Murder Takes a Break (29 page)

"What if I won't help you?"

"You will," she said, waggling the Colt, and of course I did.

M
r. Peavy didn't look nearly so happy to see me as he had the last time I'd paid him a visit.

"What are you doing here at this hour?" he asked, looking at me through a crack between the door and the facing.
 
"Is this about getting Chad back in school?"

It was about something a lot more unpleasant than that, but I couldn't say so because Big Al was standing behind me, ready to blow a hole the size of a softball in me.

"It's urgent that I talk to Chad," I said, which was certainly true.

"You don't look so good," he said.
 
"What happened?"

I hadn't had a chance to clean up much in the last few hours, so I'm sure I didn't look at all like someone who was trying to keep kids in school.

"That's what I need to speak to Chad about.
 
Can I come in?"

"Who's that with you?" he asked.

The porch light was on, but Big Al was standing behind me in my shadow.
 
I'm fairly big, but Big Al is bigger, hence her name, and there was no way she could hide herself completely.

"It's one of the school counselors," I said.

"Well, I don't know," Mr. Peavy said.
 
"This is a pretty strange time to be conducting business if you ask me."

Big Al stepped out from behind me and pointed the pistol at him.

"Nobody asked you, asshole.
 
Open the damn door."

Mr. Peavy was quicker than I'd have thought, but Big Al could move fast for her size.
 
When Peavy tried to shut the door, she snatched open the screen and kicked the door into his face.
 
While he was still staggering backward, she darted into the room with the Python in a two-handed grip, sweeping it to cover the whole area.

I went in right behind her, and by that time I had my own pistol in hand, hoping I could control the situation before it got out of control.

"Where's the kid?" Big Al asked.

Peavy didn't answer.
 
He was holding his hand to his face where the door had hit him.
 
He was going to have a really bad black eye in the morning.

"Time to forget about the boy," I told Big Al.

She turned around and saw my gun.
 
It didn't seem to bother her much.

She laughed and said, "You think you can stop me with that toy?"

"Yeah," I said.
 
"I do."

"Maybe so," she said, wiggling the Python, "but mine's bigger than yours.
 
It'll take you two or three shots to drop me, and by then, you won't have a spine left."

"You wouldn't want to kill me," I said, wondering how true it was.
 
"So far you've stayed out of jail.
 
You don't want to spoil your record."

"Too late for that," Bob Lattner said as he came through the front door.

I
have no idea what Mr. Peavy thought was going on.
 
I wasn't even sure what I thought, except that there were a lot of guns being shown around.
 

Lattner had a .38 revolver, and for a minute I thought Big Al would play the "mine is bigger than yours" game with him, too.
 
It seemed to give her a lot of satisfaction.

She didn't want to play, however.
 
She said, "You're a little out of your jurisdiction, Lattner.
 
There's nothing you can do about me here."

"We'll see about that.
 
Where's your son, Mr. Peavy?"

Peavy was looking from one pistol to the other as if he'd wandered onto the set of some movie he hadn't even known was being made.
 
He still had one hand up to his face.

"Chad's upstairs," he said.
 
"Asleep."

"No I'm not," Chad said from above us.

He was standing on the landing, and just to make things perfect, he had a pistol, too.
 
Another .38.
 
All we needed now was for his mother to come wandering in with an AK-47 and the evening would be complete.
 

I've discovered that there's one big problem with having four pistols scattered around a room, even if one of them is yours: You really can't watch all three of the others, not at the same time.

The one I wasn't watching at the moment belonged to Big Al, and naturally she was the first to pull a trigger.
 
The noise was as loud as you would expect an explosion in a living room to be, and it was rapidly followed by another explosion and then another.
 

The good news was that no one had shot me.
 

The bad news was that by the time I realized I hadn't been shot, I couldn't have heard the U. S. Marine Band if they'd been playing a Sousa march in the next room.

Everyone was ducking for cover except for Mr. Peavy, who just dropped to the floor and assumed the fetal position.

Big Al was behind the sofa, while Lattner and I had opted for chairs.

Chad fired a couple of shots at the room in general and dashed back upstairs.

That still left three of us armed and dangerous, but none of us was willing to make the first move to come out from behind the furniture.

It seemed to me that someone had to do something eventually, but I hated to be the one.
 
Shooting at people bothers me.
 
I don't like the results.

On the other hand, if someone had to get shot, I'd prefer that it not be me, so I rolled out from behind the chair, fired a shot under the sofa, and hit Big Al in the foot.

She didn't make much noise, no more than a mild groan, or that's what it sounded like to me.
 
Maybe she screamed in agony.
 
I couldn't really hear, so I wouldn't know for sure.
 
Say what you will about her, though, she was tough.

So was Lattner, who'd apparently been hit by Chad's first shot.
 
There was a dark stain spreading on the back of his jacket, but with Big Al out of the picture for the time being he took the opportunity to charge across the room to the stairs.

Sometimes people can fool you.
 
I would have said that Mr. Peavy wouldn't move for about a week.

I would have been wrong.

He rolled in front of Lattner, who tripped over him and fell forward, striking his head on the first step of the stairway.
 
