The Harder They Come

“Or today. What about today? You know he killed another man today, right this afternoon? While you were what, knitting?”

 

 

It was all too much. She didn’t have to listen to this—whoever said she had to listen to this? He was a liar. He was just trying to get to her because he was the criminal, not Adam. “I don’t knit,” she said. “And I have no contract with you—how many times do I have to tell you people?” Kutya squirmed. He let out a low growl and the lights flashed in the yard. She shot a furious glance round the room, the cops, the poor dog—Christabel, where was Christabel? “You know what you are?” she said.

 

He just sat there, his lips zipped tight, trying to burn his eyes right through her.

 

“You’re just an actor, that’s all. Somebody in a costume. Like you’re dressed up for Halloween. And you know something else? I’m not into trick-or-treating.”

 

 

 

 

 

34.

 

 

IN THE END, THEY must have believed her—and Christabel too, Christabel who by that point was scared sober and wearing a face like something she’d picked up off the floor—because eventually they took their muddy boots and clanking belts and double-barreled shotguns and faded back into the night, but not without taking two plastic bags of what they called evidence with them and leaving a patrol car just down the street with its lights off and two cops inside to see if she was going to run out into the woods, find her way to Adam and somehow warn him off. Which she would have, if she could. Because it was all lies and if you had to pick sides here she knew which one she was on. Adam never hurt anybody. And even if he did, even if it was true, whoever it was probably had it coming.

 

The cops left a vacuum behind them, whoosh, all the air sucked right out of the place. One minute the house was an armed camp and the next it was deserted. They’d also left a mess. Her clothes were scattered around the bedroom, drawers pulled out, closets yawning open. The kitchen floor was all tracked up and they’d left it that way because what did they care about freemen on the land and personal property or individual rights or anything else for that matter, but she didn’t have the heart to take a mop to it before she went to bed and when she woke up from a night’s worth of poisonous dreams, she didn’t have the energy. Ditto for Christabel, who at least didn’t have to go into work, thank god, because it was Saturday.

 

When she got up and came into the kitchen at something like half past six, Christabel was already sitting there at the table drinking black coffee and staring out the window. She was wearing a T-shirt she’d managed to put on backwards under a cardigan that hung loose over her butt and bare thighs, last night’s makeup caking under her eyes and her hair looking as if she’d been fighting a windstorm all night long. Kutya lay curled up under the table, his dreadlocks filthy from the mud out in the yard—the mud on the floor, for that matter—and he never even lifted his head when she stepped into the room. Christabel didn’t turn to look at her. She didn’t say hi or good morning. All she said was, “Jesus, I don’t think I’ve ever been through anything like that, not in my whole life. Not even that time I was in the accident.”

 

“Me either.”

 

“I was so scared.”

 

All she could do was nod. She went to the counter and poured herself a cup of coffee, then lightened it with a splash of milk and stirred in two heaping teaspoons of sugar, real sugar and not that artificial crap. She’d worry about calories later. Calories were the least of her problems.

 

“You know, you can’t say I didn’t warn you,” and here Christabel turned to look up at her out of bloodshot eyes, eyes that weren’t even that pretty, really, but just a dull fixed brown.

 

She just shook her head, very slowly, the injustice of it all settling on her like a coat made out of lead, like one of those things they make you wear when they take X-rays of your chest. “Yeah, you warned me, all right, but since when do I have to listen?”

 

“Oh, Christ! You’re not going to defend him, are you? He’s a nut case. He killed two people. He could have killed us!”

 

“So the cops say. You believe the cops?”

 

She saw now that Christabel was holding something in her left hand, a slice of color, the sharp concentrated gleam of the Cloud sucked down to earth: her cellphone. “I believe this,” she said.