As Ilkovic kicked again, Coltrane scrambled to avoid the blow, feeling the rush of Ilkovic’s shoe barely miss him. He almost tripped over the shotgun, grabbed it, spun, and found Ilkovic straightening from where he had picked up McCoy’s revolver.

Coltrane aimed the shotgun and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“You didn’t pump a shell into the chamber, photographer.” Ilkovic aimed toward Coltrane’s left shoulder.

Helpless, Coltrane watched him pull the trigger.

But the revolver was jammed with mud.

Instead of firing, it blew apart.

Ilkovic stood as if paralyzed, staring through his grotesque goggles at his explosion-mangled hand. Mouth stretched open in a silent wail, he looked dumbfounded.

Coltrane moved as deliberately as if he had been adjusting the focus and shutter speed of a camera prior to taking a photograph. He racked a shell into the chamber, checked that the shotgun’s barrel wasn’t clogged, aimed, and blew Ilkovic’s head off.

SEVEN

1

A CHAOS OF EMOTIONS THREATENED TO TEAR COLTRANE APART: relief, horror, triumph, dismay, victory, revulsion. Sinking to his knees, staring down in shock toward the headless torso that had been Ilkovic, he had a terrible sense that the corpse was actually that of his father. But this time, his father hadn’t blown his brains out – Coltrane had done it for him.

“Thank God,” he murmured. Tears mixed with the rain on his cheeks. “Thank God.”

Immediately, fear reinvaded him. He had to get help for McCoy. But with McCoy’s car destroyed, there wasn’t any way to drive back to the Pacific Coast Highway. He would have to do it on foot. Ten miles away along a mud-slogged road. It would take hours. McCoy would bleed to death by then.

Despite his exhaustion, Coltrane struggled to his feet, but no sooner did he start to run toward the storm-obscured hills than he lurched to a halt, a sudden thought seizing him. There was a way to drive for help. He had forgotten there was another vehicle – Ilkovic’s. If he could find where…

Coltrane stared toward the headless corpse. Something rose in his throat as he took one hesitant step after another. Stooping, afraid that Ilkovic’s mangled hands would thrust up and clutch his throat, Coltrane trembled and pulled up Ilkovic’s rain slicker. He had been convinced that the worst was over, that there couldn’t be anything more horrifying than what he had just endured, but now he realized how wrong he had been. Touching Ilkovic’s warm corpse, fumbling in his pants pockets, feeling his spongy flesh beneath his wet garment, Coltrane became so light-headed, his mind reeling, that he feared he was going to pass out. His quivering fingers brushed against a set of keys. He tightened his grip and pulled his hand free, squeezing the keys rigidly in his palm lest he lose them as he slumped onto his hips, fighting not to throw up.

Slowly, he wiped his mouth and straightened. Find the car, he urged himself. Where would Ilkovic have left it? Coltrane had heard McCoy drive into the valley – but he hadn’t heard Ilkovic’s car. Did that mean Ilkovic had left it on the ridge above the valley? The trajectory of his bullets had indicated that at the start he was shooting from up there. Had he abandoned his vehicle and come down on foot?

Go! Coltrane inwardly shouted. You have to get help for McCoy!

Running through the dark rain, doing his best to follow the road, he felt the muddy ground angle upward, his lungs heaving, his legs straining. The effort of his ordeal had so drained him that he wavered as he reached the top. Where would Ilkovic have left the car? Not on the ridge, not where Coltrane could have seen it from below. Farther beyond the ridge. Near the road. Ilkovic wouldn’t have wanted to get too far from his escape route.

Coltrane slammed into the hood of the vehicle before he saw it. The startling impact shocked him backward, his knees, thighs, and lower abdomen in pain. But he didn’t have time to let his further injuries slow him down. His thoughts were totally on McCoy. Grabbing the driver’s door of what he now recognized was a dark van, he tugged, cursed when the door didn’t budge, fumbled to unlock it, and finally scrambled up behind the steering wheel. It took his shaking right hand three tries to fit the key into the ignition switch. Starting the van, putting it into gear, he warned himself to go slowly. Don’t get stuck in the mud. He put on the headlights and made a slow, gentle turn, praying as he felt the tires slip in the wet earth. But they gained traction, and he exhaled when the van completed its arc. Starting back through the hills toward the Pacific Coast Highway, he pawed at the levers on the steering wheel and found how to activate the windshield wipers. Throughout, he was conscious of a terrible odor, but with so many activities occupying his attention, it was only when he was on his way that the rank stench in the van fully struck him. It reminded him of rotten meat, and he suddenly knew, his soul frozen, that the rear of the van was where Ilkovic had butchered Daniel.

2

POLICE RADIOS SQUAWKED. The headlights of numerous emergency vehicles pierced the night gloom of the valley, their crisscross pattern creating a sense of being in a maze. The storm had diminished to a drizzle, its din no longer muffling the drone of idling police cars. Although Coltrane had warned the state trooper whose cruiser he had nearly run off the highway that the stream would be too high and fast for an ambulance to get across, the officer had radioed for one, regardless. Now its white outline, haloed by the glare of headlights, stayed fifty yards behind McCoy’s gutted car, amid the other emergency vehicles, all of them trying to remain far enough away that they wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene.

On the opposite side of the stream, across which Coltrane had again made his way no matter the risk, a medevac helicopter hovered, its whirling rotors creating a high-pitched whine, its searchlights aimed toward the charred ruins of the western town. Those lights forced Coltrane to shield his eyes as he sat in a puddle among jumbled scorched timbers, cradling McCoy’s listless body where he had pulled it gently from its makeshift hiding place. McCoy’s body was cold; Coltrane wrapped his arms around him, desperate to warm him. “You’re going to be all right. They’re going to take care of you.”

McCoy made no response. His only motion was a slight rise and fall of his chest.

“Don’t die on me, McCoy. You’ve got help now. You’re going to be fine.”

The young state policeman, who had at first tried to keep Coltrane from entering the swollen stream and who had in the end followed him, waved to the helicopter, motioning for it to set down next to the ruins. The reflection of the chopper’s searchlights gleamed off the red cross on the side of the white fuselage.

Coltrane hugged McCoy, doing his best to transfer his body heat. The medevac attendants jumped out, stooped to avoid the whirling rotors, and ran toward the ruins, mud splashing their white uniforms. In less than two minutes, while Coltrane described the gunshot, they rigged up an IV line and an oxygen mask. As much as Coltrane was eager for McCoy to be rushed to a hospital, he felt an odd sense of separation when the attendants eased McCoy onto a stretcher and hurried with him to the chopper. The noise of the rotors changed from a whine to a roar as the chopper lifted off. Coltrane stared upward, waiting until the chopper’s searchlights were extinguished and he could barely hear the receding whump-whump-whump before he turned to the state policeman, who told him yet again that there were many people with an awful lot of questions for him.