"Oh, Jesus," he muttered.
Fielding--the man who had a plan for everything. He must have had a plan for escaping if he was caught.
He lifted the receiver and hit the first digit of 911.
The line went dead.
Motion outside the kitchen door.
He looked up.
Standing on the back porch, gazing at him through the window in the door was a man. He was pale. Wearing a dark coat. Black or blue. There was blood on his left arm but not a lot of blood. Burns on his face but they weren't serious.
The man lifted his silenced machine gun and tapped the trigger, as Parker leapt aside, crashing into the wall and falling to the floor. The doorknob and lock of the back door blew apart under the stream of bullets. Glass splinters exploded into the room.
Leisurely, the Digger pushed the door open and stepped inside, like a friendly neighbor invited over for coffee.
36
The Digger's cold, the Digger wants to get this over with and leave.
He'd rather be outside. He likes the . . . click . . . the . . . the . . . the snow.
He likes the snow.
Oh, look, a nice Christmas wreath and a nice Christmas tree in Parker Kincaid's comfy house. Tye would like this.
Funny . . .
No puppies, no ribbons here. But a nice wreath and a nice tree.
He fires again as Kincaid runs through the doorway.
Did he hit him? The Digger can't tell.
But, no, guess not. He sees Kincaid crawling into another room, shutting out lights, rolling on the floor.
Doing things like that.
The Digger believes he's happy. The man who tells him things called again, an hour ago. Not a message from the voice-mail lady who sounds like Ruth but a real call on his cell phone. He told the Digger that the night wasn't over yet even though the Digger had gone to the black wall and done what he was supposed to do.
Not . . . click . . . not over yet.
"Listen to me," said the man who tells him things and so the Digger listened. He was supposed to kill three more people. Someone named Cage and someone named Lukas. And Parker Kincaid. "Kill him first. Okay?"
"Hmmm, okay."
The Digger knows Kincaid. He came to his house earlier tonight. Kincaid has a little boy like Tye except the Digger doesn't like Kincaid's little boy because Kincaid wants to make the Digger go back to the lousy hospital in Connecticut. Kincaid wants to take him away from Tye.
"Then at four-thirty A.M.," said the man who tells him things, "I want you to come to the Federal Detention Center on Third Street. I'll be in the clinic. It's on the first floor in the back. I'll be pretending I'm sick. Kill everyone you see and let me out."
"Okay."
Walking into the dining room, the Digger sees Kincaid roll out from beneath the table and run into the hallway. He fires another stream of bullets. Kincaid's face looks like Ruth's face when he was about to put the glass in her neck and like Pamela's when he put the knife in her chest below the gold cross here's your Christmas present I love you love you all the more . . .
Kincaid disappears into another part of the house.
But he won't leave, the Digger knows. The children are here. A father won't run out on his children.
The Digger knows this because he wouldn't leave Tye. Kincaid won't leave the little blond boy and the dark-haired girl.
If Parker Kincaid lives, the Digger will never get to Cali-fornia. Out West.
He steps into the living room, holding the gun in front of him.
*
Parker rolled away from the Digger, rolled along the floor, elbows scraped, head throbbing from where he hit the edge of the kitchen table, diving away from the bullets.
The Whos! he thought in despair, scrabbling toward the stairs. He wouldn't let the Digger upstairs. He'd die with a death grip on the man's neck if he had to but he would save the children.
But another burst of shots. He turned from the stairs and dove into the living room.
A weapon . . . What could he use? But there were none. He couldn't get into the kitchen and grab a knife. He couldn't get into the garage for the ax.
Why the hell had he given back Lukas's gun?
Then he saw something--one of Robby's Christmas presents, the baseball bat. He snagged it, gripped the taped handle and crawled back toward the stairs.
Where is he? Where?
Then steps, faint. The crunch of the Digger walking over broken glass and pottery.
But Parker couldn't tell where he was.
The hallway?
The dining room? The first-floor den?
What should he do?
