I
SEE AN ARM RAISE UP, moving to block my knife, and I adjust the arc, getting in under it, aiming for the neck-
It’s Phin.
I try to put on the brakes, but momentum drives my strike onward. Phin’s eyes get wide and he jerks his body sideways. The knife tip nicks his chin, and then I bump into him and he catches me before I fall onto my face.
We both stumble backward, and then I tense up and lift up the knife again when I see Alex standing directly behind him. She’s smiling her half smile.
My energy is nearly gone, but I struggle with what little I have left, fighting Phin to get at the murderer over his shoulder.
“Easy, Jack!” Phin says, holding me back. “We called a truce.”
A truce? Is he out of his mind?
Alex steps closer, pinches my wrist and twists, making me release the knife.
“We can kill each other later, Jack,” Alex says. “Those idiots outside, they’re getting ready to come in. They’re armed. We aren’t. We need to come up with a plan, and quick.”
I can’t believe this. And maybe if I wasn’t so damn tired and banged up, I’d stage a protest. But it makes a warped kind of sense. If the snipers break in, we have no way to defend ourselves. Alex is actually the lesser threat. For the moment, at least.
“Don’t trust her,” I say to Phin, keeping my eyes on Alex.
“I won’t.”
My chest feels damp. I glance down and notice Phin is bleeding on my shirt. I touch his cheek.
“Sorry,” I say. “Does it hurt?”
He smiles. “I’m tough.”
“I know. Thanks for coming.”
“We’re friends. You call, I come.”
I’m strangely moved by that, but being a hard-edged homicide cop I respond with a strong, curt nod. Phin, however, holds me closer, actually hugging me. I give him a perfunctory pat on the back, wondering what the hell he’s doing, but not minding it terribly much. His skin is cool to the touch, and he’s got the barest hint of aftershave, something that smells like pine. No, it actually is pine. I brush a pine needle out of his hair.
His breath is on my ear, soft and warm. He whispers, “I dropped a.38 somewhere in the garage.”
I nod, slightly so Alex doesn’t notice. Then we mutually disengage.
“Hey, sis! You kill the bitch yet?”
Harry, from the living room.
“There’s been some, uh, complications, Harry,” I say over my shoulder.
“What complications?”
Harry’s not going to be pleased. I’m not either. Phin and I lead the way back into the house.
“Hey, Phin,” Harry says. “Welcome to the rave. You bring the Chex Mix?”
“Hi, Harry. What’s with the refrigerator door?”
“I’m neurotic. My shrink says I have a hard time letting go.” Then Harry notices Alex, and his eyes narrow. “What the fuck? You make a deal with Satan?”
“The snipers are coming,” I say, and the words taste lousy on my tongue. “We need her help.”
“What we need,” Harry says, “is to pound a stake through her heart, cut off her head, and bury the body on hallowed ground.”
“We can finish up our business later, sweetheart,” Alex says to Harry. “Where’s the circuit breaker?”
I stare at her, suspicious. “Why?”
“They’ll probably come in through the front door. We soak the carpeting with water, strip the covering off the end of an extension cord, wrap it around something metal, and put it in the puddle. They walk in, we hit the breaker, fry both of them.”
“They teach you that in psycho school?” Harry says.
Alex coolly regards him. “I should have cut your tongue off instead of your hand.”
“Why don’t you come over here and say that, so I can bounce this refrigerator door off your goddamn-”
“Enough,” I interrupt, giving Harry the palm. I actually like Alex’s idea. “What if they’re wearing rubber-soled shoes?” I ask.
“One of us stands by the door with a hose, soaks them when they come through the door.”
“Won’t it trip the breaker?”
“Circuit breakers are tripped when there’s resistence or surges. All we’re doing is running current. It will work.”
“We need to hurry.” Phin is staring out the front window. “They’re coming.”
“Get the hose and the extension cord in the garage,” I tell Phin and Alex. Then I hurry to the kitchen, turn on the sink, and fill a six-quart cast-iron pot with water. It’s really heavy, almost too heavy to lift. But I muscle it out of the sink and carry it at waist level, waddling to the front door. I spill the water all over the floor and set the pot down.
