A final piece of the puzzle fell into place. The reason Denton hated me was because I worked with animals. A mother who trained horses so well they thought with one mind had probably spent more time with them than she did with her little boy. Especially her first little boy, when the act with the horses was new and she was working hard to perfect it. Because I worked with animals, Denton had moved me to the place in his mind where a twisted coil of hatred toward his mother lay.
“What about your father? And Stevie? Why kill them?”
He made a bitter sound that was half laugh. “Conrad was the only one who mattered to him. Conrad and his stupid sissy clothes and his freak circus friends, his freak man-wife. All of them were freaks, and they didn’t care how they humiliated me. Never gave it one thought. I made millions with nothing but my brains, all Conrad ever did was give away the money somebody else made. Well, now they can all get together and dress up in their stupid clown outfits, forever and ever, amen.”
Self-pity from anybody is annoying. From a murderer, it’s downright disgusting.
Gabe must have thought so too, because he yelled, “Let her go, damn it!”
Denton’s arm muscles tensed in preparation for flinging them wide, and I braced myself to land on my feet.
28
I was almost surprised that fear didn’t buckle my knees when Denton took his arm away and let my feet touch the ground. He crossed the distance between me and the other men and stood beside Leo Brossi.
Little cold fingers climbed my spine, vertebra by vertebra. It was almost a sick joke: woman convinces cops to use her as a lure to catch a killer, woman goes off on her own with dead phone, woman gets killed after all.
He said, “Okay, Gabe, do it.”
Leo said, “Not so fast. I’m fucking that bitch first, and then I have some other things planned for her.”
Gabe frowned at him. “You didn’t say anything about that.”
Leo said, “What the hell’s the matter with you, boy? You probably fuck rattlesnakes. Denton, take the bitch in the house. I’m not doing her in the yard.”
Denton said, “Leo, don’t complicate things.”
“Look, the bitch hit me. She broke my nose. I’ve got a fuck coming, and I’m taking it.”
Gabe said, “Rape ain’t right. I don’t care how much of a cunt she is.”
It almost sounded as if Gabe might have a thread of decency somewhere in his beetle brain. I suddenly remembered the stuffed toy he’d brought the baby. The memory of it was a little ray of light. Denton Ferrelli had a sick twisted mind, and Leo Brossi was a career criminal, but Gabe was just a dumb kid living with snakes and alligators and thinking that killing things made him a man.
I said, “Leo will rape your baby girl if he gets a chance, Gabe.”
Leo said, “Goddamn it, Denton, get the woman in the house!”
Like a bull pricked by picadors, Gabe glowered at me and then at Leo. “Not in my house.”
Leo said, “I’m not asking your permission, boy.”
Gabe’s lower lip crept forward. “I ain’t your boy.”
Denton said, “That’s enough, both of you!”
I said, “Guess what, Gabe. Leo raped Priscilla before he gave her to you. The baby might even be his.”
A dark painful flush spread up Gabe’s neck. Denton laughed, and Gabe looked quickly at him.
I said, “They think you’re funny, Gabe. They think it’s funny to use your woman, your baby, anything they want. And when they’re through with you, they’ll think it’s funny when they kill you.”
“Shut up, cunt. Ain’t nobody killing me.”
“They’ll have to. You know too much. You think they’re going to let you go around knowing what you know?”
Gabe was dumb, but he wasn’t so dumb he didn’t know I could be telling the truth. His brow furrowed and he cut his eyes toward Leo and Denton.
Leo said, “Kid, she’s fucking with your mind. Now shut up and do as you’re told. I want the woman in the house.”
Denton said, “Leo, let it go.”
Over him, Gabe said, “What the hell you mean, do as I’m told?”
Gabe’s face looked like a four-year-old’s about to cry or throw a tantrum, and his hand holding the dart gun looked twitchy. He swung angrily toward Denton.
“You was there both times, and if you think I won’t tell the cops you was, you better think again.”
Denton scowled at him. “Gabe, this isn’t the time—”
Reggie slammed himself against the door of the shed with such determined force that it cracked and rattled against the wooden latch. The men all shot a quick look toward the shed, and my hand began to inch toward my shorts pocket where my .38 was making a hard statement on my thigh. As if the words were wrenched from him, Gabe pulled himself taller and sputtered, “Mr. Brossi, is what she said true? Did you rape Priscilla?”
Leo Brossi grinned and made a lewd jerking motion with his pelvis, looking in his shiny silk like a banty rooster posturing under a bull.
“Wasn’t rape, boy. She liked it. Probably never had nothing but boys before.”
Denton said, “Leo, that’s enough!”
Stung, a small man between two large men, Leo pivoted toward Denton to make himself feel bigger.
“Speak for yourself, Denton. You have your plans, I have mine.”
Behind him, Gabe made a strangled sound and whipped the dart gun up to point it at Leo Brossi. Brossi made a quick instinctive movement to the back of his waist, and in the next instant a shimmering knife blade sliced through the air and pierced the side of Gabe’s neck.
For a second, time seemed to freeze. Gabe remained standing for what seemed an eternity, staring at Leo with incredulous shock, his face traced by inarticulate runnels of private agony. The geyser of dark blood arching from his neck seemed to move in imperceptible increments. My hand seemed to take eons to creep into my shorts pocket and come out with my .38.
At the same time, Denton shouted “Fool!” and ran to stand behind Gabe and chop his fist down on Gabe’s thick forearm holding the gun still pointed toward Leo Brossi.
Perhaps it was the blow that caused Gabe’s trigger finger to squeeze instinctively, or perhaps Gabe’s final movement was deliberate. The dart left the gun with a sharp phifftt and caught Leo square in the shoulder. Leo’s other hand swung toward the point of impact as if to pull the dart out, but the drug was faster than his hand. His eyelids fluttered, his face quivered, and he crumpled to the ground and lay motionless, only the horror in his eyes evidence that he was conscious.
Only then did Gabe fall into the pool of his own blood, his sturdy young legs in their tight denim already flaccid in death.
I held my gun extended with both hands, waiting for the moment when I had a clear target. Inside the shed, Reggie was hysterical, banging himself against the shed door so hard it seemed as if the door must surely split from the impact.
As Gabe fell, Denton crouched low and scrambled through the river of blood to grab Gabe’s backup dart gun from its leather holster. I gripped my gun and sighted his head, my finger ready on the trigger.
Denton’s fear was palpable. Things hadn’t gone the way he’d planned. A lifetime of bullying people weaker than himself hadn’t prepared him for the moment when one of his thugs lay bleeding out on the sandy ground, another was turning blue from asphyxiation, and a woman he’d planned to feed to the alligators had him in her gunsight.
The shed door slammed open with a loud crack, and Reggie charged out in snarling fury, graceful flanks smoothly churning, wide chest heaving, no confusion in his mind anymore about whether it was right to attack a man who had been welcome in his master’s home. Even muzzled, he was a ferocious sight.