“Wait till we’re in the car.”
The black Crown Victoria was parked between the two live oaks in the front yard. Its windshield glinted and then went dark as the sun slipped behind the house.
The men climbed into the car and closed the doors.
“Something isn’t right in there,” Max said. “Get a search warrant, whatever you have to do, turn that place upside down. That old man…I don’t know.”
Sgt. Mullins put the key into the ignition but didn’t start the engine.
He stared through the windshield at the great stone House of Kite, ensconced on the banks of the sound.
“Well, I do know,” he said finally. “Been doing this quite awhile. You learn how to read people, how to know if they’re hiding something. If they’re nervous. Body language says a lot. Fidgeting. If the eye contact is too intense or nonexistent.”
“Barry, look—”
Sgt. Mullins held up a finger.
“That old man,” he said, “doesn’t have a thing in this world to hide.”
“It’s your suspect’s father for—”
“Means nothing. I looked into his soul, Max. He’s telling the truth.”
Sgt. Mullins clicked in his seatbelt and cranked the engine.
“Let’s go find Mr. Scottie Myers,” he said, shifting the car into reverse.
Max scowled.
Sgt. Mullins grinned.
“Trust me, Max. I’m right. It’s a gift.”
Sgt. Mullins turned the car around and they headed back along the dirt road that wound through the thicket of live oaks. Reaching down, he turned on the radio, found an oldies station, drumming his hands now on the steering wheel.
As Max reached to buckle his seatbelt he happened to glance in the side mirror.
“Stop the car, Barry!”
“What?”
“Look!”
Sgt. Mullins stepped on the brake and both men looked back through the window.
Beyond the tunnel of live oaks, they could see the stoop of the stone house, the front door flung wide open, a woman in torn yellow lingerie falling down the steps, picking herself up again, and running after them, the blood on her left leg visible even from fifty yards away.
Sgt. Mullins said, “Holy God.”
He turned back to shift the car into park.
The windshield shattered.
His right arm exploded.
Sgt. Mullins stomped the gas and as the car accelerated, the man with the shotgun stepped out of the way and fired pointblank through the window at Sgt. Mullins’s head.
The detective collapsed into Max’s lap, his foot slipped off the gas pedal, and the Crown Victoria rolled a ways down the dirt road before veering into the thicket. After ten feet, its front bumper collided gently with the trunk of a live oak and the car was at rest, idling quietly.
Max’s left shoulder had caught three pellets of buckshot but he felt nothing as he strained to lift the big detective off his legs.
He heaved Sgt. Mullins back into the driver seat and glanced through the rear passenger window. A man with long black hair was thirty yards away and closing, moving deliberately through the thicket toward the car. He saw Max looking, smiled, and pumped his shotgun.
They killed Vi.
He swept Sgt. Mullins’s coat back as the footsteps of the assailant waxed audible over the purr of the engine.
Unbuttoning the latchet, he pulled the Glock from its cowhide holster.
Vi had begged him several times to come shoot with her at the range. He never had and knew nothing of how to use a firearm except for what he’d seen in movies and on television.
After searching for a safety that wasn’t there, Max finally aimed through the rear passenger window as the pale-faced man closed in.
He squeezed the trigger and the glass exploded as the .45 bucked in his hand.
When her eyes opened she could see a solitary planet in the cobalt.
Her breath steamed.
Leaves crunching somewhere in the distance.
She wondered if the man with long black hair would kill her in the woods or take her back to that awful house…
Beth woke colder than she’d ever been, the sky starblown, woods gone quiet, her bleeding stopped. She sat up, staggered to her feet, and limped along through the thicket.