Black House (Page 227)

The cheering and the applause stop as if amputated. There is a moment of awful, uncomprehending silence. Jack Sawyer, shot twice in the lungs and once in the heart, as well as in the hand and the throat, stands where he is, gazing at the hole below his spread fingers and above his wrist. Wanda Kinderling peers up at him with her dingy teeth bared. Speedy Parker is looking at Jack with an expression of naked horror that his wraparound sunglasses cannot conceal. To his left, up on one of four media towers surrounding the platform, a young cameraman faints and falls to the ground.

Then, suddenly, the freeze-frame that Wendell has captured without even knowing it bursts open and everything is in motion.

Wanda Kinderling screams "See you in hell, Hollywood" — several people will later verify this — and then puts the muzzle of her .32 to her temple. Her look of vicious satisfaction gives way to a more typical one of dazed incomprehension when the twitch of her finger produces nothing but a dry click. The bulldog .32 is empty.

A moment later she is pretty much obliterated — broken neck, broken left shoulder, four broken ribs — as Doc stage-dives onto her and drives her to the ground. His left shoe strikes the side of Wendell Green’s head, but this time Wendell sustains no more than a bloody ear. Well, he was due to catch a break, wasn’t he?

On the platform, Jack Sawyer looks unbelievingly at Dale, tries to speak, and cannot. He staggers, remains upright a moment longer, then collapses.

Dale’s face has gone from bemused delight to utter shock and dismay in a heartbeat. He seizes the microphone and screams, "HE’S SHOT! WE NEED A DOCTOR!" The P.A. horns shriek with more feedback. No doctor comes forward. Many in the crowd panic and begin to run. The panic spreads.

Beezer is down on one knee, turning Jack over. Jack looks up at him, still trying to speak. Blood pours from the corners of his mouth.

"Ah f**k, it’s bad, Dale, it’s really bad," Beezer cries, and then he is knocked sprawling. One wouldn’t expect that the scrawny old black man who’s vaulted up onto the stage could knock around a bruiser like Beezer, but this is no ordinary old man. As we well know. There is a thin but perfectly visible envelope of white light surrounding him. Beezer sees it. His eyes widen.

The crowd, meanwhile, flees to the four points of the compass. Panic infects some of the ladies and gentlemen of the press, as well. Not Wen-dell Green; he holds his ground like a hero, snapping pictures until his Nikon is as empty as Wanda Kinderling’s gun. He snaps the black man as he stands with Jack Sawyer in his arms; snaps Dale Gilbertson putting a hand on the black man’s shoulder; snaps the black man turning and speaking to Dale. When Wendell later asks French Landing’s chief of police what the old fellow said, Dale tells him he doesn’t remember — besides, in all that pandemonium, he could hardly make it out, anyway. All bullshit, of course, but we may be sure that if Jack Sawyer had heard Dale’s response, he would have been proud. When in doubt, tell ’em you can’t remember.

Wendell’s last picture shows Dale and Beezer watching with identical dazed expressions as the old fellow mounts the steps to the Winnebago with Jack Sawyer still in his arms. Wendell has no idea how such an old party can carry such a big man — Sawyer is six-two and must go a hundred and ninety at least — but he supposes it’s the same sort of deal that allows a distraught mother to lift up the car or truck beneath which her kid is pinned. And it doesn’t matter. It’s small beans compared to what happens next. Because when a group of men led by Dale, Beez, and Doc burst into the Winnebago (Wendell is at the rear of this group), they find nothing but a single overturned chair and several splashes of Jack Sawyer’s blood in the kitchenette where Jack gave his little gang their final instructions. The trail of blood leads toward the rear, where there’s a foldout bed and a toilet cubicle. And there the drops and splashes simply stop.

Jack and the old man who carried him in here have vanished.

Doc and Beezer are babbling, almost in hysterics. They bounce between questions of where Jack might have gone to distraught recollections of the final few moments on the platform before the shooting started. They can’t seem to let that go, and Dale has an idea it will be quite a while before he can let go of it himself. He realizes now that Jack saw the woman coming, that he was trying to get his hand free of Dale’s so he could respond.

Dale thinks it may be time to quite the chief’s job after all, find some other line of work. Not right now, though. Right now he wants to get Beezer and Doc away from the Color Posse, get them calmed down. He has something to tell them that may help with that.

Tom Lund and Bobby Dulac join him, and the three of them escort Beez and Doc away from the Winnebago, where Special Agent Redding and WSP Detective Black are already establishing a CIP (crime investigation perimeter). Once they’re behind the platform, Dale looks into the stunned faces of the two burly bikers.

"Listen to me," Dale says.

"I should have stepped in front of him," Doc says. "I saw her coming, why didn’t I step in front — "

"Shut up and listen!"

Doc shuts up. Tom and Bobby are also listening, their eyes wide.

"That black man said something to me."

"What?" Beezer asks.

"He said, ‘Let me take him — there may still be a chance.’ "

Doc, who has treated his share of gunshot wounds, gives a forlorn little chuckle. "And you believed him?"

"Not then, not exactly," Dale says. "But when we went in there and the place was empty — "

"No back door, either," Beezer adds.

Doc’s skepticism has faded a little. "You really think . . . ?"