CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“Burkeman and Treat,” said Rule. “They haven’t made their half-hour call-in and we can’t pick them up on the radio.”
He stood in front of Covitski with his hands on the desk, and Covitski couldn’t tell if it was just the lack of sleep that was making Rule’s eyes that red or something else but the eyes were wild whatever it was.
“Something’s going down. We’ve got an all-cars out to Wayne’s place. Let’s go.”
Covitski was already on his feet.
Outside, they saw Susan Olsen waiting for her cab. They’d offered a ride earlier, but she’d turned them down. Now it was just as well. Every car they had was the car that might just get there first.
She’d noticed them, too. Covitski nodded stiffly, but she didn’t respond.
She looked a little like his niece, he thought, his brother’s eldest daughter. He’d noticed that right away. Not a lot, but a little. They had the same coloring and they both had that same sad look around the eyes.
He had no idea where his niece had gotten that look, but it was there as long as he remembered.
When they pulled away out of the driveway Covitski looked at her again and she was turning in the other direction. Away from them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
It was early. There was no one on the street. He passed the Roberts house and considered stopping in.
He heard the dog barking.
He passed Ed Schorr’s place where the car with the two dead cops was parked and would be parked for quite a long time, and then the Crocker place, and he was almost to the house where the twins lived—he didn’t know their names or the names of their parents because they were relatively new there—when he saw one of the two spinsters across the street come out with a bag of garbage.
He guessed she was an early riser.
He pointed the Magnum and fired.
The woman went down with a big red hole in her apron and the sound was huge and he guessed that would wake up the neighborhood all right, people would be locking their doors pretty soon and he’d better get on this right away.
He walked up the porch to the house where the twins lived and opened the door and saw the little boy coming through the living room in his pajamas rubbing the sleep from his eyes and he shot him once in the head with the .38. He walked down a hall to a bedroom. The man and woman were startled and they were just now getting out of bed.
The woman put her hands in front of her face when she saw the gun so he shot her in the stomach. The man hunched down trying to hide behind the bed. He walked over and shot the man once in one leg and once in the other leg. The man squirmed and cried out so he shot him in the chest and then walked out of the bedroom down the hall through the living room and out the door.
He heard the little girl, the other twin, saying Mommy Mommy somewhere back behind him.
The spinster’s sister was bent down over her body on the lawn. She was crying and shaking her as though she were trying to wake her. He didn’t want to use the Magnum. There were so few bullets. He shot her in the back with the .38 instead and then crossed the street and over across the lawn and even though he was pretty sure she was dead he shot her in the head for good measure.
He jogged down that side of the street, the side opposite his house, past the Crocker, Schorr, and Roberts places and past his own house and the Murdoch place on this side of the street to the house where the Leigh kids lived, the ones who had stolen the pickets off his fence. He walked up to the porch and tried the door and since it was locked he used the Magnum. The Magnum punched a hole in the door two inches wide and the lock was gone completely. Its roar moved away from him down the street like a raw wind. He had four rounds left.
He opened the door and walked inside. He listened. The house was silent. He heard a noise upstairs, something moving, so he climbed the stairs. The noise was coming from a closet in one of the bedrooms, so he walked in and fired through the closet and then he opened the door. The older of the two boys slumped out across his feet wearing nothing but a pair of briefs. The boy was still alive. He stepped back and aimed carefully and shot him.
He heard someone running down the hall and into the next bedroom. He trotted out the door and saw that Leigh, the father, and the younger boy had opened the bedroom window. The boy was already out on the sloped shingled roof, trying to work his way down, but the father was only halfway out the window. He waited until the father got both legs over the windowsill and then shot him in the back and watched him tumble off the roof onto the cracked white sidewalk below. He heard the boy screaming down on all fours trying to cling to the roof, and looking back at him. He left him there and went back to the stairs and down.
The woman was on the phone in the kitchen and he knew it was the police she was trying to call. He shot her once in the face and she fell across the breadboard and he hung up the phone.
He walked outside. He didn’t know how many bullets were left in the clip, so he popped it and tossed it on the curb and inserted another.
He crossed the street.
He saw a car coming down the road and waited and watched, standing on the sidewalk under a tree until the car pulled by, gliding past him, and then turned and tracked the car with the Magnum. When he fired, he saw the back window shatter and glass explode out of the windshield and saw the vivid splash of blood across what was left of it as the car went over the curb and into a tree across the street in front of Bobby Dimmit’s house who he had known all his life since he was just a boy. He had no idea if the driver was a man or if it was a woman.
There were three rounds left in the Magnum.
He walked up the steps to Roberts’s house.
The dog was barking. He looked through the window but he couldn’t see the dog. He tried the door, but it was locked. He shot at the lock with the Magnum.
