CHAPTER 11
1
Fritz Meshaum didn’t want to give up his bazooka, at least not without payment. When May seized him firmly by the shoulders and Low twisted his right arm nearly up to his shoulder blades, however, he changed his mind and lifted a trapdoor in the floor of his ramshackle cabin, revealing the treasure for which the Griner brothers had come.
Little Low had expected it to be green, like the ones in World War II movies, but Fritz’s bazooka was painted a dusty black, with a long serial number running up the side and some of those funny Russian letters beneath. A scale of rust rimmed the mouth. Lying beside it was a duffel bag containing a dozen shells stenciled with more words in Russian. There were also eight or ten rifles and as many as twenty handguns, most semi-auto. The brothers stuffed a couple in their belts. There was nothing like pistols in a man’s belt to make him feel like he had the right-of-way.
“What’s that thing?” asked May, pointing to a shiny black square of plastic above the bazooka’s trigger housing.
“Dunno,” Fritz said, peering at it. “Some kind of inventory control for the bean-counters, most likely.”
“It’s got words in English on it,” May said.
Fritz shrugged. “So what? I got a John Deere cap with Chinese shit on the tag inside. Everybody sells everything to anyone. Thanks to the Jews, that’s just the way the world works. The Jews, they—”
“Never you mind the damn Jews,” Little Low said. If he let Fritz get on a roll about the Jews, he’d shortly be on to the federal government, and they’d be hunkered around this fucking hole in the floor for the rest of the spring. “All I care about is does it work. If it don’t, tell me now, lest we come back here and tear off your ballsack.”
“I think we should tear off his ballsack, anyhow, Low,” May said. “That’s what I think. I bet it’s small.”
“It works, it works,” Fritz said, presumably talking about the bazooka rather than his ballsack. “Now let loose of me, you scum.”
“Got a mouth on him, don’t he, brother?” Maynard observed.
“Yes,” Little Low said. “Yes he does. But we’ll forgive him this time. Get a couple of those grease-guns.”
“Those ain’t grease-guns,” Fritz said indignantly. “Those’re fully automatic army—”
“It’d suit me fine if you shut up,” Low said, “and what suits me is going to suit you. We’re going now, but if this bazooka of yours don’t work, we will return and make it disappear up your saggy ass all the way to the trigger housing.”
“Yessir, what he said!” May exclaimed. “Try shittin after takin a load like that!”
“What are you going to do with my boom-tube?”
Little Low Griner smiled gently. “Hush, now,” he said, “and don’t worry about what don’t concern you.”
2
From a hilltop a quarter of a mile away, Van Lampley observed the Silverado pull into Fritz Meshaum’s scabrous dooryard. She observed the Griners get out and return to their stolen truck a few minutes later, carrying stuff—no doubt more stolen goods—which they put in the truckbed. Then they took off again, once more in the direction of Dooling. She considered pulling into Meshaum’s place once they left, but in her current state, she felt incapable of asking any questions that would make sense. And really, did she have to? Everyone in Dooling knew that Fritz Meshaum was in love with anything that had a trigger and went bang. The Griner brothers had stopped to gun up. It was as plain as the nose on her face.
Well, she had a gun herself, her good old .30-.06. Probably not much of a shake compared to what was now in the bed of that stolen truck, but so what? Did she really have anything to lose that she hadn’t been planning, just an hour ago, to give away to the universe?
“Want to mess with me, boys?” Van said, keying the ATV and revving it (a mistake, as she had never bothered to check how much gas was in the Suzuki’s tank before setting out). “Well, why don’t we see just who messes with who?”
3
The Griners had listened to their scanner only off and on during their days at the cabin, but they did so constantly on the trip to town, because the police band had gone crazy. The transmissions and crosstalk meant little to Maynard, whose brains rarely got out of first gear, but Lowell picked up the general drift.
Someone—a bunch of someones, actually—had taken a mess of guns from the armory at the sheriff’s station, and the cops were just as mad as hornets in a shook-up nest. At least two of the gun-robbers had been killed, a cop had also been killed, and the rest of the gang had gotten away in a big RV. They had taken the stolen guns up to the women’s prison. The cops also kept talking about some woman they wanted to pull out of the Ho Hotel, and it seemed like the gun-robbers wanted to keep her for themselves. Low couldn’t follow that part. He didn’t much care, either. What he cared about was the cops had raised up a posse and were preparing for a big fight, maybe starting tomorrow morning, and they planned to rendezvous at the intersection of Route 31 and West Lavin Road. That meant the station would be undefended. It also gave Lowell a brilliant idea about how they might be able to nail Kitty McDavid.
