THIRTY-SIX

At dawn, she awakened him, shaking him in bed. His back was to her and he turned and said, “What?” Too loud, the dumb ass.

Maggie said, “Ssshh.”

Terrill said, “What is it?”

“You need to get going,” Maggie said. Her voice was a whisper, conspiring.

Terrill turned over to look at her. “Now?”

“Yes.”

After a moment, he said, “You mean Mickey?”

“I mean Mickey and the girl. You can’t do it here. You’ll have to take both of them away.”

“The girl too?”

“Yeah. She saw you shoot that lawyer, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, she did.”

Maggie shrugged, as if to say, Okay then.

“Okay,” Terrill said. And like that, it was decided.

Maggie had thought it out while Terrill was sleeping and before that as well. She was usually thinking. They couldn’t kill Mickey in the house. There couldn’t be witnesses. Maggie, with Terrill’s help, had spent months conditioning them to think in terms of the group. Always it was the group and whatever was best for the group. The individual was to be forgotten. Individuality was to be suppressed. They had taught their followers that and their followers had been prime subjects for conditioning. Losers, misfits, misanthropes wanting to belong, little girls with daddy issues. They had been good subjects, easily suggestible. Even Toby Eagle had come around. It had been easy. Yes, they had been good subjects. But they weren’t robots. They could still bicker and resent and nurse grudges about whom Terrill liked better and who had last done the dishes. They hadn’t shut down all their emotions. So the sight of Terrill putting a couple of bullets into Mickey’s head was bound to cause problems. What did you kill Mickey for, man? Mickey was all right. Mickey was a good dude. Mickey loved you. What did he do to you?

What did he do? He fucked up, you stupid cows. He let a policeman live when he should have helped Toby kill him and now the policeman had given all the other pigs and the media a pretty good description of Mickey and all the other fuck whores. Mickey had become a liability. As much as the girl had.

Maggie could tell them that. She could explain to them that their collective welfare was more important than Mickey’s. That the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one and all that other bullshit. Maybe they’d buy it … maybe … but Mickey would surely have something to say in his own defense, maybe with a gun, and even if they locked him up during the show trial, there wouldn’t be time for the dialogue. They had the money now and they needed to move.

Her voice still a whisper, Maggie said, “Tell Mickey you need his help with the girl. You know him. You know he’ll want to be alone with you.”

Terrill said, “Now?”

“Now. I’ll be waiting here for you.”

*   *   *

Cordelia lifted her head up when she heard the door open. She didn’t know if she’d been sleeping or if she had just passed out. She had stopped counting songs. The songs would fade and she could hear them in her sleep, going in and out, but she would lose count, and when she came to, she didn’t know how much time had passed. She didn’t know if it was day or night. She was weak. She was hungry. She was struggling not to lose her sanity, but it was getting harder, not easier. She felt ashamed. She had told herself to kick away at panic and then maybe the panic would start respecting her, acknowledge that she was not so easily dominated. But it was not panic that was threatening to overwhelm her now; it was despair. She had not been raped, she had not been tortured. Yet she felt a mess.

When she heard the door open, she wondered, What next? What else can they do to me? Would they just leave her here to die, like the dog tied to a tree and left to starve. Would they send someone down just to shoot her? Thanks for the cash, be-yotch. Would they turn off this incessant, godawful music? Brian Wilson morphing into Frankie Valli into Bobby Darin and then Bobby Goldsboro until blood poured out of her ears. Big girls do cry, motherfucker, and they pee and shit and wonder if they’d be better off dead.

There was someone coming down the stairs.

A form taking shape. Tall man wearing a black stocking cap, dark hair coming out of the sides. Dark in the basement, but Cordelia knew who he was now. He’d been wearing that cap when he shot Tom Myers.

She could call him on that. Try to eke out some dignity amid the smell and the dank and the worthlessness. Tell him: I saw you. I saw you murder Tom, you fucking creep. You fucking monster. Are you going to shoot me too? Do it then. Do it, you worthless piece of shit.

But she didn’t. She didn’t say what she was thinking. Coward, she thought. You can’t even die with dignity. You can’t even give yourself that.

“Please,” she said.

Terrill stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

“Please,” she said, her voice remote and small. “Please don’t kill me.”

Terrill said, “Did I say I was?” His voice hard, even now.

Cordelia sobbed and lowered her head. She didn’t think she had anything left.

Terrill moved behind her and unlocked the chain that bound her to the pipe. He lifted her up. She was unsteady on her feet. Then she slipped and he caught her.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

He had to help her up the stairs. And then they were out of the basement. The morning light assaulted her eyes and she put her arm up to shield herself. She could see a carpeted floor. Dirty. The smell was better than the basement, but it was still rank. Where was she? Was she in St. Louis? Was she in the United States? She could have been anywhere.

