Liberty or Death (40 page)

As I lowered myself down onto the scarred white paint, I was overwhelmed with weariness. My shoulders sagged. My neck felt too fragile to hold up my head. My hair, what they hadn't torn out, was too heavy. I propped my elbows on my knees, holding up my wobbling head, and stared down at my bare feet. They looked so naked and vulnerable against the dirty linoleum, the toenails still a soft, shining pink from the pre-wedding pedicure.

Bump Peters cleared his throat. "Dora McKusick," he said, "you stand accused of being a spy..."

"Theadora Kozak," I interrupted. "My name is Thea Kozak."

"It doesn't matter. You stand accused of being a spy against the Katahdin Constitutional Militia..."

"It matters," I said. "Dora McKusick can't be a spy, She doesn't exist."

"All right. Thea Kozak, then. How do you plead?"

"For whom am I alleged to have been spying?" I may not have gone to law school myself but I am forever my father's daughter. Bump blinked and looked down at the paper he was holding.

"Aw, shit, Bump," Roy Belcher said. "Why don't you just skip the formalities and shoot the bitch?"

"Is this my trial?" I asked. I had no more idea what had come over me than they did. It felt like some impossibly bratty imp was speaking through me. An imp that wanted to defy any and all advice that Jim Ferret had given me. An imp I was too exhausted to control. And then, this looked so much like the end that Jim's voice didn't matter much anymore. The cavalry had had their chance and what had they done with it? No one was rushing in to save me. I might as well at least go out as myself. Speaking with my own voice. They might not answer my questions, but as long as I had breath, I would ask them.

"Is it?" the imp demanded.

"Yes," Peters said.

"I don't get to have counsel?"

"No."

"To speak in my own defense?"

"No."

"Do I get to ask questions?"

"No."

"Then it isn't a trial, is it?"

"No. It's a formality."

"Mr. Peters, I can see that you are a military man. The claim of right upon which your organization rests is the Second Amendment, correct, that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state?" Where were these words coming from? I couldn't recall ever before in my life referring to the Second Amendment. An encyclopedic mind driven by hysteria? Wouldn't Jack have been proud of me, seeing how well I remembered what he'd made me read? When St. Peter asked me about my life on earth, I could tell him about going to Jack Leonard's summer school, and how much I'd learned there.

Bump Peters nodded solemnly. "Every able-bodied man between the ages of seventeen and forty-five."

Outside, I thought I heard something. Probably just more of the bad guys, but a girl could hope. To distract them, the imp went on talking. "Even if this is a court martial, and not a trial, I should be afforded some due process rights, shouldn't I? You can't claim your rights under the Second Amendment and deny me mine under the Fifth, can you?"

"In time of war," he said, "certain rights are suspended."

Can you have a war, I wondered, if the other side won't play? The militia and their imaginary friends—or, in this case, enemies. "How did you ever get to be so careless about human life, Bump?"

"Roy's right," Reverend Hannon said. "You should just shoot her."

The imp turned on him. "Exactly what kind of god do you think you're serving, anyhow, that lets you talk that way?"

"A god who ordained that man should be the master and woman his helper," Hannon said. "A god of vengeance and wrath."

Outside, I heard an engine shut off and a door slam. The men looked expectantly toward to door. "Sounds like Jimmy's back," Clyde said. It was the first time he'd spoken.

But Stuart Hannon wasn't finished with me. "If you'd kept your place, if you'd stayed at home and done your duty, you wouldn't be in this mess now."

"What about 'wither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge'?" I asked. "I
was
doing my duty. Was I supposed to stay home and dust when my beloved was in such danger?"

"Don't waste your time, Stuart," Peters said. "She'll talk you around in circles. This girl's got an education. She thinks she's real smart. But we haven't got time for chatting and game-playing. We've got a truckload of guns to move and plans to make. They're letting Harding go tomorrow." Meaning they didn't need Andre anymore. Or me. As if he'd read my mind, he raised his gun and pointed it at me.

