It took Shelton a moment but then he recalled Clemens’s continuing role in the evening’s drama, how they were to meet back here at the farmhouse to discuss Jenna and the dead bodies. But Shelton couldn’t remember Clemens saying anything about rummaging through his secret drawer in the kitchen. It seemed Clemens had gone rogue on that front.
Shelton had walked right in through the front door, yet Clemens hadn’t bothered to stop for one minute to say hello. Clemens didn’t seem to pay Shelton any mind at all. Clemens was so focused on his effort that he never even bothered to turn around and realize Shelton was standing there with his weapon.
Shelton pumped the shotgun and turned it on Clemens, who finally froze and looked up. His arm was still elbow deep in the drawer.
“I wonder how long you’re going to stand there with your fingers in my shit,” Shelton said. “Now that the shotty has come into it.”
Clemens stepped away from the drawer and put his hands up.
“Now hold on one minute,” he said.
Shelton held the gun on Clemens while he bumbled through his ridiculous lies and explanations. He might have even begged, but Shelton couldn’t be sure. Shelton didn’t hear a single word Clemens said because Shelton was already gone.
Shelton had slipped outside of himself, had left his body so easily and without hesitation that he didn’t even notice he was gone until he looked down and saw himself aiming the barrel straight for Clemens’s heart. And still he rose. He rose until he reached some place of perfect stillness and symmetry that was both darkness and light, both love and animal rage. And from that distant, blissful remove he watched himself pull the trigger.
The shot hit Clemens at the top of the left shoulder and sprayed the wood paneling behind him. His head snapped back at impact and from the time-stilled heights from which Shelton observed he could see small shards of shoulder bone disperse, like a handful of tiny, gift-store shark teeth, and he could smell the powder and the singed wood as the buckshot burrowed into the wall. Clemens fell back against the kitchen counter and looked up at Shelton with big, scared-shitless eyes.
Shelton had meant to kill him and was both relieved he had not and embarrassed by his poor aim. Here he was, not ten feet away and couldn’t hit a man in the chest. Double vision, he supposed.
Clemens pushed himself up off the counter and held up his right hand and pleaded with Shelton as he eased toward the back door.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t shoot.”
Shelton set the shotgun down and leaned it against the kitchen table. He nodded at Clemens.
“All right then,” he said.
Then Clemens was gone and Shelton felt himself in dire need of a drink. He walked back to the truck for some whiskey and resolved to stay focused on what was important. Bo. That was what he’d come home for originally, before all this business with Clemens.
He heard an engine turn and looked up and there was Clemens’s truck, not ten feet away and stuck in the same little rut Shelton had been parked in earlier. He was just about to walk over and give him a shove when Clemens rolled out on his own and drove off toward the flat black of Jackson Lake. A shoulder shot for attempted robbery seemed about right to Shelton.
“Fair and square,” he said. “You old motherfucker.”
Shelton had his drink, then capped the whiskey and went back inside. He walked up the stairs and then paused near the top when he heard the screaming. For one hopeful second he thought it was baby Jenna. The sounds were coming from her room and he wondered if after all this time she might have just been hiding somewhere he never bothered to look. Had he even checked the closet?
He ran down the hall but it was only Kayla. She was sitting on the floor with her knees curled to her stomach and the screams were her own. She was clutching a butcher knife from the kitchen and Shelton realized she must have awakened and seen him shoot Clemens. She’d been frightened and gone for the knife, then run upstairs to discover Jenna was gone.
“Kayla,” he said, and stepped toward her. “Honey bear.”
She screamed again and sat there shaking. Her whole body vibrated like a plucked string, and when Shelton took another step closer she pushed herself along the floor to get away from him. Pushed herself clear across the room. He could see the fear and the animal fury in her eyes and she lifted the knife and held it pointed at him.
“What did you do to her!” she screamed. “What have you done to my baby!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Shelton said. “I’ve been out here looking for her.”
“You’re a fucking liar!”
What he wanted was to sit with her and hold her. He wanted to try and offer some comfort about Jenna, to resolve with her to find the child and somehow repair their ruined lives and start all over again, but Kayla only looked at him and raged.
“You shot Clemens!”
“Baby,” he said. “Let’s just calm down for a minute and talk.”
“You get away from me!” she shouted. “I fucking hate you! I fucking hate you so much!”
Shelton only stood and looked at her. He did not know what to say, suspected that whatever he said would only make things worse.
“Get away from me!” she shouted.