But I"m doing it. I mean, I"m sort of committed at this point.
I should be committed. This is a lunatic move. Suicide.
A real Gary Cooper move.
That"s Cooper in For Whom the Bell Tolls, in case you"re wondering, where he stays behind to cover the retreat-even though he knows it"ll be his a.s.s.
"I do this for you, Maria. You go, and I will go with you."
Bulls.h.i.t he goes with her. He bites the dust and turns into ant food.
Off to the side there, back in the trees, that"s where we did Hester Luddgate.
I wish there was something I could do with these tapes.
Oh, well.
I"ll just leave them in the car when we go in. Somebody will find them. Whoever happens to survive the upcoming epic, The Gunfight at Tom"s Garage.
Produced, written, directed by and starring the great Simon Quirt!
If the wrong person finds these tapes, they"ll never see the light of day. Guess I"ve got to survive, or at least make it so Tom and the other guys don"t.
If I can save Lisa ...
"Lisa, if you"re listening to this, I want you to make sure these tapes aren"t destroyed. I"m willing them to you. Take them to a lawyer, maybe. The cops should listen to them, but they might be worth something so make sure you keep all the rights. You deserve something out of this mess I got you into. Maybe a lawyer can put you in touch with an agent, or something. Maybe they can make a book or movie out of this and my exploits will be immortalized."
Okay, I"m stopping here. Tom"s mansion and the garage are just up the driveway. I can see them from here. Everything looks dark, which is normal.
The guys are probably waiting for me inside the garage.
Unless Tom has maybe sent Mitch and Chuck outside to cover me-or bushwhack me.
Oh, man.
This is it.
I"m gonna climb out of the car now, and haul Jody-or whoever she is-out of the trunk. My human shield.
Oh, man.
Four against one.
Great odds, if you happen to be the Terminator.
Oh, well. If I bite the dust, let it be said that I did what I had to do and didn"t back down.
Talk to you again soon, folks.
Or maybe not.
Adios, amigos.
Where the f.u.c.k"s a c.r.a.pper when you need one?
Part Eleven.
Home, Sweet Home.
Chapter Forty-one.
Jody tossed and turned and sometimes groaned. She knew she had only been in bed for forty-five minutes, but it felt like hours and hours.
She"d expected to fall asleep immediately. After all, she"d been very tired-drained-and this was not some lousy motel with a noisy air conditioner and a hard pillow. This was home.
Familiar, peaceful sounds came through the open window. So did a mild breeze that was almost, but not quite, cool enough to make her sit up and reach down past her feet for the top sheet. If she covered herself with the sheet, she might be too hot. This was just about right, sprawling here in her nightshirt.
Maybe if it weren"t twisted around her like this-squeezing her, putting pressure on a few sore places, cutting off her circulation.
She sat up, pulled at her nightshirt and struggled to unwind it. When it was hanging loose, she lay back down. She folded her hands beneath her head. She could feel the rear of the nightshirt rumpled between the small of her back and the mattress, leaving her rump bare against the sheet. The hem in front was only slightly lower than her waist.
Felt just fine that way.
But it wouldn"t do. Not with Andy in the guest room. Not that he was likely to sneak around in the middle of the night and spy on her.
You never know about him, though.
Pushing at the mattress with her heels, she raised her rump. She gave the hem of her nightshirt a tug to bring it down several inches, then lowered herself.
Better.
Not quite as cool and comfortable, but now at least she didn"t feel so exposed, so vulnerable.
It isn"t Andy that bothers me, she realized. It"s him.
He was here.
Right here in my room. Looking around. Going through my drawers. Looking at my personal stuff. Touching things.
He took a nap in my bed, just like some warped version of Goldilocks.
He actually took my stuff and wore it!
G.o.d only knows what else he did when he was here.
She had a feeling that her father was keeping things to himself. A lot of things. She wished she could"ve listened to the tapes, herself.
"Be grateful you didn"t have to," Dad had said. "I don"t want you to ever listen to them. That goes for you, too, Andy."
"What about me?" Sharon had asked.
"I wouldn"t, if I were you. I wish I hadn"t heard them, but I really didn"t have much choice in the matter. My G.o.d, I knew there were a lot of sick, evil people out there, but ... these guys were monsters. And that Simon fellow ... thank G.o.d he"s dead. Thank G.o.d they"re all dead."
Jody wished she could hear the tapes, though. Dad had spent most of the afternoon at the station, listening to them with Nick Ryan. He hadn"t come right out and said so, but Jody supposed there must be at least five or six hours" worth of recordings by the nut.
Dad had definitely given them an abridged version when he got home.
He"d managed to compress the whole story into less than an hour so that Sharon could hear it all before leaving to get ready for the start of her shift.
Closing her eyes, Jody could see him at the kitchen table. He had turned his chair around so that he could straddle its seat and lean forward, arms crossed over the top of its back. He"d told most of the story in a soft, calm voice, almost as if he were bored by it. Near the end, though, the upturned corner of his mouth had started to twitch sometimes.
