Mac McKenzie had recognized the limp too. Had known what it meant. Had known that with all the veterans who were back running the business world, being a coward on the battlefield could be just as fatal to a career as being a homosexual.
“That’s when you killed him,” I said.
Devore’s stillness didn’t change. “We were in the kitchen. He bent down to put the box of medals back in his bag. I grabbed the extension cord and started to choke him. He passed out.”
Suddenly his eyes focused and he was back with us in the apartment. “I really don’t remember much after that.”
“You don’t remember hanging Mac from the door with the cord while he was still alive? Don’t remember him kicking his heels against the door, struggling to breathe? Or pinning the medals to his jacket?”
“Those goddamned medals,” he said. “They looked ridiculous on his herringbone coat.” I expected him to smile, but he’d turned cold. Bloodless. “Killing him was better than any money.” He aimed his gun at my head. “And killing you will be just as good. You and Mac are the same. You’ve probably got a shoebox full of medals too. I hear they gave them out like candy.”
“Only in the air force,” I said. He didn’t laugh. Not even a smile. That proved he’d never been infantry.
“You think you’re pretty funny, Nash, but the joke’s on you.”
Eileen took a slow step forward. “You’re wrong, Paul,” she said.
Devore swung his gun toward her. “You stay where you are.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Stay where you are.” I needed to keep Devore’s attention on me.
But she took another slow step toward him. “You killed Mac, Paul. And because of that”—her voice hitched and tears began spilling down her cheeks—“I killed Teresa.”
Devore tried to take a step back but bumped into the bloodstained couch. “I said stay where you are.”
Another step forward. “You’re an evil man, Paul.” The tears still fell, but her voice grew stronger as she spoke. “You’ve hurt so many people. When will it stop?”
Devore was panicked now. She was only a few feet from him. He looked cornered. Scared.
Both guns exploded.
Eileen staggered and fell to the carpet. Devore tumbled over the back of the couch, his feet swinging sideways, knocking the lamp off the end table. The bulb flared as it hit the floor, went black as it shattered. The only light now angled in through the bedroom door.
I checked Devore first. He was the real threat.
But not anymore. His eyes and mouth were open, frozen in a look of perplexed fear. His forehead was open as well, the wake of her bullet having left behind a black, viscous hole. A hole that seemed to have sucked the life out of everything within reach. Including me.
I didn’t miss the irony of it all. Devore had tried to run away from a violent death in the war by shooting himself in the foot. But Death had shadowed him back across the ocean, through his convalescence, through his dishonorable discharge, through his repetitive, calculating days at Standard Oil, into Apartment 311 of the Bon Vivant on La Brea. Had shadowed him like a thief determined to take what he valued most.
Eileen was moaning. She was on her back near the doorway to the bedroom. Devore’s bullet had left a crimson bloom on the lapel of her raincoat, on the upper part of her left breast. Her breathing was shallow.
I lifted her left shoulder and felt her back for the exit wound. Pulled my hand away covered in bright red blood and bits of snow-white bone.
I ran to the bathroom, grabbed the towels off the rack. Found a pair of scissors in a kitchen drawer. As I pulled her raincoat away from the wound, her eyes opened. She whispered, “Am I going to die?”
I felt the indifference I’d cultivated in the war falter and tears sneak into my eyes. Whispered back, “I’ve seen worse.” The only thing I could say that I was sure of. I focused on the wound, the only honest thing in the room.
Air wheezed in and out of the hole. The sucking chest wound I’d seen countless times on the battlefield. I tore the towels into dressings and packed them over both wounds, front and back, then cut large pieces from the raincoat and placed those over the dressings. Used my tie and strips cut from her coat to bind the bandages to her body. Then I had her lie on her left side.
Truth is, I didn’t know if she would make it. She’d lost a lot of blood and splinters of bone could have nicked her heart. It would come down to those things that go beyond blood and bone. Like determination. Or purpose. Or the will to live. I had no idea if she possessed any of those things. Had no idea who she really was at heart.
Other than an actress.
I could hear murmuring in the hallway, tenants who had heard the gunshots but were too scared to investigate. I started for the telephone.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Sweat had seeped onto her forehead and upper lip. Shock beginning to set in.
I came back and knelt beside her. “Sorry for what?”
“For the lies I told you.”
“No confessions right now. You need to get to a hospital.”
“Was I convincing?”
I brushed back her hair, caressed her cheek. “Perfectly.”
She tried to smile. “The role of my life.”
It wasn’t long after that night at the Bon Vivant that I pulled my own army dress uniform from the closet and laid it on the bed. I hadn’t taken any real time to look at it in the fifteen months since I’d come back from Europe, but its familiarity immediately aroused a well-worn dread.
The forest-green four-pocket coat still bore the insignias, bars, and medals I’d been awarded over the course of the war. There were a lot of them, a few more than Mac McKenzie had earned, but that didn’t matter to me. Some men were proud of their accomplishments overseas. I wasn’t. I was no hero. If there had been a way to escape the war that wouldn’t have required a bullet in the foot or a dishonorable discharge, I’d have taken it. I only kept moving forward because I realized that the only honest way back led in front of me. Every step I took was one step closer to home—no matter which direction that step had led.
