Nicki stood there, stunned, watching as Brad melted down in front of her. When he was done, the bloodstain on his soaked shirt was three times the size it had been before, and the look she saw in his face was one of utter defeat.
“You don’t get it, do you?” he said, listing to one side and struggling to catch his breath.
“What is it?” Nicki asked.
“He was still out here when I came after him. He’d had a good half minute to run away, but when I stepped out, he was still here.” He said this as if it would somehow explain his outburst. Nicki just waited for the rest.
“He cut the damn battery cable, Nicki! He took those bolt cutters and he cut the cable in two. We’re screwed. We’re totally, hopelessly screwed.”
Of the things that Nicki understood, cars were nowhere on the list. “Can’t you hot-wire it, like you did with the others?”
Brad looked at her as if she’d grown a new eye. “No! It’s the fucking battery! The little shit did the one thing that irreversibly cripples a car. When you hot-wire, you just bypass the ignition. You still need the goddamn battery.”
When he was done, there seemed to be nothing left. He breathed hard, waiting for someone to cough up an idea. Nothing came but darkness and harder rain.
“What are we going to do?” Nicki asked.
Brad snorted a chuckle, and his shoulders sagged. “I guess we go back inside and wait,” he said.
“But the police will be here.”
He nodded. “And soon.”
Nicki was confused. “What happens then?”
“Let’s go inside,” Brad said. “You’ll catch your death out here.” He tried to smile, but there was no humor left.
Nicki started to move, but Brad didn’t. “Are you coming?”
“I’ll be there. I just have one more thing to do.” He pulled the Sig from his waistband.
“Brad, no!”
He raised the weapon and fired one shot through the Bronco’s radiator.
PART FIVE
TIME TO LIVE
Chapter Thirty
Peter Banks protested bitterly about being treated like a prisoner, cursing Darla Sweet and her entire family tree. Darla tried shutting him up by telling him that his belligerence was only hurting his own case, and Carter told him that he was a fool to say anything from now on without his lawyer being present. Neither approach worked, so by the time Carter was dropped back at his car, he was relieved to be free of them both.
Something about Darla’s conclusions vis-à-vis Peter didn’t sit right with him. First of all, Carter had a hard time seeing that kid in the role of a murderer—even an accidental one. His shock at being accused seemed too genuine, as did his calm demeanor when they arrived at the pool hall. Guilty people ran away, or at least tried to.
Just as Nicki and Brad had.
This Banks kid never seemed even close to bolting. His eyes didn’t shift, he didn’t seem to calculate distances to the exits. Instead, he played a damn fine game of pool. Perhaps Deputy Sweet was not an aficionado of the game, but Carter knew from personal experience that when nerves got edgy, pool shots paid the price. Peter Banks was threading needles with the cue ball.
But if Peter wasn’t their man, Carter was no closer to saving Nicki than he was when he spoke to her on the phone three hours ago.
He had to find that tape. There’d be no arguing with a video. Standing there in the parking lot with his key poised at the lock, he cast his gaze back at the façade of the Quik Mart. Crime scene tape sealed the opening of the doors, but all of the investigating personnel had left. In their minds, he supposed, the case was closed.
Wiping the mask of rainwater from his face, Carter ran his options through his mind. The one that made the most sense involved calling the state police and playing out his new theory to the powers that be. To do that, though—to accuse the senior cop in any community of this level of malfeasance—a person had better have his shit together in a watertight bag. Circumstantial evidence wouldn’t be enough. Which meant that Carter didn’t yet have what he needed.
It all came back to the damn videotape. That was the single piece of evidence that would get everybody off Nicki’s case.
Suppose the tape was still in the store. That was possible, wasn’t it? If Hines couldn’t have smuggled the tape out under his shirt, and the place had been crawling with investigators ever since, then maybe he’d hidden it somewhere in a back room. Surely not. Maybe. Carter considered prying open a door and combing through the Quik Mart himself, but he dismissed the thought. He wouldn’t know where to look, and it would hardly help Nicki’s case for him to be arrested on a burglary rap.
The more he thought about it, the more he fumed. How could one father put another through this kind of anguish? What would drive Hines to do such a thing? Surely, the sheriff’s own instincts as a parent should have triggered some measure of mercy.
It just didn’t add up. At a visceral level, Carter couldn’t buy the motivation inherent to Darla Sweet’s theory of the cover-up. It would take a beast with no heart to inflict this kind of distress and pain on innocent people merely for the sake of protecting one’s career, or even a son’s future as a professional athlete. The motivation just seemed too light. Add to that the apparent innocence of Darla’s prime suspect, and that left one huge mystery.
Not only would the sheriff have had to stash the video, but he also would have had to wipe the murder weapon free of fingerprints. Surely, the killer didn’t stick around to do that, and for Hines to go to those ends to protect the son of a bitch—
“Oh, my God,” Carter breathed. The answer flashed into his head with such brilliance and clarity that it had to be the right one. Sheriff Hines was covering for his son, Jeremy. That explained everything. It never did make sense for Sheriff Hines to go through all of this for the sake of a ne’er-do-well dropout, but it was the least he could do to protect his own flesh and blood.
