“Look what I done, Gare,” Earl whispered. “He’s dead. His whole head... look.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, quit whining! Put that sack o’ shit in the car and get rid of it. Do it!”
Earl gazed down at the limp body of the man he’d just killed. The eyes were open; they caught white moonlight and glowed eerily. Earl looked uneasily at his partner, wiping his palm on his unclean jeans. “Oh, man.” Finally he grabbed the body, muscled it into the car.
“Where—?”
“The bushes! Drive it into the bushes! Where d’you think?”
As Earl hid the car, Gare turned back to Runyer. He fished the cuff key from his uniform pocket and unlocked them. “Now,” he mocked, “we’ve got some rules. One is, get on your belly.” He shoved Runyer onto the cold asphalt.
“Rule two is you give me any crap and you get shot.”
“Gare—”
“What? What?”
“Tell him it wasn’t my fault. I mean, shooting that guy.”
“Of course it wasn’t. It was his fault, Earl.” He nodded at Runyer. “He shouldn’t’ve stopped us.”
“Look, mister,” Runyer said, “so far it’s just manslaughter. If you—”
Gare sighed, lifted the revolver, and pulled the trigger.
The powder granules hurt most of all, stinging Runyer’s face and his right hand, which he’d lifted defensively. He hardly felt the bullet, other than the punch in the stomach and the snap of his rib.
“Oh.” Runyer sank down on his elbow. “My.” He felt loose inside, unattached.
“I told you rule number two. Weren’t you listening?”
“Lisa Lee,” Runyer whispered. He held his belly. But not too tight. He was afraid to touch the bullet hole.
The cold autumn wind was powerful in the Green Mountains. It carried sounds a long way despite the hilly terrain. They could hear the sirens real clear.
The men looked up at the spiky horizon and saw a carnival of flashing lights.
“Two of ’em,” Gare said. “Shit.”
“Mebbe three. Could be three.”
Gare ran to the squad car, got inside. He shut off the light bar, then started the car over the cliff, stepping out just before it nosed over. It fell with the sound of crushing foliage.
Through a peppery haze Runyer saw Gare lift his head and look up into the hills. There were two faint yellow lights one hundred yards away. Porch lights. They flickered through the branches.
“Up there. Let’s go.” He nodded at the twin glow through the mist.
Runyer moaned as a wash of pain flowed through him.
Their eyes turned to him. The men looked at each other, then walked toward him.
He wasn’t going to plead, he told himself, hearing the skittery boots on the asphalt.
Gare and Earl stood over him, looking down.
“Please,” Runyer whispered.
“Get him in the car,” Gare said to Earl. “Move.”
He drove up the hill real slow, no lights, and that was how he surprised the couple in the cabin.
While Earl hid the Lexus out back, Gare kicked the door in, fast, pushing Runyer in front of him, poking the gun toward the man and woman, who sat on the couch, drinking wine. She barked a fast scream and the trim, white-haired man turned fast toward the shotgun over the mantel.
Through the haze of his pain Runyer was thinking: No, no. Don’t do it.
But Gare cocked the pistol and the man stopped in his tracks at the sound, turned back, hands up high, like in a movie. He was so surprised by the break-in that for a minute he didn’t even know he was supposed to be afraid. He squinted at Gare and the sheriff, then glanced at his wife. And you could see his face just cave, like loose shale. “Please,” he said, the word rattling from his throat. “Please don’t hurt us.”
“Just shut up and do like you’re told. Nobody’ll get hurt.”
Runyer lay on the floor, eyes darting around the place. Typical of a lot of the rental cabins around here. A big living room, wood-paneled, filled with mismatched furniture. Two small bedrooms downstairs, a loft upstairs. The walls and floors polyurethaned yellow pine. Glassy-eyed hunting trophies.
Then he found what he was looking for: the phone, on the wall in the kitchen.
But Gare’d been doing his own surveying. Runyer should’ve guessed that a seasoned perp wasn’t going to miss a telephone. He stepped into the kitchen and ripped the unit down.
“Any other phones?” he snapped.
“I... no.”
“Any cell phones?”
A pause. The husband looked mortified.
“Well?” Gare shouted.
“In my pocket,” the husband said quickly. “I forgot. My jacket.”
“You forgot. Right.” Gare smashed the phone under his boot. Then he called, “Get those curtains closed.”
The man’s wife — her white hair was in a French braid, the way Lisa Lee wore it for PTA meetings and church potlucks — hesitated for a moment. She looked at her husband.
“Now!” Gare barked, and she hurried off to draw the thick drapes covering the windows.
“Anybody else in the house?”
“I—” the man began. “We didn’t do anything—”
“Is there anybody else... in... the... house?” Gare demanded. Pointing his gun at the husband’s sun-wrinkled face.
“No. I swear.”
Earl stepped inside. “Hey. They got ’emselves a Lincoln out there. Let’s take it and—”
Gare snapped, “We’re not going anywhere yet. Keep ’em covered.” He stepped to the door, shut off the porch lights. Gazed down the hill. Runyer could see the flashing lights streak past on the highway. The cars — there were two — didn’t even slow up. Runyer’d never told Hazel where exactly on the road he’d set up the roadblock. Route 58 was thirty-seven miles long.
Gare closed the door, turned to the couple. The husband had sat down, he was breathing heavily.
“Too much excitement for you, old man?” Gare laughed.
“He has a bad heart,” the wife whispered. “Couldn’t you just—”
“And he’s got a bad gut,” Gare said, nodding toward Runyer. “So whyn’t you shut up, lady, ’fore you catch something, too?”
“Listen... Gare,” Runyer said. “There’re troopers out looking for you. We—”
“For us?” Earl blurted, panic in his round, peach-fuzzed face.
“Relax,” Gare said to him. “He doesn’t mean ‘us.’ Nobody can ID us.” He waved the gun at Runyer. “And you, quiet.”
The wife sat down next to Runyer and glanced at his wound. “I’m a nurse,” she said to Gare. “Let me take a look at him.”
“Go on. But don’t do anything stupid, lady.”
“I just want to help him.”
“Hold up there.” Gare found some clothesline and tied the husband’s hands. His wife’s, too.
“I can’t work on him this way,” she protested weakly.
“Then you can’t work on him,” Gare responded as he rummaged through the breakfront drawers.
In the light, Runyer could see he’d been wrong about them being college kids. He saw bad teeth, scars, callused hands. Their pedigree was all over them: day labor, taverns, construction jobs till they were thrown off the site drunk or thieving, maybe a teenage wife at home — a girl who cringed automatically whenever a man shouted.
“When d’you get shot?” she asked, struggling to open her nurse’s kit.
“Twenty minutes ago.”
She took his blood pressure, awkwardly with her bound hands. “Not too bad. And” — she examined the entrance wound — “from where you got hit, I’d say the bullet missed the major veins and arteries.” She taped a pad over the puncture in his gut.