“Low?”
“Yes, brother?”
“I can’t make out from all that bibble-babble who’s in charge. Some say Deputy Coombs took over from the Norcross bitch, and some say a fella named Frank. Who’s Frank?”
“Don’t know and don’t care,” Little Low said. “But when we get into town, you keep an eye peeled for a kid by himself.”
“Which kid, brother?”
“One old enough to ride a bike and carry a tale,” said Low, just as the stolen Silverado passed the sign reading WELCOME TO DOOLING, A NICE PLACE TO RAISE YOUR FAMILY.
4
The Suzuki ATV could do sixty on the open road, but with night coming down and her reflexes shot to perdition, Van dared no more than forty. By the time she passed the WELCOME TO DOOLING sign, the Silverado containing the Griner brothers had disappeared. Maybe she’d lost them, but maybe not. Main Street was nearly deserted, and she hoped to spot it there, either parked or cruising slowly while those bad boys looked for something worth holding up. If she didn’t spot it, she supposed the best she could do was pop into the sheriff’s station and report them to whoever was on duty. That would be sort of an anticlimax for a woman who was hoping to do something good to make up for a shooting she still felt bad about, but it was like her daddy always said—sometimes you get what you want, but mostly you get what you get.
The beginning of downtown proper was marked by Barb’s Beauty Salon and Hot Nails on one side of the road and Ace Hardware (recently visited by Johnny Lee Kronsky, in search of tools, wires, and batteries) on the other. It was between these two fine business establishments that Vanessa’s ATV chugged twice, backfired, and died. She checked the gauge, and saw the needle resting on E. Wasn’t that just the perfect end to a perfect fucking day?
There was a Zoney’s one block up where she could buy a few gallons of gas, assuming anyone was bothering to run the place. But it was getting dark, those damn Griners could be anywhere, and even walking a block seemed like quite a trek in her current state. It might be better to go ahead and end it, as she’d set out to do earlier . . . except she hadn’t become a statewide arm-wrestling champion by giving up when the going got tough, had she? And wasn’t that what she was thinking of? Giving up?
“Not until my damn hand’s down on the damn table,” Van told her beached ATV, and began plodding up the deserted sidewalk toward the sheriff’s.
5
The business directly across from the cop-shop was the Drew T. Barry Indemnity Company, proprietor currently out at West Lavin Road with the rest of the posse. Low parked the Silverado behind it in a space marked RESERVED FOR BARRY EMPLOYEE, ALL OTHERS WILL BE TOWED. The back door was locked, but two slams of May’s beefy shoulder fixed that. Low followed him inside, dragging the kid they had found riding his bike down by the bowling alley. The kid in question happened to be Kent Daley, member of the high school tennis team and close friend of Eric Blass. Kent’s bike was now in the back of the Silverado. He was sniveling, although he was really too old for such behavior; it was Low’s opinion that sniveling was okay for teenage girls, but boys should start to taper off at ten and be done with it by twelve or so. He was willing to give this one a pass, however. After all, he probably thought he was going to be raped and murdered.
“You need to shut up, youngster,” he said. “You’ll be all right, if you behave.”
He frog-marched Kent into the big front room, which was filled with desks and posters telling how the right insurance policy could save your family from a life of poverty. On the front window, which faced the deserted business district, Drew T. Barry’s name was printed backward in tall gold-flake letters. As Low looked out, he saw a woman come slowly up the sidewalk on the other side. Not much of a looker, heavyset, lesbo haircut, but seeing any woman today was a rarity. She glanced at the Barry establishment, but with no lights inside, could see nothing but the reflection of the streetlights, which had just flicked on. She climbed the steps to the cop-shop and tried the door. Locked, and wasn’t that smalltown police for you? Low thought. Lock the front door after the guns are stolen. Now she was trying the intercom.
“Mister?” Kent whined. “I want to go home. You can have my bike, if you want it.”
“We can have anything we want, you pimply little peckerwood,” May said.
