a face. The teeth and most of the tongue were gone, the nose had been eviscerated, and as the bullet had opened and surged upward it had destroyed both of Lamar's eyes and opened his forehead so that pulsing dark matter showed amid the bone. It had erased his face.
“
Bud finally found the Beretta .380, though it had slipped down almost into his underpants in the struggle. He raised it and aimed. He was three feet away. He fired twice into Lamar's head, and he fell sideways into the creek and did not move.
Bud stared at him for just a second, then sat down as an exhaustion so total it seemed to penetrate to his heart overcame him. He felt numbness everywhere, except where he hurt. The little gun slipped out of his hand and he did not even look for it.
Holly, crying bitterly, had made it nearly all the way back to the farmhouse when she heard the roar. She turned to the west and saw them, or rather their lights; three helicopters roaring in over the tree line, lights flashing dramatically.
Then, from the other direction, she saw the vehicles-state police cruisers, vans, ambulances, a whole convoy-racing down the road to the farm. The vehicles and the helicopters reached the house almost simultaneously, and from each there poured a crowd of black-garbed men in hoods with fancy guns. It was all theater, like a movie; it had nothing to do with anything.
She walked toward them as the men completed their dramatic performance, kicking in doors, presumably racing through the house ready to hose anything that moved down with their machine guns. But there was nothing to hose down.
She reached the perimeter.
“Help,” she said.
In seconds policemen surrounded her.
“They're out there,” she said, pointing.
“Bud Pewtie and Lamar. Over there, in the trees. I heard some shots.
You'd better hurry.”
“Let's go,” said an old man, who seemed to be in charge.
“Please hurry,” she said, but they were already gone.
We were so close, she thought.
Bud climbed up the bank through a fog of exhaustion; he could make no sense of the rising dust, the roar of the helicopters, the flashing of their navigation lights.
His mind worked imperfectly. It closed on one thought:
It was over.
A light came onto him.
He blinked.
“There he is,” shouted the pilot over the intercom.
C.D. looked, and yes, the light came onto Bud, who groped blindly, then sank to his knees. C.D. saw the blood all over him, focused a pair of binoculars on the face and saw how battered it was.
“Put it down, GODDAMMIT,” he screamed.
The bird hit with a thud.
“Listen, you get back to the house and see if there's a goddamned doctor in the cars, or at least a goddamn paramedic.
Get him here fast. That boy's hurt bad. Then you call Comanche Shocktrauma and tell them to expect incoming.”
“Mark the place with a flare. Lieutenant, so we can find it on the way back.”
“Goddamn right I will,” said C.D.
“And bring some more men to secure the area.”
He rolled from the deck of the Huey, and someone handed him a flare, which he ignited with a yank. The flare's red fire blossomed. Carrying it, he raced down to Bud as the helicopter roared away into the night.
He ran down the slope and came to Bud, dropping the flare.
“Bud, Bud—”
“Got him. Lieutenant. He's down there. Blew his face off. Oh, Christ I hurt.”
“Take it easy. Bud.”
He tried to comfort Bud, holding him close, putting his hand to the highway patrolman's chest to check the heart-beat.
Bud fell forward, then caught himself. In the flickering magenta of the flare, the blood all over his face looked almost black, and the swelling had all but buried one of his eyes. The man was shivering, and saliva and phlegm ran out of his bloody mouth.
“I killed him. Oh, fuck, is he dead,” Bud was saying.
“Good work. Bud. You got him. Great goddamn job.
Now settle down. Help is—” But suddenly someone else was before them.
He thought it was another cop, but as the figure drew nearer and acquired clarity out of the darkness he recognized its size.
“ Where's Lamar?” asked Richard.
C.D. was close enough now to see how swollen the man's face was. Had he been hit? Did Lamar beat him? But Richard sniffled and C.D. knew he'd been crying.
“It's all over,” he said.
“It's finished.”
“Where's Lamar?”
“Dead,” said C.D.
Richard held something up. C.D. saw that it was a Smith & Wesson .357.
Bud almost laughed. Richard! With a big gun like that!
His own gun!
“Richard, boy, it's all over. Put the gun down. You don't want to hurt nobody. Not now,” C.D. was saying.
Richard looked at the gun, almost amazed to find it there.
Bud heard vehicles revving, roaring toward them. A chopper suddenly hovered overhead, throwing out a searchlight beam that lit the three of them and beating up a storm of dust.
Richard blinked.
“I—I—” began Richard.
“There now, Richard, it's all over. You just put that old gun down so nobody gets hurt,” C.D. crooned.
Richard looked up at C.D. and then at Bud. In the light Bud saw huge eyes webbed with red and full of fear, trembling lips, drops of dew on the nose.
“Richard, put the gun down, those boys mean business.
It's all over. Nobody has to get hurt now, not you, not nobody. You were a victim, too. He made you do them things.”
Richard nodded numbly.
“Drop the gun, Richard,” said Bud, suddenly anguished, afraid the troopers would shoot this poor, pitiful child.
Richard took a step toward them, seemed to turn and watch the men from the helicopter racing at them, and turned back to Bud and C.D. He faltered, as though he were losing his grip. C.D. reached out to help him.
Richard started to bend to set the gun down as the troopers surrounded him, and it was fine, it was great, it was the happy ending everybody dreamed about.
But something suddenly came into Richard's eyes, from nowhere.
“Daddy!” he cried, and raised the pistol and fired.
