Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [120]
For hours before this capture, Kathryne was spending a fearful evening. April had taken off again, and the weather had been hot beyond belief all day. They left the doors open, and the windows, and kept waiting for April to come back. Watched television. The tension in the house got so great they couldn't even go to sleep. Nicole had come over with the kids and bedded down with them on the floor of their room because it was cooler, but Kathy and Kathryne were too keyed-up and just sat around talking, scared to death.
Then all of a sudden, a floodlight went right across the windows.
My God, they didn't know what was happening. A huge loudspeaker boomed in, a huge loudspeaker. "YOU IN THE WHITE PICKUP," it shouted. Two words, "Crazy Gary," jumped instantly into Kathryne's mind. "Oh, my God, it's that crazy Gary." Then they heard the loud speaker say, "AT THE COUNT OF TWO, PUT UP YOUR HANDS, PUT UP YOUR HANDS." A quieter voice said, "Get ready to open up, if he doesn't obey."
At those words, Kathy and Kathryne hit the floor. They might have been soldiers, they did it so instinctively. The bedroom filled with light. A police beacon was turning in a circle. When they began to raise their heads they could see three policemen walking up road carrying guns. Then someone yelled, "They got him."
Nicole woke up out of a crazy dream, and started screaming.
Kathryne was holding onto her, shouting, "Sissy, don't go out there. You can't go out," which was all Nicole needed to break loose. Then she was out and in the crowd that was standing on the road around Gary on the ground. With all those lights on him, he didn't know what was going on.
The police wouldn't let Nicole up close. She stood a distance away looking at him, and one of the cops began to question Kathryn who had just come out and asked, "Do you know him?" When Kathryne said, "Yeah," then the cop said, "Well, he was right about up to your driveway when we got him. You were lucky." Then another cop said, "We think he killed the fellow last night too." That's when panic hit Kathryne. They still hadn't found April.
Nicole didn't know whether she wanted to go up to him or not. She just stood there, watching them point those rifles. There was nothing in her.
Back inside the house, however, she was shaking and screaming and crying. She took Gary's photograph and threw it in the garbage. "That crazy son of a bitch," she shouted, "I should have killed him when I had the chance!
Later that night, she went through all kinds of changes. She lay there and words went through her mind like a broken record. Things they had said, over and over.
Toby Bath called Brenda. "We've got him," he told her. "Is he okay?" asked Brenda. "Yes," said Toby, "he's fine." "Anybody else get hurt?" asked Brenda. "Nope, nobody got hurt. Did a good clean job. "Thank God," said Brenda. She had never been in a more shattered state. She couldn't even cry. "Oh," she said, "Gary's going to hate me. He's not too happy with me anyways. But now he's going to hate me." She was more worried about that than anything.
10
Chris Caffee couldn't sleep at all and Debbie kept saying, "I can't believe Ben's dead. I can't believe it."
They were all feeling pretty paranoid. Chris got up once to take a shower but started shaking when she realized there was a window in the bathroom and the killer could come through it. While the water was running she wouldn't hear a sound. It was like the movie Psycho.
Then she got back in the living room, and almost gave a yip. Some big person with a flashlight was walking in the front yard. But it was only a policeman. He had noticed their car door was open, and a cat had taken up abode in the back seat. They invited the man in, and that was how they learned a suspect had been caught. They didn't know if it was really the killer, but at least the police had somebody.
Debbie kept saying things you couldn't answer any more than you could talk back to your TV set. "When I was a kid," she announced, "I used to play touch football with the boys.