trail to the periodic illumination of the dusk-to-dawn lamps, which were momentarily faked to darkness by the flashes of lightning.
I dug in my heels and allowed the mare to have her head; in an instant I was around the far turn. I heard the terrible sound of the automatic again, like fibers being torn in cloth.
I could feel Creampuff reaching out and grabbing the rough surface of the path and throwing it behind us. I leaned with her and missed a sign by inches, almost spilling the two of us on the rain-slick trail. Just around the corner, I could see that something was down and that Toy Diaz was warily approaching it. It was a horse, kicking and screaming in the pathway, with William White Eyes trapped underneath.
The drug dealer could not catch a galloping horse, but the 9 mm had.
The fickle streetlights chose that moment to burst into full illumination, and there was a sharpness to the edges of everything, a glistening, as Diaz stood to the side of the fallen horse, careful to stay clear of its kicking legs. My paint’s mean streak and mine kicked in in a last-second attempt to save William’s life, and I felt the surge as Diaz lifted his arm.
It’s possible that he was so concentrated on the action that he didn’t hear me or that the echo of thunder in the ravine had deafened us all. Either way, by the time he heard us, it was too late. The big paint didn’t slow; she didn’t veer or misdirect her momentum. She simply ran right over Toy Diaz.
He must have pulled the trigger on impact, but the rounds flailed emptily into the hillside to the left. There was a momentary muffling of the horse’s hooves, and her balance shifted just a little as I reined in and veered from the injured horse lying on the gravel.
I thought I would come unseated when the paint reared and pivoted to the left. She stiffened her legs and backed away from the smell of blood and the screaming of the other horse. She wanted nothing to do with the scene in front of us and backed away into the trees along the creek bank.
She reared again, and this time I wasn’t as lucky. I fell against the saplings that lined the Wissahickon as she went over backward, slipping on the wet gravel and falling to the side. I clawed my way to the left as she slid right and rolled. We both made it to the flat area of the trail at the same time, whereupon she turned left and disappeared away from the vehicle approaching from the direction we’d been heading, its revolving yellow emergencies strobe-lighting the shiny surface of the pebbled path.
I pulled the. 45 from the small of my back and clicked off the safety.
Diaz had been thrown to the side of the trail; he still lay there, face down and unmoving. The shoebox- shaped automatic was there as well, where the horse and I had struck him, far out of reach even for a whole man.
I approached carefully with the Colt pointed at his head. He didn’t move, so I knelt beside him, and placed my fingers along his wrist. There was a pulse.
His clothes were soaked from fording the stream, and he wore a hooded black leather jacket that was waterlogged and must’ve weighed a ton. I put his hand back on the pavement and lowered myself enough to look at his face. He was, indeed, the small man I’d seen with Osgood at the shooting range. He might have been handsome then, but he had struck the pavement like a cue ball, and his head seemed lopsided under the hood of his coat. The leather was torn at the shoulder, and he was bleeding from a spot where one of my. 45s had clipped him, near a gauze bandage at his throat where Vic must’ve gotten him before.
He opened his eyes and blinked but said nothing as I watched him. My voice came out in a heavy rasp. “Don’t move.”
I felt the blood rushing to my head and the throb of my own pulse as a large, white truck pulled up. The door read FAIRMOUNT PARK COMMISSION, but the two men who got out weren’t carrying rakes.
“Are you all right?” I stared at the little red dots. “Sheriff, you all right?”
I converted the chill in my back to a nod. “Yep.”
Katz looked past me, and Gowder continued on to Toy Diaz. I stumbled a little as I walked away, stopped, and just stood there, breathing and fighting the nausea that rose in the back of my throat. I became aware of a noise in front of me and a screaming that wasn’t human.
William White Eyes had disengaged himself, pushing with his good leg, and had dragged himself to a shallow ditch; he was covered in dirt and leaves. His eyes were large as he struggled to rise up on one elbow but, even from a few yards away, I could see that something was broken in him. He slumped back against the ground, groaned, and looked at me as the screaming continued.
I stared at his pale, white body in the stark illumination of the street lamps that had pulsed on again and noticed how all the different colors of his war paint now looked black. I went over and kneeled beside him. “You okay?”
His voice wheezed with effort. “No.”
I kept quiet and held onto him till the EMTs arrived and took over.
I walked back up to the path where the gelding still kicked weakly. I kneeled again and placed a hand on the bay’s neck beside the Cheyenne medicine sign for wind. The horse attempted to raise its head but let out a rattling gasp and resettled. I counted at least five bullets in the poor animal. My father was a blacksmith and had told me when I was a little boy that the beasts of the field didn’t feel pain the way we humans did. I remember not believing him then, and I still didn’t.
I could hear the steady clop of hooves on the pathway stones as Henry rode up from behind and, from the sound, I could tell that he had captured my mount. More vehicles arrived, adding blue and red to the already abundant yellow that ran between the trees. I’m sure if it had been daylight, I would have been able to look back up the ravine and seen Chief Tedyuscung with his hand over his brow, looking west, at the mess of things in general. The screaming continued along with the sirens, and something was going to have to pay; that’s the way it always was, and it was usually the innocent.
I was cold, and my legs complained at carrying my weight. My eyes didn’t seem to want to focus as I pushed my hat back and felt the trapped rain run down my back. I looked at my hands and watched them shake, and a chill ran through me. I placed my hand back on the bay’s neck to steady him and, looking into the eye with the circle around it, spoke to him softly. “Easy…Easy boy…”
A weight hung in my chest and, before my eyes could completely blur, I raised the Colt and fired.
E PILOGUE
Two weeks, and I still had the screaming in my head.
I tossed a few more crumbs from my bagel to Mutt and Jeff, who were looking a little thicker than their hundred or so compatriots scattered across the roach-coach area of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. I guess they felt like they’d found good pasture and saw no reason to move on. It was slow going with the finger brace Rissman had put back on me. My ribs still groused every time I took a breath, but everything still hurt a little, so I just ignored it all.
“Are you going to answer my question?”
I looked up and again thought about how much she looked like her daughter. I thought about how seeing women in floral-print summer dresses gave me hope about things in general, and I thought about what she knew, which was probably more than I wanted to admit. “I’m sorry.”
Lena took a sip of the coffee she had brought with her. “Toy Diaz?”
“He’s a little worse for wear. He’s going to have a supervised rehabilitation at Graterford, and it promises to be lengthy since he no longer has his friends in the district attorney’s office.”
“What about the young woman?”
“Jo Fitzpatrick?”
“Yes.”
I tossed the pigeons more crumbs. “By the letter of the law, she didn’t do anything wrong.” I reached over and picked up the cup of coffee she’d brought for me; it was finally cool enough to drink. “Maybe it just seems like enough people have been punished for this mess. Every mistake she made was because she cared about people or because she cared about her child.” Lena nodded, but I don’t think her old-world sense of justice was satisfied. I sipped my coffee as she and Mutt and Jeff watched. “I don’t know.” I slapped my hand on the backpack, containing
