by Bill Hopkins
end of Vicky to get into position. More shots rang out, a few ripping through Vicky. If Candy kept that up, he’d have to kill her for sure. No one messed with his car and lived to tell the tale.
Nathaniel said, “Call the sheriff.”
“No service.” Nathaniel checked his own phone. Rosswell guessed that Nathaniel didn’t believe him.
More shots.
“Candy,” Rosswell yelled, “stop shooting. Everyone and their brother is looking for you. You have no way out.” Rosswell prayed that was true.
Silence for a moment then more shots.
Rosswell watched as Nathaniel scooted next to him. Nathaniel squinted at Candy and grunted. “That’s not a woman.”
“What?”
“I’m telling you that the person who’s firing that gun at us is not a woman.”
“That’s Candy Lavaliere. I’ve known her for years. You don’t even know her. She’s got some masculine traits, maybe, but she’s a woman. Hell, I suspect she and Ollie are lovers. You’re fricking crazy.”
“Women generally have wider pelvises than men. That’s why they sway their hips.”
Nathaniel had gone around the bend. Candy was trying to kill them and he lectured Rosswell about female anatomy, giving him facts he already knew. Rosswell had seen stress under gunfire many times. Men sometimes go crazy when someone’s trying to kill them. And now Nathaniel was comparing the way males and females walked.
“Rosswell, come out here, you prick,” the shooter yelled.
Rosswell said, “What the crap?”
Unless she’d downed a dose of testosterone while in the jail, that voice didn’t belong to Candy or any other woman Rosswell knew. It was a deep bass voice of a man. And it was a man he knew. But he couldn’t place a name with the voice. Not right then.
“I told you,” Nathaniel said. “It’s a man.”
“No crap.”
“Who is it?”
“I know him, but I can’t place the voice right now.”
“Let me try.”
Rosswell said, “Try to place his voice?”
“No. Let me see if I can talk him down.”
“Have at it.”
Nathaniel scooted a foot or so towards the road, but Rosswell doubted that the bad guy could see him clearly enough to take a kill shot. The shooter knew that spraying them and everything around them with bullets would do the job as effectively as one shot to the head. The guy didn’t need good aim. All he needed was a lot of bullets.
“Hey, out there,” Nathaniel said.
No answer.
Nathaniel waited a few more seconds, then said, “Let’s talk.”
No answer.
Rosswell said, “I don’t think this is working. I’m going to shoot him.”
“Wait,” Nathaniel said to Rosswell, then hollered to the shooter, “Talk to me, man.”
No answer.
“That does it,” Rosswell said, squirming into a sitting position behind Vicky. It was a stable position that would allow him accuracy.
The guy said, “What do you want?”
Rosswell then recognized the voice. “It’s Johnny Dan Dumey.”
He’s been stalking me. The glint of light I saw at the park when we got the tire impressions were from binoculars. Shooting at Tina and me. The woman in the crowd that Hermie’s son saw. The knife under my couch. All of it was Johnny Dan Dumey.
“Tell me about him.”
Rosswell wasn’t about to give up one criminal to another. He’d have to settle for something that would give Nathaniel something to chew on but nothing he could use if they lived through the firefight.
Maybe Nathaniel will do something really stupid out here that he could be arrested for. The two birds with one stone ploy.
Rosswell said, “I don’t know him that well. He’s an auto mechanic, and his daddy, Elmer, is in a nursing home.”
“Good stuff.”
“What are you, some kind of hostage negotiator?”
“I’m quite well read.” Nathaniel nodded toward the man trying to kill them. “No practical experience, but that seems of little consequence now.”
“Ollie will be sorry he missed out.”
Johnny Dan yelled, “I said, what the hell do you want?”
Nathaniel cupped his hands around his mouth and said, “Johnny Dan, how’s Elmer doing? How’s your dad?”
Johnny Dan still hadn’t sought cover. Probably because he didn’t realize that Rosswell was armed. Then again, if he didn’t think either one of them had a gun, why didn’t Johnny Dan charge and blow their heads off? Something was wrong with the boy’s brain, but what bothered him was way beyond Rosswell’s knowledge.
In answer to Nathaniel’s question, Johnny Dan shot a volley over their heads. “Get out here where I can see you. Who the hell are you?”
“Nathaniel Dahlbert.”
“What kind of car do you drive?”
“Infiniti.”
“How old?” Johnny Dan asked.
“Brand new.”
“Is it silver?”
