For a moment I lose track of his voice, so loudly is my blood rushing in my ears. “How do you know that?”
“She told the nigger who killed her, when she was pleading for her life. She figured he might spare her, I guess. And the truth is, he might’ve. He was awfully upset about shooting her when he came out of that swamp. He was talking crazy. Scared to death.”
“But you killed him,” I say in a flat voice.
Knox laughs again. “Alphonse did. Stuck a knife in his gizzard, to make sure he stayed quiet. You know what Daddy always said: a man’s worst enemy is his mouth.”
My next breath is a gasp, and I realize I haven’t breathed for so long that I’m dizzy from oxygen deprivation.
“He was right,” I whisper, more to myself than to Knox. Without looking away from his eyes, I gauge the distance to the holster hanging in the corner. Twelve feet. Knox’s knees are still under the desk. . . .
Two backward steps cause me to bump into the giant razorback standing on its pedestal. Turning as though surprised, I lay my hands on the shaft of the spear.
“That’s no toy,” Forrest says. “That’s a man’s weapon. You think you could kill a monster like that?”
“What do you call this thing?” I ask dully.
“A spear, or a dart. But you throw it with an atlatl, which comes from a Nahuatl word, which is Aztec.”
My eyes go once more to the pistol in the corner. It’s too far away.
“That’s gotta hurt about your girl,” Knox says with mock sympathy. “She could’ve been carrying a son. Guess you’ll never know now, unless you ask the M.E. to check.”
He’s pushing me to go for the gun. With the speed and power of a man with everything to lose, I yank upward on the shaft of the spear. For a sickening moment the whole animal rises, and I sense Forrest aiming a gun at my back—but then the shaft slips free and I’m whirling with the gleaming black point before me.
Forrest is moving too, shoving back his chair and reaching for something below my line of sight. I lunge toward him, but the distance is too great. Then, just as his bright pistol clears the desktop, the wheeled chair skates backward and he grabs for the edge of the desk with his free hand. In that instant of uncertainty, I drive the spear into the hollow at the base of his throat. His blinding muzzle blast scorches my face, but I cling to the shaft and drive forward until the point strikes bone.
Knox’s hands fly to his throat, and his gun caroms off the wall behind him. His eyes follow its path, but instead of chasing that pistol, he hurls his body toward the corner, reaching for the gun on the coatrack. The spear point goes with him, but the shaft remains in my hands. As his right hand closes on the holster, I twist the shaft with all my strength and jab it forward. There’s a sharp crack, then Knox drops like a puppet whose operator has snipped its strings.
His weight tugs the spear from my hands, but the threat is no more. My final thrust must have severed his spinal cord. Forrest Knox lies on his side, the spear lodged in his neck, blinking mechanically and gasping like a catfish dying on a riverbank. His gray lips are fast turning blue, and the only emotion I see in his eyes is horror.
The sound of the door behind me registers too late.
By the time I turn, Alphonse Ozan is aiming his pistol at my chest. He takes two steps into the room, far enough to see what’s happened to his boss. When he looks back at me, his eyes blaze with rage.
“You just killed a cop,” he says. “You die for that. And nobody will even question why.”
I’m weaponless, but it hardly matters. He’s got me cold. All I can think about is Annie wondering why she had to lose her father as well as her mother. But I can’t simply stand helpless and wait for his bullet.
As my legs tense to spring, a soft creak comes from behind Ozan, and he whirls. Before he can fully turn, a silver blade flashes down, slicing through his shoulder and deep into his chest. The blasts from his pistol deafen me, but the rounds blow harmlessly through the floor.
When Ozan falls, I see Walt Garrity standing framed in the doorway behind him. He looks as dazed as a sleepwalker awakened in the midst of traffic. The curved blade of the katana jutting from Ozan’s back pulses for a few seconds, then goes still.
“Walt! Are you okay?”
“Is Knox dead?”
Forrest’s eyes are closed, his face gray.
“He’s dead.”
“Come on, then.” Walt beckons me forward. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“What’s the point? There’s no running from this.”
He starts to reply, but then he touches the back of his head. When his hand comes away, I see blood. Lots of it.
“Ozan hit me with his pistol,” he explains. “I’m foggy, Penn. We’ve got to move.” Walt rolls Ozan over, wipes down the hilt of the sword with his shirttail, then pulls me to the door. “Did they take anything that belongs to you?”
“I didn’t bring anything but my gun.”
“Find it. I’m going to do what I can in here.”
As I hunt through the main room, Walt calls from the study: “I saw game cameras on my way in. Mounted on trees. I avoided them, and I took the memory cards on the ones I saw. We’ll just have to hope I got them all.”
At last I find my .357 in the drawer of a maple cabinet. “We can’t get away clean on this,” I shout. “You need a hospital.”
The old Ranger marches out of the study and grabs my shirt front, his eyes wild. “Listen to me, goddamn it. Think about your kid, okay? Even if Tom gets out of jail, he doesn’t have long to live. Which means you’re the only one left to take care of the women. You get it? So get your ass moving!”
“Okay,” I tell him, following toward the front door. “But you’re hurt, man. You need a doctor.”