“Hannibal!” Jim and Dave shrieked in unison. The sound made Cynthia think of the Doublemint Twins.
She shoved the Carver kids toward the open door of the truck so hard that Brother Boogersnot fell down. He started to bellow at once. The girl-always an Ellie, never a Margaret, Cynthia remembered-looked back with an expression of heartbreaking bewilderment. Then the man with the long hair had her by the arm and was hauling her up into the cab. “On the floor, kid, on the floor!” he shouted at her, then leaned out to grab the yowling boy. The Ryder truck’s horn let out a brief blat; the driver had hooked one sneakered foot through the wheel to keep from sliding out headfirst. Cynthia batted the red wagon aside, grabbed the boogersnot by the back of his shorts, and lifted him into the truck-driver’s arms. Down the street, approaching, she could hear a man and a woman yelling the kids” names. Dad and Mom, she assumed, and apt to be shot down in the street like the dog and the paperboy if they didn’t look out.
“Get up here!” the driver bawled at her. Cynthia needed no second invitation; she scrambled into the overcrowded cab of the truck.
6
Gary Soderson came striding purposefully (although not quite steadily) around the side of his house with his martini glass in one hand. There had been a second loud bang, and he found himself wondering if maybe the Gellers” gas grill had exploded. He saw Marinville, who had gotten rich in the eighties writing children’s books about an unlikely character named Pat the Kitty-Cat, standing in the middle of the street, shading his eyes and looking down the hill.
What be happenin, my brother?” Gary asked, joining him.
“I think someone in that van down there just killed Cary Ripton and then shot the Reeds” dog,” Johnny Marinville said in a strange, flat voice.
“What? Why would anyone do that?”
“I have no idea.”
Gary saw a couple-the Carvers, he was almost positive-running down the street toward the store, closely pursued by a galumphing African-American gent that had to be the one, the only Brad Josephson.
Marinville turned to face him. “This is bad shit. I’m calling the cops. In the meantime, I advise you to get off the street. Now.”
Marinville hurried up the walk to his house. Gary ignored his advice and stayed where he was, glass in hand, looking at the van idling in the middle of the street down there by the Entragian place, suddenly wishing (and for him this was an exceedingly odd wish) that he wasn’t quite so drunk.
7
The door of the bungalow at 240 Poplar banged open and Collie Entragian came charging out exactly as Cary Ripton had always feared he someday would: with a gun in his hand. Otherwise, however, he looked pretty much all right-no foam on the lips, no bloodshot, buggy eyes. He was a tall man, six-four at least, starting to show a little softness in the belly but as broad and muscular through the shoulders as a football linebacker. He wore khaki pants and no shirt. There was shaving cream on the left side of his face, and a hand-towel over his shoulder. The gun in his hand was a.38, and might very well have been the service pistol Cary had often imagined while delivering the Shopper to the house on the corner.
Collie looked at the boy lying facedown and dead on his lawn, his clothes already damp from the lawn sprinkler (and the papers that had spilled out of his carrysack turning a soggy gray), and then at the van. He raised the pistol, clamping his left hand over his right wrist. Just as he did, the van began to roll. He almost fired anyway, then didn’t. He had to be careful. There were people in Columbus, some of them very powerful, who would be delighted to hear that Collier Entragian had discharged a weapon on a suburban Wentworth street… a weapon he had been required by law to turn in, actually.
That’s no excuse and you know it, he thought, turning as the van rolled, pivoting with it. Fire your weapon! Fire your goddam weapon!
But he didn’t, and as the van turned left on to Hyacinth, he saw there was no license plate on the back… and what about the silver gadget on the roof? What in God’s name had that been?
On the other side of the street, Mr and Mrs Carver were sprinting into the parking lot of the E-Z Stop. Josephson was behind them. The black man glanced to the left and saw the red van was gone-it had just disappeared behind the trees which screened the part of Hyacinth Street which ran east of Poplar-and then bent over, hands on knees, gasping for breath.
Collie walked across the street, tucking the barrel of the.38 into the back of his pants, and put his hand on Josephson’s shoulder. “You okay, man?”
Brad looked up at him and smiled painfully. His face was running with sweat. “Maybe,” he said.
Collie walked over to the yellow rental truck, noting the red wagon nearby. There were a couple of unopened sodas lying inside it. A 3 Musketeers candybar lay beside one of the rear wheels. Someone had stepped on it and squashed it.
Screams from behind him. He turned and saw the Reed twins, their faces very pale beneath their summer tans, looking past their dog to the boy crumpled on his lawn. The twin with the blond hair-Jim, he thought-began to cry. The other one took a step backward, grimaced, then bent forward and vomited on to his own bare feet.
Crying loudly, Mrs Carver lifted her son back out of the truck. The boy, also bawling at maximum volume, threw his arms around her neck and clung like a limpet.
“Hush,” the woman in the jeans and the misbuttoned shirt said. “Hush, lovey, it’s over. The bad man’s gone.”
David Carver took his daughter from the arms of the man lying awkwardly over the seat and enfolded her.
“Dad-dy, you’re getting me all soapy!” the girl protested.
Carver kissed her brow between the eyes. “Never mind,” he said. “Are you all right, Ellie?”
“Yes,” she said. “What happened?”
She tried to look toward the street, and her father shielded her eyes.
Collie went to the woman and the little boy. “Is he okay, Mrs Carver?”
She looked at him, not seeming to recognize him, and then turned her attention back to the squalling kid again, caressing his hair with one hand, seeming to devour him with her eyes. “Yes, I think so,” she said. “Are you okay, Ralphie? Are you?”
The kid drew in a deep, hitching breath and bellowed: “Margrit’s spozed to pull me up the hill! That was the deal!”
The little snot sounded okay to Collie. He turned back toward the crime-scene, noted the dog lying in a spreading pool of blood, noted that the blond Reed twin was tentatively approaching the body of the unfortunate paperboy.
“Stay away!” Collie called sharply across the street.
Jim Reed turned toward him. “But what if he’s still alive?”
“What if he is? Have you got any healing fairy-dust to sprinkle on him? No? Then stand back!”
The boy stepped toward his brother, then winced. “Oh man, Davey, look at your feet,” he said, then turned aside and threw up himself.
Collie Entragian suddenly felt tumbled back into the job he thought he had left behind for good the previous October, when he had been bounced from the Columbus Police Department after a positive drug test. Cocaine and heroin. A good trick, since he had never taken either drug in his life.
First priority: protect the citizenry. Second priority; aid the wounded. Third priority: secure the crime-scene. Fourth priority…
Well, he’d worry about the fourth priority after he’d taken care of one, two, and three.
The store’s new day-clerk-a skinny girl with double-coloured hair that made Collie’s eyes hurt-slid out of the truck and straightened her blue smock, which was badly askew. The truck’s driver followed her. “You a cop?” he asked Collie.
“Yes.” Easier than trying to explain. The Carvers would know different, of course, but they were occupied with their kids, and Brad Josephson was still behind him, bent over and trying to catch his breath. “You folks get in the store. All of you. Brad? Boys?” He raised his voice a little on the last word, so that the Reed twins would know he meant them.
“No, I’d better get on back home,” Brad said. He straightened up, glanced across the street at Gary’s body, then looked back at Collie. His expression was apologetic but determined. At least he was getting his breath back; for a minute or two there, Collie had been reviewing what he remembered of his CPR classes. “Belinda’s up there, and…”
“Yes, but it’d be better for you to come on in the store, Mr Josephson, at least for the time being. In case the van comes back.”