Lamar had tried again. The phone rang and rang. Now what the hell was wrong with that boy?
“Where'n fuck is he?” he demanded.
“Maybe he had a flat or an accident,” said Richard.
“Not this old boy. He ain't that goddamn type. He is a accident.”
Darkening with fury and frustration, he stood in the room.
What the fuck?
The ringing grated through the earpiece of the phone, but no one picked up.
He tried to run through ways it could have gone wrong.
Had he been too fancy? Should he have done the fuck as he drove along the road? Is there any way, any way at all they could be on to him?
No. He'd been too careful. They weren't that clever.
He stood, watching the girl curled beneath him, bound and gagged helplessly. He could sense Ruta Beth behind him. Richard was off some goddamned place fretting over some goddamned thing.
The door exploded.
Next thing, Lamar was on the floor. How he got there he didn't know: just his fast reflexes taking over, getting him down there, flat and safe.
“Lamar!”
It was Ruta Beth, standing dumbly.
“GEDDOWN!” he screamed.
“THEY HERE!”
Ruta Beth hit the floor.
“I'm hurt. Daddy.”
“Goddamn,” said Lamar.
“Oh, shit,” said Richard from the kitchen.
“You hit bad. Baby Girl?”
“Neck. Oh, Daddy, it hurts.”
“You gotta shoot back, goddammit, or we are cat piss.”
He himself pulled Holly off the couch and to him, as a human shield. He felt her heart beating against her ribs like a trapped little bird. A temptation came to put a bullet in her head, but he knew that was stupid. He slithered to the window, dragging her with him, and snuck a peek out to see nothing, smelled just the faintest whisper of smoke hanging in the air. He calculated swiftly. A SWAT sniper wouldn't have missed, not hardly, and by now there'd have been dozens of gum balls flashing, big boys on loudspeakers, choppers, the goddamned whole world getting ready to kill him. But he didn't see a goddamned thing.
He knew who it was.
How the hell did he find him?
Goddamn!
“Richard, boy, the lights, get ’em out.”
“Lamar, I—”
“GODDAMN BOY, GET THEM OUT!”
Only a scream would get Richard moving. Somehow the worthless piece of shit began to flutter around, and in a second the lights had vanished.
Another second passed, and suddenly Lamar heard a high keening sound.
Sounded like an animal being burned in a fireplace or something, but under the whine of fear and slobbery, pee-pants panic he recognized Richard's tones.
“Locked! Locked! Locked!” Richard was sobbing.
He meant the back door, Lamar thought. Fucking Pewtie had locked off the back door. Smart motherfucker. No other way out, except the side window.
“Ruta Beth, you okay?”
“Oh, Daddy, it hurts so bad. I got blood every damned place.”
“Can you shoot. Baby Girl?”
“What?”
“Can you shoot, goddammit, Ruta Beth. Got to answer him. It's that fucker Pewtie. You're all I got.”
Not really; he had the girl, too. He felt her squirm under him.
“I don't think so, Lamar. I got blood on my hands. So slippery.”
She was losing it fast.
“That's okay. Baby Girl. It don't matter. You're still the goddamn champ. Listen here, I want you to slide out the door. He ain't going to shoot, he sees you're wounded. You yell for help. He's going to say. Put your hands up, and when I hear his voice, I can nail him.”
Ruta Beth crawled by him, leaving a black slime of blood. She got to the doorway and somehow pulled her way up. Then she stepped out on the porch, stood under the bright porch light. Lamar kneeled on Bud's wife's neck, calmed himself, and studied the darkness out the window, waiting for a scream. He had five double-oughts in the Browning cut down When it came, he'd flash to the area and pump the gun empty. If it was only one man as he now suspected, he'd at least hurt him.
Bud had fallen back behind the Trans Am almost directly to the left of the house.
Goddamn! Goddamn!
It had all fallen apart. Now what? Lamar knew he was there and would just as sure as winter be calculating counter moves if he hadn't already cut Holly's throat.
But what Bud saw astonished him.
It was the girl, Ruta Beth Tun. She stood groggily, her hands up. She was drenched with blood. He hadn't even fired a second shot! Then he realized the Comedy King was having a good time tonight with the play of whimsy: He had decreed that the screen door turned out to be a storm door and it would deflect Bud's bullet from Lamar, but the same Laugher saw that it hit Ruta Beth.
“Don't shoot,” she said.
“I's bad hurt.”
She took a step forward.
Bud put the front sight right on her head. The range was thirty feet; he could hit her in the face easy.
“Don't shoot,” she said, taking a wobbly step forward.
He felt the trigger strain against his finger.
Do it, he told himself. Do it and move on to the other.
“Keep your hands high and come out and lie face down in the—” The window lit bright with harsh flame as someone fired five fast shotgun blasts at him. Bud had no consciousness of drawing back, only a sense of an explosion all around him as the buckshot tore into the hood of the car and spalled spastically against the windshield, blowing shreds of glass outward as it turned the sheet into webbed quicksilver.
Abruptly the left side of his face went to sleep for what must have been a whole second, then began to sting.
He touched his face: blood. But had anything penetrated?
He felt a core of ache spread through his brain, and the suffocating odor of gunpowder swirled around him. But he seemed not to be mortally hit.
Next he heard the crash of a window from the other side of the house.
Lamar had jumped free.
Lamar knew the lawman would do the right thing, which was the wrong thing; he couldn't just shoot poor Ruta Beth.
And indeed, Lamar saw a shape hunkered by the left front fender of the Trans Am bending over a rifle and in a second he'd brought the sawed-off Browning up and unleashed its whole tube of shells. The bright fireworks of the gun flashes ate up the world and Lamar now wished for half a second he hadn't cut it down, for with a full-stocked and barreled weapon, the highway patrolman would have been easy meat.
But the gun bucked in his hands and he struggled to bring it back on line and each fresh blast lit the night for what seemed miles, though curiously so intent was he on the mechanics of it, he didn't hear a thing.
Then the gun came up dry, the smoke seethed in the air, and he thought he'd hit but he wasn't sure. Only one thing remained now: to get clear, to get out. Nothing else mattered.
If he got out of the house and across the fields, he could flag down a truck and commandeer it or steal a car from some square John or some such. But his ticket out was the goddamned girl, though she'd slow him somewhat; but Pewtie wouldn't spray in his direction with the little wife along.
“Come on, sweetheart,” he said, rising and pulling her up. The now useless shotgun fell away. He had a SIG, with seven cartridges, but no reloads. Too bad. Didn't have time to look for other magazines now.
In one powerful motion he pulled her along to the side window and threw her out. She smashed through the glass, caught her foot, and fell with a horrible thud to the earth.
He leaped out and pulled her up.
“Come on, goddammit, or I will put a bullet in your head and think no more of it.”