“Get… off… me!” A labored out-of-breath whisper.
As if. I grabbed for the hand holding the gun, missed my grip, and grabbed again before he could bring it around to my face. The gun went off a second time. I don’t know where that bullet went and didn’t care because it didn’t go into me. His wrist was slippery with sweat, so I clamped down with all my strength and twisted. There was a snap. He uttered a high-pitched scream. The gun fell from his hand and hit the floor. I picked it up and pointed it at him.
He made that high-pitched scream again and put his good hand in front of his face, as if that would stop a bullet. The other one just flopped on his broken wrist, which was already beginning to swell. “No, don’t! Please don’t shoot me! Please!”
Not one single fucking ha-ha.
3
You may have gotten a pretty good feeling about young Charlie Reade by this point, I’d guess—sort of like a hero in one of those YA adventure novels. I’m the kid who stuck with my father when he was drinking, cleaned up his vomit, prayed for his recovery （on his knees!）， and actually got what he prayed for. I’m the kid who saved an old man when he fell off a ladder trying to clean the gutters. The kid who went to visit him in the hospital and then took care of him when he came home. Who fell in love with the old guy’s faithful dog, and the faithful dog fell in love with him. I strapped on a .45 and braved a dark corridor （not to mention the giant wildlife therein） and came out in another world, where I made friends with an old lady with a damaged face who collected shoes. I’m the kid who overpowered Mr. Heinrich’s killer by cleverly dumping gold pellets all over the floor so he’d lose his balance and fall down. Gosh, I even played two varsity sports! Strong and tall, no acne! Perfect, right?
Only I was also the kid who put firecrackers in mailboxes, blowing up what might have been somebody’s important mail. I was the kid who smeared dogshit on the windshield of Mr. Dowdy’s car and squeezed Elmer’s Glue in the ignition slot of Mrs. Kendrick’s old Ford wagon when Bertie and I found it unlocked. I pushed over gravestones. I shoplifted. Bertie Bird was with me on all those expeditions, and it was the Bird Man who phoned in the bomb threat, but I didn’t stop him. There were other things that I’m not going to tell you about because I’m too ashamed. All I’ll say is that we scared some little kids so bad they cried and pissed themselves.
Not so nice, right?
And I was mad at this little man in his dirty corduroy pants and his Nike warm-up jacket and his clotted, greasy hair falling over the brow of his narrow weasel’s face. I was mad （of course） because he would have killed me once he had the gold—he’d already killed once, so why not? I was mad because if he had killed me, the cops—possibly led by Detective Gleason and his intrepid sidekicks Officers Witmark and Cooper—would have entered the shed in the course of their investigations and found something that would have made the murder of Charles McGee Reade look piddling in comparison. I was maddest of all—you may not believe this, but I swear it’s true—because the little man’s intrusion made everything more difficult. Was I supposed to report him to the police? That would lead to the gold being discovered, and that would lead to about ten zillion questions. Even if I picked it all up and put it back in the safe, Mr. Ha-Ha would tell them. Maybe to get some consideration from the district attorney; maybe just out of spite.
The solution to my problem was obvious. If he was dead, he couldn’t tell anyone anything. Assuming Mrs. Richland’s ears weren’t as sharp as her eyes （and the two gunshots really hadn’t been very loud）， the police wouldn’t have to come. I even had a place to hide the body.
Didn’t I?
4
Although his hand was still in front of his face, I could see his eyes between his splayed fingers. Blue, threaded with red, and starting to spill tears. He knew what I was thinking of doing; he could see it on my face.
“No. Please. Let me go. Or call the police if you have to. Just don’t k-k-kill me!”
“Like you were going to kill me?”
“I wasn’t! I swear to God, I swear on my mother’s grave, I swear I wasn’t!”
“What’s your name?”
“Derek! Derek Shepherd!”
I hit him across the face with his gun. I could tell you I didn’t mean to do it, or I didn’t know I was going to do it until it was done, but those would be lies. I knew, all right, and it felt good. Blood burst from his nose. More trickled down from the side of his mouth.