She lowered her hand and exposed her eyes to the light. It stung. She covered her eyes again.

She was being guided. She was aware of another person. A man in front of them, opening the door, and she felt the cold air rushing onto her. They were going outside.

Once they were outside, she opened her eyes again. Rural. They were in a rural area. Propane tanks and trashed-out vehicles. She wanted to ask them where they were taking her, but she was too weak and frightened to speak. She didn’t want to ruin things. Maybe, if she misbehaved, they’d turn around and march her back into the house and throw her back into the basement, and she’d rather face the unknown than do that. Complaining, are we? Fine, we’ll just go right home, young lady.

She was squinting now. Opening and closing her eyes by degree, adjusting to the light, keeping them open longer each time. She saw the other man now walking in front of them. Going toward an old blue Volvo, the boxy sort. Now he was opening the trunk.

“Oh, no,” she said. “No.” Her voice seemed small and unfamiliar to her.

“Relax,” Terrill said. “We’re going to let you go.”

He wanted her to believe it. It was early and he wasn’t in the mood to struggle with her. If he shot her here, it would wake up everyone in the house, and Mickey would still be here. They needed to get away from the house.

She was a little thing, weakened from hunger and thirst. It didn’t take much to get her into the trunk. They didn’t even bother tying her up.

Terrill said, “I’ll drive.”

“Okay,” Mickey said. He seemed like he was in good spirits. Like he had been worried that Terrill was mad at him or something, but now knew that everything was okay between them.

Terrill leaned close to him now, his voice low. He said, “We’re going to take her a couple of miles from here. The woods next to the pasture.”

Mickey nodded. “You think that may be a little close?”

Terrill shook his head. “We’re not staying there long.” He said it in a way that made Mickey think he was being let in on something. An intimacy.

Mickey nodded, glad to be in the inner ring.

Mickey had a .380 Ruger semiautomatic in his coat pocket. Racked and ready to go. Terrill had the big .357 revolver he had used on the lawyer. There was a Browning bolt-action rifle on the floorboard behind them.

They drove on a long flat road, going a smooth fifty, until they passed a sign that said PASTURE FOR RENT and took the next right after that. Then they were on a narrower road, between wheat fields. They would wave pretty and green in the late spring, but now they were pale and cold.

Terrill slowed at a cut in the field that formed a sort of driveway through the wheat. He turned in and drove about thirty yards until the wheat formed walls around them. He shut off the car’s engine.

“Okay,” Terrill said.

They got out and moved to the back of the car. Mickey unlocked the trunk and popped it open. The girl was there, pale and a little shrunken, but still alive.

“Take her out,” Terrill said.

Mickey obliged, half lifting her, half helping her get on her feet. Then he took her by the arm and led her away from the car. He was standing next to the girl and about fifteen feet away from the car when he looked up and saw Terrill.

Had Terrill just been taking his revolver out to kill the girl, Mickey would not have said anything. Had Terrill merely touched the revolver, Mickey would not have thought twice. But Mickey Seften had the survival instincts of a ferret and sometimes he noticed things. Terrill was touching his gun while he looked, not at the girl, but at Mickey. Like he was drawing a bead.

Mickey was looking back at Terrill now. Mickey let go of the girl’s arm.

Terrill was busted and he knew it. He decided the best thing was just to bluff it out. He frowned at Mickey and said, “What?”

Mickey Seften’s hands were at his side. “You tell me what,” he said.

Terrill said, “What are you, fucking paranoid? You been smoking too much dope, man.” He tried a smile.

But it wasn’t working. Maybe the guy had been smoking too much dope, getting paranoid. Or maybe Mickey had seen the glint in Terrill’s eye before and he knew and saw in the way that killers know and see, and Terrill said, “Mickey” in a conciliatory way, like you would use to try to talk someone off a ledge, but it was a bluff and Mickey knew it because he was reaching inside his coat pocket and Terrill didn’t see that he had any choice and then he was drawing his revolver, and then Mickey was drawing too, hippy cowboys, and shots cracked out in the cold morning as they exchanged gunfire.

They were neither one of them marksmen and it’s not an easy thing to draw and fire even at a stationary target. Their hands were shaking and adrenaline was surging and then they both started moving, involuntarily, as they kept firing at each other, Terrill retreating behind the Volvo to take cover, Mickey with nowhere to go except turn and run into the wheat field, but that didn’t occur to him at the moment, and then Terrill’s body was behind the Volvo and Mickey felt something tear at his shoulder and he got another shot out of the .380 before he went down and was looking up at the sky.

