The Cypress House(131)

He tried to move, tried to hide, just as any animal in its last moments will. He made it as far as the rail on the north side, thinking he could slip off the bridge and into the creek, and then he knew it was hopeless and he stopped moving and turned back to see Solomon Wade standing before him.

Under the bridge, he thought. He hid under the bridge, but on the opposite side of his car. Just where he should have been. Just where you should have thought to look.

It didn’t matter now. Arlen’s blood was running freely across the boards, and Wade was walking toward him with a pistol in his hand. He wore that white Panama hat, rain shedding off its brim. He smiled when his eyes met Arlen’s.

“You liked that trick with my sheriff, did you?” he said. “Hanging him up to greet me. You’ll wish you hadn’t done that.”

Arlen didn’t answer. The pain was radiant right now, and his blood looked very bright on the worn planks of the bridge.

“Don’t you go so easy,” Wade said. “Wanted to drop you, not kill you easy. You’re going to beg me for another shot. Beg.”

Wade had never so much as turned to glance back at the sheriff’s car. The last lobe of Arlen’s numb brain that retained capacity for thought registered that and whispered, Good. He doesn’t know. He’ll drive right past Paul without a look.

Wade stepped over Arlen and picked up the Springfield. He hefted it, gave it one curious glance, and then tossed it over the bridge and into the creek.

“Your mistake,” he said, “was in doubting my reach. You’re not the first man to have schemed against Solomon Wade. Won’t be the last, I’m certain. But you know what? I’m still standing now, and you’re down there choking on your own blood. That’s how it goes. That’s always how it will go.”

Wade shoved his pistol into his coat pocket and then withdrew a knife. It had a six-inch blade with a hook at the end, the sort you used for gutting deer. When Arlen saw it, he closed his eyes.

Picture Paul, he told himself, picture him driving fast and far. Driving north. Chasing the coast as far as he can go, all the way to Maine. Rebecca’s waiting there. He can find her.

Wade knelt beside him, said, “No, no, no. You stay awake, tough boy. You stay awake for this.”

You should have told Paul the town, Arlen thought sadly. The place where she’s going. Camden. You should have told him, so they could find each other.

Wade registered the sound of the engine before Arlen did. One second he was kneeling over Arlen’s body with the knife in his hand, and the next he was gone, on his feet. The sound was clear in Arlen’s ears, but it had no meaning, not right away. Then he got it. A car. Coming this way, and coming fast.

No, he thought, anguished, and tried to lift his head. No, Paul, damn it, all you had to do was wait…

The sheriff’s car barreled on toward them, the engine howling and the tires spraying mud as it neared the bridge. Solomon Wade took one step back, into the center of the bridge, cleared the pistol from his belt, and began to pull the trigger.

Arlen opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out was blood.

Wade looked entirely calm as he worked the trigger. Looked calm for his first shot, and his second, and his third, and only then, when the front wheels of the sheriff’s car hit the bridge with a bang, did his face show any concern. He fired once more, and then the trigger clicked on empty, and he turned to run. The edge of the bridge, and the safety on either side of it, was three steps away.

He made two of them.

The car missed Arlen, stretched on his side beneath the rail, by maybe a foot. It might have been less. It did not miss Solomon Wade.

He was diving to his left when the hood caught him. The impact threw him into the air as the sheriff’s car came to a squealing stop with its front wheels on the road and its back still on the bridge. The side of Wade’s head smacked the top of the windshield and spun him sideways, and he landed on the bridge near Arlen.

The door opened and Paul ran out of the car with the pistol in his hand. He went to Arlen first, but Arlen called him off. There was blood in his mouth when he spoke, but he got the words out.

“Shoot him.”

Paul turned and looked down at the man he’d just hit. Solomon Wade’s neck seemed to point in two directions at once, and the side of his face was a fractured, bleeding mess.

“He’s dead,” Paul said.

“Shoot him,” Arlen said again, and blood dripped from his lips.

Paul shot him. Once in the head. The body jolted and then was still. Paul came back to Arlen and dropped to his knees on the bridge. He looked at the wound and then pulled his shirt off and pressed it against Arlen’s ribs. His face was very pale.