Desperation Read online

  Get going. Hurry.

  He started to pull the chair back, then shouted with surprise and jumped out of the way when it overbalanced almost at his touch and spilled Jim Reed's dead weight onto the floor. The corpse uttered a great dead belch when it hit. The plaque in its mouth flew out like a missile leaving its silo. It landed upside down, but David could read it with no trouble just the same: THE BUCK STOPS HERE.

  Heart pounding harder than ever, he dropped to one knee beside the body. Reed's uniform pants were unbuttoned and unzipped, exposing some decidedly non-reg underdrawers (vast, silk, peach-colored), but David barely noticed these. He was looking for something else, and he sighed with relief when he saw it. On one well-padded hip was Reed's service revolver. On the other was a keychain clipped to a belt-loop. Biting his lower lip, somehow sure that the dead cop was going to reach out

  (oh shit the mummy's after us)

  and grab him, David struggled to free the keys from the belt-loop. At first the clip wouldn't open for him, but he was finally able to get it loose. He picked through the keys quickly, praying to find what he needed ... and did. A square one that almost didn't look like a key at all. A black magnetic strip ran down its length. The key to the holding cells upstairs.

  He hoped.

  David put the keyring in his pocket, glanced curiously at Reed's open pants again, then unsnapped the strap over the cop's gun. He pulled it out, holding it in both hands, feeling its extraordinary weight and sense of inheld violence. A revolver, not an automatic with the bullets buried away in the handle. David turned the muzzle toward himself, careful to keep his fingers outside the trigger-guard, so he could look at the cylinder. There were bullet-heads in every hole he could see, so that was probably all right. The first chamber might be empty--in the movies cops sometimes did that to keep from shooting themselves by accident--but he reckoned that wouldn't matter if he pulled the trigger at least twice, and fast.

  He turned the gun around again and inspected it from the butt forward, looking for a safety-catch. He didn't see one, and very gingerly pulled back on the trigger a little. When he saw the hammer start to rise out of its hood, he let off the pressure in a hurry. He didn't want to fire the gun down here. He didn't know how smart coyotes were, but he guessed that if they were smart about anything, it would probably be about guns.

  He went back out into the main office. The wind howled, throwing sand against the window. The panes were bruise-purple now. Soon they'd be black. He looked over at the ugly green curtain, and the shape which lay beneath it. Love you, Pie, he thought, then went back out into the hall. He stood there a moment, taking deep breaths, eyes closed, gun held at his side with the muzzle pointed at the floor.

  "God, I never shot a gun in my life," he said. "Please help me be able to shoot this one. Jesus' sake, amen."

  That taken care of, David started up the stairs.

  CHAPTER 3

  1

  Mary Jackson was sitting on her bunk, looking down at her folded hands and thinking arsenic thoughts about her sister-in-law. Deirdre Finney, with her pretty pale face and sweet, stoned smile and pre-Raphaelite curls. Deirdre who didn't eat meat ("It's like, cruel, you know?") but smoked the smoke, oh yes, Deirdre had been going steady with that rascal Panama Red for years now. Deirdre with her Mr. Smiley-Smile stickers. Deirdre who had gotten her brother killed and her sister-in-law slammed into a hicksville jail cell that was really Death Row, and all because she was too fucking fried to remember that she'd left her extra pot under the spare tire.

  That's not fair, a more rational part of her mind replied. It was the license plate, not the pot. That's why Entragian stopped you. In a way it was like the Angel of Death seeing a doorway without the right mark on it. If the dope hadn't been there, he would've found something else. Once you caught his eye, you were cooked, that's all. And you know it.

  But she didn't want to know it; thinking of it that way, as some sort of weird natural disaster, was just too awful. It was better to blame it on Peter's idiot sister, to imagine punishing Deirdre in a number of nonlethal but painful ways. Caning--the sort they administered to thieves in Hong Kong--was the most satisfying, but she also saw herself hiking the tip of a pointed high-heeled shoe into Deirdre's flat little fashionplate ass. Anything to get that room-for-rent look out of her eyes long enough for Mary to scream "YOU GOT YOUR BROTHER KILLED, YOU STUPID TWAT, ARE YOU READING ME?" into Deirdre's face and to see the understanding there.

