Lee went down the passageway to the bedroom. There was a double bed with the sheets pulled up from the corners. The duffle bags packed with the take were heaped one on top of the other beside the bed. Gilmore was sitting on the edge of the mattress, paused in the act of either pulling on or removing his jeans, glancing curiously at what was now filling the doorway.
— Lee, said Gilmore.
Lee shot him in the chest and Gilmore dropped down onto the mattress. His arms were outflung and his jeans were still around his knees. Stuffing from one pillow swirled to the bedspread and smoke hung in the air and there was a shrill ringing in Lee’s ears. He pumped the shotgun.
He turned and went back down the passageway. Arlene was screaming in the bathroom. Lee opened the front door and went outside. The man-door into the shed remained unchanged and he kept it in plain sight.
He was on the bottom of the stoop when something slammed into the side of his abdomen and turned him halfway around. He became aware of a popping noise that broke through the ring in his ears. Once Helen had made popcorn on the hot plate and this sound was not dissimilar. He looked up.
There was Speedy at the back of the van, not coming out of the shed at all, and he was holding up the 9mm in both hands.
Lee fired the shotgun from his hip. The pellets punched into the side of the van. He pumped and fired again. Snow and dirt spewed up from the ground. Speedy had already turned and was fleeing. Lee walked towards the van, pumped the shotgun, fired again. Speedy was thirty yards away, running flat-out, head bent forward, not looking back. Lee pumped the shotgun and pulled the trigger and nothing happened. He had to lean against the van when he reached it. What was this thing bound around him? He looked down and saw a hole in his jacket, dark and small and singular, somewhat like a cigarette burn. He thought of the day he’d bought the jacket, the money that had gone out of his wallet. He looked up again and Speedy was out of sight.
Lee’s breath plumed out. He took a step away from the van and he faltered. The man-door into the shed was on the other side of the van. He inclined his ear but could hear nothing through the ringing. No airplane, no woman screaming. Nothing of the boy.
Stan was two miles from the marina when he saw the man by the side of the road, waving his arms above his head. He slowed down and the man jogged forward. He slipped once on a patch of ice but kept his footing. He was a small man, moving quickly, and there was a scar on the side of his face. Stan glanced over his shoulder at the Marlin.410 he’d brought from home. It was laid behind the seat. The man came around the passenger side and Stan leaned across the seat and opened the door.
— What’s the trouble?
— Just listen, said the man.
He was pointing an automatic pistol. Stan could smell the metal of it, the gun oil. The man climbed into the truck. Up close Stan could see fine scratches on the man’s face and hands, as if he’d been running through the bush. His jeans were wet to the knees.
— Listen.
— I just stopped to see if you needed help.
The man wagged the pistol at him. His lips were pulled back over his teeth. He told Stan to shut up while he thought.
Stan looked in the rear-view mirror. The road behind him was vacant.
— Okay, said the man. We’ll go back.
The man turned forward on the seat. There would be no other chance. Stan hit him with a hard right cross into the chin, felt the man’s jaw move sideways against the impact. Speedy dropped his pistol in the footwell and toppled sideways out of the truck.
Stan started to move over on the seat and the truck lurched forward and he realized it was still in gear. He pulled the shift to park and slid across the seat and picked up the 9mm. The safety was engaged at the back of the slide.
He got out of the truck. There was a spot of blood where Speedy had landed on his head on the road. He’d gotten up and was now shuffling away in an aimless, drunken fashion. Stan pointed the pistol at him.
— You son of a bitch. Stop walking.
Speedy stopped, turned around: You want to talk about this, man?
— Shut your goddamn mouth. Are you alone?
But then the unmarked cruiser came into view on the road behind them. It slowed to a stop and Dick Shannon got out. He’d unholstered his revolver.
— Stanley. What are you doing with that gun?
— This son of a bitch waved me down and then stuck this at me.
— Has this got to do with why you called me?
— I don’t know yet, said Stan. There’s a real jam of some kind. Leland King …
Dick came forward. He patted Speedy down. He told him he was arresting him for pointing a firearm, did he understand? Speedy said nothing. Dick handcuffed him and found Speedy’s wallet in his hip pocket. He looked through it.
— Simmons, said Dick. Willis John. What’s your story, Willis John Simmons?
— I have nothing to say to you.
Dick pushed Speedy down into the back of the unmarked car and closed the door behind him. Stan turned the 9mm and removed the magazine and ejected the chambered bullet.
— What’s this about Leland King? said Dick.
Stan bent down and retrieved the ejected bullet. He offered the pistol and bullet to Dick.
— Lee King called me half an hour ago. He said he was in some kind of jam.
— What kind of a jam are we talking about?
— He said they robbed a bank.
— Jesus.
— They found a kid out there. Tailing after them maybe, I don’t know. Lee didn’t have much time to talk. He said he figured if the police came with the sirens going, the kid was going to get killed.
— And why was Leland King calling you to talk about this?
— Christ, Dick, that doesn’t matter just now. I know the place he called from. It’s Alec Reynolds’s place.
— Stan, this is some kind of a goddamn mess. I’ll get some cars scrambled-
— The nearest tactical team is two goddamn hours away. I’m going.
— I don’t want you to do that, Stanley.
— I think I know what kid Lee was talking about.
— You jackass, look how old we are. I have a crown of pork waiting for me when I get home. I’m telling you to wait right here.
Stan was already moving back to his truck. He heard Dick shout his name. Dick was standing alongside the cruiser with one hand lifted in a gesture of entreaty.
— Follow me, said Stan.
He drove his truck quickly down the road. He parked it in the clearing where he’d parked it before. The deadfall was cloaked under the snow. Past the culvert and a hundred yards farther down the road he could see the entrance to the laneway. He got out of the truck and took the.410 out from behind the seat. By that time Dick had pulled up behind him and was getting out of the unmarked car.
— Stanley, Christ. There’s cars coming from every detachment from here to North Bay. The tactical team there is standing up. We can sit tight.
— I know where to go, Dick.
Stan could see Speedy in the back seat of the car. Stan looked at Dick. Dick lifted his hands and held them palm out.
Then Dick got one of the detachment’s 12-gauge shotguns out of the trunk. He loaded it. Stan could see that his fingers were fumbling slightly. Dick left Speedy in the back seat, and then he and Stan went into the bush, backtracking the way Stan had gone before, taking deep steps through the snow. It was slow going. Up ahead was the shallow fold of the creek. Beyond that was the rocky slope. He watched the high feature for movement in the breaks between the trees. Dick thrashed through the snow behind him. He’d unholstered his pistol again.
They came to the creek. Stan slipped going down the bank and put one leg up to the knee into the freezing water. Dick hauled him back out by the shoulders.
— Look, said Dick, pointing.
Fifteen feet downstream there were fresh tracks coming crosswise down the slope above the creek. Right at the bank the snow was cloven away to the mud beneath, as if someone else had stumbled and fallen. The tracks resumed on the other side, heading to the road.