corpse, dead from his own hand.
Marlin threw himself to the ground and heard the round ricochet off the stone entry way behind him. He instinctively rolled, anticipating another shot, but it never came. He sprang to his feet and saw that Vinnie had leaped the railing of the porch and was sprinting into the darkness.
Marlin had dropped his gun when he tumbled, and by the time he picked it up and drew his flashlight, Vinnie was out of sight. Marlin glanced through the open front door, unsure whether to remain where he was or go after Vinnie. Garza and the deputies were nowhere to be seen.
He went after Vinnie.
The waiting was almost too much for Smedley. Who the hell had fired that shot? What was going on in there? Was there an officer down? Should he abort the original plan and enter the home?
Then he heard a sound he instantly recognized. The groaning of the garage door as it worked its way up the tracks. They had forgotten about the garage door-and now somebody was coming out through it! The question was, should he go investigate or stay put? He decided he would work his way along the back wall of the house, peek around the corner to the garage, and still keep an eye on the back door.
He stepped gingerly because the area behind the house was rocky and uneven. He tripped a few times, making more noise than he would have liked, then finally arrived at the corner. He stuck his head around to take a look… and had a mere instant to see a shovel coming toward his forehead.
He felt the impact all the way down to his toes.
His knees buckled, but he managed to remain standing. But now he realized his gun hand was empty. Even through the double vision, he could see that the.38 he had borrowed was now in the hands of Sal Mameli, pointed straight at his face.
Then he heard another shot.
Garza and the deputies found the house empty, except for Angela Mameli passed out in the bedroom. Even the two gunshots hadn’t roused her. They headed for the front door to see what the hell was going on outside.
Marlin weaved his way through a thick grove of cedar and oak trees, his flashlight extinguished, following the sounds of Vinnie’s frantic rampage through the brush. Vinnie was in Marlin’s territory now-in the dark, tramping through the woods-maybe twenty or thirty yards away.
Just up ahead, he heard the scratch of a branch against Vinnie’s clothing. It was unmistakable, a sound he had grown up with. Vinnie seemed to have slowed down, too, waiting for a chance to ambush his pursuer.
Groping in the dark, Marlin found the trunk of a large oak tree and stood perfectly still behind it. Then he called out, “Vinnie, give it up!”
The response was another shot, which thumped into the front of the oak tree.
Marlin was breathing heavily now, struggling to remain calm, the pulse pounding in his temples. He took a deep breath-and heard it again. Just a scratch-but that was all he needed.
Marlin wheeled around the tree and fired three quick shots into the dark.
He heard Vinnie Mameli scream.
Smedley wondered if he was dead. He didn’t feel dead. He heard screaming, but he was fairly certain that it wasn’t coming from him. He was almost too afraid to open his eyes. But he did. He still had double vision, so he saw two Sal Mamelis rolling on the ground, cupping their groins.
Smedley craned his neck and looked behind him. He couldn’t believe it. It was like something out of a million bad movies he had seen…where someone arrives in the nick of time to save the day.
It was Maria.
She was holding Smedley’s gun.
She had just shot Sal Mameli.
Right in the balls.
Marlin waited a few minutes, until Vinnie Mameli’s groans subsided. Then he knelt low and turned on his flashlight, prepared to dive for cover if necessary. But Vinnie was down, sprawled under the lower boughs of a cedar tree. Marlin carefully stepped toward Vinnie until he was just a few yards away.
He might have seen the final spark of life in Vinnie’s eyes, but he couldn’t be sure. In any case, when he knelt down to check his pulse, there was none. Marlin dropped his head and sighed, and he could feel his hand shaking as he slid his gun back into its holster.
After a moment, he returned to the house and called through the front door. Tatum responded, but his voice came from outside the house, near the garage. Marlin found Tatum and Cowan standing guard over Sal Mameli, who seemed to be in shock, lying on the ground. Blood saturated the crotch of his pajamas.
“Garza and Smedley?” Marlin asked.
Tatum said, “Garza’s inside, calling for an ambulance. Do we need two?”
“Yeah…but no rush on the second one.”
Tatum nodded. He gestured toward the small cottage behind the house, where every window now glowed with light. “Smedley’s in there, with the housekeeper. Got clocked with a shovel. Bleeding pretty bad.”
Marlin walked to the cottage and stepped inside. It was a small structure, but clean and well-decorated. In the small bedroom, he found Smedley sitting in a chair, the pretty housekeeper holding a towel to his head. She was murmuring to him in Spanish, but Marlin couldn’t pick out any of the words.
“Smedley, you all right?”
Neither of them even looked his way.
A cat emerged from somewhere and began to rub against Marlin’s leg. A black bird in a cage bobbed up and down on its perch, chirping, probably thinking it was morning already. Marlin looked away, and then looked back at the bird. It looked…familiar.
Marlin stood there awkwardly for a moment, watching Smedley and the housekeeper gaze into each other’s eyes, then he turned and left them alone.
Sheriff Bobby Garza finally decided to accept assistance from an outside agency. An investigative team from the Department of Public Safety converged on the Mameli house within hours. When Marlin spoke to Garza on Monday afternoon, the sheriff was exhausted but confident.
A.35-caliber shell had been found on the housekeeper’s necklace, just as Poindexter had said. Three bullet holes pocked the walls of Sal’s den. One.35-caliber bullet, still in good condition, had been extracted from a stud. Luminol revealed the presence of blood in many locations around the room, with a large concentration in one particular area on the carpet. This, Garza figured, was where Emmett Slaton had died.
Monday evening, Marlin drove Inga to the Mamelis’ house. She would be leaving in the morning, going back to Minnesota, where Thomas Peabody would be buried. Inga had been crushed by the news of her friend’s death, and Marlin hoped he could lift her spirits a little. He had warned her that he hadn’t gotten a good look at the bird, and he was pretty sure it didn’t have a red band on the back of its neck.
That seemed to excite her. “The males don’t have that band when they’re young. It appears when they mature sexually.” Inga started talking about the possibilities-the opportunity to initiate a captive-breeding program- if only the bird turned out to be a male. Marlin was worried that she was in for a letdown.
He pulled around the house and parked by the garage, next to one lone van from the DPS. The investigation was obviously wrapping up.
He put his truck in PARK and sat for a moment. “I’m sorry it had to end up this way,” he said. “With your friend….”
She smiled, then leaned over and gave him a hug. Marlin held her tight for several moments.
“Well,” she said, wiping her eyes, “let’s go see what we have.”
They walked to the small cottage, and Marlin ducked under the yellow tape while Inga waited behind it. A moment later, Marlin emerged carrying the birdcage.
As he got closer, Inga’s eyes widened. “Oh my God, John,” she whispered. “Oh my God.”
Billy Don and Red were watching the Cowboys on
The day had actually started out pretty well. This morning, they had met with Smedley-who turned out to be
