The Night Crew

Chapter 30

They sat for a moment, huddled over Glass, watching her breathe. Thinking. Anna asked, finally, 'Can you walk?'

'I don't know.' Harper looked around, found a blind spot where he couldn't be seen, pushed himself up on the wall, tested the leg and nearly collapsed.

'Maybebut not very far. I could hop pretty fast.'

'Forget it,' Anna said. Then: 'Here's what we do. We've got to get him talking to us. Anything. Just get him talking. Then we'll know about where he is, which side of the house. Then I'll sneak out the other side, with your car keys. Once I'm away from the house, in the dark, he'll never find me. And he doesn't know where your car is. Once I'm in the car, I'll come crashing up hereI'll get as close to the back porch as I can without wrecking it. That's five feet you'll have to cross. Can you carry Pam that far?'

'Anna.' He was staring at her, unhappy. 'Anna, I can carry her, but, Jesus, that's crazy.'

'Can you think of anything else?'

He looked down at the linoleum, thinking. A few seconds later he said, 'If we can figure out where the phone goes out, and where he is, if they're different, I might be able to patch the wires.'

'Do you know anything about telephones?'

'No, but if he's just cut the wires.'

'I don't know if you can just put them back together,' Anna said. 'Even if we find out where he is, and you can get out, he could move. If you're just lying out there on the ground, messing with wires. you'd be dead. If I ran, it doesn't matter what he does once I'm out of here: he can't catch me.'

'Christ.' He ran his hand through his hair, moved, groaned.

'And if we mess with the wires, and the phones still don't work, we'll have lost the timeand we don't have any time.' She touched Pam, looking across her at Harper.

Harper broke his eyes away for a moment, then shook his head, grinned, put his hand on top of her head and mussed her hair. 'Don't worry about wrecking the car,' he said. 'Fuck the car. Put it right on the porch.'

'Okay.'

'Let me get my back against the wall with Pam. If he tries to come in, I'll light the motherfucker up.'

Anna nodded, grinned back at him, squeezed his good leg: 'It's the only way. Let's see if we can get him talking.'

Anna started, crawling to a window on the back of the house, knocking it out with a chair. The shattering of the glass should attract his attention, if he was still out there. She sat on her heels like a dog baying at the moon, and shouted: 'Steve. What do you want? What do you want?'

Nothing.

Jake had moved to the hallway between the back room and the office. He called softly, 'Nothing here.'

'Steve,' Anna shouted. 'Where are you? What do you want? Are you still there?'

The voice, not far away: 'I'm still here.'

And a second later, a shot: not the pistol any more, a loud crack, and plaster flew from the wall overhead.

'Shit,' Harper yelped. 'He's got a rifle. A big one.'

'Always gotta be killing something around here, putting them out of their misery,' the voice shouted.

He was over toward the garage, or maybe the barn, Anna thought.

'What do you want?'

'I want you dead,' the voice answered. 'But I want to mess with you for a while.'

Another shot, this time into the office.

Anna crawled past Harper, who said, 'We've gotta get better protection. Sooner of later, he'll think about shooting lower, onto the floor, and then we're in trouble. Those goddamn slugs are going halfway through the house. Maybe all the way.'

Anna said, 'Okay,' and crawled into the office. The desks were wooden. Not much help. There was another door off to the left, and she went that way.

'What do you think now, about messing with my head? What do you think now?' Judge screamed, still from the direction of the garage.

'We weren't messing with you,' Harper shouted back. 'How were we messing with you?'

'You're always messing with me, all of you,' Judge screamed back.

Anna crawled through the door and found herself in the bathroomand in the corner was a cast-iron bathtub, just what you might hope for in an old ranch house. She crawled back through the office.

'Jakethere's a big old iron tub in the bathroom.'

'That'd help,' Harper said. 'Let's see if we can move her.'

Judge was still screaming at them: 'All the time, all my life, you fuckers. Let's see what you think about it now I've got the big gun.'

'What the hell is he talking about?' Harper panted. He trailed his leg behind him as they moved Glass across the office floor and into the bathroom, wincing every time he had to pull his leg forward.

'I don't know,' Anna said. 'He's nuts.'

'Let me do this,' Harper said. He was on one knee beside Glass, and picked her up, gently, and lifted her over the side of the tub. She opened one eye and said, 'Car?'

'She's awake,' Harper grunted.

'We're trying to get you out of here,' Anna said.

She crawled to the door and shouted at Judge: 'The cops are coming. If you get out of here now, maybe you've got a chance.'

'If the cops were coming, they would have been here,' Judge screamed back. 'If I take you down, I walk. I'll drag you out in the desert somewhere, with a shovel.'

Anna turned away, said to Harper, 'I'm going, out the side of the back room,' and Harper said, 'Goddamn, Anna.'