  "Violence breeds violence," she told her hands in a calm, teacherly tone. Talking to herself under these circumstances seemed perfectly normal. "I know it, everybody knows it, but thinking about it is so pleasant, sometimes."

  "What?" Ralph Carver asked. He sounded dazed. In fact--gruesome idea--he sounded quite a bit like the walking short-circuit that was her sister-in-law.

  "Nothing. Never mind."

  She got up. Two steps took her to the front of the cell. She wrapped her hands around the bars and looked out. The coyote was sitting on the floor with the remains of Johnny Marinville's leather jacket in front of its fore-paws, looking up at the writer as if mesmerized.

  "Do you think he got away?" Ralph asked her. "Do you think my boy got away, ma'am?"

  "It's not ma'am, it's Mary, and I don't know. I want to believe it, I can tell you that. I think there's a pretty good chance that he did, actually." As long as he didn't run into the cop, she added to herself.

  "Yeah, I guess so. I had no idea he was so serious about the praying stuff," Ralph said. He sounded almost apologetic, which Mary found weird, under the circumstances. "I thought it was probably ... I don't know ... a passing fad. Sure didn't look that way, did it?"

  "No," Mary agreed. "It didn't."

  "Why do you keep staring at me, Bosco?" Marinville asked the coyote. "You got my fucking jacket, what else do you want? As if I didn't have a pretty good idea." He looked up at Mary. "You know, if one of us could get out of here, I think that mangebasket might actually turn tail and--"

  "Hush!" Billingsley said. "Someone coming up the stairs!"

  The coyote heard it, too. It broke eye-contact with Marinville and turned around, growling. The footfalls neared, reached the landing, stopped. Mary snatched a glance at Ralph Carver, but couldn't look for long; the combination of hope and terror on his face was too awful. She had lost her husband, and that hurt worse than she had ever imagined anything could. What would it be like to see your whole family snatched away in the course of an afternoon?

  The wind rose, howling along the eaves. The coyote looked nervously over its shoulder at the sound, then took three slow steps toward the door, ragged ears twitching.

  "Son!" Ralph called desperately. "Son, if that's you, don't come in! That thing's standing right in front of the door!"

  "How close?" It was him, the boy. It really was. Amazing. And the self-possession in his voice was even more amazing. Mary thought that perhaps she should re-evaluate the power of prayer.

  Ralph looked bewildered, as if he didn't understand the question. The writer did, though. "Probably five feet, and looking right at it. Be careful."

  "I've got a gun," the boy said. "I think you better all get under your bunks. Mary, get as far over to my dad's side as you can. Are you sure he's right in front of the door, Mr. Marinville?"

  "Yes. Big as life and twice as ugly is my friend Bosco. Have you ever fired a gun before, David?"

  "No."

  "Oh, Moses." Marinville rolled his eyes.

  "David, no!" Ralph called. Belated alarm was filling his face; he seemed to be just realizing what was happening here. "Run and get help! Open the door and that bastard'll be on you in two jumps!"

  "No," the kid said. "I thought about it, Dad, and I'd rather chance the coyote than the cop. Plus I have a key. I think it'll work. It looks just the same as the one the cop used."

  "I'm convinced," Marinville said, as if that settled it. "Everybody get down. Count to five, David, then do it."

  "You'll get him killed!" Ralph y
elled furiously at Marinville. "You'll get my boy killed just to save your own ass!"

  Mary said, "I understand your concern, Mr. Carver, but I think if we don't get out of here, we're all dead."

  "Count to five, David!" Marinville repeated. He got down on his knees, then slid under his bunk.

  Mary looked across at the door, realized that her cell would be directly in the kid's line of fire, and understood why David had told her to get way over to his father's side. He might only be eleven, but he was thinking better than she was.

  "One," the boy on the other side of the door said. She could hear how scared he was, and she didn't blame him. Not a bit. "Two."

  "Son!" Billingsley called. "Listen to me, son! Get on your knees! Hold the gun in both hands and be ready to shoot up--up, son! It won't come on the floor, it'll jump for you! Do you understand?"

  "Yeah," the kid said. "Yeah, okay. You under your bunk, Dad?"

