I stood up, leaving the knife in her. It was then that I remembered the .38 resting at the small of my back.
I looked at Belinda.
The gear had turned, raising her up. I grabbed Caroline’s knife, ran toward Belinda, but the gear turned again and lifted her higher than I could grab.
She was wriggling and thrashing. I turned and raced up the stairway to the platform above. When I got there I couldn’t reach the rope. Another moment she would be equal with me and there wouldn’t be anything I could do but watch her pass. Climbing higher to another platform wouldn’t change that. It would be the same thing all over again all the way up.
I leaped and grabbed at the rope, ended up clinging to it like a spider, just above Belinda. I cut the rope above my head and it dropped. As we fell there was light and shadow and then a sudden jolt and an explosion of lights. The lights went away and for a moment there was darkness; the floor felt like it was spinning. When the spinning stopped, I opened my eyes slowly. I was looking up at the ugly face of Booger.
“Belinda?” I said.
“You’re lying on top of her, bro.”
44
Belinda and I had landed on the platform where Caroline had died. It had been a pretty good fall, and it was the only platform in line with us. Had we been one platform higher when I cut the rope, we would have landed in the same spot, but a whole lot harder.
Belinda had a gag around her mouth, and when I took that off there was a blue rubber ball clenched between her teeth. I pulled that out and she coughed and gasped for air. I held her head up and she began to gulp the air and pull it in more naturally. Her throat was red with rope burn.
She grabbed me and hugged me, but she was as weak as a minute-old kitten.
I looked at Booger. “Is Stitch dead?”
“Only way he’ll move again is if a ventriloquist sticks his arm up his ass. Got him right in the eye. His left.”
I continued to hold Belinda, letting her get her strength back.
“You know how I made that shot?” Booger asked.
I didn’t care, but I let him talk. He was as proud as if he had just discovered the cure for cancer.
“Used the rifle stock nub to crimp the glass at the corner of one of the windows. You hit it there it’ll crack, but the whole glass won’t come out. Doesn’t make a lot of noise. I used my knife to pick the cracked glass out till there was a space for the rifle barrel. I’ll tell you something cool. I put that rifle through the hole, maybe an inch of it sticking out, and I saw him at the window across the way, and it was one of those windows you can crank up, an old-style window—”
“I know,” I said.
“And I put the bead on him. He was looking down at the crowd, picking out his target, you know, and then just as I was about to squeeze, he had that doe-in-the-forest moment, when he senses something. He turned his head slightly and looked at me. I could see the look on his face through the scope. Everything he ever was or thought he was drained out of his face like shit running out of a sick dog’s ass. I pulled the trigger. It was choice.”
“I heard the silencer cough.”
“Well, no one else did. No one will know that sonofabitch is dead in that office until someone comes in to take out the trash. I see you put the bitch down.”
I looked over at Caroline. Her arms were outstretched and her head was hanging off the platform and the knife was sticking up from her throat. There was a lot of blood.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Damn,” Booger said. “She’s a looker. What a waste of good ass. Well, I’m going to get your knife, there’s fingerprints all over that.”
“My blood is all over the place too. Not to mention hers.”
Belinda finally had it together enough that I could help her walk. She tried to talk, but nothing came out but a kind of squeak. I got her downstairs and set her on the floor with her back against the wall by the exit.
Booger and I got some cleaning stuff off the side of the janitorial buggy Caroline had used to bring Belinda in, spruced me up, stuffed some paper towels into my wounds. None of them were bad, but they hurt.
We found some rags in a closet, and some more janitorial supplies there, a mop and bucket, and Booger carried all of it up to the platform and went to work. I used the rags and helped him clean. Booger pulled the knife out of Caroline’s neck and we wrapped her head and neck in rags and carried her downstairs and put her in the janitorial buggy, her knees under her chin. Then we cleaned the blood that had leaked down from the platform onto the floor below. Even though there was a lot of blood, altogether this only took us about thirty minutes.
The rope had wadded up in the gears, but the gears were strong and they had broken the rope and dropped pieces of it on the floor. I gathered those up and Booger climbed up the stairs and got the rope that had tied Belinda’s feet, the hood, the rest of the stuff, and brought it down. We dumped it all in the trash buggy on top of Caroline’s body. We dumped the rags in there and stuck the mop down beside her. We tore up some paper towels and wadded them and put those on top of the rags so the blood couldn’t be seen. We rolled the buggy into the closet and closed the door.
By this time Belinda could stand, but she couldn’t talk, and she seemed confused and not altogether with it. Booger took his rifle apart and put it in the toolbox, toted the box out the door, went out to the parking lot and got our car. He called on the cell phone when he was near.
We went out the door toward the circle drive, which was close by. The shrubs near the clock tower door gave a little protection, but we finally had to walk out from behind them. Belinda was in a dirty white bathrobe, and she walked as if she were drunk. All it took was one inquisitive eye and we could be done for. I wasn’t up to shooting a student or a campus cop to make sure we got away. They caught us, they caught us. But fate worked for us. The crowd was involved in Judence’s talk. I looked over my shoulder to check it out. The speech was still going on, and I heard some clapping, and a roar of agreement from some of the crowd. All I could see were the backs of listeners. I couldn’t see Judence, but I could hear him over the microphone. He was talking about equal rights and how the school the white community wanted to build was a way to bring back segregation. Some people were saying “Amen” and “Right on, brother,” and stuff like that.
I put my arm around Belinda and we reached the drive as Booger pulled the car around. We got in and he drove us out of there.
We were back at my place and Belinda was on the couch. She had gone right out, but I could hear her breathing, smooth and normal. Booger and I were sitting in chairs. He had a beer and I had nothing.
“Tonight, when things are settled down,” Booger said, “I’ll go back and get the buggy with Caroline in it and dump the body.”
“What if someone finds her first?” I said.
“We’ll hope they don’t,” Booger said. “She’s been missing, so we’ll keep her missing if we can. The other building, not so easy to move around in. We’ll have to leave Stitch. I kind of like that. I think it’s funny.”
“And they get to see what a great shot you made,” I said.
“That too.”
Booger looked at Belinda, said, “You know, she gets that metal shit out of her mouth, she’ll be one hell of a looker.”
“She’s one hell of a looker now,” I said.
“What say I go get us something to eat, some burgers or something?”
“Sure, but bring some yogurt, or ice cream. Belinda may not be up to chewing.”
“Got you, bro,” and Booger was gone.
I went in the bathroom and took off my cut-up shirt and looked at my wounds. A couple of them were pretty bad rips, but nothing had caught too deep except for the back wound, and I had a lot of muscle across my shoulders, so I was going to be all right there. I did need some stitches, and I had the stuff to do that and Booger
