In gray light, DeMarco pushed his way through the stand of red pines, his left arm raised to bat the branches away from his face, his forearm already scratched and bleeding. He moved toward the burbling of water over rocks. The needle-matted ground was soft and fragrant, and if he ran stooped low, he could pass under most of the branches. Behind him in the clearing, his car and Bonnie’s Mustang sat side by side, both hoods lightly steaming from the engine heat. He thought maybe he could get to the campsite in time. Maybe he could prevent what he knew was going to happen there.
The first shot echoed through the tops of the trees and over the misted lake like the crack of a bullwhip. It threw DeMarco off stride for a moment, then he was running again, harder now, listening to the silence, the pause, and praying that it continued. Huston would have been surprised by the effects of that first shot, the spray of tiny pellets, the sudden bloody pockmarks all over Inman’s face and chest. It would be a killing shot only if delivered point-blank, and he doubted Huston’s ability to do that. So now maybe Huston was checking the cylinder, seeing the two remaining rounds of birdshot, the three .22 longs. Maybe he would take some delight in the birdshot, see it as a way of prolonging Inman’s pain. But certainly he planned to save the last round for himself.
A less attractive scenario was that the little shell full of birdshot had been emptied inside Huston’s own mouth or against his temple. In which case, Huston would have already used the knife to dispatch Inman. Both images made DeMarco cringe.
Only ten more yards and he would be into the white beyond the trees, the mist along the shore and over the lake. He ran full speed now, chest aching. Praying for more silence.
He broke out of the trees and onto the pebbly shore and swung left. Then he was splashing with long strides across Schofield Run, the water icy against his shins. He slipped and went down and banged his elbow hard against the rocks but was quickly on his feet again, splashing onto dry ground. He put a hand to his jacket pocket, made sure his service weapon was still there, though he felt no need to take it in hand. He had already decided that he was not going to pull a gun on Huston, no matter what.
DeMarco could make out two dark figures through the mist now, two faceless silhouettes, one standing in the water, one lower, possibly sitting on shore. Then the second shot cracked. The sound slapped DeMarco full in the face. “Thomas, don’t!” he yelled. But with the words came the splintering crack of four more shots in rapid succession, and the figure on the shore fell onto his back, and DeMarco slowed, blinked, and as his focus on the figure in the water sharpened, the ache in his chest swelled and pulsed, and he reached into his pocket and withdrew his weapon and walked toward Inman. The man was standing beside a small boulder that protruded from the water, his hands taped at the wrist and clasped hard around DeMarco’s father’s revolver.
? ? ?
Huston’s face and neck and chest were riddled with bloody splotches from the first three shots. The last three, all to his chest, had made slightly larger wounds, and around them, the blood was bright and flowing, emerging with the slow, shallow pulses of his heart.
DeMarco knelt beside him. He kept his right hand extended toward the lake, held Inman ankle-deep in the water. He placed his left hand atop Huston’s head. Huston lay with his eyes wide open, staring into the high, deep whiteness. His hands were clenched against the pain but a small smile creased his mouth. “You’re a very clever man,” DeMarco told him.
Huston gave no indication that he had heard. He’s somewhere else, DeMarco told himself. Maybe he was with Claire and the children already. Maybe he was watching as they approached him hand in hand.
“I’m fucking bleeding to death, man,” Inman said, but DeMarco had no interest in him at the moment. He was interested only in the art of dying as practiced by a former writer he admired, so he sat very quietly with his hand atop Huston’s head until Huston’s labored breathing ceased and he lay still and smiling and far away from the pebbly shore.
Now DeMarco turned his attention to other matters. Beside his knee lay Inman’s heavy-handled knife, where Huston had placed it. Inman was leaning forward from the edge of the water, shivering violently. There was a cut down each of his thick arms, running from the armpit to elbow, and a long cut down the inside of each thigh. His jeans and gray T-shirt bore Rorschach images in blood. Lashed to each ankle was a cement block from DeMarco’s garage.
DeMarco smiled. Something of Huston’s calmness had passed into him and he was in no hurry now; he had nothing important to do.
“That fucker got what he deserved,” Inman said. “He’s a fucking lunatic.”
“Is he?” DeMarco said.
“Look what he did to me!”
DeMarco studied the situation. Inman’s clothes were wet to his chest. Huston’s clothes were too. A thick ribbon of mud swirled through the green water behind Inman. But there were no drag marks leading into the water.
DeMarco said, “Check me out on this, Carl. He held the gun on you and marched you out into deeper water, right?”
“I’m fucking freezing here!”
“Answer my questions and you can come out.”
“All right, yeah, that’s what he did.”
“Did he tie the cement blocks to you in the water?”
“No, before. Then he made me carry them until I was out there farther.”
“And that’s when he cut you?”