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“Put it down, bub,” I said. “You can have another season to run.”
Like most men who commit murder for hire, he probably concluded long ago that as the giver of death, he would never be its recipient. When he aimed at me, his mouth was full of food. He also made a childlike gesture I had seen others make in their last seconds on earth. He extended his left hand in front of him, as though it could save him from the bullets that he knew were about to explode from the muzzle of the AK-47. I know I must have fired at least three times. The first round clipped his fingers from his left hand and patterned them on his T-shirt; the second round hit him in the mouth, and the third ricocheted inside the kitchen, breaking glass and pinging off steel surfaces.
I crawled to the man who had died by the French doors and turned him over. His fingers were holding on to his Glock. I had to pick up his hand by the wrist and pull it free from its grip on the handles and the trigger guard. I searched in his pockets for a backup magazine or extra bullets but found none. I worked my way over to the kitchen entrance and took a Beretta off the man who had died with lettuce and shrimp and sourdough bread hanging out of his mouth. I found a backup magazine in one of the snap-button pockets of his cargo pants, this one a pre-AWB job that held fourteen rounds.
I could hear movement upstairs and also out on the porch and in the camellia bushes by the windows. I found a telephone that had spilled on the floor, but there was no dial tone. I suspected the Duprees had cut the phone lines. I moved along the base of the living room wall toward the staircase that led down into the basement. When I peered into the darkness, I could hear someone breathing, then I made out a shape moving up the steps toward me.
“Gretchen?” I said.
“Is Clete all right?” she said.
“He’s fine.” I handed her the Glock. “It probably has a full magazine, but check it. Where’s Alafair?”
“With the sheriff. She found some blankets. The outside door is locked. We could hear guys talking in the yard. This is the only way out.”
“I’ve got a Beretta with a reserve magazine that I’m going to give to Clete. How’s Sheriff Soileau?”
“I think she’s in a coma. Can anybody see into the house from the highway?” she said.
“I doubt it. The Duprees keep the cops on a pad, anyway.”
“What if we start a fire?” she said.
“We’ll have to get Tee Jolie and Helen out. A fire may also serve the Duprees’ purpose better than ours. They might seal us off inside it. We’re going to have to punch our way out, Gretchen.”
“What happens when this is over?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Am I going down for the hit on Bix Golightly?”
“I can’t answer that.” I wanted to tell her that perhaps it was time for her to stop thinking about herself. I’m happy I didn’t.
“I just want to get one thing straight with you. I clipped Golightly, and I’m glad I did,” she said. “In case I don’t come out of this, I want other people to know I didn’t pop him for the money. I did it because he sodomized a six-year-old girl on her birthday.
He’s in hell, and he’ll never be able to hurt another child, and I’m glad I put him there. What do you think of that?”
“I think Bix got what he had coming, kid.”
“You mean that?”
“Take care of Helen and Tee Jolie. When you and Alafair hear shooting, head up the stairs and run for the front door. We’re going to kill everything in sight, got it?”
“How much ammunition do you have for the AK-47?”
“Whatever is still in the mag. I’m going to find Clete now. If you get outside and Clete and I don’t get there in one piece, make sure the Duprees go down.”
“What about Varina?” she asked.
“In my opinion, Varina is an adverb.”
“Is this state a fresh-air mental asylum?”
“How’d you guess?” I said.
I crawled to Clete’s position and gave him the Beretta and the backup fourteen-round magazine.
“I think the old man is in the study,” he said. “I heard somebody knocking around in there. Why wouldn’t he have blown Dodge?”
