Dark of the Moon

25

VIRGIL HAD JUST called Stryker: "He moving yet?"

"Not a thing. Lights are still on."

"Have you seen…?"

AT THAT MOMENT, a figure emerged from the hedge at the back of the Sherwin-Williams store, dressed all in black, except for jogging shoes with reflective strips on the back, little white flashes in the night. Hard to see him, though it was a he. Couldn't be Williamson, because he was still at the paper.

The killer jogged silently in a combat hunch to the back and then down the side of Virgil's truck. Virgil half stood as the figure lifted the muzzle of a shotgun as he came up to the truck's front door, then stepped back and fired a single shot like thunder and lightning in the night, a flash of exploding glass, through the window on the truck, neatly blowing the head off the CPR dummy that sat behind the wheel.

In the flash, Virgil caught his face.

VIRGIL SHOUTED: "Williamson: lay the gun on the ground."

Williamson had never struck Virgil as an athlete, but he spun and pumped and fired and the last words weren't out of Virgil's mouth when lightning flashed at him, but going wide, and he went flat and squeezed off a shot from his own shotgun, but Williamson had vanished. Virgil had the impression that his shot had gone in close, but he'd learned early that a shotgun was no sure cure in a gunfight.

Fuckin' Williamson!

He could hear Stryker screaming on the radio: he picked it up and shouted, "Williamson's out. Williamson's out. He's got a shotgun and he ran behind Sherwin-Williams. Kick in the door on his office, make sure he's not headed back there. He's got a shotgun and I don't know what else, he's shooting, so everybody take it easy. Everybody stay in your cars, let's see if we can spot him…"

"You okay, you okay?" Stryker was still screaming.

"I'm okay, except I'm scared. Everybody stay cool now. Let's round him up. Margo, are you there? Jensen?"

Stryker: "How'd he get out, how'd he get out…?"

THEY CHECKED IN, all cruising.

Little Curly said, "I'm going down the tracks, I'm going down the tracks…"

Big Curley: "I'm behind Marvin's, heading toward the elevator."

A few seconds later, the tornado siren went off. The dispatcher called: "I'm waking up everybody in town. I've got the weather-tree going-in five minutes, everybody in town will know that it's Williamson and they'll all be looking out the windows."

Margo Carr: "Do you think he cut back across Poplar? If he's headed down to the river, he'll be hard to spot."

Jensen: "Tommy, get back to the weather-tree, tell people to lock their doors and call if somebody tries to get at a car."

Dispatcher: "Louie Barth says somebody ran down the alley just a minute ago, behind his house…"

Carr: "I'm right there, I'm taking the alley…"

Virgil had brushed the glass off the seat of his truck, threw the decapitated dummy in the back, and took off, calling, "Careful, careful, Margo, don't let him ambush you. Where am I going, where am I going…?"

Saw flashers, north, turned that way, more flashers coming up behind. Dispatcher called, "I've got everybody coming in, we're coming right in on top of you, Margo…"

VIRGIL HEARD the boom of a shotgun, close, no more than a couple of blocks, called, "Got gunfire, got gunfire…" saw the lights ahead, cut left, closed, cut left, found a squad car across a street, a body on the ground, Stryker standing, then on the radio, "Margo's down, she's hit, he took her car, he's running east on Clete, he's turning north on Seventy-five…"

Virgil was out on the street and Stryker shouted, "She's bad, she's bad…"

"Get her in your truck, run it to the hospital." Together, they lifted her into the backseat of the truck. She had shotgun-pellet wounds in her face and neck; she was semiconscious, pumping blood, and Stryker took off and Virgil shouted into the radio, to the dispatcher, "Call the emergency room, they've got a gunshot wound coming in, gonna need a surgeon, gonna need some blood…"

"I think I got him, I think I got him," Jensen called. Big Curly: "I got him too, he's running north on Seventy-five…" And a third cop, unknown to Virgil: "I'm running south on Seventy-five, I'm just going past Ambers, I don't see him yet."

Virgil took the truck back down the street and cut onto the main drag, saw flashing lights ahead, accelerating out of town. More lights were filing in behind him, every cop in the city, then Jensen called, "He's turned off at the park, he's turned at the park, he's headed up to Judd's…He's running out of road."

Virgil: "Dispatch, start breaking people around the perimeter of the hill, we don't want everybody at the same spot up on top. Tell them to put their lights on the hill but get out of the trucks in the dark behind them, watch for him coming down the hill."

VIRGIL WAS two hundred yards behind Big Curly, who was two hundred yards behind Jensen, who was a half mile behind Williamson. Virgil saw Carr's truck, driven by Williamson, climbing the hill toward Judd's, then Jensen's taillights flaring as he slowed to turn through the park gates and up the hill, then Big Curly slowing, and then Virgil was slowing, and then Jensen said, "Holy shit! He's turned down the hill toward the bluff, toward the Buffalo Jump. Man, he's headed right toward it…Jesus Christ!"

Virgil had turned and was looking up the hill when he saw the lights of the lead car, Williamson, bounding over humps in the turf, once, twice, and then he was gone.

"He went over," Jensen screamed. "Jesus Christ, he went over."

Virgil shouted: "Dispatch, get people down there. Larry. Stop where you are: put your headlights down there, Big Curly, get up by Larry, put your headlights across the slope, I'm coming in, I'll bet he bailed out before the car went over the edge."

Then he was there, pulling past the second cop, pulling past Jensen, playing his lights across the slope; saw no movement, was out of the truck, stepped back to Jensen and Big Curly and said, "Get back out of the light, guys, get back in the dark."

"Don't see anybody. I don't see anybody," Jensen said. He and Big Curly both had shotguns. Virgil popped the back of his truck, unlocked the toolbox, lifted out the semiauto.30-06 and two magazines; opened his duffel, took out a long-sleeved camo shirt that he used for turkey hunting.