“Got the hose,” Alex says. “Phin is stripping the extension cord. I don’t think he trusts me with a knife.”
“I wonder why.”
I take one end of the hose, and hand the other to Harry. “You’re on squirting duty. Make sure you stay out of the wet spot.”
“I always do.”
I bring the hose down the hall, peek in on my mother.
“You okay?”
Mom nods, but she looks terrible. She hands me the flashlight. I check out Latham and Herb. Both are semi-conscious, and they also look terrible. Then I make the mistake of peeking at the vanity mirror, and I look worse than everyone. Sort of like DeNiro at the end of
Raging Bull.
“Oh, Jacqueline,” Mom says. She reaches up to touch my face, and I flinch away.
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”
It’s the truth. All of the pain has sort of combined into a dull ache. Unpleasant, but bearable. Maybe I simply don’t have any energy left to devote to hurting.
I give Mom a quick peck on the cheek, and then it’s on to the laundry room. I set the flashlight on the dryer and turn off the water valve that leads to the washing machine. I unscrew the hose coming out of it, attach the garden hose, then put the water back on.
“Dammit, Harry! Quit it!”
Harry is apparently soaking Alex. If I had a sense of humor left, I might have smiled at that.
“Tell me when to hit the power,” I call down the hallway. “How are you doing, Phin?”
“Power cord is stripped. I’m plugging it in.”
“Wrap the stripped end around the cast-iron pot, then step away.”
I fight the circuit breaker door, manage to get it open, and poise my finger above the main button. A wave of vertigo hits. I ride through it without losing my balance.
In the silence that follows, I have a chance to think about a lot of things. One of those things is retirement.
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a cop. It didn’t take a psychoanalyst to figure out that my desire came from my parents. My mom was a cop, and she was my hero. My dad wasn’t in the picture, and his absence left a void in my life. I wanted to emulate my mother, and I became a control freak as a defense mechanism. The more control I had in my life, the less chance of being surprised, of getting hurt. My desire to protect myself, and my mother, evolved into a desire to protect others.
After a few years on the Job, I realized I couldn’t really protect anyone. It wasn’t any particular incident that stood out, any key moment that led me to this conclusion. It was just the day-to-day grind of seeing people getting hurt, all the time, without being able to save them.
I accepted it. If I couldn’t protect them, then at least I could catch the ones who were hurting them.
I’ve caught a lot of bad people in my twenty-plus years as a cop. I know I’ve done a lot of good.
But now, here I am. I became a cop to protect others, and now I can’t even protect the handful of people who are more important to me than the rest of the world put together.
Alex was right. It’s my fault we’re all in danger. If anything happens to Mom, or Latham, or Herb, or Phin, or even Harry, I won’t be able to live with myself.
I make a decision. A big decision. If we get out of this – no…
when
we get out of this, I’m going to hang up my gun. Retire. Draw a pension and get married and gain weight and spend life enjoying it instead of trying to fix it.
“Jackie!” Harry yells. “Alex just ran out the back door!”
No real surprise there.
“Phin went after her!”
“Did he finish the wires?” I call.
“No!”
Dammit. “Mom! I need you!”
Mom shuffles into the laundry room.
“Press the breaker when we tell you to.”
I trade places with her, holding open the panel door until she can get her finger on the button.
“I don’t like this plan,” she says.
There isn’t time to argue. I hurry back into the living room, spy the extension cord in a tangled pile on the floor.
A noise at the front door – someone trying the knob.
“Hurry,” Harry says. He’s got the hose in his hand, bent in a kink.
Something slams into the door. It shakes, but holds.
I find the end of the cord, stripped to bare wires. I reach for the cast-iron pot.
Three gunshots, incredibly loud. The door rattles.
I wind the wire around the pot handle, then scurry off the damp section of carpeting just as the door kicks in.
Two men in camouflage dress storm into my living room. They each have a huge handgun. One is wearing yellow aviator sunglasses. The other is the sniper I saw at Ravenswood, which seems like so long ago.
“Now!” I scream.
Harry hits them with the hose. The lights go on. There’s a spark, a crackling
ZAP,
and the smell of smoke and ozone.
