The touch of blue steel on her face had made Catherine shiver. She thought she might even faint; in a way, she wished she would. Falling facedown in the sawgrass would be better than this. And Decker—she could have clobbered him, standing there like it was the checkout line of the supermarket. The one time she wanted to see the hot streak, the dangerous temper. Normally she detested violence, but this would have been an exception; Catherine would have been delighted to watch her ex-husband strangle Thomas Curl with his bare hands.
“I got to kill you both,” Curl said. He was fighting off deep tremors. Sweat gathered in big drops on his cheeks, and his breath came in raspy bursts.
Decker knew he could take him, probably with one good punch. If only the pistol weren’t aimed point-blank at Catherine’s heart. Oh, Catherine. Decker had to be careful, he was so close to the edge.
“A deal is a deal,” Decker said.
“Hell, I can’t let her go now.”
“She won’t tell,” Decker said. “She’s got a husband to think about.”
“Too bad,” Thomas Curl growled. Suddenly one eye looked bigger than the other. He started rocking slightly, as if on the deck of a ship.
Curl said, “Let’s get it over with, I don’t feel so good.”
He pushed Catherine toward Decker, who pulled her close with both hands. “Rage, please,” she whispered.
Curl said, “So who wants it first?” When neither of them answered, he consulted his faithful pal. “Lucas, who gets it first?”
“Tom, one final favor before you do this.”
“Shut up.”
“Take our picture together, okay? Me and Catherine.”
Curl sneered. “What the hell for?”
“Because I love her,” Decker said, “and it’s our last moment together. Forever.”
“You got that right.”
“Then please,” Decker said.
Catherine squeezed his hand. “I love you too, Rage.” The words sounded wonderful, but under the circumstances Decker wasn’t sure how to take it; guns make people say the darnedest things.
He lifted the Minolta from around his neck. Thomas Curl tucked the pistol under his right arm and took the camera in his good hand. He examined it hopelessly, as if it were an atom-splitter.
“My daddy’s just got a Polaroid.”
“This is almost the same,” Decker said reassuringly. “You look through that little window.”
“Yeah?” Thomas Curl raised the camera to his big eye.
“Can you see us?”
“Nope,” Curl said.
Decker took two steps backward, pulling Catherine by the elbows.
“How about now, Tom?”
Curl cackled. “Hey, yeah, I see you.”
“Good. Now… just press that black button on top.”
“Wait, you’re all fuzzy-looking.”
“That’s all right.”
Curl said “Shit, might as well have a good final pitcher, considering. Now’ how do I fix the focus?”
Catherine squeezed Decker’s arm. “Fuck the focus,” she said under her breath. “Go for his gun.”
But in a helpful tone Decker said, “Tom, the focus is in the black button.”
“The same one?”
“Yeah. It’s all automatic, you just press it.”
“I’ll be damned.”
Decker said, “Isn’t that something?”
“Yeah,” Thomas Curl said, “but then where does the pitcher come out?”
“Jesus,” Catherine sighed.
“Underneath,” Decker lied. For the first time he sounded slightly impatient.
Curl turned the camera upside-down in his hand. “I don’t see where.”
“Trust me, Tom.”
“You say so.” Curl raised the Minolta one more time. It took several drunken moments to align the viewfinder with his eye.
“Lucas, don’t the two of them look sweet?” Curl hacked out a cruel watery laugh. “First I shoot your pitcher, then I shoot your goddamn brains out.”
He located the black button with a twitching forefinger. “Okay, fuckheads, say cheese.”
“Good-bye, Tom,” said R. J. Decker.
There was no film loaded in the camera, only fourteen ounces of water gel, a malleable plastic explosive commonly used at construction sites. For Decker it was a simple chore to run bare copper wires from the camera’s batteries directly into the hard-packed gelatin, a substance so volatile that the charge from the shutter contact provided more than enough heat.
As chemical reactions go, it was simple and brief.
At the touch of the button the Minolta blew up; not much in the way of flash, but a powerful air-puckering concussion that tore off Thomas Curl’s poisoned skull and launched it in an arc worthy of a forty-foot jump shot. It landed with a noisy sploosh in the middle of the canal.