He meant the back door, Lamar thought. Fucking Pewtie had locked off the back door. Smart motherfucker. No other way out, except the side window.
“Ruta Beth, you okay?”
“Oh, Daddy, it hurts so bad. I got blood every damned place.”
“Can you shoot. Baby Girl?”
“What?”
“Can you shoot, goddammit, Ruta Beth. Got to answer him. It's that fucker Pewtie. You're all I got.”
Not really; he had the girl, too. He felt her squirm under him.
“I don't think so, Lamar. I got blood on my hands. So slippery.”
She was losing it fast.
“That's okay. Baby Girl. It don't matter. You're still the goddamn champ. Listen here, I want you to slide out the door. He ain't going to shoot, he sees you're wounded. You yell for help. He's going to say. Put your hands up, and when I hear his voice, I can nail him.”
Ruta Beth crawled by him, leaving a black slime of blood. She got to the doorway and somehow pulled her way up. Then she stepped out on the porch, stood under the bright porch light. Lamar kneeled on Bud's wife's neck, calmed himself, and studied the darkness out the window, waiting for a scream. He had five double-oughts in the Browning cut down When it came, he'd flash to the area and pump the gun empty. If it was only one man as he now suspected, he'd at least hurt him.
Bud had fallen back behind the Trans Am almost directly to the left of the house.
Goddamn! Goddamn!
It had all fallen apart. Now what? Lamar knew he was there and would just as sure as winter be calculating counter moves if he hadn't already cut Holly's throat.
But what Bud saw astonished him.
It was the girl, Ruta Beth Tun. She stood groggily, her hands up. She was drenched with blood. He hadn't even fired a second shot! Then he realized the Comedy King was having a good time tonight with the play of whimsy: He had decreed that the screen door turned out to be a storm door and it would deflect Bud's bullet from Lamar, but the same Laugher saw that it hit Ruta Beth.
“Don't shoot,” she said.
“I's bad hurt.”
She took a step forward.
Bud put the front sight right on her head. The range was thirty feet; he could hit her in the face easy.
“Don't shoot,” she said, taking a wobbly step forward.
He felt the trigger strain against his finger.
Do it, he told himself. Do it and move on to the other.
“Keep your hands high and come out and lie face down in the—” The window lit bright with harsh flame as someone fired five fast shotgun blasts at him. Bud had no consciousness of drawing back, only a sense of an explosion all around him as the buckshot tore into the hood of the car and spalled spastically against the windshield, blowing shreds of glass outward as it turned the sheet into webbed quicksilver.
Abruptly the left side of his face went to sleep for what must have been a whole second, then began to sting.
He touched his face: blood. But had anything penetrated?
He felt a core of ache spread through his brain, and the suffocating odor of gunpowder swirled around him. But he seemed not to be mortally hit.
Next he heard the crash of a window from the other side of the house.
Lamar had jumped free.
Lamar knew the lawman would do the right thing, which was the wrong thing; he couldn't just shoot poor Ruta Beth.
And indeed, Lamar saw a shape hunkered by the left front fender of the Trans Am bending over a rifle and in a second he'd brought the sawed-off Browning up and unleashed its whole tube of shells. The bright fireworks of the gun flashes ate up the world and Lamar now wished for half a second he hadn't cut it down, for with a full- stocked and barreled weapon, the highway patrolman would have been easy meat.
But the gun bucked in his hands and he struggled to bring it back on line and each fresh blast lit the night for what seemed miles, though curiously so intent was he on the mechanics of it, he didn't hear a thing.
Then the gun came up dry, the smoke seethed in the air, and he thought he'd hit but he wasn't sure. Only one thing remained now: to get clear, to get out. Nothing else mattered.
If he got out of the house and across the fields, he could flag down a truck and commandeer it or steal a car from some square John or some such. But his ticket out was the goddamned girl, though she'd slow him somewhat; but Pewtie wouldn't spray in his direction with the little wife along.
“Come on, sweetheart,” he said, rising and pulling her up. The now useless shotgun fell away. He had a SIG, with seven cartridges, but no reloads. Too bad. Didn't have time to look for other magazines now.
In one powerful motion he pulled her along to the side window and threw her out. She smashed through the glass, caught her foot, and fell with a horrible thud to the earth.
He leaped out and pulled her up.
“Come on, goddammit, or I will put a bullet in your head and think no more of it.”
He yanked her off into the darkness.
Bud stepped out from behind the car but then remembered Ruta Beth, still in the doorway. He drew back and put the rifle on her once again.
“GET OUT, GODDAMMIT AND GO FACE DOWN!”
But the woman just stared at him. Then slowly, she seemed to be raising her hands but she stopped midway, and pointed something at him.
Was there a gun in it or what?
Bud didn't have time to think; the carbine fired, he threw the lever and fired again. He didn't see the bullets strike, but with the second one, Ruta Beth seemed to deflate; all the air went out of her as she tumbled sideways and she seemed to hit the floor with sickening force, her arms and legs flung loosely akimbo.
He wanted to race out after Lamar.
But where was Richard?
Where was Richard?
Was it a trap? Maybe it was Richard who had gone out the window, and Lamar, reloading, just waited for him to show himself.
No, it was Lamar. Only Lamar would be smart enough to get out the window that fast. Richard would be inside, in pieces. Richard wasn't a factor, that was clear.
Richard lay on the kitchen floor, sobbing.
It was so unfair. Why did things always have to happen to him? Now the police were here and they would kill him. He hadn't done anything.
Didn't they understand that? He was innocent. No blame should be attached to him. It wasn't like he wanted any of this to happen. He actually tried to prevent it. In the restaurant, he had heroically screamed, trying to save the woman's life. Ruta Beth had killed her, not him.
Richard tugged on the door again. It wouldn't budge.
He turned and crawled to the door and peeked into the living room. The shooting had stopped. The windows were all blasted out and there was no sign of Lamar.
“Lamar?” he called.
No answer.
He looked toward the door and saw Ruta Beth's boots laying splayed on the floor of the porch. He suspected, after all the shooting, that Ruta Beth was still in them.
He crawled over and peeked around. Ruta Beth lay on her stomach, in a huge and spreading black, satiny puddle -of blood. She was utterly inert, utterly without signs of life.
He'd never seen anything so still in his life.
He faced the darkness.
He raised his hands.