If he shouted for the children to leap out the window they'd just come to see what he wanted. He had to get upstairs himself, grab them and jump. He'd try to cushion the fall as best he could. The snow would help and he could aim for the juniper bushes.
Footsteps very close. Crunch. A pause. Another crunch.
Parker looked up.
No! The Digger was at the foot of the stairs, about to climb them, looking up. No expression on his face.
He's profile-proof . . .
Parker couldn't run at him; he'd be in full view and would die before he got three steps toward the man. So he flung the bat into the dining room. It crashed into the china cabinet.
The Digger stopped, hearing the noise. He turned stiffly and walked toward it. Like the alien monster in the old horror film The Thing.
When he was nearly to the arched doorway Parker climbed out from behind the couch and charged him.
He was six feet away from his prey when he stepped on one of Robby's toys. It shattered with a loud crunch. The Digger spun around just as Parker rammed into him, knocking him to his knees. He landed a fist on the killer's jaw. The blow was hard but the Digger dodged away and Parker, under the momentum of the swing, fell onto his side. He collapsed on the floor, tried for the Digger's gun. But the man was too fast for him and grabbed the weapon, then struggled to his feet. Parker could do nothing but retreat into the narrow space behind the couch.
His face dripping sweat, hands trembling, he huddled here.
Nowhere else to go.
The Digger backed up, orienting himself. Parker saw something sharp on the floor in front of him. Glistening. A long shard of glass. He grabbed it.
The killer squinted, looking around. He located Parker, who gazed up into the man's dim eyes. Parker thought--no, Margaret Lukas's eyes aren't dead at all; there's a million times more life in them than in this creature's. The killer moved closer. Coming around the back of the couch. Parker tensed. Then he looked past the man--at the Christmas tree. He remembered the three of them, he and the Whos, opening presents on Christmas morning.
It's a good thought to die with, he decided.
But if he was going to die he'd make sure the children didn't. He gripped the long splinter of glass, wrapped his shirt cuff around the lower half. He'd slash the man's jugular vein and pray that he'd bleed to death before he got up the stairs, where the children were sleeping. Not daring to think about the sight the Whos would see in the morning. He tucked his legs under him, gripped his impromptu knife.
It would be all right. They'd survive. That was all that mattered.
He got ready to leap.
The Digger walked around the couch and started to lift the gun.
Parker tensed.
Then: the stunning crack of the single, unsilenced gunshot.
The Digger shuddered. The machine gun fell from his hands. His eyes focused past Parker. Then his head dropped and he sank to the floor. He fell forward, a bullet hole in the back of his skull.
Parker grabbed the Uzi and pulled it toward him, looking around.
What? he wondered frantically. What had happened?
Then he saw someone in the doorway.
A boy . . . How could that be? He was a young boy. Black. He was holding a pistol. He walked forward slowly, staring at the corpse. Like a cop in a movie he kept the
large gun pointed at the Digger's back. He needed both hands to hold it and struggled with the gun's weight.
"He kill mah daddy," the boy said to Parker, not looking at him. "I seen him do it."
"Give me the gun," Parker whispered.
The boy continued to stare at the Digger. Tears were running down his cheeks. "He kill mah daddy. He brought me here, brought me in a car."
"Let me have the gun. What's your name?"
"I seen him do it. He do it right in fronta me. I been waiting t'cap his ass. Found this piece in his car. Trey-five-seven."
"It's okay," Parker said. "What's your name?"
"He dead. Shit."
Parker eased forward but the boy pointed the gun toward him threateningly. Parker froze and backed off. "Just put that down. Would you do that? Please?"
The boy ignored him. His wary eyes scanned the room. They stopped momentarily on the Christmas tree. Then returned to the Digger. "He kill mah daddy. Why he do that?"
Parker slowly rose once more, hands up, palms out. "Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you."
He glanced upstairs. But the shot had apparently not wakened the Whos.
"I'm just going over there for a minute." He nodded to the tree.