Like everyone else who’d served in every branch of the service, I’d been trying to hide my fear. And ever since I’d come home, trying to hide the truth I’d seen. About war. About death. About me.
The insignias, bars, and medals merely supplied the gilt of heroism to the endless guilt of the facade I wore.
That I wear.
An actor in my own right. The role of my life. One that never seems to end.
Eileen Burnham survived, but I haven’t seen her since that night.
The police kept a close eye on both of us as they investigated the crime. And I did my best to cooperate, including turning over the extortion letter to Beaumont the morning Eileen had gone to the hospital. He and the prosecutor, William Reinhardt, a hollow-eyed man with no hair and two chins, both believed that Mac had been entertaining women at the apartment and that that was the basis for the extortion attempt. I let them think that.
Neither of them saw the pictures of Mac with other men. I’d kept them in my coat pocket until I was able to go home and burn them. Did I destroy evidence? Sure. Did I care? Not a damn. The extortion letter was enough. Mac McKenzie didn’t die because of his lust for men. He died because of Paul Devore’s greed. And which has done more harm in this world?
No charges were filed against Eileen, and after a brief flurry of lurid articles in the newspapers, the case faded away. Somehow Reinhardt must have bought her claims that her involvement in the extortion plan was limited, her shooting of Teresa was an accident, and her killing of Paul Devore was self-defense. He also must have bought my explanation of how Paul Devore had murdered Mac McKenzie and my corroboration of Eileen’s version of her actions.
But I’m still not sure if I believe her.
There’s a part of me—the PI part—that thinks that it really was the role of her life. That she intended all along to kill Teresa and keep the money—if there h
ad been any—for herself. And that killing Paul Devore had been an unexpected bonus.
But there’s another part of me—the man in me—that wants to believe her. Wants to believe that it was all a tragic accident and that her interest in me had been real. The same part of me that remembers her looks and smarts, her toughness and complexity. The same part of me that, every time it rains, thinks of lovers and thieves and wonders which of the two Eileen Burnham might be.
Or if—like all the rest of us—she’s both.
CRAIG JOHNSON
Land of the Blind
FROM The Strand Magazine
It’s the last thing you want to hear in law enforcement and certainly the last thing you want to hear on Christmas Eve, just as you’re finishing up payroll and heading out the office door.
“Where?” I asked.
My deputy, Double Tough, leaned against the doorway and held said door open with one hand. The mottled skin of his face was highlighted by the haloed glow of the Christmas lights, which he had hung above the main entrance of the old Carnegie Library that served as the office of the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.
“Near Story.”
I stuffed the small red leather-bound copy of A Christmas Carol, which had been a gift from my father, under my arm and handed him his check. “That’s Sheridan County.”
He stuffed the envelope in his back pocket. “Not exactly—just south, near the fish hatchery.”
I stepped out into the frigid air, flipped up the collar of my old horsehide jacket, and pulled my hat down against the wind. I let the door skip closed behind us and locked it as I hurried toward his unit, yanked open the door, and climbed inside. “Wait, there’s a hostage situation at the fish hatchery?”
“Nope, at the church just next door—the Congregational Baptist.”
I noticed the crucifix hanging from his rearview mirror and made the connection. Since the fire that had cost him his eye, Double Tough had gone through something of a religious reawakening and had been auditioning churches around the area in search of the right theological fit. “Did you try that one?”
“I did, but they were a little too fire-and-brimstone for me.” He fired up the Chevrolet and glanced over his shoulder, checking for traffic even though the street was vacant, before pulling out and hitting his lights and siren.
An Appalachian by birth, the energy worker had followed the methane gas boom that had sprung up in the Powder River, but when it had faded a couple of years ago, he’d pinned on one of my stars. “I would’ve thought with your background that would’ve been right down your alley.”
He reached up and touched the melted skin at his jawline. “I figure I been singed enough for one lifetime.” He smiled, but I wasn’t sure if it was the real eye or the glass one that glanced at me. He navigated onto the interstate highway, and nailing the accelerator, he slid slightly before getting the Suburban straightened out. “The Highway Patrol and Jim Persil are on-scene. You know, that new sheriff from over in Sheridan.”
I fastened my seatbelt, a bit disgruntled—Christmas not being my best season. “So why do they need us?”
He smiled again. “It’s your county, Bossman.”
The newly elected neighboring sheriff was young and had been genuinely concerned about not overstepping his jurisdiction, so circumspect in fact that he’d become something of a pain in the butt. “Okay, give me the lowdown.”
“Christmas Eve service at the church had just begun when they had this kid come in, twenties, wearin’ nuthin’ but a pair of tighty-whities with a nine-millimeter tucked in the waistband. He grabs this poor woman from the front row and drags her up on the altar and says he’s going to shoot her for all our sins. I guess the preacher tried to step in and got a round through his hand for his trouble.”
I rested a palm on the red leather volume that I had set on the center console. “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead . . .”
He nodded toward the copy of A Christmas Carol. “You still reading that book every Christmas?”
“Yep, you?”
