The men stopped checking their weapons, stopped donning their body armor, and waited for my reply. And suddenly I felt responsible for them, for all of them, as if my refusal to join the posse would make them more afraid than they were, and that extra load of fear would be too much for them to carry.
Loushine whispered something to the sheriff, and Orman replied, “No, it’ll be all right.”
“You’re the boss,” Loushine said and joined the others who waited for my answer.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said, smiling just as big and brightly as I could.
And we tell our children not to succumb to peer pressure.
Thirty minutes later I sat on the hood of the sheriff’s cruiser about a mile from the Johannson homestead while he deployed his men. I could hear the low rumble of his voice but not what he was saying. By my estimate, we had thirty minutes of daylight left.
“I’ll tell you what we used to do,” I announced. “When we could, we would take our suspects at dawn. Hit ’em hard and fast when they were still too groggy from sleep to put up a fight. It was standard procedure.”
No one was listening.
“I was out there yesterday,” I recalled. “Johannson’s father and his young nephew were in the house. Have you considered them?”
No one was listening.
“Hey, I know! We have the barn. We have the costumes. Let’s put on a show.”
“Quiet down, Taylor,” Loushine warned.
“Deputy, this is small-town amateur night,” I countered.
He looked at me like he knew I was right but said nothing. A moment later, the sheriff joined us. His deputies had scattered, some in cars, to encircle the house down the road. He looked at his watch. “The teams will be in position in ten minutes. Then we move.”
“Move? What do you mean, move?” I knew what he meant, I just wanted to hear him say it.
“We’re going to knock on the front door.”
“Sheriff, the man has an UZI semiautomatic carbine. He can fire twenty-five rounds before you can say, ‘Bless me father for I have sinned.’”
“You’re not frightened, are you, Taylor?” Loushine interrupted.
I studied him for a moment. He was busy checking the load in his service revolver. It wasn’t necessary. I had seen him check it twice before. But it gave his hands something to do, and it was an excuse not to look me in the eye.
“I’ll be standing right behind you, Deputy,” I told him.
Sheriff Orman slapped a gun into my hand. A Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special, Model No. 64: three-inch barrel, thirty and a half ounces fully loaded, serrated-ramp front sight, square-notch rear sight, square butt, satin finish, six shots—as efficient a close-encounter killing machine as you’ll ever find and a stunning improvement over the Walther PPK in my pocket. Yet I looked at it like I had never seen one before in my life.
The minutes dragged on, giving me plenty of time to think, plenty of time to contemplate what I was expected to do with the .38. I was expected to point it at a man and squeeze the trigger. Simple, right? Yeah, sure. That’s why I have nightmares, because it’s so simple.
It is not as easy to kill a man as TV and the movies would suggest. Living with it later is even harder. You don’t brush it off and go out for Chinese like the actors in the cop shows: “Hi, honey, I killed a couple of guys today; what’s for supper?” I know. I’ve killed men. Four of them. I’ve replayed my encounters with them a hundred times in my head, carefully editing each tape until any alternative action was clearly impossible. I memorized their rap sheets until I convinced myself that their deaths were an almost preordained consequence of their lives and my involvement a kind of destiny. Yeah, I know it’s self-deluding bullshit. But a man has to sleep.
Now I was being encouraged to kill again.
And I was willing.
I stuck the .38 in the waistband of my jeans and pretended it wasn’t there, concentrating hard on the advice George Meade had given me my first day on the job: “Don’t think too far ahead.”
When his deputies were in position, Orman cautioned them over the radio to play it safe and ordered them not to shoot unless Jimmy Johannson tried to break through.
“If there’s any shooting to do, I’ll tell you,” he said. “Remember, surprise is what we want. If we do this quick and clean, we won’t have anything to regret tomorrow.”
“Please, God,” Loushine prayed.
I wished I had said that. I believe in God as much as anyone who doesn’t make a living out of it, which is to say I believe in Him more at some times than others. It’s true we haven’t exactly been on speaking terms since my wife and daughter were killed. Still, one would hope He wouldn’t hold that against a guy. I found myself searching the quickly darkening sky for a sign that He approved of tonight’s activities. There was none. Just as well. A divine revelation right then would have been particularly disconcerting.
“Ready, Taylor?” the sheriff asked.
“Yeah,” I answered and squeezed into the back seat of his cruiser with another deputy. Orman and Loushine sat in front.
Fear is the most transient of emotions. It cannot be sustained at a high pitch for more than a few minutes at a time. I was terrified as the sheriff pulled off the county blacktop onto the gravel road and drove the mile to Johannson’s place. Yet I was calm by the time his wheels hit the dirt driveway. I took in everything, seeing much more in that first instant than I had in several hours the day before. There were actually six wrecks cluttering the yard, not five—four on the left of the driveway and two on the right. The wreck closest to the house on the right was a rusted out pickup, the hood open to heaven like all the others. About ten yards in front of Johannson’s door was a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Her statue was perched on a large rock and surrounded by smaller rocks and brightly colored flowers. About twenty yards to the left of the shrine were three oil drums. A siphoning apparatus was attached to the middle drum. To the left of that was the large shed.
I was out the door and making a low run to the pickup before the sheriff’s cruiser came to a halt. When they got out, the sheriff motioned his deputy far to the left, near the shed. Then he and Loushine approached the front door. The lights above the door and the shed were burning, and the sheriff had left his headlights on. I was leaning across the pickup, the .38 trained on the front door. Yet even though I was watching it, I was unprepared to see it fly open and Jimmy Johannson dash out, squeezing off God knows how many rounds from the UZI as he ran to the oil drums. The sheriff and Loushine retreated to the cruiser. The other deputy found cover behind the shed. I stayed where I was. I didn’t fire.
At the first sound of shooting, two cars pulled into the yard from opposite directions with lights and sirens. Johannson pinned them down, giggling between bursts as his submachine gun turned the vehicles into scrap. I wondered how many magazines he had.
The sun was down now. The only light was man-made, all of it concentrated on the drums and the front of the house. I heard several handguns and a single shotgun blasting away from outside the circle of light as Kreel County’s finest returned fire. But I couldn’t see anybody except the deputy at the shed.
I crawled from the front of the pickup to the back. The sheriff was crouching behind his cruiser. He was in a bad spot and couldn’t get a shot at the man behind the drums without exposing himself to return fire. Loushine had a better line, but he, too, was exposed, on the ground behind a maple tree.
I returned to the front of the truck. Johannson was in a good position. The way the drums were arranged, he was protected from the front and the sides. To take him, I would have to maneuver behind. But there was no cover until I reached the shrine. Dammit, I knew this was going to be a mistake.
I caught the eye of the deputy at the shed and rotated my finger vigorously in the air, motioning for covering fire. He stared at me for a moment, probably wondering what kitchen appliance I had become. But he caught on quickly and raised his hand for me to wait. He reloaded his revolver and nodded.