Low twisted the boy’s wrist, making him holler. “What part of shut up don’t you understand? Brother, go get Mr. Bazooky. And the shells.”
May left. Low turned to the kid. “Card in your wallet says your name is Kent Daley and you live at 15 Juniper Street. That right?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said, wiping snot from his nose up one cheek with the heel of his hand. “Kent Daley, and I don’t want any trouble. I want to go home.”
“You’re in a real pickle, Kent. My brother is an awful sick man. There is nothing he loves more than to wreck a human being. What’d you do, caused you to be so unlucky, do you suppose?”
Kent licked his lips and blinked rapidly. He opened his mouth and shut it.
“You did something, all right.” Low laughed; guilt was hilarious. “Who’s at home?”
“My dad and my mom. Only my mom’s, you know . . .”
“Catchin forty winks, is she? Or four hundred and forty?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But your dad’s fine?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you like me to go to 15 Juniper Street and blow your dad’s fuckin head off?”
“No, sir,” Kent whispered. Tears rolled down his pale cheeks.
“No, course you wouldn’t, but I will, unless you do just as I say. Will you do as I say?”
“Yes, sir.” Not even a whisper now, just a breeze through the boy’s lips.
“How old are you, Kent?”
“Suh-Suh-Seventeen.”
“Jesus, almost old enough to vote and grizzling like a baby. Quit on it.”
Kent did his best.
“Ride that bike pretty fast, can you?”
“I guess so. I won the Tri-County 40K last year.”
Little Low didn’t know a 40K from a serving tray, and didn’t care. “You know where Route 31 meets up with West Lavin Road? The road that goes to the prison?”
Maynard had returned with the bazooka and the case of shells. Across the street, the heavyset woman had given up on the intercom and was heading back the way she had come with her head hanging down. The drizzle had ceased at last.
Low gave Kent, who was staring at the bazooka with dreadful fascination, a shake. “Know that road, do you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. There are a bunch of men up there and I’m going to give you a message. You will give it to the one named Terry, or the one named Frank, or both of them. Now listen.”
6
Terry and Frank were at that moment getting out of Unit One and approaching the double gates of Dooling Correctional, where Clint and another guy stood waiting for them. Ten members of the posse were back at the intersection; the rest had taken up positions around the prison at what Terry called the compass rose: north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west, and northwest. There were woods, and they were damp, but none of the guys seemed to mind. They were high on excitement.
And they’ll stay that way until the first one takes a bullet and starts screaming, Terry thought.
Someone’s tricked-out truck was blocking the inner gate. The dead space had been filled with tires. And soaked in gasoline, from the smell. Not a bad move. Terry could almost admire it. He shone his light on Norcross, then on the bearded man standing next to him.
“Willy Burke,” said Terry. “I’m sorry to see you here.”
“And I’m sorry to see you here,” Willy responded. “Doing what you shouldn’t be doing. Overstepping your authority. Playing the vigilante man.” He took his pipe from the pocket of his biballs and started to load it.
Terry had never been sure if Norcross was a doctor or just a mister, so he settled on his given name. “Clint, this has almost gone beyond talking. One of my deputies has been killed. Vern Rangle. I think you knew him.”
Clint sighed and shook his head. “I did, and I’m sorry. He was a fine man. I hope you feel equally sorry about Garth Flickinger and Gerda Holden.”
“The Holden girl’s death was an act of self-defense,” Frank said. “She was ripping Deputy Rangle’s goddam throat out.”
“I want to talk to Barry Holden,” Clint said.
“He’s dead,” Frank said. “And it’s your fault.”
Terry turned to Frank. “You need to let me handle this.”
Frank raised his hands and stepped back. He knew Coombs was right—there was his damn temper, getting the best of him again—but he hated him for it, just the same. What he felt like doing was climbing that fence, barbed wire rolls at the top be damned, and knocking the heads of those two smug sons of bitches together. Evie Black’s goading voice was still in his head.
“Clint, listen to me,” Terry said. “I’m willing to say there’s blame on both sides, and I’m willing to guarantee that no charges will be brought against any of you here if you let me take the woman into custody now.”
“Is Barry really dead?” Clint asked.
“Yes,” the acting sheriff said. “He attacked Vern, too.”
Willy Burke reached over and gripped Clint’s shoulder.
“Let’s talk about Evie,” Clint said. “What exactly do you plan to do with her? What can you do?”
