Bill didn’t like that. Said it was messy. I wanted to stop there, but Bill pressed me to give him another name. I finally caved in, and next thing, Bill had killed another dealer and buried him in my cellar. Before I knew it my cellar was full of dead drug dealers. Even after I got arrested, Bill kept up the killing. Only now it was harder to get to the cellar, so we just hid the bodies as best we could. Cameron Brown, Leroy Watkins.” Mo shook his head. “Bill was obsessed with the killing. He organized a death squad. And that was so successful Bill started killing not just dealers but hard-core drug users. The death squad learned how to kill the addicts with ODs, so it’d look more natural.
“That’s why I hired an attorney. I couldn’t be part of all that craziness anymore. They were even talking about killing you. And you wouldn’t believe who was taking part in this. Cops, shoe salesmen, grandmothers and schoolteachers. It was insanity. It was like one of those cult things. Like those militia people you see on the television out in Idaho. I even got caught up in it for a while. Carrying a gun. And then that police officer discovered it, and I panicked. It was the gun that had killed Brousse. What was I thinking?”
“Why did you hire a lawyer? Why didn’t you just turn yourself in?”
“I’m an old man. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail. I guess I hoped if I was cooperative and had a good lawyer I might get off easier. I didn’t kill anyone, you know. I just gave Bill some names and set up some meetings.”
“You were still participating after you’d gotten a lawyer. You set up Elliot Harp.”
“I couldn’t get out. I was afraid. I didn’t want anyone to know I was talking to the police. As it is, every time I hear a car on the road out there I break into a sweat, thinking it’s Bill, and he’s found out and come to get me.
“I just wish I’d had some other choice right from the beginning. I feel like I started this in motion. This nightmare.”
“There always are choices,” Ranger said, laying the barrel of his .44 Magnum alongside Mo’s head.
Mo rolled his eyes to look at Ranger. “Where’d you come from? I didn’t hear you come in!”
“I come in like the fog on little cat feet.”
I looked at Ranger. “Very nice.”
“Carl Sandburg,” Ranger said. “More or less.”
Gravel crunched under tire treads outside, and Mo jumped beside me. “It’s him!”
I pulled the shade and looked out. “It’s not Reverend Bill.”
Ranger and Mo raised their eyebrows at me in silent question.
“You’re not going to believe this,” I said.
I answered the knock at the door and revealed Lula standing on the stoop, beaming, looking pleased.
“Hey girlfriend,” she said. “Vinnie told me all about this hideaway house, and I came out to give you a hand.”
Mo’s voice cracked. “It’s the lunatic in the red Firebird!”
“Hunh,” Lula said.
I got Mo’s jacket from the hall closet and bundled him into it, at the same time checking him for weapons. I ushered him out the front door and was standing with him on the stoop when I caught the far-off sound of a car on the road. We all paused. The car drew closer. We caught a flash of blue through the trees, and then the vehicle turned into the drive. It was a Ford Econoline van with FREEDOM CHURCH lettered on the side. It stopped halfway to the house, its forward progress halted by Lula’s Firebird. The side door to the van slid open and a man in mask and coveralls got out. We stared at each other for a moment, and then he hefted a rocket launcher to his shoulder. There was a flash of fire and a
“That’s a warning shot,” the man yelled. “We want Mo.”
I was speechless. They’d blown up my truck! They’d turned it into a big yellow fireball.
“Look on the bright side,” Lula said to me. “You’re not going to have to worry about that puppy stalling no more.”
“It was fixed!”
Two more men got out of the van. They sighted assault rifles, and we all stumbled back into the house and slammed the door shut.
“If they can blow up a truck, they can blow up a house,” Ranger said, pulling car keys from his pocket, handing them to me. “Take Mo out the back door while I pin these guys down. Cut through the woods to my Bronco and get the hell out of here.”
“What about you? I’m not going to leave you here!”
The house was peppered with gunshot, and we all hit the deck.
Ranger knocked out window glass and opened fire. “I’ll be fine. I’ll give you a good start, and then I’ll lose myself in the woods.” He glanced over at me. “I’ve done this before.”
I grabbed Mo and shoved him toward the back door. Lula ran after us. All of us scuttled in a crouch across the small backyard to the woods while gunfire once again erupted from the driveway. Mo was struggling to run, and Lula was shouting, “Oh shit! Oh shit!”
We slid on our asses down a small embankment, scrambled to our feet and kept going, crashing through dry, viny undergrowth. Not what you’d call a quiet retreat, but quiet didn’t matter with World War III going on behind us.
When I thought we’d gone far enough I began curving back toward the road. There was another explosion, and I turned to see a fireball rise to the sky.
“Has to be the bungalow,” Lula said.
