Gun Church

“See. Go on, answer Renee. You don’t know, do you?”

“I don’t. You’re right, I should, but I don’t.”

“It’s strawberry,” Jim said. “Now pick up the Python and let’s get this over with.”

I reached for the Colt. “You won’t get away with any of this. Even if you kill all of us, you’ll get killed yourself or spend the rest of your life in prison.”

“Getting away’s not the point anymore. I’ll give myself up. I’ll be alive and you’ll be dead. Gun Church will be published and the only one left to tell the tale of how all this came down will be me. I will be your legacy and you’ll be mine. Our names, our lives, and our blood will be bound up together forever, Kip. Gun Church will be as much mine as yours … maybe more.”

“You’re assuming a lot, Jim.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Step away from Amy. Now! You too, Renee. I’m tired of talking.”

We did as he asked. As we stepped away, he came toward Amy, the Glock aimed at her head. When he reached her, he gently pulled her to her feet, keeping her between us and him.

“Both of you have two live rounds.” Jim looked at Renee and then at me. “It’s Kip versus Renee, just like Cutthroat. Only this is the real thing. Only one of you is coming out of those woods alive and don’t think you can fool me. I’ll be counting shots, so don’t get any fancy ideas about combining forces. Just remember, as good as you are with those weapons, you know I’m better with this.” He waved the Glock. “And I’ve got a lot more ammunition. The one of you who gets out of the woods alive takes their chances against me. It’s not much of a chance, but it’s something.” He checked his watch. “You’ve got one hour starting now. Kip, you go that way.” He pointed to his left. “Renee, that way.” He pointed to his right. “Remember, you try and fuck around with me and Amy suffers the consequences. Begin.”

I walked back into the thicket of trees to my right. As tempted as I was to turn around to look, I couldn’t risk it. Jim had gone over the edge. It wasn’t that he had so calmly and coldly murdered Peter Moreland. I think I accepted that Jim had the potential for violence in him that very first night in the chapel. His potential violence was part of my rush and what inspired Gun Church. No, what let me know he was really gone was his talk of blood and legacy: my blood, his legacy. When I was several yards into the woods and protected by shadows, I dropped to my belly and looked back. Renee was gone, and Jim and Amy were nowhere in sight. Only Peter Moreland’s wrecked body remained, but even as I got up and ran deeper into the woods I knew that Peter’s body would have others to keep it company. It was only a matter of who, how many, and when.

Fifty-Three

His Monster

Between the darkening clouds and the canopy of the trees, I could not use the position of the sun to judge direction or the passage of time. My internal sense of time was utterly distorted by the alternating rushes of panic and calm. Much like that day in class with Frank Vuchovich, the world would suddenly speed up so that I felt I would almost fly off into space and then, just as suddenly, slow down so that each of my breaths and heartbeats seemed to have distinct histories. Only in the woods can you understand that shadows are as much a product of state of mind as light and the things that stand in its way.

I had no intention of killing Renee, but I couldn’t be sure of her intentions. She seemed angry enough down in the clearing to kill me right then and there. I didn’t blame her really. My narcissism was apparently so insidious that I was like a man who jumped a puddle and thought he’d crossed the Atlantic. I had never asked Renee anything about herself and the only things we shared were things about me. From the moment I walked back into the woods, I was determined to play keep-away until I could get a handle on what Renee had in mind.

Stopping every few yards to listen for her, I’d done a kind of zigzag pattern through the horseshoe-shaped woods. I was no outdoorsman, not by a long shot, but all my time with Jim in Brixton had taught me some important lessons. For one thing, forests can be very noisy places in their way. Swaying trees creak and crackle like old bones and wind whispers as much as it howls. Animals chatter, chirp, bark, rustle leaves as they scurry. Birds do more than sing and call. They make a hundred different sounds with their wings, claws, and beaks. Insects buzz and whine. Human sounds, however, are distinctive. They are clumsy and unnatural. The forest floor is littered with fallen branches and people can’t seem to walk without snapping them beneath their feet.

Only when I followed the slope of the hill down to the river and the falls did I have any trouble hearing. So I moved about forty yards back into the woods, twenty yards on the river side of where the access road from the shed cut a swath through the trees. I should have known that Renee would be lying in wait for me there. I was sitting on a log resting, listening for the telltale snapping of branches when I felt a ring of cold metal press against my neck.

“Go ahead, Renee, just pull the trigger and get it over with. But please try and save-”

“Shhhh! Quiet.” She removed the muzzle and fired a shot into a tree on my right. “Wait a few seconds,” she whispered, her breath hot on my ear, “then shoot at something on your left.”

I understood. To Jim, standing outside the woods, it would sound as if we were firing at each other. After I fired, she fired again. That left one round between us. She moved quietly around in front of me, putting her face close to mine so that we could speak more freely.

“Renee, I’m sorry. I have pissed away my time with you. If I had it to do over, I would-”

“Forget what I said back there. I had to make Jim believe I was really mad at you or none of this would work. I love you and I guess, in your way, you really do love me.”

“Strawberry,” I said. She smiled so that I barely noticed the absence of the sun.

“We don’t have much time. One of us has to walk out of the woods and the other has to-”

The sound barely registered above the wind and the rush of the water. It was only when Renee’s eyes got big and she coughed blood that I understood what was happening. There it was again. She slid sideways against my knee and to the ground, the left side of her sweater dark and wet. White bubbles formed in the blood at the corners of her mouth as she struggled to breathe. Her lips were moving and I pressed my ear to her mouth.

“Your back pocket,” is what I thought she said. Yourbackpocket? If I survived, I’d worry about it then. I pulled away to check on her wounds, but it was moot. The St. Pauli Girl was dead. Of all the possible sounds in the woods, crying was the most distinctly human.

Jim was on me before I could raise the Colt, not that I could have seen him clearly through my tears. I tried to make the heaving in my chest stop by taking big gulps of air, but it would not stop. Even breathing became difficult.

“If I thought it was your idea to trick me, Kip, I would have killed you just the same as her,” he said, his voice strained and woeful. “She thought she could fool me with that angry act down there, but I knew how much she loved you.”

“Why did you kill her?”

His tone reverted to form. “Don’t ask stupid questions. You killed her just like you killed Haskell Brown and Mabry and Stan Petrovic. If you had accepted her love and my other gifts to you, she’d still be breathing.”

Jim’s cold nature put me back in the moment. “What did you do with Stan’s body?” I asked.

“He’s rotting in your Porsche in one of the old buildings at Hardentine. I used him as added leverage to get Renee to come up here with me. She would have done anything to protect you. And now … ”

“I’m going to kill you, Jim.”

“Good, that’s what I like. You’re not going to be a pussy and just lay down and die. If I counted right, you’ve got one round left. Let’s see what you can do with it. Now when I tell your story, I won’t have to make anything up about you dying like a man. Go ahead, I’ll give you-”

I wheeled and fired, but if I thought I would catch Jim sleeping or in mourning, I was wrong. He fired too. I was down and my right side burned as if there was a white-hot sword sticking through me. My shirt was wet under my jacket and I didn’t need to look to know it wasn’t sweat. Jim had stumbled several feet backwards and I couldn’t quite see him, but I could hear him howling in pain and rolling around on the forest floor. The thing about it was, Jim wasn’t dead and I wasn’t going to stick around to see how badly wounded he was. I got up and ran for the falls.