He skirted the boy--and the bloodstain surrounding the Digger's head--and walked to the Christmas tree. He bent down and picked up something and returned, knelt. Parker held his empty right hand out to the boy, palm up. Then with his left he offered him Robby's Star Wars Millennium Falcon spaceship.
"I'll trade you."
The boy studied the plastic toy. The gun drooped. He was much shorter than Robby and must have weighed only sixty or seventy pounds. But his eyes were twenty years older than Parker's son's.
"Let me have the gun, please."
He studied the toy. "Man," he said reverently. Then he handed Parker the pistol and took the toy.
Parker said, "Wait here. I'll be right back. Do you want something to eat? Are you hungry?"
The boy didn't answer.
Parker picked up the machine gun and carried it and the pistol upstairs. He put the guns on the top shelf of the closet and locked the door.
Motion beside him. Robby was coming down the corridor.
"Daddy?"
"Hey, young man." Parker struggled to keep his voice from trembling.
"I had a dream. I heard a gun. I'm scared."
Parker intercepted him before he got to the stairs, put his arm around him and directed him back to the bedroom. "It was probably just fireworks."
"Can we get firecrackers next year?" the boy asked sleepily.
"We'll see."
He heard footsteps outside, slapping on the street in front of the house. Glanced outside. He saw the boy running across the front lawn, clutching the spaceship. He vanished up the street.
Headed for where? Parker wondered. The District? West Virginia? He couldn't spare a moment's thought for the boy. His own son took all his attention.
Parker put Robby in bed, beside his sister. He needed to find his cell phone and call 911. But the boy wouldn't let go of his father's hand.
"Was it a bad dream?" Parker asked.
"I don't know. I just heard this noise."
Parker lay down next to him. He glanced at the clock. It was 3:30. Joan would be here at 10:00 with her social worker . . . Jesus, what a nightmare this was. There were a dozen bullet holes in the walls. Furniture was damaged, the breakfront shattered. The back door was destroyed.
And in the middle of the carpet was a bloody corpse.
"Daddy," Stephie said, mumbling in her sleepy voice.
"It's okay, honey."
"I heard a firecracker. Petey Whelan had firecrackers. His mother told him he couldn't have any but he did. I saw them."
"That's not our business. Go back to sleep, honey."
Parker lay back, closed his eyes. Felt her slight weight on his chest.
Thinking about the bullet holes, the bullet casings, the shattered furniture. The body.
He imagined Joan's testimony in court.
What could he do? What excuse could he come up with?
What . . . ?
A moment later Parker Kincaid was breathing deeply. Content in the sleep of a parent whose children were close in his arms, and there is no sleep better than that.
*
When he opened his eyes it was five minutes to ten in the morning.
Parker had been awakened by the sound of a car door slamming and Joan's voice saying, "We're a few minutes early but I'm sure he won't mind. Watch your step--he knew we were coming and he didn't bother to shovel the walk. Typical. Typical."
37
He rolled from the bed.
Nauseous, head throbbing, he looked out the window.
Joan was walking toward the house. Richard was with her, bringing up the rear, sullen. He didn't want to be here. And another woman too--the social worker. Short, clattering along on stocky heels, looking at the house appraisingly.
They walked to the front door. The bell rang.
Hopeless . . .
He stood in the upstairs hallway, toes curling on the carpet. Well, just don't let her in, he told himself. He'd stonewall. Make her get a court order. That would buy a couple of hours.
Parker paused, looked at his sleeping children. He wanted to grab them and escape out the back door, drive away to West Virginia.
But that would never work, he knew.
The bell rang again.
What can I do? How can I stall?
But Joan would still know something was wrong. Stalling would make the paranoid woman even more suspicious. And what would two or three hours buy him?
He took a deep breath and started down the stairs.
What could he possibly say about the bullet holes in the walls? The blood? Maybe he could--
Parker stopped at the landing.
Stunned.
A thin, blond woman in a long, black skirt and white blouse, her back to Parker, was opening the door.
Which was surprising enough. But what truly shocked him was the condition of the house.
Immaculate.
