Smoke and Mirrors

127

Alexa reached the backyard unarmed, and spotted Brad and the deputy lying still in the falling rain. She had gone to them, planning to slow only long enough to get a handgun before going inside as Winter had asked her to do. She saw that both of the men had been shot in their heads. A round had hit Brad’s head at an angle, taking out Brad’s left eye and chipping out a piece of the socket, where rose-colored blood coned down toward the ground. The deputy had two clean holes in his temple. She was lifting the deputy’s coat for his handgun when she saw Brad move his hand and blink his right eye. She could see now that the wound had entered his left eye socket and exited at his temple.

“Can you hear me?” she asked him.

He didn’t respond.

“Wait here and stay still. Can you do that?”

He nodded and closed his eye. She put his cap over his face to protect him from the freezing rain.

Taking his rifle, Alexa ran to the back door and turned the knob. It was locked. No surprise. Using the key Leigh had given her, Alexa unlocked the door and opened it slowly. Stealthily, she slid into the mudroom, feeling the heat as she eased the door shut. Using her hands to feel, she located the door to the utility room, where the breaker box was, and leaned the rifle against the wall. She heard Winter calling out to Styer at the other end of the house. As she opened the door she stopped when her foot struck something large. Reaching farther, she felt the warm figure of Estelle. Alexa found her neck, felt a weak pulse, stood, and stepped over the woman. Using only her hands, she found the open metal door to the breaker box. She followed the row of breakers with her fingertips, found the larger main button, and hearing the bat clattering on the stairs, she flipped it and was rewarded by white light.

Leaving the utility room to the sound of gunfire, Alexa shouldered the rifle and moved into the main hallway. When Styer moved into view, she realized her scope lens was iced over and fogged. She looked over it and squeezed the trigger, missing wide, the bullet shattering the glass in the front door behind him.

Still facing forty-five degrees from her, Styer swung the gun across his chest and aimed it at her.

Alexa kept firing, adjusting her aim.

Styer was hit and fell, dropping the gun as he went down.

As she came up the hall, her barrel pointed at him, he rolled onto his back and laughed, rose-colored bubbles issuing from his nostrils and mouth. The bullet must have entered his chest after passing through his left shoulder.

As she got to him, she kicked the Glocks away and turned to see Winter getting to his feet and bending down to get his gun.

“You all right?” she asked him. Her ears were ringing from the gunshots.

“No,” he said, limping painfully to lean against the handrail.

“Well, I guess you are going to have to arrest me after all,” Styer said from the ground below her as he groaned in pain. When he spoke, his words sounded wet, lubricated by the blood rising from his punctured lungs. “You know, Massey-”

His words ended in an explosion from the gun in Winter’s hand. Through the new ringing in her ears, she heard the crisp sound of a shell casing click on the floor.

Looking down, she saw that Styer was still smiling despite the new black hole below his chin. Whatever thoughts he’d had were scrambled somewhere in the knot of brains that trailed across the shiny floor beyond the exploded top of his head.

“Jesus Christ, Massey!” Alexa screamed. “Why did you do that?”

Winter shook his head.

Then she saw the small black object in Styer’s right hand, his thumb resting on the button. She reached down and carefully took the cell phone in her hands, snapped open the back of it, and, using her fingernail, removed and disconnected the battery.

“The remote,” she said. “Cell phone remote.”

“The remote?” he asked in total seriousness.

“To detonate the bomb.” She stared at him speechless for a long few seconds, shaking her head slowly. “I’d forgotten about it. Thank God you remembered. You did remember, right?”

Winter winced, snapped the safety on the Reeder up, pushed it into its holster, and sat down on the bottom stair, his face reflecting only a portion of the agony she knew he was feeling. Alexa walked over, plopped on the stair beside Winter, and put her arm on his shoulder.

“Christ,” she said. “Thank you.”

It hit her that Winter hadn’t seen the phone, nor had he remembered the bomb below them. It came to her as surely as if he opened his mouth and explained it to her. He had shot an obviously dying Styer because he didn’t want Alexa to have even a monster like Styer’s death on her conscience. As it was, she had merely wounded Styer to save Winter’s life. His bullet had removed the killer’s death from her gun and her conscience.

Winter had often told her that killing a felon, even in the line of duty, was only a little less damaging than dying yourself.