He tried the door again, but either the lock had somehow held against all expectation or there were other locks he couldn’t see. He fired a little higher and tried the door again. Nothing.
There was only one round left in the Magnum.
He decided to let it go at that. Roberts was a busybody. At some point when he thought it was safe to do so, Roberts would stick his head up in one of the windows and he could use the .38.
He could hear the Leigh boy up on the roof, still crying and screaming.
He walked to the Schorr house.
There were sirens in the distance. He would have to make it fast.
He knew this house. He had played here as a kid with whatsisname who had moved to Delaware or something and the back door was practically paper.
He went around back, watching Roberts’s window just in case and then turned and went around the sloping, padlocked, trapdoor entrance to Schorr’s cellar, stepped over a garden hose, and went to the door. He opened the screen. He didn’t even bother to see if the door was locked. He just kicked it in and walked inside into the kitchen and there was Schorr standing there with a knife in his hand from the open drawer.
He really didn’t mind Schorr and was annoyed to find him there. Schorr was efficient at the post office and he had a pleasant manner. But it annoyed him so much that the man was in his way now because it was his wife he was really after that he shot him in the right leg with the .38 and then when he went down placed the gun to his temple and fired again, brains and blood all over his pants leg and shoes, and walked past him through the kitchen.
She was hiding behind the couch in the living room.
Ohmygodpleasedon’t she said like it was all one word.
When he shot her the first time she moved, tried to fling herself away, so that instead of hitting her in the chest the bullet caught her in the throat and it was probably the bloodiest thing he’d ever seen, her trying to stop it up with her slippery hands. He shot her in the heart. The blood pumping from her neck began to ebb.
The sirens were much closer and it sounded like there were a lot of them so he knew he had to hurry so he went
out past Schorr’s body through the back door and jogged around past Roberts’s house where the dog was still barking like it could smell the blood in the air and was going completely crazy now around to the front of his house and through the picket gate.
He heard cars screech to a halt, their sirens still going to the right and to the left of him in the street in front of his house, and he threw the door shut behind him and threw the locks, slapped the clip out of the .38 and reached into his pocket for another.
He was home.
Among friends.
In his fortress.
It was the very best day of his life.
CHAPTER FORTY
The squad cars and ambulances were all over the street like flies on shit, parked in front of the house all the way up and down the street, and Rule was on the bullhorn.
Lock was at the front window, or near the window, being careful not to show himself.
“I don’t like that…goddam thing there!” he yelled. “I don’t want you to use that anymore. You want to talk to me, you use the telephone!”
Okay. You got it, he thought. He turned to Covitski. “The shooters in place?”
Covitski nodded. “Both doors, every window.”
He went to his car.
“Patch me through to an open line,” he said. “And get me Lock.”
It took a moment, and then he heard it ringing. Lock picked up on the second ring.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Wayne.”
“This is Wayne. What’s the last name of the party you want to speak to?”
“Lock.”
“Okay. Who are you and what do you want?”
“My name’s Rule. I’m just outside here. How are things going in there, Wayne?”
“Fine.”
“Are you all alone?”
“I have a Mrs. Carole Gardner in here with me and a Mr. Edwards.”
“And how are they doing?”
“They’re dying. Dead. I don’t know.”
“Which?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“It’s pretty important, Wayne.”
“I said I don’t know.”
“Okay. Is there anything you need? Anything we can do for you?”
“No.”
“How about them? Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Gardner, I mean. They’ll need a doctor, right?”
“They’re fine.”
“You said they were hurt.”
“They’re fine. No doctor.”
“You’ve been pretty busy tonight.”
“I know.”
“So why don’t you come outside—leave the guns in there—come on out and we’ll talk about it. I bet you’ve got a lot to say, Wayne, and I’ll tell you, I’d really be interested to hear.”
“Oh sure.”
“I mean it. No one’s going to hurt you if you do. You have my word on it. We’ll just talk. That’s all.”
“What’s your name again?”
“Rule.”
“I don’t know you, do I.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
“You’re with the police.”
“That’s right. I’m a lieutenant with the Barstow police.”
“Lieutenant Rule.”
“That’s right.”
There was a pause on the line.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m kinda busy right now. I’ll have to talk to you later, okay? ‘Bye.”
He hung up.
Busy with what, Rule wondered. If Gardner and Edwards were already dead.
“Well?”
Covitski was at his side leaning into the car.
“He won’t say if they’re dead or not but they’re in there and you can at least figure they’re hurting. This guy talks like I’m trying to sell him a subscription to Better Homes and Gardens. No affect at all.”
“No what?”
“Affect. His voice. It’s flat. Totally flat.”
“He’s not scared.”
“No. He’s not.”
“Did he say what he wants?”
