Bad People (48 page)

He couldn’t make his broken finger bend around the trigger. She grabbed the shotgun. She was on one knee, her other leg braced at a long straight angle. Luke wrenched the shotgun free of her grip in one burst of effort.

He turned it and drove the butt into her kneecap. Her joint folded the wrong way with a clean and satisfying snap. The action wrenched his injured shoulder, sending lightning bolts through his torso. He smashed the rifle butt into Connie’s shoulder so she would know the pain she had caused him.

She screamed again. He straddled her and placed the barrel of the shotgun across her throat and pushed, saving the shell in the gun for S/D.

Connie coughed and wheezed. Her good leg kicked ineffectually at his back. Her arms reached up, scratched his face, deeply first, then gradually and gradually more weakly and more weakly. And more weakly. Finally, Connie Wexler was doing what Luke wanted her to do.

55: Connie

The world went black.

The metal pressed Connie, crushing down on her larynx. One shoulder was done for, and her kneecap was shattered. She could not see Luke’s face in the starlight, only his horrible eyes, like two deadly meteors burning in space. She fought the urge to give up.

She reached out with her good hand, clawed at his eye, and dug. She felt wetness, something like wet gelatin running over her thumb and palm, then down her wrist.

He didn’t stop crushing her, as if he hardly noticed the death of his eye. She tried the same with her other hand, but he’d broken her shoulder. She did not have the strength there to fight him. He knocked her hand away easily.

Taking out Luke’s eye meant nothing. No victory. He could still harm Stephen-David. Nothing to help her, nothing to stop him.

He was uttering something, chanting or cursing at her, but the words only blurred into guttural sounds in her ears. She prayed Stephen-David would get away. Get away somehow. But how? If she could have one thing in this world before she left it, it would be to make Stephen-David run away now, get in his car and drive away as far as he could. At the very least she was orphaning her son. The things she would tell him now if she could.

Would he ever forgive her?

“What—what!” said a voice.

“Forgive me,” she said again.

“Why should I? You
hurt
me!” Luke was talking to her. He had stopped choking her. He still had her pinned. He thought she had been talking to him.

“But are you sorry enough? Tell me! Are you sorry enough?” he cried.

“Yes.”

“Don’t lie to me. I can tell if you are lying. I can tell. I have the Mind. You don’t have the Mind. I have it.”

“I know,” she said, to keep him talking. “The mind. I get it. “

“You don’t possibly get it. If you got it, you wouldn’t fight me, understand?”

“Absolutely. I absolutely understand.”

“Explain it.”

“What?”

“Go ahead, explain it to me.”

She faltered. “I can’t. It’s your thing. I need you to explain it to me. That’s what I’ve been hoping for.”

Luke’s eyebrows went up. She had never seen him emote anything that close to an expression of surprise before. She only had to keep him talking, get her hand on the shotgun…

“No! No! No! You’re lying. You’re lying to me!” He jumped up, drove the barrel of the gun right into her forehead. “I can smell your lies, bitch!”

Connie refused to close her eyes.

A streak of something came out of the darkness.

A bobcat, no, two bobcats, lunged across the yard. One tore into Luke’s thigh, the other leaped, and caught the side of Luke’s neck in its jaws. Connie jumped up on her good leg, falling into the melee. She grabbed again for the shotgun. Fighting to hold onto it, and fighting to free himself of the bobcats, Luke fired the last shell involuntarily—and harmlessly—into the air.

Connie broke away, and raced toward the house. Stephen-David had made it downstairs and was staggering toward the glass kitchen door.

He had found her pistol, his father’s gun once, now hers, and had it in his hand. He struggled to push the door open.

She helped him, resisted the urge to embrace him again, and pulled the pistol from his hand.

Luke flailed left and right, whipping his body, trying to shake off the bobcats.

The one at his neck fought and clawed at his face. The skin of his cheek and jaw hung loose—like a Halloween mask that had come off.

Connie aimed at Luke’s chest and fired.

The bullet doubled him over, and he spun into the pool, which splashed.

Connie ran to the edge.

The bobcats, stunned by the water, the gunfire, and the fall, retreated, bounding up the pool steps and disappearing back through a rent in the fence.

Luke, facedown in the inches of standing water, rose. He flipped his head, like a shark caught on a line.

Even after losing one eye, and his face an exposed mass of muscle and jawbone. He sensed Connie standing on the edge of the pool.

And leaped.

She fired again but, spooked by his stunning speed, missed him completely. He seized her ankles and pulled. She fell backward on the pavement.

Her skull cracked.

“Mom!” cried Stephen-David.

Stunned she felt herself being pulled down into the black icy water. Luke spun her under himself, and pressed down. He ground his pelvis into her. He moved his hands to her pants and tried to open them. Her head was underwater and, brackish liquid filled her nose, her gasping mouth, and her lungs. She moved the gun between her belly and his, and, unable to tell exactly where the muzzle pointed, fired.

Again, and again.

Luke’s hands fumbled at her jeans. His erection pounded against her thigh. She fired again, but no bullets came this time. The water around her was warm now.

Luke’s relentless hands slackened, and released her.

But his body lay heavy upon her still. She sank under it. She may have hit herself with some of the bullets she had fired but it didn’t matter.

She was finished, but so was Luke.

She felt him rise up again. Her heart pounded.
No!
She felt arms seize her shoulders, and pull. “No,” she shouted, trying to twist her exhausted body.

