His mouth was open in astonishment. This, evidently, was not how he'd planned to come down this flight of stairs. Now his arms were waving, his legs kicking, trying to make some sort of purchase, to regain his footing.
As he pitched forward, his right arm hit one of the lower steps first, his elbow cracked, and his forearm snapped back, angling the knife toward himself. And then his neck connected with the upturned blade, and the weight of his body drove it deep into him, and his mouth opened even wider, but no sound came out.
He came to rest two steps from the bottom, his arms and legs twisted at unnatural angles. From his neck, the blood spilled forth as if from an open tap. The gathering pool spread from the second step and down to the first.
And tumbling after him, like an afterthought, like a second punch line to a joke you thought was over, came Paul's backpack. It bounced a couple of times, then settled next to Rick's head in the blood.
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
The man who delivers papers to our neighborhood showed up not long after that. He didn't even get close to our door. Who could blame him? Here's what he found:
A man in handcuffs sitting out on our front step.
An abandoned Beetle parked on the front lawn, door open, engine still running.
From inside the house, a woman's screams, a man's cries for help.
From the trunk of a small car parked at the end of our driveway, even louder screams. They sounded like a man's.
The paper man (there are almost no boys anymore; papers must be picked up in the middle of the night and delivered before six, and this was a sight you wouldn't have wanted a young lad to see) went back to his car, where he kept a cell phone, and called for help.
What a production.
Two police cars and an ambulance converged on the scene within five minutes. When the ambulance attendants, who, I'm told, looked upon our house with a certain familiarity, arrived, they were directed first to the trunk of the car by the paper guy. But the handcuffed man sitting on our front step, Don Greenway, advised them not to think, even for a moment, of opening that trunk. You might, he suggested, want to call someone from the zoo.
I was able to reach up and unlock the door to let everyone in. The police came in first, putting some muscle behind the door so as to move me out of the way, duct-taped to the overturned chair as I was. Their eyes had barely landed on me when they saw Rick at the bottom of the stairs, a much more convincing dead person than I ever was in that same spot, a very long time ago.
They must have thought, at that moment, that whoever'd done that to Rick had been the same person who'd put me in the chair, but gradually, the truth began to emerge. I told them to please check on my wife, in the kitchen, and one officer ran ahead to do just that while another stayed with me, wanting to know who else was in the house, how many hurt.
"There's one guy out there in the trunk," I said as the officer cut me out of the chair, "but it may be too late for him. And there's another one, not hurt, but running around the neighborhood someplace with his hands cuffed behind his back."
"There's already a guy here in handcuffs."
"There's a second one. It's a long story."
Once I was free, I was on my feet and running to the kitchen where Sarah was now standing, and we threw our arms around each other and started to cry. I held on to her for a very long time.
"Mom? Dad?"
It was Paul, calling from out front. The police wouldn't let him inside. We both ran out to see him and embraced him, so happy that we were all alive, except that Paul had no reason to think that all of us being alive was in any way an extraordinary thing.
"What's going on?" he asked. "What the hell happened to your face?"
"You're a hero," I said, hugging him again. "And you don't even know it."
"Huh?"
It was my first time outside of the house since the police had arrived, and it was wild. At least half a dozen police cars, three ambulances, a fire truck, just in case. A couple of SUVs with TV station logos splashed across the sides. And nearly everyone on the street was outside, standing in their yards, gawking. It was the first time I'd ever seen the housecoat lady outside without a hose in her hand.
Trixie approached me tentatively as I stood out there with Paul.
"Oh God," she whispered. "All hell broke loose."
"Kinda," I said. "I need you to get me that ledger."
She nodded and slipped away. I saw Earl across the street, standing by the back of his pickup. Our eyes met, and he nodded, as if to say "I'm glad you're okay, man, but if you don't mind, I'm going to stay on this side of the street while the cops are around." That was just fine with me.
Sarah grabbed one of the ambulance attendants as he walked past, and said, "My husband's been hurt."