The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,142

I was not prescient; I didn’t have an epiphany; it was the opposite.

I was at the side of my father the first time he went over the top. I was in a wheat field golden with heat and misty with blood, and among the martyrs like Felicity and Perpetua who died in a Carthaginian arena, and at the limestone wall among the farm boys from Ohio who charged into Confederate artillery with empty muskets. I knew that death wasn’t that bad after all, that it freed me from the earth and united me with brothers and sisters who were among the finest in the family of man.

I began running toward Valerie and Saber, waiting for Grady to take aim and fire at my back. But it didn’t happen. Instead, the driver of the station wagon pulled to the center of the asphalt and accelerated toward us, the car’s wake rippling over both curbs onto the lawns along the street. There was only one passenger. He was in the backseat, rolling down the window.

As he positioned himself and fitted the automatic rifle to his shoulder, I could see his white shirt, the bloodless pallor of his face, the delicacy of his hands, the flawless sweep of his hair over his tiny ears, the ease with which he sighted on his target and prepared to pull the trigger.

The weapon he held was known formally as the Browning automatic rifle and informally as the BAR. Its effect was devastating. As the station wagon closed on us, the line of fire was perfect. Probably two bursts would kill the four of us.

The driver clicked on his headlights, then hit the high beams, silhouetting Vick, my cowboy hat slanted on his head, his bandaged cheek as white as snow. I piled into Saber and Valerie and knocked them both to the ground and covered them with my body. The shooter opened up. There must have been at least one tracer round in the magazine. It streaked away into the darkness, maybe hitting the bathhouse in the side yard. The other rounds chewed Vick Atlas into pieces. His flesh, his hair, his clothing seemed to dissolve in the headlights, as though he were caught on wires. I could hear the ejected shells pinging against the station wagon’s window frame, the bullets thudding into a tree behind us. Then the station wagon drove away slowly, the profile of the shooter as sculpted and serene and immobile as a statue’s.

Vick had fallen into the water. I got up and pulled his body onto the swale and found the handcuff key in his pocket. I unlocked the cuffs from Valerie’s and Saber’s wrists and put Saber into the passenger seat of my heap. My hands would not stop shaking. I thought Valerie was crying. Or maybe laughing. Saber was grinning. I was sure about that.

Behind me I saw Grady running down the sidewalk, staring back at us like a frightened child.

Epilogue

THE POWER WENT back on, and one house after another filled with light, as though the Angel of Death held no dominion in this green-gray, moss-hung urban forest on the rim of the industrial world. I went back into the house and called the police. Then I made a second call, one I have never told anyone about until now.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hi, Miss Cisco.”

“Aaron? What kind of mess are you in now?”

“Long story. You have a key to Grady Harrelson’s house?”

She paused before she spoke. “What do you think?”

“Detective Jenks said he plans to go to Mexico. I bet he’d like to go there in a Caddy convertible. It’s pink. You’ll find it in Grady’s basement.”

The line went silent again.

“Did you hear me, Miss Cisco?”

“Where’s Grady?”

“He just barreled butt down the street. On foot. I don’t think he’ll be back for a while.”

“What’s happened, Aaron?”

“Vick Atlas got blown apart by the Atlas hit men. Vick shot my friend Saber in the foot. He and Grady were going to put us in a junkyard compactor after Vick chain-dragged me behind his automobile.”

“You’re making this up.”

“Suit yourself. It’s going to be raining cops and newspeople in a few minutes. If you’re interested in the Caddy, I’d visit a little later. I doubt they’ll pay it any mind.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“You’ve got to do something for kicks,” I replied.

I NEVER SAW GRADY again. He avoided prosecution by tying up the process in the courts and eventually going bankrupt. Some said he was terrified of Jaime Atlas and hired bodyguards who beat