lifted the shotgun again, but now he wasn't moving so fast.
He screamed, "You killer!"
I was flat on my back, but I had my gun by then. I squeezed the trigger, and kept squeezing, pointing the gun up at him. He staggered in a circle as I shot him. I shot him until he fell, and kept shooting into the air up where he had been because I was too scared to do anything else, and never gave a thought where the bullets would hit or whom they might hurt. I kept shooting even after he fell.
"Diaz?"
I could see her feet, but she didn't answer me. She had fallen behind the Dodge.
"Diaz, answer me."
I tried to get up, but couldn't. I tried to roll over, but my body flared with an outrageous heat that made me scream. I touched myself, and my hand came away gloved in bright red.
I heard a little girl screaming, and thought it must be Kelly Diaz.
I said, "It's okay. I'm not your daddy."
Blood pulsed out over my fingers, and the trailer park dimmed. The last thing I saw was David Reinnike climb to his feet. He raised up from the dead, climbed to his feet, and picked up the shotgun. I tried to raise my gun again, but it was too heavy. I pulled the trigger anyway, but it only made clicking sounds. David Reinnike stood over me, weaving unsteadily from side to side. His red shirt glistened brightly in the pure California sun. He lifted the shotgun, and pointed it at my head. He was crying.
He said, "You took my father."
All the world fell, and then I was gone.
59
Starkey
Starkey knew her nightmare was real when she got Biggins on the patch, midway between Van Nuys and Newhall. Biggins had checked out a tag number registered to one Frederick Conrad, a former employee of Payne Keller's, after the substation sheriff reported the vehicle at Keller's home. When the sheriff did not respond to Biggins's return call, Biggins had gone to Keller's home and discovered the body.
Starkey got directions to Conrad's mobile-home park on the fly, and called in the State Sheriffs herself. She didn't trust Biggins to do it. He seemed too upset.
Pike said, "Faster."
"Shut up."
"Push."
They came around the curve and screamed into the turnoff, and reached the trailer park first through clouds of dust and spraying gravel that rimed her soul with ice. Starkey had died in a trailer park. She had lost Sugar Boudreaux in a place exactly like this, and the echoes from that explosion now rippled through her, and she thought, Oh God, not again.
When she saw Cole, she knew he was dead. Dead people have that look. She didn't know what Pike saw. She wasn't thinking about Pike.
Diaz was down near the front end of an old car. Cole was down, too, halfway between the car and a trailer. A thick squat man was standing over Cole with a shotgun, and looked up at her as if he was peering through the wall of an aquarium. All of them were red. All of them glistened in the brilliant hot sun, and Starkey knew Cole was dead.
Pike made a sound, a kind of sharp grunt, and after that Starkey wasn't sure what happened. The steering wheel snapped out of her hands; Pike's foot crushed hers into the accelerator; the car surged forward, crushing over low shrubs and rocks and a wrought-iron bench. The squat man raised the shotgun. The windshield burst into lace, and then Pike stomped the brake pedal as he yanked the hand brake, and they were sideways. Pike was out of the car before they stopped sliding, and she heard the booms, two fast booms so close she thought they were one-BOOMBOOM-and the shotgun went up, twirling into the sky as David Reinnike windmilled backwards and fell.
Pike reached Cole as Starkey fell out of her car.
"Nine-one-one. Clear the perp and check Diaz."
Pike never even gave the others a thought, but that seemed right to Starkey, so very very right. Her eyes filled and snot blew from her nose as she radioed emergency services. She stumbled forward to Cole and threw up as Pike worked. The side of Cole's chest was red pulp. It bubbled as Pike pushed on his chest.
"You gotta plug him. We gotta-"
Starkey, crying and shaking, pulled off her shirt and bundled it and pressed it into Cole's wound. She pressed and held hard.
Pike was shaking. She would never mention it to him, but she felt him