The sound of the shot filled the room. It slapped off the walls and reverberated in the windows.
She saw the knife shatter, saw the fragments arc out of Frye’s right hand. The sharp steel flew up and back, sparkling for a moment in the shaft of light that escaped through the open top of the bedside lamp.
Frye howled as the knife spun away from him. He fell backwards and rolled off the far side of the bed. But he was up as soon as he went down, cradling his right hand in his left.
Hilary didn’t think she had hit him. There wasn’t any blood. The bullet must have struck the knife, breaking it and tearing it out of his grasp. The shock would have stung his fingers worse than the crack of a whip.
Frye wailed in pain, screamed in rage. It was a wild sound, a jackal’s bark, but it was definitely not the cry of an animal with its tail between its legs. He still intended to come after her.
She fired again, and he went down again. This time he stayed down.
With a little whimper of relief, Hilary sagged wearily against the wall, but she did not take her eyes off the place where he had gone down and where he now lay out of sight beyond the bed.
No sound.
No movement.
She was uneasy about not being able to see him. Head cocked, listening intently, she moved cautiously to the foot of the bed, out into the room, then around to the left until she spotted him.
He was belly-down on the chocolate-brown Edward Fields carpet. His right arm was tucked under him. His left arm was flung straight out in front, the hand curled slightly, the still fingers pointing back toward the top of his head. His face was turned away from her. Because the carpet was so dark and plush and eye-dazzlingly textured, she had some difficulty telling from a distance if there was any blood soaked into it. Quite clearly, there was not an enormous sticky pool like the one she had expected to find. If the shot had hit him in the chest, the blood might be trapped under him. The bullet might even have taken him squarely in the forehead. bringing instant death and abrupt cessation of heartbeat; in which case, there would be only a few drops of blood.
She watched him for a minute, two minutes. She could not detect any movement, not even the subtle rise and fall of his breathing.
Dead?
Slowly, timidly, she approached him.
“Mr. Frye?”
She didn’t intend to get too close. She wasn’t going to endanger herself, but she wanted a better look at him. She kept the gun trained on him, ready to put another round into him if he moved.
“Mr. Frye?”
No response.
Funny that she should keep calling him “Mr. Frye.” After what had happened tonight, after what he had tried to do to her, she was still being formal and polite. Maybe because he was dead. In death, the very worst man in town is accorded hushed respect even by those who know that he was a liar and a scoundrel all his life. Because every one of us must die, belittling a dead man is in a way like belittling ourselves. Besides, if you speak badly about the dead, you somehow feel that you are mocking that great and final mystery–and perhaps inviting the gods to punish you for your effrontery.
Hilary waited and watched as another minute dragged past.
“You know what, Mr. Frye? I think I won’t take any chances with you. I think I’ll just put another bullet in you right now. Yeah. Fire a round right in the back of your head.”
Of course, she wasn’t able to do that. She wasn’t violent by nature. She had fired the gun on a shooting range once, shortly after she bought it, but she had never killed a living thing larger than the cockroaches in that Chicago apartment. She had found the will to shoot at Bruno Frye only because he had been an immediate threat and she had been pumped full of adrenalin. Hysteria and a primitive survival instinct had made her briefly capable of violence. But now that Frye was on the floor, quiet and motionless, no more menacing than a pile of dirty rags, she could not easily bring herself to pull the trigger. She couldn’t just stand there and watch as she blew the brains out of a corpse. Even the thought of it turned her stomach. But the threat of doing it was a good test of his condition. If he was faking, the possibility of her shooting pointblank at his skull ought to make him give up his act.