by Thomas Perry
Prescott slipped in the back door, locked it, pushed a new magazine into his pistol, then moved to the front door. He reached up and flipped the light switch beside it. Outside, the light was painfully brilliant. The floodlights Prescott had installed in the trees above the line of brush where the killer had hidden poured down in a bright, white halogen light that seared the eyes and made the leaves on the bushes shine. Prescott waited. He knew there were only two ways for the killer to react, and either one was going to put him in front of Prescott’s sights one final time. He crouched by the window to see which way it would be. The killer could turn and try to run off across the huge open field of old corn stubble, a five-minute run with nothing that rose higher than his socks to obscure the view of his back. Prescott believed he had already closed that possibility: in order to scare him into falling into the empty pool, he had fired a rifle. This killer would know enough not to run across empty, open land, and he could not stay in the suddenly lighted bushes. He had seen Prescott’s muzzle flash coming from the woods, so he wouldn’t go in that direction. But he knew there was one place left where the odds would be about even.
Prescott stood back from the window, raised his pistol to shoulder level, and waited for the front door to swing open. After ten seconds, he sensed that something was not right. It was a vague, irritating discomfort at first, then a feeling of distraction. It was a sound. It was an unexpected sound, one he had done his utmost to make impossible. He listened more carefully, hoping it was coming from far away—a freak of the damp night air that had thrown a noise across the empty fields. He stepped to the side window in time to see a bush still shaking, a leaf brushed from it falling to the ground. It was too late for a quick shot from here. The killer was out of the brush now, already too close, moving along the clapboards somewhere near the front of the house.
Prescott tried to listen for footsteps. It might be possible to hear the man’s shoulder scrape against the clapboards, then put five or six shots through the outer wall about two feet up from the floor. But listening had become futile, because the engine sound was louder now. He heard the springs of the car give a squeak, and there was a metallic scrape as the nose tipped down over the deep rut in the gravel drive. He spun and ran for the back door, stuck the key in and opened it, then dashed outside toward the corner of the house, squinting against the searing light of the floods across the yard.
His experience told him not to pause at the corner of the house, because that was where the killer would fire instinctively. He determined to step out beyond it, where the light would be out of his eyes and he would have a full view of the side of the house.
He reached the corner, dashed out, and pivoted. The killer’s shot slashed along the side of the house, leaving a line of bare wood, and ricocheted off into the distance.
Prescott fired. The killer’s left forearm was slapped outward from his body, and Prescott knew he had hit it, but the killer was already moving around the corner to the front of the house. If the wound had slowed him, it was too late for Prescott to see it.
Prescott ran after him, his mind flashing images of the front, trying to predict where the killer would stop to aim. The killer would be ready. Prescott would not. He would have to see, sort out the shapes instantly, and place his one, final shot before the killer put a round through his head. Prescott was almost to the corner before he was sure: practice. This killer was good because he practiced. When shooters practiced, what they became good at was what the ranges offered them: they practiced seeing something pop up, aiming, and shooting it. They practiced leading a target that moved side to side. What they didn’t practice was the target that came in low, moving straight at them. Prescott veered away from the house, came in at the corner and dived, trying to use the moment of fast motion to see.
He saw the human shape on the porch and aimed at it, but the muzzle flash came from somewhere to the left, beyond it. The shot caught the muscles along the top of Prescott’s left shoulder, beside his neck, and sent pain streaking down his shoulder blade. He hit the ground hard, not able to break his fall with his left arm. He tried to aim at the place where he had seen the muzzle flash, but he could make out nothing.
The human being moved away from the door, and Prescott could see better. It was a young woman, thin and dark-haired, and she was bent backward. The killer had his injured arm draped over her shoulder, and the other hand holding the pistol beside her face. She was terrified, her face set in a wide-mouthed, silent wail as the killer held her in front of him and sidestepped off the porch. Prescott aimed, trying to find a bit of the man—an inch or two—where he could put a fatal shot.
“Fire and she’s dead!” The voice was the one Prescott had heard so many times over the telephone, and it had lost none of its bravado. It sounded eager and full of hatred.
Prescott lay still, the gun in his hand useless, the house he had carefully selected and turned into a trap now irrelevant. He watched the killer open the driver’s door, get the girl into it, and slip into the back seat behind her without ever presenting him with a shot he could be sure would be fatal. He watched the car back down the gravel driveway for two hundred feet before it swung around. He watched the Lincoln Navigator in the driveway slump suddenly as a shot pierced the right front tire, then jump a few times as shots pounded into radiator, engine compartment, and windshield. As the car drove off, he pulled himself awkwardly to his feet and hurried to find the cell phone he had left in the bushes.
37
Varney lay back in the back seat while Mae drove out of the gravel driveway onto the road. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she chanted. “All those lights were on, so I thought it must be over, and it would be okay to drive in.”
Varney spoke carefully, his face set in the effort to overlook the pain in his arm. “I’m not mad. Just shut up and let me think for a minute.” He knew that she wanted to say something more. “Just drive to the casino fast. We need a different car.”
