LaChaise's handcuffs, ''we can't be responsible for the results.''
''Open the boxes,'' LaChaise said.
Logan, worried, cracked the lids and stepped back. Way back. LaChaise stepped up, raised them.
Candy, his wife.
She'd been shot several times through the body, out of sight under her burial dress, but one shot had gone almost straight through her nose. The nose had been rebuilt with some kind of putty. Other than that, she looked as sweet as she had the day he first saw her at the Wal-Mart. He looked at her for a full minute, and thought he might have shed a tear; but he didn't.
Georgie was worse. Georgie had been hit at least three times in the face. While the funeral home had sewed and patched and made up, there was no doubt that something was massively wrong with Georgie's skull. The body in the box looked no more like the living Georgie than did a plastic baby doll.
His sister.
He could remember that one good Christmas when they'd had the tree, he was nine or ten, she was three or four, and somebody had given her pajamas with feet in them. '' Feetsies,'' she called them. ''I'm gonna put on my feetsies.'' Must have been twenty-five years gone by, and here she was, witha head like a football. Again he felt the impulse toward tears; again, nothing happened.
Logan, the funeral director, his face drained of blood, cleared his throat and said, ''Mr. LaChaise?''
LaChaise nodded. ''You did okay,'' he said, gruffly. ''Where's the preacher?''
''He should be here. Any minute.'' Logan's hands flittered gratefully with the compliment, like sparrows at a bird feeder.
''I want to wait back here until the funeral starts,'' La-Chaise said. ''I don't wanna talk to my mama no more'n I have to.''
''I understand,'' the funeral director said. He did: he'd been dealing with old lady LaChaise since the bodies had been released by the Hennepin County Medical
Examiner. ''We'll move Candy and Georgie into the chapel. When Reverend Pyle arrives, I'll step back and notify you.''
''That's good,'' LaChaise said. ''You got a Coke machine here somewhere?''
''Well, there is a Coke box in the staff area,'' Logan said.
''I could use a Coke. I'd buy it.''
''No, no, that's fine…''
LaChaise looked at the escort. ''How about it, Wayne? I'll buy you one.''
Sand drank fifteen caffeinated Diet Cokes a day and got headaches if he went without. LaChaise knew that. ''Yeah,'' Sand said. ''A Coke would be good.''
''Then I'll make the arrangements,'' the funeral director said. ''The Coke box is back through that door.''
He pointed back through the Peace Room, as the staging area was called, to a door that said, simply, ''Staff.''
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STAFF DOOR WAS A storage room full of broken-down shipping cartons for coffins, eight or ten large green awnings, folded, for funerals onrainy days, a forklift and a tool bench. The Coke box was just inside the door, an old-fashioned red top-opening cooler, with a dozen Coke Classic cans and a couple of white Diet Coke cans bathed in five inches of icy water.
''Get one of them Diets,'' Sand said, looking down into the water. He was watching his weight. LaChaise dipped into the cooler and got a regular Coke and a Diet, and when he turned back to the escort, Crazy Ansel Butters had stepped quietly out from behind the pile of awnings. He had a. 22 pistol and he put it against Sand's head and said, ''Don't fuckin' move.''
Sand froze, then looked at LaChaise and said, ''Don't hurt me, Dick.''
''Gimme the keys,'' LaChaise said.
''You're making a mistake,'' Sand said. His eyes were rolling, and LaChaise thought he might faint.
''Give him the keys or you'll be making a mistake,'' Butters said. Butters had a voice like a bastard file skittering down a copper pipe.
Sand fumbled the keys out of his pocket and LaChaise stuck his hands out. When the cuffs came off, he rubbed his wrists, took the keys from Sand and opened the leg irons. ''That deputy still out by his car?'' he asked Butters.
''He was when I come in,'' Butters said. He slipped a Bulldog. 44 out of his coat pocket and handed it to LaChaise. ''Here's your 'dog.''
''Thanks.'' LaChaise took the gun and stuck it in his belt. ''What're you driving?''
''Bill's truck. Around the side.''
''Did Mama see you?''
''Shit no. Nobody seen me.''
LaChaise stepped close to the escort, and turned him a bit, and said, ''All right, Wayne, I'm gonna cuff your hands. Now you keep your mouth shut, 'cause if you start hollering beforewe get out of here, we'll have to come back and do something.''
''I won't say a thing,'' Sand said, trembling.
''You scared?'' LaChaise asked.
''Yeah, I am.''
''That's good; keep you from doing anything foolish,'' LaChaise said. He snapped the cuffs over Sand's hands, then said, ''Lay down.''
Sand got down awkwardly, and Butters stepped up behind him and threw a half-dozen turns of packaging tape around his ankles. When he was finished,
LaChaise took the roll of tape, knelt with one knee in the middle of Sand's back, and took three more turns around his mouth. When he was finished, LaChaise looked up at Butters and said, ''Borrow me your knife.''
Sand squirmed under LaChaise's knee as Butters passed a black lock-back knife to
LaChaise.
LaChaise grabbed a handful of Sand's hair and pried his head back and said,
''Shoulda bought me them Big Macs.''
He bounced Sand's head off the concrete floor once, twice, then said, ''You asshole.'' He pulled his head straight back, leaned to the side so he could see
Sand's bulging eyes. ''You know how they cut a pig's throat?''
''We gotta move along,'' Butters said. ''We can't fuck around.'' Sand began thrashing and squealing through the tape.
LaChaise let him go for a minute, enjoying himself, then he cut Sand's throat from one ear to the other. As the purple blood poured out on the concrete, Sand thrashed, and La-Chaise rode him with the knee. The thrashing stopped and Sand's one visible eye began to go opaque.
''Gotta go,'' Butters said.
''Fuckhead,'' LaChaise said. He dropped Sand's head, wiped the blade on the back of Sand's coat, folded the knife as he stood up and handed it to Butters.
''Gonna be hell cleaning up the mess,'' Butters said, looking down at the body.
''I hate to get blood on concrete.''
''We'll send them some Lysol,'' LaChaise said. ''Let's roll.''
''Lysol don't work,'' Butters said, as they headed for the doors. ''Nothing works. You always got the stain, and it stinks.''
THEY WENT OUT THE SERVICE DRIVE ON THE BACK OF the funeral home, Butters with his thin peckerwood face and long sandy hair sitting in the driver's seat, while
LaChaise sat on the floor in front of the passenger seat.
When they turned onto the street, LaChaise unfolded a bit and looked over the backseat, through the cab window, through the topper, and out the topper's rear window, down toward the funeral home. The deputy's car was still sitting in the street, unmoving. Nobody knew yet, but they probably didn't have more than a couple of minutes.
''Are we going up to the trailer?'' LaChaise asked.
''Yeah.''
''You been there?''
''Yeah. There's electricity for heat and the pump, and a shitter out back.
You'll be okay for a day or two, until we get set in the Cities. Martin's down there today, waiting for some furniture to get there.''
''You find a cop?''
''Yep. Talked to a guy last night, me and Martin did. We got us a cop the name of Andy Stadic. He's hooked up with a dope dealer named Harp. Harp took some pictures, and now we got the pictures.''
''Good one.'' They crossed a river with a frozen waterfall, and were out of town. ''How's Martin?''
''Like always. But that Elmore is a hinky sonofabitch. We told him we needed a place to stay, me 'n Bill, and I had to back him up against the wall before he said okay on the trailer.''
''Fuck him,'' LaChaise said. ''If he knew I was gonna be out there, he'd be peein' his pants.''