“Bring it to me! Bring it when you are done!”
The numerals on the digital bedside clock glowed in the darkness. It was 8:45 P.M. “He is home no later than nine! He is so predictable you could set your watch by him!”
Gary padded softly through the living room to the kitchen, where he checked the back door's security lock. There would be no escape from the rear of the house. Nor would there be a way out through the windows—all were shielded by decorative wrought-iron grates. His only way out would be the way he came in—through the front door.
He could feel his heart thump as he checked his watch. Returning to the living room, he drew the lead pipe from his pants before settling into a recliner to wait.
“‘Do this right and we ‘ll make love all night. Every night. You and me. Forever.”
Minutes passed and the conversations, the promises of sex and money, filled Gary's head, nearly distracting him from the plan at hand. Over and over, he re-focused on the reason he was there. And as it played in his head, Gary became increasingly jittery. He was nervous. He was unsure. He could not do it.
Not again. Not for her.
Acting on impulse, he bolted from the recliner just as headlights swung wide across the driveway and pierced the darkness through the picture window. It was too late. The wheels that had been set in motion so long ago were moving with a speed he could not halt. There was no turning back.
God, he loved Sharon.
As he listened to Glen get out of his car and walk toward the door, Gary Adams crept to wait by the door. If he still had wanted to turn back, it was too late. He had to do what Sharon had begged him to do.
Gary raised the lead pipe and swung at Glen Harrelson's head. Glen went down, but just as Perry Nelson had done, he tried to stand to fight. He was not out cold. And this time there wasn’t the icy water of a raging creek to revive him. It was fear and the instinct to survive that gave him the burst of strength to fight his attacker.
Gary hit him once more with the bloody pipe.
It didn’t put him out. Thought he’d be out like a light.
Glen Harrelson grabbed Gary Adams's arm and forced him to the floor, flipping him onto his back.
With the light streaming in from the garage door, they could see each other. Two men brought together by the same woman. Their eyes met. Glen Harrelson had the look of a man who was fighting for his life. It was the same wild-eyed look Perry Nelson had that night along the edges of Clear Creek five years before. Glen kicked Gary's leg and knee. Hard, with a force of a man that was going to kill the killer.
The pipe was not going to work and Gary knew it.
He reached for the gun, which he had set off to the side as his insurance policy for such a moment as what was taking place in Glen Harrelson’ s house. The gun fired two times.
It was over. It had gone all awry. Murder is like that. Gary Adams knew that there was no way he could make it look like an accidental death. It was going to have to resemble a botched burglary. He heaped a pile of clothing about the room to make it look as though the place had been ransacked.
Sharon had told him that the grates over the basement windows could be removed. Glen went downstairs and confirmed that one, in fact, was loose. He moved a chair to the window, got up and pulled the grate off, quietly setting it to the side. There had been enough noise coming from the house. Gary went back upstairs and took a jar of coins from the closet and scattered its contents. He went into the garage where Sharon had said Glen kept a supply of gasoline. When he returned he stepped over Glen's body and doused the area with the liquid.
Before he struck a match, Gary decided he needed a delayed fuse. He lit a cigarette and placed it inside a book of matches. That, he thought, would give him the five minutes he’d need to get away.
And he was gone. In a few minutes, Gary was sitting in his truck waiting for the sirens to signal that a neighbor had seen the fire. But five minutes, then ten more, passed. Nothing.
He wondered what went wrong. Did the cigarette go out? Why hadn’t anyone called?
Gary Adams walked back to Columbine Court. He went into the open garage and cracked the door open. Like yardage of black plastic, a curtain of black smoke ripped out of the opening. Gary slammed the door and ran like hell.
Eighteen-inch-deep footprints ran up the ridge from the Dude Ranch to Round House. It was frigid outside, colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra, as the locals liked to say. Sharon had left the yellow light on the deck, casting a warm glow over the snowy hillside. The tracks were left by Gary Adams as he trudged up from his place to tell Sharon that he had taken care of everything back in Thornton.
It was a little after 4 A.M. when Sharon let him into her bedroom.
“It's done,” he said, taking off his coat to let the air of the house warm him.