  Ralph wasn't. He was still standing at the bars of his cell. There was a scared, set look on the swollen face hovering between the white-painted bars. "Don't do it, David! I forbid you to do it!"

  "Get down, you asshole," Marinville said. He was staring out from under his bunk at David's father with furious eyes.

  Mary approved of the sentiment but thought that Marinville's technique sucked--she would have expected better from a writer. Some other writer, anyway; she had this one placed. The guy who'd written Delight, perhaps the century's dirtiest book, was cooling his heels in the cell next to hers, surreal but true, and although his nose looked as if it might never recover from what the cop had done to it, Marinville still had the attitude of a guy who expects to get whatever he wants. Probably on a silver tray.

  "Is my dad out of the way?" The kid sounded unsure as well as. scared now, and Mary hated his father for what he was doing--plucking the boy's already overstrained nerves as if they were guitar strings.

  "No!" Ralph bawled. "And I'm not going to get out of the way! Get out of here! Find a phone! Call the State Cops!"

  "I tried the one on Mr. Reed's desk," David called back. "It's dead."

  "Then try another one! Goddammit, keep trying until you find one that--"

  "Quit being dumb and get under your bunk," Mary said to him in a low voice. "What do you want him to remember about today? That he saw his sister killed and shot his father by mistake, all before suppertime? Help! Your son's trying; you try, too."

  He looked at her, his cheeks shiny-pale, a vivid contrast to the blood clotted on the left side of his face. "He's all I got left," he said in a low voice. "Do you understand that?"

  "Of course I do. Now get under your bunk, Mr. Carver."

  Ralph stepped back from the bars of his cell, hesitated, then dropped to his knees and slid under his bunk.

  Mary glanced over at the cell David had wriggled out of--God, that had taken guts--and saw that the old veterinarian was under his bunk. His eyes, the only young part of him, gleamed out of the shadows like luminous blue gems.

  "David!" Marinville called. "We're clear!"

  The voice that returned was tinged with doubt: "My dad, too?"

  "I'm under the bunk," Ralph called. "Son, you be careful. If--" His voice trembled, then firmed. "If it gets on you, hold onto the gun and try to shoot up into its belly." He poked his head out from under the bunk, suddenly alarmed. "Is the gun even loaded? Are you sure?"

  "Yeah, I'm sure." He paused. "Is it still in front of the door?"

  "Yes!" Mary called.

  The coyote had taken a step closer, in fact. Its head was down, its growl as steady as the idle of an outboard motor. Every time the boy spoke from his side of the door, its ears twitched attentively.

  "Okay, I'm on my knees," the boy said. Mary could hear the nerves in his voice more clearly now. She had an idea he might be approaching the outer edges of his control. "I'm going to start counting again. Make sure you're as far back as you can be when I get to five. I ... I don't want to hurt anyone by accident."

  "Remember to shoot uphill," the vet said. "Not a lot, but a little. Okay?"

  "Because it'll jump. Right. I'll remember. One ... two ..."

  Outside, the wind dropped briefly. In the quiet, Mary could hear two things with great clarity: the rumbling growl of the coyote, and her own heartbeat in her ears. Her life was in the hands of an eleven-year-old with a gun. If David shot and missed or froze up and didn't shoot at all, the coyote would likely kill him. And then, when the psycho cop came back, they would all die.

  "... three ..." The quiver which had crept into the boy's voice made him sound eerily like his father. "... four... five."

  The doorknob turned.

  2

  For Johnny Marinville it was like being tumbled back into Vietnam again, where mortal things happened at a zany speed that always surprised you. He hadn't held out much hope for the kid, thought he was apt to spray bullets wildly everywhere but into Bosco's hide, but the kid was all they had. Like Mary, he had decided that if they weren't out of here when the cop came back, they were through.

  And the kid surprised him.

  To begin with, he didn't throw the door open, so it would hit the wall and then bounce back, obscuring his line of fire; he seemed to toss it open. He was on his knees, and dressed again, but his cheeks were still green with Irish Spring soap and his eyes were very wide. The door was still swinging open when he clamped his right hand over his left on the butt of the gun, which looked to Johnny like a .45. A big gun for a kid. He held it at chest-level, the barrel tilted upward at a slight angle. His face was solemn, even studious.

