‘Holy shit,’ Finley muttered.
Vivian said, ‘My God.’
‘I’m… okay.’
He’s not. Holy shit.’
The light on the other side of her eyelids dimmed slighdy, so she opened them. The bright beam was aimed down at Jim. She groaned at the sight of him. He glistened with blood. His left eye was a slashed, bleeding pit. The left side of his neck was split by a gash that crossed the front of his throat. All over his chest and stomach were raw-edged slots. From one in his ribcage jutted the handle of a knife. A wedge of broken blade showed, sticking out an inch from a wound below his right shoulder.
Abilene started to get off him.
Vivian gave the flashlight to Finley, then hurried toward her. She was barefoot, but no longer naked. She wore the white shorts and shirt that Jim had made her take off under the balcony.
She grabbed Abilene’s arm and helped her up.
‘Man,’ Finley muttered.
Abilene looked down at herself. Her blouse was no longer plaid. Below its short sleeves, her arms were sheathed in blood. The open front covered her left breast and felt glued there. Her right breast was bare and looked as if it had been dipped in a bucket of red paint. The rest of her chest and belly were splattered and dribbling, but she could see a few places that the blood had missed. Her skirt was gone. Her panties were sodden with crimson blotches, her thighs splashed and runny.
‘How much of that’s yours?’ Finley asked.
‘Not much. It’s my back…’ She turned around.
A hiss of indrawn breath came from Vivian.
‘Nasty,’ Finley said.
‘You’ll need stitches in some of those.’
‘Did you get all that going through the window?’
‘Mostly. One’s from his knife.’
‘Well, you sure gave him payback,’ Finley said. ‘For all of us.’
‘How’d you know about the window?’
‘Cora told us.’
Abilene faced her friends again. ‘You were both out of it.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ Finley said. ‘The shit played basketball with my head.’
‘I don’t know what hit me,’ Vivian said.
‘I did. Sorry about that.’
‘Cora was just telling us what’d happened,’ Finley explained, ‘when we heard a door slam. Sounded like it came from down here.’
‘Christ, what took you so long?’
‘I thought we made pretty good time. We had to find the shotgun. And Viv, of course, had to get dressed.’
‘If you’d kept your shirt on,’ Vivian said, ‘none of this would’ve happened.’
Abilene saw that Finley hadn’t bothered to put it back on. Hardly surprising.
‘He had me fooled,’ Finley muttered. ‘Shit.’ She looked down at Jim’s body. ‘He really had me believing in that crazy fuckin’ brother of his.’
‘He had us all believing,’ Abilene said.
‘Yeah. Right. But I’m the only one who made out with the scumwad. If I hadn’t gone over and started messing around ‘It would’ve happened differently,’ Abilene told her. ‘That’s all. He was planning to get us. He would’ve made his try sooner or later. He knew Hank wasn’t gonna show up.’
‘Can we get out of here now?’ Vivian asked. ‘It’s… awful in here. And Cora’s gotta be wondering.’
‘She’ll be thinking we’re all dead,’ Finley said.
‘How is she?’ Abilene asked.
‘She won’t be walking out of here on either leg.’
‘Maybe she won’t have to.’ Abilene turned toward Helen’s body. Finley lit the way for her. ‘I think Helen found the keys before… he got to her.’ She stepped carefully over the mat of blood and crouched. ‘I touched something when…’
‘Did Jim bring you here?’ Vivian asked.
‘He came in after me. I was here for the knife.’ She shoved her right hand beneath Helen’s thigh.
‘The knife he used on Helen? Good thinking, Hickok.’
‘It wasn’t my idea. I had a little help from a friend.’
She closed her hand around the key case and pulled it out.
Finley and Vivian stood by the edge of the pool, watching over Abilene with the shotgun and flashlight. The water turned pink around her. When she finished washing, she climbed out and looked down at herself. Her skin looked ruddy and clean.
She left her bloody blouse and panties beside the pool, and followed Finley toward the stairs.
Vivian, behind her with the shotgun, said, ‘You’re bleeding all over the place.’
‘You can patch me up when we get upstairs.’
‘I can try.’
‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll be out of this place in a few minutes.’
‘The four of us, anyway,’ Finley muttered.
They began to climb the stairs.
‘But not Helen,’ Vivian said. She sounded as if she might start to cry.
‘I don’t know,’ Abilene said.
They didn’t ask what she meant by that. Just as well. This wasn’t the time to talk about such things.
‘That’s just about the best sound I’ve ever heard,’ Cora said when the Wagoneer’s engine roared to life.
Vivian and Finley had left her stretched out on the porch, then headed for the car.
They’d gone there once before and returned to the lobby with the Coleman lantern, a bundle of clothes, and the first-aid kit. By the bright glow of the lantern, they bandaged the cuts on Abilene’s legs. There weren’t enough bandages for all the cuts on her back, but they’d come prepared for that. They folded two sweatshirts into heavy, square pads and lashed them to her back with belts and Jim’s ropes. When the pads were secure, Abilene had dressed herself in shorts and one of Helen’s big blouses.
She’d led the way outside, carrying the lantern.
After Vivian and Finley had lowered Cora to the porch, they’d taken the lantern and hurried away to bring up the car.
They’d been gone a long time. Abilene, standing beside Cora, had started to wonder if something might have gone wrong.
But with the noise of the racing engine, she knew that everything must be all right.
She looked toward the sound and saw headbeams slant into the night from beyond the far corner of the porch. The bright paths slipped lower as the car nosed into view at the top of the driveway. When it turned, the beams swept sideways and lit the pavement that stretched like a road across the front of the lodge.
The approaching car looked almost as good as home.
It swung over close to the porch and stopped. The engine went silent. The headlights went dark, but a light came on inside the car as the front doors swung open. Vivian and Finley hopped out.
‘Anybody feel like a ride?’ Finley asked, pulling open the back door.
If only this had happened last night, Abilene thought.
