A gunshot rang out from the upper window. Mallory talked to him across Riker’s body. “Most people can’t shoot worth a damn. These bastards couldn’t hit a moving target to save their lives.”
“I thought these people were all issued hunting rifles at birth.” Charles looked up to see the long metal barrel protruding from the window on the second floor.
Another shot kicked up the dust in front of them. “Well, that’s an improvement,” said Mallory, in a cool critique of the shooter.
Charles caught the flight of a bottle with a fiery rag in its neck sailing through the window next to the shooter’s. The interior was lit up with a burst of flames. And there were no more shots from the upper floor. He looked around for Augusta, but she was nowhere in sight.
They walked steadily, never slowing the pace. People were walking along with them but keeping their distance. He wondered why. Mallory had no weapon now.
“They don’t know what to do,” said Mallory. “They’re pure reaction. Don’t look at them.”
Finally, they were at the top of the paved road, within steps of the dirt path that led through the windbreak of trees and into Dayborn, where electric lights were burning instead of torches and buildings. The energy of the mob had petered out to nothing, to wandering figures without direction.
Charles looked to Mallory and Riker. They might survive this after all.
Ah, but now a man stepped into the street, flanked by two teenage boys. Malcolm’s suit of lights sparked with a million independent fires. He was holding a rifle in his arms. Two more men joined them. One carried a baseball bat, and the other man held a rock in each hand.
The sheriff kept his eyes to the road ahead. The headlights of the car picked out the details of trees and shrubs along the way, but the moon had gone into the clouds, and everything beyond the scope of the beams was utter darkness. At the turn for the road to Owltown, he saw the flames and stopped the car, yelling, “Get out!” Lilith opened her mouth to speak.
He was faster, saying, “This is my personal business, Lilith. It may not be all that legal. Now you don’t want to spend your vacation days in court, do you? Witnessing against me?”
And though he did not believe he would live to face Guy Beaudare with the tragic news of Lilith’s death, he could imagine the man’s pain at losing his only child. All too well, he remembered the agony of losing young Kathy Shelley.
Lilith would have a long life ahead of her, time enough to recover from this insult.
He could see she was gathering a few well-picked angry words, but before she could spit out more than “You can’t – ” he reached past her, opened the door and pushed her out on the road. As he sped off, he watched her in the rearview mirror as she stood up, dusted herself off and stared after his taillights disappearing down the road.
Riker’s head wound continued to bleed and this was the only clue that the man was still alive.
Malcolm raised the rifle. He was pointing it at Charles’s face.
Riker’s body hung limp as dead weight, and perhaps it was a mercy that he was unaware of what was about to happen. Charles listened to the crackle of fire and looked at the angry faces surrounding him. They were all stealing back.
He turned to Mallory. Her face shone in the firelight, and he found some comfort there. Death was surely coming, but he was beyond being frightened anymore. This tiny fragment of a day, standing on a patch of dirt at the end of the gauntlet with Mallory, this was sublime. It was the peak experience of his entire life – only one exquisite moment left.
He wondered what Mallory would do to wreck it for him – that
was
her nature.
“If you move, Charles, even a hair,” said Malcolm, “I’ll kill you.”
And Charles supposed it was good logic to take out the largest target first, but foolish to underestimate Mallory as the lesser threat. He neglected to enlighten Malcolm, for he had finally come up with a last-minute gift for Mallory. His death might buy her seconds of diversion to run, to live.
“Malcolm, you’re a real moron,” said Mallory, dripping with contempt. “A rank idiot.”
Charles thought this might not be the time for common name-calling. Possibly a more elegant line from –
“I understand the town idiot died,” said Malcolm, smiling behind the rifle sight.
She shook her head in mock wonder. “You keep making the same mistake, Malcolm. You always leave the scene before the job is done. Ira’s still alive. Screwed up again, didn’t you?”
Malcolm lowered the gun, but only a little. Charles was still in the rifle sight.
“Another loose end to lead the sheriff to three more murders.” Her voice was taunting, and now she had a larger audience, as more people came closer, pressing around them.
“Shut up,” said Malcolm, turning the gun on her now. “Just shut up!”
Of course, this was
his
audience and he couldn’t afford to lose them to a better act, not now.
“Yeah, like you’re going to do your own killing for a change.” Mallory seemed almost bored. “According to the witness, you walked away from my mother’s house before the stoning. You let your brothers do the job. Now you might have gotten away with that murder – if it had gone to trial.”