Terry appeared stumped, but Frank was ready, speaking with assurance. “We’re going to take her to the sheriff’s station. While Terry’s questioning her, I’m going to get a team of doctors from the state hospital down here double-quick. Between the cops and the docs, we’re going to find out what she is, what she did to the women, and whether or not she can fix it.”
“She says she did nothing,” Clint said, staring off into the distance. “She says she’s just an emissary.”
Frank turned to Terry. “You know what? I think this man is totally full of shit.”
Terry gave him a reproachful (if slightly red-eyed) look; Frank once again raised his hands and stepped back.
“You don’t have a single medical doctor in there,” Terry said, “and you don’t have any PAs you can call, because I seem to remember that they’re both women and they’ll be in cocoons by now. So, bottom line, you’re not examining her, you’re just holding her—”
“Holding onto her,” Frank growled.
“—and listening to what she tells you—”
“Swallowing it, you mean!” Frank shouted.
“Be quiet, Frank.” Terry spoke mildly, but when he turned back to Clint and Willy his cheeks were flushed. “But he’s right. You’re swallowing it. Drinking the Kool-Aid, so to speak.”
“You don’t understand,” Clint said. He sounded weary. “She’s not a woman at all, at least not in the sense we understand. I don’t think she’s entirely human. She has certain abilities. She can call rats, that much I’m sure of. They do what she wants. It’s how she got Hicks’s cell phone. All those moths people have been seeing around town have something to do with her, too, and she knows things. Things she can’t know.”
“You saying she’s a witch?” Terry asked. He pulled out the flask and had a sip. Probably not the best way to negotiate, but he needed something, and right now. “Come on, Clint. Next you’ll be telling me she can walk on water.”
Frank thought of the fire spinning in the air in his living room, and then exploding into moths; and of the phone call, Evie Black saying that she had seen him protect Nana. He tightened his arms across his chest, squeezing down his anger. What did it matter what Eve Black was? What mattered was what had happened, was happening, and how to fix it.
“Open your eyes, son,” Willy said. “Look at what’s happened to the world over the last week. All the women asleep in cocoons, and you’re sticking at the idea the Black woman may be something supernatural? You boys need to do better. Need to quit on sticking your fingers where they don’t belong and let this thing play out like the doc says she wants.”
Because Terry could think of no adequate reply, he took another drink. He saw the way Clint was looking at him and had a third, just to spite the bastard. Who was he to judge, hiding behind prison walls while Terry tried to hold the rest of the world together?
“What she’s asked for is a few more days,” Clint said, “and that’s what I want you to give her.” He nailed Terry’s eyes with his own. “She’s expecting bloodshed, she’s made that much clear. Because she believes that’s the only way men know how to solve their problems. Let’s not give her what she expects. Stand down. Give it seventy-two hours. Then we can revisit the situation.”
“Really? And what do you think will change?” The liquor hadn’t taken over Terry’s mind yet, so far it was only visiting, and he thought, almost prayed: Give me an answer I can believe in.
But Clint only shook his head. “I don’t know. She says it’s not entirely in her hands. But seventy-two hours without shooting would be the right first step, of that I’m sure. Oh, and she says that the women have to take a vote.”
Terry nearly laughed. “How the fuck are sleeping women going to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Clint said.
He’s playing for time, Frank thought. Spouting any old made-up thing that comes into his shrinky-dink brain. Surely you’re still sober enough to see that, aren’t you, Terry?
“I need to think it over,” Terry said.
“All right, but you need to think clearly, so do yourself a favor and pour the rest of that liquor out on the ground.” His eyes shifted to Frank, and they were the cold ones of the orphan boy who had fought for milkshakes. “Frank here thinks he’s the solution, but I think he’s the problem. I think she knew there’d be a guy like him. I think she knows there always is.”
Frank leaped forward, reached through the fence, seized Norcross by the throat, and choked him until his eyeballs first bulged, then dropped out to dangle on his cheeks . . . but only in his mind. He waited.
Terry considered, then spat in the dirt. “Fuck you, Clint. You’re no real doctor.”
And when he raised the flask and took another long, defiant swallow, Frank raised an inward cheer. By tomorrow, Acting Sheriff Coombs would be in the bag. Then he, Frank, would take over. There would be no seventy-two hours, and he didn’t care if Eve Black was a witch, a fairy princess, or the Red Queen of Wonderland. Everything he needed to know about Eve Black had been in that one short phone call.
