Cut to the Bone (30 page)

CHAPTER 49

Tyler

QUIT STALLING,
TYLER BERATED
himself again, and forced himself to stand and walk to the patio door. He was raising his hand to knock when he froze, his knuckle an inch from the door. On the other side of the glass, Jeff had reached out and taken hold of a small, slender hand—Kathleen's hand, Tyler assumed—and clasped the pinky finger between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. Then he turned slightly—a few degrees, no more—but it was enough for Tyler to see that it was not Jeff at all. As his brain scrambled to interpret the data and identify the face, he felt a rush of panic. A moment later, his conscious mind caught up with the faster circuitry of his subconscious, and he recognized the face: the murder suspect, Satterfield! Just then he saw Satterfield reach toward Kathleen's finger with his right hand. Light glinted on steel, and then Kathleen's arm swung free, arced toward the floor, slinging blood as it dropped. Satterfield still clasped her little finger in his left hand, a pair of bloody gardening shears in the other. Her head jerked, and through her nostrils and the tape across her mouth came a muffled, whinnying scream.

Tyler gasped and staggered backward as if he'd been struck. He fought back the impulse to scream and the need to vomit, knowing that revealing his presence was almost certain to trigger a massacre inside.
Think,
he commanded himself.
Think!
God, why hadn't he gotten a cell phone when Roxanne had suggested it? He spun, scanning in vain for the glimmer of lights in neighboring houses. Should he run back to the street and start banging on doors? Was there even time for that? How long would it take for the police to get here in force—ten minutes? half an hour? The image of the arrow-pierced bodies flashed into his mind—two brutal deaths in quick succession—and he knew that the Brocktons might not have ten minutes.
It's up to me,
he thought.
I have to stop it. But how? Jesus God, how?
Satterfield surely had a gun—maybe more than one. Tyler had nothing, not even a set of keys. Sweaty running clothes and his bare hands, that was all he had. It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.

CHAPTER 50

Brockton

I HEARD A CHORUS
of muffled screams, including my own, when Satterfield cut off Kathleen's finger. My heart was racing and my chest was heaving; with the duct tape over my mouth, I couldn't get enough air, and felt close to blacking out.
Calm down,
I commanded myself.
Calm down. Breathe. Think. If you panic instead of thinking, everybody dies.
At death scenes—even gruesome ones, like the woman's body pinned to the tree by arrows—I was generally able to distance myself from the horror; to look at the scene as a puzzle. Could I do that now? I didn't know, but it seemed our only hope.

Satterfield laid Kathleen's finger on the table, along with the gardening shears, and picked up his gun again. I forced myself to observe his face, his movements, his surroundings, as if he were a research subject.

Over his shoulder, I suddenly glimpsed movement—a reflection in the sliding-glass door?
No,
I realized with a shock.
Something—someone—outside the door, out on the patio.
I waited and watched, tuning out the sights and sounds and horrors closer at hand.
There it was again—a face! My God—Tyler's face!
Perhaps there was a glimmer of hope.

But it was faint, and it was fleeting. We didn't have much time—maybe not even time for Tyler to go next door and call the police. If the police did come, and if Satterfield heard them, he'd kill us swiftly, before they could stop him.

It's up to Tyler,
I thought desperately, and then thought despairingly,
How? It would take a miracle.
The word itself—
miracle
—gave me an idea. It was an absurd idea, but it was the only idea I had.

I shifted my focus back to Satterfield. I had to get his attention; I had to persuade him to take the tape off my mouth. I grunted his name, as best I could through the tape:
Nnn-nn-nnn. NNN-nn-nnn.
He looked at me quizzically.
NNN-nn-nnn!

Now his expression changed to amusement. “Are you speaking to me?” I nodded, praying. “You have something important to say?” I nodded again. “What could you possibly say that would interest me now? ‘I'm sorry?' Too late. ‘Kill me first?' Not a chance.” I shook my head firmly. “You really mean it, don't you? You actually think you have something to say.” I nodded.
Don't look desperate,
I urged myself.
Look strong. Look smart. Look like you know something he needs to know.
“Tell you what,” he said finally. “We'll play a game. I'll let you talk for ten seconds. If you scream, I shoot your wife. If you bore me, I shoot your son. Deal?”