I stood up. I don't know why. To flee? To fling myself at Bump Peters' feet and beg for mercy? To get away from the merciless imp in my head who kept making things worse? Because getting executed was a formal occasion requiring a formal response? Who knows? I stood as he fired and the shot, which was meant for my head, hit me in the center of my chest, knocking me off my chair. I slammed into the wall, my head snapped back, blood was pouring out of my nose and running everywhere as I collapsed on the floor like a rag doll, consumed by the enormous pain in my chest. Blood pooled, warm and sticky, under my face. I closed my eyes and waited for death to stop the pain.

Footsteps thundered across the floor as Jimmy McGrath burst into the kitchen. "We've got to move!" he yelled. "Move! Look at this. Someone stuck a Goddamned tracking device on the truck."

 

 

 

Chapter 29

 

I didn't die. It was one of those times when, ironically, I wished I could, but I didn't. I had taken Jack Leonard's advice. I had worn the stupid vest. It was a flat-out miracle and an example of their stupidity that they hadn't discovered it when they were hauling me around, but they hadn't. Maybe they'd just thought it was some strange undergarment. Maybe all their significant others still wore corsets. And so it had saved my life. I felt like I'd run full tilt into an oncoming two-by-four but I was alive. It hurt so much I felt faint and dizzy with the awfulness of it. I wanted to hunch my shoulders and bend my body to cup the pain and cushion it. I wanted to thrash and scream and let the agony out. Except that I couldn't move. I had to lie there and play dead and hope that they wouldn't be any more careful about my life or death than they had been about my vest and my gun.

While they all clustered around Jimmy McGrath, deciding what to do, I practiced being dead. Being limp. Not breathing. It was Clyde who knelt down and checked my pulse. I smelled the residual cooking smells on his clothes and recognized the gentle flutter of his fingers on my neck, looking for a pulse. The fingers fluttered and rested, snugging up exactly where I checked my heart rate myself. He couldn't have missed it. I could be limp and boneless. I could keep my respirations shallow. But I couldn't stop my heart. His fingers rested there for a long time—an eternity for me, playing possum there and waiting to be found out. Then he sighed and said, "She's gone." All my questions about Clyde and who he really was rushed back. There was no one to ask.

Besides. I was dead on the dirty floor in a pool of my own blood. The dead don't have questions. The dead have Andre Lemieux, the homicide detective, to ask their questions for them—like who killed Paulette Harding. Only I knew the answer to that. The thought of Andre set my pulse racing. How on earth was I going to get from here to there without someone noticing that I wasn't dead?

Another set of feet came toward us. Maybe to double check?
Please don't,
I thought.
Don't come any closer. I might have some awful disease. Get my blood on you and, like Lady Macbeth, you'll bear the taint forever.
The feet stopped. "It's this Goddamned bitch who's responsible. She sicked the cops on us. You can bet on it." Jimmy McGrath's voice. "I told you she was a spy." I wanted to open my eyes. Didn't. Felt the silence like a tangible thing.

I felt Clyde move away. There was another silence. I wanted desperately to know what was going on. It took effort to restrain my curiosity. It would have taken more to move. I lay and worked hard at being dead.

"You think she planted the tracking device?" Clyde asked.

"It doesn't matter. She's the one who put 'em onto us." The feet came closer. He roared "Bitch" and kicked me. It rolled me over and slammed me up against the wall. If I hadn't been dead, I would have screamed. I thought of Paulette and fervently hoped I wasn't about to be kicked to death.

"Give it a rest," Clyde said. "You'll get blood all over your shoes. We haven't got time for this anyway. Not if we're about to have company. You see anyone following you?"

"Nah."

"We haven't got long," Bump said suddenly. "It's time we were out of here. You didn't unload the truck, I hope?"

"Found it after we'd unloaded," Jimmy said glumly.

"And you didn't immediately start loading again?"

"Fuck," Jimmy said. "Of course I did. I'll go tell 'em to hurry."

"Hold on," Hannon said. "I agree. We've gotta go. But what do we do with the cop and the kid?"