Stop this, he had told her—almost begged her—when she called him on her stolen cell. Let the women go.
You’ll have to kill me first, the woman had replied.
Which was what Frank intended to do. If it brought the women back? Happy ending. If not? Revenge for taking away the only person in his life who mattered. Either way? Problem solved.
7
Just as Van Lampley reached her stalled ATV—with no idea what to do next—a kid tore past on one of those bikes with the apehanger handlebars. He was making enough speed to blow his hair back from his forehead, and he wore an expression of stark, bug-eyed terror. It could have been caused by any one of a dozen things, the way the world was now, but Van had no doubt what had lit a fire under the boy. It wasn’t an intuition; it was a rock-solid certainty.
“Kid!” she shouted. “Kid, where are they?”
Kent Daley paid her no mind, only pedaled faster. He was thinking about the old homeless woman they had been goofing with. They never should have done it. This was God, paying them back. Paying him back. He pedaled faster still.
8
Although Maynard Griner had left the halls of academe while still in the eighth grade (and those halls had been delighted to see him go), he was good with machinery; when his younger brother passed him the bazooka and one of the shells, May handled them as if he had been doing so all his life. He examined the shell’s high-explosive tip, the wire that ran down the side of the thing, and the fins at the base. He grunted, nodded, and aligned the shell’s fins with the grooves inside the tube. It slid in easy-peasy. He pointed to a lever above the trigger and below the black plastic inventory tag. “Pull that back. Should lock her in.”
Low did, and heard a click. “Is that it, May?”
“Should be, as long as Fritz put in a fresh battery. I believe it’s a lectric charge that fires the rocket.”
“If he didn’t, I’ll go on back there and ramguzzle him,” Low said. His eyes were sparkling as he faced Drew T. Barry’s plate glass window and rested the bazooka on his shoulder in the best war-movie style. “Stand clear, brother!”
The battery in the trigger housing turned out to be just fine. There was a hollow whoosh. Exhaust shot from the tube. The display window blew out into the street, and before either man had time to draw a breath, the front of the sheriff’s station exploded. Chunks of sand-colored brick and shards of glass rained down on the street.
“Hoooo-EEEE!” May slapped his brother on the back. “Did you see that, brother?”
“I did,” Low replied. An alarm was braying somewhere deep inside the wounded station. Men were running to look. The front of the building was now a gaping mouth filled with broken teeth. They could see flames inside, and paperwork fluttering around like singed birds. “Reload me.”
May aligned the fins of a second shell and latched it tight. “All set!” May was hopping with excitement. This was more fun than the time they’d thrown a package of dynamite into the trout tank up at Tupelo Crossing.
“Fire in the hole!” Low shouted, and pulled the bazooka’s trigger. The shell flew across the street on a trail of smoke. The men who had come out to gawk saw it and either turned tail or hit the deck. The second explosion gutted the center of the building. Linny’s cocoon had survived the first blast, but not this second one. Moths flew up from where she had been, and caught fire.
“Let me have a turn!” May held out his hands for the bazooka.
“No, we need to get out of here,” Low said. “But you’ll get your chance, brother. That I promise.”
“When? Where?”
“Up to the prison.”
9
Van Lampley stood by her ATV, stunned. She had seen the first contrail cross Main Street, and knew what it meant even before the blast. Those son-of-a-bitching Griner brothers had gotten an RPG launcher or something like it from Fritz Meshaum. As the smoke from the second blast began to clear, she could see flames licking out from holes that had been windows. One of the triple doors was lying in the street, twisted into a corkscrew of chromed steel. The others were nowhere to be seen.
Woe to anyone who was in there, she thought.
Red Platt, one of the salesmen at Dooling Kia, came swaying and staggering toward her. Blood was sheeting down the right side of his face, and his lower lip no longer looked completely attached—although with all the blood, it was hard to tell.
“What was that?” Red shouted in a cracked voice. Shards of glass glittered in his thinning hair. “What the fuck was that?”
“The work of two swinging dicks who need a broomhandle stuck in their spokes before they hurt anyone else,” Van said. “You ought to get patched up, Red.”
