a Rossi.38 into the ground, and I shot him high in the chest. Blood squirted out in a little geyser, and he looked down at it and then started pressing on the blood, trying to make it stay where it was. Then he fell over.
Inside, there were the sounds of fast movement and Karen screamed something and there was the peculiar high shriek that only young children can make. Someone started shooting and bullets slammed through the side of the hangar, well wide of us, and then the shooting stopped.
We looked in through either side of the window in time to see Charlie drag Toby through the hangar doors. Karen followed them. Peter was lying on his side and the fat guy kicked him twice, then took a blue revolver from under his jacket. He pulled Peter's head back and put the revolver into Peter's mouth. Pike shot him in the top of the left shoulder with a load of number four. The fat guy fell backward and Pike shot him again.
We ran back between the two Pawnee crop dusters just as Charlie came around the hangar with one arm locked around Toby Lloyd's neck, looking for us. The Browning.380 was pressed under Toby's ear. Charlie's face was bright red and there were veins standing out on his forehead. He was checking the roofline. Batman and Robin always come down from the roof. He screamed, 'You're mine, you sonofabitch. I'm gonna cut out your fuckin' guts and fry'm in a pan!'
Karen came around the corner behind them, tears washing her face, her hands tight and clawed. She wanted to run to Toby, but she was scared if she did the nut with the gun would kill him. She yelled, 'Toby!'
Charlie DeLuca dug his pistol so deep under Toby's jaw that Toby shrieked again and wet his pants. Charlie yelled, 'I'm gonna kill him, you chickenshit motherfuckers, you don't come out here. I'm gonna blow his fuckin' eyes out.'
I glanced at Pike. Pike's flat black lenses were locked on Charlie DeLuca, the shotgun resting easy along the Pawnee's metal wing strut. Pike's a better shot than me. Maybe the best I've ever seen. I said, 'He's going to do it. He's going to kill the boy.'
'Yes.'
I gave him the.357 and took the shotgun. 'Can you make the shot?'
Karen screamed, 'Help him, please. Somebody help!'
Pike said, 'I can make the shot, but not with his gun on the boy that way. He could jerk when he dies.'
Karen screamed, 'Toby!'
Peter stumbled out of the hangar and said, 'Let go my kid, you fat fuck!' There were cuts over both eyes and his nose was broken and his lips were split. There was so much blood on his face that he looked like he was wearing makeup. 'I'm Peter Alan Nelsen, and I will kick your fat fucking ass!'
Karen screamed, 'Peter! No!'
Charlie DeLuca smiled and swung the Browning toward Peter and said, 'Kick this.' Then he fired once.
Peter fell down, and Karen and Toby screamed, and I stepped out from behind the Pawnee and yelled, 'Charlie!'
Charlie DeLuca swung the.380 back toward me, pulled the trigger, and something tugged at the top of my shoulder. Then I felt something solid wash past me from behind and there was a loud noise and the back of Charlie DeLuca's head blew out like a big rig tire filled with red paint. Pike's Python. Charlie was dead before he started to fall.
Toby kicked away from what was left of Charlie DeLuca and ran to Peter, yelling, 'Daddy! Daddy!'
Blood was spilling from the top of Peter's left thigh, but he made it to his knees and dragged himself over to Charlie DeLuca and started punching the body. If Peter could get up, I figured I should get up, too. I did okay at it, but my ears were ringing and my shirt felt wet. I looked down and opened my jacket and saw that my shirt was turning black from the top down. Then Pike was there, peeling back the shirt. 'Doesn't look bad. Caught it across the top of the trapezius.'
'Sure.'
Pike went over to Peter, took off his belt, and wrapped it tight around Peter's leg. Then he came back to me and used his sweatshirt as a compress on my shoulder. I burned where the bullet had torn through the muscle and there was a tingling feeling, but it could've been worse. Peter blinked at his leg and at Charlie DeLuca and then he grinned at me. 'We got the bastard. We got him.'
'Yes,' I said. 'We did.'
He began to laugh. 'It's over.'
Karen was laughing then, too. Nervous and scared and letting off the tension by laughing. 'Yes,' she said. 'God, yes.'
Karen came over and hugged me. Toby helped Peter to his feet and they came over and hugged me, too.
Some days, I guess you're more huggable than others.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
We left the bodies at the airport and went into town to see Chelam's only doctor, a young guy with a beard and glasses name of Hocksley. Karen Lloyd drove.
The doc was good about it. He practiced out of his home just four houses down from May Erdich's place, the kind of guy who wanted to know his patients and bring babies into the world and watch them grow. Idealistic. You know the type. When he cut off my shirt and Peter's pants, he whistled and said, 'Man, I haven't seen anything like this since I left the Bronx General ER.'
'Hunting accident.'
'Sure.'
He swabbed us down and cleaned us out, then put in a couple of stitches and gave us each two injections, something clear to fight infection and something white to fight tetanus. He also gave us some orange pills for the pain. He said, 'Don't suppose I should call the police about this.'
I said, 'Mind if I use your phone?'
I called Rollie George and told him where I was and what had happened. While I told him, the doc crossed his arms and listened and absently stroked his beard. When I hung up, he said, 'Think I should maybe go take a look?'
I shook my head. 'It won't do any good.'
He looked at Peter. 'You look familiar.'
'I've got one of those faces.'
We left the doctor, dropped Toby with May Erdich, and drove back to the little airfield. The snow had stopped falling but not before a gentle skin of white had been pulled over the road and the airplanes and the bodies in the field. Joe Pike and I unshipped the tarps from the two Pawnees' engine cowlings and covered Charlie DeLuca and the three guys who'd died with him and then we sat in the LeBaron to wait.
A couple of Connecticut state cars got there first, followed by a plain blue sedan with somebody from the Connecticut AG's office. They came in the right way, without the sirens or the lights, and I liked them for it. The guy from the AG's office walked over to us and asked who we were. I told him my name and Joe's, but I didn't mention Karen or Peter, and he didn't ask. He said that he had been told something about bodies at another location. I told him how to get to the pumpkin field and that there were two bodies on either side of the field in the woods. He nodded and went back to the uniform cops, and then he and a car full of the uniforms drove away to take a look. Twenty minutes later a tan car with an FBI emblem on the side door and a white Ford from the New York State Attorney General's office pulled in just ahead of a gray Cadillac limousine. Two guys got out of the FBI car, and a bald guy and two women got out of the N.Y. car. Rollie George and his dog got out of the limo. The law student was driving. Everybody except the bald man smiled when they saw Rollie and shook his hand and told him it was good to see him. Nothing like palling around with a big-time novelist at a murder scene.
Karen said, 'Shouldn't we be out there with them?'
'No. We sit and wait and see what they say.'
They went as a group to the spot between the two airplanes and lifted the tarpaulin and looked at what was under it. Maxie sniffed at Charlie's body and lifted his leg and Rollie had to pull the dog away. One of the women laughed. They stood over the bodies for a long time, sometimes glancing back to the car, but mostly not. Everybody seemed in agreement with what they were talking about except the bald guy. You could see it in his