"You guys stay here. Watch the light: he'll have to move if he didn't go over the edge." He slapped a magazine into the rifle, worked the bolt one time. "If you see him, yell. I can't use the radio. It'd give me away."

"Where're you going?" Big Curly asked.

"I'm gonna crawl around up the hill. If he's not dead at the bottom, he must've headed uphill. He'd be crawling."

Jensen: "Man, maybe we ought to wait."

Virgil shook his head: "Can't. Once he's off the hill, he's got a hundred miles of cornfields in every direction. We'll get him sooner or later, but not before he kills a couple of farmers for their cars. What we need, Larry, is every cop you can find, throwing a perimeter around this hill…It'll take him a while to get off."

"Get some dogs in," Big Curly said.

Virgil snapped his fingers: "Do that. Do that right now. If you can get a couple of dogs, tell the handlers to get them to bark. Get them down below. We want him to think that the dogs are coming."

"They will be," Big Curly said.

"No, no. If he sees people coming, and feels like he's trapped, he'll go down shooting," Virgil said. "If you have a dog walk right up on him, the handler gets shot. We don't want that. Want the dogs barking, but we don't want them trailing in the dark. I'm going. Keep watching the headlights. If you see him…"

"Take it easy," Jensen said. "Take it easy."

"If he's down there at the bottom of the hill, just start honking your horns," Virgil said. "I'll be back."

IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS, in fifth, sixth, seventh, and maybe eighth grades, before the whole issue of women came up, Virgil and his male friends would occasionally play war, always on a soft summer evening, when the light was fading to dark. There were apple trees in the neighborhood, to provide the ammo; a golf-ball-sized green apple, thrown at close range, could give you a bruise like a good left hook. Tree lines, fences, hedges, and overgrown bridal-wreath bushes provided the cover.

One thing everybody learned quickly was that in the dark, even with a bright moon-a full moon hung overhead as Virgil slipped into the grass, heading up the hill-was that you were never sure what was human and what was shadow; you learned not to look directly at someone, because he could feel you in the dark. You learned to move slowly, like the moon shadows spreading across the open. If you didn't learn, you'd take a shot behind the ear, just as sure as God made little green apples.

THE WAR GAMES were still in Virgil's blood, refined by years of hunting. He slipped into the thigh-high bluestem, running in a crouch, then duckwalking and crawling, quickly at first, getting away from the lights of the trucks, then more slowly, feeling his way past hard corners of exposed rock, the occasional bit of brush, the prickly wild rose.

Williamson had essentially rolled the car down the hill the same way his mother's had gone down, and over the bluff. If he'd bailed before it went over, he'd have three choices: head sideways and down the hill to the west, head up and across it to the north, or head sideways and uphill to the east. He couldn't go south, because that was sheer bluff.

Virgil didn't think he would go down and west, because that would take him right into the face of the arriving cops, and also force him to cross the approach road. He could have gone north, but that would have cut across the lights from Jensen's and Big Curly's headlights as they came up the hill.

Most likely, Virgil thought, Williamson went east, parallel to the bluff, or slightly northeast, edging away from the bluff. That way, he'd avoid the road altogether, which ended at the ruins of the Judd place. He'd cross below the Judd place, turn more north, across the shoulder of the hill, and after walking down the far side, would step into the ocean of cornfields that spread out below.

The corn was high enough that he'd be able to jog, guided by the rows, without being seen. Someplace along the run, he'd cut into a farmer's place looking for a ride.

IF VIRGIL WAS RIGHT, he should cross paths with Williamson above the Judd place.

If he was wrong, if Williamson had gone straight north, and he'd made it across the road…then Williamson would be behind him, and above him.

That wouldn't be good.

He stopped for ten seconds, listening. Could hear men shouting, a long way away, but no horn honking. Williamson had bailed. Could hear crickets, could hear the crinkle of grass in the breeze, could hear the rasping szzzikks of nighthawks. Listened as hard as he could, heard nothing more.

Moved on.

WILLIAMSON RAN AWAY from the car, into the dark, clutching the shotgun, no particular destination in mind. He'd fucked up, and this was what happened when you fucked up.

He'd known that Flowers would be out there on the street, watching the Dairy Queen. What he'd thought was, "How stupid does he think I am?"-that dumb little bitch Jesse Laymon calling him up, laying all that past-history stuff on him, like she thought it up herself. The meeting had to be a setup.

Had to be.

So he'd come up with a counterstroke: it was possible that Flowers had kept his investigation to himself, because Stryker and the others were also suspects. And if the newspaper were under surveillance, and if he showed himself there, and then, if he went over the roof, down the whole block, and came down the fire escape on the back of Hartbry's, and wired it down…and if he nailed Flowers as he waited in his truck, and then cut behind Sherwin-Williams and made it down the alley and back up the fire escape…

Hell, it was a big risk, but the jig was almost up anyway. Flowers was pushing him, and if he knew about the Williamsons and the way they died…

But if he pulled it off-he was good.

Flowers killed, while he was under surveillance.

The shotgun was Judd Jr.'s and old enough that they'd probably never trace it to him. He could drop it in the street after he fired it…

He'd worked through it, frightened himself, worked through it again, rehearsed it, had, at the last minute, gone to the roof and spotted two watchers-he knew every car in town, certainly knew Stryker's and Jensen's-and convinced himself it would work.

Scared, sweating, pulling on the black turtleneck, hot in the night, the gloves, his regular black slacks.

HE'D RUN the turtleneck and the gloves through the shredder when he got back, he thought, flush them down the toilet…

Jesus, what a risk.

Jesus, what a rush.

End it. End it.