remembered the pot, with its jagged flashes of color. It was the only colorful thing about her. He now saw her: a drab, scrawny young woman.
He saw exactly how she could fall for the power and the glory of a Lamar, especially as she herself had already known the sick thrill of standing over something that had been alive until just a very few seconds ago.
But still… she was a girl.
Bud hoped he could kill the girl.
Just kill her. Shoot her dead in the head or upper torso and think nothing of it.
But that little bit of doubt upset him; not that she was poignant and needy but only that she was such a drab little creature, un stirred by life's possibilities. He shook his head as he slid through the barn.
Crouching in its doorway he studied what was before him. The house was twenty-five yards off and he could see the back door and dim light from the first-floor windows.
Two cars had been parked in the yard around toward the front of the house, and he could also make out what appeared to be a rickety porch out front.
He first thought of the cars: escape.
Backing out of the barn, he circled around again in a wide low arc, and slithered up to the cars. Neither was locked; one was the Toyota that had so bedeviled everybody, and the other a black Trans Am.
Gingerly Bud opened each, leaned in, and reached up under the dash to a nest of wires. He didn't have time to find the ignition wire, but simply, with a hard yank, pulled them all. Nobody was driving anywhere tonight.
He next crawled to the side of the house. The window was tall and he couldn't quite see in, but from the low secondary light, he gauged the room to be empty and dark, probably the kitchen, its only illumination a doorway into the larger room or hallway. He snaked around back to find a door. He tried it; it was locked. He looked around quickly for something to secure the door from this side, figuring after he shot Lamar, Richard would head for the nearest exit and could be counted on to come to rest against a locked door, ready to give up.
Clothesline!
He ran to it and cut it free with his pocketknife, then came back and swiftly wrapped loops about the doorknob, drew the rope tightly to the clothesline post and tied it securely, a good working cowman's knot.
Richard wouldn't be able to get shit open.
Maybe he'd go out a window and into the fields. They'd find him thirty yards out, nursing a broken ankle.
Bud glimpsed at his watch. Four a .” no two ways about it. Time to go.
He slid around the base of the house to the edge of the porch and peered in. The front door was open, though a screen door blocked entry. The screen would be easy to shoot through, though. He drew closer to the doorway and peered into the blaze of light and sensed bodies but couldn't get a clear look. He stepped out a bit further, until at last he saw Lamar Pye.
Big as life its own self, standing by the couch, Lamar gripped the phone tightly. Behind him was Ruta Beth, a dark blur; Bud couldn't see Richard but figured he was there somewheres. And he made out a head crumpled in one corner of the couch. Holly.
The rifle came up to Bud's shoulder. He kneeled, looking for support.
The light wasn't great, but it was enough. He could see the bead of the front sight. It wobbled, described a filigree in the air, and Bud sought to capture it too hard, driving it wild. He exiled a chunk of air from his lungs and willed steadiness into his limbs.
Kill Lamar, throw lever, kill Ruta Beth. Two easy shots, a second apart. Lamar dies with his brains blown out, Ruta Beth won't react in time to move and she's the next easy target, into the chest. Then dump the rifle, draw the Beretta, and blow into the house. If you see Richard, pop him; otherwise grab Holly and flee.
Yet even now he paused just a second, dwarfed by the coldness of it all.
No, goddammit, he told himself. Do his ass. Send him to hell for breakfast.
Bud concentrated on the front sight as he pressed the trigger and the bead was right there on Lamar's broad, almost handsome face.
He felt it break, and there was perhaps a tenth of a second as the hammer fell when Bud sensed the world suspended, like a note held too long, beyond human endurance.
Time had stopped. There was no sound, no movement, no sense of life anywhere.
The rifle fired, its flash draining details from the dark night, and the door to the house shattered into a billion pieces, a sleet of bitter chaos—goddamn, not a screen but a goddamn glass storm door in the middle of hot summer, who’d ever have imagined that?—and Lamar sank instantly from view but with such goddamned energy and purpose that Bud knew the bullet had been deflected and that he had not been hit.
Lamar had tried again. The phone rang and rang. Now what the hell was wrong with that boy?
“Where'n fuck is he?” he demanded.
“Maybe he had a flat or an accident,” said Richard.
“Not this old boy. He ain't that goddamn type. He is a accident.”
Darkening with fury and frustration, he stood in the room.
What the fuck?
The ringing grated through the earpiece of the phone, but no one picked up.
He tried to run through ways it could have gone wrong.
Had he been too fancy? Should he have done the fuck as he drove along the road? Is there any way, any way at all they could be on to him?
No. He'd been too careful. They weren't that clever.
He stood, watching the girl curled beneath him, bound and gagged helplessly. He could sense Ruta Beth behind him. Richard was off some goddamned place fretting over some goddamned thing.
The door exploded.
Next thing, Lamar was on the floor. How he got there he didn't know: just his fast reflexes taking over, getting him down there, flat and safe.
“Lamar!”
It was Ruta Beth, standing dumbly.
“GEDDOWN!” he screamed.
“THEY HERE!”
Ruta Beth hit the floor.
“I'm hurt. Daddy.”
“Goddamn,” said Lamar.
“Oh, shit,” said Richard from the kitchen.
“You hit bad. Baby Girl?”
“Neck. Oh, Daddy, it hurts.”
“You gotta shoot back, goddammit, or we are cat piss.”
He himself pulled Holly off the couch and to him, as a human shield. He felt her heart beating against her ribs like a trapped little bird. A temptation came to put a bullet in her head, but he knew that was stupid. He slithered to the window, dragging her with him, and snuck a peek out to see nothing, smelled just the faintest whisper of smoke hanging in the air. He calculated swiftly. A SWAT sniper wouldn't have missed, not hardly, and by now there'd have been dozens of gum balls flashing, big boys on loudspeakers, choppers, the goddamned whole world getting ready to kill him. But he didn't see a goddamned thing.
He knew who it was.
How the hell did he find him?
Goddamn!
“Richard, boy, the lights, get ’em out.”
“Lamar, I—”
“GODDAMN BOY, GET THEM OUT!”
Only a scream would get Richard moving. Somehow the worthless piece of shit began to flutter around, and in a second the lights had vanished.
Another second passed, and suddenly Lamar heard a high keening sound.
Sounded like an animal being burned in a fireplace or something, but under the whine of fear and slobbery, pee-pants panic he recognized Richard's tones.
“Locked! Locked! Locked!” Richard was sobbing.