The spinning red light of the sheriff’s car was barreling down the road from the highway, the siren screaming with urgency. It turned onto the Owltown road at its base and rolled toward them through the streets of flames.
“Get him!” Malcolm screamed.
The crowd moved into the road as the car was slowing. It stopped dead in the morass of arms and legs as bodies crawled over the vehicle like insects. The door was opened and the sheriff was dragged from behind the wheel. Charles saw the blood on one side of the man’s head as the mob lowered him to the ground in front of Malcolm.
The sheriff’s hand was slowly moving to the weapon in his holster. A shout came out of the mob, and Malcolm turned to point the rifle at Jessop while a young boy relieved the man of his pistol.
“I called in for backup,” said the sheriff. “This time, the law will be here before you can run. Give it up, Malcolm.”
“I don’t think so.” Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t hear any more sirens, Tom.”
The boy who held the sheriff’s gun kept his eyes on Malcolm, not quite sure of what was happening, so excited he could not stand still but danced his feet in the dirt.
Charles watched the flaming debris from a bar land on the roof of a store and spread along the shingles. Near the neighboring building, a barrel was in flames. Bright sparks flew over the roofs of other structures. A woman batted live cinders from her hair, and another woman brushed them from her skirts.
“This is the story,” said Malcolm, nodding in Mallory’s direction, but not taking his eyes off the sheriff. “She shot up all these innocent citizens in a wild killing spree, and she had to be put down like a dog. You died in the line of duty, Tom. I hope that’s a comfort.”
He lowered the rifle and pointed one finger at the young man with the sheriff’s gun. “Shoot him, Teddy!”
“Don’t do it, Teddy,” said Mallory to the boy. There was so much authority in her command that the boy lowered the sheriff’s gun and stared at her.
“Malcolm has a gun,” she said, speaking only to the boy. “Don’t you wonder why he doesn’t do his own killing?” She turned to Malcolm. “Why let a kid take the fall? Do it yourself.”
Charles thought this was not her best idea.
Malcolm glared at the boy with the gun. “Kill him now!”
The boy dropped the gun and ran. Malcolm raised the barrel of the rifle. “All right, I
will
do it myself.”
“No you don’t!” screamed a woman’s voice.
Every head turned to stare up at the deputy standing on the roof of the sheriff’s car. Lilith’s face was shining with sweat, her chest was heaving and her gun was pointing at Malcolm’s head.
“Kill him!” yelled Mallory.
The crowd was silent, watching, waiting.
Malcolm’s face was grim, eyes locked on his target, the sheriff. “Put the gun down, Deputy, or I’ll shoot your boss right now.” He risked a glance at the woman with the gun. “Put it down! Now! Do what I – ”
Lilith let a bullet fly through Malcolm Laurie’s forehead. Bone fragments scattered, and blood sprayed from the hole. There was time for him to register surprise, but only just. An accident of perfect balance kept the body standing for another moment, but he was dead before he toppled forward and hit the ground.
And now they heard the sirens.
A convoy of police cars roared down the road from the highway, perhaps twenty pairs of lights shining in the night. The remains of the crowd scattered, fleeing the brightness of burning Owltown.
Lilith Beaudare climbed down from the roof of the car. She was stiff in her movements. Her body had lost its fluid grace as she walked toward Malcolm’s corpse with slow, halting steps. She stopped to look down at her gun, as though surprised to see it there and wondering who that killing hand might belong to.
Mallory had to call Lilith’s name twice to break her trance, and now they stared at one another. The spinning lights of the sheriff’s car turned their faces blood-red with every revolution. Glowing cinders swirled above them and came back to the earth in a brilliant rain of slow-falling stars.
“Best to take him in the car,” said the sheriff. “That damn chemical plant is still pumping out casualties. We’ll be here all night waiting on an ambulance.”
“No problem with that.” The young state trooper closed his first-aid kit and looked down at his patient. “He’ll be fine in the car. It looks a lot worse than it is.”
But Charles did not believe Riker could look much worse than this without being dead. Every rib had been taped, one arm rested in a makeshift splint, and a good portion of the man’s face was swaddled in heavy bandages.
The trooper helped them settle Riker into the back of the sheriff’s car beside Mallory. She covered him with a blanket, tucking him in like a child. He was semiconscious, opening and closing his eyes.
