I had the gun out and shot him twice in the chest before he could do anything. The blows from the heavy .38 slugs would have knocked an ordinary man flat on his back, but he was not ordinary. Two more shots came together, blending in a hot stunning roar. One of them was his. I felt it hit like a pole thrust sharply, end first, into my stomach. I had tipped the barrel of the .38 up half an inch before the third shot. The first two set him up so that his head was turned slightly to one side. The third slug tore his throat out and went on into his head at an angle, along the jawline. He turned a little more, his eyes glazing, and then his legs failed and he pitched downward, spouting blood.
I backed away from the wreckage, feeling sick. I had to lean against the dresser. The automatic was almost too heavy for my hand but I continued to hold it. I knew the wound was bad without looking. I felt blood trickling down the inside of one leg.
I reached down and found the hole and put the heel of my hand against it. I walked with clown steps out of the room. I put my shoulder against the wall and slid along it, pushing grimly toward the living room. There wasn’t so much pain. It was more the idea that I was hurt that frightened me. I felt a swooping dizziness. It would be better to sit down, but I had to get outside. If she was still alive I had to stop her. I remembered Aimee’s shrill scream. There was no more sound now, except the treacherous howl of the wind.
The front door was open. I put the fingers of my hand around the knob of the screen, but it was hard to turn because I was holding the gun, too. Finally I got it open, but I had leaned forward too much and fell outside with the swing of the door, rolling down the steps, feeling the blunt edges against my back and arms and shoulders. There was a pain in me, as though someone’s hands were tearing at my gut.
I lifted my head, looked down the curved drive to the gatehouse. Thunder grumbled above. Swirling clouds pressed low upon the island.
Aimee was lying motionless on her back near the drive, arms spread, one knee up. Diane walked past the child slowly, not looking at her. She had a gun. She was watching Macy, who lay on his belly a dozen steps from the gatehouse. Macy didn’t move. There was an object near him that might have been the .45.
Diane aimed carefully at Macy. In that same moment, he seemed to stir, an arm moving slightly. He wasn’t dead yet. I raised my own gun, taking time only to see that I had the right direction. I had little hope of hitting her.
I squeezed off the remaining shots in the magazine, the big automatic jerking in my hand, the noise deafening me. Then a sudden spasm left me weak. My face was cold, my eyes full of perspiration. I let go the gun and wiped at them. It was odd that she hadn’t returned the shots. I looked up again, hauling myself to my knees. For a long moment I could see with perfect clarity.
Diane had fallen near the gate. She must have panicked when I began to shoot, and tried to run. The gate seemed to be locked. She hooked her fingers over stiff strands of wire, pulled herself to her feet, leaned for a moment against the gate, as if she were trying to shove it open. There was a car parked on the other side, pointed toward the causeway.
Something was wrong with one of her ankles. She might have twisted it when she fell. She glanced up, then put her arms above her head and began to climb the woven wire gate laboriously. It was eight feet high. It would take her only a few seconds to wriggle over the top and reach the car on the other side.
I tried to get up, sat back groaning from the fury of sudden pain. All I could do was watch her. She seemed to be having some trouble. Then I became aware that someone else was watching her, too. Macy Barr.
His head was lifted no more than half an inch from the ground. He looked at her for a few seconds, then began to crawl forward. I saw where he was going. Not toward Diane but to the door of the gatehouse. Once he stopped, and I thought he was finished. But with an awkward lunge he reached his feet, staggered forward to the doorway, leaned inside.
Diane saw him. She had reached the top bar of the gate, was ready to lift one leg and then the other over the top, drop to the ground. But fear held her fast for the seconds she needed to jump to safety. She stared at Macy and there was terror in her eyes. Above the gathering shriek of the storm I could hear her own scream, lifting to meet the lashing wind that whipped at her hair.
“Don’t, Macy! No—”
She was still screaming when Macy threw the switch inside the gatehouse that electrocuted her mercilessly while her tortured body jerked and wrenched in a useless effort to be free of the clinging current.
I put my head down and waited. I knew there would have to be a time when I would find enough strength to go down there. I waited patiently for that time and finally I got to my feet and shuffled through a dark tunnel of angry rain to the gatehouse, found Macy dead on the floor. I closed the switch. I walked past him and looked at a telephone. I picked up the receiver and with a finger as large and awkward as a banana I dialed a number that would bring help. Then I sat on the edge of the bed trying to hold on to slipping strength. The child would be wandering in the rain, lost and afraid — if she were still alive. I thought she might be. Diane wouldn’t shoot her.
It was all over. But I had to wait with a hole in my stomach and wonder. Sometimes they could fix it, and sometimes they couldn’t. I had bled only a little from the mouth, with all the walking around. That encouraged me. But still you never knew.
I hoped Elaine would be able to get to me fast. I wouldn’t feel so afraid then.
Chapter Twenty-seven
First there was the hospital. Memories of it were sporadic, vivid, unorganized. Bits and pieces of colored glass in a clear jar. Moments of knifing pain. The upended bottle and long tube attached to one arm. An oxygen tent. A whirring circle of crisp clean whiteness. Faces, of course. Expressions of masked uncertainty, professional optimism.
And fear. Elaine was the one who was afraid. She held tight to one hand during the great swinging loops in and out of darkness, the bird-wing beat of pain in my stomach. Then the hand wasn’t there and the faces were careful little masks until there wasn’t anything but eyes peering at me and the measured drip of chloroform on a pad across my nose. I wasn’t very interested in anything. I couldn’t quite remember why I was there. It didn’t seem to matter, except that I was probably sick. No, not sick. I remembered, then. Shot. Maybe it was bad. There was no time to worry about it. There was no time.
Afterwards I was bound tightly about the middle. They wouldn’t let me eat. Tubes in the veins nourished me. Elaine’s face was more cheerful. The faces that came with badges weren’t. They were weary and irritable from overwork and trying hard to be polite but not really caring. Some of them were government badges. I told them everything I thought was safe for me to tell. I told it about nineteen times on successive days with a doctor standing by and after a while the badges went away with tired sighs. The papers printed very little, Elaine told me later.
I grew stronger. Lying in bed, I tried not to think. One of the badges — gold-filled — came back to see me, a well-dressed guy with a pink face. He talked to me for a long time, alone. Afterwards I was completely clear. He got mad at me three separate times because I wouldn’t tell him everything he wanted to know. He tried to convince me I had enough information to wreck organized crime in the area. I told him it wouldn’t stay wrecked six months, and meanwhile I’d have bought myself a hole in the head. He saw my point. He signed some kind of release and the hospital said I could go home. My doctor from Orange Bay came down, checked me over suspiciously and took me back in a red and black ambulance.