H. G. Wells had it right when he lifted that proverb. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king .
Light might do it.
Noise might.
I put my mouth against her ear and said, “I’m going back to the car. Keep alert.”
I crawled to the door and up to the front seat. Static poured out of the radio, through the open door, and blended into the rain. I wasn’t sure yet what I was doing: the first bit of business was to find out what was possible. I needed to see. I took off my jacket to make a shield against the light, then I reached over and turned the light switch back so the dash would light up. A voice came through the radio—“Desk to car six”—and I jumped back against the seat, startled. But the voice broke up and disappeared in the static. I opened the glove compartment. There wasn’t much inside—a few papers, the registration, an ownership manual, a screwdriver, some road maps, and a roll of electrical tape. What could I make of that?
The radio said “six” and faded, and I had an idea. I leaned out and hissed. Irish crawled over and I told her what I was going to do. The static on the radio was now a jumble of voices, low enough that it couldn’t be heard much beyond the open door, but the noise was constant. It wouldn’t matter, I thought: he wouldn’t hear it. I tore one of the road maps apart, wadded up a quarter section, added some spit, and made it into a gummy mass, a spitball about half the size of my fist. It would fit well enough into the slight recesses of the steering wheel spokes where the horn buttons were. I picked up the electrical tape and leaned out into the rain. “Here we go,” I said.
I blew the horn. Twice…three times.
“Scream,” I said, and she screamed my name at the black sky.
I mashed the wadded paper into the horn button and the steady wail began. I whipped the tape tight around it, three, four, five times, and left it dangling. The horn blared away: it would drive a sane man crazy and a crazy man wild. He’d have to come now, I thought: he’d have to.
I took her hand and we moved away from the car.
Carefully…one step at a time.
Eight steps…ten…
Underbrush rose up around us.
“Get down here,” I said. “Lie flat under those bushes and don’t move.”
She dropped to the ground and was gone. I stood still and waited.
I tried to remember what little I had seen of the terrain. The car had tilted right as it clattered down the slope. We had gone a hundred yards, I guessed, which would put the cabin somewhere to the left and above us.
The horn filled the night with its brassy music. I felt as if I were standing on top of it, it was that loud.
Off in the distance a light flashed. It flicked on and off twice. I said, “Uh-huh,” and waited. He was gambling, hoping he could find his way without tipping his hand. You lose, I thought. His flashlight came on again, swung in a quick semicircle, dropped briefly down the slope, and off again. I now knew that the road was about fifteen feet above me, that the ground was steeper than I’d thought, and he was forty to sixty yards away, moving along to my right. He wouldn’t dare use the light again, I thought, but almost at once he gave it another tiny flick, as if he’d seen something he couldn’t quite believe the first time. Yes, he had caught a piece of the car in that swing past it: he saw it now, and if he raised the beam by a few degrees, he’d see me too, standing by the trees waiting. If he moved the light at all, I’d go for him right from here. Knock him down and he’s done for…give him a flesh wound, a broken arm, a ventilated liver. On the firing range I’d been a killer— shooting from the hip, in a stance, close up or distant, it didn’t matter. I could empty a gun in three seconds and fill the red with holes. It’s an instinct some cops have and sometimes it saves your life.
I should’ve taken him then, but the light was gone now and it didn’t come back. Minutes passed and I battled my impatience. Think of the hundred and one stakeouts in a long career: waiting in a blowing snow for fifteen hours and not being bothered by it. I had learned how to wait: I’d learned the virtue of patience—and had unlearned it all in minutes. I saw the bookman’s face pass before me in the dark.
Rigby.
Who else fit the Grayson pattern all up and down the line?
Who did Grayson count on? Who would be this destroyed by a misspelled word? Who would take that failure so personally and torture himself and take up the sword against those who’d tarnish Grayson’s memory?
Who had the skills and the single-mindedness to spend the rest of his days trying to finish Grayson’s book?
He had the greatest hands, Moon had said. He had the finest eye.
Rigby.
That’s what happens when you make gods out of men, I thought.
And now he was here. I felt my hand tremble slightly, uncharacteristically. Chalk it up to the dark: I still couldn’t see him and I strained against the night, trying not to make that big fatal mistake. We were a few feet apart, microorganisms, deadly enemies who would kill each other if we happened to bump while floating through the soupy ether that made up our world.
There wasn’t a sound. The blaring horn had ceased to exist. It can happen that way when it’s constant, no matter how loud it gets.
I was betting my life on a shot in the dark.
Be right with your own god, I thought, and I opened fire.
In the half-second before the gun went off I had a flash of crushing doubt. Too late, I wanted to call it back. Instead I pumped off another one, took his return fire, and the slope erupted in a god-awful battle in the dark. I went down—didn’t remember falling, didn’t know if I’d been shot or had slipped on the wet slope. Something hard had hit my head. I rolled over on my back, only then realizing that my gun was gone and he was still on his feet. There was light now, bobbing above me. I saw his shoes, heard the snap of the gun as the pin fell on an empty chamber, saw the log he’d hit me with clutched in his other hand. He dropped the gun and got up the knife. I tried to roll to my feet but couldn’t quite make it. Got to one knee and fell over, like a woozy fighter down for a nine count. He loomed over me, then something came out of the dark and hit him.
Trish.
It wasn’t much of a fight. The light dropped in the grass and they struggled above it. He knifed her hard in the belly. She grabbed herself, spun away, and, incredibly, spun around and came at him again. He knifed her in the side and this time she went down.
She had bought me a long count, fifteen seconds.
I was up on one knee with the gun in my hand, and I blew his heart out.
58
I carried her to the car and put her down on the seat.
Don’t die, I thought. Please don’t die.
I worked her clothes off…
Gently.
Everything was blood-soaked. The frontal wound was the scary one. The knife had gone in to the hilt, just at the hairline above her crotch. Her navel was a pool of blood, like an eight-ounce can of tomato paste. The cut was raw and ugly. I dabbed at it and tried to push the blood back, but it welled up again like a pot flowing over. I covered it with my hand. The last thing I worried about, now, was infection.
Blood oozed between my fingers and kept coming. She was going to die, right here on this car seat, and there wasn’t a thing on earth I could do to save her.
There wasn’t anything to be done. Even if I could get the hole plugged, she’d be hemorrhaging inside. I was watching her die.
She smiled. Her face had a peaceful, dreamy look.
“Tam-pons,” she said. “Almost that…time of month.”
Tampons. Jesus Christ, tampons.
I got them out of her bag. The package looked small in my hand. It was what it was.
I tore the electrical tape off the steering wheel. There wasn’t enough left to go around her. But I had my belt, my shirt…