* * * *
Vale Oakman lay on his bed. Fully dressed in his uniform, gunbelt draped over the footboard. His hands were cupped behind his head, his legs crossed at the ankles. He stared at the ceiling, waiting for the call, wondering if this was the time not to answer.
Although the lamp was off, a bright December moon gave him enough light to see the fat manila envelope sitting on the dresser, right next to the mother-of-pearl-backed brush set that used to be his granddaddy’s, a lawman himself over in Missouri. He hadn’t counted the money inside. He didn’t want to touch it.
A cramp in the arch of his left foot.
He let it run its course, bearing the pain.
That was the least he could do, considering what he might have to do later.
* * * *
When the overhead light in the kitchen blared on, Cora slapped a hand to her chest and yelled, “Jesus!”
Reed fell back against the door. He couldn’t yell; he had no breath left in his lungs.
“Two hours,” Casey’s voice boomed out of the kitchen. “You were supposed to wake me in two hours.” He stood in the doorway then, a dark figure with hands on his hips. “Can’t I trust you kids to do anything right?”
Cora had any number of answers—none of them polite—ready to give him, but she had never seen him in a T-shirt before, and she couldn’t help noticing, even without his usual loose shirt or windbreaker, how big he was.
“You hungry?”
Reed tried to say yes, but it came out as a bleat.
Casey laughed. “You know, you two never change, do you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cora asked when she finally found her voice.
“Oh, just get in here,” he said. “I’m making a sandwich. You’re welcome to join me if you don’t have anything better to do.”
* * * *
Mayor Jasper Cribbs rolled slowly off his wife, who smiled at him and said, “You are always the best, dear. Always the best.”
He passed a hand over her breast, propped himself up on one elbow, and kissed her. Hard.
Her eyes closed, and she moaned.
His eyes shifted so he could see the green numerals of the bedstand clock.
Good, he thought; call coming soon.
* * * *
Senior, after making sure his son was still working, walked slowly toward the door. As he passed the wall rack in the short hallway, he reached up and took down the Remington, checked to be sure there was a chambered shell, and let it hang loosely at his side.
No one calls this late at night without something going on.
No one on this island calls on a black man this late at night without something bad going on.
Standing beside the door, shoulder to the wall, he wished for the hundredth time he’d taken a few minutes to put in one of them peephole things, or a little window.
“Who is it?” he called.
“Need to use your phone, sir, if that’s all right.”
“Too late.”
“Sir, I have an awfully sick man in the car. I don’t know where I am, I don’t know how to get a doctor. Just want to call nine-one-one.”
Senior didn’t believe it for a minute. The street runs north and south; all the fool has to do is turn around, he’ll run into someone soon enough.
Someone with neighbors.
“Ain’t letting no one in this late. Go away.”
“Sir, I think perhaps he’s dying.”
Senior moved away from the door, brought the shotgun up to his hip. “Go away.”
“Daddy?”
“Junior,” he snapped, “you finished yet? You finish, I’ll take care of this.” He raised his voice. “Go away.”
His hands shook; his vision fogged over for a second; his stomach tightened.
He knew what it was—they were finally coming to get him. Wouldn’t sell, couldn’t drive him off with those sorry-ass Teagues, so they coming themselves, the sons of bitches; they coming themselves.
He bared his teeth.
Too bad they didn’t listen last time they came.
“Cutler, that you? You trying—”
It happened too fast:
What sounded like an explosion at the front door, the door slamming inward, splitting in half, showering the hall and the old man with splinters from the frame and the door itself; a handheld steel battering ram dropping to the threshold as a man in a topcoat and derby stepped calming into the opening, a gun in each hand.
What sounded like an explosion at the back door, the door slamming inward, its window pane shattering, a man in a football jacket and baseball cap standing in the opening, a gun in each hand.
When the firing began, Junior shrieked and ran for the cellar, throwing the broom at the intruder, left hand waving wildly at his shoulder.
When the firing began, Senior Raybourn yelled for a divine army to stand at his back, and spun into the kitchen, pulling the trigger.
When the firing began, it was just after midnight.
* * * *
7
As soon as Casey heard the shots, he knew what they were. He yelled for the kids to go for the cops, grabbed his coat from the chair, and ran out. Hesitated only a second to get his bearings, until he saw pops of light off to his left and leaped off the stoop, landed running at full speed. Plowed through the hedge in back, thinking it a miracle this side didn’t have the thorns, and angled left toward Raybourn’s house.
No shooting now, and in the moonlight he spotted a man trotting alongside the house from the back, heading for a car parked at the curb, headlamps on. A second man walked calmly down the porch steps through drifting, horizontal layers of smoke.
