Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [105]
“Jesus, no!” Lizzie said, shocked out of her senses. “Drex? Chip, are you saying that Drex threw a rattler at Granddaddy?”
“That’s what I’m sayin’, darlin’,” Chip said. His grip on Lizzie’s shoulder never wavered.
“Have you gone nuts, man?” Drexell said, and his face looked different now. He didn’t look as bewildered and befuddled as he had. He didn’t look as weak as he had. He looked craftier and harder. “Why are you telling my sisters lies?”
“Because we’re not going to get away with it,” Chip said. “You hadn’t gotten that yet, I see.” Drexell looked blank. “There’re too many loose ends, fool. We should have killed the doctor. Yes, you asshole, sometime within the past few years we should have moseyed on over to Dallas and taken care of that old idiot. And we knew Matthew was getting out of jail sooner or later. We should have been waiting outside the gate for him with a gun.”
Now there was a sentiment I could agree with.
“You say we’re not going to get away with it,” Drex said. “So why are you doing this hostage thing? I thought you were playing a deeper game. I thought you had a plan. You’re just crazy.”
“Yes, I am, and I’ll tell you why,” Chip said. He let go of Lizzie’s shoulder, and she swung around to face him, taking a step backward, closer to the wall covered with guns. “I had me an appointment with a much better doctor than Bowden last week, and you know what he told me? I’m eaten up with cancer. At thirty-two! And I don’t give a fuck what happens when I’m not on the earth anymore. I don’t have long enough to live for you-all to do anything to me. Since I’m not getting away with anything, I sure as hell don’t want ol’ Drex to.”
His eyes were mean beyond belief when he said this.
“You’re going to die?” said Lizzie. “Well, good. I wish Drex had cancer, too. I want you both to die.” She seemed to have shaken off her fear, and I wished I could do the same. I looked at Tolliver, and I thought we would not make it through this. Chip would take us all out, because we were going to live and he wasn’t.
With one incredibly fast motion, Lizzie grabbed a rifle off the wall, the one right by one of the doors. It was pointed at Chip in a split second. “Go on and shoot yourself, since you’re going to die anyway!” She meant it, too, and she was ready with that rifle. “Save me the trouble!”
“I’m not going by myself,” said her lover, and he shot Drexell Joyce in the chest.
Katie shrieked and went over backward in her chair, covered with the mist of her brother’s blood, and as we all looked at the falling dead man, the screaming woman, Chip put the gun barrel in his mouth and fired at the same moment Lizzie did.
Twenty
I was so tired after the sheriff’s department finished with us that it was hard to focus when I got behind the wheel to drive back to Dallas. In fact, we never did make it to Garland. When I realized there was no real reason why we should, I pulled off at the next exit and got a room. We were just about out in the middle of nowhere, except it was nowhere with an interstate and a motel. It wasn’t a very good motel, but we could be pretty sure that no one was going to shoot us through the window.
I was still confused about several things, but both the shooters were dead.
Tolliver took his medicine, and we crawled into the bed. The sheets felt cold and almost damp, and I got back out of bed to turn the heater up. It made the curtains billow in an unpleasant way. I’ve run into that before, and I keep a big clip in my overnight pack for just such a situation. It came in handy tonight. As I got between the sheets, I realized that Tolliver was already asleep.
When I woke, the sun was up outside. Tolliver was in the bathroom, trying to take a sponge bath, and he was grumbling to himself about it.
“What are you talking about in there?” I asked, sitting and swinging my legs out from under the covers.
“I want to shower,” he said. “I want to shower more than anything.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. “But we can’t get the shoulder