She reached the casino in a few minutes. She parked the car in the middle of a long line of vehicles, then sat and watched while Varney opened the trunk and reached into the suitcase that contained his tools. He took a long, thin strip of sheet metal, slipped it into the space beside the window of the car beside theirs, moved it around a bit, then tugged it to make the lock button pop up. He opened the door, sat in the driver’s seat, used a big screwdriver to pop the silver ignition switch with the key slot out of its socket, and connected two wires from the back of it, starting the car. Then he pulled the trunk-release latch and the trunk popped open. He came back to the car where Mae sat and said, “Put everything in this car, and then wipe that one down and lock it up.”
While she worked, he sat on the rear bumper of the car he had started. “Drive straight to Interstate 35, down to Minneapolis. It’s the fastest way, and we want speed. Now shut me in.”
She gaped at him. “You’re going to ride in the trunk?”
He said quietly, “There will be cops everywhere in about five more minutes. They’re going to be looking for the two of us in a red Ford. But it’s going to be just you in a gray Toyota. See?”
She nodded.
“Then do it.”
He lay in the trunk, and she slammed the lid, hurried to the open door, got in, and drove. When she was on the highway, there were already police cars driving toward her with their lights flashing. She pulled over and slowed, then stopped. But Jimmy had been right. They saw her, drove past her, and went on. She moved back onto the road. When she made it onto Interstate 35, it seemed to her that she saw more police than she had seen since she had been in this state. They seemed to have come from nowhere. She would drive ten miles of empty road, and then four of them would come along in a line, heading north, covering the miles she had just passed, all in the far left lane with their lights blinking so they could go really fast and the few cars going north ahead of them at this time of night would get out of their way.
The car Jimmy had picked to steal
wasn’t bad. The odometer said forty-one thousand miles, but the engine was powerful and smooth, and she knew that was all that mattered. She wasn’t sure whether he had looked at the gas gauge as soon as he had started the engine, but she supposed he had, because it was nearly full, and she knew he cared about that. It would get them to Minneapolis, and then things would begin to improve. She decided that this was the scariest night of her life.
She fought the fear by reminding herself that she had been almost as scared the time when Gwen died, and she had come through it. Gwen had passed out at the party and her chest had started going up and down, not like breathing, but like shivering. Mae had known it was an overdose. It had to be. But Mae had managed to keep her fear under control so she could do what she had to do. She had closed the door of the bedroom where Gwen was lying, so nobody else would see her and start calling ambulances and cops. Then she had stepped outside on the patio, as though she were going outside for a smoke. Only she had just kept walking into the night. She had avoided all the terrible unpleasantness that would have come if she had let herself get stupid and stay around. Just the single question—where did the drugs come from?—led into so many complexities and difficulties that it simply had to remain unsaid. Nobody at that party had known her name or where she had come from, so it had all worked out all right. She had been proud of her presence of mind. It was bad enough to have lost Gwen, who had been her friend for a couple of years, but the rest of it would have been too much.
Tonight she just had to keep her wits above the fear long enough to get them both down into a real city, and things would begin to improve. Jimmy would realize that once two people had been through something like this together, they were forever bonded. He would be grateful to her: she was saving his life, after all. He would take care of her for as long as she wanted. She liked the thought of that.
She controlled her fear and made the long, fast drive through the night, listening alternately to two radio stations: one that played music about two years out of date so consistently that she wasn’t sure if it was intentional, and one that had people calling in on the telephone to complain about politicians she had never heard of. When she reached Minneapolis she drove to a street near the hotel where they had stayed, because it was all that she knew of the city. She stopped, pulled the trunk latch from inside, and went to the back of the car. She watched Jimmy sit up and climb out. “We’re at—”
He was already looking around. “I see,” he said. “I can’t go into the hotel.” He had wrapped a piece of cloth from his suitcase around his arm to keep the blood from getting all over everything, but he still looked pale and weak.
He said, “We need to get out of this state.”
“But you’re bleeding.”
“That’s right,” he said. “But I want to be over the state line into Iowa before we rest.” He began to walk. “We need another car. I want you to go back to the hotel. Call a cab for the airport. When you get there, rent a car and come back for me.”
All the way to the hotel, she whispered under her breath the instructions he had given her. She sat in careful silence with the cab driver, because she was afraid she would say something that would give away her secret. It was more than an hour before she was back on the block where she had left Jimmy. She stopped the car behind the one he had stolen up north, but he was not in it. She faced the possibility that she might have to walk around, up and down alleys and things to look for him, but he was suddenly right beside her. He reached into the window, snatched the keys, opened the trunk, and put their suitcases in it, then sat beside her in the front seat. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “How about you?”
“Drive,” he muttered.
She supposed that it was a stupid question. He could hardly be okay. What she had been trying to do was convey some kind of concern, make a connection, like a touch. He must know that. Men seemed intentionally to miss the point sometimes, to pretend they didn’t know, or that they had forgotten, so they could look at a person with contempt for having said something that was literally stupid but wasn’t really.
