She was wearing a Detroit Tigers T-shirt. It was extra-long, like a nightgown, and came down to her thighs. I could see her breasts moving beneath it, full and heavy, swinging a little each time she took a step.
I glanced back through the doorway at Jacob. He was still out on the walk, standing there like a statue, peering into the house. It seemed as if he were waiting for Lou to get up.
Nancy reached the bottom of the stairs, moved at a crouch across the entranceway, then stooped down beside Lou's corpse. She didn't touch him. She still had her hand over her mouth, and the sight of her like that sent a wave of pity through my body. I stepped forward, my arms held out to embrace her, but when she saw me coming, she jumped up and backed away toward the living room.
'Don't touch me,' she said. Her legs were stocky beneath her T-shirt, pallid, like two marble pillars. She was beginning to cry a little; a pair of tears were moving in tandem down either side of her nose, as if in a race.
I tried to think of something soothing to say to her, but all I could come up with was a feeble lie. 'It's okay, Nancy,' I whispered.
She didn't react to this. She was staring past me, toward the doorway, and when I turned to see what she was looking at, I found Jacob standing there, the rifle cradled in his arms like a baby, a blank, mannequinish look pasted on his face.
'Why?' Nancy asked.
He had to clear his throat before he spoke. 'He was going to shoot Hank.'
The sound of my brother's voice pulled me out of my trance. If we could act together, I realized, the thought fluttering upward into consciousness on a pair of panicky wings, we could still salvage something from this horror: we could still save the money. It would simply be a matter of our agreeing to look at things in a certain way.
'He wasn't going to shoot anyone,' Nancy said. She was staring down at Lou's body now. The puddle of blood was still growing, moving slowly out across the tiled floor.
'Nancy,' I said softly, 'it's going to be all right. We're going to work this out.' I was trying to calm her down.
'You killed him,' she said, as if in disbelief. She pointed her finger at my brother. 'You shot him.'
Jacob didn't say anything. His rifle was clenched tightly against his chest.
I took two steps toward Nancy, edging my way around the puddle of blood. 'We're going to call the police,' I said. 'And we're going to tell them it was self-defense.'
She glanced toward me, but not at me. It didn't seem like she understood.
'We're going to tell them that Lou was about to shoot him, that he was drunk, that he'd gone berserk.'
'Lou wasn't going to shoot anyone.'
'Nancy,' I said. 'We can still save the money.'
She reacted to this statement as if it were a slap in the face. 'You bastards,' she hissed. 'You shot him for the money, didn't you?'
'Shhh,' I said. I made a quieting motion with my hand, but she started toward me, her fists clenched, her face distorted with rage. I backed away from her.
'You think I'm going to let you keep the money?' she said. 'You fucking--'
I retreated all the way across the entranceway, past Lou's body, toward the door and my brother. She kept coming at me, yelling now, calling me names, shouting about the money. As she passed Lou's body, she stumbled against the shotgun, kicking it with one of her bare feet. It made a loud metallic noise as it slid across the tiles, and we all stared down at it.
There was a pause, while Nancy seemed to consider. Then she was bending to pick it up.
I stepped forward to grab it first, not to threaten her, only to keep her from getting it. We both got ahold of it, and there was a brief struggle. The gun was black and oily, and surprisingly heavy. I pushed, then pulled, then pushed again, and Nancy lost her grip. She stumbled back toward the stairs, fell against them, and, shrieking, lifted her arms to protect her head.
I realized with a shock that she thought I was going to shoot her.
'It's okay,' I said quickly. I crouched down, began to lay the gun on the floor. 'I'm not going to hurt you.'
She started to back up the stairs.
'Wait, Nancy,' I said. 'Please.'
She kept moving away, one step at a time, higher and higher, and I came after her, the gun in my hands.
'No,' she said. 'Don't.'
'It's okay. I just want to talk.'
When she got to the top of the stairs, she turned to the right and broke into a run. I sprinted after her, up the last few steps and then down the hallway. Her bedroom was at the very end. Its door was open, and there was a light on inside. I could see the foot of the bed.
'I'm not going to hurt you,' I yelled.
She reached the door and tried to slam it shut, but I was right behind her. I caught it with my arm, forced it open. She backed away from me. The room was larger than I'd expected. There was a king-size water bed directly in front of us, pushed up against the wall. To the left was a little sitting area -- two chairs and a table with a TV on it. There was a door behind the chairs, shut, which I assumed must've led to the bathroom. To the right, pressed up against the house's front wall, were two huge bureaus and a dressing table. There was a doorway there, too. It was open and led to a walk-in closet. I could see some of Nancy's dresses hanging inside.
'I just want to talk,' I said. 'Okay?'
Nancy fell backward against the bed and started crawling, crablike, across it. A sloshing sound came from the mattress, and the covers rose and fell with the rolling of the water beneath them.
I realized that I was pointing the shotgun at her. I took it in my left hand and held it out, away from my body, to show her that I wasn't going to use it. 'Nancy--'
'Leave me alone,' she cried. She reached the headboard and stopped, trapped. Her face was smeared with tears. She wiped at it with her hand.
'I promise I won't hurt you. I just want to--'
'Get out,' she sobbed.
'We have to think about what we're doing. We have to calm down and--'
Her right hand shot out suddenly, reaching for the night table. At first I thought she was going to pick up the phone and call the police, so I stepped forward to snatch it away. Her hand wasn't moving toward the phone, though; it was moving toward the night table's drawer. She pulled it open, reached inside, fumbling blindly, in a panic, her eyes locked on me and the gun. A box of tissues fell out, landing on the floor with a hollow thump, and then, right behind it, came her hand. It was holding a small black pistol. She had it by the barrel.
'No,' I said. I retreated toward the door. 'Don't, Nancy.'
She pulled the pistol toward her, worked her hand around to the grip. Then she raised it and aimed it at my stomach.
My mind was sending out a jumbled stream of contradictory orders, screaming at my body, telling it to leap forward and grab the pistol, to run away, to duck, to hide behind the door, but my body refused to listen. It acted on its own. My arms lifted the shotgun, and then my finger found the trigger, found its cold metal tongue, and pulled it backward.
The gun fired. Nancy's body was flung back against the headboard, and a tiny fountain of water sprang up at her side.
I stood there in shock. The spray of water made a sound like someone urinating when it landed on the bedspread. Nancy's body slumped over to the right, balanced for a second on the edge of the bed, then slipped with a thud to the floor. There was blood everywhere -- on the sheets, the pillows, the headboard, the wall, the floor.
'Hank?' Jacob called. His voice sounded scared, shaky.
I didn't answer him. I was trying to absorb what had just happened. I took a step into the room, crouched down, set the gun on the floor.
'Nancy,' I said. I knew she was dead, could tell just by the way she'd fallen from the bed, but the desire for this not to be true was overwhelming. I waited for her to answer me; the whole thing seemed like an accident, and I wanted to explain this to her.