She walked toward the Shell station, feeling like herself for the first time in days. She knew it wouldn’t last, but while it did, she intended to ride the adrenalin. The gas station was open, but unattended. Van found a ten-gallon can in the garage bay, filled it at one of the pumps, and left a twenty on the counter beside the cash register. The world might be ending, but she had been raised to pay her bills.
She toted the can back to her ATV, filled the tank, and headed out of town in the direction the Griner brothers had come from.
10
Kent Daley was having a very bad night, and it wasn’t even eight o’clock. He had no more than turned off Route 31 and accelerated toward the buses blocking West Lavin Road when he was clotheslined off his bike and driven to the ground. His head hit the asphalt and bright lights flashed in front of his eyes. When they cleared, he saw the muzzle of a rifle three inches from his face.
“Shit fire!” exclaimed Reed Barrows, the deputy who had taken Kent down. Reed had been placed at the southwest point of Terry’s compass rose. He put his gun down and hauled Kent up by the front of his shirt. “I know you, you’re the kid who was putting firecrackers in mailboxes last year.”
Men were running toward them from the new and improved roadblock, Frank Geary in the lead. Terry Coombs brought up the rear, weaving slightly. They knew what had happened in town; there had already been a dozen calls on a dozen cell phones, and they could easily see the fire burning in the middle of Dooling from this high vantage point. Most of them wanted to go tear-assing back, but Terry, fearing it was a diversion to get the woman out, had ordered them to hold their positions.
“What are you doing out here, Daley?” Reed asked. “You could have gotten yourself shot.”
“I’ve got a message,” Kent said, rubbing the back of his head. It wasn’t bleeding, but a large knot was forming there. “It’s for Terry or Frank, or both of them.”
“What the fuck’s going on?” Don Peters asked. He had donned a football helmet at some point; his close-set eyes, deep in the shadow of the forehead shield, looked like those of a small and hungry bird. “Who’s this?”
Frank pushed Don aside and dropped to one knee beside the kid. “I’m Frank,” he said. “What’s the message?”
Terry also took a knee. His breath was redolent of booze. “Come on, son. Take a beep death . . . deep breath . . . and pull yourself together.”
Kent groped among his scattered thoughts. “That woman in the prison there, the special one, she’s got friends in town. Lots of them. Two of them grabbed me. They said to tell you to stop what you’re doing and go away, or the police station will only be the first thing to go.”
Frank’s lips stretched in a smile that came nowhere near his eyes. He turned to Terry. “So what do you think, Sheriff? Are we going to be good boys and go away?”
Little Low was no Mensa candidate himself, but he possessed a degree of cunning that had kept the Griner operation afloat for almost six years before he and his brother had finally been brought down. (Low blamed his generous nature; they had let the McDavid cunt, who was hardly a ten, hang around and she had repaid them by becoming a snitch.) He had an instinctive grasp of human psychology in general and male psychology in particular. When you told men they oughtn’t to do a thing, that was what they did.
Terry didn’t hesitate. “Not going away. Going in at sunrise. Let them blow up the whole goddam town.”
The men who had gathered around raised a cheer so hoarse and so savage that Kent Daley flinched. What he wanted more than anything was to take his sore head home, lock all the doors, and go to sleep.
11
So far, the adrenalin was holding out; Van hammered on Fritz Meshaum’s door hard enough to rattle it in its frame. A long-fingered hand that looked as if it had too many knuckles pulled aside a filthy curtain. A stubble-spackled face peered out. A moment later, the door opened. Fritz opened his mouth, but Van seized him and began to shake him like a terrier with a rat before he could utter a word.
“What did you sell them, you scrawny little shitepoke? Was it a rocket launcher? It was, wasn’t it? How much did those bastards pay you so they could blow a hole in the middle of downtown?”
By then they were inside, Van roughly steering Fritz across his cluttered living room. He beat feebly at one of her shoulders with his left hand; the other arm was bound in a makeshift sling that looked as if it had been made from a bedsheet.
“Quit it!” Fritz shouted. “Quit it, woman, I already had my damn arm dislocated by them two cretins!”
Van shoved him down in a filthy armchair with a stack of old skin magazines beside it. “Talk.”
“It wasn’t a rocket launcher, it was a vintage Russian bazooka, coulda sold it for six, seven thousand dollars at one of those parkin lot gun sales up in Wheeling, and those two country-fried fuckers stole it!”