Carter thought about the look on Gisela Hines’s face when they’d first arrived, and about that huge bruise on Jeremy’s eye. Darla had been quick to conclude that the bruise came from a beating from his father, and maybe some of it was, but it was equally feasible—even more feasible in Carter’s mind—that Jeremy Hines’s black eye was the result of one hell of a punch delivered by someone trying to foil a robbery.
He thought back to his telephone conversation with Nicki. She’d told him that Brad had tackled the robber from behind and hit him hard in the face.
But why would Jeremy Hines rob a store? What could he possibly hope to gain by sticking a gun in a store clerk’s face? Surely, in a town this size he didn’t think that he could get away with it.
As he felt himself running away with this new take on events, Carter forced himself to put on the breaks. To convince anyone—even himself—that this theory had merit, he needed means, motive, and opportunity. Right now all he had was a wild hare of an idea.
And a bruised eye.
And a gun wiped clean.
And a million questions.
It was time to pay another visit to the Hines residence.
* * *
Scotty had never bled like this before. About the worst was a gash in his knee when he’d slipped at the swimming pool. Back then, he could see the flash of white bone smiling back at him from behind the torn skin. That had hurt like crazy.
This thing on his head didn’t hurt all that much, but it bled like he was in a horror movie. The rain probably made it look worse than it was, but the blood had turned his T-shirt crimson. He could even see little red rivers flowing down his legs. He wondered if maybe his brains were hanging out. That was the fear that kept him from touching the wound. The very thought of brain tissue under his fingernails made him feel queasy.
He picked up the pace and ran again. He had to get to the Mellings’. From there he could call the cops and then they could rescue Gramma.
Did you see the way she swung into action to fight Brad? She was like an animal, flying through th
e air and nailing the son of a bitch like a linebacker. Who’d’ve thought? She saved Scotty’s life. He never in a million years thought anyone would risk their own life for his. With Mama, it had been just the opposite. In Scotty’s world, people existed for themselves.
After all, Gramma barely even knew him. That was because she’d thrown Mama out of the house for getting knocked up with him, and they never talked to each other. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Scotty, none of the bad shit that tracked his mama through life would have happened.
No surprise there. Scotty knew he was a pain in the ass. It was his mouth that got him into trouble. He didn’t have that little switch inside that other people had to cut off thoughts before they could become words. Sometimes, he found himself saying shit that he hadn’t even known he’d been thinking.
It was only natural that Gramma got so pissed off at him. Everybody got pissed at him. Just last week, he’d promised Gramma that he’d move out the instant he turned sixteen—as soon that he could get the e-constipation paper signed. E-constipation was the process by which kids could be treated as adults under the law. Kathy Melling had told him all about it.
Gramma laughed when he told her the plan; he’d never heard her laugh so hard. “Honey,” she’d said, “I wouldn’t sign your e-constipation papers on a bet.” He hadn’t thought that the idea was all that ridiculous.
But he had begun to think that maybe she was beginning to like him a little. They laughed a lot when they weren’t screaming and being mad at each other.
Now she was alone with a couple of killers. And that one—that Brad—was plenty pissed off.
If something happened to Gramma, Scotty would have nowhere to go. Those first nights after Mama’s murder, when no one was sure what to do with him, were the most frightening of his life. If Gramma got murdered too, where would he go?
Now that he thought about it, maybe cutting the battery cable hadn’t been such a good idea. Maybe if he hadn’t, they’d be gone now. He’d done it on an impulse, really, inspired by seeing the long-handled bolt cutters leaning against the wall of the garage. He was worried that they might try to kidnap Gramma and drive her off and do something terrible. Rape her, maybe—which Scotty had only recently learned meant a lot more than the when-a-man-beats-up-a-woman explanation that his mama had given him.
In the heat of the moment, Scotty had reasoned that if the killers couldn’t drive off anywhere, they’d be easier to catch. Now, as it was taking him for-freaking-ever to get to the Mellings’, he wondered if he hadn’t just pushed Brad over the edge. Everybody knew that a trapped animal was more dangerous than a roaming one, and Scotty wondered if the same thing applied to people.
If they did hurt Gramma, or if they killed her, it would be all his fault. He picked up the pace even more.
Up ahead, a flash of something blue caught his eye. Through the rain, in the lingering early twilight, he could barely make it out. It looked like a car.
Not just any car, but a police car.
And it was heading right for him.
* * *
Trooper Hayes blinked twice. When he first saw the speck in the distance, he didn’t know what to make of it through the fog of the rain. It took him all of three seconds to connect the dots.
He pulled the microphone from its clip and spoke the words that would bring cops from all over the state to this little corner of Lincolntown.
Chapter Thirty-one
Carter Janssen didn’t bother to knock this time. Blocking the space between the boxwoods with his vehicle lest someone try to get away, he strode up the walk, across the porch, and into the Hines’s living room. In New York, they called it “home invasion.”
Gisela rushed in from the dining room, her features set in a mask of fear. She struggled with the weight of an over-and-under shotgun, the stock tucked under her arm, the muzzle pointed at him.
“Get out of my house,” she said.
“I need to speak with Jeremy,” Carter said. “Where is he?”
