It seemed to Carson that the killer was so obsessed with the weapon pressed to his head that he had all but forgotten that, like Michael, she was armed.
“Yes, I do,” said Michael, “I have a gun to your head, so I’ve got a negotiating advantage, but you’ve got some cards to play, too.”
Carson ’s right arm hung at her side. She turned her hand and directed her pistol toward the deck immediately behind her.
“You have no reason to trust me, and I have no reason to trust you,” said Chang with what sounded like a perilous degree of despair.
“You have every reason to trust us,” said Michael. “We’re nice people.”
As Carson squeezed off a shot, she dropped toward her knees, intending to fling herself flat on the deck.
Chang screamed in pain and fired a round the instant he was hit.
Maybe Carson didn’t really feel the bullet sizzle across her scalp, but there was muzzle flash, the smell of burnt hair.
She sprawled facedown, rolled on her back, sat up with the pistol in a two-hand grip, saw Chang flat and Michael on top of him with a knee in his back.
“My foot, my foot,” Chang screamed, and Carson said urgently, “Michael, is my hair on fire?” and Michael said, “No, his piece is on the deck, find it!”
Carson found the weapon-“Got it”-and Michael said he needed to vomit, which he had never done in his years as a cop, so Carson knelt beside Chang and put her pistol to his head, which she greatly enjoyed. Chang kept screaming about his wounded foot, and Michael leaned over the railing and spewed into the bay. In the distance a siren rose, and when Michael had purged his stomach, he announced that he had called 911 from the quay, and then he asked Carson if she needed to vomit, and she said she didn’t, but she was wrong, and she vomited on Chang.
chapter 10
Mr. Lyss pointed a finger at Nummy. His fingers were long. They were more bone than flesh. The nails were the color of chicken fat.
Squinting down his arm, along his finger, right into Nummy’s eyes, Mr. Lyss said, “You’re sitting on my bunk.”
“I figured this must be my bunk.”
“You figured wrong. You’ve got the top one.”
“Sorry, sir,” Nummy said, and he got to his feet.
They were eye to eye.
Mr. Lyss’s eyes were like the gas flames on the kitchen cooktop. Not just blue, because lots of nice things were blue, but blue and hot and dangerous.
“What’re you in here for?” Mr. Lyss asked.
“For just a little time.”
“ Moron. I mean what’d you do to land here?”
“Mrs. Trudy LaPierre-she hired a man to break in her place and steal the best she’s got.”
“She hired her own damn burglar?” Mr. Lyss chewed his pale, peeling lips with his dead-charcoal teeth. “So it’s an insurance scam, huh?”
“Insurance what?”
“You’re not that dumb, boy, and the jury will know it. You knew why she hired you.”
Mr. Lyss’s breath smelled like tomatoes when you forget to pick them because you don’t like tomatoes, and then they rot on the vine.
Nummy moved away from Mr. Lyss and stood by the cell door. “No, she never done hired me. Who she hired is Mr. Bob Pine. She wanted Mr. Bob Pine to steal her best, then beat Poor Fred to death.”
“Who’s Fred?”
“Poor Fred. Grandmama always called him Poor Fred. He’s Mrs. Trudy LaPierre’s husband.”
“Why’s he Poor Fred?”
“He got a brain stroke years ago. Poor Fred can’t talk no more, and he gets around in his walker. They live next door.”
“So this Trudy wanted him killed, made to look like it happened during a burglary.”
“Mr. Bob Pine he was going to put stolen stuff in my house, I’d go to prison.”
Eyes pinched to slits, shoulders hunched, head thrust forward, like one of those birds that ate dead things on the highway, Mr. Lyss came close again. “Is that your story, boy?”
“It’s what almost happened, sir. But Mr. Bob Pine he got a cold in his feet.”
“In his feet?”
“Such a bad cold, he didn’t feel good enough to do the stealing and killing. So he goes to Chief Jarmillo, tells him all what Mrs. Trudy LaPierre hired him for.”
“When did this happen?”
“Yesterday.”
“So why are you here?”
“Mrs. Trudy LaPierre she’s dangerous. Chief says she’s got a history of dangerous, and she’s all crazy-mad at me.”
“She hasn’t been arrested?”
“Nobody can find her.”
“Why would she be mad at you?”
“It’s silly,” said Nummy. “Mr. Bob Pine come to my place to see me before doing the stealing and killing. He wanted to cremate me.”
For no clear reason, Mr. Lyss got angry and shook his bony old fist in Nummy’s face. His knuckles were dirty. “Damn it, boy, don’t complicate dumb with stupid. I’m trying to get a simple truth out of you, and you snarl it up so I just about need a translator. Cremate? Burn you to ashes? If he’s going to pin the crime on you, he’s not going to cremate you first.”
Easing back toward the bunks, trying to escape his cellmate’s breath, which burned in the nose worse than gasoline fumes, Nummy tried harder to get the word right. “Creminate. No. Increminate.”
“Incriminate,” said Mr. Lyss. “Pine wanted to incriminate you, set you up for old Fred’s murder.”
“Poor Fred.”
“But he hadn’t stolen anything yet, he didn’t have anything to plant in your house.”
“No, what he come for was to get some stuff of mine he was going to put in Poor Fred’s house.”
“What stuff?”
“Stuff I didn’t know was stuff I even had. Deeanhay.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Deeanhay. Chief Jarmillo says like some of my hairs, my spit on a water glass.”
“D-N-A, you damn fool.”
“My fingers on the glass, my marks.”
“Your prints.”
“My fingers, my marks again, on a hammer handle. Chief Jarmillo says I wouldn’t have no idea I was giving this stuff away.”
Mr. Lyss followed Nummy to the bunks. “So what happened? Why didn’t Pine go through with it?”
“Mr. Bob Pine he comes, I’m making toast.”
After a moment, Mr. Lyss said, “And?”
“It’s just white-bread toast.”
Mr. Lyss shifted back and forth from foot to foot, back and forth, as if he might break into a little dance. He kept knocking his fists together, too, and his eyes bulged more than it seemed eyes could bulge yet not fall out of their
