Then Mona Sue screamed, “No!” and broke the frozen moment.
The bad knee gave Benbow time to get off a round. The heavy slug took Little R. L. in the top of his shoulder, tumbled through his chest, and exited just above his kidney in a shower of blood, bone splinters, and lung tissue, and dropped him like a side of beef on the deck. But the round had already gone on its merry way through the sternum of the doctor as if he weren’t there. Which, in moments, he wasn’t.
Benbow threw the pistol joyfully behind him, heard it splash in the pool, and hurried to Mona Sue’s side. As he kissed her blood-spattered face, she moaned softly. He leaned closer, but only mistook her moans for passion until he understood what she was saying. Over and over. The way she once called his name. And Little R. L.’s. Maybe even the old man’s. “Cowboy, Cowboy, Cowboy,” she whispered.
Benbow wasn’t even mildly surprised when he felt the arm at his throat or the blade tickle his short ribs. “I took you for a backstabber,” he said, “the first time I laid eyes on your sorry ass.”
“Just tell me where the money is, old man,” the wrangler whispered, “and you can die easy.”
“You can have the money,” Benbow sobbed, trying for one final break, “just leave me the woman.” But the flash of scorn in Mona Sue’s eyes was the only answer he needed. “Fuck it,” Benbow said, almost laughing, “let’s do it the hard way.”
Then he fell backward onto the hunting knife, driving the blade to the hilt above his short ribs before the wrangler could release the handle. He stepped back in horror as Benbow stumbled toward the hot waters of the pool.
At first, the blade felt cold in Benbow’s flesh, but the flowing blood quickly warmed it. Then he eased himself into the hot water and lay back against its compassionate weight like the old man the wrangler had called him. The wrangler stood over Benbow, his eyes like coals glowing through the fog and thick snow. Mona Sue stepped up beside the wrangler, Benbow’s baby whimpering at her chest, snow melting on her shoulders.
“Fuck it,” Benbow whispered, drifting now. “it’s in the air conditioner.”
“Thanks, old man,” Mona Sue said, smiling.
“Take care,” Benbow whispered, thinking. This is the easy part, then leaned farther back into the water, sailing on the pool’s wind-riffled, snow-shot surface, eyes closed, happy in the hot, heavy water, moving his hands slightly to stay afloat, his fingers tangled in dark, bloody streams, the wind pushing him toward the cool water at the far end of the pool, blinking against the soft cold snow, until his tired body slipped, unwatched, beneath the hot water to rest.
Jeffery Deaver
The Weekender
from Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
I looked in the rear-view mirror and didn’t see any lights, but I knew they were after us and it was only a matter of time till I’d see the cops.
Toth started to talk, but I told him to shut up and got the Buick up to eighty. The road was empty, nothing but pine trees for miles around.
“Oh brother,” Toth muttered. I felt his eyes on me, but I didn’t even want to look at him, I was so mad.
They were never easy, drugstores.
Because, just watch sometime, when cops make their rounds they cruise drugstores more often than anyplace else. Because of the prescription drugs.
You’d think they’d stake out convenience stores. But those’re a joke, and with the closed circuit TV you’re going to get your picture took, you just are. So nobody who knows the business, I mean really knows it, hits them. And banks, forget banks. Even ATMs. I mean, how much can you clear? Three, four hundred tops? And around here the Fast Cash button gives you twenty bucks. Which tells you something. So why even bother?
No. We wanted cash and that meant a drugstore, even though they can be tricky. Ardmore Drugs. Which is a big store in a little town. Liggett Falls. Sixty miles from Albany and a hundred or so from where Toth and me lived, farther west into the mountains. Liggett Falls is a poor place. You’d think it wouldn’t make sense to hit a store there. But that’s exactly why — because like everywhere else people there need medicine and hairspray and makeup only they don’t have credit cards. Except maybe a Sears or Penney’s. So they pay cash.
“Oh brother,” Toth whispered again. “Look.”
And he made me even madder, him saying that. I wanted to shout, look at what, you son of a bitch? But then I could see what he was talking about, and I didn’t say anything. Up ahead. It was like just before dawn, light on the horizon. Only this was red, and the light wasn’t steady. It was like it was pulsing, and I knew that they’d got the roadblock up already. This was the only road to the interstate from Liggett Falls. So I should’ve guessed.
“I got an idea,” Toth said. Which I didn’t want to hear but I also wasn’t going to go through another shootout. Sure not at a roadblock where they was ready for us.
“What?” I snapped.
“There’s a town over there. See those lights? I know a road’ll take us there.”
Toth’s a big guy, and he looks calm. Only he isn’t really. He gets shook easy, and he now kept turning around, skittish, looking in the back seat. I wanted to slap him and tell him to chill.
“Where’s it?” I asked. “This town?”
“About four, five miles. The turnoff, it ain’t marked. But I know it.”
This was that lousy upstate area where everything’s green. But dirty green, you know. And all the buildings’re gray. These gross little shacks, pickups on blocks. Little towns without even a 7-Eleven. And full of hills they call mountains but aren’t.
Toth cranked down the window and let this cold air in and looked up at the sky. “They can find us with those, you know, satellite things.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You know, they can see you from miles up. I saw it in a movie.”
“You think the state cops do that? Are you nuts?”
This guy, I don’t know why I work with him. And after what happened at the drugstore, I won’t again.
He pointed out where to turn, and I did. He said the town was at the base of The Lookout. Well. I remembered passing that on the way to Liggett Falls that afternoon. It was this huge rock a couple of hundred feet high. Which if you looked at it right looked like a man’s head, like a profile, squinting. It’d been some kind of big deal to the Indians around here. Blah, blah, blah. He told me, but I didn’t pay no attention. It was spooky, that weird face, and I looked once and kept on driving. I didn’t like it. I’m not really superstitious, but sometimes I am.
“Winchester,” he said now, meaning what the name of the town was. Five, six thousand people. We could find an empty house, stash the car in a garage, and just wait out the search. Wait till tomorrow afternoon — Sunday — when all the weekenders were driving back to Boston and New York and we’d be lost in the crowd.
I could see The Lookout up ahead, not really a shape, mostly this blackness where the stars weren’t. And then the guy on the floor in the back started to moan all of a sudden and just about give me a heart attack.
“You. Shut up back there.” I slapped the seat, and the guy in the back went quiet.
What a night.
We’d got to the drugstore fifteen minutes before it closed. Like you ought to do. ’Cause mosta the customers’re gone and a lot’ve the clerks’ve left and people’re tired, and when you push a Clock or Sinitty into their faces, they’ll do just about anything you ask.
Except tonight.
We had our masks down and walked in slow. Toth getting the manager out of his little office, a fat guy started crying and that made me mad, a grown man doing that. He kept a gun on the customers and the clerks, and I was telling the cashier, this kid, to open the tills and, Jesus, he had an attitude. Like he’d seen all of those Steven Seagal movies or something. A little kiss on the cheek with the Smitty and he changed his mind and started moving. Cussing me out, but he was moving. I was counting the bucks as we were going along from one till to the next, and sure enough, we were up to about three thousand when I heard this noise and turned around and what it was, Toth was knocking a rack of chips over. I mean, Jesus. He’s getting Doritos!