“Me what?”
I noticed he canted his face to one side as he drove, giving his live eye an advantage, so I was pretty sure the right one was real. “Reading?”
“Yeah.” Double Tough had, along with his religious redemption, taken up reading again, something he’d abandoned years ago. “That book you gave me, the Davis Grubb.”
Thinking a geographical advantage might help the man along, I’d loaned him a stack of Appalachian literature from my office bookshelves, including Grubb, Jesse Stuart, and Wendell Berry. “Night of the Hunter ?”
“Nope, the other one.”
As we drove, I looked out over the pristine, smooth surface of Lake DeSmet, covered with a sheet, blanket, and comforter of a fourteen-inch snow. “Fool’s Parade.”
He nodded and then glanced at me again, and I still wasn’t quite sure with which eye. “You give me that book because the guy had a glass eye?”
“No.”
He nodded, taking the exit to the little town of Story, Wyoming, and drawled “Good.”
It was a cop convention. The Sheridan County sheriff had set up a command center, and the HPs had covered the periphery with halogen emergency lights focused on the church with an honest-to-goodness sniper on top of one of the nearest vehicles, a large black step-van with the Highway Patrol insignia emblazoned on the side.
The newly minted neighboring sheriff explained, “The HP’s Rapid Response Team was up here from Cheyenne having a training session with our SWAT at the shooting club in Sheridan and were all loaded up to go home when we got the call, so they all tagged along.”
I glanced around at all the armed men in camouflage, looking more like an occupying army than a police force. “Don’t these people have homes? It’s Christmas Eve, for goodness’ sake.”
He shrugged. “I guess everybody’s bored.” I looked back at the Congregational Baptist church, looking like a Currier & Ives, the snow curling off the edges of the roof and steeple, the stained glass windows glowing warmly, as Persil rolled out a floor plan of the church on the tailgate of one of his trucks. “The stained glass is playing hell with the sniper—he can’t get a laser dot on the kid.”
“Does he have a name?”
“The sniper?”
“The kid.”
“Sam Erlanger, recent parolee with a substance abuse problem, Bolivian black tar heroin being the substance of choice as of late, but who knows what he’s on tonight. We’ve had him inside a few times. The last time he was in, the churches were offering Bible classes to the inmates, and he got all Old Testament on us. Got released a couple of weeks ago.” He pointed to a spot on the plan as he unclipped a handheld radio and laid it on the corner as a paperweight. “There’s a back door on the right side of the altar where we can get in behind him, but it might be safer just to let the sniper take the shot, stained window be damned.”
I looked at the scroll of paper rolled out on the sheet metal. “Where in the world did you get a floor plan of the church this fast?”
He gestured to where I assumed the wounded preacher was being attended to in the nearby EMT van. “The minister had it in his car; I guess they’re planning an expansion.”
“Has anybody gone in there to talk with him?”
“The preacher?”
“The guy in his underwear.” I glanced at the church. “Fruit of the Loom.”
Persil looked at me as if the answer should have been obvious. “No. I mean, the last one that tried to talk to him got a hole shot in his hand.”
“What’s the hostage’s name?”
“Daniela Breese.”
I made the mental note. “Anybody else in the church?”
“Yeah, about a half-dozen in the pews who were too far from the door to make an escape. All the rest checked out when he started talking human sacrifice for the holidays.”
I pulled out my .45, sliding the m
echanism and dropping a round in the pipe before flicking on the safety and returning it to my holster, which I left unsnapped. “All right, please tell the sniper not to shoot me.”
“You’re going in there?”
I started off toward the main doors of the church when I noticed Double Tough falling in behind me. “Where do you think you’re going?”
He was checking his .40 as his face rose from under his cowboy hat. “Bossman, if he decides it’s better to give than to receive with that nine-millimeter, another couple of rounds might be handy.”
As I pushed down the clasp on the heavy door, I could hear someone from inside talking in a low slur, almost as if hypnotized. Sam Erlanger was deep into a one-sided tête-à-tête with God, his voice dulled, his conversation meandering. “As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God . . .”
Pushing the door the rest of the way open, I held it and, taking in the scene in front of me, rested the web of my thumb on my Colt. Through the vestibule, still loaded with the hats, coats, and galoshes of the faithful who had rapidly retreated, I could see down the main aisle where the heads of those who had not been able to escape popped up now and again, looking toward the simple white cloth-covered altar where Sam Erlanger held Daniela Breese by her hair with a gun to her head.
The woman wasn’t moving and her eyes were closed, but she was breathing. Erlanger was breathing too, as his emaciated muscles contracted against themselves. Continually wetting his lips with a darting tongue, he slowly slung his glance around the room, his deadened eyes looking everywhere and seeing nothing. “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious.”
There were no doorways into the main part of the church other than the one point-blank in front of us, so attempting to enter without his noticing wasn’t much of an option. Figuring we’d at least have some semblance of surprise if one of us lingered in the entryway out of sight, I motioned for Double Tough to move to the right. I walked into the nave, carefully leaving the door slightly ajar for my deputy and in case any of the other hostages could find the courage to beat a hasty exit.