“Well, of course you would say that, wouldn’t you?” Van was panting.
“It’s the truth.” Fritz looked at her more closely, his eyes sliding from her round face to her big breasts to her wide hips, then back up again. “You’re the first woman I’ve seen in two days. How long you been awake?”
“Since last Thursday morning.”
“Holy moly, that must be a record.”
“Not even close.” Van had Googled it. “Never mind that. Those boys just blew up the sheriff’s station.”
“I heard a hell of a bang,” admitted Fritz. “Guess that bazooka works pretty good.”
“Oh, it worked fine,” Van said. “I don’t suppose you’d know where they’re going next.”
“Nope, not a clue.” Fritz began to grin, exposing teeth that hadn’t seen a dentist in a good long while, if ever. “But I could find out.”
“How?”
“Damn fools looked right at it, and when I told em it was an inventory tag, they believed me!” His laugh sounded like a file scraping on a rusty hinge.
“What are you talking about?”
“GPS tracker. I put em on all my high-end items, case they get stolen. Which that bazooka was. I can track it on my phone.”
“Which you will give me,” Van said, and held out her hand.
Fritz looked up at her, his eyes a sly and watery blue under wrinkled lids. “If you get my bazooka, will you give it back before you go to sleep?”
“No,” Van said, “but I won’t give you a broken arm to go with the one they dislocated. How’s that?”
The little man chuckled and said, “All righty, but it’s just cause I got a soft spot for wide women.”
If she had felt more like herself Van might’ve had to beat the shit out of him for a comment like that—it wouldn’t be hard and it would be public service—but in her exhaustion, she hardly considered it. “Come on, then.”
Fritz pushed up from the couch. “Phone’s on the kitchen table.” She backed up, keeping the rifle on him.
He led her down a short, dark hall and into the kitchen. There was a stench of ash that made Van gag. “What have you been cooking?”
“Candy,” Fritz said. He thumped down at a linoleum-topped table.
“Candy?” It didn’t smell like any candy she knew of. Gray scraps, like bits of burned newspaper, were scattered around the floor.
“Candy’s my wife,” he said. “Now deceased. Lit the mouthy old bag up with a kitchen match. Never realized she had such a spark.” His black and brown teeth were revealed in a ferocious grin. “Get it? Spark?”
No avoiding it now. Tired or not, she was going to have to put a hurting on the vile bastard. That was Van’s first thought. The second was, there was no cell phone on the linoleum-topped table.
A gun banged and the air went out of Van. She thumped against the refrigerator and down to the floor. Blood spilled from a bullet wound at her hip. The rifle she had been holding had flown from her hands. Smoke curled from around the edge of the eating table directly in front of her. She spotted the barrel then; the pistol that Meshaum had strapped underneath the tabletop.
Fritz pulled it free of the duct tape that had held it, stood, and came around the table. “Never can be too careful. Keep a loaded gun in every room.” He squatted down beside her and jammed the barrel of a pistol against her forehead. His breath smelled like tobacco and meat. “This one was my opa’s. What you think about that, you fat pig?”
She didn’t think much of it, and didn’t have to. Van Lampley’s right arm—the arm that had put down Hallie “Wrecker” O’Meara in the championship match of the 2010 Ohio Valley Women’s 35–45 Year-Old Division, and snapped one of Erin Makepeace’s elbow ligaments in 2011 to repeat—was like a spring trap. Her right hand swung up, catching Fritz Meshaum’s wrist and squeezing with fingers made of steel, jerking down so violently that he was pitched forward on top of her. The antique pistol went off, putting a bullet into the floor between Van’s arm and side. Bile rose in her throat as the weight of his body pressed into her wound, but she kept twisting his wrist, and at that angle all he could do was fire into the floor again before the gun slipped from his hand. Bones popped. Ligaments twanged. Fritz screamed. He bit her hand, but she just turned harder on his wrist, and began to methodically punch him in the back of the head with her left fist, driving down with the diamond of her engagement ring.
“Okay, okay! Uncle! Fuckin uncle! I give!” screamed Fritz Meshaum. “That’s enough!”
But Van did not think so. Her bicep flexed and the tattoo of the headstone—YOUR PRIDE—swelled.
She kept twisting with one hand and punching with the other.