Red Dragon - Страница 24

They trooped around the Florida State League while he was in the Cardinals' farm system. They took Willy with them and had a terrific time. Spam and spirit. He got a tryout with the Cardinals and hit safely in his first two games. Then he began to have difficulty swallowing. The surgeon tried to get it all, but it metastasized and ate him up. He died five months later, when Willy was six.

Willy still watched baseball whenever he could. Molly watched baseball when she was upset.

Graham had no key. He knocked.

"I'll get it." Willy's voice.

"Wait." Molly's face between the curtains. "All right."

Willy opened the door. In his fist, held close to his leg, was a fish billy.

Graham's eyes stung at the sight. The boy must have brought it in his suitcase.

Molly took the bag from him. "Want some coffee? There's gin, but not the kind you like."

When she was in the kitchen, Willy asked Graham to come outside.

From the back porch they could see the riding lights of boats anchored in the bay.

"Will, is there any stuff I need to know to see about Mom?"

"You're both safe here, Willy. Remember the car that followed us from the airport making sure nobody saw where we went? Nobody can find out where you and your mother are."

"This crazy guy wants to kill you, does he?"

"We don't know that. I just didn't feel easy with him knowing where the house is."

"You gonna kill him?"

Graham closed his eyes for a moment. "No. It's just my job to find him. They'll put him in a mental hospital so they can treat him and keep him from hurting anybody."

"Tommy's mother had this little newspaper, Will. It said you killed a guy in Minnesota and you were in a mental hospital. I never knew that. Is it true?"

"Yes."

"I started to ask Mom, but I figured I'd ask you."

"I appreciate your asking me straight out. It wasn't just a mental hospital; they treat everything." The distinction seemed important. "I was in the psychiatric wing. It bothers you, finding out I was in there. Because I'm married to your mom.

"I told my dad I'd take care of her. I'll do it, too."

Graham felt he had to tell Willy enough. He didn't want to tell him too much.

The lights went out in the kitchen. He could see Molly's dim outline inside the screen door and he felt the weight of her judgment. Dealing with Willy he was handling her heart.

Willy clearly did not know what to ask next. Graham did it for him.

"The hospital part was after the business with Hobbs."

"You shot him?"

"Yes."

"How'd it happen?"

"To begin with, Garrett Hobbs was insane. He was attacking college girls and he -… killed them."

"How?"

"With a knife; anyway I found a little curly piece of metal in the clothes one of the girls had on. It was the kind of shred a pipe threader makes – remember when we fixed the shower outside?

"I was taking a look at a lot of steamfitters, plumbers and people. lt took a long time. Hobbs had left this resignation letter at a construction job I was checking. I saw it and it was… peculiar. He wasn't working anywhere, and I had to find him at home.

"I was going up the stairs in Hobbs 's apartment house. A uniformed officer was with me. Hobbs must have seen us coming. I was halfway up to his landing when he shoved his wife out the door and she came falling down the stairs dead."

"He had killed her?"

"Yeah. So I asked the officer I was with to call for SWAT, to get some help. But then I could hear kids in there and some screaming. I wanted to wait, but I couldn't."

"You went in the apartment?"

"I did. Hobbs had caught this girl from behind and he had a knife. He was cutting her with it. And I shot him."

"Did the girl die?"

"No."

"She got all right?"

"After a while, yes. She's all right now.

Willy digested this silently. Faint music came from an anchored sailboat.

Graham could leave things out for Willy, but he couldn't help seeing them again himself.

He left out Mrs. Hobbs on the landing clutching at him, stabbed so many times. Seeing she was gone, hearing the screaming from the apartment, prying the slick red fingers off and cracking his shoulder before the door gave in. Hobbs holding his own daughter busy cutting her neck when he could get to it, her struggling with her chin tucked down, the.38 knocking chunks out of him and he still cutting and he wouldn't go down. Hobbs sitting on the floor crying and the girl rasping. Holding her down and seeing Hobbs had gotten through the windpipe, but not the arteries. The daughter looked at him with wide glazed eyes and at her father sitting on the floor crying "See? See?" until he fell over dead.

That was where Graham lost his faith in.38's.

