pulled a bath towel off a shower stall hanger. “You got a knife? We got to get some pressure on the wound.”

She looked over the edge of the tub, and Dunn’s face was bright red and sweating, contorted with pain, but he was controlled, the captured shotgun aimed down the hall, and he dug a switchblade out of his pocket and flicked it open. Coakley used it to cut a long strip out of the towel and said, “Wrap it tight as you can . . .”

She could hear men shouting down the stairs, but couldn’t hear what they were saying. She said to Dunn, “Wrap that, give me the shotgun,” and she slipped out of the tub, took the shotgun, the safety was showing red, and she padded as quietly as she could down the hall. The shooting had slowed, but gunshots were still coming through, blowing plaster and wood, and she did a quick peek at the stairway, saw nobody but the dead man. She stepped across the stairway quickly, went in the first bedroom, did a peek at the window, saw nobody in the yard, checked the stairway again, and slugs started ripping methodically down the hallway, straight up, coming through the floor.

She went to the window in the second bedroom, did a peek, saw a man, or part of a man, squatting by the corner of the shed across the side yard. She didn’t hesitate, but fired two fast shotgun shots through the glass, then dashed back down the hallway.

Whoever was down below was still firing through the floor. He was the most dangerous one, she thought; the bathtub had nearly been penetrated by the glancing shot, and if he shot up straight through the bottom of the tub, he’d kill both Kristy and her; but as she watched the shots coming through, she realized that the shots were so vertical—coming up through the floor and into the ceiling—that he must be right under them. She waited for the next shot, fifteen feet away, ran back to it, and emptied the pistol magazine through the floor.

She heard no screaming, but wanted to believe that she’d at least scared the shit out of him.

Back in the bathroom, she reloaded and said, to Kristy, as her cell phone rang, “We’re doing fine, honey. We’ll be okay.”

She answered the phone, and Virgil was there: “There are too many of them, we can’t come straight in. There are a dozen shooters around the place. . . . We’re coming across the field in the back. If you see people coming in the back, don’t fire at us.”

“Hurry,” she said. “We’ve only got a minute or two before they get us. You gotta hurry, Virgil.”

“We’re running in,” he said. “We’re running.”

20

Virgil had sent the two highway patrolmen and the two local cops on their way north to watch the meeting at Einstadt’s, and turned south off the highway to go on down to the Rouse place.

“This goes to about eleven on the weird-shit-o-meter,” Jenkins said. He’d pushed his seat all the way back and had one foot up on the dash. “I gotta admit, Virgil, this country makes me a little uncomfortable. I’m not really that much of a country guy. I’ll take an alley.”

Virgil asked, “What happened to that bag of Cheetos?”

“Ah, I think they’re right behind your elbow. Let me see . . .” Jenkins fished the bag out, held it while Virgil took a handful of Cheetos, getting sticky orange cheese goop all over his fingers.

Virgil said, between chews, “As far as your weird-shit-o-meter goes . . . give me one of those little hand wipes, will you? . . . it would be very hard to find anything a lot weirder than that case you and Shrake had out in Lake Elmo. The mummy.”

Jenkins considered for a moment, put a finger in his ear to wiggle out an itch, then said, “Yeah, well. All right, that was probably a nine.”

“Nine, my ass,” Virgil said. “You’re giving child abuse an eleven—” His phone rang, and he one-handed it out of the equipment bin. “And you’re saying the mummy was only a nine? Lots of child abuse around. How many mummies have you run into?”

He put the phone to his ear, and Coakley was shouting at him, and when she slowed down enough to make herself understood, Virgil said, “Hold on, five minutes. Five minutes. Listen for your phone,” and she was gone.

They’d been ambling along on the back