His pistol flew out of his hand and landed four steps up.

I headed for the stairway.
 
Big Al was still behind the couch, and Lattner wasn't moving.
 
If anyone was going to catch up with Chad, it was going to be me.
 
Mr. Peavy tried to trip me the way he'd gotten Lattner, but I was too quick for him and dodged out of the way.
 
Having seen him in action, I was ready for him.

I stooped down and grabbed Lattner's pistol on my way up the stairs.
 
You never knew when a spare might come in handy in a crowd like the one I was fooling with.

I reached the second floor and looked down the hallway.
 
Mrs. Peavy was standing outside her bedroom door in a green nightgown, staring at me.
 
She wasn't holding an AK-47, thank goodness.
 
Not even a .38.

"What's happening?" she said. "Where's my husband?"

I was sure she was talking loudly, but I could barely hear her.
 
My ears were still ringing from the gunshots.

"He's downstairs," I said.
 
My voice seemed to echo in my skull.
 
"He's fine, but some others aren't.
 
It might be a good idea to call 9-1-1.
 
Where's Chad?"

She looked at the pistols in my hands, then at a door at the end of the hall.

"I don't know," she said.

I left her there and ran to the door.
 
It was locked.
 
With the shape my knee was in, I wasn't going to be kicking it open.
 
I stood to the side and shot the lock to pieces.

I went into the room carefully, but the care wasn't necessary.
 
Chad wasn't there.
 
The window opposite the door was open, and there was a big sycamore tree just outside.

I was in no condition for tree-climbing.
 
I went back downstairs, where Lattner was lying where he'd fallen.
 
Big Al, on the other hand, was standing up and pointing the Colt at me.
 
I was getting tired of looking at it, so I shot her again, in the arm this time.
 
She fell back behind the couch.

Mr. Peavy was sitting on the floor, looking at me with wild eyes.
 
He was no doubt reconsidering having his son enroll in any college or university that would hire a two-gun maniac like me.

I handed him Lattner's pistol.
 
"If either of them tries anything, pull the trigger," I said, and ran on outside.

There were plenty of lights on in most of the surrounding houses now.
 
Mrs. Peavy might be calling 9-1-1, but so were half the neighbors.
 
The cops would be on the way before she said ten words.

Chad was running down the sidewalk.
 
He had half a block's head start on me, but I started after him anyway.
 
I was in pretty decent shape, thanks to my almost-daily run, and although he was a football player and much younger than I was, I didn't think he'd been working out lately.

The problem was my knee.
 
I was afraid it wouldn't hold up long enough for me to catch Chad.

I suppose I could have fired a few shots at him, but the truth is that a pistol is rarely accurate at any distance beyond thirty yards, and I was already breathing heavily, which is not conducive to unerring aim.
 
In other words, I was as likely to hit a nearby house as to hit Chad.
 
More likely, in fact.
 
Even if I thought I could hit him, I couldn't be certain that I wouldn't kill him.
 
And I didn't want to do that.
 
Not even if he was a murderer.

So I pounded along behind him, wishing that I was twenty years younger and a few pounds lighter.
 
Having a sound knee would've been nice, too.

But you have to make do with what you have, which in my case was an ageing body and a knee that was already beginning to cause me to list alarmingly to one side.

We ran for two blocks, and I thought I might actually be gaining, but if I was, the gain was so small that it was measurable in millimeters.
 

Chad wasn't pulling away, however; I was sure of that.
 
That was the good news.

The bad news was that my knee felt as if something inside it might be about to fly apart.
 
I wasn't going to be able to go much further.

Luckily, I didn't have to.
 
Chad fell down.

It was an old neighborhood, and some of the trees near the sidewalk had sent their roots under it, cracking the concrete and making it dangerously uneven.
 
I had barely missed stubbing my toe a couple of times, and when Chad went down I wasn't terribly surprised.

The surprise came when he twisted around and shot me.

I hadn't thought he'd do it, though I should have known better.
 
He'd shot at Sharon, killed Henry J., and had most likely eliminated Patrick Mullen as well.

Why shouldn't he shoot me, too?

My leg went out from under me as if jerked by a rope.
 
I fell on my shoulder and rolled into the street.
 
The curb wasn't very high, but it was better than no cover at all.

Chad's next bullet chipped concrete a foot from my head and screamed away.
 
The one after that came a little closer, but not much.
 
It did, however, hit something: a car across the street. That's what I mean by accuracy being affected by exertion.
 
He was lucky to have hit my leg.
 
Or I was unlucky.
 
One or the other.

I tried to slow my breathing, and I gripped the Mauser with both hands.

"Chad," I said.
 
"Put down the pistol.
 
The police are on the way, and I don't want to have to shoot you."

That was true.
 
I really didn't want to shoot him, but he said, "Fuck you," so I did.

"Y
ou two make quite a pair," Cathy Macklin said.

I suppose she was right.
 
Dino was still wearing his sling, though I don't think he really needed it.
 
He was using the old sympathy ploy with Evelyn, so she wouldn't pay too much attention to me.
 
He thought I was getting entirely too much attention from Cathy, and for Evelyn to feel sorry for me too was more than he could take.