Black House

The applause thunders and thunders. Folks cheer. Hats are thrown in the air and sail on the summer breeze. Their welcome becomes a kind of miracle in itself, an affirmation, perhaps even an acceptance of the children, who are widely supposed to have been held in some bizarre sexual bondage linked to the Internet. (Isn’t all that weird stuff somehow linked to the Internet?) And of course they applaud because the nightmare is over. The boogeyman died in his own backyard, died at the foot of a prosaic, now vaporized aluminum clothes whirligig, and they are safe again.

Oh how the cheers ring in these few last moments of Jack Sawyer’s life on planet Earth! Birds are startled up from the bank of the river and go squawking and veering into the sky, seeking quieter environs. On the river itself, a freighter responds to the cheers — or perhaps joins in — by blasting its air horn over and over. Other boats get the idea and add to the cacophony.

Without thinking about what he’s doing, Jack takes Doc’s right hand in his left, Dale’s left hand in his right. Dale takes Beezer’s hand, and the Sawyer Gang raises their arms together, facing the crowd.

Which, of course, goes nuts. If not for what is going to happen next, it would be the picture of the decade, perhaps of the century. They stand there in triumph, living symbols of victory with their linked hands in the sky, the crowd cheering, the videocams rolling, the Nikons flashing, and that is when the woman in the third row begins to make her move. This is someone else we know, but it takes us a second or two to recognize her, because she has had nothing at all to do with the case we have been following. She’s just been . . . sort of lurking around. The two hundred seats up front have been awarded by random drawing from the French Landing voter rolls, the lucky lottery winners notified by Debbi Anderson, Pam Stevens, and Dit Jesperson. This woman was No. 199. Several people shrink from her as she passes them, although in their happy frenzy they are hardly aware of doing it; this pale woman with clumps of straw-colored hair sticking to her cheeks smells of sweat and sleeplessness and vodka. She’s got a little purse. The little purse is open. She’s reaching into it. And we who have lived through the second half of the twentieth century and have through the miracle of TV witnessed a dozen assassinations and near assassinations know exactly what she is reaching for. We want to scream a warning to the four men standing with their linked hands raised to the sky, but all we can do is watch.

Only the black man with the sunglasses sees what’s happening. He turns and starts to move, aware that she has probably beaten him, that he is probably going to be too late.

No, Speedy Parker thinks. It can’t end like this, it can’t.

"Jack, get down!" he shouts, but no one hears him over the clapping, the cheering, the wild hurrahs. The crowd seems to block him on purpose, surging back and forth in front of him no matter which way he moves. For a moment Wendell Green, still bobbing around like a man in the throes of an epileptic seizure, is in the assassin’s path. Then she heaves him aside with the strength of a madwoman. Why not? She is a madwoman.

"Folks — " Dale’s got his mouth practically on the microphone, and the P.A. horns mounted to the nearby trees whine with feedback. He’s still holding up Jack’s hand on his left and Beezer’s on his right. There’s a small, dazed smile on his face. "Thank you, folks, we sure do appreciate the support, but if you could just quiet down . . ."

That’s when Jack sees her.

It’s been a long time, years, but he recognizes her at once. He should; she spat in his face one day as he left the Los Angeles courthouse. Spat at him and called him a railroading bastard. She’s lost fifty pounds since then, Jack thinks. Maybe more. Then he sees the hand in the purse, and even before it comes back out, he knows what’s happening here.

The worst is that he can do nothing about it. Doc and Dale have his hands in a death grip. He drags in a deep breath and shouts as he has been taught to do in just such a situation as this — "Gun!" — and Dale Gilbertson nods as if to say, Yes it is, it is fun. Behind her, pushing through the clapping, cheering crowd, he sees Speedy Parker, but unless Speedy’s got a particularly good magic trick up his sleeve — He doesn’t. Speedy Parker, known in the Territories as Parkus, is just fighting his way into the aisle when the woman standing below the platform brings out her gun. It’s an ugly little thing, a bulldog .32 with its handle wrapped in black kitchen tape, and Jack has just half a second to think that maybe it will blow up in her hand.

"Gun!" Jack shouts again, and it’s Doc Amberson who hears him and sees the snarling woman crouched just below them.

"Ohfuck," Doc says.

"Wanda, no!" Jack cries. Doc has let go of his left hand (Dale has still got his right one hoisted high in the summer air) and Jack holds it out to her like a traffic cop. Wanda Kinderling’s first bullet goes right through the palm, mushrooms slightly, begins to tumble, and punches into the hollow of Jack’s left shoulder.

Wanda speaks to him. There’s too much noise for Jack to hear her, but he knows what she’s saying, just the same: Here you go, you railroading son of a bitch — Thorny says hello.

She empties the remaining five bullets into Jack Sawyer’s chest and throat.

No one hears the insignificant popping sounds made by Wanda’s bulldog .32, not over all that clapping and cheering, but Wendell Green has got his camera tilted up, and when the detective jerks backward, our favorite reporter’s finger punches the Nikon’s shutter-release button in simple reflex. It snaps off eight shots. The third is the picture, the one that will eventually become as well known as the photo of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima and that of Lee Harvey Oswald clutching his belly in the parking garage of the Dallas police station. In Wendell’s photo, Jack Sawyer looks calmly down toward the shooter (who is just a blur at the very bottom of the frame). The expression on his face might be one of forgiveness. Daylight is clearly visible through the hole in the palm of his outstretched hand. Droplets of blood, as red as rubies, hang frozen in the air beside his throat, which has been torn open.