Rule shrugged. “He doesn’t want anything.”
Covitski thought about it.
“You’re gonna try him again, right?”
“Yeah. Let’s give him a minute, though. I don’t want to push him.”
He glanced over his shoulder. A few houses down, they were hauling a boy up through a window off the edge of a roof. A pair of uniforms were leading Roberts and his dog to the police line down the block away from there. The dog seemed stunned by all the activity. For once it wasn’t barking.
He took a cigarette off Covitski and lit his own from its tip.
“Weird what you think of,” he said and handed it back to him.
“What?”
“If Howard Gardner had left his wife alone, we wouldn’t be here.”
Covitski gave him a look. Like he ought to have his head examined.
“We’d be here, Joe,” he said. “Sooner or later. We’d be here.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“They want me to go outside,” said Wayne. “What do you think?”
They didn’t answer.
It wasn’t fair. He’d been alone all his fucking life, making every decision for himself, and here he was, just asking for a little advice, and it was exactly like living with his mother; they were there but they weren’t there.
“What do you think, dammit?” he said.
They said nothing.
He was writing down their response to him or lack of it in his notebook and dating it carefully when the phone rang. He finished writing.
RETAL.
Then he got up and got it.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
She had to use the bathroom.
Her feet were bare on the rug and her legs were very heavy as she slid them down and she was wet, something on her head was wet and she was wet all down her face and down across her body. She had to go to the bathroom and he was on the phone, talking, his back to her, he was a strange blur moving against the white wall that tilted oddly as she rose off the floor and trotted unsteadily barefoot down the hall, using the walls on both sides for support and to keep her balance and feeling giddy, drunk, wanting to laugh and wondering when had she been drinking? And then she was in the kitchen, not the bathroom, there was no bathroom here oh hell she was in the wrong room but she saw the door in front of her and something told her she should probably no definitely use it.
She turned the knob but the door wouldn’t open.
It was stuck.
It was locked.
That was the problem. The door was locked. And here it was—here was the lock. A little anchor-shaped thing made of brass. She turned it.
It was still locked.
There was a button on the doorknob and you had to turn it button button who’s got the button so she did and turned the knob again and pulled open the door and almost fell down sick to her stomach there on the steps, giddiness turned to nausea the moment the warm morning breeze hit her face and the sun hit her eyes, a warm blinding slap across the face, and she saw the mowed lawn like a hazy drifting sea in front of her and behind it the sparse row of hedges, and someone in the hedges—a man—said—oh my god.
The man was blurry too but as he stepped out of the hedges she saw the rifle he carried and knew what it was, a gray-white glint of metal in the sunlight and the rifle spoke to her clearly and the rifle said run.
RUN!
She stumbled on the third step but then she was on the lawn up and running lurching along the side of the house, her bare feet on the grass wet with dew, breeze across her body, realizing her dress was open the man had seen her and clutching it together with one hand and flailing at the hedges with the other because she had somehow stumbled into the hedges and they seemed to want to slap her down so she pushed them away. Go away. Go away you. Running. The man with the gun was not going to reach her. She would not let him reach her. He was not going to catch her. Oh no. Not aga
in.
She saw the row of cars ahead of her on the street and she ran toward the cars but the man was getting near her oh god he was near and she screamed in panic. She screamed again as she felt his fingers clutch at her arm and then slip off again. The wetness was all over her now running down her all across her body and the dress was open but she didn’t care and she screamed again and fell against the hedge her hands scraping the hard picket fence behind it as the fingers reached out and grabbed her, closed on her arm. Those hard callused fingers on that enormous evil hand that was a man’s hand. He had her.
The man with the gun.
He had her.
Had her over and over again like a film on a loop.
Over and over.
And then the world exploded.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Rule saw the door open and Wayne in the doorway and heard the Magnum roar as the patrolman who had finally reached Carole Gardner slammed back against the picket fence and fell, his shoulder sprayed like mud across the clean white birch, and as he ducked down behind the hood of the car and they opened fire, he was aware that Wayne was yelling something, his mouth was open and the lips were moving while he stood in the doorway firing the .38, standing legs spread wide and then jerking with the impact of the bullets, but still standing and still firing.
He saw Carole fall sideways to her knees, then sprawl out onto the grass. And he thought, She’s shot! Jesus! Us or him? After everything else. After a night he could only imagine.
He felt his stomach slide.
He ducked low around the car and began to run.
He knew it would be just like this.
No pain. He felt nothing but impact as the bullets hit him, a shower of tiny meteors, celestial bodies flattening against him, pouring through him, as he ascended through the weighty morning sunlight into the thinner nighttime sky that lay above. He knew that he’d been kind to them. To all those people who owed him their own ascendancy now.
He hadn’t meant to be kind. That was not the idea.