Terrill was ducked behind the rear of the Volvo now and he could hear Mickey groaning, his breathing rasped and irregular. Terrill kept to the ground as he moved on hands and knees to the front of the Volvo. He crept around and saw that Mickey was on his back. Terrill came out then and fired his last two shots into Mickey’s body. He saw Mickey twitch and buck and he knew he was dead.

Terrill sighed. His heart was racing. It was done. He moved up to Mickey and took the .380 away from him. Mickey had a bullet in his shoulder and two in his body. Terrill stood over him with the .380 and put another bullet in his head, more out of anger than a need to be sure.

Terrill turned around and looked into the wall of the wheat field. It didn’t tell him anything, except that the girl was gone.

Terrill gave the corpse a good kick and said, “Shit, Mickey. Now look what you’ve done.”

*   *   *

After she heard the Volvo pull away, Maggie Corbitt sat cross-legged on the bed and smoked a joint. She was enjoying the moment. Wake and bake, as Terrill used to say. A peaceful morning. Soon the girl would be taken care of and Mickey would be too. That would leave three of them in the house, outside of her and Terrill. Three, and three was not so difficult to handle.

Two million dollars. Two million dollars and it had been easy. You want to steal, steal from the rich. They’ve got it, and if you’ve got something they want, they’ll give it to you. It really was that simple.

It seemed silly now, all that fuss. The Gene Penmarks of this world even debating whether they should pay the ransom. The man probably spent two million dollars last year refurbishing his house. Ten times that on a yacht. Half that for his “sumptuous” wedding. Fuck him. He could spare two million.

Maggie didn’t need a mansion up on a hill. She and Terrill would take the money and maybe settle for a beach house in California. Blue sky and water and waves breaking on the surf. Get away from this midwest shithole. You say you worked hard for your money? Yeah, well, try sharing a house with a bunch of hippy-dippy assholes for a few weeks. Like babysitting grown children. Lee with her Ivy League worldview, spacing out now. Acting like Europe made her smart. Ray, talking about hitting “the man” while taking a government disability check. Jan talking tough feminist bullshit but sulking if Terrill or Ray didn’t give her enough attention. Christ, it could wear on you.

Maggie put the joint out in the ashtray on the night table. She got off the bed and pulled her pants on. She pulled on a white T-shirt and her green jacket. Then she went downstairs.

It seemed more relaxed to her at first. The Penmark girl was gone and it made her feel better. She could have died down there and they would have had to haul her out and dispose of her somewhere. But it was taken care of now.

Ray was leaning up against the counter. Jan was standing nearby. They stopped their conversation when Maggie came in.

“Hey,” Maggie said. “Where’s Lee?”

Ray said, “How should I know?”

“What?” Maggie said, her tone tough. She was sensing an insolence here.

“I said, how should I know.”

A definite insolence. Maggie wondered if she should ask them what they had been talking about. They probably wouldn’t answer her truthfully. Though all three of them knew it was about the money.

“What’s up?” Maggie said, immediately regretting that she’d said it.

Ray said, “Where did Terrill go?” His voice was a little harder than Maggie was used to. Not asking, but questioning, and there was a difference between the two.

Maggie said, “He and Mickey are taking care of the girl.”

“Taking care of her?” Ray said, “Or returning her?”

Maggie gave him a direct look. “What do you care?”

“I don’t care if they kill her or not,” Ray said. “But you might have checked with us before deciding.”

Maggie said, “You knew it would come to that.” She was getting impatient now. Ray drawing distinctions when he had already murdered a deputy in Oregon. Maggie shrugged. “Is there a problem?”

Jan started to speak, then stopped. She tried again, saying, “We were just wondering what—what happens next.”

Ray said, “We were wondering where the money is.”

Maggie thought, I knew it. It was just a matter of time. So predictable, all of it. The chickenshits couldn’t go right to it, but had to act like they were miffed about the Penmark girl. Like they cared whether she lived. It was the money they were worried about.

“Don’t worry about it,” Maggie said. She went to the counter to get a coffee cup, showing them that she wasn’t that concerned. But she could feel their eyes on her back.

Ray said, “Are you going to meet up with them?”

Maggie turned around. “Meet up with who?”

“With Terrill and Mickey? Is that what you’ve got in mind?”

“Man,” Maggie said, “what is this?”

“It just seems funny,” Ray said. “We wake up this morning and the girl’s gone and Terrill’s gone and Mickey’s gone. And we don’t know where the money is. That’s all I’m saying.”

Jan sensed the hostility between Ray and Maggie. She was on Ray’s side, but she felt something coming, so she tried to sound like a mediating voice of reason when she spoke. She said, “We just want to know what’s going on, that’s all.”

“Shut up,” Maggie said, keeping her eyes on Ray. To Ray she said, “If you think we’re trying to double-deal you, why don’t you just say it?”

“Did I say that? When did I say that?”

