The crazy idea of suicide broke apart in his head like one of those big table-top puzzles. The pieces of the strange idea pulled apart and scattered, becoming random pieces. He stopped just inside the doorway. He knew since he’d been forced to shoot Sergeant Whitney that he was not quite right in the head. Had the girl sensed that about him? She was sobbing, held in the young man’s arms, the two of them standing in the middle of the living room. The young man nodded to Bell, motioning for him to come on in and shut the door.
“I put her in the shower. I thought it would do her good. My name’s Robin Wood,” the veterinarian said, walking into the kitchen. Bell was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of him, the pistol on the table. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand exactly who you are, and—is that necessary?” Wood asked, looking at the pistol.
Bell could hear a dishwasher going on behind him and wondered how the house had power. The kitchen smelled of coffee and was neat, verging on luxurious. It was the kind of house his mother would have loved. It was the kind of house his family could never afford, but that his mother would go out and visit on Sundays, visiting realtor’s “open houses,” an opportunity for ordinary people like her to see the homes of the county’s well-to-do.
Bell looked at the young man in front of him and recognized a secure I’m-in-charge glossiness, the stamp of the wealthy that Bell had seen his whole life in Mississippi. The big land-owning families who rode around their cotton and palm-oil plantations in sixty-thousand dollar Dodge pickups, equipped with the latest GPS, weather-spotting, link ups—high kings. Everywhere the rich looked across their Delta cotton land, it was flat and green with their cotton, the way it had been for over a hundred years. It may have been the New South, but with the same old poor people, white and black, working for the Man in the big truck. He decided he didn’t like Wood.
“Yes, sir. I think it is.” Bell dragged the pistol over closer to him. He’d forgotten to bring in the extra clips from the backseat of the car. He almost got up to get them, but realized that he was probably safe here. He’d seen nothing on the road to make him think the things had gotten this far.
“Lacy said you would explain what’s going on,” Wood said.
“Well, everything I would tell you is going to sound crazy, and I’m not sure you’ll believe me,” Bell said. He took a swallow of coffee. “How is she?”
Wood came over to the table and sat down. He glanced in the direction of the bathroom and then looked at Bell.
“Apparently she was raped,” Wood said. “Does her father know?”
Bell put down his coffee cup, shocked. “I don’t know. When? I guess at that house, where I found her?”
“Listen—Lieutenant, right? Lieutenant, I don’t understand. Lacy said that her father— that Sharon Collier was killed there, in front of the house where Lacy was raped. I really don’t understand what is going on. This doesn’t make any sense. You bring my girlfriend in here carrying a gun. She tells me her father has shot her sister out in the middle of the street in cold blood. Is she mad?”
“No,” Bell said. “She isn’t crazy. I saw it too.”
“You saw her sister?” Wood said.
“Yes. Only it wasn’t her sister anymore,” Bell said. He met Wood’s gaze evenly.
“I’m sorry, I can’t believe any of this. What are you talking about?” Wood said.
Bell looked away. He could see the corral from the kitchen window with snow-dusted horses standing near the fences. He tried to formulate some kind of explanation that would make sense, or at least sound reasonable, but he was exhausted, and the effort of trying to explain everything he’d seen in the last few hours was too much.
“Listen, doctor.”
“Yes.”
“I’m very tired right now. I think I’ve lost a lot of blood and I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.” Bell looked at the clock on the stove, everything shiny and clean. It was 3:00 p.m., according to the clock. “And I’m very hungry. Do you think I might have something to eat? Maybe later, I can explain.”
There was the sound of a door opening and closing in the house. The two men looked at each other.
“Pick up your land line,” Bell said. The lieutenant glanced at the phone hanging on the wall of the kitchen. “Go ahead.”
Wood looked at him, then got up and went to the phone and lifted the receiver off the hook, a slightly annoyed look on his face.
“It’s dead, isn’t it?” Bell said.
Wood nodded. “How long has it been out?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But I think the TV is probably out, too. Where have you been all day?”
“I had a call last night, there was a horse had a ruptured tendon emergency at the Cohn ranch. I just got back an hour ago. I was there most of the night.”
“Well, let’s just say things have changed,” Bell said.
“You want me to take a look at that? You’re bleeding,” Wood said.
“I saw a satellite dish. Is it yours?” Bell said.
“Yes. There’s no cable this far from town.”
“That might work,” Bell said. “There might be some news on that.” He stood up, and everything went black around him.
Miles stood up, still in shock. The bullet the girl had fired at him had passed through his thigh but had missed the femoral artery. He’d bled onto the snow where he’d pretended to be dead and saw the red-ochre colored stain where he’d been lying, and prayed that the girl who shot him wouldn’t come back outside. He had instinctively shoved a palm full of fresh snow in the entrance wound; the cold snow had stopped the pain. He pulled his pants down in the middle of the road, and turning to look at his butt and the back of his thigh, he examined the bullet’s exit wound with his fingers. It was the size of a fifty-cent piece.
“I’m going to die,” Miles said out loud. Lying there, he saw a car’s headlights and realized it was coming straight at him. Two Howlers were hanging onto the car’s ski rack, pounding on the roof of the car as it drove toward him. The car passed him as he struggled to roll toward the curb. The car, just missing him, kept right on going at a high rate of speed until it was gone from sight, the Howlers still hanging on it. His pants still down, he crawled up on the sidewalk and packed snow into the exit wound. It stung horribly, and then he felt nothing. He pulled up his jeans and cinched his belt.
The girl who had shot him was gone, but anyone might mistake him for a Howler, especially now. He stood up and noticed Crouchback’s distinctive old Porsche 911 parked in a driveway a few houses down the street. He’d seen the man driving it around Timberline. He limped toward the house’s open front door and walked in, stepping over the body of the woman, laying in the foyer, that he’d seen earlier.
“Crouchback! MR. CROUCHBACK!” There was no answer. The house was dark. He tried the light switch, but nothing happened. He walked into the living room and looked out onto a snow-covered patio with a covered pool through a set of French doors. The house was cold. He walked to the fireplace, picked up a black wrought-iron fireplace tool and walked into the kitchen holding the heavy fire poker. The kitchen was clean and tidy. He saw a coffee pot with coffee in it, poured himself a cup and drank it down quickly, as if he would be driven out of the house at any moment. The coffee was lukewarm but tasted wonderful. His hand was shaking and stained with his own blood, all his fingertips pinkish.
He moved to the kitchen sink and washed his hands. It was very quiet when he turned off the tap. He could hear a clock ticking somewhere from one of the nearby rooms—powered by a battery, he guessed. He looked down into the sink and saw a dirty plate with a knife and fork, the plate flooded with soapy water. He must be dreaming, he was sure of it. He’d dreamt that he’d driven to work in the snow with the top on his car inoperable—of course, how strange. It was all a nightmare. It all had to be a dream. He would wake up. He took a good look around him saw the poker resting nearby on the black-colored granite counter top. A dream! A nightmare. Everyone has them. They’re so lifelike! And about the Good murders—that too! Surely the murders were a dream.