Deep Shadow

Perry could see King’s breath pluming as he used a screwdriver to lever a window open, then stepped back so Perry could be the first to climb into the old man’s house.

It wasn’t as easy as they imagined because Perry was even drunker than King, plus he’d scored a bottle of Adderall behind the Greyhound station—20-milligram tablets, pure pharmaceutical speed.

Inside the house, when Perry finally found his balance, and his eyes had adjusted, he had his question answered—“Why’d no one ever try to rob the guy before?”

Alfred Hostetler was standing there, shouldering a shotgun, squinting with his bitter, superior eyes, ready to pull the trigger. Cowering behind him was what looked like a Mexican family, a woman and a couple of kids—no, three kids, two snot-nosed boys and a pretty little girl who was maybe thirteen.

It took Perry a moment to arrange it in his mind. He had climbed into the mother’s bedroom, he realized, probably the maid.

“You better be carryin’ more than a damn screwdriver, you expect to rob a man like me and walk out alive,” the old man said to him, sounding pissed off, with no hint of fear, like he had more important things to do.

Even so, that struck Perry as an odd thing to say because it was King who had the screwdriver. Perry was carrying the gun. One of the switch-blades, too.

Clack . . . clack-clack. It was the sound the shotgun made, both barrels misfiring on 12-gauge shells that might have been as old as old man Hostetler. Perry had thrown both arms over his head, terrified, but recovered fast enough to shoot Hostetler twice, in the stomach, as the Mexican maid and her brats screamed, then ran for their lives into the darkness of the big wooden house.

Perry sprinted after them, but shoved the gun into his pocket in favor of the switchblade he was carrying.

A knife would be quieter, he decided. More hands-on and personal, too.

That little pistol was loud.

Two hours later, riding in what was probably the maid’s car—a beat-up old Subaru that smelled of diapers and Taco Bell—Perry was now getting pissed off himself because King, who was driving, kept saying to him, “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe this is happening!”

Because of the Adderall, the man’s voice was abrasive in Perry’s brain, as penetrating as the orange caution lights flashing down MLK Drive at three a.m. on this morning, with a black wind scattering trash across the asphalt.

Perry said, “It happened, so get over it. What was I supposed to do? The guy was pointing a gun at me! The shithead tried to shoot me, goddamn it. I could be dead right now!” He had been scrubbing at his hands and jeans with a towel. Now he cranked down the window, let the wind take the towel, and couldn’t help grinning as he yelled, “That was wild, man! Talk about a fuckin’ high! I was that close to dying, dude!”

Perry had never experienced what he was feeling. It was an overwhelming rush, a screw-it-all freedom that was like soaring, a complete letting go. His brain was flashing postcard images of what he’d done: colors bright, dripping like fresh paint, startled faces, screaming wide eyes, five people, the old man, the woman, then the kids, finding them hidden in closets, under a bed, one by one, the girl last—settling into it then, taking some time to enjoy how her muscles responded to the point of the switchblade—but he hadn’t touched the dog.

Nice dog.

In fact, Perry had said that as he left, walking out the front door, using the towel so they wouldn’t leave prints.

“Nice dog. Good doggy . . .Yes you are!”

King had repeated what he’d said about not believing this was happening, then made a show of calming himself, before saying, “Okay, okay, here’s what we do. You sober enough to at least listen?”

Perry was crashing from the speed, his nerves sparking, but he was sober enough.

What they did was park the Subaru near a pool hall, keys on the dash, and walked fast down MLK to where it became Lake Silver Drive, the wind pushing them along like leaves beneath streetlights. They kept right on walking, even when a cop slowed, cruising past, but the cop never stopped, so they did seven or eight miles before first light, finally buying coffee and doughnuts at the Perkins on Cypress Gardens Drive, both men spending some intense time in the washroom first.

Three miles later, they saw a dozen bicycles racked outside Candlelight Christian Academy off Highway 17. It was early Sunday—probably a soccer team or something doing an overnight, King decided, before saying, “Make sure you take a helmet, too.”

Christ, a bike helmet? After murdering five people?

Perry responded, “Whatever,” keeping watch as King chose a nice Trek, then grabbed a bike for himself.

The two men pedaled south, not too fast—“Like we’re sightseeing,” King kept reminding Perry—riding until noon, which was when they noticed two helicopters flying search patterns to the north, and King said, “We gotta find trees to hide under. A place to camp, maybe, for a few days, where there’s cover—and water. I want to wash this shit off me.”

King’s slacks and shirtsleeves were stained, too. He was the one who had pulled the girl from beneath the bed, then held her so Perry could use the knife, but not before saying first, “Give the King about five minutes alone with this pretty little thing. Okay?”

Perry did it—but only because one of her brat brothers was making a wheezy, crying sound, still breathing.

Where?

It took Perry a while, maybe five full minutes, down on his hands and knees, crawling with the bloody knife in his hand, searching until he found the kid under a blanket.

Perry guessed the brat thought he would be safe there. But he wasn’t.

For a couple of hours, the men hiked inland, ducking branches, until they found a lake so far from the road that there was no sound of cars, only wind blowing through the high trees where a hawk screeched, but not another living thing around.

Near the lake was a hunters’ storage shed, padlocked, about the size of a Porta Potti. Inside were cans of food in Tupperware tubs, and military Meals Ready to Eat, dense as cheese blocks in their rubberized brown bags.

“No one will bother us here. You think?” King said to Perry, as he collapsed, cross-legged, in the shade.

Perry was walking toward the lake, where trees threw shadows along the southern perimeter. The water was black and clear in a way that reminded him of looking through smoked glass, like a black marble he’d had as a kid.

Perry answered, “I ain’t going back to the joint.” Meaning no one had better try to come after them. He had lost the switchblade during all the excitement, but he still had the pistol.

King had held on to his knife. He used it now to slit open an MRE, took a few bites of a fig bar, then decided to recount the gold coins that had come spinning onto the floor when the fancy frame busted.

Eleven gold eagles, and seven hundred dollars, cash, in twenty-dollar bills, that’s all they’d found worth a damn—but it wasn’t like they’d spent much time searching the place after doing what they’d done.

Perry was staring at the lake—it was teardrop shaped, sharp edged, like a bowl—seeing fish nosing among roots that protruded, knee-high, from the water.

“Weird-looking trees,” Perry said. “Sort of like in comic books, the fantasy ones, you know—girls with big boobs, carrying spears.” He lit a cigarette, crumpled the pack, then watched the wind sail it across the lake.

“They’re cypress trees,” King told him, looking at the sky, before adding, “This cold front’s moving south. By tonight, it’ll get warmer here, but cold as hell in Miami. Probably the Sarasota area, too.” An authority on the weather now.

Perry was still staring at the lake, his eyes suddenly wider, as he whispered, “What the hell was that . . . ?”

He had seen something so unexpected that it startled him. A huge fish or something from beneath the surface, something dark with a tail, had stirred a refrigerator-sized swirl beneath the Marlboro pack. Like it had