Pauline rushed to her husband, tried to wrangle the lifeless body from his arms. But Turk wouldn’t let the boy go. Pauline wailed and pressed her face to Jimmy’s, soaking her hair in his blood.
Only Cooper seemed fully aware of the situation; his stare kept volleying between the terrible scene in the doorway and David’s face, which was still only inches from the barrel of the gun. “What do I do here, Turk?” he asked.
Turk said nothing; he only gazed down at the dead child in his arms. Pauline had dropped to her knees and was sobbing against her husband’s leg. She clutched at one of Jimmy’s small, limp hands like someone groping for something in the dark.
Cooper cleared his throat and, more agitated, said, “Turk? What you want me to do here, man?”
Turk lifted his gaze. He surveyed the room with dead eyes, resting momentarily on David.
The gun shook in Cooper’s hand.
“Kill them both,” Turk said, turning back toward the stairs.
David sprang up from the couch, but Tre grabbed him and wrapped him in a bear hug. He was impossibly strong. From the couch, Ellie looked at him, then turned to Cooper. Cooper leveled the gun at her face.
“You motherfuckers!” David screamed.
Cooper eased the muzzle of the gun toward Ellie’s forehead. The gun was nearly touching—
(touching)
—Ellie’s forehead now. David struggled within Tre’s grasp, but it was a futile attempt.
“I’ll kill you!” he shouted at Cooper—at all of them. “I’ll kill you all!”
Ellie glanced at him, then turned back to look at Cooper. She brought up a hand—slowly, so slowly—and let her fingers dance along the barrel of the gun. Cooper watched, mesmerized by the strangeness of it. Those lithe little fingers danced along the edge of the gun until they came to rest along the top side of Cooper’s hand.
“Whatever you’re trying to do, sweetheart,” Cooper said, “it ain’t gonna do you no good.”
Ellie’s hand closed around Cooper’s wrist.
David stopped struggling.
Cooper grinned. Then his head cocked slightly to one side, the bewildered look of a dog overcoming his features, and the grin fell away from his face. A vertical crease appeared between Cooper’s eyebrows. Cooper’s lower lip began to tremble, to quiver, and it was soon obvious that he was muttering something just barely audible, like someone reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
Then he screamed. It was a shrill, womanlike sound, raw enough to rupture his throat. His eyes grew wide, fearful, terrified, and his cheeks began to quiver. But not just his cheeks—his whole face began to quiver, his head shaking rapidly as if possessed by some force that was overtaxing his brain. And David wondered if that was exactly what was happening. . .
“Coop?” Tre said, his voice small and seemingly far away.
David felt Tre’s arms loosen around his chest. He seized the opportunity, throwing Tre’s arms off him and driving himself into Cooper’s chest while simultaneously clutching at the hand that held the gun. Sharp pain blossomed in his nose and radiated along the contours of his skull. There was a deafening explosion as the gun went off. David drove Cooper back against the wall; he felt the air gust out of Cooper’s lungs in one giant expulsion; a second after that, Cooper’s legs went rubbery and they both crashed to the floor.
Someone screamed.
David was quick to his feet, and had already administered a swift kick to the side of Cooper’s head before he realized he now held the gun in his hands. Cooper’s head rebounded off the wall and his eyes went foggy. His mouth worked silently, like a fish hauled out of the water gasping for air.
When David glanced up, he saw Tre’s thick, blocky silhouette rushing toward him, though seemingly in slow motion. It was as if the gun redirected itself and pulled its own trigger. The second gunshot seemed to suck all the air out of the room. Tre twisted in midleap; he spun away and crashed through the coffee table. In that millisecond, David was able to make out the look of utter shock on Tre’s tanned face; he could see the tats on his forearms and biceps in stark and terrible clarity; he could see the shimmering beads of sweat spring from Tre’s forehead and arc like cannon fire through the air in slow motion.
A moment later, the world caught up with itself. A grayish mist hung in the room, tangible as a spiderweb. David took a deep breath, and the acrid stench of gunpowder burned his sinuses. He tasted blood at the back of his throat, and when he touched his nose, he found his fingertips bloody. On the floor, Tre rolled over on the broken bits of the coffee table and moaned.
Turk reappeared in the doorway. He still held his son, but the look of shock had been wiped from his face. He now looked like a bull prepared to charge.
“Don’t move,” David said, swiveling the gun in Turk’s direction. “I’ll blow your goddamn head off.”