Prescott slipped in the back door, locked it, pushed a new magazine into his pistol, then moved to the front door. He reached up and flipped the light switch beside it. Outside, the light was painfully brilliant. The floodlights Prescott had installed in the trees above the line of brush where the killer had hidden poured down in a bright, white halogen light that seared the eyes and made the leaves on the bushes shine. Prescott waited. He knew there were only two ways for the killer to react, and either one was going to put him in front of Prescott’s sights one final time. He crouched by the window to see which way it would be. The killer could turn and try to run off across the huge open field of old corn stubble, a five-minute run with nothing that rose higher than his socks to obscure the view of his back. Prescott believed he had already closed that possibility: in order to scare him into falling into the empty pool, he had fired a rifle. This killer would know enough not to run across empty, open land, and he could not stay in the suddenly lighted bushes. He had seen Prescott’s muzzle flash coming from the woods, so he wouldn’t go in that direction. But he knew there was one place left where the odds would be about even.
Prescott stood back from the window, raised his pistol to shoulder level, and waited for the front door to swing open. After ten seconds, he sensed that something was not right. It was a vague, irritating discomfort at first, then a feeling of distraction. It was a sound. It was an unexpected sound, one he had done his utmost to make impossible. He listened more carefully, hoping it was coming from far away—a freak of the damp night air that had thrown a noise across the empty fields. He stepped to the side window in time to see a bush still shaking, a leaf brushed from it falling to the ground. It was too late for a quick shot from here. The killer was out of the brush now, already too close, moving along the clapboards somewhere near the front of the house.
Prescott tried to listen for footsteps. It might be possible to hear the man’s shoulder scrape against the clapboards, then put five or six shots through the outer wall about two feet up from the floor. But listening had become futile, because the engine sound was louder now. He heard the springs of the car give a squeak, and there was a metallic scrape as the nose tipped down over the deep rut in the gravel drive. He spun and ran for the back door, stuck the key in and opened it, then dashed outside toward the corner of the house, squinting against the searing light of the floods across the yard.
His experience told him not to pause at the corner of the house, because that was where the killer would fire instinctively. He determined to step out beyond it, where the light would be out of his eyes and he would have a full view of the side of the house.
He reached the corner, dashed out, and pivoted. The killer’s shot slashed along the side of the house, leaving a line of bare wood, and ricocheted off into the distance.
Prescott fired. The killer’s left forearm was slapped outward from his body, and Prescott knew he had hit it, but the killer was already moving around the corner to the front of the house. If the wound had slowed him, it was too late for Prescott to see it.
Prescott ran after him, his mind flashing images of the front, trying to predict where the killer would stop to aim. The killer would be ready. Prescott would not. He would have to see, sort out the shapes instantly, and place his one, final shot before the killer put a round through his head. Prescott was almost to the corner before he was sure: practice. This killer was good because he practiced. When shooters practiced, what they became good at was what the ranges offered them: they practiced seeing something pop up, aiming, and shooting it. They practiced leading a target that moved side to side. What they didn’t practice was the target that came in low, moving straight at them. Prescott veered away from the house, came in at the corner and dived, trying to use the moment of fast motion to see.
He saw the human shape on the porch and aimed at it, but the muzzle flash came from somewhere to the left, beyond it. The shot caught the muscles along the top of Prescott’s left shoulder, beside his neck, and sent pain streaking down his shoulder blade. He hit the ground hard, not able to break his fall with his left arm. He tried to aim at the place where he had seen the muzzle flash, but he could make out nothing.
The human being moved away from the door, and Prescott could see better. It was a young woman, thin and dark-haired, and she was bent backward. The killer had his injured arm draped over her shoulder, and the other hand holding the pistol beside her face. She was terrified, her face set in a wide-mouthed, silent wail as the killer held her in front of him and sidestepped off the porch. Prescott aimed, trying to find a bit of the man—an inch or two—where he could put a fatal shot.
“Fire and she’s dead!” The voice was the one Prescott had heard so many times over the telephone, and it had lost none of its bravado. It sounded eager and full of hatred.
Prescott lay still, the gun in his hand useless, the house he had carefully selected and turned into a trap now irrelevant. He watched the killer open the driver’s door, get the girl into it, and slip into the back seat behind her without ever presenting him with a shot he could be sure would be fatal. He watched the car back down the gravel driveway for two hundred feet before it swung around. He watched the Lincoln Navigator in the driveway slump suddenly as a shot pierced the right front tire, then jump a few times as shots pounded into radiator, engine compartment, and windshield. As the car drove off, he pulled himself awkwardly to his feet and hurried to find the cell phone he had left in the bushes.
37
Varney lay back in the back seat while Mae drove out of the gravel driveway onto the road. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she chanted. “All those lights were on, so I thought it must be over, and it would be okay to drive in.”
Varney spoke carefully, his face set in the effort to overlook the pain in his arm. “I’m not mad. Just shut up and let me think for a minute.” He knew that she wanted to say something more. “Just drive to the casino fast. We need a different car.”
She reached the casino in a few minutes. She parked the car in the middle of a long line of vehicles, then sat and watched while Varney opened the trunk and reached into the suitcase that contained his tools. He took a long, thin strip of sheet metal, slipped it into the space beside the window of the car beside theirs, moved it around a bit, then tugged it to make the lock button pop up. He opened the door, sat in the driver’s seat, used a big screwdriver to pop the silver ignition switch with the key slot out of its socket, and connected two wires from the back of it, starting the car. Then he pulled the trunk-release latch and the trunk popped open. He came back to the car where Mae sat and said, “Put everything in this car, and then wipe that one down and lock it up.”
While she worked, he sat on the rear bumper of the car he had started. “Drive straight to Interstate 35, down to Minneapolis. It’s the fastest way, and we want speed. Now shut me in.”
She gaped at him. “You’re going to ride in the trunk?”
He said quietly, “There will be cops everywhere in about five more minutes. They’re going to be looking for the two of us in a red Ford. But it’s going to be just you in a gray Toyota. See?”