“Yes. You know it?”
“I’ve seen you driving around town a lot. You’re going to have a problem with that clutch slave assembly. I can hear it going out.”
If Rod Serling had appeared announcing the beginning of a Twilight Zone episode, Rosswell wouldn’t have been more surprised. A madman trying to kill them was giving Nathaniel a little last minute advice about a bad clutch on his car.
Nathaniel said in a low voice, “I’ve got him talking about irrelevant matters. That’s good.”
Rosswell whispered, “Keep going.”
Nathaniel said to Johnny Dan, “Maybe you could take a look at it.”
Johnny Dan said, “You’re going to be dead. You won’t need a clutch.”
Nathaniel said, “Johnny Dan, there are some more things we ought
to talk about. Come over here and let’s talk. Man to man.”
The idea of Johnny Dan waltzing over for a visit while he was toting his AK-47 didn’t appear to be a real good idea. However, Rosswell had to admit that as long as Nathaniel had Johnny Dan talking, he wasn’t shooting.
Johnny Dan said, “Y’all got any guns?”
“No.”
Rosswell was proud of Nathaniel’s instant lie.
Johnny Dan strutted up and down the road, never letting his eyes leave what little he could see of them. Hoping they were hidden behind his precious Vicky to the point where Johnny Dan couldn’t see them well enough to shoot them didn’t bring Rosswell comfort. Parked between them and death was—Rosswell hated to think of her this way—nothing but a hunk of German tin, but Vicky could be sacrificed if she kept them from getting killed.
“He’s only got thirty rounds per magazine,” Rosswell said to Nathaniel. “I’m hoping he’s running out of ammunition.”
Nathaniel yelled to Johnny Dan, “Throw down your gun and we’ll talk.”
Johnny Dan laughed loudly. “That’s a good ’un. I’m going to use that.” He slung his rifle over his shoulder, posturing like a soldier of fortune. Even though he was disguised as a woman, the sneer was all male.
“Your method isn’t working,” Rosswell said to Nathaniel. “Let me try something.” He nodded. Rosswell stood. “Johnny Dan, come over here and talk to us.”
The instant he saw Rosswell, Johnny Dan drew the rifle off his shoulder and slapped it into firing position, but before he could pull the trigger, Rosswell shot him between the eyes. What happened next played out in slowmo, like the movies. Johnny Dan dropped the rifle, raised both hands, and fell backward into the road. It didn’t take a second but seemed like it took ten minutes.
In the stillness that followed, Rosswell said, “You saw him aiming for us, didn’t you?”
Nathaniel didn’t answer. Rosswell said, “It was clearly self defense.” Nathaniel still didn’t answer.
Rosswell said, “He was going to shoot first.”
Rosswell turned and Nathaniel had disappeared.
Chapter Thirty-three
Saturday afternoon into Saturday night
People either died or vanished when Rosswell was around. It was beginning to hurt his feelings.
But he had a bigger problem on his hands. He had a dead bad guy lying in the road and no way to call the cops.
“Nathaniel,” he called. In the distance, he thought he heard a car start and then drive away from his location. Probably a brand new Infiniti with a clutch going bad. He doubted that he’d ever see Nathaniel Dahlbert again.
He’d have to drive into town and fetch the law. That’s the decision he made.
And immediately after he made the decision, he smelled why it would never happen. Vicky leaked gasoline. If she were going to explode from a stray spark swirling around, he didn’t want to be near her.
Still pointing his gun at Johnny Dan like the cops do on television, Rosswell approached him with slow yet deliberate steps. The hole in his head told Rosswell that he’d never move on his own again, yet Rosswell couldn’t afford any risks. When he reached Johnny Dan’s rifle, he kicked it off the road, far out of his reach.
Then he stood over the corpse and stared.
Rosswell didn’t like killing people.
He already knew that Neal and Frizz would chew his ass good if he messed up the scene, although he felt an urge to cover Johnny Dan’s body out of respect for the dead. What should he do? Stand there until the mailman or one of the neighbors drove by? No phone. No car. And yelling wouldn’t do any good.
The fire marshal’s investigator drove up, parking his car far enough from Johnny Dan’s body to avoid contaminating the crime scene. A rumpled uniform that transformed into the man sent from Jefferson City eased out of a state-issued car, an unmarked maroon sedan with black-wall tires plain enough to be conspicuous. There may as well have been COP CAR painted on the side in bright orange letters.
The marshal