Страница 28 из 44
Unwilled, automatically, his fist closed around the gun and he wheeled in time to see Theodore rushing toward him with the knife outstretched at groin level, ready to rip him up the belly. In unthinking reaction Mitch yanked the gun around and jerked the trigger, and kept jerking the trigger with deliberate, methodical, mechanical pulls.
The gunshots were earsplitting roars; the bullets sprayed out, making the gun pitch and buck in his fist; more than one of them, fired point-blank, struck Theodore. Red spots started to show up on his shirt even before he stopped moving. A dark disk appeared on his face just above his bad eye, rimmed at the bottom by droplets of crimson froth. In slack-mouthed disbelief Mitch watched him turn aside like a puppet and take a dozen jerky disjointed steps and topple—dead, clearly, by the way he fell.
The firecracker scent of cordite was a vicious bite in Mitch’s nostrils. Blood dripped from the scraped side of his jaw. He had a stitch in his ribs; he stood soaked in his own juices, staring down at the trail of blood spots that marked Theodore’s last few steps.
Dull amazement washed through him; he was not ready to credit the reality of it. It was only after some time that he thought to turn around—he almost lost his balance—toward the porch where the girls had been struggling.
They stood a little distance apart, staring. The gunshots must have broken up their fight. Terry slowly sat down and buried her face in her hands; her body lurched but she made no sounds. Billie Jean waited a long time before she climbed down off the porch and walked past Mitch as if he weren’t there and stood over Theodore’s crumpled body. She prodded Theodore with her toe. There was a reflexive muscle-jerk that made Theodore’s leg clatter; Billie Jean jumped back in terror. Mitch bent down by her and felt for a pulse but he wasn’t sure where to look: he tried the wrist and the throat. He peeled back the lid of Theodore’s good eye but blood filled it immediately; he wiped his hand on the sandy ground and backed away, and ran to the corner of the barn, where he bent over and threw up.
He was a long time sick. Finally he wiped his mouth furiously on a handkerchief and came back across the street, taking a long detour to avoid going near Theodore. Billie Jean was crouching below the porch, watching Theodore anxiously as if she was waiting for him to get up.
Full of fury Mitch kicked her in the thigh and when she looked up he said, “It’s your fault! You killed him!” His voice trembled.
Billie Jean looked at him with a slowly changing face; with childish petulance she said, finally, “Bullshit.”
He looked past her, up across the porch. Terry looked bleak and glazed. He climbed up and went over to her and sat down beside her. She didn’t say anything; she didn’t even look at him. There was a long livid scratch down her cheek and her clothing was torn, her hair a matted tangle. She was sucking on a broken fingernail.
At the edge of the porch Billie Jean got up, rising into sight like a porpoise coming up from the sea. She said in a practical voice, “Let’s don’t just leave him out there in the middle of the street like that.”
Mitch thought about it sluggishly. “Do what you want to do.”
“I can’t move him by myself. He weighs too much.”
Unreasonable and loud, he shouted, “What the hell do you want me to do? Bury him with full military honors? Embalm him and build a thousand-dollar casket? Leave me alone!”
Very businesslike, Billie Jean only waited out his tirade patiently and then said, “Do the same thing he did with Georgie.”
Mitch resisted it for half an hour but in the end he did what Billie Jean wanted because it was the only thing he could do. He didn’t know where Theodore had put Georgie and he didn’t want to find out. He put Theodore around back of the store near an anthill and left him there bloody and naked. He carried Theodore’s clothes inside and stuffed them into a knapsack with Georgie’s things. Working mindlessly, doing what Floyd had ordered last night, he policed the place, picked up every last scrap and carried everything across the street into the barn. The trunk of the sports car was not locked; he put everything into it and had to sit on the lid to close it.
He stood in the barn entrance, soaked in sweat and caked with dirt and blood. He felt feverish, drugged. Across the powder-stripe between the buildings Terry Co
Mitch still had the gun in his hip pocket. He took it out and after a minute discovered how to break the cylinder open. All the cartridges had been fired. He put it back in his pocket and started to cross the street.
Billie Jean said, “Well?”
“Well what?” he snapped.
“What do we do now?”
“Christ, how the hell should I know?”
“You better think of something,” Billie Jean said. “I don’t think Floyd’s go
C H A P T E R Twelve
Carl Oakley sat in the Cadillac behind rolled-up tinted windows, wearing a hat and dark glasses and hoping he looked enough like Earle Co
He chewed a cigar and felt an acid pain in his gut—the sense that it was already too late. They had likely murdered Terry long since: he ought to call in the police. But the police would insist on talking to Earle.
Forty-eight hours ago Oakley had considered himself an honest man, within the acknowledged flexibility of business morals. He was surprised by the ease with which he had shattered that illusion. What he was doing was illegal, dangerous, and inexcusably dishonest, and during the night he had traveled the full length of rationalizations and faced the reality of his crime. All these years he had enjoyed the self-satisfied comfort of the knowledge that he did not covet what was not rightfully his. To the best of his belief he had never envied Earle Co
The new ambitiousness could not have sprung full-blown into his consciousness like a fully shaped god from the head of Zeus; it must have been there all the time, undetected, waiting. What had triggered it had been the sudden awareness that Earle was shrinking—no longer the larger-than-life idol who had moved through the corporate world with demoniacal grace, pokerish imperterbability, unca