murderer. It was clear how it had to go; the arm would rise until the muzzle touched his temple; then Tommy would pull whatever he’d wedged behind the trigger – a RamDyne improvised suicide replication plug, part Number 4332 from the RamDyne Catalog, available to your friendly secret police force, no doubt – and crush Nick’s trigger finger. The gun would blow Nick’s brains out. He’d be found in the weeds by the river, his hand locked around his own pistol, his own car close at hand. There’d be no other physical evidence. They’d thought of everything. It was so fucking professional!
Nick strained against his own hand.
“Oh, Jesus, oh, Christ, don’t do this.”
“Just – ah, almost, there, don’t fight it, goddammit,
“Watch yourself, Pony,” Tommy said, warning his partner to steer clear of spatter, “I’ve almost got it, ah – ”
Tommy Montoya’s head exploded.
The sound of the report reached them.
Across the river a cloud of angry white birds rose as one in clattering agitation, rudely bumped from their perches by the rifle shot.
Nick, freed of half his constraint, turned to the other man, Pony, who stood still stupefied, not getting it.
But Nick got it.
“You’re dead, motherfucker,” he said, and at that precise instant the second bullet found Pony center chest, blowing through his heart. He pirouetted to the ground, the destroyed heart spurting blood as he fell.
The birds cawed and seethed in the air. The wind rose and whistled.
Nick sat back. His arm ached. He wanted to throw away the pistol, but couldn’t, because it was taped to his hand. He figured the key would be somewhere on these two clowns.
He looked around and saw a man wading across the river. He was tall and rangy and tan, beardless now, in blue jeans and a tired blue denim shirt. He wore a baseball cap that said RAZORBACKS on it. He had harsh, gray, squirrel-shooter’s eyes, unmirthful, focused, unafraid. His mouth was grim. He was quite tall.
He carried a fat-barreled Remington 700 rifle with about a yard of scope atop it. He carried it like a man who knew a little something about rifles.
He walked up to Nick.
“Mornin’, Pork,” said Bob the Nailer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Nick looked at him with love-filled, moronic eyes.
“You’re some sorry sight, sonny,” said Bob. “Chained and trussed like a coon in a bag after a hunt. Those boys were about to have your patty-cake butt for breakfast.” Nick watched him go over to each of the bodies, and search them for keys and papers.
He plucked two keys out of the late Tommy Montoya’s pocket and came back over to take the cuffs off Nick.
“Goddamn,” he said in disgust, “these boys even had a rig for phony suicide.”
He stripped the tape from Nick’s fist. Nick kept looking at him stupidly while he freed the little Colt Agent. It fell to the earth. Swagger bent and picked it up.
“You’re not going to shoot me with this little bitty gun, are you, Pork? I couldn’t be sure the last time.”
Dumbly, Nick shook his head.
“Here. Don’t lose it. Now come on, boy, we’ve got to get these two pieces of human shit into the water, and more or less sanitize this area. You don’t want the Louisiana State Police on your ass, do you? I sure don’t, no sir. I’ve seen enough damn police to last me a century.”
With that, he laid his rifle down on the hood of Nick’s car and bent to one of the two bodies. As he bent, Nick saw that he had a Colt.45 automatic wedged cocked and locked into his jeans in a high hip-carry holster. The pistol was a custom job, with low mount sights and neoprene combat grips. It was the sort of pistol a man who has thought a lot about pistols might carry, as were the three spare magazines in Sparks mag holders on the other high hip.
Bob pulled each of the bodies to the lip of the river, and launched them with no ceremony at all. They sailed sluggishly out into the current, held afloat by the bladders of air trapped in their clothes; each man trailed a slick of blood.
“We’re going to make some damn ’gators happy today, that’s for sure,” Bob said. “Now come on, boy, don’t just sit there like a toad on a rock, get a move on!”
But Nick had lapsed into some kind of poststress letdown and was incapable of operating rationally. He just stared at Bob, eyes wide open, mouth agape, while Bob went to the men’s station wagon. Finding nothing to interest him, he turned the key, gunned the engine, drove off the dirt road, aimed at the swamp, stepped out of the car and bent over, and with one hand gave the gas pedal a goose. The car took off with a squeal, blew through some weeds, sloshed into the river and disappeared under the surface in a commotion of bubbles and oil stains.
He turned.
“Now your car, sonny. Can’t leave evidence. I’ll buy you a new one some day, okay?”
Nick watched him repeat the ritual, and his little Dodge, once the pride of his life, disappeared in the black, quiet water.
“Okay, boy, take a last quick gander. Police up anything that doesn’t belong. Come
By this time, Nick could get himself up, but he didn’t answer and he left it to Bob to do most of the checking.
“Okay. Time to take the freedom bird back to the world.”
They walked a half mile down the road and found a white pickup pulled off under some trees. Nick, still silent, climbed in. Carefully, Bob drew a rifle case out from behind the backseat, wiped down and inserted his Remington, then climbed into the driver’s seat. “Put your seat belt on, dammit,” he said. “I’m not having you crash through the damned windshield.”
Nick stared ahead, not registering anything as the swamp gave way to fields, to crops. On they drove through Louisiana in Bob’s white rattling pickup, leaving the bayous and New Orleans miles and miles behind.
Finally Bob asked, “Hungry? There’s a goddamned sandwich behind the seat and a thermos of coffee.”
“I’m all right,” said Nick. They were his first three words.
An hour later, just past the Arkansas line, they stopped at a diner by the roadside in a town called Annalisle.
“Need a burger,” said Bob. “Hungry.”
He got out of the car and went in. Nick watched him walk. He never looked back, his eyes kept straight ahead, his shoulders gunnery-sergeant erect, his bearing precise. Nick stirred himself at last and followed. Bob was sitting in a booth at the far end by himself. A girl came, and they ordered a burger and coffee for Bob and scrambled eggs for Nick.
Nick spoke at last. “Thanks. That was fantastic shooting.”
“I had to wait till the light was on them properly,” Bob said. “I wanted to shoot out of the sun. I was afraid the damn birds would take off and tell them where I was. But it worked out.”
“How do you throw a bolt so fast?”
“Practice, son. I’ve done some rifle shooting over the years.”
“I saw you die. I saw the flames at the church. I was there when they found the body.”
