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Gommorah, I say this is about some poor little kid who saw
his mommy getting drilled by the guy who passes around
communion wafers. You were pissed, so you killed him and
your whole family. How’s that for the legacy of Billy the
Kid. His descendants were so messed up they couldn’t
satisfy their wives. Think I’ll take another trip down to Fort
Sumner, fix up that tombstone of his. Right now it says
‘Pals.’ I’m thinking it should say Billy the Kid: Always
Shooting Blanks.”
For a split second, Roberts’s face turned away from
Amanda and his eyes met mine. They burned in a way I
hadn’t seen before. They were unfocused, angry, like he’d
begun to lose a bit of control. Though he was in fact a coldblooded murderer, in William’s mind he was a savior.
“See,” I said. “The way you’re looking at me right now,
those aren’t the eyes of a Regulator. They’re the eyes of a guy
who kills for his own sick pleasure.”
He swept his gaze back to Amanda, the rifle muzzle still
digging into the nape of her neck. Sobs were racking her body.
I had to separate them, get some distance. Just a little more…
“This whole show for the cameras? Might get page twelve
in tomorrow’s paper, somewhere after the ninth episode of
Lost. You’ll be forgotten before restaurants get their morning
sushi deliveries. And all that’ll be left is your dead granddaddy.
You saw today’s Dispatch, right? You know nobody believes
the truth. Nobody thinks Brushy Bill actually was Billy the Kid.
You’re a fucking failure, Will. Just like your whole family.”
Suddenly Roberts swung the rifle my way, that muzzle
aiming to blast my heart out. I knew it was coming. Once I
saw the look in his eyes, I knew he would kill me if I pressed
further. So I was ready.
I managed to grab the rifle’s barrel before it measured my
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chest, swatted it upward as a gunshot shattered the air, white
plaster raining down like ash. I had only seconds. One thing
I’d learned about Winchesters, they were quick to reload.
“Amanda, run!” I shouted. She tried to move, but Roberts’s
hand snaked out and grabbed her by the hair. He tried to hold
the Winchester with his other hand, but the long, heavy rifle
seemed to be too much. He struggled to bring it around and
get off another shot. Instead he whipped the barrel around and
caught me in the face.
I went down, my legs giving way. Blood began to trickle
into my eyes. I wiped it away, got back to my feet, saw that
horrible black muzzle lining up with my forehead. Roberts
had a sick grin on his face.
Then another shot rang out, and the grin disappeared.
A swell of blood blossomed just over Roberts’s left
shoulder. I heard another sharp crack, saw a spark of light
come from the building across the street. The cops had set up
snipers. And they finally got their separation.
The second shot blew out a portion of Roberts’s jacket by
his midsection, a gout of blood splashing onto the floor. His
eyes began to roll back in his head. He tried to bring the Winchester back up, but I grabbed it from his trembling hands.
Then everything just seemed to happen. Roberts began to
topple backward, and in a moment of horror I saw his body
was destined for the open window he’d shattered. His left
hand was still clutching Amanda’s hair. Her hands bound, her
mouth gagged, she didn’t have the balance to resist.
“No!” I shouted, as Roberts stumbled backward, hitting the
back of his legs on the windowsill. He teetered for a moment,
grinning at me, his face and chest a mass of dark blood.
Through bloodstained teeth I heard him say, “Let’s go,
angel,” before he fell backward, taking Amanda with him.
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I rushed forward, still holding the gun, and thrust the upper
half of my body out the window. Amanda was teetering over
the ledge, holding on with her legs as Roberts now clung desperately to her outstretched arms. His hands were slipping.
Below them I could see dozens of people scattering about as
they looked above, saw the three of us perched nine stories
high.
And then he fell. Roberts’s hand slipped off of Amanda’s
wrists, and then he tumbled down, faster than I could have
imagined, that sick smile embedded in my eyes like it would
never leave, his body falling faster and faster until it thudded
on the pavement below.
And that’s when Amanda’s knees gave way, and she fell
over backward. Without thinking, I thrust the Winchester into
the loop between the bonds on her hands.
It held.
And there we were, hanging a hundred feet from the
ground, Amanda’s bound hands caught on the barrel of a rifle
that had been used to kill four people.
Her mouth was still gagged. Her eyes fluttered, more gasps
escaping as she tried not to die.
“Amanda, baby, reach up with your hands and grab the
barrel,” I said. Her hands managed to close around the rifle,
but the weight was too much for me to hold. I braced my legs
against the wall, tried to leverage the rifle upward and give
Amanda a place to find her footing.
