Crane fingered the brass nozzle of the hose and tightened it with a white-knuckled turn. “So,” he said, looking at the nozzle. “You came back.”
“I said I would.”
Crane slid his hand down off the nozzle and wrapped his fingers around the black rubber. “Sayin’ it’s one thing. The other day, you didn’t look like you had the stones.” He squinted. “What changed your mind?”
“A dirty cop, back in D.C.”
Crane studied my discolored jaw. “A cop, huh?”
“That’s right. He told me to stay off the case. But it didn’t really matter that he was a cop. He was just another guy, looking to get a piece of April Goodrich. It happened like that her whole dumb life. And I think the last time it happened, it happened here.”
Crane said, “How you figure, friend?”
“It wasn’t too tough.” I walked around Crane and leaned my back against the punchboard. It gave me a view through the entrance to the yard outside. I could see most of my car, and beyond that the empty gravel road that ran into the woods. My car sat alone beneath the oak. I thought of Russel and the warmth of his kitchen, and the care he gave to his animals. I wondered if he had picked up the phone and made the call.
“April headed west,” Crane said.
“No,” I said, “she didn’t.” Two large black pigs stood blocking the exit to my left, and Crane had squared off in front of me.
“Then where is she?”
I shifted my weight. “Here, somewhere. She came down with a briefcase full of money she stole, from back in town. You killed her for the money. Or maybe you killed her for the kick. Either way, Crane, you killed her.”
Crane said, “You crossed the line now. You better be able to prove what you’re sayin’.” ‹›
I reached into the pocket of my jeans, pulled out the silver antique ring with the ruby stone, and held it out. Crane’s black eyes widened. I said, “Here’s my proof.”
“That’s a stupid trick,” Crane said. “And it’s one you’re gonna die for.”
He swung the hose. The brass nozzle clipped my shoulder. I felt the sting and tucked my chin into my chest and pulled my elbows in, my balled fists in front of my face. I backed up and Crane swung again, making contact across my forearm. I grunted as the nozzle broke the cushion of muscle and reached the bone.
The black pigs screamed from the doorway. Crane made an animal sound and bared his clenched gray teeth as he brought the hose up over my head. It came down with force, but I moved to the side, and the nozzle chinked the concrete. Before he could bring it back up I pushed him off balance with an open palm, then came quickly out of my stance and fired off a left to his lower back and then a hard right into his kidneys, aiming two feet deep. Crane dropped the hose and doubled down to catch his breath, and when he did I moved in front of him again. I had time to rear back on this one, and Crane didn’t even blink as he watched my punch come straight in and connect square on the bridge of his thick nose. The nose gave like dry sponge, but it only moved Crane back one step. He straightened up and walked toward me, blood inching down over his lip.
I stumbled and fell back. Crane grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me back up. There was blood now streaked across his teeth, and in his eyes a mechanical rage. He shook me and then without releasing his grip quickly moved me backward with a shove that sent me into the punchboard. Knives loosened and fell to the concrete. I groped for the handle of the largest one as it bounced but got my hand around its steel blade instead. I heard pigs wheezing and I heard Crane laugh as he kicked my hand and pinned it against the punchboard. I felt the edge of the blade bite the skin of my fingers, and I watched my hand release the knife, and I saw the clean, even slice and then the blood.
Adrenaline brought my knee violently up into Crane’s balls. He grunted and his eyes jerked skyward, and I shot my hands up between his and broke out of his grip. He threw a wild roundhouse. I ducked it, then shifted to the left and came up in a boxer’s stance and combinated again with a left and then a right to his back. Crane screamed and spun with a hammer fist that hit my ear like a club and knocked me to the ground. I was up quickly and shaking my head clear when he grabbed me and ran me into the punchboard again. My forehead hit first, and as he pulled me back the sty was spinning and the sounds of Crane and the pigs were in the distance. I was pushed out the exit then, and I fell to my knees in the hard mud, and Crane put a boot to my back. I rolled over and stared at the moving gray sky as squealing pigs brushed my arms and walked with manic clumsiness across my chest. I was still trying to make the sky stop moving when everything suddenly turned to night.
It was day again. I raised myself up on one elbow. The pigs were now back along the fence. I moved my arms at the joint and then my legs. Nothing was broken, and nothing felt right. I wiped blood from my palm onto the leg of my jeans and stared at the ground until I could focus on the ridged mud. When I looked up I saw Crane taking long strides through the sty in my direction. The snub-nosed. 38 was in his hand.
“I should have killed you straight up,” he shouted, still walking with purpose. “Makes no difference now.”
I didn’t try to move. I took a deep breath and smelled the air, and I remembered that it was Christmas Eve. Crane ducked his head and exited the sty. I thought of my grandfather, and of his hand around mine, the two of us, walking at night through the snow. Crane stood over me and cocked the pistol’s hammer and pointed the. 38 at my head.
He said, “No mess, friend.”
There was a roar. Crane’s red shirt ripped apart in the middle of his chest, and his black vest waved out as if it had been blown by a sudden gust of wind. Blood and bone jetted out and rained down. Crane threw the. 38 aside and did an airy two-step dance. His eyes rolled as he fell to the ground and landed at my side, his arm draped across my chest. The arm jerked in spasm. I pushed it off me. Then I looked in the direction of the sty.
Hendricks was standing in the exit. Smoke curled out of the barrel of the. 357 that he held at his side.
I wiped chunks of Crane off my face with a shaking hand. I looked at what was left of him. His mouth was open and his gray teeth were sunk into the mud. The large white boar hobbled by and stopped and inspected Crane’s inert body. Something like a smile was on the boar’s snout. I looked at Hendricks and nodded. Hendricks nodded back.
“April’s dead,” I said.
“Then Crane had it comin’.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “But you didn’t have to kill him.”
Hendricks smoothed out the brim of his hat as he holstered the. 357. “I was aiming for his legs,” he said, with a shrug. “Sight’s way off on this goddamn Smith and Wesson.” A slight gleam appeared in his eye. “Gotta get that son of a bitch fixed. Know what I mean?”
TWENTY-ONE
Hendricks walked slowly back to his car and radioed for an ambulance. While we waited for it he had a seat beside me in the mud and asked for the details. I handed him April’s ring and described everything I had seen in the cottage, with the exception of the brown leather briefcase. Hendricks listened closely. He never once looked at Crane or touched the corpse.
When the ambulance arrived I left the keys to my car with Hendricks and was gurneyed and rushed north to La Plata General. I spent the next three hours in the emergency room, mostly next to a moaning, liver-spotted old woman who had stumbled and broken both wrists on what was probably her last Christmas Eve. She complained about her daughters who lived in Pittsburgh and never called, even at Christmas, and I sat there and let her complain. I had eaten a couple of Tylenol 3s, and I wasn’t feeling all that bad. But a taste of whiskey would have made things a whole lot better.
The bearded doctor who finally saw me had the look of a lawn and gardIsnfonen department manager. He cleaned out the cut across the inside of my hand and wrapped my fingers together with tape over a gauze bandage. After that I was ushered off into a busy room and laid on a cold table, where an unsmiling brunet with shapely but occupationally cumbersome breasts took several X-rays of my bruised arms and shoulders. Everything turned up negative.
I asked for “something stronger,” but the good doctor ignored me as he pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back