"Willy, the business with Hobbs, it bothered me a lot. You know, I kept it on my mind and I saw it over and over. I got so I couldn't think about much else. I kept thinking there must be some way I could have handled it better. And then I quit feeling anything. I couldn't eat and I stopped talking to anybody. I got really depressed. So a doctor asked me to go into the hospital, and I did. After a while I got some distance on it. The girl that got hurt in Hobbs 's apartment came to see me. She was okay and we talked a lot. Finally I put it aside and went back to work."

"Killing somebody, even if you have to do it, it feels that bad?"

"Willy, it's one of the ugliest things in the world."

"Say, I'm going in the kitchen for a minute. You want something, a Coke?" Willy liked to bring Graham things, but he always made it a casual adjunct to something he was going to do anyway. No special trip or anything.

"Sure, a Coke."

"Mom ought to come out and look at the lights."

# # #

Late in the night Graham and Molly sat in the back-porch swing. Light rain fell and the boat lights cast grainy halos on the mist. The breeze off the bay raised goose bumps on their arms.

"This could take a while, couldn't it?" Molly said.

"I hope it won't, but it might."

"Will, Evelyn said she could keep the shop for this week and four days next week. But I've got to go back to Marathon, at least for a day or two when my buyers come. I could stay with Evelyn and Sam. I should go to market in Atlanta myself. I need to be ready for September."

"Does Evelyn know where you are?"

"I just told her Washington."

"Good."

"It's hard to have anything, isn't it? Rare to get it, hard to keep it. This is a damn slippery planet."

"Slick as hell."

"We'll be back in Sugarloaf, won't we?"

"Yes we will."

"Don't get in a hurry and hang it out too far. You won't do that?"

"No."

"Are you going back early?"

He had talked to Crawford half an hour on the phone.

"A little before lunch. If you're going to Marathon at all, there's something we need to tend to in the morning. Willy can fish."

"He had to ask you about the other."

"I know, I don't blame him."

"Damn that reporter, what's his name?"

"Lounds. Freddy Lounds."

"I think maybe you hate him. And I wish I hadn't brought it up. Let's go to bed and I'll rub your back."

Resentment raised a minute blister in Graham. He had justified himself to an eleven-year-old. The kid said it was okay that he had been in the rubber Ramada. Now she was going to rub his back. Let's go to bed – it's okay with Willy.

When you feel strain, keep your mouth shut if you can.

"If you want to think awhile, I'll let you alone," she said.

He didn't want to think. He definitely did not. "You rub my back and I'll rub your front," he said.

"Go to it, Buster."

# # #

Winds aloft carried the thin rain out over the bay and by nine A.M. the ground steamed. The far targets on the sheriff's department range seemed to flinch in the wavy air.

The rangemaster watched through his binoculars until he was sure the man and woman at the far end of the firing line were observing the safety rules.

The Justice Department credentials the man showed when he asked to use the range said "Investigator." That could be anything. The rangemaster did not approve of anyone other than a qualified instructor teaching pistolcraft.

Still, he had to admit the fed knew what he was doing.

They were only using a.22-caliber revolver but he was teaching the woman combat shooting from the Weaver stance, left foot slightly forward, a good two-handed grip on the revolver with isometric tension in the arms. She was firing at the silhouette target seven yards in front of her. Again and again she brought the weapon up from the outside pocket of her shoulderbag. It went on until the rangemaster was bored with it.

A change in the sound brought the rangemaster's glasses up again. They had the earmuffs on now and she was working with a short, chunky revolver. The rangemaster recognized the pop of the light target loads.

He could see the pistol extended in her hands and it interested him. He strolled along the firing line and stood a few yards behind them.

He wanted to examine the pistol, but this was not a good time to interrupt. He got a good look at it as she shucked out the empties and popped in five from a speedloader.

Odd arm for a fed. It was a Bulldog.44 Special, short and ugly with its startling big bore. It had been extensively modified by Mag Na Port. The barrel was vented near the muzzle to help keep the muzzle down on recoil, the hammer was bobbed and it had a good set of fat grips. He suspected it was throated for the speedloader. One hell of a mean pistol when it was loaded with what the fed had waiting. He wondered how the woman would stand up to it.