Butler, staying low, opened the passenger door and rolled out into the alley.
Miller moved quickly to stand beside the open driver's-side window. In the bucket sat Green. His jaw was gone. Threads of blood and saliva, and shreds of white bone remained. Green was dead or dying. His feet kicked at the floorboards of the truck.
Miller had seen Butler exit the Escalade. He could hear Butler talking to himself. Praying or getting his courage up as he tried to scrabble along the other side. Miller walked behind the SUV and turned its corner. He found Butler on all fours. Butler looked up. He was crying, and it smelled like he'd shit his jeans.
'Stand up,' said Miller.
Butler tried but couldn't do it.
Lights began to glow in the back of several houses. Percussion came through the open windows of the Cadillac. Behind the drums was the faint wail of a siren.
'Stand yourself
Michael Butler willed himself to his feet and raised his hands. His hands shook. Tears ran dirty down his cheeks. Miller leveled the Winchester and rested its shortened stock on his forearm.
'I ain't
'So?' said Miller.
The alley flashed. It looks like lightning, thought Butler. It feels like the wind.
Michael Butler opened his eyes. He was on his back. His chest was warm. He coughed up a spray of blood. He looked at the night sky. He looked at the stars.
Miller came into his vision and stood over him. He held the shotgun loosely. Now there was a pistol in his other hand.
'I,' said Butler. 'I…'
Miller sighted down the barrel of the Glock and shot Butler in the mouth. He rolled him over with his foot and shot him in the back of the head.
Miller holstered the Glock in the waistband of his jeans. He slipped the cut-down Winchester into the special harness he wore under the coat. Squinting his narrow eyes, he found both 9 mm casings and the shotgun shell near Butler's body. Still wearing his gloves, he managed to pick them up. He then found the first shell that had ejected in front of the Cadillac's grille and dropped it into the pocket of his raincoat along with the others.
He went to the open window and looked at Green's corpse. He looked inside the car. Opening the back door, he found the Adidas shoe box and examined its contents, then closed the lid and slipped the box under his arm. Wasn't no reason to leave it behind.
Miller walked down the alley. In his side vision, he saw lights on in the back rooms of some of the houses, but few curtains parted and no one came outside. He heard the siren grow louder. He didn't run.
Miller reached his BMW, parked near the alley's T, before the police arrived. He turned the ignition key and pulled away from the curb. He drove carefully and with his headlights full on. He was not nervous or frightened. He felt no remorse, or anything else.
Miller hit the power button on the radio. He found an Obie Trice he liked and turned it up.
Rachel Lopez, the windows down in her Honda, listened to a Brooks and Dunn on the radio and smoked a cigarette as she drove up 7th Street.
She was careful to stay in her lane and she watched the speedometer as well. She glanced in the rearview and saw no police. Looking at her reflection, she noticed that her makeup had run in streaks from around her eyes. She was ugly. She supposed she had cried.
It didn't matter. Tomorrow she would be back on the job, sober and straight. This was Rachel at night.
CHAPTER 15
Lorenzo Brown opened his eyes. He stared at the cracked plaster ceiling and cleared his head.
Jasmine's warm snout touched his fingers. Lorenzo rubbed behind her ears and breathed out slowly. It was time to go to work.
He did curls with forty-pound dumbbells while listening to Donnie Simpson on PGC. Simpson was playing an old EWF, 'Keep Your Head to the Sky.' It was a song released well before Lorenzo's time but one that he was familiar with and loved. The newsman came on and talked about the war and a helicopter downed by a rocket and the death of three young servicemen. He talked about some people who had been in charge of the local teachers' union and how they'd stolen from out the pension fund. He mentioned briefly a double murder in Northwest.
Lorenzo finished his workout. He showered, ate his breakfast, changed into his uniform, and walked Jasmine. He left food and water for her, directed the fan toward her bed, and got on his way.
Cindy, the dispatcher, was just settling in behind her desk as he entered the Humane Society office. He could hear the sound of one dog barking down in the kennel.
'Mark in yet?' said Lorenzo.
'Downstairs,' said Cindy.
Lorenzo found Mark in the basement, wrapping a bandage around his hand. He was standing beside the cage of the pit bull rescued from behind the storefront church.
'Lincoln get you?' said Lorenzo.
Mark nodded, his face colored with embarrassment. 'I didn't think he'd bite me.'
'It's not your fault,' said Lorenzo. 'You can't trust him. I mean, he don't trust nobody himself, after what got done to him.'
