TWENTY-THREE

Crissa looked down at the man at her feet, the Glock pointed at his bloody, ruined chest. He lay on his back on the steps, eyes closed, his gun in the dirt a few feet away. She saw a red bubble rise from one of the holes in his chest. Then the bubble popped, and no more came after it.

There was no time to waste. She didn’t know how far the sound of the shots had traveled. She set the Glock on the counter, then took his ankles, dragged him inside and fully onto the shower curtains. No blood on the concrete. She went past him and down the steps, got his gun and came back inside, set it next to hers. The air still reeked of gunpowder.

She flipped the wall switch, and the yard went dark. Kneeling, she touched a gloved finger to his carotid artery. No pulse.

She stood then, and her legs went weak. She reached a chair, sat, drew air deep. The night was silent except for the crickets.

When she could trust herself to stand, she rolled him facedown onto the curtains, took out her penlight. She pulled the wallet from his back pocket, found his driver’s license. Francis Xavier Burke, with an address in Detroit. She’d never heard of him. A couple of credit cards, a concealed-carry pistol license, fifty dollars in cash. In his jacket pockets were a pack of Newports, a silver lighter. That was it. She took the lighter, put everything else back.

Keep moving, she told herself. Don’t stop to think.

His keys were in the car. With the headlights off, she swung the car around past hers, then reversed up the driveway and into the backyard.

When she opened the trunk, the sports bag with the money was in there. Below it were two tactical bags, and she saw they were matches for the ones Charlie Glass had gotten in Detroit. The first held guns, including the shotgun, and ammunition. The second was full of cash. She put all the money into the sports bag, filling it. She zipped it shut, carried it into the house, stowed it in a downstairs closet.

Using the penlight, she searched for shell casings. She found her three in the kitchen, another in the hallway. A final one on the slate path out front.

There was a spent slug on the hearth in the living room. It had gone through the screen door, the back of the couch, hit the fireplace mantel and bounced off to land mostly intact. She picked it up, then traced a path with the penlight beam along the hallway wall, saw the splintered trim where his second bullet had hit. With her penknife, she dug out the mushroomed slug. She put it in her pocket with the casings.

Back in the kitchen, she rolled him into the curtains, bound them with duct tape. She took a breath, then dragged him out the door feet first, down the steps and into the dark yard. She was winded by the time she got to the car. It took all she had to get him up and into the trunk.

Time to move. She shut the trunk, got behind the wheel, went down the driveway with the headlights off, turned at the road. She heard the thump of something rolling in the trunk, braked to listen. It didn’t come again.

She drove for a half hour, the mist reflecting the headlights back at her. She passed through a town with a brightly lit shopping plaza, the lights haloed in the fog, then onto a long stretch of dark road alongside a river. At the first bridge she came to, she pulled onto the shoulder, put her hazards on and got out, looked over the concrete railing at the dark water below. She took the Browning and the Glock from her pockets, unloaded them, wiped them down with a handkerchief, then disassembled them by the light of the bridge stanchion. Everything went into the water. She listened for each splash, then dropped in the shell casings and slugs.

She drove another ten minutes, found a dirt road that led out into woods. She took it as far as she could, until the road ended at a wooden barrier, nothing but darkness beyond. It would have to do.

She powered down the windows for ventilation, shut off the lights and engine, used her penlight to check the car a final time. She found a banded pack of cash under the passenger seat—five hundred dollars. She put it in a jacket pocket. There might be more in the trunk, but she wasn’t going to open it again.

The swamp smell was strong here. She could hear water just beyond the barrier. She opened the rear door, used her penknife to slice through the seats, then pulled out chunks of cushioning. She took a road map from the glove compartment, ripped it into pieces, stuffed them down into the torn seats, then uncapped the can of charcoal lighter she’d taken from the kitchen. She doused everything, the acrid smell of the fluid rising up, dropped the empty can on the floor. The gas tank had been three-quarters full. It would be enough.

Way out here, with no lights around, the sky was bright with stars. The moon gave enough light that she could see the dirt road, the shape of trees on both sides. She could hear the bellowing of frogs, then the sound of something big moving through the water.

She tossed the keys out past the barrier, heard them splash, then used his lighter to set the map on fire, backed away as the flames rushed up the upholstery, licked at the back window. If it burned long enough, it would reach the trunk, then the gas tank. It was the best she could do. She started back up the road.

She’d just reached the main road when she heard the muffled explosion. She looked back, saw a glow through the trees, heard faint popping. The ammunition going up. She walked on.

A half hour later, she came to the bridge, dropped the cigarette lighter into the water. No cars on this road, but she could see the distant lights of the shopping plaza ahead. She’d find something open, call a cab, have it drop her a few blocks from the house. Go through the place again, looking for any traces Burke and Roy might have left. Then make that phone call.

She walked on under the stars, and tried not to think of what she’d done.