Anna: 'Yell something at him.'

Harper pushed himself up from behind the bathtub and as Anna crawled down the hall to the back room, shouted, 'Shut the fuck up, you fuckin' moron.'

Crack. A slug pounded through the side wall of the back room, but much lower this time. Anna was sprayed with splinters of lath and plaster. The bullet missed by three feet.

'Anna?'

'Yeah, I'm okay.'

The windows on the side of the back room were double-hung, with slide latches. She turned the latch on the first one, struggled to lift the window, got it up. There was a screen on the outside, with hooks inside. She unhooked it, and pushed it open.

Harper was shouting: 'The women are both still alive in here. If you stop now, you'll just go to treatment.'

Crack.

Something wooden exploded in the office. 'Is he in the same place?' Anna called back to Harper.

'I think so. came from the same direction.'

'I'm gone.'

Anna boosted herself over the window ledge and dropped to the ground. There was a stretch of open yard in front of her, before she got into the brush. She took a breath, and sprinted across it, keeping the house between her and the spot they thought Judge might be. She passed a bush, slowed, turned, dropped to her belly.

Light poured from the house and she could hear Harper yelling, but could not make out what he was saying. And she heard Judge shouting back from the other side.

She had the gun and she thought: 'If I take him now.'

But if she tried and lost, she'd be dead, and so would Harper and Glass. She moved back a bit into the brush, turned on the flashlight and let the needle of light lead her toward the driveway. The moon was higher now and if she didn't look straight at it, she could see that lighter strip that marked the rut coming up from the road.

She turned off the flashlight: better to let her eyes adjust. A minute passed, and another, as she patiently moved toward the track. She couldn't afford to blunder into a tree, or twist an ankle.

Then Judge spoke: 'Hey.'

Close by; the hair rose on her neck. He was not within an arm's length, but within fifty feet, she thought. She couldn't hear him breathing, but she could hear the snap of twigs beneath his feet. He said it again, 'Hey.'

The gun was in her jacket pocket. She slumped onto the ground, eased her jacket up over her face. In the dark, with her dark hair, if she could keep her face covered, she'd be nearly invisible. She used to play war with her brothers, running around the house on a summer's night with guns made out of splintered boards. If you were dressed right, you could hide in a radish patch.

No radishes up here.

Then a thump, and the sound of a man's feet pounding on the hard earth, running, sprinting, but just a few feet. Again, close byto the right? Twenty feet? Did the shadow move? She pointed the pistol at the shadow. The shadow was gray, man shaped. Was it moving? It seemed to be moving toward her.

'HEY ANNA.' Not the shadow. Judge screamed at the house, and now he was off to her left, coming up on the window she'd crawled through. Would he step into the yard? How long a shot would it be? And she thought, Time.

But if she could take him out.

She pivoted on her spot, waiting. Then crack, and she saw the muzzle flash from the rifle. Seventy-five feet away, back in the brush. Jude was apparently moving around the house.

If she moved on him, while he was sitting still, he'd hear her: there was too much dry brush. She bit her lip, thinking, then turned down the road. The ground was rising beneath her, and she felt vulnerable, slinking along. Was he right there, behind her? Then the road began to fall. She stopped, drew back into the brush, and looked back toward the farmhouse. Nothing moving, nothing.

Crack.

She didn't see the flash, but it sounded as though it came from the back, the way Judge had been going. Anna started down the slope in a hurry, and when the yard light dropped out of sight, she turned the flashlight on again, gave it full play out in front, and ran down the hill.

Never in her life had her legs seemed shorter, the distances longer. Twice she thought she saw the gate ahead, and passed the spot with no gate in sight. The third time, it was the gate. What about the alarm? No help for it. She'd have to trip it to get the car in anyway. To save time, she pulled the gate open as she went through, then turned and ran up the dark road toward the car.

She was breathing hard when she got to it, fumbled for the key, found it, pushed the unlock button when she was still fifty feet downhill. The taillights blinked and the interior lights came on, and a few seconds later, she was cranking the engine over.

Lights on going back up the hill? Yes. The lights might push Judge back, might confuse him, get him running. They wouldn't have long.

She swung through the gate, and started up the dark lane, scanning the sides of the road. Had to keep moving fast: if he was planning to ambush her along the way, he might be only five feet from the car when she passed.

She kept her foot down and the car bounded up the ruts, throwing her around in the seat: no seat belt, she might not have time to get it off. At the top of the rise, she hit the high beams, caught the ranch-house full in her headlights. No sign of Judge, nothing moving except herself in the car. And the car was moving fasttoo fast. She skidded around the side of the ranch, straightened it out, spotted the back porch. hammered the car right to the edge of the porch, flicked open the door.

'JAKE!' she screamed. 'JAKE!'

Nobody there. She leaned out the door to scream again, and saved herself:

Crack.

