School Days - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,43

off three shots at the middle of his mass, trying to group them around the lower end of his sternum. He yelled once, the way a weight lifter does when completing a lift, and stepped back. The gun dropped from his hands, and he fell sideways onto the wet earth. I stood for a moment, listening. Only the rain and the sporadic thunder. Nothing moved. There was no one else with him. I walked to him and looked at his gun. It was some sort of Italian nine-millimeter. I left it where it had landed and squatted beside him. He was dead. I moved over to George. She was dead, but less recently than Animal. I stood and looked down at both of them while I opened the cylinder and ejected the spent rounds and reloaded. I put the gun back on my hip and snapped the holster strap.

He'd killed George for talking to me. And he wanted me to see that before he killed me for slapping him around. I thought I'd scared him enough. I hadn't. I guess he was spunkier than I'd thought. And the miscalculation had cost George her life and Animal his. Animal was bleeding from his chest. The rain was washing the blood pinkly away. When eventually I found out why Jared shot up his school, what would I have? The truth. Was that worth two bodies? The world had probably lost more for less. But they were alive, and now they weren't. Maybe the truth wasn't worth dying for. Or killing for. Maybe it never had been.

Too late now.

I looked at them some more. End of the line at, what, seventeen for her? He was maybe twenty-two. Then I stopped thinking and just looked at them as they lay in the mud, mindless of the rain.

After a while I went back to my car to call Cromwell.

Chapter 42

DIBELLA SHOWED UP about forty-five minutes after Cromwell, and stood with us in the rain in the grove while the Dowling crime-scene specialist did what he could with the soaking crime scene. They both wore raincoats and hats. I didn't. I figured I had nothing to lose by getting rained on some more.

"Two more dead," Cromwell said.

I didn't say anything. Neither did DiBella.

"I don't like some know-it-fucking-all from the city coming out here and killing people in my town."

"Actually, that's person," I said. "Singular. I didn't kill the girl."

"And you don't think she'd be alive if you hadn't kept sticking your fucking snout into everything around here?"

"She might be," I said.

"On the other hand," DiBella said, "she's probably alive if whatsisname over there, Yang, doesn't shoot her in the fucking chest ... several times."

Cromwell shrugged.

"How many times he shoot at you?" Cromwell said.

"Came pretty fast," I said. "I'd say eight."

"How much brass you find, Clyde?" Cromwell said to the crime-scene guy.

"Eight from the nine, three thirty-eights. Dead guy had six rounds left in his piece. One in the chamber, five in the magazine."

"Thirty-eights are mine," I said. "I reloaded."

"You thought there'd be more people?" Cromwell said.

"I always reload," I said.

From the periphery of my vision, I saw DiBella nod approval.

"So, if that's the case," Cromwell said, "then he probably shot her someplace else and brought her here."

"She's been dead awhile," Clyde said.

"How long," Cromwell said.

Clyde looked up at Cromwell squinting against the rain. "Harry, I got no fucking clue. I do fingerprints and look for clues. I don't know shit about corpses."

"ME'll tell us," DiBella said.

"I want your gun," Cromwell said to me. "Ballistic comparison."

I nodded and took it out of its holster, unloaded it, and handed it to him.

"I'll need it back," I said.

"How do I know you didn't shoot her?" Cromwell said.

"ME'll tell you that she was shot with a nine," I said.

"You coulda had a nine."

"Sure, and before you came, I ate it and the brass."

"Maybe you didn't call us right away."

"C'mon, Harry," DiBella said to Cromwell. "You know he's legit. Besides, the crime scene matches his story."

"He could have arranged that," Cromwell said.

"Why, for crissake?" DiBella said. "You're just sulky 'cause there's another shooting in your town."

"I don't like it," Cromwell said.

"For crissake, Captain Healy vouched for him to me," DiBella said. "Shit happens."

"I don't like it when it happens in my town," Cromwell said.

"Nobody does," DiBella said. "But it's gotta happen someplace."

"We through here?" I said.

"What's your hurry."

"My dog's home alone," I said. "She'll need a walk."

Cromwell looked puzzled.

"You need to borrow a piece until they return that one?" DiBella said.

"Got