The twitching had begun when he told about Simon breaking the girl"s jaw with the rifle b.u.t.t. "He did it so Karen wouldn"t be able to tell anyone that her name wasn"t (twitch) Jody. After that, he put her back into the trunk and drove her to Tom"s place. That"s where he finished putting his story on tape. He left the recorder and tapes in the glove compartment of the Cadillac, then he apparently (twitch) took Karen out of the trunk and they headed for the garage.
"He wanted to make it look as if he was cooperating, but he was armed to the teeth. He went in with an Army model Colt .45, plus a two-shot .45 Derringer and a Smith & Wesson .357 magnum revolver. He talks about all those weapons on the tapes, and they were also found in the rubble this morning.
"We think he went in holding Karen in front of him. He said he wanted to (twitch) use her as a shield. But something must"ve gone wrong. Somehow, she got away from him. Maybe he had to let go of her so that he could have both hands free for shooting. Or she might"ve surprised him somehow, and made a break. Maybe she even got away from him after he"d sustained some wounds during the fight. If she recovers, she oughta be able to tell us exactly what happened. Her part of it, anyway.
"However it all went down, Karen was shot once in the back (twitch) with a .45, probably by Simon. She (twitch) fell on the driveway a fairly good distance from the garage, so she didn"t end up burned (twitch) like the rest of them.
"These guys were using candles and kerosene lamps to light the garage. To give the place atmosphere, maybe. But that"s why the place went up. We think one of the lamps got hit by a stray bullet.
"When the fire department arrived, the garage was totally engulfed. They couldn"t send anyone in till after they"d knocked down the fire. By then, everybody inside was dead. A female was found suspended from a rafter (twitch) by chains, and had shackles (twitch) around her wrists. She was apparently Lisa. Whether she was still alive at the time Simon went in ..." He shrugged. "Either way, he didn"t manage to save her.
"G.o.d only knows what happened in there. One thing was pretty clear, though; Simon didn"t shoot all of them before they got to him. There was some hand-to-hand fighting, and he got hacked up pretty good by a saber. He was found with two other guys on top of him, all three of them twisted together and charred black. The bodies of the other two men were found nearby. It looks as if Simon shot those two, and then got jumped by the pair who ended up in the heap with him. If Karen was in there, maybe she"ll be able to tell us something about how (twitch) it all went down at the end. We"ll also know more after the autopsies have been done on Simon and the others."
As he"d said that, Sharon had pushed her chair back and stood up. "I"ve gotta get a move on. Maybe you can fill me in on whatever else ..."
"Will you come back here when your shift is over?" Dad had asked.
For a few moments, they"d stared at each other.
"Do you want me to?"
"Yup. Sure do."
She"d taken a deep breath and raised her eyebrows. "You do understand, Sergeant, what time that"s likely to be?"
"Maybe I"d better give you a spare house key."
Dad had left the kitchen with her.
When they were gone, Jody had glanced at Andy, expecting some funny looks or lewd cracks about her father and Sharon. But Andy sat motionless and silent, frowning at the table.
Soon, Dad had returned and resumed his seat. "I guess it"s about time we started thinking about supper. Do you like pizza, Andy?"
"Huh?"
"Pizza."
"Let"s not rush into things," Jody had interrupted. "I want you to tell us what else he said on the tapes. There must"ve been a lot more than you told us. I mean, you spent all afternoon listening to "em."
"I think I covered everything you need to know about."
"I wanta know everything he said."
"No, you don"t. Now let"s drop it and ..."
"But he was in the house, Dad. He was in my bedroom. He was in my stuff."
"I know. And I know it must seem creepy."
"He was a madman. And a pervert."
"I know, honey. I know. Look, if you feel nervous about sleeping in your bedroom tonight, you can sack out on the sofa."
"The sofa"s lumpy."
"I know, but..."
"I want to sleep in my own bed. It isn"t fair for him to take it away from me ... ruin my own bedroom for me." Even while speaking, she"d realized that she must sound awfully selfish and petty. Whining about her bedroom. Simon and that horrible gang had slaughtered Andy"s whole family, butchered no telling how many other people ...
"It"s all right," she"d said. "I"ve just gotta get used to the idea and ..."
"Maybe if we go into your room and give it a really good cleaning up ..."
"We cleaned it while you were over listening to the tapes," she"d explained. "We cleaned the whole house, didn"t you notice?"
"Not really."
For the first time in a long while, Jody had felt a smile come to her face. "Sharon"ll be real glad to hear you didn"t even notice. She worked her b.u.t.t off."
"I helped, too," Andy had muttered.
"Those lab guys made more of a mess than ... the guy."
"Simon."
"Yeah. Him." She didn"t need to be reminded of his name. She would probably never forget his name. But she didn"t want to speak it. "Anyway," she"d continued, "they left fingerprint powder all over the place."
Blinking like someone who"d just woken up, Andy had said, "Could you tell me something, Jack? How come they wanted to look for his fingerprints here if he"s dead?"