“No,” Van said, “but I won’t give you a broken arm to go with the one they dislocated. How’s that?”
The little man chuckled and said, “All righty, but it’s just cause I got a soft spot for wide women.”
If she had felt more like herself Van might’ve had to beat the shit out of him for a comment like that—it wouldn’t be hard and it would be public service—but in her exhaustion, she hardly considered it. “Come on, then.”
Fritz pushed up from the couch. “Phone’s on the kitchen table.” She backed up, keeping the rifle on him.
He led her down a short, dark hall and into the kitchen. There was a stench of ash that made Van gag. “What have you been cooking?”
“Candy,” Fritz said. He thumped down at a linoleum-topped table.
“Candy?” It didn’t smell like any candy she knew of. Gray scraps, like bits of burned newspaper, were scattered around the floor.
“Candy’s my wife,” he said. “Now deceased. Lit the mouthy old bag up with a kitchen match. Never realized she had such a spark.” His black and brown teeth were revealed in a ferocious grin. “Get it? Spark?”
No avoiding it now. Tired or not, she was going to have to put a hurting on the vile bastard. That was Van’s first thought. The second was, there was no cell phone on the linoleum-topped table.
A gun banged and the air went out of Van. She thumped against the refrigerator and down to the floor. Blood spilled from a bullet wound at her hip. The rifle she had been holding had flown from her hands. Smoke curled from around the edge of the eating table directly in front of her. She spotted the barrel then; the pistol that Meshaum had strapped underneath the tabletop.
Fritz pulled it free of the duct tape that had held it, stood, and came around the table. “Never can be too careful. Keep a loaded gun in every room.” He squatted down beside her and jammed the barrel of a pistol against her forehead. His breath smelled like tobacco and meat. “This one was my opa’s. What you think about that, you fat pig?”
She didn’t think much of it, and didn’t have to. Van Lampley’s right arm—the arm that had put down Hallie “Wrecker” O’Meara in the championship match of the 2010 Ohio Valley Women’s 35–45 Year-Old Division, and snapped one of Erin Makepeace’s elbow ligaments in 2011 to repeat—was like a spring trap. Her right hand swung up, catching Fritz Meshaum’s wrist and squeezing with fingers made of steel, jerking down so violently that he was pitched forward on top of her. The antique pistol went off, putting a bullet into the floor between Van’s arm and side. Bile rose in her throat as the weight of his body pressed into her wound, but she kept twisting his wrist, and at that angle all he could do was fire into the floor again before the gun slipped from his hand. Bones popped. Ligaments twanged. Fritz screamed. He bit her hand, but she just turned harder on his wrist, and began to methodically punch him in the back of the head with her left fist, driving down with the diamond of her engagement ring.
“Okay, okay! Uncle! Fuckin uncle! I give!” screamed Fritz Meshaum. “That’s enough!”
But Van did not think so. Her bicep flexed and the tattoo of the headstone—YOUR PRIDE—swelled.
She kept twisting with one hand and punching with the other.
CHAPTER 12
On the prison’s last night, the weather cleared and the rain clouds of the day were blown south by a steady wind, leaving the sky to the stars and inviting the animals to stick their heads up, and sniff, and converse. No seventy-two hours. No second thoughts. A change was coming tomorrow. The animals felt it the way they felt oncoming thunderstorms.
Hunkered beside his partner in the rearmost seat of one of the schoolbuses that had been requisitioned to block Route 31, Eric Blass listened to Don Peters’s snores. Any vague remorse Eric had felt about burning Old Essie had been assuaged by the fading of the day. If no one ever noticed she was gone, what did she count for, really?
Rand Quigley, a far more thoughtful man than most gave him credit for, was also hunkered down. His spot was in a plastic chair in the visitors’ room. In his lap he had overturned the toddler-sized toy car from the family area. It had been a source of disappointment for as long as Rand could remember; the kids of the inmates climbed in it and pushed forward, but got frustrated because they couldn’t turn. The problem was a broken axle. Rand had fetched a tube of epoxy from his toolbox and glued the break, and now he tied the pieces together to set with a bowline knot of twine. That he might be in his last hours did not elude Officer Quigley. It comforted him to do something useful with whatever time might be left.
On the wooded knoll above the prison, Maynard Griner stared up at the stars, and fantasized about shooting them out with Fritz’s bazooka. If you could do that, would they pop like light bulbs? Had anyone—scientists, maybe—poked a hole in space? Did aliens on other planets ever think about shooting out stars with bazookas or death-rays?
Lowell, propped against the trunk of a cedar, commanded his brother, who was flat on his back, to wipe his mouth; the light of the stars, sent out billions of years ago, glimmered on Maynard’s drool. Low’s mood was sour. He did not like to wait, but it was not in their best interest to unload with the artillery until the cops made their move. The mosquitoes were biting and some hemorrhoid of an owl had been screeching since sundown. Valium would have improved his spirits greatly. Even some Nyquil would have been helpful. If Big Lowell’s grave had been nearby, Little Lowell would not have hesitated to dig up the rotting corpse and relieve it of that bottle of Rebel Yell.
Down below, the T-shaped structure of the prison lay pinned in the harsh radiance that shone from the light towers. On three sides, woods surrounded the dell in which the building stood. There was an open field to the east, running up to the high ground where Low and May were camped. That field was, Low thought, an excellent firing lane. Nothing at all to impede the flight of a high-explosive bazooka shell. When the time came, it was going to be awesome.
Two men crouched in the space between the nose of Barry Holden’s Fleetwood and the front doors of the prison.
“You want to do the honors?” Tig asked Clint.
Clint wasn’t sure it was an honor, but said okay and lit the match. He placed it against the trail of gas that Tig and Rand had laid earlier.
The trail flamed, snaking from the front doors across the apron of the parking lot and under the interior fence. In the grass median that separated this fence from the second, outer fence, the piles of doused tires first smoldered and then began to flicker. Soon, the firelight had cut away much of the darkness at the perimeter of the prison. Curls of filthy smoke began to rise.
Clint and Tig went back inside.
In the darkened officers’ break room, Michaela used a flashlight to sift the drawers. She found a pack of Bicycles, and asked Jared to play War with her. Everyone else, save the three remaining wakeful prisoners, was on watch. Michaela needed something to occupy herself. It was around ten PM on Monday night. Way back last Thursday morning, she had awoken at six sharp and gone running. Feeling frisky, feeling fine.
“Can’t,” Jared said.
“What?” Michaela asked.
“Super busy,” he said, and gave a twitchy grin. “Thinking about stuff I should have done, and didn’t. And how my dad and mom should have waited to be mad at each other. Also about how my girlfriend—she wasn’t really my girlfriend, but sort of—fell asleep while I was holding her.” He repeated, “Super busy.”