Darkfall

looked bright. And then… one afternoon… during the slack time between the lunch and dinner crowds, when Mama was out on an errand and I was alone in the shop with my father… this guy came in… with a gun…”

“Oh, shit,” Jack said. He knew the rest of it. He'd seen it all before, many times. Dead storekeepers, sprawled in pools of their own blood, beside their emptied cash registers.

“There was something strange about this creep,” Rebecca said. “Even though I was only six years old, I could tell there was something wrong with him the moment he came in, and I went to the kitchen and peeked out at him through the curtain. He was fidgety… pale… funny around the eyes.

“A junkie?”

“That's the way it turned out, yeah. If I close my eyes now, I can still see his pale face, the way his mouth twitched. The awful thing is… I can see it clearer than I can see my own father's face. Those terrible eyes.”

She shuddered.

Jack said, “You don't have to go on.”

“Yes. I do. I have to tell you. So you'll understand why… why I am like I am about certain things.”

“Okay. If you're sure—”

“I'm sure.”

“Then… did your father refuse to hand over the money to this son of a bitch — or what? ”

“No. Dad gave him the money. All of it.”

“He offered no resistance at all?”

“None.”

“But cooperation didn't save him.”

“No. This junkie had a bad itch, a real bad need. The need was like something nasty crawling around in his head, I guess, and it made him irritable, mean, crazymad at the world. You know how they get. So I think maybe he wanted to kill somebody even more than he wanted the money. So… he just… pulled the trigger.”

Jack put an arm around her, drew her against him.

She said, “Two shots. Then the bastard ran. Only one of the slugs hit my father. But it… hit him… in the face.”

“Jesus,” Jack said softly, thinking of six-year-old Rebecca in the sandwich shop's kitchen, peering through the parted curtain, watching as her father's face exploded.

“It was a.45,” she said.

Jack winced, thinking of the power of the gun.

“Hollow-point bullets,” she said.

“Oh, Christ.”

“Dad didn't have a chance at point-blank range.”

“Don't torture yourself with—”

“Blew his head off,” she said.

“Don't think about it any more now,” Jack said.

“Brain tissue…”

“Put it out of your mind now.”

“… pieces of his skull…”

“It was a long time ago.”

“… blood all over the wall.”

“Hush now. Hush.”

“There's more to tell.”

“You don't have to pour it out all at once.”

“I want you to understand.”

“Take your time. I'll be here. I'll wait. Take your time.”

VIII

In the corrugated metal shed, leaning over the pit, using two pair of ceremonial scissors with malachite handles, Lavelle snipped both ends of the cord simultaneously.

The photographs of Penny and Davey Dawson fell into the hole, vanished in the flickering orange light.

A shrill, unhuman cry came from the depths.

“Kill them,” Lavelle said.

IX

Still in Rebecca's bed.

Still holding each other.

She said, “The police only had my description to go on.”

“A six-year-old child doesn't make the best witness.”

“They worked hard, trying to get a lead on the creep who'd shot Daddy. They really worked hard.”

“They ever catch him?”

“Yes. But too late. Much too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“See, he got two hundred bucks when he robbed the shop.”

“So?”

“That was over twenty-two years ago.”

“Yeah?”

“Two hundred was a lot more money then. Not a fortune. But a lot more than it is now.”

“I still don't see what you're driving at.”

“It looked like an easy score to him.”

“Not too damned easy. He killed a man.”

“But he wouldn't have had to. He wanted to kill someone that day.”

“Okay. Right. So, twisted as he is, he figures it was easy.”

“Six months went by…”

“And the cops never got close to him?”

“No. So it looks easier and easier to the creep.”

A sickening dread filled Jack. His stomach turned over.

He said, “You don't mean…?”

“Yes.”

“He came back.”

“With a gun. The same gun.”

“But he'd have to've been nuts!”

“All junkies are nuts.”

Jack waited. He didn't want to hear the rest of it, but he knew she would tell him; had to tell him; was compelled to tell him.

She said, “My mother was at the cash register.”

“No,” he said softly, as if a protest from him could somehow alter the tragic history of her family.

“He blew her away.”

“Rebecca…”

“Fired five shots into her.”

“You didn't… see this one?”

“No. I wasn't in the shop that day.”

“Thank God.”