None of the other, shaded windows around the house afforded Nolan any view, though from Breen’s description he knew where everything was: adjacent to the living room was a kitchen (with space-age refrigerator, of course — stick a glass in a hole in the door and you get ice water) and Sam’s bedroom, which were side by side and together took up the same space as the rather large living room; in there somewhere was a toilet — Nolan didn’t remember exactly where — unless the Comforts still went the outhouse route, or maybe the cows weren’t the only ones crapping in the pasture. According to Breen, the old man’s room was unlike the others in the house, as it alone did not show signs of acquired affluence; the master bedroom was as empty and functional as the old man’s mind. Upstairs was a bedroom for Terry (the statutory rapist presently being rehabilitated) and another for Billy — also an office affair Sam used for planning sessions and the like. Nolan could see colored lights flashing behind the shade on Billy’s window; Breen said Billy’s room was a pot freak’s retreat, water bed and strobe lights and black-light posters and tons of stereo equipment, enough wattage in the latter to power a fair-size radio station. He could hear the faint throb of rock music coming from that upper floor room, and he would have to make the hopefully safe assumption that Billy was mind-tripping up there, as was the boy’s usual practice.
Satisfied that he’d pinpointed both Comforts, Nolan went to work on the basement window in back of the house. The window came open easily, soundlessly, with the proper prying from his knife. He climbed down inside the Comforts’ lowest level, a washing machine right below the window serving as a step down for him, making his entry a quiet one.
He used a pen-flash to examine the room. This end of the long basement was the laundry room; the other was being converted into a bar and recreation area. This was the first remodeling the Comforts had undertaken, and they were apparently doing the work themselves, as it was pretty slipshod: boards, cans of paint, various building bullshit lying around.
Which was good, because this was the makings of a fire hazard; this made a logical reason for a basement fire, and should help to con Sam as he quickly tried to make some logic out of a fire breaking out in his house. The remodeling was almost finished, but not quite: the bar was in and linoleum was on the floor, but the ceiling wasn’t tiled, which was also good: those open ceiling beams would insure the effectiveness of the smoke bomb’s penetration.
Nolan knelt with the canister, pulled the lever, heard its pop, left it on the floor, mid-basement, turning his head away even before he’d let go of the can, as already its stream of smoke was shooting out like water from a firehose. The can hissed as it dispersed its contents, and Nolan headed toward the laundry end of the basement, then hopped up onto the washing machine and out the window.
He immediately returned to his view of Sam Comfort relaxing in the living room. A smile formed under the nylon mask as Nolan watched bewilderment grow on Sam’s face, first as Sam sniffed smoke, then as he saw smoke. After a slapstick double-take, the old clown jumped from the couch as if goosed and ran upstairs via the stairwell opening in the far corner of the room. The positioning of those stairs was a break for Nolan; with this view of the action, he’d be able to key on whether or not Sam opted for the front door, here in the living room, or the back door, out in the kitchen. Sam was only gone half a minute, then came tumbling out of the stairwell, a man who’d all but fallen down the stairs, coughing from the ever-thickening smoke, showing signs of panic, shaking in his damn underwear. As Sam came into clearer view in that smoke-clogged receptacle of a room, Nolan could see plainly under one of Sam’s arms an oversize green metal strongbox — Bingo! — while slung over Sam’s other arm was a double-barreled shotgun. He’s panicked all right, Nolan thought, but the old coot’s as suspicious and crafty as ever.
A sound — pop! — turned Nolan’s head, in reflex, before he realized the sound was only Jon’s smoke grenade going off, meaning things were running to plan. When he turned back, the old man was no longer in sight.
Shit! The room was pretty well dense with smoke now, and Nolan couldn’t tell if the front door was slightly ajar, which would have indicated whether Sam had gone out that way. Damn it, there was nothing to do but circle behind the house, and if Sam wasn’t back there, come on around and catch him out the front. Damn!
Nolan ran.
Sam wasn’t in back, nor was the back door ajar.
Alongside the house, where the Buick was, no sign of Sam there, either.
And what about Billy? An ugly chain of deduction was forming in Nolan’s mind. Sam had gone upstairs for three reasons, hadn’t he? To get the strongbox; to grab the shotgun; to warn his boy Billy. But Sam hadn’t been up there very long, barely long enough to do all those things. Why hadn’t Billy been following along on his daddy’s heels, down those steps? Why hadn’t Sam yelled “Fire!” when smoke first began trailing into the room, to warn Billy immediately? Shouldn’t that have been Sam’s natural reaction?
If, then, Billy hadn’t been upstairs, where had he been? And more important, where the hell was he now?
Once around the front of the house, Nolan knew the answer to that. Nolan’s questions about Billy were, for the most part, anyway, answered: Billy had not been in the house; Billy had been outside, Christ knows why or where. And Billy was onto the “burning house” trick. In fact, Billy was right next to the smoke grenade Jon had planted.
And Billy was grinning. The smoke was just as thick out here as in the house, but Nolan could see that Billy was grinning. Billy was laughing, or was doing something like laughing, a combination of rasping smoke-cough and sick snickering. Billy was stoned out of his head, and Billy was standing with one foot on Jon’s chest, getting ready to heave one mother of a pitchfork down into Jon, punching steel teeth through the kid, pinning him to the earth like a scarecrow.
Nolan was still running, a slow but steady jog, and he bumped into Sam, who’d come out the front door, and the two men came face to face and for just a moment. Nylon mask or no, Nolan felt he could sense recognition in Sam’s flat gray eyes.
Nolan slapped the old man across the side of the face with the .38 and Sam said, “Unggh!” and toppled, colliding with Nolan. Nolan hit the ground and was on his feet again within the same second, and he brought up the .38 and fired twice.
The shots broke the country calm like cracks of thunder. The bullets hit Billy Comfort in the chest and rocked him, shook him like a naughty child, exploded through him, blood squirting from the front of him, a spatter of bone and organs and more blood bursting out his back. He pitched backward, gurgling, dying.
Jon was awake now and rolling to one side as Billy Comfort’s last effort in life — the hurling of the pitchfork — came to no account: the fork quivered in the ground, right next to Jon, but not, thankfully, in him.
Nolan looked at Jon and, with their stocking-distorted features, they exchanged a look that had in it any number of things — relief and shock and frustration among them, perhaps regret as well — and suddenly Jon’s face distorted further under the mask, as he yelled, “Nolan! The old man!”
And as he remembered Sam Comfort, whom he’d merely cuffed out of the way so he could take care of more important business, as he recalled the crazy old man with a shotgun, Nolan heard the country calm shatter a second time in gunfire.