Time to kill some guys.
I went through the backdoor and into the alley, pumped a shell into the chamber. I circled all the way around the firehouse at a slow jog, hit Main Street and turned back toward the station. I kept close to the buildings, jogging in the shadows.
I could see them up ahead, two pickup trucks, one facing in each direction, blocking Main Street, headlights on. I saw Jason and Evan standing to either side of the stationhouse door. They both held deer rifles and looked poised to charge in at me. But I wasn’t in there. I was out here.
And bringing it strong.
I ran at them fast, lifting the shotgun. I got pretty close before Clay saw me. He sat in the back of the closest pickup, foot propped up on an Igloo cooler, white bandages around his wounded leg, a red blotch seeping through. He turned his head and saw me, his eyes going big as hubcaps as I sprinted forward. Home stretch. I ran as fast as I could make myself while still keeping the shotgun up.
Clay overreached for the deer rifle in the bed of the truck and fell off his perch, rolled out of the truck and hit the street with a grunt. He stood, hopped on one foot and reached for the rifle again.
I cut loose with the twelve gauge.
The shotgun bucked in my hands, buckshot splattering across Clay’s torso. He convulsed like he’d been hit with a million volts, shrank to the ground and sat in a bulky pile of dead.
Jason and Evan spotted me. And I looked at them and our eyes met and just like that it was on, as if the eye contact had triggered some primal, animal charge.
I started running again, pumping in shells and firing and pumping. I was a screaming, running blizzard of buckshot, spitting fire. Thunder rattling the whole town. They ran at me too. Both crazy with banshee yells. We were a hell of a collision in the making.
I had the advantage, spraying buckshot. They ran awkward, shooting, trying to work the bolt actions on the deer rifles. Try it sometime, shooting and running at the same time. The shots went wide, and I almost didn’t care if I hit anything or not. I wanted noise and death. Let it all finish here. Pump, shoot, pump.
Twenty feet apart I made Evan’s face disappear in a horrible spray of blood and flesh. I pumped, swung the shotgun at Jason. Everything slowed. He worked the bolt action, eyes like a frightened rabbit’s. I could see all the mistakes in his face. He knew. The fear bringing it home. He knew in that moment it had all been a mistake, that he was going to die bloody and bad.
But he kept trying. I’ll give him that. He was game. He worked the bolt, tried to bring the rifle level for a final shot. Maybe he could get lucky. I shot from the hip, and blood exploded across Jason’s chest. The deer rifle flew away. He fell backward, slowly, like he was falling through cotton. That’s how I saw it. He hit the pavement and bounced. Lay there with his eyes wide open.
I thought he was dead, but he suddenly violently sucked for air. He coughed and gasped.
I knelt next to him, didn’t even feel angry. Didn’t feel anything.
Jason’s eyes focused on me. “You.” “Me.”
“You … fucking … fuck.” His breath came shallow, blood on his lips. I could almost hear the wrecked machinery of his guts and chest grinding out his final seconds.
“Why do you think I killed Luke, Jason?”
“We all know it was … you … son of a—” He broke off in a fit of coughing, spasms along his whole body.
“Why?”
“Call an … ambulance.”
I grabbed two fistfuls of Jason’s shirt, lifted his head off the road. “Why did I kill Luke? You got me pegged for it, don’t you? Okay then, tell me why.”
“Don’t be s-stupid.” Jason coughed again, more blood foaming out of his mouth, running down his chin, face going so white.
I shook him hard, his eyes pin-balling in his skull. “I asked you a question, Jason.”
“You know why,” he said. “Luke and D-Doris. Jealous, so you … killed …”
He froze, like somebody hit the pause button on his face. And suddenly he seemed plastic, his eyes like glass. I checked for a pulse. Nothing. I set him back on the ground and sighed over him. He looked smaller somehow, like he’d shrunk there on the road when the life had gone out of him.
I looked at his face. I wanted to see that Jordan sneer. I wanted to see the wild eyed rage I’d seen so long ago when he’d beat the hell out of that Mark kid at the Tastee-Freeze.
That was the Jason Jordan I’d hoped to kill, the animal, the reckless bully. The Jason that deserved to be gunned down in the street.
But all I saw was fear. The last expression on Jason Jordan’s face, his gaze fixed into the distance, frozen stare at the big unknown coming right at him. I didn’t even want the answers to my questions anymore. I’d had bad answers to too many questions already. There was nothing left to do but haul away the bodies and hose the blood off the road.
People were coming out to the street, wrapping themselves in bathrobes, putting on glasses. I don’t know why, but I felt embarrassed to have them looking at me. But I supposed I’d have been curious too.
“Back inside, folks,” I yelled. “Everything’s under control.” I stood, made some kind of everything-is-okay gesture, hoping they’d all scoot back inside without question.
“What are you playing at, Toby?” It was Richard Macon, the hardware store owner. “Where’s the chief?”
“The chief’s on his way,” I told them. “By order of the Coyote Crossing Police Department, I’m asking you to all go back inside.”
“I’ve known you since you were six years old, Toby Sawyer,” Macon said. “Now, tell me what in blue blazes is going on.”
“You know me, and I know you too, Mr. Macon.” I thumbed the tin star on my shirt. “But tonight, I’m the law. Now you people get your goddamned asses back inside.”
And they did.
They grumbled and gawked at the bodies in the street, but they went. Soon doors were closing. I saw only a few faces peeking though curtains. Maybe I had some kind of authority they believed in, or maybe the fact I’d lied about the chief being on his way was good enough. Or maybe when a man with a gun tells you to do something, you do it.
I picked up the shotgun and put it on my shoulder, sucked in a big lungful of night air. Night. There wasn’t much left of it. The sun would be poking up over the horizon soon. The night was over. Everything was over. No more Jordans. No more Mexican smugglers. With morning would come the fallout. The State Police with mops and brooms and hard questions that I didn’t have all the answers for.
Hell.
I could use a bed. Maybe a hundred hours sleep.
I went back into the station and tried the phone, but no luck. The whole place still smelled scorched. It was a hell of a mess.
“Goddamn, son, what the hell did you do to this place?”
I flinched at the sudden voice behind me, turned and saw him coming from the back room.
“Been one hell of a night, ain’t it, boy?” said Chief Krueger. “I suppose you might have a few questions.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I didn’t have jack shit when I came back to Coyote Crossing. Nothing but a dilapidated trailer and a headstone with my mother underneath. Frank Krueger had been like some salty, distant uncle. The chief had known my father, not a lot but some. I told him I’d somehow managed to squeak through the academy and he tossed a part-time job my way, something to keep me in beer and cigarettes until I moved on. He put his trust in me right away, and that gave me a little pride when I didn’t have much else to cling to.
But I didn’t move on. That had been the plan, but it just didn’t happen. I’d stayed. Krueger must have felt like he’d been stuck with some idiot relation, but he never said a word. Never treated me like a charity case. Yeah, I’d pulled grunt work and crap night duty. But the chief never acted like he was tossing scraps to a mutt. Which was more the truth.