Shadows Burned In (20 page)

Caroline’s feet were waking up now. She began to back away
from him. Kitts advanced on her, step for step.

“I’m telling you, we’ve never met,” she said. “I have no
idea who you are.”

The man deflated in front of her, then seeing she saw it, bowed
up again and raised his weapon. “You’re not my Caroline. You stole her body and
used it all up.”

“What . . .?” But she stopped, realizing that everything
she’d said so far had only made things worse. “What do you want?” she finally
repeated.

Kitts stopped, considering her question. Then, pointing to
the phone with the poker, he said, “I want you to call your husband. Tell him
there’s a fire. The cat died. There’s a cockroach in the kitchen. I don’t give
a shit what you tell him. But you get him here. Without suspicion.”

Caroline shook her head. “I’m not bringing him here for you.
You’re that escaped prisoner they called him in for, aren’t you? You’ll just
kill him.”

Kitts raised a finger and wagged it from side to side. “I
promise to let you both live. But I want to see him first. Talk to him
face-to-face. Do that and I let you both live. I’ll even turn myself in. It’ll
be a big coup for
Rudy
. Don’t do it, and I promise you he’ll die soon after
you do.”

She made the call.

“He says he’s coming, but he’s not happy about it, I can
tell.”

“Poor Rudy. Now, turn around and face the wall.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m going to tie you up.
Turn around and face the wall
.”

She did as she was told. When she heard his next words, she
knew it had been a mistake.

“You stole it and used it all up, you bitch. And now you’ve tainted
my memories too.”

She heard the thin whoosh before she felt it, and then she
felt nothing. Kitts smiled as he murdered the usurper harpy, hacking the curved
tooth of the poker into her skull.

Kitts caught her as she crumpled, wrinkling his nose at the
brains leaking onto his arm. He slid her to the floor, the strain stretching
his side. He stood up with a deep breath and raised the steel rod again. And
again. He pounded her skull, obliterating her face until there was nothing left
but a bloody ruin, a madman’s pumpkin carving of jagged lines and dripping
holes. The pale yellow of the living room wall was dotted with red now, the
floor slashed with red blood and gray brains. Kitts stood up and stared at his
handiwork, glad that he’d taken revenge on Caroline’s doppelgänger, knowing
that somewhere her spirit was silently thanking him for trying his best to
preserve her perfection in his mind’s eye.

He returned to the recliner in the living room, sat down
with a heave of exhaustion only the old can really understand. His belly felt
full to bursting now. He sat and waited.

It took almost fifteen minutes for the warden to get back
home, and he wasn’t sure what to expect as he stepped out of his car and onto
the porch. When Carrie had told him she needed him home, he’d gotten mad. His
job was on the line, and of all the sumbitches to escape, it had to be Kitts!
Just
had
to be. And then Carrie had mentioned her hip giving her fits and
their still-missing cat and how worried she was. But they didn’t have a cat.

So he’d rounded up six county officers and asked them to
give him a five-minute head start so he could scope out the situation. And now,
as he mounted the steps to his own home—certain in the knowledge Kitts had
violated that sanctity and burning with anger at the thought—he wasn’t sure
what waited for him.

The front door was hard to open, had become wedged against
something. Kitts must’ve moved a bureau in front of it.
Best to move quickly
,
thought Ramirez, putting his shoulder against the door. It scraped open slowly as
Ramirez forced his way into the room, expecting to see Kitts there, possibly
armed, waiting to cap him. What he saw instead was the dead weight of
Caroline’s body, pressed hard between the door and the wall.

Ramirez stared in shock. Her face was an ugly mess. His
heart stopped in his chest as he stood, transfixed, looking at the bloody
monster that had once been his beautiful wife, the best part of his life. His
hands began to sweat, his chest expanding with the cold certainty of being too
late.

“
Caroline
—”

In the moment of Ramirez’s awe, the murderer came at him
from the living room with the poker. Gasping for breath against his burning
side wound, Kitts leaned forward, hoping to add his body weight to the waning
strength in his arm. The rod fell short, embedding itself high on Ramirez’s
collarbone and raking down across his chest. Shouting his horror, the warden
pushed himself backward, away from the blow. Kitts fell to the floor on top of
Caroline, crying out as the shock of the fall brought new pain from his side.
He lifted himself off the dead husk that had once been his wet dream

(wet work dream now)

and grabbed for the weapon he’d let go. Kitts pushed
himself up to stand, crooked and leaning to his left to avoid stretching the
wound again. Ramirez was still on the floor fumbling for his pistol, and Kitts
knew if he didn’t move now, he’d be dead.