The police officer leaned down to the open window on Mallory’s side. “I called this in to the hospital. Detective Riker’s got top priority in the emergency room. If they jerk you around and make you wait for that X ray, you got a two-car escort of cops to back you up, okay?”
“Thanks,” said Mallory, as if she might actually need help.
When they were alone, with Riker dozing between them, Charles said, almost incidentally, “Did you notice that Augusta was burning Owltown?”
“She’s cleaning,” said Mallory.
“Pardon?”
“It’s her land now. She can do what she likes with it.”
“You mean Augusta is the one who bought out the New Church land holdings?”
Mallory nodded, as she pulled the blanket up around Riker’s face. “She owns the commercial section and all the waterfront property. She wants to redevelop it as an owl habitat.” She turned to the rear window. “Ah, look at that.” Behind them, another building burst into flames. “Another eviction notice.”
He saw Augusta’s slender silhouette moving away from the flames as the sheriff and his deputy climbed into the front seat. The car was rolling past the smoking remnants of Owltown. Charles leaned closer to Mallory. “But shouldn’t we at least speak to her about – ”
“There’s not much left, Charles, just that one building.” She pointed to the last storefront, saved from its burning neighbor by a wide gap of land. “Oh,” she said, as this too went up in a roar of flames like so much kindling. “All gone.” She turned to Charles and smiled. “Damn.”
The sheriff swung the car around and pointed it back toward the highway, heading for the hospital. His rearview mirror was bright with the flames of Owltown. He turned to his deputy, who had not said a word since the shooting of Malcolm Laurie. “You earned your salary today, Lilith. Your dad is gonna be real proud of you.”
From the backseat, Mallory said, “She was slow with that damn bullet. She still needs work.”
“But she didn’t give up her gun,” said the sheriff in Lilith’s defense. “And her aim was damn good.”
“You’re right,” Mallory conceded. “Not your basic rookie. But she’s got to shoot faster.”
“Well, I can’t let her practice on any more Lauries. Wouldn’t be sporting. They’re limping targets now.”
“Where – What happened?” Riker’s eyes were half open. He turned his head slowly from window to window, trying to fix his place in the world.
“It’s a wrap,” said Mallory. “Go back to sleep.”
“Hardly a wrap,” said Charles. “We still don’t know who killed Babe Laurie.”
“And we may never know,” said the sheriff, not seeming to mind this in the least. And suddenly Charles knew the sheriff had solved that little mystery, for the man reflected in the rearview mirror was smiling contentedly. Mallory seemed unconcerned, disinterested.
“Hey, kid,” said Riker.
“Stay quiet,” said Mallory. “We’re almost there.”
“You remember when you were a little squirt, and I was still allowed to call you Kathy?”
“Yes, I remember. Rest now. Close your eyes.” It was unmistakably an order, but her voice was gentle, soothing. She might have been talking to a child.
Riker did not take direction well. His eyes were all the way open now. “We’ve been through a hell of a lot together, haven’t we?”
“Yes, Riker.”
“So, can I call you Kathy now?”
“No.”
Riker smiled and closed his eyes, drifting off again, mumbling something which might have been derogatory. But even now, Mallory would not let him have the last word. She leaned her head very close to his and whispered, “Sleep.”
Charles toted up the damage to his traveling companions. The sheriff wore a large square bandage above his right eye, but he seemed to be in the best of moods. Riker was defying Mallory and coming back to consciousness. Mallory had shot and wounded all those people, yet she seemed only a bit tired after a long and busy day.
Lilith was another story, for she had just killed a man, and she was not fortified with Mallory’s damaged psyche.
Charles watched the deputy’s profile as she stared out the side window. He caught the almost imperceptible movement of her head from side to side, fighting that slow slide into shock. Her lips were pressed together in a grim tight line. To stifle a scream? Her eyes, so sad, were slowly closing.
Charles intuited a sense of loss, something spoiled.
The passenger window framed an engorged yellow moon suspended over the sugarcane fields. The alignment of the car created the deceit that the moon was also in motion and racing them along the black ribbon of highway, darting behind the odd building and reappearing on the other side.
Lilith’s chin lifted slightly. Her eyes opened, and in the dark mirror of the window glass, Charles noted a hardness in her expression. Her gaze might have been fixed on the same moon that kept pace with them, the same fields, but he thought not. He believed she was looking out on an entirely different landscape.
Death had changed everything.