With the baby in her arms she stares at him in utter disbelief. He’s shot Doug. Just there. Like-like that. Like a paper target …
She wants to scream. Nothing comes from her throat but a hot gust of silent pain.
There is an onrushing blast of sound: an approaching bus on the Interstate.
She sees its reflection in the window of the station wagon’s open door. The sound makes Bert hesitate and for a little while they both stand frozen as if in some crazy tableau.
Running through her mind is the most ridiculously unimportant question:
How the hell did he find us?
God knows. What does it matter? Could have been anything.
That fat cop with the mustache, or maybe the trooper in khaki-phoning in a report, looking to collect $25,000; the report relayed to Bert; a fix on the truck, its license plate numbers, the highway it was traveling; a quick charter jet flight to that airport they passed early this morning-then just wait by the side of the road in the rented station wagon until the truck came along …
The bus slams by with a heavy whoosh. Bert is holding the rifle straight down alongside his leg so the people on the bus won’t see it.
Now he lifts the weapon into sight and begins to walk forward. Not hurrying.
“All right now Madeleine. Give me the child. That’s a good girl. Just take it easy and everything’s going to be fine.”
He talks to her the way you might talk to an insane person; he contrives to sound quietly confident and calm but the extra edge on the rasp of his voice betrays the throbbing depth of his rage.
She feels her eyelids flicker. Sensations carom through her flesh, contradicting one another. This is like one of those suffocating dreams in which you try to run but your muscles are imprisoned and nothing will move.
Walking toward her he holds his body twisted slightly to one side because he’s using both hands on the rifle, one of them extended in front of him.
All we’ve been through-to come to this?
He says, “There were a million cops waiting for the plane.” For a moment she doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Involuntarily she steps back. Her rump strikes some part of the cab. She’s trapped here against the truck.
He says, “Was it you that tipped them? I figured it probably was you. They got the shipment.”
A truck goes by; the rifle drops out of sight again. In the wake of the noise Bert says, “They got the Jamaican pilot and Jack Sertic and Phil Quirini. Got George Talmy, too. They didn’t get me. I had a friend in uniform who owed me an obligation. He got me out of there. They never identified me. I’ve always been a little too quick on my feet for those assholes.”
His eyes seem a trifle too intense, too bright. Is he on something? Some of his own drugs, to hype him up?
Why doesn’t a car appear? Why doesn’t somebody come?
“Nobody’s going to get hurt.” He’s still talking in that same tight little voice. “Everything’s fine.”
Behind him Doug is twitching on the ground, crawling around in a slow circle like a half-crushed beetle.
“Madeleine. You listening to me?”
She has no voice.
“Bitch-you’re dead!”
Bert does something to the rifle. The metal clacks shut: the sound intensifies the pitch of her alarm and in her mind she’s shrieking obscenities at him: Get away you cocksucker-leave us alone-you fucking son of a bitch-GET AWAY FROM MY CHILD!
He comes on, relentless, moving like a mechanism, oblivious to her rage.
Twenty feet between them now; no more. He’s got no need even to aim the thing at this short a range.
With an awful dread she feels shuddering paroxysms of her own hatred; she feels hysteria cresting in her. It all erupts and a howl detonates from her as if from the throat of some wild rabid animal and it’s as if she has nothing to do with it, or with the terrible conflagration in her. She’s lost control: she feels her lungs suck for air and she watches her enemy swim in the blood-red haze of her vision-and in one sudden bright abject moment of exhausted clarity she knows she has lost.
Come on then, you bastard. Kill me.
… Why doesn’t he shoot?
Then she knows. Of course.
Of course!
“Wait!”
The force of her own explosive voice startles her. She holds the baby up in front of her.
He stops in his tracks: he scowls. “Jesus, Madeleine. Even you can’t be that insane. You honestly think you can use your own child for a shield?”
Quickly she shifts Ellen’s weight into one arm, freeing the other. She knows what she’s doing now. God knows where the knowledge sprang from.
“Back up,” she shouts. I need just a little more space. Just another second’s worth of time.
She’s holding Ellen almost at arm’s length in one hand now and Ellen begins to wail.
She tightens her grip on the flailing baby’s tiny jump suit.
“If you drop that child so help me …”
Oh Jesus. Bert isn’t going to do it. He’s calling her bluff.
He’s starting toward her again.
There isn’t enough time. Oh Goddamn you black-hearted bastard.
No more hysteria. Come on-come on …
She jabs the free left hand into the open cab behind her. Her fist closes around the stock, slides up to the trigger guard, hauls the shotgun out into view.
She brings it down across the baby’s tummy and grips the forestock in that hand and, pinning the baby against the crook of her elbow with the shotgun itself, levels it at him. “So help me God, Bert, I’ll leave your brains all over this parking lot.”
Bert gapes at her: at the shotgun, then at her face.
She’s sweating as if in a steam bath. Doug’s words from last night bat around in her head: “Safety catch is on. It’s okay, no danger.”
She has no idea on earth where the safety catch is. And she doesn’t dare look down at the shotgun in an effort to find it. Any sign of hesitation or uncertainty and he’ll be all over her in an instant.
The baby is yelling powerfully now; too much racket to make herself heard. She gestures with her chin and now she steps away from the truck, beginning to walk toward Bert.
He stands his ground, squinting, trying to think his way through this.
She makes soft shushing noises and the baby gradually stops shouting.
There’s a lever right on top, just next to her thumb. She can feel it. It’s bent to one side. Could that be the safety?
Try it.
She’s watching Bert. His frown is a little puzzled. She feels the tab of the metal lever click slightly when it moves an inch to the other side.
“Get in the car,” she says. “Drive away.”
He crouches and sets the rifle on the ground and stands up again, holding his empty palms out to her. Now he smiles-she remembers the chill of that smile-and he resumes his calm approach as if it had never been interrupted.
“Should have shot me when I had the rifle,” he says. “At least you could have rationalized that as self-defense. Now I’m unarmed. You won’t do it.”
The smile has settled on his face like a death’s head rictus.
He’s going to walk right up and take the shotgun away from her.
He believes she’s bluffing.
He knows about her and guns.
He knows she’s not going to shoot him.
She watches him come forward.
He’s three paces away, nearly in jumping distance, when she says very quietly, “It’s not me I’m protecting, you see. It’s the baby.”
She depresses the muzzle of the shotgun by leaning her whole torso forward and points the damn thing in the vicinity of his knees and pulls the trigger.