He lurched forward as Ramirez pulled the pistol out of its
holster.

“You murdering
bastard
!” Ramirez screamed through the
tears of his loss.

His eyes sharpened to clarity by pain, Kitts swung hard,
knocking the gun from Ramirez’s hand. The warden watched the blurry arc of the poker
as Kitts raised it for a backswing. Ramirez used all his strength to push
himself backward along the floor. The rod wooshed through the space he’d been a
second before. The warden shook his eyes clear.

Kitts seemed to be enjoying the game. Raising the poker
again, he said, “I told you I’d kill you, you motherfucker.” But Ramirez moved
forward, not away, in and under the arc of the swing as it came down. He took
the old murderer’s legs out from under him, and Kitts fell on top of him, his
weapon clanging to the floor. Before Kitts could recover, Ramirez turned him
over, pinning him to the ground with his weight, pummeling and screaming at
him. Kitts reached out a hand and, remarkably, found the poker with one grab.
He brought it up clumsily to bash the side of the warden’s head. The blow
wasn’t piercing but still dazed Ramirez, who fell to one side. Kitts struggled
up slowly, powered by the widower’s moans and the memory of that day on the
basketball court when a sergeant had humbled a defenseless prisoner in front of
a woman. In front of Caroline.

Kitts spat on Ramirez, who laid there, delirious from the
blow.

“I told you I’d kill you, you motherfucker,” he said again,
raising his arm.

Sirens in the distance.

Kitts stopped and stared past the corpse of the fake
Caroline into the black night beyond the front door. He knew he had a minute or
two before the troopers got here. Ramirez was crawling away from him now, would
get to his weapon before Kitts could get to him, and while the two of them
continued their mano-a-mano, the troopers would be storming the porch.

To hell with this
.

Kitts dropped the poker and lurched away like Quasimodo. He
felt as much as heard the shot from Ramirez’s pistol hit the door facing as he
passed into the kitchen. His hand fumbled with the back door knob before he
realized it was locked. He heard Ramirez lifting himself off the floor, bellowing
his rage in great gasping breaths, and finally Kitts had the deadbolt released
and the door opened. He was out of the house and tripping through the night for
the Trinity River again as Ramirez appeared in the doorway behind him, an
avenging shadow. Kitts heard the troopers’ cars grind to a halt on the shale
driveway around the front of the house, saw the eerie reflections of their red
and blue lights in his peripheral vision. But he didn’t allow himself the
luxury of looking back.

Ramirez took aim at the black figure loping toward the river
and fired two shots that missed. Troopers were coming through the house to the
kitchen and around from the front with hounds.

“Sonofabitch murdered my wife! He’s going for the river. I
want him
dead
, you understand me? Let the dogs have him first. When they
get tired, you can shoot him.”

“But Warden, if he surrenders—” began one of the younger
officers.

He was cut off as his sergeant stepped in front of him. “We
understand, sir.” Turning back to the rookie, the sergeant said, “This man
won’t give himself up, Bob. He ain’t the kind to. Understand?”

Whether he understood or not, the rookie nodded. They fanned
out, and Ramirez led them toward the river.

Reaching the riverbank, Kitts heard the pursuers coming.
Mostly he heard the dogs baying, but that was soon drowned out by the rushing water.
The pain in his side warned him against attempting to swim, but the hounds urged
him to it. He waded into the river for a few feet, then dove in, letting the
current take him. A few random gunshots splashed the water nearby, and then the
sounds of his pursuers began to fall off behind him.

He began to swim, and each stroke was like a knife reopening
his wound. He’d beaten the posse, knew they wouldn’t catch him now. The river
was just too fast. But he also knew, as his strokes became heavier, his stomach
like the blood sac of a tic on a dog, he’d misjudged the water’s temperature.

Who’d’ve thought to worry about cold water at this time
of year in Texas?
he wondered uselessly.

His limbs were growing more numb. Whether from the cold
water or the shock his body had finally registered from the bullet wound, he
didn’t know. He also knew it didn’t matter.

“Goddammit!” he cursed at the stars shining down on him. He trod
water as best he could while the Trinity carried him on, casting his eyes
around for the bank. But as he raised his head to look for a reflection of any
kind to gauge the distance, the river took a dive. Kitts rolled down with the
whitecaps and went under. His wind-whipped lungs begged for air. He panicked
and fought his way to the surface. Kitts spat the cold water out and gasped air
again. His side stabbed him with pain like a bitter punch line.