“More cake for me,” he said. “Yummy.”
I knew what he wanted. I looked at him and started crying. Sobbing. It wasn’t hard.
“Don’t, Buck. Please don’t hurt me. I’m begging you, Buck…”
“Oh yessss,” Buck Kincannon whispered.
“Please, Buck. I don’t want to die. Let’s just be friends, can we do that? Please, Buck…”
“Louder,” he said, taking a step closer.
“I’ll work for you, Buck, be your eyes and ears on the police force. You’ll own me. Whatever you want, Buck, it’s yours, just let…me…”
I put my face on the floor and began blubbering. I heard his footsteps creep closer, one step, two steps.
“LOUDER!” he railed.
“Don’t kill me, don’t kill me…,” I begged, tucking the glass into my palm, feeling it razor into my flesh. Buck stepped forward. I felt the muzzle of the shotgun against my temple.
“I OWN YOU. I COMMAND YOU TO LIFT YOUR FACE AND SPEAK!”
“Buck, pleeeease…,” I wailed, bringing my hands to my face as if in terror. Then I lunged forward, upward, knocking the gun aside with my forearm, putting everything into my bad leg, rising, slashing at his hands on the gun, feeling the glass sever gristle and tendon. He howled like an animal as I tumbled over him, dredging the glass through his face, across his eyes. I kept slashing, as if trying to slice my way into his brain, shut it off forever.
And then Dani was pulling at my back, and we were up and running through smoke-thick air as Buck Kincannon writhed on the floor, hands pressing into the blinded ruination of his face, one cheek flapping loose like a thick red washcloth.
“Crandell,” he moaned. “Help me, Crandell.”
Dani and I stumbled out the door as Nelson Kincannon’s headlights reached the end of the long driveway, screeched away down the road, escaping. Dani dragged me to her car.
Halfway down the lane, she screamed, “Oh God,” pointing to a car careering from the main road onto the drive, swerving, accelerating at us. She whipped the wheel, skidding sideways on the wet pavement. We were slammed in the side, spun. Her car broke through the fence lining the lane, white slats banging off the windshield. The engine stalled. I jumped out, held myself up on the open door. The other car stopped two dozen feet distant, headlamps shining through rain and steam from a busted radiator.
“Lucas?” the driver bawled. “Is that you, Lucas?”
Racine Kincannon lurched from his car. Lucas Kincannon and I were the same basic height and build. Racine squinted through swirling steam, his drunken voice shrill and desperate.
“Lucas. It’s you and me, brother. I fired Crandell. Fuck Nelson and Buck. It’s us, a team. That’s what you meant, right? RIGHT?”
“Racine Kincannon,” I roared, “you’re under ARREST!”
Racine made a croaking sound and leapt behind the wheel. He floored the accelerator, smashing through the fence and into the huge golden sculpture of the Brahma bull. The bull snapped off its plinth, thundered to the ground, and rolled to its back, legs rocking skyward amidst clouds of steam. The driver’s door swung open and deposited a passed-out Racine Kincannon on the grass.
Dani was near shock, so I made my way to Kincannon’s snoring body, found a cell phone in his pocket, made the call, blood pouring from my palm. My good leg gave up and I crumpled to the ground, unable to move. Dani draped herself over me, crying.
And so we remained for several minutes, until the parade of blue-and-white flashers turned onto the Kincannon property and the curtain fell on the night from hell.
CHAPTER 51
Clair and Harry were at my place. The furor had subsided after three days, at least for me. The headlines continued unabated, though, from the Mobile Register to The Wall Street Journal,
which page-one’d the headline BIZARRE CRIME ROCKS KEI ’ S FOUNDING FAMILY: A TALE OF HIDDEN CHILDREN AND DEADLY ACTIONS.
“It’s time for the five o’clock news,” Clair said, picking up the remote. “Maylene’s supposed to make a statement.”
The television popped on, a scene outside the federal courthouse in Montgomery. The word LIVE floated in the upper corner of the screen.
“Look in the crowd…” Clair jabbed her finger at the tube. “Was that Dominick Dunne?”
“What’s Dominick done?” I asked, thumping in on crutches, my foot in a soft cast and fabric boot, a six-week sentence.
“A writer. He does a crime show on cable. Kind of a ‘Crime Styles of the Rich and Sleazy.’”
I watched the camera pan the crowd, zero in on Maylene. She was flanked by two high-wattage lawyers and a woman Dani had once pointed out as a major PR type. Maylene shouldered past the lawyers to a bank of microphones on the courthouse steps.
“Maylene’s going to talk,” Clair said. “Here it comes.”
“Here comes what?” Harry said.
“Whitewash and obfuscation and stonewall. She’ll try to dump everything on Crandell, since he’s not around to give his side of the story. She’ll wrap the boys in her wings until the lawyers can get under the hood and tear the wires from the legal engine; years of obfuscation set to come. She’ll spend millions to pervert the system.”
The camera zoomed in on Mama, face pale and hair white, her eyes tiny black dots. We fell quiet and listened to the reporters’ questions, were knocked back by Maylene Kincannon’s answers.
“…I never expected to be so deceived…garden of vipers and scoundrels…years of lies and scheming from my own children…”
“What the hell?” Clair said.
“…culpable members of my family have been removed from all positions with KEI, no longer welcome in my home…”
“Jesus,” Clair said. “She’s tossing them to the wolves.”
“…support all efforts of our state’s judicial system to mete out appropriate punishment for vicious crimes and deceits…testify myself if needed…”
A reporter asked a question about the children kept in the house. Maylene jutted a righteous chin.
“My only concern was for the finest care for the children and a life where every wish was fulfilled, every care given. In retrospect, I should have paid more attention to what was occurring elsewhere.”
Maylene paused. Dabbed the pinpoint eyes with a tissue. She gestured off-camera for someone to join her and turned back to the microphones.
“My job now is to reestablish my relationship with the one son who has been so horribly maligned, one that I was manipulated to believe had terrible and incurable psychological problems, when in fact…”
Lucas Kincannon joined his mother, putting a loving arm around her oxlike shoulders. Kissed her powdery cheek. Several people applauded the spontaneous warmth of the moment. Lucas wore a dark suit, white shirt, and superbly knotted tie. He tucked his hands in his pockets and looked into the cameras with gentle shyness, referring questions to his mother or the lawyers.
Clair stared at the television in disbelief. “Lucas did abduct a woman, right? Mrs. Atkins? With that purse bit?”
Harry said, “Rumor has it the old lady’s revisiting her story. She may have misunderstood a few things the lad was requesting. I doubt Mrs. Atkins has any worries about the collapse of Social Security.”
Maylene’s voice lightened and she began chirping about “letting the sun shine on a bright new day in Kincannon stewardship.”
“Sun shine or s-o-n shine?” Clair said.
“…fostering change, while continuing a legacy of caring for the community…,” Mama intoned. “…companies now under the expert supervision of professionals…”
“Lucas is going to be the new Buck,” I said. “Except that Lucas has the brains of a physicist and enough business acumen to grab the reins in weeks instead of years.”
“Weeks?” Harry raised a dubious eyebrow. I flicked off the television.
“The whole show’s not taking place in Montgomery. Take a ride with me, Harry.”
The Kincannon estate seemed unscathed by the bloody hurricane that had blown across its stately grounds. The guardhouse was empty. Harry got out and pushed the gate aside. We drove to the house where I had been imprisoned. The door opened to a somber face.