grip feels unfamiliar in my hand. Sighting once down the six-inch barrel, I move back into the hallway and hurry into the bedroom.
Drewe hasn’t moved. Facing the closed door, I back around the bed to the telephone and dial Sheriff Buckner’s office with my left hand. I keep my right on the Magnum, taking my eyes off the door only long enough to see the numbers.
“Sheriff’s Department.” A woman’s voice, more a question than a statement.
“I need to talk to the sheriff.
“Who is this?”
“Harper Cole. Get him!”
“He’s not here.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“Just a second.”
The next voice is male, young. “Deputy Jones. What can I do for you?”
I answer in language calculated to scare the living hell out of Deputy Jones, telling him about the tunnel and making it plain that people might die if Buckner and some deputies don’t get back to my house ASAP. Then I hang up and sit down between Drewe and the door, the.357 pointed at its upper panel. The gun has a sobering weight. My arms are soon shaking with fatigue, but I’m afraid to sneak a look at my watch. It’s been over a year since I opened the gun safe, the last time I felt sentimental about my father and found myself cleaning his guns to remember him.
A bump from somewhere inside the house steels my flagging arms. No way could Buckner’s men be here yet. Not from Yazoo City. I listen in a way I have not since my grandfather took me on my first and last deer hunt. Shooting Bambi seemed cruel and unnecessary to me then. Now blowing off a man’s head seems entirely justifiable.
There is definitely someone in the house. I don’t know how I know, but I do. And that someone is moving.
“Harper Cole!”
My finger pulls against the Magnum’s trigger, stopping at the last pound of pressure. Does Brahma know my name? Of course he does.
“Where you at, man? It’s Billy Jackson!”
I’m on my feet instantly, pulling open the door and motioning the heavyset deputy into the room. His forehead and cheeks are beaded with sweat, his eyes alight with excitement.
“Who’s with you, Billy?”
“Jimmy Hayes, on the porch,” he says breathlessly, thumbing the hammer of the nine-millimeter automatic in his hand. “We were watching the house, like that New Orleans cop said to.”
“Just you two?”
“Sheriff’s on his way, but it could be twenty or twenty-five minutes. Your wife okay?”
“She’s sleeping.”
He looks past me to Drewe’s inert body. “Sheriff told me something about a basement? Someplace we didn’t search?”
“It’s a bomb shelter. From the fifties. I think the killer could be hiding down there.”
“State police say the guy got away in a plane.”
“Then why the hell is Buckner still searching, Billy? They found tracks on an airstrip, that’s all. That could be hunters spotlighting deer. The FBI thinks there’s a
His eyes move quickly from side to side, like mechanical thought indicators. “A bomb shelter, huh? No shit. Old Pete Williams has one of those. Like a little underground trailer. Has a poker night down there sometimes.”
“This one’s bigger,” I say impatiently. “There are tunnels running to it. One from the house, the other from outside.”
“Where in the house?”
“Pantry closet in the kitchen. There’s a trapdoor in the floor.”
“Outside?”
“There’s a weather-sealed door like a cellar entrance about seventy feet on a straight line from the back door of the house. In the cotton. It’s covered with dirt most of the time, but-”
I stop too late. Billy’s eyes flash with animal cleverness. “Turner used it to sneak past us last week, right?”
I don’t answer, but he sees the truth.
“Goddamn. Okay, wait here a second.”
I grab his meaty forearm and hold him. “Where you going?”
“Tell Jimmy what’s up.”
I don’t like the look in Billy’s eyes. “What did the sheriff tell you to do?”
“Make sure you and your wife were safe till he got here.”
“Don’t you think you should stay here, then?”
He pulls his arm away. “Harp, they’re combing the whole county for the sumbitch that killed Erin. And he could be squatting under this house right now, maybe wounded. You think I’m gonna wait till he skips out that back tunnel? He coulda heard me hollering for you. I’m gonna put Jimmy out there to cover the back entrance.”
I hate to admit it, but Billy’s plan makes sense.
“You’ll be okay,” he says, pointing at my Magnum. “That’s a goddamn cannon you got there. I’ll knock twice when I get back.”
Again I cover the closed door with manic concentration. When the two taps finally come and the door starts to open, I have to restrain myself from pulling the trigger. Billy’s sweating even more than before, and he’s exchanged his pistol for a pump shotgun.
“You okay, Harp?”
“Scared shitless.”
“Don’t worry. Jimmy’s covering the back entrance.”
“How can he find it in the dark?”
Billy grins. “He’s a hunter, boy. Somebody pops up in that field, he’ll take ‘em down sure as shit.”
“You hang tough another minute, okay?” Billy backs toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
His eyes are hard and bright. “We got this sumbitch cornered, Harp. Like a fox. And I’m gonna nail his ass.”
His smile disappears. “Don’t give me no shit now. I’m gonna work my way through the tunnel with the Remington while Jimmy covers the back door.”
“Billy, don’t do it! Wait for Buckner.”
He shakes his head. “You got lights down there?”
“There’s a switch low on the right side of the pantry wall.” I can’t believe I’m telling him this, but I also can’t let him go down into that hole in pitch darkness, which he seems fully prepared to do.
Billy slaps his open hand on the shotgun. “You just sit tight and cover your old lady. I got a tear-gas round, a gas mask, and the odds on my side.”
My mind searches wildly for another solution, but alternate plans aren’t the problem. Getting Billy Jackson to abandon this one is. And nothing short of a presidential directive would do it.
“Listen,” he says earnestly. “You want to see this asshole go to trial? Sit there in court with your crying wife and in-laws while a dozen lawyers scream objections and get this fungus sent to a mental hospital? Maybe even get him