The snipers flinch.
Neither of them fall.
It didn’t work. Sweet Lord, it didn’t work.
They look at each other, then turn their guns on me.
W
HEN ALEX RAN OUT the back door, Phin knew where she was heading.
To find a gun.
Phin takes two seconds to decide that Alex with a sniper rifle poses a bigger threat than the two guys with their Desert Eagles, and he rushes out after her.
He tears through the kitchen, out the patio door, into the backyard. Phin looks right, then left, sees Alex dart around the corner of the house. He vaults a lawn chair and pursues.
She only has a twenty-yard head start, but she can run like a rabbit. Phin, though lean and muscular, is not in good shape. He’s been in remission for a while, but it’s more a stay of execution than a full pardon. The pancreatic cancer is still there. It’s shrinking, bit by bit, thanks to chemotherapy. But the pain hasn’t gone away, and the chemo comes with a slew of symptoms that rival those caused by the disease.
Phin supplements his prescription drugs with many that you can’t find at your local Walgreens, and these have also taken their toll on his body. He can pace Alex, but he can’t catch her.
She reaches the street, then cuts left, heading toward the Bronco. All of the running Phin did earlier to night has pretty much tapped his reserves, and he falls farther behind, his breath ragged, his muscles crying out. The night air is cold, tingly, on his bare chest. He chances a quick check over his shoulder, sees the two men at Jack’s front door, trying to kick it in, and hopes Alex’s electricity booby trap is legit, not bullshit.
Alex gets to the Bronco, tries the driver’s-side door. Locked. She runs around to the back, and Phin closes the distance, hands out in front of him, leaning on the truck’s hood when he gets there, taking big gulps of air so he doesn’t throw up.
The rear door must be locked as well, because Alex sprints away without getting inside, running across the lawn and blending into the night. Phin is too wiped out to follow.
Gunshots. From Jack’s house. Phin sees the two men bust in the front entrance. He watches them walk inside, sees the lights go on.
Sees nothing happen.
Alex’s trap is bullshit after all.
Phin puts his face up to the tinted glass of the front window, tries to get a look inside the truck. There’s a rifle in the front seat, a big one with a scope. He does a quick 180, scanning the ground for a brick or rock or something to break the windshield. There’s nothing but grass.
Phin puts his back against the driver’s door, clenches his hands, and fires his left elbow backward against the glass, like a piston. He does it once, twice, three times, hard as he can.
The window remains intact.
He wants to try it again, but he can’t – he’s pretty sure he just broke his elbow.
T
HE FRESH AIR FEELS GOOD. Liberating. The rhythmic slap of my feet hitting the ground, the stretch of my muscles, the wind on my cheeks. I bet I could run five miles without breaking a sweat.
Phin is behind me, but he gives up when he reaches the truck. Wimp. I should have beaten him to death while we were in the garage.
No biggie. There’s still time.
I’m running so fast I almost miss the rifle. It’s on a grassy hill, only a few yards off the road. I sprint to it, slide alongside like I’m stealing second base, and snatch it up in my hands.
It’s a beauty. Bolt action, suppressor, bipod, night-vision scope, cheek pad, palm support, padded butt plate. A better weapon than the M40A1 rifle I trained with in the corps. I get behind it, assume the position, load a round, and point it back at the Bronco. Phin is crouching next to the side door. An easy target. I consider putting a round through his leg, but notice he’s cradling his elbow, already hurt.
I’ll get to him in a minute.
I swing the barrel around, aiming at Jack’s house. I can see Harry through the front bay window, sitting on the floor and clutching his hose. Those two sniper idiots, standing there, pointing their guns. The trap must have tripped the circuit breaker. I figured it might do that. They should have held the breaker button in and kept it there; then the current would have kept flowing. But I saw no reason to share that little tip.
I nudge the rifle. There’s Jack. She actually has her hands up over her head. Like she’s surrendering.
As if that’s going to help her.
“You are dust,” I say, quoting Scripture. “And to dust you shall return.”
My Bible-thumping father would have been proud I remembered that. I grin, caress the trigger, and fire.