Then I heard the sounds of bending metal. The rifle was
old, wasn’t meant to carry any load, let alone a grown person.
Amanda was slipping.
“Hold on!” I yelled. I braced my feet ever harder, felt the
stitches in my hand pop as I yanked as hard as I could, feeling
the rifle barrel moving upward as I carried Amanda. Then the
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load lightened, and I saw Amanda had found her footing, just
barely, on an outside ledge.
“Amanda, baby, count to three and then lean forward.
Please, I promise you’ll be fine.” Tears streaked down her
cheeks but she nodded.
“One,” I said, my voice leaving me. “Two.”
I looked at my love, knew in this next second she would
either live or die.
“Three.”
At once I dropped the Winchester and Amanda leaned
forward. I leapt forward, clasped my arms around her waist,
pulled her as hard as I could, and suddenly she came toppling
over the windowsill, landing on the ground next to me.
We both lay there for a minute, breathing heavy, until I saw
that Amanda was still bound. I grabbed the knife Roberts had
dropped and cut the ropes from her hands. Then I gently
pulled the handkerchief from her mouth and kissed her hard.
Her salty tears found their way into my mouth as I held
Amanda, knowing I could never hold her like this again.
59
You never know how much damage is done until you pull
back. Survey the scene from a distance. And even then it
needs a few days to metastasize.
What Largo Vance had started, Costas Paradis was about
to finish. The man had donated nearly half a million dollar
s
to perform an exhumation of Brushy Bill Roberts and
compare his DNA to William Henry, his alleged grandson,
and the sole surviving heir to Billy the Kid. And this time they
were going to do it right. Costas would make sure of that. Or
at least his money would.
In the meantime, as expected, residents of New Mexico
and Texas were apoplectic over the Dispatch’ s revelations.
They were planning to fight the exhumation tooth and nail.
My old friend Justice Waverly was quoted in the Dallas
Morning News as saying, “They can come with shovels and
backhoes, but if they try to destroy the legacy of the Old West
we’ll meet them with rifles and cannons.”
In New York that kind of talk could get a politician impeached. In Texas it guaranteed Justice Waverly would be
reelected every term until he finally keeled over in his morning pastry.
I spoke to Curt Sheffield the day after Roberts died. The
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cops had found a receipt in his bag for several nights at a
seedy forty-dollar-a-night hotel room. I didn’t even know
they ran that cheap in New York. The manager didn’t remember seeing Roberts, mainly because the man was half
blind.
The cops found bloodstains on the floor that they were
running against Mya’s type, to confirm Roberts had stayed
there. They also found a note on the nightstand next to the
bed where Roberts slept. It gave no further explanation for
the murders. It contained two brief sentences.
Up in heaven I’ll see my friends.
Bury me next to my blood.
If the DNA tests confirmed what I assumed they would,
there was a question of whether William Henry Roberts would
be buried in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, next to the alleged
grave site of Billy the Kid. Even though it wasn’t where the true
Kid was buried, it was where his legacy lived. And that legacy,
that myth, I’d learned, was far more important than the truth.
Most argued a murderer didn’t deserve such a burial. Those
in power argued what was good enough for one killer was
good enough for another, that evil should be contained.
After running the hostage crisis on page one the next day,
the next day Dispatch relegated the Roberts story to page
seven, where it was given quarter-page treatment in deference
to a color picture of a senator’s wife who had an allergic
reaction to her Botox injection. After that, William Henry
Roberts wasn’t mentioned again.
Paulina Cole was suspended for three weeks. But I knew
that her suspension was merely window dressing. Ted Allen
was forcing her to fly under the radar until everything quieted
down. Besides, with Costas Paradis looking to dig up Brushy
Bill Roberts, the Kid’s defenders had bigger fish to fry than
a newspaper reporter.
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On page three of the Dispatch was a small item about the
custody fight for the Winchester rifle Roberts had used on his
rampage. Rex Sheehan claimed it was still the legal property
of the museum in Fort Sumner. Costas Paradis wanted to buy
the gun to smelt the metal and burn the wood. Despite my
desire for Costas to get some sort of closure and to see the
rifle destroyed, part of me felt the gun was a relic of American
history and should be treated as such. Provided, this time, Rex
got a security system worth a damn.
When I finished reading the day’s papers, I put them in a
neat pile underneath the chair. It was only then when I noticed
the steady beeping, the humming. It came from Mya’s bedside.
Staring at her small, frail body, a far cry from the strong,
vibrant girl I once knew, something inside me had burst. I
couldn’t leave. Didn’t want to. I told Wallace and Jack I needed
a few days off, that the trauma from the week’s events combined
with the new sutures in my hand made it difficult to write, difficult to work. This was all bullshit, but it sounded better than
the truth. A lot of things were sounding better than the truth.
