent him here with a gun.”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything. Where’s my boy?” the old man yelled, and Agnes thought, Wait a minute, he’s got a right to know that.

  “It’s all right,” she said, and took a step forward.

  “Agnes,” Carpenter said, but she pushed his hand back and said, “Stay there, you’re scaring him,” and walked carefully across the remaining bridge support to Four Wheels.

  “I swear Garth’s all right, Mr. Four Wheels,” she said when she was next to him, standing beside the shotgun instead of in front of it. “I think he’s probably in the truck. He’s helping Doyle paint the house and do odd jobs for me. He can leave whenever he wants to.” She leaned a little closer, in spite of the alcohol fumes, seeing Shane moving closer out of the corner of her eye. “I think he likes the food.”

  The old man’s eyes were bleary. “Food?”

  She turned in the direction of the Defender. “Garth? You in there?”

  Garth’s head came up slowly from the backseat, and he waved cautiously.

  “Your grandpa’s worried about you,” Agnes called. “You want to come tell him you’re all right?” But don’t tell h
im about the food because I don’t want him to stay.

  Garth nodded and opened the door of the truck, and Four Wheels began to put the shotgun down.

  And Brenda gunned the Caddy and drove straight for them.

  Agnes froze, but Shane yanked her toward the bridge, where they both fell into the cut, landing hard in the mud, Shane cushioning the fall for her as the Caddy hit Four Wheels square on, the old man screaming as the car smashed into the inlet, crushing him into the mud on the other side of the bridge.

  “Don’t look,” Shane said, pulling her head to his chest, but Agnes said, “Doyle,” and she heard the handyman say from under the bridge, “Fucking bitch!” which sounded about damn right. Shane held her tight while she shook, and she said, “She killed that old man, Brenda killed that old man, why did she do that?” and he said, “She wasn’t aiming for him, Agnes,” and held her tighter while the truth sank in.

  Then Brenda opened the door of her wrecked Caddy that was nose down in the cut, hanging suspended in the seat by her safety belt, and Agnes turned in time to see her say, “My God, that man almost killed our Agnes!” her blue eyes wide with innocence.

  Doyle picked himself up out of the mud under the bridge and looked at Brenda with so much loathing that it was a miracle she didn’t melt from the corrosion. “Burn in hell, you miserable hag of witch,” he said, and began to climb out of the cut.

  Agnes met Brenda’s eyes and saw them narrow.

  “She tried to kill me?” she said to Shane, her voice a whisper. “With her car?”

  “Can you make it out?” Carpenter said from above them, and Shane nodded and sat up, bringing Agnes with him.

  Agnes stood up slowly, holding on to Shane as he stood, too. “She tried to kill me with her car?”

  “Climb out of the ditch, babe,” Shane said, his voice telegraphing steady, steady.

  “She killed that old man!” Agnes looked up the embankment, and saw Garth standing beside Carpenter, looking sheet white. “Oh, God, Garth, did you see-”

  “Weren’t no call to do that,” Garth said soberly. “He was puttin’ the gun down.”