She decided that he was simply in a bad mood, and she could not blame him. He was in pain. He was tired, and worried about what was going to happen to the two of them now. That was a special part of his problem. He was a man, and that meant he was used to being the one who made things happen. They expected that of themselves. When he couldn’t do it, he must feel like less than a man. She decided that all she could do was behave as though she believed everything would be all right.
Mae concentrated on driving. The distance to the Iowa state line from Minneapolis was about as long as the drive had been to get this far. Now she saw few police cars. Her problem was endurance. In the dim gray light before the sun came up, she saw the sign that said WELCOME TO IOWA, but he would not let her stop. She had to keep driving toward the east with the sun in her eyes until noon, when she could go into a motel and rent a room.
The hours after that were not as easy as she had promised herself they would be. She had to go out again and buy disinfectants, bandages, tape, then wash and dress his wound. It was a strange, ugly hole right through the forearm, and when she washed it, the hole started bleeding again. She could see that when she touched him, it hurt terribly, but he didn’t make a sound. Later, she went out to bring back food, and he slept. She managed to get into bed beside him for a couple of hours before he woke her and made her change the bandages, get into the car, and drive on.
Before he let her stop again they were in Indiana. She changed the bandages again. This time he said, “I’ll drive.” She was afraid. How could he be strong enough? “Are you sure you want to?” she asked. “I can keep going for a while.”
He got in behind the wheel without answering. Mae sat beside him, studying his movements, watching his face and especially his eyes. A person who had lost a lot of blood could easily faint. She watched for twenty minutes, her body tense, waiting to grab the wheel, but he showed no sign of weakness. She slowly let her muscles relax: her tight shoulders, her stiff shoulder blades, her tired arms. Then she was asleep.
Mae awoke when the car seemed to slow and turn at the same time. She sat up hurriedly, taking in a quick breath through nose and mouth that was almost a snort. It was night, and the glare of headlights hurt her eyes.
He said, “You’re awake.”
She was alarmed. She must look awful. Her mouth was dry and her throat was sore from sleeping with her mouth open. She ran her fingers though her hair quickly, and rubbed her face to be sure she hadn’t been drooling. She scrutinized him, searching his face for signs that would tell her what he was thinking of her. He didn’t seem to be looking at all. She took her brush out of her purse and began to brush her hair. “How long was I asleep?”
“I don’t know. A few hours,” he said. “I’m stopping because the sign said there were restaurants up here, and gas stations.” She was ready for him to look at her now, but he still had his eyes ahead. She knew that was what he was supposed to do, but it would have made her feel reassured if he had just sneaked a glance at her now.
He stopped the car on a blacktop surface facing the back of the restaurant and far out of the glow of its overhead lights. She said, “Can I change your bandage before I go in?”
He nodded, “Okay.”
She took out the bandages and the antibacterial salve and got everything ready before she opened his shirt and took off the old dressings. She could see well enough in the dim light to tell that when she changed the gauze this time, there was no new blood. He was incredible. Over months she had gotten used to his ability to lift things, his ability to keep on running or exercising without seeming to get winded or tired. Those were things that seemed to her to be impossible to evaluate, because his body was so different from hers. But this—hurt and bleeding and healing—was something that everyone had, and it must be the same for everybody. It didn’t seem to be the same for Jimmy.
The way he lived h
ad made him into such a healthy animal it was almost frightening. He was beginning to recover from a gunshot wound in just twenty-four hours.
Mae put the new bandages on. She liked the business of touching him like this, ministering to him. She felt as though she was putting good feelings in his mind for later. When he felt better, he was going to know who had gotten him through this. She said, “I’ll bring us something to eat. What do you want?”
“I’ll go in with you.”
They went inside the restaurant, and she was amazed to hear what he ordered, and more amazed to see him eat it. He was healing, all right. Otherwise, he couldn’t have eaten all that steak and the potatoes and vegetables, and then order pie and milk too. She had to cut his steak for him, but after that, if his left arm hadn’t been resting in his lap while he ate, she would not have known.
When they were finished, he paid the bill in cash and they went out to the car again. It made Mae feel a tiny bit sad to leave the place where there were lights and cheerful voices and the smells of food cooking, and come out here where it was dark and the air was beginning to take on the late-night chill, and the smell of gasoline was so strong while Jimmy filled the tank. It was easy to be lonely when she was with Jimmy. He had started talking a little more before things had gone all wrong the other night, but that had died out.
Varney said, “You ready to drive some more?”
She drove while he slept, but she found as she drove that the night didn’t bother her much, because she forgot about it for long periods. She was thinking about Jimmy while he slept. She could tell during dinner that he had become more settled in his mind. It was as though he had been shocked and confused at first, but had finally made some sense of what had happened. To Mae, that was a very good sign. It meant he was going to be all right. He had not lost his health, and he had not lost his nerve. She drove through the night devising ways to make this work. She considered getting him to marry her, but there were too many reasons why that would be unwise. He would have a responsibility to give her money, but he would also have a right to some of hers, including the money Tracy had been paying her to be with him. And that would stop. He wouldn’t pay Tracy for his own wife. Mae would have no income at all. No, marriage was not for her.