Maggie said, “I think you are saying it.”

Ray said, “Where is the money now?”

“What?”

“Where is the money, Maggie. Did Terrill and Mickey drive off with it? Where is it? Where is the fucking money?”

“What is this? Huh? No. They did not drive off with it. Terrill—they’ll be back in a minute. And then we can all talk about what happens next. Like we always do.”

Ray Muller was giving her a long look now, appraising her in a way that she had never quite seen before. Maggie thought about the man she had sent to kill deputies in Oregon. It was the same guy, she thought. The same Doberman she had sicced on a dumb-shit cop, but now the Doberman was looking at her and the usual commands didn’t seem to be working.

Ray said, “Like we always do.” Mimicking her, but calling her out too. He said, “Is that really how it works?”

Maggie said, “Man, what is with you?”

Ray went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “Or isn’t it you and Terrill just telling us what we’re going to do? Isn’t that how it usually works?”

Shit, Maggie thought. Ray growling now, tensing for a spring. She saw it now, saw it coming, and the man was leaving her little choice. Part of her hoped that Terrill would come back and help her reason with this asshole. But another part of her hoped that Terrill wouldn’t come back soon because if he did, he would not have Mickey with him and there would be more questions then. An insurrection was what it was. A fucking insurrection.

Maggie gave out a sigh. “Do you want to see the money?” she said. “It’s still here. I can show it to you, okay?”

“Yeah,” Ray said, “why don’t you do that.”

Christ, Maggie thought. He was ordering her now. The dumb shit.

“It’s upstairs,” Maggie said.

She began walking out of the kitchen. Then she was in the living room walking toward the staircase. She could feel Ray walking behind her. Not right behind her, but following her into the living room, making sure she wasn’t going to try to run out the front door. He stopped before she went up the stairs, though. There was no fire escape, so if Maggie wanted to leave, she would have to come back down the stairs. And Maggie could feel it then. The two of them holding her accountable. My, my, she thought. My, my.

She took the money out from under her bed. It was still in the black bag Mickey had given to Terrill. Maggie set it on the bed. Then she opened the top drawer of the chest and took out a Beretta 9-millimeter semiautomatic. She racked the slide and put one in the chamber. She looked at the bedroom door. It was still closed. She stuck the gun in the front of her pants and then lifted the black bag up in front of her. It was big and heavy and it hid the butt of the gun above her belt.

She was a cool cat, she thought. A very cool cat. Cool and calm as she thought it out. She would be holding the bag with two hands when she went down the stairs. They would be waiting there and when they saw the bag, that’s where they would focus their attention. Ray would say something like “ah” or “now that’s better” or something else stupid and Maggie would toss it down the stairs, let it land at their feet. Ray would keep his eyes on it and that would be when she shot him. Pull the Berretta out of her pants and plug him in the chest. Maybe see his eyes go wide in that moment when he realizes what’s going to happen and that it’s too late to stop it … the moment between life and death when he realizes he’s been played.

Shoot him and then shoot Jan for siding with him. She would probably cry out some sort of plea before getting hers. Maggie, no! Sorry, Jan. You play, you pay, bitch.

Maggie stepped out into the hallway.

“Where are you going?”

Maggie turned and looked down the hall. It was Lee. Christ.

“I’m going downstairs,” Maggie said. Using the tone she generally used with Lee. “Something wrong?”

Lee stood there in the hallway, her expression blank. She took in the bag.

Lee said, “You’re going to run away with him, aren’t you?”

“Who?” And after Maggie asked that, she saw the revolver Lee was holding down at her side. Using one hand, Maggie began to reach for her Beretta.

“Lee…?”

Lee raised her arm and fired three shots. Two of them took Maggie in the chest and knocked her down. Lee walked to her and fired two more shots into her torso, twitching it, though Maggie’s face registered the same initial shock. Lee pulled the trigger three more times on empty chambers. Click, click, click.

Lee stood over the body. Early dawn now, the Kiowa moon gone.

She looked over to see Ray standing nearby. He had come up the stairs.

Ray Muller looked at the dead body and then over at Lee, still holding the pistol.

“Jesus Christ,” Ray said.

Lee vaguely pointed the spent pistol at Ray. Ray put his hands up. “Lee,” he said.

“She was going to take him away from me.” Lee looked at the gun and tossed it on the floor.

Ray picked it up. Then he took the Beretta that was near Maggie’s hand. He pointed it at Lee. Debated it for a moment, then said, “It’s okay, Lee. No one’s mad at you. Go back to your room. Okay?”

Lee looked at him, her eyes something feral. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she said.

She stayed there for a couple of moments, then walked back down the hall to the bathroom. Ray heard the door slam shut.

“Jesus Christ,” he said again.