And the passenger side window exploded, showering her with splinters of glass.

Crack.

The back window went out. The gunfire was coming from out in the darkness, back toward the buildings she thought might have been chicken houses.

She jammed the car into park and threw herself across the porch, through the door into the house.

Crawled frantically to the bathroom.

Harper was there, groaning, bleeding: 'Hit me,' he moaned, 'Got me from the side.' And he looked at her. 'Ah, Jesus, what happened to you, you're bleeding.'

Anna half-rose to look in the mirror: she had several small cuts on her face, apparently from the window glass. As soon as she saw them, they started to burn. But they weren't bad, she thought. She dropped back down to Harper.

'Let me see where you're hit, let me see.'

He rolled to show her; the slug had hit him in the pelvic bone, and angled down to come out the inside of his thigh. A purple stream of blood flowed from the lower part of the wound, which he'd partially stopped with a sock.

'Lord.' Anna dug into her coat, found the HermŠs scarf she kept stuffed in the inside pocket, flipped it into a coil and bound the sock to the wound.

'Fuckin' killin' me,' Harper said.

Crack.

Apparent miss.

'We got to find some way out,' Anna said frantically. 'The car is right outside the door, but he's shooting it to pieces.'

'I don't know if I could make it out anyway,' Harper moaned. 'Do you think you could ran for it? I can probably hold him off a while longer, he just got me with a lucky shot. If you could run to someplace where the phone would work.'

'God!' Anna, trying to think. She looked over the rim of the tub at Glass, who now had both eyes open. Glass recognized her, tried to speak, her broken lips working, but nothing came out.

Crack. Another miss. How do you miss a house?

'Let me go look at the car,' she said to Harper, and she scrambled back out into the hallway, through the back room. The car was still there, engine running.

Crack.

Missed again; she frowned, wondering what he was doing. He wasn't shooting at the car. She looked back toward the room where Harper was hidden, decided. She'd have to go. If he could hold them off for ten minutes, like he said, she might be able to get back.

She decided, and scrambled back to tell Harper.

Crackand the house lights went, all at once.

'Coming for ya now, Anna,' the voice screamed.

'Come on in,' Anna shouted back. 'The cops will be here in five minutes, and then we're gonna kill you. You hear that? In five minutes, you're gonna die. Think about it, Steviefive minutes, no more Steve. Just a piece of trash they're gonna throw in a hole, and nobody'll care. Not even your parents. Your parents'll be embarrassed to be related to you.'

Crack.

'That's right, piss him off,' Harper said, and she could hear the grin in his voice.

And that pissed her off. She was bleeding herself, she had the blood of two people dying on her hands, and one of those persons was trying to laugh.

'Goddamn you, Jake,' she hissed.

'What?'

'Keep your mouth shut. No matter what you hear, keep your mouth shut, and stay here. Don't move. Don't come to help me. Okay? Number two: You shoot the next thing that comes through the bathroom door. If I decide to come through, I'll tell you. Otherwise, just shoot it down.'

'What're you going to do?'

'I'm gonna kill this sonofabitch.'

'How?'

'I don't know,' she said, her voice deadly. 'But I'm going to.'

She moved out of the bathroom into the office, groping her way in the dark. She could hear the car engine running in the backgroundand then suddenly, it stopped.

And the voice: 'I killed the guy, didn't I?'

'Get the fuck away from here,' Anna screamed. 'Get away from me.'

He wasn't coming inhe was staying outside, and the next time he spoke, his voice came through a window in the back.

'I don't see anybody. I don't see anyone.' Then from another window, maybe the bathroom window: 'Where is everybody? Everybody else dead?'

Anna pushed further into the office room, found shelter behind a desk. Couldn't see much: when it came to it, she thought, it might be whoever saw the other person first. Fifty-fifty.

But he knewthe place, and she didn't.

And now he was around in front. 'Hey Anna, come on out.'

'Get away from here,' she screamed. 'The cops are coming.'

'You were trying to run away from me, weren't you? You went down and got the car and you were all gonna run out of here, but something happened. And I know what it was. I hit the guy. I killed him. He's dead, isn't he? This is a thirty-ought-six, makes a big hole.'

His voice was working around to the side, now coming through a shot-out window behind her.

She needed a set: a movie set. And a scene.

'I'm coming in, Anna. I'm coming in. Bet you can't guess where.'

She moved to a corner of the room, pulled her knees up to her chin. She called softly, 'Jake, can you hear me? Jake, can you hear me? Are you there?'

'He's not there,' the voice said. 'Jake's dead. He's a dead motherfucker, Anna.'

'What do you want from me? What do you want? Tell me,' she screamed.

'All I wanted was the goddamn time of day, but you couldn't even give me the time of day. You'd fuck all those other people, but you wouldn't even talk to me. And you were like, you were perfect. You and me would've been perfect, but you wouldn't even talk.'