Not a piece of broken porcelain or glass anywhere. Not a bullet hole in any of the walls. They'd been plastered and primed; buckets of paint sat in the corner of the living room on white tarps. The chair that had been peppered with bullets last night had been replaced by a similar one. There was a new breakfront.
And the Digger's corpse--gone. On the spot where he'd died was a new oriental carpet.
With Joan, Richard and the social worker standing in the doorway, the woman in the dark skirt turned. "Oh, Parker," said Margaret Lukas.
"Yes," he answered after a moment.
She smiled in a curious way.
He tried again. "Morning."
"How was your nap?" she asked. Then prompted, "Good?"
"Yes," he said. "It was good."
Lukas turned back and nodded to the visitors. She said to Joan, "You must be Parker's wife."
"Ex-wife," Joan said, stepping inside. The social worker--a pudgy brunette--entered next, followed by handsome and impeccably slow-witted Richard.
Parker continued down the stairs and couldn't resist touching a wall where he knew he'd seen a cluster of bullets strike last night. The plasterboard was smooth as Stephie's cheek.
He had a terrible pain in his shoulder and head from where he'd dived to the floor last night as the Digger came through the kitchen door. But if not for that he'd have thought the entire attack was a dream.
He realized that Joan was staring at him with a put-out smile on her face. "I said, 'Hello, Parker.'"
"Morning, Joan," he said. "Hello, Richard." Parker walked into the middle of the living room and kissed Joan's cheek, shook her husband's hand. Richard carried a shopping bag of stuffed animals.
Joan didn't introduce Parker to the social worker but the woman stepped forward. She shook his hand. She may or may not have given her name. Parker was too dumbfounded to notice.
> Joan looked at Lukas, "I don't think we've met. You're . . ."
"Jackie Lukas. I'm a friend of Parker's."
Jackie? Parker lifted an eyebrow. The agent noticed but said nothing about the name.
Joan glanced at Lukas's trim figure with a neutral look. Then her eyes--the color so reminiscent of Robby's, the cynical expression so different--took in the living room.
"Did you? . . . What did you do? Redecorate or something? I didn't notice it last night."
"I had some free time. Thought I'd fix things up a little."
His ex studied him. "You look awful, Parker. Didn't you sleep well?"
Lukas laughed. Joan glanced at her.
"Parker invites me over for breakfast," Lukas explained, offering the two women a look of female conspiracy. "Then he goes upstairs to wake up the children and what's he do but fall back asleep."
Joan's grunt repeated what she'd said earlier: Typical.
Where was the blood? There'd been a lot of blood.
Lukas asked the guests, "You want some coffee? A sweet roll? Parker made them himself."
"I'll have some coffee," the social worker said. "And maybe I'll have half a roll."
"They're small," Lukas said. "Have a whole one."
"Maybe I just will."
Lukas disappeared into the kitchen and came back a moment later with a tray. She said, "Parker's quite the cook."
"I know," Joan answered, unimpressed with her ex-husband's talents.
Lukas handed out coffee cups and asked Parker, "What time did you get back from the hospital last night?"
"Uhm."
"The hospital? Were the children sick?" Joan asked this with melodramatic concern, glancing at the social worker.
"He was visiting a friend," Lukas responded.
"I don't know what time," Parker said. "It was late?" The answer was largely a question; Lukas was the writer of this scene and he felt he should defer to her script.
"What friend?" Joan demanded.
"Harold Cage," Lukas said. "He'll be all right. Just a broken rib. Isn't that what they said?"
"Broken rib."
"Slipped and fell, right?" Lukas continued her award-winning performance.
"Right," Parker recited. "Slipped and fell."
He sipped the coffee that Lukas had put in his hand.
The social worker ate a second sweet roll. "Say, could I get the recipe for these?"
"Sure," Parker said.
Joan kept a benign smile on her face. She walked around the living room, examining. "The place looks all different." As she passed her ex-husband she whispered, "So, Parker, sleeping with skinny little Jackie, are we?"
"No, Joan. We're just friends."