Suddenly the first man stopped and said something to his partner, and they both turned toward him.
He froze, crouched, not sure they had seen him until the shorter man raised his weapons and began firing into the night. Casey instantly flattened himself on the ground, cursing his size and the moon because the combination pure and simple painted a target on his heart.
The gunshots were deafening, grass erupted not five feet from where he lay, the eruptions moving closer, and he looked frantically, desperately for something to hide behind, it didn’t matter how large as long as it gave him cover.
Nothing; there was nothing, not even a decent tree.
Dirt, grass, and pebbles stung his cheek and scalp as he tried to wriggle backward, his only hope the hedge because Mrs. Essman’s empty house was too far away. That he was going to die only entered his mind when he heard one of the gunmen laugh, a mocking, sporting laugh echoed by another round of gunfire that gouged the lawn not a foot from his left shoulder.
Time to pray, Case, he thought; time to pray.
But he hadn’t even begun, when the gunfire abruptly intensified. Against all reason he raised his head, and saw the two men backing away at speed toward the parked car. A moment before he realized some of the shooting was at his back. He dared a look behind, and saw two figures kneeling by the hedge, and in the flare of one muzzle-flash he thought he saw John Bannock’s face.
The first gunman, his weapons out of sight, slid quickly behind the wheel; the second opened the back door, looked over the roof toward Casey, then took off what looked like a derby, and climbed in. By the time Casey was on his feet, the car was already on the move.
Taking its time; slipping out of the moonlight.
Oh, Lord, he thought, swallowing hard, desperate for a breath; oh, Lord.
“Casey, you all right?”
It was John, and Casey grinned even though he knew the man couldn’t see him clearly. A grateful wave, and he was off again, running as fast as his shaky legs would take him.
He took the Raybourn porch at a leap, calling Senior’s name, stepping over a thick battering ram and barging through the wreck of the front door without thinking. Swinging up his hands when Senior, sitting against the hallway wall, brought a shotgun to bear on his chest.
“It’s me, Chisholm,” he sai
d loudly. “Raybourn, it’s me, Casey Chisholm. You all right?”
Holes and gouges and smoke and stench everywhere.
From the living room, a radio playing “El Paso.”
From somewhere deeper in the house, the sound of glass falling and breaking.
He swept the shotgun’s barrel aside easily as he knelt beside the old man, searching him for signs of injury, inhaling sharply when he saw blood on the man’s arm, his shoulders, his temple, his shirt covered with it.
Senior had a difficult time holding his head up. “Preacher? You the preacher?”
“Chisholm,” Casey answered. “Hang on, I’ll get some—” He stopped, looked around. “Where’s your son, Mr. Raybourn. Where’s Junior?”
Senior jerked violently at his boy’s name, tried to stand, but Casey pushed him back down. “Stay here. I’ll find him.”
“Find him, Preacher,” Senior begged. He brushed a hand over his chest, and moaned at all the blood gleaming on his palm. “Get him, Preacher, find my boy.”
Casey stepped over the debris into the kitchen, batted away smoke and dust. The back door had been busted in, glass all over, and white powder drifting in the air, rising and falling lazily as the night wind slipped in. A moment later he realized it was, of all things, flour.
“Find him, Preacher, find him.”
He didn’t see the younger Raybourn until he looked hard to his right. Junior lay facedown in front of an open door with stairs on the other side. Blood seeped through his shirt, mixed briefly into pink by the flour that settled there.
“Preacher, you find him?”
Casey dropped to his knees, rocking, feeling a chill in his stomach turn swiftly to cold. He leaned closer, not wanting to move the man, not wanting to take the chance of hurting him further.
“Preacher.”
Excited voices outside, and a high distant siren. A quick prayer of thanks to the kids for whatever they’d done, and he laid a hand on the side of Junior’s neck, pressing lightly, searching for a pulse.
“Preacher?”
Son of a bitch, he thought, and glared helplessly around the room, rocking faster, left hand in a fist thumping his leg; son of a bitch, son of a bitch.
Sooner, and he might have helped.
Sooner, something answered, and you’d be dead too. They weren’t just shooting at you to scare you away.
He tried again to find the pulse, while the cold in his stomach deepened, and he began to tremble at it, tightened his jaw so his teeth wouldn’t chatter.
“Preacher.”
Aw, Junior, damnit, he thought as he bit down on his lower lip and slid a hand under the man’s chest. No dampness there; the bullets hadn’t gone through.
A wail: “Oh my God!”