“Get out.”
The shotgun told him much of what he needed to know. “I’ll leave right after I have a talk with your son.”
“I’ll count to three,” Gisela said. “Then I’ll pull the trigger. One.”
“Go right to three,” Carter said. The sight of the muzzle stirred his insides, but the look in the woman’s eyes screamed bluff. “I need to speak with him now.”
“About what?”
“I think you know,” he said.
“You can’t take him away,” Gisela said. She started to cry. “He’s too young. It was all a mistake.”
“I know,” Carter said. “He thought the gun was unloaded, didn’t he?”
Her grief turned to shock. “How did you know?”
“Mrs. Hines, honestly, I’m not concerned about what he did or why. I just need to exonerate my daughter. She had nothing to do with this. It isn’t right for her to suffer. There’s a transplant waiting for her. Heart and lungs. We’re about to miss the deadline, and unless I get the truth from Jeremy, that one bullet will have killed yet another child.”
The pressure seemed more than Gisela could bear. The muzzle drifted downward. “Please don’t let them take my baby away,” she cried.
Carter took a hesitant step forward, hoping perhaps to comfort the woman, but a noise from behind made him spin on his heel. It was a distinct thump, and it came from the room where Jeremy had emerged last time. It was the sound of a window opening. Dammit, the kid was getting away!
Carter lunged toward the bedroom.
“Don’t!” Gisela screamed from behind. “Leave him be!”
Carter tried to ignore the leaden feeling in his stomach, the tingling in his back as his skin tightened to receive buckshot. The bedroom door was locked. Stepping back, he threw his shoulder into it, cracking it down the middle. The flash of pain in his shoulder made him wonder what exactly had broken.
“I’ll shoot!” Gisela yelled.
He ignored her. She’d do what she thought she had to do; he had no control over that. But he wasn’t about to let his only hope disappear. He took a step back and fired a kick with the flat of his foot, landing a blow just above the knob. The jamb splintered in an explosion of wood and hardware.
Gisela screamed.
At a glance, Carter saw that this was not the first violence done in the confines of the bedroom. Near a little student desk, shelves had been toppled, their contents strewn across the floor. Near the bed, he could almost make out the outline of a head and a pair of shoulders where someone had been tossed into the wall, puncturing the drywall. A two-by-three-foot picture frame lay on its side near the bed, its glass shattered, and if Carter wasn’t mistaken, the stains on the carpet looked like blood.
Gisela flung herself into Carter, knocking him off balance, but he stayed on his feet. She was punching him now, all over his back and shoulders, but he didn’t feel the blows. He didn’t care. He ran to the wide-open window, where a tattered screen hung by a corner. In the distance, he could see a lanky young man in shorts and a T-shirt disappearing into the trees.
Carter ducked low as he stepped through, dropping four feet to the soft, sandy ground. He hopped three times in a struggle to keep his balance, then found his feet and took off at a run.
“Jeremy!” he yelled. “Wait up! I need to talk to you!”
The kid had vanished into the trees. How did he do that? The woods didn’t seem that thick out here. Most of the trees were so scrawny, with foliage that didn’t thicken till waist height, that he’d have thought it impossible to hide. But Jeremy was nowhere to be seen.
So, where was he? Could it be that he was just that freaking fast, that he could build insurmountable distance between them in just a few seconds? Carter knew that he wasn’t in the shape that he once was, but really.
Carter slowed to a jog. Running made sense only when you knew where you were going.
He called out to the woods, “Jeremy? Running doesn’t make it any easier. Com
e on out. I’m not a cop, I’m not here to arrest you. I just need to talk. When we’re done, you go your way and I’ll go mine.”
A new wave of rain arrived, a thunderous roar of water made louder by the acoustical tricks of the woods. He shouted again, but it was hard to tell if his voice would carry for miles or inches. Certainly, it would be a simple matter to sneak up on somebody in weather like this, and that was a thought that made him move more slowly.
There was no mistaking the sound of a gunshot, though, and the one that rocked Carter’s world seemed to come from only a few feet away.
Chapter Thirty-two
Nicki lay back on the sofa, trying her best to fight off the fatigue.
“I’m stumped,” Brad said. He’d pulled a straight-back chair into the living room from the kitchen and allowed himself a brief rest. “Honest to God, I just don’t have a clue what to do next. I should have shot the kid.”
“You couldn’t have,” Nicki said.
Brad snorted. “Yeah, I could. And this is why I should.”
Nicki closed her eyes. “You’re not like that. You couldn’t hurt a child.”
“What makes you think so?”
“You were hurt too many times yourself.” She glanced at him in time to catch the roll of his eyes. She smiled. “You want to be tougher than you are,” she said. “You want to be a bad guy, but it’s not in you.”
He started to argue, but he let it go. What was the point? Nicki’s universe played by the rules. In it, good things came to good people, and good people never did bad things. Having never met animals like Peter Chaney and Lucas Georgen, she’d never understand that sometimes it was necessary to kill. Even here, in this godforsaken little house, she couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that it was important for Gramma and Scotty to be afraid of him. Fear was what kept him from having to hurt them worse than he did.
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