“Taking me out isn’t going to change things,” Jay says. “Your DNA was under her fingernails. It’s locked in an evidence box downtown right now. I bet there’s traces of all three girls in the back of that van parked outside. If I put it together, you can bet someone else is going to be right behind me.”
“You’ve ruined my life.”
“I didn’t kill those girls.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt them!”
Jay hears the garage door open, followed by the squeal of tires as Ellie backs out of the driveway at a fast clip, knocking over garbage cans and, by the sound of it, grazing the side of his Land Cruiser. Morehead looks panicked, not sure if it’s a car leaving or one arriving, a squad car maybe. Just as the headlights swing from the driveway and out onto Glenmeadow, Morehead turns, peering through the curtains, and that’s when Jay runs. He knocks the tree down as he goes, clumsily blocking the exit from the living room. He races to his bedroom, leaving the light off and feeling his way to the bed, to the pillow under which he left the .38, loaded. He hears a shot in the dark, burning the air, mere inches from his head. It shatters the window that faces into the backyard, setting off the sensor lights on the patio. When Jay swings around, Morehead is standing in the doorway to his bedroom, bathed in the sickly yellow light from outside. His right hand is shaking badly, the barrel of the gun jumpy and unpredictable. Something about seeing this killer, this coward, inside his bedroom, the room where his wife died, where so much was taken from him, sets Jay off. He raises the .38, pointing it at the preacher.
But Morehead only smiles.
It’s the wide, grotesque grin of a clown, makeup melting at this late hour, under the glare of the lights. “Please,” he says, begging. “Deliver me, Jay.”
“Naw, man. There’s no way you’re getting off that easy.”
Morehead’s expression hardens. He levels his gun, aiming.
But Jay gets him first, a clean shot to the right side of his chest.
Morehead drops the .22, falling back against the doorjamb and sliding to the floor. Jay crosses to the man’s feet, kicking the .22 out of his reach, his last move before he grabs the telephone to call the police. He sits on the side of the bed, watching trails of gun smoke curling in the air, as the phone rings and rings.
Election Day
TEXAS, 2000
Axel Hathorne starts the day a clean ten points ahead in the polls, on track to win his third and, by city law, last term as mayor of Houston, Texas. The polls have just opened, and the Bush-Gore race is anybody’s guess, the two running neck and neck in every poll from the Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times to the Chronicle and the Dallas Morning News and USA Today, and several pundits on the cable news channels suggesting that it may be the closest presidential race in U.S. history. Jay still remembers Reese Parker’s prophecy: Four years from now, it’s going to come down to a handful of votes. She’s still working her magic, he’s heard, with her name popping up in a few feature articles in the Chronicle, about the inner workings of the Bush campaign–her involvement in “flyergate,” the stunt that tanked Sandy Wolcott’s career, reduced to a few sentences, nearly forgotten by now. But if Bush wins, she’ll be a star. Cynthia too. After Axel distanced himself from Cynthia during the runoff campaign and the election that put him in office, she went to Austin, taking a position at a lobbying firm with close ties to the capitol and then chairing the Bush campaign’s state operation this year. Jay hasn’t seen her since that day at Sam’s house. She sends him e-mails from time to time. He reads them, sometimes more than once, saving them in an untitled folder on his computer. But he never writes back.