“We went to
Tracey seemed frozen in place.
“Just take the paper out of my pocket,” Clare said. “That’s all.”
The kid peeked over his shoulder at MacEntyre, then reached into Clare’s pocket. He came up with a crumpled sheet of paper. He shook it out, one-handed. As he read it, the knife in his other hand started to shake. He lowered the paper. Stared at MacEntyre. “This is a suicide note. With
MacEntyre sighed. “She must have written it.”
Tracey stalked toward his friend. “Why the hell would she have written a suicide note for me? Why the hell would this be in my truck?” He snapped it in MacEntyre’s face. “It says I’m responsible for everything!”
“When it comes down to it,” Russ said, “there’s only room for one king of the earth. Everybody else is support staff.”
“Shut up,” Tracey snapped. “Aaron? I’m waiting.”
MacEntyre sighed again, a deep, defeated sound. “C’mere,” he said, sliding around to the front of the table, the rifle steady on Russ. “Smooth it out here and let’s take a look at it.”
Tracey stomped over to where MacEntyre stood.
“Get in front of me so you’re not in my line of fire.”
Tracey glared at his friend but did as he said. He bent forward and laid the paper on the scratchy surface of the butchering table, putting down his knife and smoothing the sheet with both hands.
MacEntyre seized the knife and plunged it into Tracey’s back.
Clare screamed. Russ surged forward, but MacEntyre swung the Remington straight into his abdomen. Russ skidded to a stop, the rifle barrel digging into his gut. “Walk,” MacEntyre said, and pushed the barrel in. Russ backed away. MacEntyre followed, indicating with his head where he wanted Russ to go. The young man backed him against the white tile half-wall that divided the room into two parts. From the other side of the wall, Russ could hear Tracey’s high, skittering moan and gasping breaths. Over MacEntyre’s shoulder, he could see Clare, tears spilling down her cheeks, silently working her wrists back and forth, loosening her bonds.
“You’ve really pissed me off, Reverend Fergusson.” MacEntyre stared at Russ while he spoke. Something glinted in his dark eyes, but it wasn’t anger. It was excitement.
Russ’s stomach lurched with nausea.
“In fact, I may even bring you with me instead of taking care of you right here. So I can show you just how much you piss me off.”
Unseen by MacEntyre, Clare yanked her hands free.
“You got any money in there?” MacEntyre nodded toward Russ’s jeans. His practicality was even more gruesome laid over the sound track of his friend’s slow and rattling death.
“In my parka,” Russ said. “Up next to the haymow.”
Over MacEntyre’s shoulder, he watched as Clare took one step. Then two. “You’re not going to get away with this,” he said loudly, letting the fear show in his voice.
“Oh, please. Q kills you, kills the lady, and in a fit of remorse puts the end of the rifle against his heart and pulls the trigger. Conveniently obliterating any signs of being stabbed. I go back to school on Monday. Probably score with the girls because I’m all broken-hearted and shit.”
“He was your friend! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” Bizarrely, Russ’s mind flashed on Lyle for a second.
“I told you. Two kinds in this world. Wolves and sheep.” MacEntyre sighed. “I did what I could for him, but I guess you can’t change what you are. I’m a wolf. Q was a sheep.”
From the corner of his eye, Russ could see Clare reaching for something in the locker. Jesus God, he hoped it wasn’t a knife. MacEntyre’d have his intestines splattered across the room before Clare could get close enough to strike.
“What am I?” he asked MacEntyre, desperate for time.
The young man smiled his cool, curved smile. “I have you pegged as a wolf. Which is why this conversation is at an end.”
Clare whirled, leaping toward them, a thick metal tube shaped like a light saber in her hands. She had her fingers clamped over some sort of switch.
“Drop the rifle, Aaron,” she said. Her eyes were huge, and her face, where it wasn’t purple and bloodied, was stark white. But her voice was hard. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”
MacEntyre looked bored. “You can’t hurt someone with a pneumatic bolt stunner, Reverend. You can only kill someone. And you’re not going to do that.”
“Put the gun
MacEntyre’s lips twitched. He glanced toward her. “Sheep,” he said. His head turned, and Russ knew. This was it.
Clare jammed the stunner into the bare skin of MacEntyre’s neck. The charge igniting in the chamber made a muffled crack. Russ threw himself out of the way of the gun, but he needn’t have worried. The rifle dropped to the floor. MacEntyre gurgled. A wet, bloody hole blossomed beneath his Adam’s apple. Clare yanked the stunner away, an expression of horror on her face, as the young man fell over, eyes wide, blood and air spuming out of his neck. The abbatoir stank of urine and feces as his bladder and bowels let go.
They both watched him for a moment, lying on the floor. A dead thing. Then Clare cried out and hurled the stun gun into the farthest corner of the room. “Oh, my God,” she said, covering her face with her hands. “What have I done?”
Russ knew she wasn’t speaking to him, but he stumbled to his feet and went to her. He wrapped his arms around her and held her as tightly as he could.
“You did what you had to, love,” he said. “You did what you had to.”
FIFTY-ONE
Ironically (she thought later, when she began to be able to think about it), it was Quinn Tracey, not Russ Van Alstyne, who saved her from descending into a paralysis of guilt and horror. Over Russ’s voice, soothing and supporting her, she heard another gasping rattle.
“He’s not dead yet,” she said idiotically, replaying the Monty Python joke.
“He is, darlin’. I’m sorry, but it was him or me, and he’s dead and I’m not.”
She pushed against Russ’s solidity. “Not… him.” She couldn’t say his name. “Quinn.”
He wasn’t. Russ stayed with him, compressing his wound, because he was heavier. Clare went back outside and stood in the road, buffed and battered by the wind and snow until she felt scoured raw and she saw the headlights of what turned out to be Kevin Flynn’s cruiser. Noble Entwhistle was right behind him, and, thank God, a Glens Falls ambulance that Harlene had diverted. She showed them where to go and then retreated to her car. She turned the heater on full blast and listened to Tal Bachman’s melancholy voice: “I was there all the time-even I couldn’t find me. So how did you see? What made you believe?” She refused to think of anything. She leaked tears. After a while she achieved a passable state of numbness.
Then the passenger-side door opened and Russ climbed in. He slammed the door shut behind him and looked at her. He touched her jaw with fingers as light as a drift of snow. “You should get in the ambulance and let them take you to the hospital. You ought to have that checked out.”
She shook her head. “Nothing broken. I didn’t lose any teeth.”
“Clare-”
“Hold me,” she said, her voice breaking despite herself. “Please.”
He leaned toward her and gathered her in an embrace. He rocked her awkwardly over the stick shift while she cried. When she had wrung all the salt out of her body and her face was hot and puffy, she sat back. He let her go but kept hold of her hand. He rubbed her knuckles with his thumb. “Holding on,” he said.
“Not letting go.” She smiled a watery smile. “Hey, we’re talking. Our lawyers won’t be very happy.”
