Boyd reached down and grabbed Jose by the hair and jerked his head up and back, and there was a sound like a rake-handle breaking. The young man flopped to the ground, his chest and shoulders jerking, his feet kicking spasmodically.
Screaming in horror, Val fired two more shots, catching Boyd in the side and staggering him away from where Jose lay. The young man was staring upward, eyes wide and bright, feeling nothing at all below his neckline but a fiery emptiness as if he had been separated from all of his nerve endings.
Boyd crouched and spun, hissing as he began to advance toward Val once more, but Diego snapped out of his shock and waded in to land a single wide haymaker on the side of Boyd’s jaw. It was a powerful punch, backed by all of the sturdy foreman’s mass and turn, and Boyd’s head snapped so far around that there was an audible snap somewhere in his neck, but he just twitched his shoulders and turned his head back toward Val, lashing out with one hand almost as an afterthought and catching Diego on the cheekbone. This was a far more powerful blow and the foreman spun like a dancer on the ball of one foot and landed facedown, his eyes rolling high and white.
Grinning with his bloody mouth, baring his jagged rows of teeth, Boyd lunged once more at Val and she fired again, standing in a shooter’s crouch now, the gun held in one hand, the other one clamped around her wrist to support its weight, one eye seeing nothing but black and the other staring right into Boyd’s hideous face. Her first bullet punched through his mouth, clipping the tips off several teeth, like a missile flying through a cave and snapping off stalactites and stalagmites. That slowed Boyd by no more than a half-step.
She put the next round through his right eye and the next through his forehead.
The force slammed him back against the barn, but this time he seemed to freeze in place. His one remaining red-within-black eye stared at her with such profound shock that Val didn’t pull the trigger again. Instead she watched as that dark eye lost its clarity and slowly rolled upward as Boyd slid down into the wall, toppled over into the bloody dirt, and lay still.
Val stood there, her muscles locked and trembling, pain continuing to detonate in her skull and in her bad shoulder, but she still held the gun tightly in both hands. She took a single step forward, barrel aimed at the killer’s head, but there was no movement. Another step, remembering how Ruger had fooled Crow that terrible night. She wouldn’t make the same mistake. She took another step, and risked a glance around her. Ty was definitely dead. Jose—she thought his neck must be broken, but she could hear him breathing…and crying. Diego was out, but didn’t look that bad. And Connie. Dear God…Connie was alive, her hands clamped around her throat, her eyes open and glassy with shock. Inside the barn, Mark lay silent amid the shadows. She looked back at Boyd and took a final step until she was standing over him, the gun barrel pointing down. He had two black holes in his face. One where his right eye should be—which was now a dark mass of jelly—and another in the center of his forehead. He was definitely dead.
But she emptied the rest of the magazine into him anyway, each shot punching through his skull and into his brain.
The slide locked open, the magazine empty.
Val staggered back, lost her balance, and fell just as the first sob broke from her chest, and abruptly the whole yard—the house, the path, the barn, and all the bodies—were washed into a cartoon of harsh blacks and whites by headlights as Crow came tearing up the road toward her.
Chapter 30
(1)
Crow sat with Val, both of them wrapped in the blanket the paramedics had draped around her shoulders. The cartoon black and white of the scene had been repainted with the red and blue of police lights, and ambulance sirens were a constant wail. Diego, Connie, and Jose had all been taken away. Ty Gibbs still lay where he had fallen, his dead face still registering amazement; inside the barn, Mark was being photographed. Crow could see the white flashes of the camera as they documented the scene. Crow had done it himself once upon a time; he knew the drill. He looked up and saw Newton standing nearby talking into his cell phone, calling in the story, scooping everyone else. Crow almost hated him for it, but just couldn’t spare the energy.
Crow kissed Val’s face, her hair. “It’s over,” he murmured.
“He was dead,” she whispered.
“He’s dead, baby, it’s okay. You killed the bastard—”
“No!” she had snapped, pounding on his chest with her fist. “He was dead. I shot him over and over again. I didn’t miss once. Not once. He was dead.”
Crow looked at her and saw the truth of it in her eyes. Not shock, not delusion. He stood up and walked over to where Boyd lay, ignoring Dixie McVey, who was writing in his notebook. Crow squatted down and counted the bullet holes. Fifteen of them from Henry’s old .45. But it was worse than that, worse than even Val knew, and sometime soon he’d have to tell her. As Crow knelt there, using a Bic pen to lift the folds of Boyd’s clothing, he saw other bullet holes. Old ones. Nine of them. In belly and groin and chest. Nearly healed over. Nine shots. The number of bullets that had been fired from Jimmy Castle’s pistol. Nine. Nine and then Val’s fifteen, the last of which had been head shots. Twenty-four shots all told. It was, of course, impossible.
He looked at Boyd’s mouth, the jaw hung loose, twisted askew, the lips slack over the teeth. With hands that were starting to shake with a palsy of rising terror, Crow reached out and pushed back Boyd’s upper lip, looking at evidence of what he did not want to find; but the bullet had done too much damage and what was left of the teeth revealed no dark secrets. Crow got to his feet feeling no relief.
He turned and walked slowly back to Val and waved away the paramedic who was trying to usher her into the back of an ambulance. The paramedic must have seen something in his face; he held up his hands, palms out, and retreated to his vehicle.
Crow took Val in his arms, careful with her.
She leaned into him. “He was dead,” she said again.
He nodded. “I know.”
(2)
When they heard the shooting and saw Crow’s car pull into the driveway, Vic started his truck and he and Ruger drove without headlights down the farm access road all the way to the river, then Vic turned his lights on and headed first north then west until they had circled above the town proper. Most of the way they didn’t say anything.
Vic’s cell phone rang when they were just north of town. It was Jim Polk. Vic put it on speakerphone. “All hell’s breaking loose at the Guthrie place. Is that your stuff?” he asked.
Vic had to take a breath before he answered. All he said was, “Boyd.”
“Yeah, well that reporter from Black Marsh called in that Boyd was dead.”
Vic and Ruger exchanged a look. “What do you mean ‘dead’?” Vic said.
“I mean dead, what do you think I mean? I was the one that took the call,” said Polk. “Mark Guthrie’s dead,
