He breathed in deeply and exhaled fully. He lowered his voice as far as it would comfortably go. “Gonna be beautiful this morning, isn’t it?”
They both turned. They had to disengage each other to do it. Stork smiled and looked back toward the sunrise.
Trudy looked at him. “I’m sure it will be. God’s new morning.”
“So true.”
She turned away. Bill watched a pair of doves whisk by on squeaky wings. The sky beyond them was tinged with orange now. His heart was beating fast but steady and his body felt young and strong, especially his hands and his eyes.
He breathed in deeply and exhaled fully again, then started down the hillock toward them. The grass was damp and soft under his boots and he could smell it. The sky registered another octave of light, an orange glow that seemed warm and fertile and unhurried.
“Is that the Bible you’ve got there?”
Trudy turned back again but Stork kept looking east. “We were going to pray with a friend but he didn’t make it. Care to join us?”
She was just ten feet away now. He could see her watching him, see the back of her husband’s capped head in the middle of the brightening sky. She had the same sense of holy mandate about her that Colesceau had described, but also a trace of uncertainty in her face.
“Wherever three are gathered in my name,” he said. “Isn’t that how it goes?”
She took her husband’s arm. “Honey, Jonathan? This guy would like to pray with us.”
“Fine,” said the Stork. He turned to face Bill and Bill smiled at him. “What’s your name?”
“Big Bill Wayne.”
Stork offered his hand. Big Bill brought the ice pick from his pocket and slammed it into Stork’s chest. Bill used every bit of strength he had, starting down in his legs. The crack of bone, then instant depth. He hung on it with both hands for a split second. Then he let go.
Stork arched skyward like he was yanked by wires. He rose up on his tiptoes with his arms out and the handle profiled against the gray-orange sky. Trying to fly, thought Bill. His beak was wide open but nothing came out but a brief dry gasp. Bill could tell by his eyes he wasn’t seeing anything. Stork dropped to the grass with a hmmfff.
Trudy had stopped in place, her hands out toward her husband but suddenly frozen midair, the Bible already on the ground at her feet.
It seemed to Bill he had waited a lifetime to see the expression on her face: helplessness, powerlessness, fear. Worth the wait.
There was a sudden eruption from Stork, a sound like a cough and a sneeze and a retch all put together. It had the ring of the final. Trudy’s white dress caught red mist. Bill waved to clear the air in front of him, like shooing off a fly.
Then he pulled out the derringer and put it to Trudy Powers’s temple.
“Just me and you now, little darlin’.”
Merci clambered up through incomprehensible morning dreams and got the phone. It was 6:22 A.M., she saw, and Hess’s urgent voice startled her from the other end.
“Helena Spurlea is Colesceau’s mother,” she heard him say. “Colesceau used Billy Wayne as a front to buy the machine. She’s renting the apartment behind her son’s. That’s where we’ll find it, and God knows what else.”
It took her maybe two seconds to process the information.
“We’ll need warrants for the Porti-Boy. Alvarez might be willing—”
“—I’ve already got them.”
“Wait for me, Hess. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
“I’m already waiting.”
Merci turned up both radios full blast, slapped on a T-shirt and her body armor, a loose blouse and sport coat, pants and duty boots. She strapped the ankle cannon over her sock, then the shoulder rig with the loose snap and the H&X nine. Where was that “select law enforcement” freebie, anyway? Hair up, then on with a Sheriffs Department cap. She grabbed the charging cell phone off the bathroom counter and put it in her purse, making sure the cheap stiletto was still there, too.
She glanced at Hess’s note on the kitchen table, still there from the morning before. Sonofabitch was right about Colesceau! Her heart was beating hard and strong as she trotted across the drive toward her car.
She got in and turned the key just as the smell hit her, then something cold and wet locked over her face.
At first she was baffled; then she understood.
She jammed her boots against the pedals and slammed her body and head back. She threw her elbows and twisted at the waist, first one way, then the other, then back again. She told herself not to inhale one drop of anything but he’d caught her somehow on the exhale and she was starved for air even as she realized she’d better not breathe.
And through all of that she kept thinking she’d break the guy’s grip on her face but she couldn’t. His hands, and the smell she couldn’t get away from, just rode her thrashing head like a rodeo cowboy on a bull.
She willed the man’s grip to give. She focused all of her power on making his arms relax. His arms are weak now...
Then she noticed the roof liner of the Impala was a very interesting smoke gray color.
Hess waited in his car at the entrance to the Quail Creek Apartment Homes for Merci’s Chevy to come charging down the street, but by seven o’clock she still wasn’t there.
He drove over and parked across from Colesceau’s apartment at 7:05. He didn’t want to tip their plan but Colesceau wasn’t going anywhere now, with Hess watching. He noted the plates on the black Caddy parked in front of him and checked the numbers against the ones in his blue notebook: Helena Spurlea’s. He radioed Dispatch, told them to get Rayborn to Quail Creek ASAP but Dispatch said she wasn’t responding to the call.
Hess got out of the car and approached the crowd. He adjusted his hat to cover as much of his face as he could. There were only half a dozen protesters this early. They were sharing a box of donuts and coffee from a couple of thermoses. The CNB shooter was there, but the big networks had packed up and left. He talked one of the coffee drinkers into letting him use his cell phone. He called Merci direct and got plenty of ringing but no answer. Not at home, he thought. Not at headquarters. Not en route to headquarters. Not on the cell either, and she carried the damned cell everywhere.
He went to the apartment window and looked through the crack in the blinds. The TV was on, but he couldn’t see anyone watching it. He went back to his car and tried Dispatch again but Dispatch couldn’t raise Merci Rayborn any more than Hess could calm the worry starting to work itself into him. It made his nerves feel brittle and jumpy. Things felt wrong. It was 7:11, and he gave her four more minutes to show.
Then another three.
Then he lumbered across the street again, past the little crowd of demonstrators, and asked the CNB shooter to come with him, please.
He was a young man of maybe twenty-five, Hess guessed, sleepy after a long night’s vigil and probably disappointed that his shift had yielded nothing compared to yesterday’s circus at the Corrections Building. Mark. Hess got him away from the others and laid it out: don’t shoot the next five minutes for CNB and Hess would make sure he got into the house first, ahead of the other cameras. If he didn’t want first access then he’d get none at all, and he could explain that to his bosses however he wanted.
Mark said fine and Hess shook his hand and looked him in the eye while he did it. Whatever threat Hess was trying to convey seemed to hit home, because the guy looked away, nodding quickly.
He went to the porch and knocked. No answer. He tried the door but it was locked. He looked back at Mark, who was standing with the protesters, his camera at his side.