Fine.
As fine as Mo.
Who wanted Doug more than she wanted Pete.
“What’re you looking for?” Doug asked.
“Something to shoot.”
And he thought: Just witnesses. That’s all I’m looking for.
“Let’s go that way,” Pete said and walked toward the fence.
Doug shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
Pete studied it as they approached. Wood posts about eight feet apart, five strands of rusting wire.
Not too easy to climb over, but it wasn’t barbed wire like some of the fences they’d passed. Besides, Pete didn’t want it to be too easy to climb. He’d been thinking. He had a plan.
Roy had thought about the murder for weeks. It had obsessed his every waking moment. He'd drawn charts and diagrams and planned every detail down to the nth degree. In his mind, at least, it was the perfect crime.
Pete now asked, “So what’s your girlfriend do?”
“Uhm, my girlfriend? She works in Baltimore.”
“Oh. Doing what?”
“In an office.”
“Oh.”
They got closer to the fence. Pete asked, “You’re divorced? Mo was saying you’re divorced. ”
“Right. Betty and I split up two years ago.”
“You still see her?”
“Who? Betty? Naw. We went our separate ways.”
“You have any kids?”
“Nope.”
Of course not. When you had kids you had to think about somebody else. You couldn’t think about yourself all the time. Like Doug did. Like Mo. Pete was looking around again. For squirrels, for rabbits, for witnesses. Then Doug stopped and looked around too. Pete wondered why, but then Doug took a beer from his knapsack and drank the whole bottle down and tossed it on the ground. “You want something to drink?” he asked.
“No,” Pete answered. It was good that Doug’d be slightly drunk when they found him. They’d check his blood. They did that. That’s how they knew Hank’d been drinking when they got the body to the Colorado Springs hospital-they checked the alcohol in the blood.
The fence was only twenty feet away.
“Oh, hey,” Pete said. “Over there. Look.” He pointed to the grass on the other side of the fence.
“What?” Doug asked.
“I saw a couple of rabbits.”
“You did? Where?”
“I’ll show you. Come on.”
“Okay. Let’s do it,” Doug said.
They walked to the fence. Suddenly Doug reached out and took Pete’s rifle. “I’ll hold it while you climb over. Safer that way.”
Jesus… Pete froze with terror. Doug was going to do exactly what Pete had thought of. He’d been planning on holding Doug’s gun for him. And then when Doug was at the top of the fence he was going to shoot him. Making it look like Doug had tried to carry his gun as he climbed the fence but he ’d dropped it and it went off.
Roy bet on the old law enforcement rule that what looks like an accident probably is an accident.
Pete didn’t move. He thought he saw something funny in Doug’s eyes, something mean and sarcastic. It reminded him of Mo’s expression. Pete took one look at those eyes and he could see how much Doug hated him and how much he loved Mo.
“You want me to go first?” Pete asked. Not moving, wondering if he should just run.
“Sure,” Doug said. “You go first. Then I’ll hand the guns over to you.” His eyes said: You’re not afraid of climbing over the fence, are you? You’re not afraid to turn your back on me, are you?
Then Doug was looking around again.
Looking for witnesses.
“Go on,” Doug encouraged.
Pete-his hands shaking from fear now, not anger-started to climb. Thinking: This is it. He’s going to shoot me. I left the motel too early! Doug and Mo must have kept talking and planned out how he was going to ask me down here and pretend to be all nice and then he’d shoot me.
Remembering it was Doug who suggested hunting.
But if I run, Pete thought, he’ll chase me down and shoot me. Even if he shoots me in the back he’ll just claim it was an accident.
Roy's lawyer argued to the jury that, yes, the men had met on the path and struggled, but Hank had fallen accidentally. He urged the jury that, at worst, Roy was guilty of negligent homicide.
He put his foot on the first rung of wire. Started up.
Second rung of wire…
Pete’s heart was beating a million times a minute. He had to pause to wipe his palms.
He thought he heard a whisper, as if Doug was talking to himself.
He swung his leg over the top wire.
Then he heard the sound of a gun cocking.
And Doug said in a hoarse whisper, “You’re dead.”
Pete gasped.
Crack!
The short, snappy sound of the.22 filled the field.
Pete choked back a cry and looked around, nearly falling off the fence.
“Damn,” Doug muttered. He was aiming away from the fence, nodding toward a tree line. “Squirrel. Missed him by two inches.”
“Squirrel,” Pete repeated manically. “And you missed him.”
“Two goddamn inches.”
Hands shaking, Pete continued over the fence and climbed to the ground.
“You okay?” Doug asked. “You look a little funny.”
“I’m fine,” he said.
Fine, fine, fine…
Doug handed Pete the guns and started over the fence. Pete debated. Then he put his rifle on the ground and gripped Doug’s gun tight. He walked to the fence so that he was right below Doug.
“Look,” Doug said as he got to the top. He was straddling it, his right leg on one side of the fence, his left on the other. “Over there.” He pointed nearby.
There was a big gray lop-eared rabbit on its haunches only twenty feet away.
“There you go!” Doug whispered. “You’ve got a great shot.”
Pete shouldered the gun. It was pointing at the ground, halfway between the rabbit and Doug.
“Go ahead. What’re you waiting for?”
Roy was convicted of premeditated murder in the first degree and sentenced to life in prison. Yet he came very close to committing the perfect murder. If not for a simple twist of fate, he would have gotten away with it.
Pete looked at the rabbit, then looked at Doug.
“Aren’t you going to shoot?”
Uhm, okay, he thought.
Pete raised the gun and pulled the trigger once.
Doug gasped, pressed at the tiny bullet hole in his chest. “But. but. No!”
He fell backward off the fence and lay on a patch of dried mud, completely still. The rabbit bounded through the grass, panicked by the sound of the shot, and disappeared in a tangle of bushes that Pete recognized as blackberries. Mo had planted tons of them in their backyard.
The plane descended from cruising altitude and slowly floated toward the airport.
Pete watched the billowy clouds, tried to figure out what they looked like. He was bored. He didn’t have anything to read. Before he’d talked to the Maryland state troopers about Doug’s death, he’d thrown the true-crime book about the Triangle murder into a trash bin.
One of the reasons the jury convicted Roy was that, upon examining his house, the police found several books about the disposing of evidence. Roy had no satisfactory explanation for them.
The small plane glided out of the skies and landed at the White Plains airport. Pete pulled his knapsack out from underneath the seat in front of him and climbed out of the plane. He walked down the ramp beside the flight attendant, a tall black woman. They ’ d talked together for most of the flight.
Pete saw Mo at the gate. She looked numb. She wore sunglasses and Pete supposed she’d been crying. She was clutching a Kleenex in her fingers.
Her nails weren’t bright red anymore, he noticed.
They weren’t peach either.
They were just plain fingernail color.
The flight attendant went up to Mo. “You’re Mrs. Jill Anderson?”
Mo nodded.
The woman held up a sheet of paper. “Here. Could you sign this, please?”
Numbly Mo took the pen the woman offered and signed the paper.