couch?”
Mark looked about to say more, but the black eye of the pistol stopped him, and the black eyes of the gunman withered his will. He let Connie help him up and they moved slowly, and very carefully, over to the couch, hissing occasionally at the pain in his groin. With the four of them it was a very tight fit. Val sat on the left end next to her father, and Connie did her best to try and vanish between the elder and younger Guthrie men. Mark examined his father’s face. “That’s a pretty bad cut, Dad.”
“Leave it be,” Guthrie murmured.
“But, Dad—”
“Leave it be.”
To Ruger, Mark said, “Who the hell are you? Some kind of tough guy? Beating up on women and old men.”
“Blow me,” Ruger said. He set the rocker back on its runners, turned it to face them, and sat down. “Now… the only reason I’m going to bother to recap tonight’s game is because if you understand the rules, then I probably won’t have to shoot you.
Mark stared for a long moment, then slowly nodded.
“Good, good.” Ruger lit himself a cigarette. “Here’s the deal, Marky-boy. I am not here exactly by choice — God knows. My car broke down and I need a new one. Renting one ain’t an option right now. Also, I got a friend out there in the cornfield with a busted leg. You bozos are going to help me get him back here so we can patch him up, and then he and I are going to get the fuck out of this episode of
Mark blinked several times in rapid succession.
“As I see it, Marky, this can go one of a couple of ways. The ideal way would, of course, involve you four helping me and then putting up no fuss as I tie you up and drive off in the car. I think I speak for all of us when I say that that’s the way we’d all like it to go. On the other hand, if you folks don’t want to cooperate, then I can just simply pop all four of you, take the car anyway, and still be on my merry way. You see, it really doesn’t matter all that much to me except that it would be more work for me if I had to do it alone, and work always makes me kind of cranky.”
“‘Pop’ us? You mean you’d shoot us? You’d actually shoot us?”
“Deader’n shit,” Ruger agreed.
“Holy Jesus.”
“Mm-hm. So what’s it gonna be?”
“I can’t believe you’d actually just…shoot us. I mean, what have we ever done to you?”
“Mark…” Val whispered.
“To me?” said Ruger. “You folks have never done anything to me. If my car hadn’t crashed, you’d have never even known I existed, and vice versa. Just luck of the draw, Marky.”
“But — shoot us?”
Ruger rolled his eyes. “Yes! What part of ‘shoot you’ don’t you understand, farm boy?”
“Why?”
“Mark, be still,” Guthrie said in a quiet but very firm voice.
“No…Dad, he’s talking about murdering all of us.”
Guthrie reached over and clamped a strong hand on his son’s wrist. “Yes, and if you don’t shut your mouth he just might! Now be still!”
Mark shut his mouth.
Ruger nodded in appreciation. “Your old man is sharp, Marky-boy. You’re the kind of fella that could let his mouth get his ass in trouble.”
“I’m just trying to understand this,” Mark muttered.
“What’s not to understand? Don’t you ever watch TV? I’m a bad guy on the run, and you all are the innocent saps who get tied up and robbed. End of scene. There’s nothing to understand. There’s no meaning to it.”
“What is it you want us to do?” asked Val, trying to steer the conversation back to a straightforward business negotiation. She eyed Ruger carefully as he took a long drag on his cigarette, wondering why he was stretching this whole thing out. What was he really waiting for? He could have tied them up, taken the Bronco, and been gone half an hour ago, but instead he was dragging this out for some reason she could not work out. More than once she saw him tilt his head to one side as if listening to a voice outside, or perhaps inside his head.
Ruger licked his lips and said, “Well, two of you are going to be stretcher bearers for my buddy. He’s out in the field waiting on us.”
“Where in the field?” asked Guthrie.
“By a big post with a scarecrow. Good half mile from here.”
Guthrie nodded, and to Val he said, “By the new section of fence.”
Her stomach turned at the thought of monsters like Ruger and his friend polluting the spot where she and Crow had made love just last night. Her mouth was a thin line as she asked, “And then?”
“Then we try to patch him up.”
“You said he broke his leg?” Guthrie asked.
Ruger laughed. “Oh yeah. Stepped in a hole and broke the living shit out of it. He has one of those…whaddya call it when the bones are sticking out?”
“Compound fracture,” murmured Val.
“Uh-huh. A real motherfucker of a compound fracture. I set it, more or less, and splinted it up, but he needs someone else to check it out. I don’t suppose any of you are doctors?”
“I know some first aid,” said Val.
“Well, well. That’s handy.”
“Just some basic stuff, though.”
“Well, beggars can’t be choosers.”
Mark held up a finger and in his formal, pedantic voice said, “Let me get this straight. If we help you, that is, if we bring your friend back here, patch him up as best we can, and let you take the car, then you’ll just go away and not hurt us? Is that it?”
“In a nutshell.”
“How do we know that we can trust you?”
“I guess you just have to,” Ruger said, and then he smiled his serpent’s smile, white teeth gleaming, eyes twinkling like cold and distant stars. “Besides, why would I lie?”
“Hey, what’s that?”
Officer Rhoda Thomas slowed the cruiser and rolled to a stop. She flicked on the searchlight and directed it where Officer Head was pointing. The black stretch of A-32 glowed a dark charcoal in the harsh white light, and the yellow lane divider gleamed, but cutting right through the dividing line and across the road itself were long black smears, intensely black even in the light’s glow. “Just skid marks,” observed Rhoda. “Nothing.”
“No, wait, they look pretty fresh.”
“So?”
“So, let’s check ’em out.” Head jerked the door handle and stepped out. Puzzled and reluctant, Rhoda followed suit. They walked over to where the skid marks began and stood looking at the road. With a totally reflexive action, Head unsnapped his pistol and jiggled the butt to loosen it in its leather holster. Rhoda watched, copied the movement though it was the first time she had ever performed that particular ritual, but she didn’t want to appear as raw as she knew she was. She was fascinated by him. She thought he looked like Samuel L. Jackson with more muscles and a shaved head.
They were an incongruous pair: the petite Rhoda in her pale gray chief’s department uniform with the six- pointed star gleaming as brightly as all her buttons and fittings; and Head, older, bigger, heavier, though not at all fat, in his blue Philadelphia Police Department rig, numbered shield on his breast and all of his equipment showing signs of eleven long years of hard use on big-city streets. Rhoda looked like an extra in a cheap movie, and Head looked unpretentiously real. He had hard eyes that had seen it all, a harder mouth that was drawn tight, and the posture of a predator. Beside him, Rhoda looked like a child. It wasn’t a sex thing: Head’s partner, Maddie, was as serious and seasoned a cop as he was, and she was buddied up with Officer Jim Polk farther up A-32. No, this was