Voices in the hall, and for a moment there was confusion, until he whipped his head around and demanded someone, he didn’t care who, take the old man out, put him in the living room and do something about his wounds until the ambulance arrived.
He heard Lisse gasp.
He saw again the two men leaving the house. Not hurrying. Casual visitors on their way home.
He heard Senior protesting but unable to stop them from taking him away. “Preacher,” he called, and then he sobbed loudly.
Casey looked at his hands as the cold strengthened and made his spine rigid, his neck muscles bulge. He flexed his fingers. He thought: I don’t dare, this isn’t right, I don’t dare. Flexed his fingers again.
The siren grew louder, more than one now.
He braced himself, fighting the cold, fighting the memories, fighting the helpless anger; braced himself until he couldn’t restrain it any longer, couldn’t hold back the cold that began to turn to fierce heat that broke sweat across his face, that made his throat and eyes dry.
He sagged abruptly, bowed his head and shook it, then placed a palm over Junior Raybourn’s back, spreading his fingers as if to cover all the holes. The voices he heard became unintelligible, a buzzing, nothing more; the man below him became a figure in a thick grey-black fog. His lips moved in a prayer he hadn’t uttered for years, but he hadn’t forgotten the words, and he whispered them again.
Someone knelt beside him.
He didn’t look; he pressed harder.
A hand on his shoulder; he didn’t look; he pressed harder, prayed again.
A woman’s voice, through the buzzing: “I think he’s dead.”
And he said, “No.”
Not rocking anymore; still now, moving his fingers without moving the palm.
Sirens, and more voices, commands and demands, protests and more demands.
“Please,” the woman said.
Another voice: “You’ll have to move away, sir, we’ll take care of him now.”
His lips moved, his fingers moved.
“Sir?”
The woman said, “Please.”
A strong hand tried to tug him away, but he shrugged it off easily and said, “Wait. Wait a second.”
“Come on, sir, you can’t do anything, you’re not a doctor, right? Come on, sir, please move.”
The woman said, “Please.”
A shudder that made Casey snatch his hand away, and Junior Raybourn moaned, shuddered again, kicked a leg that hit a wall, and was still.
“That’s it, get the hell out of the way before you do any more damage.”
“Please,” the woman said, and he allowed her to pull at him gently, back to his heels, up to his feet. Immediately, the paramedics roughly shoved him farther away and swarmed around Junior, snapping soft orders to each other as they assembled their equipment.
The cold was gone; the heat was gone.
Numbed and bone-tired, he stumbled to the back door and through it, to the stoop. Took in huge gulps of the night’s air. Put the heel of one hand to his forehead and moved it around in circles. For one terrifying moment he thought he was going to throw up; for one terrifying moment he thought he was going to pass out.
“Are you all right?”
It was the woman.
He nodded. “Yes. Yeah, I think so.” He looked over as he said, “I guess I should thank—” And he stopped.
She stood under the shattered porchlight, her hair in easy waves and angel-wing bangs. She was, at that moment, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“Casey Chisholm,” he said weakly.
She smiled. “Yes. I know. I’m Beatrice Harp, and I think I’ve been searching this whole bloody country for you.”
* * * *
4
1
T
he night was endless:
Casey sat in the living room, jacket draped over his shoulders. Chills regularly walked his spine, and his head felt as if someone had jammed it full of damp cotton.
Freck had been the first to arrive, came into the house with gun drawn, followed immediately by the ambulance crew. Now the ambulance was long gone. As soon as the paramedics had uncovered the extent of the victims’ injuries, they had radioed for a medevac, then took the Raybourns to the beach to meet the helicopter that would take them to Savannah. Casey heard one of them doubt that Senior would last the night, and Junior’s chances weren’t much better.
* * * *
“Let me get this straight,” Sheriff Oakman said, notepad in hand, pure skepticism in his tone. “You saw two men come out of Raybourn’s house. They spotted you, they fired at you, they didn’t hit you, and they ran away.”
“Close enough.”
From the doorway, Freck folded his arms and snorted outright disbelief.
The sheriff ignored him. “Four guns by your count, and they didn’t hit you.”
“It was dark. Mostly dark, there was some moonlight. I dropped to the ground and”—he gestured wearily at John and Lisse—”they fired back. The two men ran, got in their car and drove off.”
“You had no weapon of your own.”
“No.”
“You heard shots and you ran over here with no weapon of your own.”
&
nbsp; “No. I mean, right. And anyway, I’m an ex-con, as you keep reminding me. Where would I get a gun?”
“Ex-cons have ways,” Freck said, slipping a toothpick between his lips.
“I didn’t have one.”
Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04] Page 34