"Shoot 'em," Bump said. I hated him for his lack of hesitation. A pleasant-faced, grandfatherly old man who didn't have to think twice about killing a child. I wanted to get up, grab my gun, and go after him. I forced my arms to be still. My breathing to be shallow. My body not to twitch. "Shoot the kid, then burn the house. You, Clyde. Do the kid. Roy, go take care of the cop. Jimmy and Stuart will come with me. We gotta get the rest of the stuff packed up. Can't leave it here. Not after tonight."

Feet hit the floor. Doors slammed. I heard Clyde pounding up the stairs. Pounding back down. No gunshot, but even though he'd declared me dead, I didn't trust him. Didn't trust any of them. All he'd have to do with a little kid like that was put a pillow over Lyle's face. He fiddled with the woodstove. I heard the clank of lids and dampers. I heard newspaper and kindling and the scratch of a match.
Hurry up, Clyde. Hurry up. He's going to kill Andre.
I smelled smoke. The lid clanked down. The door slammed behind him.

I used the chair to help myself up. It hurt like hell but it didn't matter. What was a little discomfort in the face of life and death? My purse was still on the floor by the chair. I bent down as slowly as a geriatric doing plies. I got the gun out, made sure it was ready to fire, and headed out, lurching like the hunchback from a Mel Brooks movie. It hurt to breathe. My bones ached. My sternum felt like it was only held together by the surrounding muscles and skin. I tumbled out the door and down the steps, and looked around, trying to remember which way I'd come.

It was dark, but a black that was softening as the first gray light of dawn pushed its way over the horizon. The ground was cold and wet with dew. Sharp things and hard things stabbed at my bare feet. I crossed the lawn, slipped down the slope, and began walking across the big field. I'd remembered it as open but now I saw there were occasional trees. Ahead of me was Roy Belcher's dark figure striding purposefully forward. Coming toward us, barely discernable in the darkness, a trio of men, two of whom seemed to be carrying the third. Not a hell of a lot of cavalry under the circumstances.

Belcher was probably carrying something that could blow the three of them off the face of the earth in seconds flat and his hand was moving up. Getting ready. The rotten little bully lived for moments like this. What had I heard somewhere once? That bad guys are just like the rest of us 95 percent of the time. In his other 5 percent, Belcher just slipped the bonds of humanity.

The men coming toward us would have to drop Andre before they could shoot, by which time, Belcher would have blown them all to smithereens. Cops are required to give warnings before they shoot, but I was no cop. The last time I tangled with bad guys, I did it feeling a powerful and righteous anger and an endorphin-powered confidence in myself. This time, I had no confidence and no endorphins. It was instinctive. I took some quick steps forward, raised my gun, supporting it in two hands as I'd been taught, and fired. I kept it pointed toward Belcher and kept on firing until the gun was empty. Fired at his back. Fired at his side, fired as he turned to face me. Fired as he took a step forward and brought his gun the rest of the way up. I fired until he fell onto the ground and lay still. If I'd had more ammunition, I would have gone right on firing.

I sat down then, the sudden boneless fall of a baby just learning to walk. Still holding the gun, I brought my knees into my chest, and rested my head on them.

If I'd been a movie heroine, I would have run, lithe and girlish, across the stubbly field and thrown myself into Andre's arms. The makeup people would have touched up my face and hair so that the masses of sticky blood that coated my face and neck were vestigial and insouciant, so that my blood-stiffened hair bounced free. But this was no movie. Real women don't pump gas, they run out of it. I sat there in my collapsed and wretched heap and waited for them to come up to me. This time there were no endorphins. No sense of triumph. No heady glee at beating the bad guys. Outwitting was one thing. I lived by my wits. Killing was quite another.

Behind me, shots and shouts told me that more of the cavalry had arrived. That the fortress was under siege. And then I thought about Lyle and pushed myself to my feet just as Roland Proffit came up. "Roland. Upstairs In the house. Bedroom at the top of the stairs. Lyle Harding. The little boy. If he's still alive. They were going to set the house on fire..."