'Hank?' Jacob called again. He was at the base of the stairs, but he sounded farther away. I had to strain to hear him.
'It's all right, Jacob,' I yelled, though it wasn't, of course.
'What happened?'
I stood up and moved around the bed to get a better look at her. Her T-shirt was stained black with blood. It had hitched up a bit when she fell, so that now I could see her rear end. Water was sprinkling down off the bed onto her legs, making them glisten. She wasn't moving.
'You want me to come up?' Jacob called.
'I shot her,' I yelled.
'What?'
'I shot her. She's dead.'
Jacob didn't say anything. I listened for the sound of his feet on the stairs, but he didn't move.
'Jacob?'
'What?'
'Why don't you come up here now?'
There was a pause; then I heard him begin to climb. The water continued to shoot in a fine spray from the mattress. I picked up a pillow and set it on top of the leak. After a few seconds a little puddle started to form on the bedspread. There was the smell of urine in the air, an acidic tartness -- Nancy had lost control of her bladder. The urine was mixing with the blood and the water on the floor, the whole mess seeping down into the carpet.
When I heard my brother's footsteps approach the doorway, I turned and said, 'She had a pistol. She was going to shoot me.'
Jacob nodded. He seemed to be making a conscious effort not to look at Nancy's body. He was still carrying his rifle. I could tell he'd been crying downstairs -- his face was damp and his eyes red -- but he'd stopped now.
'What should we do?' he asked.
I didn't know what to say. I still couldn't believe that I'd shot her. I could see her body lying there, could see the blood and smell the urine, but I couldn't connect all that to anything I'd done. I'd just raised the gun and pulled the trigger: it seemed like too simple an action to have resulted in all this carnage.
'I didn't mean to shoot her,' I said to Jacob.
He glanced toward Nancy's body now, a quick, furtive movement, like a peck, then looked away. His face was extremely pale. He started toward the bed, as if to sit down on it, but I stopped him.
'Don't,' I said. 'It's broken.'
He froze, shifting his weight from foot to foot. 'I guess we should call somebody,' he said.
'Call somebody?'
'The sheriff. The state police.'
I stared across the room at the phone. It was sitting on the night table, above the open drawer. Nancy's body was slumped on the floor beneath it. Her hair was all wet now, a thick, dark clot. It was wound around her neck like a noose. Jacob was right, of course. The mess we'd made had to be cleaned up, and the police were the only people who could do this.
'They're not going to believe us,' I said.
'Believe us?'
'That we shot them out of self-defense.'
'No,' he said. 'They won't.'
I edged my way around Nancy's body toward the night table.
'Will we tell them about the money?' Jacob asked.
I didn't answer him. An idea had come to me suddenly, a way to postpone for a few more minutes the exposure of our crimes.
'I'm going to call Sarah,' I said. I tried to imply that this was a rational step, tried to make my voice come out sounding confident and resolute, but in reality there was no logic behind it. I simply wanted to speak with her, wanted to tell her what had happened and warn her of the storm that was about to engulf us.
I half-expected Jacob to argue with me, but he didn't, so I picked up the phone. It was dark brown, the same color and style as the one in my office, and I found this oddly reassuring. When I started to dial, my brother turned and shuffled back across the room toward the doorway. I watched him disappear into the hall.
'Don't worry, Jacob,' I called after him. 'It's going to be okay.'
He didn't answer me.
Sarah picked up on the third ring. 'Hello?' she said. I could hear the dishwasher going in the background, which meant she was in the kitchen. She'd been waiting up for me.
'It's me,' I said.
'Where are you?'
'At Lou's.'
'Did you get him to say it?'
'Sarah,' I said. 'We shot them. They're both dead.'
There was an instant's silence on the other end, like a skip on a record, and then, 'What're you talking about, Hank?'
I told her what had happened. I took the phone and walked around to the other side of the bed while I talked, to get away from Nancy's body. I went to the window and looked out toward the road. I could see Jacob's truck, parked down at the base of the driveway. Everything was dark.
'Oh God,' Sarah whispered when I finished, an echo of Nancy's cry. 'Oh God.'
I didn't say anything. I could hear her trying to catch her breath on the other end of the line, as if she were about to cry.
'What're you going to do?' she asked finally.
'I'm calling the police. We're going to turn ourselves in.'
'You can't do that,' she said. Her voice was quick, panicky, and it made me scared to hear it. I realized now why I'd called her: so that she might take control, fix what I'd broken -- Sarah, my problem solver, my rock. But she was letting me down; she was just as bewildered by what had happened as I was.
'I don't have a choice, Sarah. This isn't something we can just walk away from.'
'You can't turn us in, Hank.'
'I won't involve you. I'll tell them you didn't know about any of it.'
'I don't care about that. I care about you. If you give yourself up, they'll send you to jail.'
'They're both dead, Sarah. I can't hide that.'
'What about an accident?'
'An accident?'
'Why can't you make it look like an accident? Like with Pederson?'
I almost laughed, the idea seemed so absurd. She was flailing about, clutching at straws. 'Jesus, Sarah. We shot them. There's blood everywhere. It's on the walls, the bed, the floor--'
'You said you shot Nancy with Lou's gun?'
'Yes.'
'Then you can make it look like Lou killed Nancy, and Jacob killed Lou in self-defense.'
'But why would Lou kill Nancy?'
Sarah didn't say anything, but I could sense her thinking over the phone, could feel it like a vibration. An image appeared in my mind of her pacing up and down through the darkened kitchen, the telephone pressed against her cheek, its cord wrapped tightly around her fist. She was regaining her composure; she was searching for a way out.
'Maybe he discovered she was cheating on him,' she said.
'But why shoot her tonight? It's not like he found her in bed with someone. She was all alone.'
There was a pause of perhaps ten seconds; then Sarah asked suddenly, 'Did Sonny hear the shots?'
'Sonny?'
'Sonny Major. Are his lights on? Is he up?'
I looked out the window again. There was only darkness down the road; Sonny's trailer was hidden behind it.
