Sawbones

Chapter 17

We manage to talk her down to just the one leg. And when the screaming’s stopped and the guy’s passed out, we drag him and his amputated limb out to the car and bundle him in the trunk. He looks like shit, but he’ll survive the trip back to New Jersey. I ain’t saying how long he’ll live after that though. Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be in his shoe when we get there.

I make sure Laura’s comfortable in the passenger seat, then go join Henry in the graveyard of dead cars.

“How long before we’re back home?” he says.

I shrug. “Thousand miles. . what’s that, about seventeen hours? I could do it in fourteen, but no way in hell I want some cop pulling us over for speeding with Long John Fucking Silver in the boot. Should be back in New Jersey about six tomorrow morning.”

Henry nods, then looks out at the cars and their terrified inhabitants. The one nearest to us is in an ancient Cadillac — she’s rocking back and forwards in her chains, the stumps where her arms and legs used to be moving in little circles, crawling with flies. Her eyes are tight closed and I swear to God if I’d known what Henry was about to do I’d have stopped him.

But I don’t know.

Not until he pulls his gun and puts a single bullet through her head.

BANG!

“Fucking hell, Henry! What you do that for?”

He watches as her torso twitches then hangs still against the chains. “Rule number one, never leave witnesses.” He bends down, picks up the brass casing from his bullet and puts it in his pocket — that’s rule number two, never leave any evidence. We’ve already picked up all our brass from outside the concrete barn. “Besides,” he says, “what kinda life she going to have, no arms and no fuckin’ legs?”

He turns his gun on the next one, chained to the seat of a rusty Volvo.

“Henry!”

“What?”

I bring my gun up and point it at Henry’s chest. “No.”

He stares at me for a second, then goes back to the girl in the Volvo. “I don’t make the rules.”

“Henry, look at her — she’s sixteen, for fuck’s sake. She’s scared, she’s done nothing wrong.”

“Never point a gun at someone you’re not prepared to kill.”

He points the gun at her head and the girl closes her eyes, sobbing behind her gag.

“Don’t fucking do this!”

“God,” he says, “you’re just like Jack — ”

And that’s when I shoot him.