Mya came and went. Her eyes fluttering open and shut.
The doctors said she would make it. She would recover.
Physically. Mentally, it would take time. It would be hard.
And I would be there for her. Like I hadn’t been before.
I called you, Henry.
And I wasn’t there.
No more.
Cindy Loverne entered, holding a cup of coffee. She sat
down, blew some steam off the top and crossed her legs.
“How are you, Henry?”
I felt guilty even answering such a question.
“Feeling a bit better,” I said.
“That’s good. Listen, I want to thank you for being so
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good to Mya. I don’t know what she’s done to deserve such
a good friend, but—”
“Please,” I said. “Don’t finish that sentence. She deserves
much better than anything I’ve given her. And I want you to
know, I know she can’t hear me right now, but I’ll be there
for her and your family. It’s the least I can do after everything.”
Cindy smiled warmly. Then her eyes moved to the bed. She
looked back at me.
“I think somebody can hear you.”
I looked over. Mya’s eyes were open. They were filmy,
groggy, squinting to regain focus.
I nearly leapt off the chair, went over and knelt down by
her bedside.
“Hey you,” I said.
“Henry,” Mya said, her voice still weak.
“I’m here,” I said. I took her hand in mine, gently stroked
her dry skin. “I’m here.”
I waited outside the hospital. The sun had dipped below
the buildings, the sky turning a harsh gray. The air felt cold
and I cinched up my jacket. I’d asked Amanda to meet me
here, unsure why I chose this particular location, but in the
back of my mind I knew the reason full well.
I watched her as she walked toward me. Her eyes were
streaked with red, and I didn’t have to ask why. She came
up to me. Her hands were in her pockets. She moved her toe
back and forth across the pavement, afraid or unwilling to
make eye contact.
“Hey, Amanda,” I said.
“Hey” came the flat reply.
“Were you able to find—”
“Yes,” she said, cutting me off. “A friend said I could sublet
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her studio for a few months. Rent’s not too bad. Commute is
kind of a killer. Guess you take what you can get.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Guess so.”
She looked at me, the pain and hurt and confusion in her
eyes nearly tearing me apart, letting loose everything I wanted
to say but knew I couldn’t.
“So what happens now?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I do want to see you again.”
Amanda shook her head, and it was just then that I saw
she’d begun to cry.
“Nope,” she said. “If we end this…I want to end it. I don’t
want to have to think about this every time
I see you. I just
want to pull it off. Like you said.”
“Amanda.” I never wondered, in all my life, what it would
feel like to tell the girl I loved, who loved me back, that I
couldn’t be with her. Part of being in love, part of being a man
was putting your loved ones above yourself.
I didn’t love Mya anymore. Not like that. But she’d paid
a price for my failures. I had a debt to pay her back.
To keep Amanda safe, to keep her alive, I had to leave. I
knew pulling away from her would tear open a wound that
would probably never heal. But at least at some point the
bleeding would stop; it would scar over.
I noticed her hand had left its pocket and was fidding with
her jeans absently.
“What’s that?” I asked. She seemed surprised.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just, you know…guess old habits die
hard.”
“Show me,” I said, but had a feeling in the pit of my
stomach that I knew what it was. She stared at me as she
brought it out. A small spiral notebook. Just like the kind she
wrote in back when we met. Back when she had nobody, and
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books. For a girl who’d grown up with no real family, no real
identity, those notebooks helped her hold on.
I hadn’t seen her write in them in the year we’d been a
couple. And now that we were coming apart, she needed
them again.
It’s for the best, I told myself. She’s smart. She’s beautiful. She has the world waiting to open itself for her. If you
stay with her, you selfish bastard, you could steal it all from
her.
And so I knew I had to end it.
“If you ever need anything,” I said. “Someone to talk to…”
“I won’t,” she said. “But I appreciate the gesture.”
“Right,” I repeated blindly. “Gesture.”
She wiped her nose, sniffed once.
“Well then, goodbye, Henry.” She turned to leave.
“Amanda,” I said. She turned back. The tears were flowing
from her eyes, and all I wanted to do was gather her in my
arms, kiss her and tell her everything would be all right. But
to do that would allow events like the other day to happen.
Jack was right. He’d been right all along. And Amanda nearly
paid for my ignorance with her life.
“If you want to say something, Henry, say it.” My mouth
opened but nothing came out. So she said, “Goodbye, Henry.”
Amanda walked away without saying another word. I
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