The arms hugged her. Stephen-David. He was in the water. He had pulled Luke off of her. Luke floated beside them, unmoved, faceless. Her son moved her toward the side of the pool. Another pair of arms reached out for them, steadied her, help lift her. She looked up. The big cop, the heavy homicide detective. He too was covered in blood, and when Connie was out of the pool, he collapsed. He was holding his side in, having come this far by nothing but force of will.

Sirens filled the air and, in a moment more, began to light up the sky. Stephen David collapsed too, exhausted on the concrete. His back had caught some of the buckshot, from the blast through the wall upstairs, but he was not as hurt as the detective.

The detective looked at her strangely. He moved his mouth like he wanted to say something to her. She shook her head, breathing too heavily to say anything herself, but trying to let him know she didn’t understand what he wanted.

He gasped, and forced his air under control, so that he could form words. Holding his bleeding side. “I have…I have a daughter. I have a daughter,” he said.

She nodded. She put her hand on his. “Good,” she said. “That’s good.”

He seemed satisfied, or at any rate, unable to say more.

Uniformed police stormed the yard. The scene was beyond chaotic for the next overwhelming minutes, but finally the paramedics were let through.

A woman who examined the large detective looked at a distressed cop in uniform and said, “he’s going to be okay.”

Another paramedic looked at S/D injuries. Connie suddenly started to cry when the paramedic cut the shirt off her son’s back. Someone wrapped a blanket around Connie. “It’s fine,” that person said, “you’re all going to be fine.”

An officer took the steps down into the pool. After a moment he whistled loudly, waving his hand. Everyone looked up. “Paramedic,” said the officer. “This one’s alive too.”

Chapter 56: Everybody

From the tree line at the base of the hills, the cats heard the woman scream. They were still hungry, still had the blood of there escaped prey in their mouths, but they were not going back. The ground below was alive with flashing lights, the screaming machines and voices of men. They ran, stretching their lithe bodies as long as they could, creating distance between themselves and the world below as quickly as they could. They were finished with men. Men who hunted too relentlessly and too ruthlessly for mere cats to contend with. They ran into the night, and then they ran some more.

***

Connie had screamed and tried to fight her way to the stretcher, where paramedics had worked feverishly to save Luke’s life.

Why?

Why would they do that.

The world had gone mad, truly mad at last.

They had pulled her away.

In the hospital they gave her something to sleep.

She did not sleep well, and dreamed of Luke coming to her, naked, skinned, and faceless, his body nothing but wet flanks of muscle and cartilage.

But still he came for her.

***

In the morning, she got to see S/D again.

Luke was at a different hospital the police told her. He was going to jail. The statements she and Stephen-David gave meshed with the statement of Detective Brussels. There was no need for her to fear, the cops who interviewed her said. Luke (actual last name still being looked into) had killed at least three people: his girlfriend Ardiss, Barry Taupe, and Detective Ethan Starvold. He had also raped the girlfriend’s roommate earlier that day, the roommate had reported.

Luke was likely to have committed the murder of Robb Hart, in the opinion of the police now, and possibly had been involved in the disappearance of a comic book store owner.

Luke was never, ever, ever going to see the outside of a prison cell again.

That was certain.

***

In January, Connie got an offer on the old house. The offer was well under her asking price, and the prospective buyer conveyed the message that he wondered, given the notoriety surrounding the property, whether she would mind very much if he had the existing structures torn down. He said he felt funny about doing that without letting the former owner know what his plans were. Connie told her realtor that was fine, as was the low-ball offer. In fact, if the buyer had given her this message himself, in person, she probably would have kissed him.

***

The trial was delayed repeatedly. It seemed it would never happen. S/D, in the meantime, got accepted to Stanford. He didn’t want to leave his Mom alone in Seattle waiting for the trial.

Connie wanted Stephen-David to got to Stanford. They talked it over. They decided their lives had been on hold long enough. S/D went to Stanford. He flew back for the trial.

***

One Sunday during the course of the trial a young shy-looking girl came to Connie’s new office.

She carried a black and white cat wrapped in a blanket. She and Connie talked.

Her name was Heather, she had been Ardiss’s roommate. The girl Luke had raped earlier the same day he had tried killing Connie and Stephen-David. Her part of the trial was over and she was moving back to her parents in Minnesota. Her Dad was allergic to cats and did Connie want her?

The cat she and Luke had found that time in the hotel.

She had not thought of the little black and white kitten in so long. Had probably blocked it out, because it seemed likely Luke would have just destroyed or abandoned it after he had promised to find it a home.

Instead he had given it to his girlfriend. Heather had kept the cat since.

Connie took the cat. She made a bed for it, from a UPS box and a long-sleeved tee out of her gym bag.

The cat curled up on the shirt, and taking a bit of it in her mouth, rolled over, wrapping herself up in it like she had belonged there all along.

***

Luke was sentenced to several life-terms but escaped the death penalty by revealing the location of Jay Porter’s body as well as giving a full account of each murder.

A year earlier, even the notion of this possibility would have outraged Connie. By the time the trial had begun however, her opinion on the matter was no longer clear-cut. And though she had seen Luke on television many times by then, the actual physical presence of him, when she finally walked into court to give testimony, astounded her.

Luke had a glass eye to replace the one she had gouged out. His face had been reconstructed.

Or rather, an
attempt
had been made to reconstruct it.