  The coyote, perhaps not expecting the door to open in spite of the voice which had been coming from behind it, took half a step backward, then tensed on its haunches and sprang at the boy with a snarl. It was, Johnny thought, the little backward flinch that sealed its doom; it gave the boy all the time he needed to settle himself. He fired twice, allowing the gun to kick and then return to its original aiming point before pulling the trigger a second time. The reports were deafening in the enclosed space. Then the coyote, which had gone airborne after the first shot and before the second, hit David and knocked him backward.

  His father screamed and scrambled out from under his bunk. The kid appeared to be fighting with the animal on the landing beyond the doorway, but Johnny found it almost impossible to believe the coyote could have much fight left in it; he had heard the slugs go home, and both the hardwood floor and the desk were painted with the animal's blood.

  "David! David! Shoot it in the guts!" his father screamed, dancing up and down in his anxiety.

  Instead of shooting, the kid fought free of the coyote, as if it were a coat he had somehow gotten tangled in. He scooted away on his butt, looking bewildered. The front of his shirt was matted with blood and fur. He got the wall against his back and used it to push his way onto his feet. He looked at the gun as he did it, seemingly amazed to see it was still there at the end of his arm.

  "I'm okay, Dad, settle down. I got it, it never even nipped me." He ran his hand over his chest and then down the arm holding the gun, as if confirming this to himself, as well. Then he looked at the coyote. It was still alive, panting harshly and rapidly with its head hung over the first stair riser. Where its chest had been there was now a wide bloody dent.

  David dropped to one knee beside it and put the barrel of the 45 against the dangling head. He then turned his own head away. Johnny saw the kid's eyes clenched shut, and his heart went out to the boy. He had never enjoyed his own kids much--they had a tiresome way of upsetting you for the first twenty years and trying to upstage you for the second twenty--but one like this wouldn't be so bad to have around, maybe. He had some game, as the basketball players said.

  I'd even get down on my knees with him at bedtime, Johnny thought. Shit, anybody would. Look at the results.

  Still wearing that stressful expression--the look of a child who knows he must eat his liver before he can go out and play--David pulled the trigger a third time. The r
eport was just as loud but not quite as sharp, somehow. The coyote's body jumped. A fan of red droplets as fine as lace appeared below the stairwell's railing. That harsh panting sound quit. The kid opened his eyes and looked down at what he had done. "Thank you, God," he said in a small, dull voice. "It was awful, though. Really awful."

  "You did a good job, boy," Billingsley said.

  David got up and walked slowly into the holding area. He looked at his father. Ralph held his arms out. David went over to him, starting to cry again, and let his father hold him in a clumsy embrace that had bars running through the middle of it.

  "I was afraid for you, guy," Ralph said. "That's why I told you to go away. You know that, don't you?"

  "Yes, Daddy." David was crying harder now, and Johnny realized even before the kid went on that these tears weren't about the fleabag, no, not these. "Pie was on a huh-huh-hook downstairs. Other people, t-t-too. I took her down. I couldn't take the other ones down, they were gruh-grownups, but I took Pie down. I s-sang ... sang to h-h--"

  He tried to say more, but the words were swallowed in hysterical, exhausted sobs. He pressed his face between the bars while his father stroked his back and told him to hush, just hush, he was sure David had done everything for Kirsten that he could, that he had done fine.

  Johnny let them have a full minute of this by his watch--the kid deserved that much just for opening the goddam door when he knew there was a wild dog on the other side waiting for him to do it--and then spoke the kid's name. David didn't look around, so he said it a second time, louder. The boy did look around then. His eyes were red-rimmed and streaming.

  "Listen, kiddo, I know you've been through a lot," Johnny said, "and if we get out of this thing alive, I'll be the first one to write you a commendation for the Silver Star. But right now we have to get gone. Entragian could be on his way back. If he was close by, he probably heard the gunshots. If you've got a key, now's the time to try it out "

  David pulled a thick ring of keys out of his pocket and found the one which looked like the one Entragian had used. He put it in the lock of his father's cell. Nothing happened. Mary cried out in frustration and slammed the heel of her hand against the bars of her own cell.