A Kiss Before I Die (8 page)

She watched him walk into the snowfall, into woods and darkness. She waited with the lights off. No cars had passed them in well over thirty minutes. She kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, anticipating headlights, looking for any sign of activity.

She wanted the police now. Let them come in by the busload. Everything would be settled within thirty minutes. The man – or men – in the house would fall like dominoes once she started. The surprise was hers and Tyler was an unaccounted for ace. The cruiser was probably accounted for, and Ruggles, Sebastian, if he was conscious, would be trying to recount things, although it was a good bet his memory would be influenced by embarrassment.

Debozy, too, no doubt sober and thinking, remembering, would be coming to judgments both right and wrong, and was one of the jokers in the deck. She had no idea of his allegiances or how good a detective he was.

She didn’t think Chief Augustine Henderson would be accommodating to anything Debozy said in his defense, so she hoped he would proclaim his innocence, tell her of his fear for his life and that would be all.

Samantha
was
worried about Mrs. Burleson. She doubted she’d be harmed, but then murderers are rarely rational, and when one mistake occurs – like killing a former cop while in your murderous employ – others tend to follow.

Her parents had been trained, had been commissioned to commit horrible acts. Her dad in particular had a unique insight when the occasional and horrible piece of news appeared.

In the months before her father died, he’d said the Benghazi attacks and deaths were the result of a failed C.I.A. operation.

“I’m telling ya, my people, my sources, they say there’s
more
than four dead. Next day, one of the C.I.A. annexes takes it in the ass, and that gets
no
airplay. Somebody screwed the pooch and they clamped the whole operation down. Honey, there’s wars being fought you never see in the papers or on TV, only in fiction. And sometimes the fiction of life nails it.”

After ten minutes, she turned on the lights, put the SUV into drive and rolled forward for maybe a tenth of a mile before the engine stuttered.

She tried starting it again.

She examined the dashboard.

The gas tank was empty.

The cold and snow and weapons weighed on her as she limped to the house. The lights of the house illuminated the land around the house.

She hadn’t thought to tell Tyler about the house lights, the motion sensor lights stationed at the corners of the house that stirred through the night detecting the rural creatures of night.

That’s when she noticed the snow.

Fifty feet ahead of her snow was falling.

Where she stood, no snow fell.

There was a perfect, straight line across the road, from her house to the open acreage across the road from the house, a veil of falling white, a curtain:  a perfect straight line demarking where the snow stopped and started. No wind or force disturbed the snow. It was a long, white curtain that ran from the house to a dark, empty field, to land they owned and left fallow.

Wondrous life
, she thought.

She stopped and watched.

Miracles and wonders
, she thought, remembering an old song.

Then the lights of the house winked out and all that remained was the snow and the white glow of clouds, the glow of the earth itself, the ambient light of the world, the radiation of life.

She limped forward toward the house and realized that not only were the motion sensor lights off but the lights of the
entire
house were extinguished.

An arrow landed close by, a sharp thump in soft light.

She ran and limped into the woods by the house.

He thoughts were scattered between statements and questions, facts and conjecture.

The power to the house was off.

Was the lack of light defensive or offensive?

Had the arrow been a warning or a threat?

Run. Now.

She jogged into the dark, into the danger of her home, fearful of nothing, not afraid to die.

Living once was enough.

Other sounds, other voices. In the white glow of her world, the house stood out like the shadow of a ghost, there but not.

She heard the clatter of feet on the porch.

She saw the shadow of a Chevy Silverado in the long driveway, the faint outline of a police car, and the shifting words of the emblem of
Foursquare Police
,
To
Protect and Serve
.

She heard glass shatter.

A moment later, the door opened.

She recognized the man from the red Ford, his beard, the high forehead, his hair, and the white glow of a bandage on his face. He had a gun.

She raised her gun and leveled it at him.

He staggered down the porch, acting drunk.

She fired. Instinct and fright colliding. She fired again.

He stepped off the porch, spinning with the shots, seemed to look around, moving toward the Silverado, and collapsed. An arrow extended from his left shoulder, an odd exclamation point on a writhing body, nerves and synapses firing uncontrollably before fading to black.

A bullet flew through the door. Then four more, rapidly, blind panic shots.

There were more shots from the rear of the home and she heard them as she melted into the woods to her right, away from the house.

A weird orange glow seemed to flicker from the top of the house and then another and another, rapid bolts of flame and light from the top of the house, the light coming from the woods, from left of the barn.

Crazy
.

Flaming arrows.

First he’d shut the power off.

Now he was terrorizing and burning them out.

She followed his lead, limped to the rear porch, and fired into the red Ford truck, deflating tires, shattering windows. It had the courtesy not to ignite until she rounded the front of it, pushing one bullet into its big block engine, catching a fuel line, sparking and then bursting into flame up and smoke.

“
You stupid…!
”

Wilcox was on the porch.

“
Just die!
”

“
You killed Burleson!
”

“
Who cares?

He fired at her, four shots. One. Two. Three. Four. The fourth punctured her right leg, crippling her, sending her flat, and she cried out in anger and pain.

