problem of McNeil. He slowed as he passed the entrance to the long driveway. There was nothing he could do at the car itself, particularly not while in his cruiser. He would have to park and take to the woods himself, hoping to… The radio crackled again. 'Chief? Chief?'
'Go ahead, goddamnit.'
'Sorry.'
'What is it, Metzger?'
'Somebody just came out of Kettle Creek and ran across the road. '
'McNeil?'
'I couldn't tell. I don't have my headlights on.'
'Which way are they going?'
'Up the hill.'
Tee reversed the car in a three-point turn and streaked back down Kettle Creek.
'Stay where you are and keep watching for McNeil's car,' said Tee, already back at the entrance to the road. Metzger flashed his lights once more. Tee cursed and started up the hill, fast. This time he saw the shadow from behind, caught the shape that cast the shadow for a second before it ducked behind a tree.
Tee kept driving, trying to control his breath. It was a trick of the light, he said. He was seeing things, he told himself.
He topped the hill, turned left until he was out of sight for anyone climbing the rise, and slammed the car into the nearest driveway and doused the lights. Moving clumsily, he cut back on foot at an angle to intersect the person he had overtaken running up the hill. When he reached the spot he wanted he crouched at the base of a tree, panting and praying silently that he was wrong. The noise of the runner came in less than a minute, cutting across lawns, brushing hedges, and taking fences with practiced ease. Tee saw the shadow first, hugely elongated in the moonlight, looking like a monster crossing the town in giant strides, and then the substance, surprisingly petite. His daughter ran gracefully to her bedroom window and hauled herself in without a sound.
She looked as if she had done it hundreds of times. Tee stayed at the base of the tree, not knowing whether to weep or explode.
Metzger flashed his lights again as he saw Tee's cruiser racing down the hill, but this time it was Tee who spoke first on the radio.
'Just stay there,' Tee growled. 'Do you want backup?' Metzger asked.
'It's just McNeil,' Tee said, trying to keep the fury from his voice.
'Why would I need backup?'
'Right you are. What should I do?'
'Just stay there, keep watching the road.'
'But McNeil's already left, I told you.'
Then stay there until he comes back,' Tee said, clicking off the transmitter. He did not want backup. He did not want help. He did not want witnesses. Tee slewed the car around the curve leading into Ketterfield Road, a lengthy stretch through one of the few truly flat areas in Clamden, and caught sight of the taillights in the distance. He slammed the accelerator to the floor and turned on his flashing lights.
McNeil saw the cruiser bearing down on him in his rearview mirror. No siren, he noted. Old Tee wants me to see him but he doesn't want the rest of the town to hear him. Not good. He toyed for a moment with thoughts of trying to outrun the cruiser, then dismissed them as pointless. He kept driving at the same safe speed, stalling for time as he pressed a number on his car phone.
Tee knifed the cruiser in front of McNeil's parked automobile and ran back to it, grabbing the driver's-door handle as if he intended to rip it from its frame.
'Hi there, Tee. You're working late.'
Tee hit McNeil in the side of the face with his fist, then pulled him out of the car and pushed him to the ground.
'Whoa,' said McNeil. 'Take it easy.'
'You sonofabitch!' Tee knelt on McNeil's back and struck him in the kidney with his hand. McNeil groaned but did not move. 'You dirty filthy sonofabitch.'
'You wanna talk?' McNeil said, unable to keep the sarcasm from his tone. 'Just ask.'
Tee put his hand on McNeil's head and forced his face into the pavement.
'She's fifteen, you asshole! Fifteen years old! I'll arrest you for statutory rape.'
'You don't want to put her through that,' McNeil said, sneering.
'You think you're safe, don't you? You think no one will turn you in because of that, don't you?' Tee pulled his service automatic from its holster and pressed it against McNeil's ear. McNeil went as silent as stone.
'There's another way to deal with scum,' Tee said. He cocked the automatic with an audible click. 'Resist me, you sonofabitch,' Tee growled. McNeil carefully did not move a muscle except to close his eyes.
'Resist me!' Tee leaned his mouth nearly as close as the pistol, roaring into McNeil's ear, spraying him with saliva.
'Resist me! Move, make one fucking move!'
Tee rapped McNeil on the head with the barrel of the gun, then got to his feet. 'Get up and move,' he said, his voice now gone icily calm.
'I'm going to kill you anyway, you might as well be on your feet.'
McNeil lay still with his eyes closed. A trickle of blood cleared the hairline of his scalp and ran across his cheekbone. 'Move,' Tee repeated. He drew his foot back and kicked McNeil between the legs.
McNeil gasped and instinctively pulled his legs into the fetal position.
Tee kicked him once more in the groin.
'Get up or I'll neuter you first.' He kicked McNeil again. McNeil cried out but continued to lie on the road, eyes pressed tightly closed.
'I'll castrate you if you don't get up.'
'Tee, you don't understand,' McNeil whispered. 'Honest to God, you don't understand.'
'I understand that my daughter's fifteen years old, I understand that!'
Tee roared. He knelt beside McNeil again, forcing the man's eyelids open with his fingers. 'Look at this! Do you see this?' He placed the barrel of the gun on McNeil's nose. 'I want you to see what's going to kill you. Now look at me. Look at me!'
McNeil swiveled his eyes to Tee's face, carefully not moving his body.
'I want you to see who's going to kill you,' he said. The gun barrel wavered unsteadily in Tee's hand, shaken by the same rage that contorted his face.
'No, Tee, please,' McNeil begged. 'I didn't do anything.'
'I'm not going to do anything either,' said Tee. 'The gun will.' He stood up and took two steps back from McNeil, thinking clearly enough to realize he did not want to be splattered by McNeil's soft tissue when he shot him. Tee leveled the gun at McNeil's ear. His hand was shaking so badly that he steadied it with the other, falling automatically into the shooter's pose. I want to do it, he thought, I want to do it so badly.
This was not like Mrs. Leigh on the cliff, there was strong motive this time, McNeil deserved to die and Tee could get away with it in practical terms, possibly even legally. But he knew that the desire that filled him had no regard for reason or rationale. He wanted to end McNeil's life as a willful act, separate and complete in itself. He wanted to do it because he wanted to do it.
His finger trembled on the trigger and his ears were filled with a vast roaring, as if all the blood in his body were racing through his brain in a torrent, urging him on. He hesitated, barely aware of the keening sound issuing from McNeil, whose whole face was squeezed and bunched as if drawn together by cords. But Tee did not see McNeil's expression, he was concentrating solely on his target. His finger tautened on the trigger, he felt the slack give way and then the final resistance. One sixteenth of an inch farther, one more ounce of pressure, and the gun would explode in his hand. In the frozen second before the weapon fired, Tee felt as if raw power were attached to his arm, he could sense it throbbing there in his hand like a living thing, power. Power. The power to kill and change a life forever, his life, someone else's life.
The roar of the gun was incredibly loud in the stillness of the night, it seemed to rip the very air apart, to make the ground shake with its sudden ferocity. The fire of the muzzle blast against the blackness struck Tee as if he had stared directly at the sun, and for a moment he was lost, disoriented, as if he himself had been shot. After
