‘It probably hurt. Like this.’ Alice shot him. I think she was aiming for his balls, but she hit him in the stomach instead.
Klerke screamed. It was a very loud scream. It banished the harpy who had taken over her head and pulled the trigger. She dropped her purse and put her hand over her mouth.
‘I’m hurt!’ Klerke shrieked. He was holding his stomach. Blood oozed through his fingers and into the lap of his silk pajamas. ‘Oh my God I’m HURRRT!’
Alice turned to me, eyes wide and wet, mouth open. She whispered something I didn’t quite hear because the gunshot from the Sig Sauer had been much louder than the one from Petersen’s little pistol. It might have been I didn’t know.
‘I need a doctor, it HURRRRRRTS!’
The blood was pouring out of him now. He was forcing it out with his screams. I took the gun from Alice’s limp hand, put the muzzle to his left temple, and pulled the trigger. He flopped back on the sofa, kicked once, and fell on the floor. His days of raping children and murdering sons and God knew what else were over.
‘It wasn’t me,’ Alice said. ‘Billy, it wasn’t me who pulled the trigger, I swear it wasn’t.’
Only it was. Something inside her had risen up, a stranger, and now she would have to live with its presence because that was her, too. She’d see it the next time she looked in the mirror.
‘Come on.’ I slipped the Sig in my belt and put the strap of her bag over her shoulder. ‘We need to go.’
‘I just … it was like I was outside myself, and …’
‘I know. We need to go, Alice.’
‘It was so loud. Wasn’t it loud?’
‘Yes, very loud. Come on.’
I led her back down the hall, only noticing now that it was lined with tapestries of knights and ladies fair and, for some fucked-up reason, windmills.
‘Is he dead, too?’ She was looking at Petersen.
I took a knee beside him but didn’t need to feel for his pulse. I could hear his breathing, good and steady. ‘He’s alive.’
‘Will he call the police?’
‘Eventually, but we’ll be long gone by the time he comes around, and he’s going to be fucked up for a long time after he does.’
‘Klerke deserved it,’ she said as we went down the steps. She swayed, maybe because she’d gotten a little of the gas, maybe because she was in shock, maybe both. I put an arm around her waist. She looked up at me. ‘Didn’t he?’
‘I think so, but I don’t really know anymore. What I know is men like him are above justice in most cases. Except the kind we gave him. For the girl in Mexico. And for the murder of his own son.’
‘But he was a bad man.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very bad.’
*
We got in the car and drove the rest of the way around the circle. I wondered if the monitor the two men had been watching had recorded us as well. If it did, it would only show a guy with black hair and a young girl who had lifted her skirt but only once or twice – and briefly – lifted her head. After she got rid of the blonde hair, she’d be next to impossible to identify. I was more concerned about the gate. If we needed a code to open it, we were in trouble. But when we pulled up close, the car broke an invisible beam and the gate trundled open. I stopped beyond it, put the car in park, and opened the door.
‘What are you stopping for?’
‘My gun. He made me leave it at the bottom of that post. It’s got my fingerprints on it.’
‘Oh my God, that’s right. I’m stupid.’
‘Not stupid, woozy. And in shock. It will wear off.’
She turned to me, now looking older than her years instead of younger. ‘Will it? Do you promise?’
‘It will and I do.’
I got out of the car and started around the hood. I was still in the glare thrown by the headlights, like an actor on a stage, when the woman came out of the trees ten feet from the gate. She was wearing camo pants and a camo jacket instead of a blue dress, it was a pistol instead of a trowel in her hand, she had no business being on this side of the continental United States or anywhere except at her damaged son’s bedside, but I knew who it was. There wasn’t even a second’s doubt. I raised the Sig, but she was faster.
‘You fucking fuck,’ Marge said, and fired. I fired a second later and her head snapped back. She went down with her sneakers sticking out into the road.
Alice was screaming and running to me. ‘Are you hurt? Billy, are you hurt?’