Nothing happened.
A tombstone loomed a few yards away. It would shield her if she could reach it, but she was too far away, she’d never get there... shouldn’t have gotten this far. He should have shot her by note.
She reached the stone and threw herself behind it, then pulled her legs in. The stone was slate; when the bullet hit it, the slate would shatter in her face. She slid back in the grass and waited. She was covered with sweat, her knee stockings (favored by Bridgeton women, who uniformly avoided panty hose and short skirts) felt like hot rubber clinging to her legs, her hair was plastered to her forehead. Nothing happened.
She inched her head around the edge of the stone, looked out from behind it, and saw him at the bottom of the slope from his mother’s grave, exactly where he’d been when she started running. The gun sagged in his hand; he didn’t raise it when he saw her. “I can’t,” he called calmly. “Just can’t. Isn’t that amazing?”
She came out a little farther. The gun drooped and pointed at the ground.
“Amazing,” he called conversationally. “I can’t. I guess something happened and I didn’t even know it.” His voice faded until he seemed to be talking to himself. “I just can’t seem to do it.”
Slowly, ready to duck again, she stood up and they faced each other. He looked helplessly at her; the gun hung uselessly at the end of his arm.
Buy him a forged passport, she thought crazily. Get him to Switzerland or the Dominican Republic, where a man with twenty million was welcome, no questions asked. With her kind of money, she could send him to Paris, Monte Carlo... pay off cops, customs, immigration officials...
Two figures topped the rise and paused beside Edna Janecki’s tombstone. She knew one was Dave from his size, and that the dark lumps rising at the ends of their arms were guns.
“Nooooo...” she shrieked, and ran for Adam. “Noooooo!” She heard a muffled pop, saw a flame puff weakly at the end of one of the guns, and Adam jerked around like a doll on a pulled string. The gun flew out of his hand, did a loop-de-loop, and hit the ground.
“The gun’s gone,” she screamed, “the gun’s gone.”
The second shot smashed him forward. His hands flew up to his throat like pale moths in the ground light and he fell to his knees, then on his face.
Eve ran. The back of her skirt flew out behind her, the front plastered against her knees. She skidded on the wet grass, almost did a split, then caught herself and was up and running again. He’d flopped over on his back by the time she reached him and was quivering all over. Blood poured out of his neck, made a pool under his head, and started to soak slowly into the wet grass. She fell to her knees and tried to stanch it with her hands, but the blood poured through her fingers. His lips moved. She bent down until her cheek almost touched his. “What?” she whispered. “What, Adam?”
He made a low, slow, snorting noise she recognized instinctively even though she’d never heard it before; it was the sound her mother must have made when she’d died in the gray-walled room with gay chintz curtains they put up to make the rich feel at home in the private wing of Oban General.
His light brown eyes looked at her, saw her for an instant, then closed. They opened again halfway as his muscles lost the control to keep them shut and gazed past her at nothing at all.
Latovsky pounded down the rise from Edna Janecki’s grave to Eve. He grabbed her shoulders, hauled her to her feet and ran his hands down her arms, then up to her neck, cupping her face. He looked her up and down to be sure she wasn’t shot, cried her name, then pulled her to him and put his arms around her. He was too strong to fight; she let him hug her with her head mashed against his chest, turned so she could see the dark, elongated shadow of Adam’s mother’s tombstone.
The dark skinny one, who’d been at the house on Raven Lake the night Abigail Reese died, slid down the slope and approached the body, holding his gun straight out in both hands the way they did in the movies. He touched the body with the toe of his shoe, then bent and pressed his fingertips to Adam’s neck.
“Nice shooting, Dave,” he called. “He’s dogmeat.”
Latovsky ignored him and hugged Eve, murmuring her name; then he let her go, held her at arm’s length, and ran his eyes down her body again as if he couldn’t believe she was all there. That gave her room, and she pulled her arm back until her shoulder wrenched and slapped his face as hard as she could.
“You looking for Larry Simms?” asked the waitress.
She was neat and young, with short, dark blond hair and a bright, competent look. She had on pressed slacks and a plaid blouse that would stay crisp in spite of the heat because she looked like the kind who didn’t sweat much, Latovsky thought.
She must be Mary Owens, whose big mouth had killed Riley and almost killed Eve. He had an impulse to tell her and watch her wilt before his eyes. But that would be mean and pointless and he kept quiet.
“He told me to look out for you,” she said doubtfully, “if you’re the lieutenant?”
“Yes,” he said.
Her face cleared. “He’s in back.”
He forced himself to thank her and went down the bar to a back section with padded booths and lacquered pine tables. Simms was in the back booth, watching for him. He waved and half stood as they shook hands, then he maneuvered the table a little so they’d both fit in the booth.
“Want a beer?” Simms asked.
“Sure.”
He signaled, and Mary Owens brought a frosted mug and set it on a cardboard coaster with BURT’S printed on it. She smiled sunnily and left them alone.
“I wasn’t exactly surprised to get your call, Lieutenant,” Simms said after Latovsky had taken a drink. “But I don’t know what we’re doing here. I mean... I sort of do, but I don’t know that it’ll help.”
“I had to try,” Latovsky said. “She won’t talk to me.”
“Nope. She hates you.”
“I still don’t know what I did wrong.” Latovsky was ashamed of the crack in his voice.
“You didn’t do anything wrong—you saved her life. She doesn’t believe that yet, but I do. See, he didn’t shoot her when she thought he would, and she’s made a whole frog-into-prince fairy story about what kind of man he would have been. Maybe some of it’s true. Maybe he never would’a shot her and he’d’a wound up a trusty in whatever institution you stuck him away in, and maybe when he was sixty he’d’ve gotten out and atoned for eight murders. Maybe. But no matter what would’ve happened, he was no St. Francis,”
“Is that what she thinks?”
“She’s miserable and doesn’t know what to think. She’s eight months pregnant and she and Sam went to lawyers last June. The divorce will be final about the time the baby’s born, and she’s just purely miserable. It’s sad, because Sam loves her, poor bastard, but he can’t live with it... and I don’t blame him.”
“He’s a fool,” Latovsky said softly.
“Could you live with it?” Simms challenged gently.
Latovsky didn’t answer, and Simms sat back in the booth and said, “I was afraid that’s how things were. And I’m sorry... but I’m not sorry, because maybe you’re the one who could hack it. Maybe. Thing is, Lieutenant, she’s like our own; Franny and I love her and she’s miserable and scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of locking herself in a suite off the grand gallery of Tilden House while other people raise the child she’s afraid to go near because of what she’ll see. Like her mother...” Simms was quiet a moment, then he said slowly, “You could help her if she’ll let you.”