“Why not 911?”
“He’ll get here quicker.”
“Quicker than the cops down in Walnut Crossing?”
“After ten o’clock there are no cops in Walnut Crossing. Everything gets redirected to the sheriff’s department in Bounderville.”
“So what will—” She stopped, staring out the window. “What’s that?”
Gurney looked out in the direction she was pointing. There was an almost imperceptible orange glow on the foliage of a tree by the corner of the house. The glow was faint and unsteady, like the reflection of a small fire. He moved closer to the window for a broader view. There was no fire visible on that side of the house.
He ran to the kitchen and saw it immediately through the French doors—the beginning of a fire at the point where the new shed and the chicken coop were joined together. Madeleine followed him and was heading for the doors.
He put out his arm to stop her. “Stay back! The son of a bitch is waiting for us to come out.”
“But we have to stop the fire!”
“We will. But not this way. That’s what he wants. I’m going out the back way.”
He ran to the bedroom, put on his sneakers, and slipped out through the window next to the bed. Landing on an uneven spot in the moist grass, he twisted his ankle sharply, the stab of pain diluted by adrenaline. He pulled the Beretta from his rear pocket and eased off the safety.
A triple flash of lightning illuminated the thicket behind the house. He saw no one. He made his way in the dark to the nearest corner of the house, then around that to the end of the side that faced the chicken coop. Crouching, he peered slowly around the corner drainpipe.
The fire was larger now, its glow clearly illuminating the area between the coop and the house. The area behind the coop and on Gurney’s side of it were left in darkness, seemingly deeper now in contrast with the blaze.
Still seeing no one, he crept out from the house as far as the asparagus bed, whose foot-high enclosure of four-by-fours offered partial shelter, and waited there to see what the next lightning flash might reveal.
The flash came a second later. What it revealed was both predictable and shocking.
Beyond the end of the coop, at the corner of the new shed, stood a perfect image of Billy Tate—the Billy Tate he’d seen in the video of the crazy night on the roof of St. Giles—Billy Tate in a gray hoodie and black jeans. But instead of a spray can for graffiti, this Billy Tate was carrying an AK-47. As suddenly as it had illuminated him, the flash died, and the hooded figure disappeared in the darkness, followed by a deafening crash of thunder.
The idea of calling out, “Police! Drop the gun! Now!” would satisfy a procedural guideline, but it would materially diminish the chances of survival—his own and Madeleine’s. And survival was now the imperative.
With one knee on the ground, Gurney raised his Beretta in a solid two-handed firing grip and waited again for the lightning. When the flash came, his view of the corner of the shed was partially blocked by the asparagus ferns bending and swaying in the wind. But he caught a glimpse of the assault rifle and the gray sweatshirt, and he fired off three quick rounds.
There was a yelp of pain, a curse, followed a moment later in the pitch darkness by half a dozen return rounds, two of which Gurney heard strike the low wall of the planting bed he was using as a shield.
Since there was no longer any downside in doing so, he shouted out the standard police warning. Twice. When there was no reply, he fired off another three rounds in the direction of the shed, then retreated around to the back of the house, feeling his way to the far side, from which he’d have a clear, direct line of fire to the hidden side of the shed.
Aided now by multiple lightning flashes, he ran toward that ideal position. Just as he arrived there, he stepped on the edge of a rock, turning the same ankle he’d injured on his way out the bedroom window. Feeling something in the joint snap, he stumbled out uncontrollably from behind the house into firelight and fell to the ground.
The hooded figure at the side of the shed whirled around, firing wildly in the direction of the sound. Gurney heard the sharp crack-crack-crack of the bullets hitting the house and still others ripping through the thick shrubs at the edge of the patio. From his prone position, he fired back—eight or nine rounds, he wasn’t sure which.
In the next lightning flash there was no sign of the hooded figure. Gurney forced himself to his feet, thinking that he would make his way back to the bedroom window and into the house for his shotgun. But when he tried to walk, he found that he couldn’t. His mind was racing for an alternative when the gray figure slowly emerged from the darkness by the shed into the light of the fire.
Gurney raised the Beretta, pulled the trigger, and heard the worst possible sound—the metallic click of the hammer on an empty chamber.
The gray figure moved a few steps forward, the AK-47 leveled at Gurney’s chest. The lack of any discernible features beneath the hood made the rasping laugh that came out of it seem hardly human.
“Time to take out the garbage,” said the voice. Neither identifiably male nor female, it sounded like something being extruded from a rusted machine.
Having been on the front line of hundreds of homicide investigations in the city, this was not the first time Gurney had found himself at a potentially fatal disadvantage with a killer. The crucial objective was to create a delay. The longer he could keep that trigger from being pulled, the better his chance of preventing it entirely.
His experience told him that most killers, unless driven by uncontrollable rages, could be tempted into pausing in situations like this in order to find out what the intended victim or the police might know about them or their crimes. The key was to reveal a sequence of facts, gradually drawing out the narrative without the real goal—delay—becoming obvious. This demanded a delicate balance. Details that carried an emotional charge were the best obscurers of delay, but they carried the risk of igniting a deadly reaction.
Gurney began with a simple question.
“Was she worth it?”
A jagged lightning strike punctuated the question, and for a startling second its flash was reflected in the malevolent eyes fixed on Gurney.
He continued, speaking softly, insinuatingly. “The high school goddess. Irresistible and untouchable. Except by Billy Tate. It must have been nearly unbearable that a scruffy delinquent like Tate could have what you couldn’t. And then, even worse, she sold herself to that disgusting old man on Harrow Hill. I can imagine your envy, the acid eating away your life, year after year. And then, the miracle. She spoke to you. Showed interest in you. My God, what a rush that must have been! Your chance at last. I wonder how long it took before she started telling you how unhappy she was with her married life, how she longed to be free of it. Perhaps she claimed to have certain feelings about you, maybe that she always felt you two had something in common. Maybe that was all the direction and encouragement you needed. Or maybe she was more specific about that terrible old Angus being the sole obstacle to her happiness—a happiness that she’d be inclined to share with you. Perhaps she gave you an advance taste of that happiness. You understood what she wanted you to do. You just weren’t sure how to proceed. So much at stake. Such a desirable prize. Such a terrible risk. But then the great opportunity fell into your lap.”
The chickens were squawking wildly now, no doubt sensing the growing conflagration on the outside of their coop.
When Gurney glanced in that direction, he noticed a dark figure moving along the edge of the firelit area and disappearing behind the coop.
He tried to maintain the calm flow of his narrative.