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Joa
It was always hard to detect expressions on his immobile face but I had the feeling he was boiling with rage. It seemed a good time for it so I said, “What makes you think Mike Farrell’s dead? What makes you so sure it wasn’t Farrell himself who gave you this bum steer to keep you occupied while he gets out of the state? He probably killed Aiello and now he’s just making waves so he can get away in the confusion.”
He gave me his hooded glance and gestured with the Magnum. “Outside.”
He took us all around the hilltop, spending a half hour at it, walking a regular search pattern with flashlight and eyes to the ground. He didn’t find anything more than Ed Baker had found twelve hours earlier. Joa
When we circled back to the front yard Cutter’s scarlet face was composed into such a parody of indifference that I was sure he was outraged. He lifted the lid of the galvanized trash can and poked around inside with the flashlight, replaced the lid and turned to face us, playing with the gun. He was standing with one foot crushing a rose stem.
He said, “I’ve got half a mind to run both of you in. Material witnesses.”
“To what? You’ve got half a mind, period.”
I baited him because he expected it, and because he knew as well as I did that he had no grounds to arrest us. Habeas corpus. He had already admitted to himself that he’d lost this round.
He said, “I’d like to pin the Aiello hit on you, by Jesus.”
Joa
“I didn’t say he did. But I can pin it on him if I take a notion to. Maybe I won’t take a notion to, Sy, if you do what you’re told now—don’t mess in the Aiello thing any more, okay? We’ll find Farrell, or whoever did it. We don’t need amateur help. Understand?”
I said, “You had a bum steer. You’ve had your fun. Now you can go.”
He stepped across the roses and stood close before us, shaking his head like a patient father chastising an errant child. “You got to learn ma
I hadn’t been expecting it. It knocked me back against Joa
I choked down a sudden belly-lurching heave; pain flooded me. I should have been ready for it: Cutter was a creature of grudges.
I gave him a dismal stare and braced, knowing he wasn’t through. The .357 Magnum gave him total control of us, but knowing it, he did not smile—his sadism didn’t take the form of visible amusement. He grunted, blinked, feinted with the gun and kicked me in the shin. His boots had metal combat toes. Agony exploded in my shin; off-balance, I went down.
Joa
The heavy boot came swinging at me; I rolled away but he took one step and kicked again. It caught me on the shoulder blade. He knew just where the tender spots were; he worked with scientific, methodical brutality. He crouched, elbows on knees, waiting for me to complete my roll; when I did, he cracked the steel Magnum lightly against my kneecap just a tap, but enough to blind me with pain. I felt coiling spasms.
Cutter’s voice was a soft low insinuation: “You’re digging yourself a grave, see? Next maybe I break a few bones you need the most. Sy, you know you’re going to talk. Don’t make me crack you.”
Joa
He ignored her; he said to me, “If you can’t talk when I get through, you’ll write it with your toes. How about it, Sy?”
I was half blind. I managed to shake my bead. Joa
“About as guilty as the President feels killing them by the thousands overseas,” he replied without heat, without even glancing at her. “Now that’s all the idle conversation we’re going to have. Sy?”
“I don’t know—anything now that I didn’t know the first time you asked.”
He bounced the Magnum suggestively in his fist, stood up and suddenly plunged the weighted boot-toe into my ribs.
I stifled a cry of anguish. He kicked again and I made a grab for his leg, got it, hung on, twisted his foot until he fell. I got my knees under me but then the Magnum came whipping across, flat along the side of my head. I fell over, lights flashing inside my skull; I heard Joa
I never thought it possible to feel such pain. I scrambled away, blind; my mind jumped the track and I felt the unreasoning helplessness of real blindness, the panic and terror. My nerves twanged, a desperate mindless compulsion to retaliate—to smash and slash, kick and maim. For the first time I fully understood the compulsion to kill, the unthinking fury of total rage.
I shook my head violently, trying to clear my vision. My shoulder banged against the rock wall of the house; I clawed my way upright, turned, plunged my hand into a hip pocket and tugged out the .25 Beretta, the automatic I had taken from Dr. Brawley.
As the red wash drained from my eyes I saw Cutter, on one knee, frowning in a crazy, dazed way. He looked stu
Cutter was shaking his head; I saw the spittle ru
I pushed the Beretta out in front of me and bellowed at him:
“Hold it!”
He froze; his small eyes shifted toward me. For a long broken moment nothing stirred. Then Cutter took a deep breath. He lowered the Magnum and got up, stuffing the long flashlight under his elbow and rubbing his right temple with his free hand. He had the Magnum at arm’s length, down at his side; with slow stubborn movements he pressed it into the clamshell holster and snapped the holster shut. He shifted the flashlight from one hand to the other and said expressionlessly, “Okay, Sy, put that thing away.”
I didn’t move the gun a half-inch. I gave Joa
Cutter gave me his long deadpan stare, as if fixing my face forever in his dark mind. He turned without saying a word, opened the car door and got in. The engine came on, then the headlights; the car wheeled around, throwing dust, and crunched away downhill. Darkness swallowed it.
Joa
“The bastard. I wish I’d killed him.”
“Yeah.” I staggered to the front step and sat down, all my movements slow; I felt like a hundred-year-old man. I closed my eyes and stifled a moan. Red waves of pain pulsed through my bones. I felt Joa
After a little while I summoned strength and got to my feet. I felt rickety and weak. Still throbbing with angry, hot pain. I climbed into the house and went around shutting off all the lights. I felt my way back to the front door and found Joa