Seconds later, the alarm began beeping throughout the house, but it wasn’t loud. The boys had learned to remain calm amid the racket and go about their business. They had never hit a place with people inside. There was no one to hear the alarm.
However, on that fateful night everything went wrong. They were in the den when someone flipped a light switch at the end of the hallway. A man yelled, “Who’s there?”
“Dammit!” Brian hissed, almost under his breath but loud enough to be heard because a woman yelled, “Someone’s in there, Carl. I heard him.”
For fifteen years, Cody had replayed those awful seconds and could never explain to himself why Brian had made a sound. They had reminded each other a hundred times that if anything went wrong, they were to scramble back to the door they entered and disappear like rabbits into the night. Don’t make a sound, just run. They were dressed in black, even down to their sneakers, and wore black face paint and black rubber gloves. They were kids but theirs was an adult game and they took it seriously. They were proud of their successes.
And the gun? Why the gun? They had stolen a hundred of them and they had wasted a mountain of ammo target-shooting deep in the woods. Cody became a decent shot, but Brian could hit anything. They had argued over whether to pack a gun for these breakins.
Another light in the rear of the house came on. Cody retreated and crawled into the kitchen where he knocked over a barstool.
“I gotta gun!” the man yelled.
Brian ducked behind a recliner in the den.
The shootout lasted only seconds, but Cody, the only survivor, could replay it for hours. The deafening boom of a 12-gauge and rapid shots from a 9-millimeter. The woman screamed and her husband fired again.
At Cody’s trial, the ballistics expert would explain to the jury that Brian managed to get off five shots before getting hit by the 12-gauge. One shot hit Mrs. Baker just under her left eye, killing her instantly. Two shots hit Mr. Baker in the chest, but he still managed to take out Brian with his second shot.
When the shooting stopped, Cody found a light switch and gawked in horror at the carnage. Mr. Baker was on the floor, groaning, trying to get to his feet. Mrs. Baker was slumped against the bookcase, bleeding. And Brian was on the floor near the television, with half his head blown off. Cody screamed and reached for him.
When the police arrived, they found Cody sitting on the floor, holding his brother’s mangled head, covered with blood, and weeping.
Mr. Baker died the next day. Cody, uninjured, at least physically, was locked away for the rest of his life. The crime scene photos were shown to the jurors, and they did not deliberate long before returning with a death verdict.
（10）
“It was all my fault, Marvin. I thought the house was empty, that the Bakers were still gone. One mistake by me and everything changed. It was just so awful.”
Cody returns to the picnic table and leans on it, next to Marvin. Both stare at the moon. Seconds pass and it’s time to go.
“There was so much blood. I was covered and I couldn’t run. The cops threw me in the back seat and cussed me all the way to the jail, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop crying. Brian was dead. He was the only person I ever loved, Marvin, and the only person who ever loved me. And he’s been dead for fifteen years.”
“I’m sorry, Cody.”
Another guard peeks around the door and says, “Warden’s coming.”
Marvin snaps to attention and moves toward the door. He opens it and waits but Cody is frozen in place. Slowly, he wipes tears from his face as he stares at the moon.
“Gotta go, Cody.”
“Go where? Where am I going, Marvin?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“You think Brian might be there?”
“Got no idea.”
Cody slowly stands, wipes his face again, and takes one long last look at the moon.
SPARRING PARTNERS
（1）
The law firm of Malloy & Malloy was well into its third generation, and, from all outward appearances, was prospering nicely, in spite of a rather shocking scandal not far in its past. For fifty-one years, it had litigated from the corner of Pine and 10th, in downtown St. Louis, in a handsome Art Deco building stolen in a foreclosure by an earlier Malloy lawyer.
Inside the doors, though, things were not going well. The patriarch of the firm, Bolton Malloy, had been gone for five years now, sent away by a judge after pleading guilty to killing his wife, an extremely unpleasant woman no one seemed to miss. Thus, the scandal: one of the city’s best-known lawyers convicted of manslaughter and stripped of his license. His sentence was ten years, but he was already plotting an earlier release.