'I didn't even know you,' Anna shouted.

His voice came from a different window, pitched lower. 'I wanted to talk at the raid: you saw me at the raid, I was leading the raid, but you wouldn't even talk to me then.'

Pause: then the voice from another window.

'You saw me lead it, you wouldn't even talk to the leader. I set the whole fucking thing upafter that night at the club when I first saw you, so you could judge me in action, and you wouldn't even talk. You just made fun of me with that pig. Which is dead, by the way. I cut that pig's throat, God, it bled, it bled about a gallon.'

He was circling the house, speaking from one window, then the next, then skipping a window.

From the back, now: 'I was really disappointed,' he said. 'And then at that golf place? When I'd set everything up, just you and me? And you did it again, you humiliated meyou humiliated me. What made you think you could get away with that? And now you're going to pay, Anna. Just like that Pig.'

Anna whispered harshly, 'Jake, you gotta help me. Jake, I lost my glasses. Jake, I can't see. where's the gun? Jake?'

She heard him coming. She took her glasses off and put them in her pocket, and the world around her went soft. She pulled her knees up tight to her face, hunched her shoulders, pulled herself further back into the darkest corner of the room.

Heard his footfalls.

'Go away,' she cried. 'Just go away. haven't you done enough?'

'No.'

Now he was inside. Close. But she still couldn't see him. She tried to pull back even further, pull her knees higher. 'Go away,' she moaned, 'Please, just let me alone.'

'Look at me, Anna. I've got a gun.'

'I can't see,' she cried, 'I can't see anything, my glasses.'

A brilliant light cut across her face, just for an instant, and was gone.

'Aw. Little girl can't see?'

'Go away.'

He was coming in now, like a rat to a cheese. She was holding her breath, waiting for a blow, the wait unbearable.

'Here I am, Anna.' He was right there, on his hands and knees, only six feet away. She could see his face in a fuzzy way, the blond hair, the square chin, the eyes a little too close together.

He had the pistol in one hand, the muzzle pointing roughly toward her face. The butt of the rifle was on the floor, and he was leaning on it. 'We're gonna have some fun. We could have had some fun for a long time, if you'd come away from your bodyguard in that parking lot, but you had to do this.'

The tip of the barrel touched one cheek, which seemed to be turning black.

'Do what?' she whimpered.

'Fuckin' bite me,' he said. He moved closer, his hand still at the cheek. 'So it's payback time, Anna. Steve is gonna have lots of fun.'

Close enough: 'Have fun with this,' Anna said. And the way she said it startled him. She could see well enough to identify the flinch, the sudden clutching fear, and then she opened her knees.

The pistol was there, of course, between her thighs, and pointing at the middle of his throat.

He had just enough time to say, 'Don't.'

Anna shot him.

And sat for three full seconds in dazed, blinded silence, Steve Judge slumped in front of her. He hadn't jerked back, or been thrown back: he'd simply gone straight down. She fumbled her glasses out of her pocket, pushed them back on her nose, tried to stand up.

'Jake?' she called weakly.

'Anna?' He was close. She took the flash from her pocket and shined it back toward the bathroom. Harper was propped in the doorway, the rifle in his hand, a long trail of blood behind him, his face as pale as parchment.

'I killed him,' Anna said.

At that moment, Judge stood up.

His eyes were crazy and half of his neck seemed to be missing. But he had one hand clasped to the wound and he pushed up and pivoted toward her, his eyes crazy, his mouth open, the white teeth straining at her.

Anna stepped back, thrust the pistol out, and fired into his chest from six inches: one, two, three, and Judge went down again. Harper, behind her, was shouting, 'No more, Anna,' but Anna stepped over Judge and fired two more shots into his head.

This time he didn't move.

'Asshole,' Anna snarled. She was still pulling the trigger, the clicks echoing in the suddenly silent shambles.

Anna carried Pam to Harper's car, brushed glass fragments off the seat and put her down. Harper was too heavy: he crawled, dazed, to the porch, and Anna turned the half-wrecked vehicle around until she could get him in the passenger side and wedge the door closed. Something was wrong with the door, but it seemed to hold.

Her scalp was bleeding badly; every time she put her right hand to her ear, it came away with a palm full of blood. She pointed the car down the drive, and took it out as easily as she could.

They'd come in and out the same way each time, and that was the way she knew: there might have been a faster way to get an ambulance out to them, but she didn't have time to look.

She tried the phone after five minutes. No connection. She tried again at seven or eight minutes, without luck. At ten minutes, she got 911.

'My God, everybody's shot,' she babbled as she guided the car to the side of the road. She knew about where she was, gave enough direction that an ambulance could find them.

She called Wyatt, told him.

He was still shouting questions when she dropped the phone.