But life should have taught him not to plan.
As Bald Bill helped his boss into the coat, he noticed Benbow at the edge of the pool and stepped over to him. Bald Bill saw the bloody cast floating at Benbow’s chest. “What the fuck?” he said, kneeling down to reach for him.
Benbow drove the thin shaft of metal with the strength of a lifetime of disappointment and rage into the bottom of Bald Bill’s jaw, up through the root of his tongue, then up through his soft palate, horny brainpan, mushy gray matter, and the thick bones of his skull. Three inches of the skewer poked like a steel finger bone out of the center of his bald head.
Bald Bill didn’t make a sound. Just blinked once dreamily, smiled, then stood up. After a moment, swaying, he began to walk in small airless circles at the edge of the deck until Curly noticed his odd behavior.
“Bubba?” he said as he stepped over to his brother.
Benbow leaped out of the water; one hand grabbed an ankle and the other dove up the leg of Curly’s trunks to grab his nut sack and jerk the giant toward the pool. Curly’s grunt and the soft clunk of his head against the concrete pool edge was lost as Mona Sue delivered the child with a deep sigh, and the old man shouted boldly, “Goddamn, it’s a girl! A black-headed girl!”
Benbow had slithered out of the pool and limped halfway to the old man’s back as he watched the doctor lay the baby on Mona Sue’s heaving chest. “Shit fire and save the matches,” the old man said, panting deeply as if the labor had been his.
Little R. L. turned and jerked his father toward him by the front of his coat, hissing, “Shut the fuck up, old man.” Then he shoved him violently away, smashing the old man’s frail body into Benbow’s shoulder. Something cracked inside the old man’s body, and he sank to his knees, snapping at the cold air with his bloody beak like a gut-shot turtle. Benbow grabbed the pistol’s thong off his neck before the old man tumbled dead into the water.
Benbow cocked the huge pistol with a soft metallic click, then his sharp bark of laughter cut through the snowy air like a gunshot. Everything slowed to a stop. The doctor finished cutting the cord. The wrangler’s hands held a folded towel under Mona Sue’s head. Little R. L. held his gristled body halfway into a mad charge. Bald Bill stopped his aimless circling long enough to fall into the pool. Even Mona Sue’s cooing sighs died. Only the cold wind moved, whipping the steamy fog across the pool as the snowfall thickened.
Then Mona Sue screamed, “No!” and broke the frozen moment
The bad knee gave Benbow time to get off a round. The heavy slug took Little R. L. in the top of his shoulder, tumbled through his chest, and exited just above his kidney in a shower of blood, bone splinters, and lung tissue, and dropped him like a side of beef on the deck. But the round had already gone on its merry way through the sternum of the doctor as if he weren’t there. Which, in moments, he wasn’t.
Benbow threw the pistol joyfully behind him, heard it splash in the pool, and hurried to Mona Sue’s side. As he kissed her blood-spattered face, she moaned softly. He leaned closer, but only mistook her moans for passion until he understood what she was saying. Over and over. The way she once called his name. And Little R. L.’s. Maybe even the old mans. “Cowboy, Cowboy, Cowboy,” she whispered.
Benbow wasn’t even mildly surprised when he felt the arm at his throat or the blade tickle his short ribs. “I took you for a backstabber,” he said, “the first time I laid eyes on your sorry ass.”
“Just tell me where the money is, old man,” the wrangler whispered, “and you can die easy.”
“You can have the money,” Benbow sobbed, trying for one final break, “just leave me the woman.” But the flash of scorn in Mona Sue’s eyes was the only answer he needed. “Fuck it,” Benbow said, almost laughing, “let’s do it the hard way.”
Then he fell backward onto the hunting knife, driving the blade to the hilt above his short ribs before the wrangler could release the handle. He stepped back in horror as Benbow stumbled toward the hot waters of the pool.
At first, the blade felt cold in Benbow’s flesh, but the flowing blood quickly warmed it. Then he eased himself into the hot water and lay back against its compassionate weight like the old man the wrangler had called him. The wrangler stood over Benbow, his eyes like coals glowing through the fog and thick snow. Mona Sue stepped up beside the wrangler, Benbow’s baby whimpering at her chest, snow melting on her shoulders.
“Fuck it,” Benbow whispered, drifting now, “it’s in the air conditioner.”
“Thanks, old man,” Mona Sue said, smiling.
“Take care,” Benbow whispered, thinking, This is the easy part, then leaned farther back into the water, sailing on the pool’s wind-riffled, snow-shot surface, eyes closed, happy in the hot, heavy water, moving his hands slightly to stay afloat, his fingers tangled in dark, bloody streams, the wind pushing him toward the cool water at the far end of the pool, blinking against the soft cold snow, until his tired body slipped, unwatched, beneath the hot water to rest.
1996
JEFFERY DEAVER
THE WEEKENDER
Jeffery Deaver (1950-) was born outside Chicago and received a journalism degree from the University of Missouri, becoming a newspaperman, then received a law degree from Fordham University, practicing law for several years. A poet, he wrote his own songs and performed them across the country.
One of the most prominent and consistently excellent suspense writers in the world, Deaver is the author of twenty-three novels and two short story collections. He has been translated into twenty-five languages and is a perennial bestseller in America and elsewhere. Among his many honors are six nominations for Edgar Allan Poe Awards (twice for Best Paperback Original, four times for Best Short Story); three Ellery Queen Readers’ Awards for Best Short Story of the Year; the 2001 W. H. Smith Thumping Good Read Award for The Empty Chair; and the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award from the British Crime Writers’ Association for Garden of Beasts. In 2009 he was the guest editor of The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year. He has written about a dozen standalone novels, but is most famous for his series about Lincoln Rhyme, the brilliant quadriplegic detective who made his debut in The Bone Collector (1997), which was filmed by Universal in 1999 and starred Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. Other Rhyme novels are The Coffin Dancer (1998), The Empty Chair (2000), The Stone Monkey (2002), The Vanished Man (2003), The Twelfth Card (2005), The Cold Moon (2006), and The Broken Window (2008). His nonseries novel A Maidens Grave (1995) was adapted for an HBO movie titled Dead Silence (1997) and starred James Garner and Marlee Matlin.
“The Weekender” was first published in the December 1996 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; it was selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 1997.
I looked in the rearview mirror and didn’t see any lights, but I knew they were after us and it was only a matter of time till I’d see the cops. Toth started to talk, but I told him to shut up and got the Buick up to eighty. The road was empty, nothing but pine trees for miles around.
“Oh brother,” Toth muttered. I felt his eyes on me, but I didn’t even want to look at him, I was so mad.
They were never easy, drugstores.
Because, just watch sometime, when cops make their rounds they cruise drugstores more often than anyplace else. Because of the prescription drugs.