Wilcox was unaware or uncaring of the arrows as the next flaming bolt of light came in so quickly he had no time to react. She saw the flicker of recognition, the shock and awe on his face. He staggered, an arrow in his left arm.

She leaned up on her right elbow and emptied a clip at the house. Wilcox disappeared into its darkness. Then she saw a sharp light from inside the house, a gunshot, and then nothing.

Her home was burning.

At the top of the house were attic shutters, and two of them were open, the windows shattered, and from them came orange and red flames and clouds of smoke. She’d played up there as a child, had been up there just a few days ago, opening trunks, finding old toys and mementos and memories. It was a beautiful room.

Then a voice came from inside the house.

“
I’m coming out! Don’t shoot
!”

The voice was familiar.

“
I’m coming out! Stop firing! Wilcox is dead
!”

She said nothing.

Vomit, acid, and bile roiled up from her stomach and she spit into the snow.

The snow whipped around her.

She waited.

Say nothing
.

The spreading patch from her leg looked black and it twinkled in the orange flickering light of her dying home…it made her think of summer snow-cones on the pier at Sylvan Beach, her mom cradling her.

“
Here’s my gun
!”

A handgun landed in the snow maybe ten feet from her. She could feel the heat of the truck as it burned. She began to push away. The thing would explode.

Detective Jeffery Debozy came into view, hands over his head, looking beat up, stunned.

“
I’m not armed! Where are you
?”

“Here,” she said. “Here...”

“
Where are you
?”

“
Here
!”

“Oh, Jesus,
shit
!” he said. “
It’s you
…!”

He put his hands down.

She smiled.

“Me.”

“
Shit
,” he said.

She was breathing heavily and her vision was distorted. Her right leg throbbed and her left foot was tingling.

“What…?”

“Ever see
Die Hard
?” He pulled a gun from his hoodie. “
Shit-howdy!
”

She felt her heart pumping and her face sweating.

“I don’t…”

He squatted next to her, reached out, and pushed her hair from her eyes.

“What a hangover,
Jesus
! You should’ve just gone out with me. We could’ve avoided all this mess.” He whistled. “You are
hot
. You know that, right…?”

“You’re…?”

“Look, I appreciate the confession and everything but you were wrong about Augus
tine
. That daffy bitch couldn’t figure out to tie her shoes if she didn’t have her husband do it for her. Seriously, she’s like the best example for not having diversity in the work place. She’s a grade-A bully and not bright, neither.”

He stood. He gestured.

“But, whataya gonna do? Can’t fight city hall.”

“Know…”

He cupped an ear.

“
No
? Or,
know
?” He was happy. “Probably
know
, huh? With a k? Listen, Wilcox didn’t kill Freddy.
I
did. He was just the wrong guy in the wrong place. I kept telling Wilcox, let’s just get you done with, and he kept saying, wait, wait, wait. I mean,
c’mon
, screw it. I think Fred went in to set up some of his little cameras and shit, you know, to try and settle this or maybe he was suddenly going honest and went in to warn you. Then Wilcox, didn’t tell me about him so – anyway, whataya gonna do? Shit happens.”

“That’s it,” she said. “Shit happens?”

“Pretty much.”

“Why…?”

“You know why. You told me. Thirty mil in cash and gold and who knows what.”

“The honor of thieves…”

“Ah, honey, that’s just not true. Everybody within a mile of you wants a piece. Samantha, I gotta say, our godfather was
nuts
. He blew his brains out and left this sorry-ass confession lying around and everybody made a copy and started cutting up the pie.
See?
He gives up your parents, tells the world they were class-A killers, I.D.’s a body of a dead detective, sullies a dead senator, and implicates that rich guy, Grant, lands us in so much shit we had to start digging up bodies. And you know…”

From behind the detective came the sound of a gun safety being released.

Debozy said, “About time,” and turned.

Sam covered her face, head down.

The detective died with a burst of bullets to his chest, his blood splattering misty in the swirling snow of a freezing, New York night.

“Ran out of arrows,” Tyler said.

She leaned up on her right forearm.

He kneeled down next to her.

“Your leg’s mangled up. Can you stand or walk?”

“Yeah. I’ll be okay.”

“Jesus, what a tough guy. Here,” and he helped her stand. “I want you talk to me, okay, Samantha. Can you do that for me?”

“Okay…”

They were moving from the house and the truck when the red Ford erupted. The heat from the burning house reached them.

“Kill anybody?”

“Red Ford guy.”

“
Ahh
, that doesn’t count. I gave him a push. Like opening a mayonnaise jar for mom.”

“Your mother…”

“She called when I was out there. Car accident.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Happens in the best and worst times, huh? Slid off a road and into a ditch. Busted up her face and neck a little. She’s a lousy driver.”

“Your father…”

“You were right…he’s okay.”

They were passing the Silverado.

“Your Bronco is out of gas.”

“Goddamn Fords.”

“I didn’t need your help.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You were fine.”

He helped her into the passenger seat of the lawyer’s truck.

“This is why you always go hunting with a buddy. Hang. We need keys.”

She watched him pass the burning Ford and run into the house and that’s when she realized she didn’t know if Wilcox was actually dead.

She reached behind the seat and found the lawyer’s gun.