I nodded again. It was an easy deal to make; we were all dead anyhow.

With his left hand, he pressed the muzzle of the gun to my temple. With his right, he picked up the gardening shears and brought the tips of the blades to my face. For a moment I expected him to cut off my nose, but he turned the tool sideways and slit the duct tape. I drew a deep breath—the air felt precious—and then I began to speak, softly at first, then gradually louder: “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, with knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord looked at the garden, and he drove them from it.” Satterfield stared at me as if I'd lost my mind, and perhaps I had. I wasn't counting the seconds, but he hadn't shot anyone—not yet, at least. The next part was the important part.
Please be out there, Tyler,
I prayed.
Please listen. Please understand.
“And in the garden he placed an angel,” I went on, with rising fervor, like an old-time preacher. “An angel with spreading wings and a mighty sword. So that if any evildoer should come therein, the angel could fly at him with the sword, and smite the evil one, like the whirling hammer of the Lord God Almighty.”

CHAPTER 51

Tyler

JESUS GOD,
THOUGHT TYLER,
his mind racing and his heart pounding as Brockton's ravings—his coded message—sank in. How many years since Tyler's last track meet? Three? No, four: his sophomore year of undergrad. Could he even do it anymore? No point worrying about it; given the situation, it was do or die.
More like try and die,
he thought grimly.

Squatting beside the concrete angel in the garden—this had to be what Brockton meant—he curled his fingers beneath the wings and hoisted the statue a few inches off the ground, swinging it slowly back and forth like a pendulum, getting the feel of it. It didn't feel right: The wings were too wide; his hands were too far apart, and the angel's head was pressing into his belly. Worse, he could tell that if he released one wing before the other—even a microsecond before the other—the statue would tumble out of control and miss its mark. Frowning, he laid it down and studied it, circling it like a wary dog. Halfway around, he had an idea. Squatting again, he gripped the angel by the thin, circular base beneath the feet and straightened, then swayed to set it swinging, this time head down.
Better,
he thought.
Much better.
The mass and balance weren't exactly the same as the hammer's—the statue felt much heavier; maybe thirty pounds rather than sixteen—but he wouldn't be throwing for distance, only for accuracy. It would do. It had to do.

He shifted his grip slightly, propping the statue on the patio as he did, the tips of the wings and the sword forming a temporary tripod.
The fall of Lucifer,
he thought; then—straightening and lifting once more—
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

He did a test throw in slow motion, mentally coaching himself through the movements: the swaying windup, then the four-and-a-half spins—the accelerating dervish dance needed to power the flight of the angel, the hammer of God. Halfway through the practice spins, he stumbled and nearly fell, regaining his balance just in time to avoid a noisy crash.
Who are you kidding?
he asked himself scornfully, but then he heard another voice—a kinder voice: his high-school coach's voice wafting across a decade, cheerfully scolding him in exactly the same words he'd used a hundred times or more at practice:
Turn off your brain, Tyler. It's like making love, son—if you're thinking, you're not doing it right.

The remembered admonition calmed Tyler; it even made him smile briefly. He drew a long, slow breath, feeling and hearing the air: rushing through his nostrils, flowing down the back of his throat, filling his lungs. He drew another, and a familiar, distinctive mixture of oxygen and adrenaline made its way into his muscles, awakening sensations and skills that lay deep and dormant within him. Turning his back on the window, he began to rock, swinging the statue to and fro, in pendulum arcs that gradually rose higher and higher: left, right, left, right, the wingtips and sword almost grazing the ground at the bottom of each arc. After half a dozen swings, the arc reached shoulder height on each side, and Tyler boosted the angel over the top: above his left shoulder, over his head, and then swooping down to the right. As it swooped he began to spin, shifting the plane of the statue's motion from vertical toward horizontal. It swung outward now, angling away from his body as he spun. Whirling faster and faster, he leaned back, leaned into the turns, he and the angel counterbalancing one another like skaters or dancers in a dizzying duet—two turns, three turns, four—the winged figure straining to take flight.

