“I suppose so.”
“And we have to kill them,” I went on. “We have to kill them or die trying. I’d rather die now, here, than wait for them to find us and kill us.”
“You’re right,” she said.
“Of course I am.”
“I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“You’re nervous,” I said. She wasn’t the only one. There were two of us.
We killed the lights at six o’clock and sat waiting for them. It was dramatic as all hell. I crouched by the window with the shade up about an inch and kept my eye at the opening waiting for something to happen. Every once in a while she would spell me at the window.
Time crawled along and so did my skin. By seven we weren’t talking any more. We weren’t mad at each other or anything like that. It was just that talking only made everything that much harder to take: Silence was better, silence and our own private thoughts.
A few minutes past eight the phone rang. It rang seven times while we sat and panicked. Then it stopped, and a minute later it rang again.
And stopped after five rings.
I prayed Reed wouldn’t be suspicious. Maybe he would figure they were out for a bite, or sleeping, or drunk. The again maybe he could figure it was us. It was farfetched but the guy was by no means stupid.
So I prayed.
Nine o’clock.
Nine-thirty.
Ten.
Ten-thirty.
A quarter-to-eleven a car pulled into the driveway. At firs I thought it was somebody else turning around but the car went straight into the garage. It was an Olds, two or three years old, black.
Two men inside. I saw their faces as they went by. Reed and Baron.
I lowered the shade the rest of the way and Cindy and I headed for the side door. Then I remembered there was a back door and ran to the window. That’s where they were heading. We went to meet them.
I took out the gun, held it so tightly I was afraid the metal would melt in my hand. We stood behind the door and waited. I could hear Cindy breathing and I wanted to tell her to stop. It was that type of scene.
Then I heard them talking.
“Punks. Probably stoned out of their heads, too blind to answer the phone. You tie up with punks and you got to expect that.”
That was Baron. Then Reed: “I don’t know. I don’t like it. Craig’s a lush half the time but I expect better from Casper.”
“A punk.”
“I still don’t like it. There’s something in the air. I can damn near smell it.”
I didn’t like it either. Why didn’t the son of a bitch open the door already?
Baron’s voice: “C’mon, we don’t have all night. Open the damn door already.”
A key scratched its way into the keyhole, turned the lock. The door opened halfway and I stood behind it, unable to breathe. They came in slowly, moved past me. I wanted to shoot but I didn’t dare. Not with the door open.
I swung the gun.
It caught Reed on top of the head and sent him to the floor. Baron turned and I had the gun on him. “Don’t move,” I said. “Or you’re dead.”
“Lindsay!”
“Don’t move,” I croaked. “Stand where you are.”
He looked at the gun and ignored it. He came at me like a bull and gave me a shove. Somehow I held onto the gun — but I went halfway across the room.
I pointed the gun at him, aimed it at his chest. The son of a bitch didn’t give a damn. He charged right at me, head down, arms out.
I wanted to shoot and I couldn’t. It was all over now, I thought. All over but the dying.
He was almost on me. I sidestepped just in time, brought the gun down as hard as I could on top of that thick skull of his. I got lucky. I connected.
It didn’t knock him out. That would have been too much to hope for. But it stunned him and that, as it turned out, was enough.
He was on hands and knees, steadying himself for another move. I looked at him and I hated him. Craig and Casper had been necessary but this was a pleasure. I hated Baron, hated him for the beatings and the threats, hated him for the miserable bastard he was. I didn’t even have time to reverse the gun in my hand. I had to hit him with the muzzle, and I hit him and hit him and hit him. His skull was like rock but the gun barrel was harder. I beat him across the top of his fat head until he was dead.
Reed.
I had forgotten him and I looked up expecting to get shot any minute. I saw Reed then. There was a gun in his hand. There was also a knife in his back.
“He was going to shoot you, Ted. I couldn’t give him a chance. I—”
She was in my arms, soft and warm and crying. I held her and stroked her and told her everything was going to be all right now. She calmed down, finally.
“I love you,” I told her.
She forced a smile. “I’m all right now,” she said. “It’s just that I never killed a man before. That’s all.”
First I washed the knife and put it in a drawer in the kitchen. Then I found a closet for Reed and stuck him in it. There was very little blood on the floor — she had gotten lucky and stuck the thing in the spine, killing him at once. I mopped up what blood there was and put the bloody rag in the closet with Reed.
Baron weighed a ton and I felt like leaving him there. It was a good thing the house was lousy with closets. Cindy gave me a hand with him and we put him away for a while.
Then we got the hell out of there. I carried the press and the suitcase, left the gun in the closet with Baron, loaded the stuff in the trunk of the car. The keys weren’t in the ignition and I had to go back and get them from Reed. I also went through their pockets, took their money. We’d need all we could get until the presses started rolling.
I locked the back door, tossed the key into the bushes. If anybody wanted in they were going to have to break their way in. Somebody might do that the next morning, but with luck we had a month, maybe more.
Plenty of time.
I drove the Olds, backed it out of the driveway, hit the street and got going. I kept well under the speed limit, drove in the right lane, and got us the merry hell out of beautiful San Francisco. We both felt a hell of a lot better once we were on the open road, better still when we were across the state line.
We stopped at a place called the Golden d’Or Motel, a last-chance affair on the outskirts of a small Nevada town named Madison City. The name was fancier than the place itself. There were a string of a dozen tourist cabins, none of them painted since the owner bought the place, which must have been around the turn of the century. The owner’s shack stood to one corner, a little larger than the cabins and, paradoxically, a little more run-down — maybe because it got more play. The VACANCY sign was permanently attached to the big sign announcing the name of the place. I don’t think they had a NO VACANCY sign. I’m sure they never needed one.
I hit the brakes, killed the engine and tapped the horn. The owner came out, a long lanky man with a hawk nose and a pair of dusty blue jeans. He was wearing a ten-gallon hat and I guessed that he fancied himself a tourist attraction. He shuffled over to the car.
“Lucky for you,” he said, “I got a cabin left.” He had eleven like it, and they were also left but we didn’t bother telling him this. Instead I signed the book — I think I used the name Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Harrison — and paid the guy, and we piled out of the car and into the cabin. Luxurious it was not — old furniture scarred with cigarette butts and bottle rings, a creaking bed, walls that wouldn’t stand up for a minute if a good wind ever blew across that section of Nevada.
We dropped into Madison City for a meal. There was one excuse for a restaurant in the town. I had eggs and coffee; Cindy had toast and tea. Neither of us was very hungry. Not for food.