It was Charlie.
The cop Leonard kicked was named Gleason. I had seen him the day they tore Uncle Chester’s flooring up. He was the fat cop with the bad toupee Mohawk had yelled at. He wasn’t any slimmer, and now his bad toupee was wet and in the light of his and Charlie’s flashlight, it looked like some kind of strange tribal skullcap.
Leonard had really planted that kick. Gleason took a long time to start breathing naturally, but the guy had enough fat nothing got broken. Charlie wasn’t feeling that good either. He had a knot on the side of his head where I had connected with the flashlight.
“Man, that flashlight hurt,” Charlie said.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Goddamn, you motherfuckers are quick.”
“How’s the head?” I said.
“It hurts, what’ya think?” Charlie rubbed the knot on his head. “Goddamn.”
“Sorry, Charlie. If it’s any consolation, I think you broke Leonard’s flashlight.”
“Yeah, well, buy another. My head, I just got this one. What the fuck you two doing here?”
We told him.
“You think Hanson didn’t think of covering this place?” Charlie said. “Jesus, we may not be the incredibly clever sleuths you boys are, but we think of a few things. We even brought along a lunch.”
“Charlie forgot the chips, though,” Gleason said. “I told him twicet about the chips, and he still forgot ’em. A sandwich without chips ain’t no good.”
“Would you lose the chips, Gleason?” Charlie said.
“I just said you forgot is all,” Gleason said.
“The point here is not that I forgot the chips out of our lunch,” Charlie said, “it’s that you two morons are screwing stuff up.”
“I told you we’re sorry,” I said. “Jesus, what you want us to do, shoot ourselves?”
“You could have fucked up an investigation.”
“Considering Fitzgerald hasn’t showed yet,” Leonard said, “I think things are already fucked.”
“Man,” Gleason said, “I think this guy busted something inside.”
Charlie put the light on Gleason. “You’re all right. Lose some fuckin’ weight. And take off that stupid toup.”
“He ought to leave it,” Leonard said. “The bad guys show up, he can scare ’em with it.”
“Yeah, well, you guys laugh,” Gleason said. “I had this special fitted.”
“Fitted for what?” Leonard said. “A fence post? You got more head than you got hair there. You need to shoot and field-dress another mop, pal.”
“Right, you’re Vidal Sassoon,” Gleason said.
And that’s when we heard someone coming through the woods from the back of the house.
“The lights,” Charlie said, and he killed the flash and Gleason killed his. We listened as the tromping came closer.
Charlie whispered, “Spread out, here’s you guys’ chance to use that karate shit on someone deserves it.”
We spread out. I took position by the door that led into the kitchen. I knew Charlie was somewhere to the left of me, and Leonard and Gleason were across the way.
We waited and the tromping went on around the side of the house and onto the front porch, then we heard the porch boards squeak, and not long after, the inside boards squeaked louder. The squeaking came our way. I felt the hair on the back of my neck bristle and there was a tightening of the groin and a loosening of the bowels. A light came from the room with the chifforobe, and the light bobbed into the kitchen, and a man came after it. Then the light swung to the right and its beam fell square and solid on Gleason, standing there like a stuffed bear, his toupee dangling off his skull like an otter clinging to a rock.
“Hey,” the startled man with the light said, and it was Fitzgerald’s voice, and for a moment, time was suspended. Then time came loose and from behind Fitzgerald a monstrous shadow charged into the room, and I moved, and everyone else moved, and I realized then that someone was running away from the chifforobe room, someone who had been with Fitzgerald and his brother, someone who had panicked.
I started to go after him, but I couldn’t get past the Reverend, so I stepped in and hit him with a right cross to the jaw and he dropped the flashlight and staggered across the room and Gleason grabbed him. When I hit him, the flash hit the floor and went around and around, showing Gleason and the Reverend, then shadow, then light, then the flash quit rolling and pinned them.
The big shadow was T.J., of course, and when Gleason grabbed Fitzgerald, T.J. grabbed Gleason, got him by the head with his huge hands, held it like it was a basketball he was about to shoot.
I heard the one who got away fall through some boards in the front room, heard him grunt and scramble, then Gleason let go of Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald spun and hit Gleason in the stomach with a hook, and though I was already moving, and so were the others, it was all too fast. T.J. had Gleason good. He twisted Gleason’s head like he was screwing the lid off a stubborn pickle jar. Gleason’s sad toupee popped loose, soared above the light of the flash, then came back to it like a hairy UFO and slapped the floor. Behind it all, you could hear Gleason’s neck crack like a plastic swizzle stick.
“Stop them!” Fitzgerald yelled to T.J., and Charlie was on Fitzgerald, and Leonard stepped in and kicked T.J. flush in the groin and drove his palm up into the giant’s chin, and the giant grunted and reached for Leonard, and Leonard moved away into shadow.
Charlie flew into me unconscious, courtesy of Fitzgerald’s left hook. I eased Charlie aside, and me and Fitzgerald came together.
The rhythm of our punches and the constant kicking of Leonard against T.J.’s body filled the room. I hit Fitzgerald with a jab and he hooked me to the body and I felt a rib crack, but I’d had that before. It wasn’t poking through the skin, so it was a pain I could isolate. I bobbed in and jabbed again and threw an overhand right, but Fitzgerald had moved out of the moon of light the flashlight provided, and I threw my punch at movement instead of substance. He leaned away and landed another in my ribs, same spot; it hurt like a knife had gone there.
But I had something Fitzgerald didn’t have: a four-wheel drive. I kicked him hard in the side of the leg, just above the knee, and he wobbled into the light, and I could see him good now, and I hit him with a right in the face and kicked with a left roundhouse to his ribs. He faded back into the darkness and ran.
I turned to look at Leonard, just as Leonard scoop-kicked the inside of T.J.’s knee, then side-snap-kicked to the front of it. T.J. went down with a yell, hit the floorboards hard, rolled over and screamed, tried to get up, but the shattered knee wouldn’t hold him.
I heard Fitzgerald break through glass and kick out window struttings, then I heard him drop to the ground outside. I grabbed the flashlight and went after him, my ribs throbbing. When I got to the window and started through, I heard Fitzgerald scream like a man with a stick in his eye, then the scream turned to an echo, then a flat, soul-breaking whine.
I dropped to the ground and shone the light around. The rain was still pounding, and even with the light it was hard to see. I could hear him, though: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death… Oh, Jesus, not this way.”
I went toward the sound, and it was coming from the old well. Fitzgerald had tumbled down there in the darkness. I cautiously slid up to the pile of rubble that had been the well’s rock foundation, bent over, and shone the light down.
Fitzgerald wasn’t saying anything now, he wasn’t making any kind of sound, but he was alive. I could see his eyes blinking at the rain. The well was not wide, and the fall had been hard, and there was all manner of rubble down there – rocks from the curbing, limbs and brush, stagnant water – and he had hit in such a way that his waist was twisted and his legs were turned at an angle only pipe cleaners should make.
“I’ll get you out,” I said.
But he wasn’t listening. He bent his head toward his chest, and his ruined body shifted and his chin went to his knees, which were too high up for anyone but an acrobat, then he was still. He eased slowly into the water, then hung on some kind of debris.