As Tyler completed his fourth turn, the back of his left shoe came down on a pea-sized pebble. Pinched between his heel and the patio, the pebble shot free, pinging against the glass of the sliding door. It hit just as Tyler came out of the turn, whirling toward the house, toward his release point—the point where he would relax his fingers and release the statue; where he would let the angel take flight.

At the edge of his whirling field of vision, Tyler suddenly saw Satterfield spinning, too: spinning toward Tyler, a nightmarish reflection of Tyler's own motion.

Time slowed; Tyler's vision narrowed, tunneled, excluding all but three things: the sheen of the glass door, the malice on Satterfield's face, and the pistol in the outstretched, tightening grip.

CHAPTER 52

Brockton

AS I WATCHED IN
horror, Satterfield spun toward Tyler, raised the pistol, and fired.

The glass exploded—the room itself seemed to explode—and then Satterfield was lifted off his feet. He flew backward, slamming against the far wall of the dining room, hurled there—
pinned
there—by the angel from the garden. The wing tips pierced his wrists, pinning him to the wall like Christ on the cross, like the woman against the tree. The angel's head was pressed tightly against Satterfield's chest, the tip of the sword nestled in the hollow of his throat.

I glanced across the table at Kathleen, who was staring at the bizarre tableau, her shock at losing her finger momentarily forgotten, it seemed. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed more movement outside. A man—his running shorts and T-shirt seeming surreally out of place here amid the carnage—stepped through the jagged, glass-fringed opening where the sliding door had just exploded. It was Tyler, looking as startled and stunned as I felt.

“It's okay, it's okay,” he gasped. “You're gonna be okay.”

“Tyler, thank God,” I said. “Are you hit? Are you hurt?”

“I don't think so.”

He knelt beside Kathleen and lifted her dangling, dripping hand. “Jesus. Jesus, Mrs. B, I can't believe he did that.” He snatched a napkin from the floor and wrapped it around the stump of her finger, then raised the hand and angled it across her chest, resting it on her left shoulder. “Can you hold it here?” She stared, wild-eyed and confused. “Can you hold your hand up like that—just for a minute?—while I find something better to stop the bleeding?” Slowly her eyes focused on his face, and she nodded. “Good. That's really, really good, Mrs. B. Hang in there. You're gonna be just fine.” Standing, he scanned the kitchen, then headed to the freezer. He opened the door, and I heard ice clattering as he rummaged in the bin.

Satterfield groaned and twitched. I was surprised that he was alive; I had thought—and hoped—that the statue had struck him with enough force to crush his chest and stop his heart. But no: Satterfield shook his head and opened his eyes, staring at the angel that pinned him to the wall. I saw him wince as he strained to free his arms, then—to my horror—I saw him lift his feet from the floor, flexing his legs to bring his feet up to the base of the statue, working them underneath it for leverage. “Tyler!” I yelled.

Tyler turned, the freezer door still open. “
Shit,
” he said, skidding back across the kitchen in a trail of ice cubes. He scooped up the gun that had flown from Satterfield's hand when the statue slammed into him. “
Stop,
” he ordered, raising the gun. Satterfield froze, but he didn't lower his legs. “I will
totally
shoot you, asshole,” Tyler added. “Put your feet down—
now
—or I will gladly shoot your balls off.”

Satterfield's feet slid from the statue and his legs eased down to the floor. Tyler kept the pistol trained on him, his hand shaking.

Suddenly I saw another flicker of movement in the back doorway—a face appearing and quickly withdrawing. Then a man in green military fatigues—a soldier? a cop?—stepped into the opening, dropped into a shooter's crouch, and aimed a pistol at Tyler's head. “
No!
” I screamed again. Tyler stared at me in confusion. I flung my head and shoulders backward, rocking the front legs of my chair off the floor, then jerked forward with all the strength I possessed. The chair bucked onto its front legs; I hung there, balanced at the tipping point, then—with agonizing slowness—toppled forward: toppled toward Tyler, falling against him, my head slamming into his belly just as I heard a gunshot from the doorway, and another, and three more in quick succession.

Tyler doubled over and collapsed onto me. Facedown on the floor, I could not see if he was alive or dead.