"Resist me!" Tee leaned his mouth nearly as close as the pistol, roaring into McNeil's ear, spraying him with saliva.
"Resist me! Move, make one fucking move!"
Tee rapped McNeil on the head with the barrel of the gun, then got to his feet. "Get up and move," he said, his voice now gone icily calm.
"I'm going to kill you anyway, you might as well be on your feet."
McNeil lay still with his eyes closed. A trickle of blood cleared the hairline of his scalp and ran across his cheekbone. "Move," Tee repeated. He drew his foot back and kicked McNeil between the legs.
McNeil gasped and instinctively pulled his legs into the fetal position.
Tee kicked him once more in the groin.
"Get up or I'll neuter you first." He kicked McNeil again. McNeil cried out but continued to lie on the road, eyes pressed tightly closed.
"I'll castrate you if you don't get up."
"Tee, you don't understand," McNeil whispered. "Honest to God, you don't understand."
"I understand that my daughter's fifteen years old, I understand that!"
Tee roared. He knelt beside McNeil again, forcing the man's eyelids open with his fingers. "Look at this! Do you see this?" He placed the barrel of the gun on McNeil's nose. "I want you to see what's going to kill you. Now look at me. Look at me!"
McNeil swiveled his eyes to Tee's face, carefully not moving his body.
"I want you to see who's going to kill you," he said. The gun barrel wavered unsteadily in Tee's hand, shaken by the same rage that contorted his face.
"No, Tee, please," McNeil begged. "I didn't do anything."
"I'm not going to do anything either," said Tee. "The gun will." He stood up and took two steps back from McNeil, thinking clearly enough to realize he did not want to be splattered by McNeil's soft tissue when he shot him. Tee leveled the gun at McNeil's ear. His hand was shaking so badly that he steadied it with the other, falling automatically into the shooter's pose. I want to do it, he thought, I want to do it so badly.
This was not like Mrs. Leigh on the cliff, there was strong motive this time, McNeil deserved to die and Tee could get away with it in practical terms, possibly even legally. But he knew that the desire that filled him had no regard for reason or rationale. He wanted to end McNeil's life as a willful act, separate and complete in itself. He wanted to do it because he wanted to do it.
His finger trembled on the trigger and his ears were filled with a vast roaring, as if all the blood in his body were racing through his brain in a torrent, urging him on. He hesitated, barely aware of the keening sound issuing from McNeil, whose whole face was squeezed and bunched as if drawn together by cords. But Tee did not see McNeil's expression, he was concentrating solely on his target. His finger tautened on the trigger, he felt the slack give way and then the final resistance. One sixteenth of an inch farther, one more ounce of pressure, and the gun would explode in his hand. In the frozen second before the weapon fired, Tee felt as if raw power were attached to his arm, he could sense it throbbing there in his hand like a living thing, power. Power. The power to kill and change a life forever, his life, someone else's life.
The roar of the gun was incredibly loud in the stillness of the night, it seemed to rip the very air apart, to make the ground shake with its sudden ferocity. The fire of the muzzle blast against the blackness struck Tee as if he had stared directly at the sun, and for a moment he was lost, disoriented, as if he himself had been shot. After a moment the report still rang in his ears but his eyes focused once more and he saw McNeil lying at his feet. The hole where the bullet had struck the asphalt was as big as an 0 made with his thumb and forefinger, scraped white gravel of the revealed underbed gleaming dully in the headlights, but it was only when Tee stared at it that he could remember the scream of the bullet ricocheting moments earlier.
McNeil lay as still as death, only the dripping of tears from his cheeks onto the asphalt giving him away.
"Now do you believe you're going to die?" Tee asked. fr "Christ oh Christ oh Christ," McNeil murmured, sounding like a penitent at prayer.
"You believe now, don't you?" But in fact it was Tee who had been convinced by the first shot. Some tension seemed to have passed away in the weapon's blast, the last resistance to what he was going to do. He knew now not only that he wanted to kill McNeil, but that he could kill him. And that he would. All the doubts had fallen away and he was calm as he raised the gun this time. Eager, but in control of himself.
He saw the beam of the headlights of the distant car as they raced toward him, he was aware of the great speed at which they approached, but he knew he had plenty of time, there was no way for anything to outrace the bullet that was aimed this time for McNeil's head.
"I never told anyone about Mrs. Leigh," McNeil said suddenly.
Tee hesitated. "Mrs. Leigh? Mrs. Leigh? You think I'm killing you because of Mrs. Leigh, you half-wit?"
"I never told anyone, I never would."
"Are you trying to trade my daughter for Mrs. Leigh?"
"Someone's coming," McNeil said eagerly, hopefully. They both could hear the blare of the oncoming horn. The headlights were now flashing from high to low beam, and back to high again. Still holding the gun pointed at McNeil, Tee waved the car on, indicating that it should pass.
But the car skidded to a halt within a few feet of Tee and McNeil, and Becker leapt out. "Don't do it, Tee!"
"John?"
"Put the gun away, Tee, you don't need it on him."
Becker was naked except for his shorts. He walked barefooted across the pavement to stand by his friend. The flesh of his legs looked obscenely white in the headlight beam.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"He called me," Becker said, pointing at the man at Tee's feet.
"McNeil? McNeil called you?"
"He said you were going to kill him."
"He was right." Although Tee looked at Becker when he spoke, his two-fisted grip on the pistol continued to point at his intended victim.
"Put it down, Tee. Put the gun away."
"Do you know what he did?"
"Tell me."
"It's a misunderstanding," McNeil whined. "I didn't do anything, Becker, honest to God."
"Shut up," Becker said. "What did he do, Tee?"
"I didn't do anything, I swear to you…"
Becker kicked McNeil in the nose with his heel, then stepped over so that he stood between McNeil and Tee's gun.
"You're in my way, John."
"Tell me what he did."
"Stand aside."
"Just tell me why you're going to kill him."
"He knows."
Careful not to move enough to alarm Tee, McNeil tried to stanch the flow of blood from his nose into his mouth.
"I don't want to hear it from him. I want you to tell me so that I can understand it."
"I… can't talk about it."
"Okay."
"I have very good reasons."
"Have you ever killed anyone, Tee?"
"Not quite."
It might not be something you want to get into." 'Are you going to move, John?"
"Not unless you're going to shoot me. I wouldn't want to get shot just so you could shoot McNeil."
"I'm not going to shoot you. You haven't got any clothes on. You sleep like that, in your underpants?"
"Sure, how do you sleep?"
"In pajamas," Tee said.
"Seriously? In this heat?"
"Shorty pajamas. The bedroom is air-conditioned… What's the worst thing that could happen if I kill him?"
"You could like it."
"No nonsense about turning me in, federal charges, ruining my life, all that shit?"
"For killing McNeil?" Becker asked. "He was resisting arrest, he was armed and dangerous…"
"I'm not armed," McNeil moaned. Becker kicked backward with his heel, catching McNeil in the mouth. "We could arm him," Becker said. "I can testify to all of this, you wouldn't have legal problems. That isn't the point. The point is, what will it do to you? You're my friend, you're the one I care about. I don't want you to start something you might find you like."