KnockOut - Catherine Coulter [44]
He looked back down at her, met her eyes, dumb with pain. She saw the buzz of excitement in him and doubted there was mercy there.
Lissy called out, “Pay attention, Victor. My mama said you gotta shoot ’em between the eyes, put their lights out right away. That way there’s no one hanging around, surviving, telling stories about you before they take their boat ride to hell. So stop your hee-hawing and put out her damned lights!”
“Yeah, yeah, all right.” Victor leaned down close and winked at the deputy as she whispered, “No, please, don’t kill—”
He fired. A chunk of concrete flew into the air not six inches from her face. She stared up at him.
He winked at her again.
Gail heard a mad cheer come from the car, then a yell: “Put a notch in that boy’s belt!”
22
VICTOR PULLED THE IMPALA into the Amesey gas station on High Street, just inside the Fort Pessel city limits, one he’d never used before because his aunt Jennifer hated Loony Old Amesey, as she called him. Some city, he thought, nothing but a dippy loser town that had nothing going for it except a long-ago dumb little Civil War battle that had passed over the grounds of city hall, an ugly gray stone heap built back in the thirties. He’d hated the place for the year and a half he’d had to plunk his butt down with his crazy Aunt Jennifer. He hated breathing the air that always smelled like old cigarette smoke. But it was better than traveling to Jordan with his parents, meeting his father’s family, who were probably just as crazy-mean as he was, maybe getting shot for just existing. You couldn’t even drink or smoke pot there, and they’d chop your hands or your nose off for selling drugs, or even your head.
There was an old geezer chewing on a stick of straw, sitting on a tilted-back chair against the side of the grungy little market, which was flashing a green neon sign that had only the letter R left glowing. It was Loony Old Amesey.
“Hey,” Victor called as he got out of the car. “I need a new taillight. Can you help me?”
“Nope,” the old coot called back, not even bothering to move. “We’re closed. Come back tomorrow. That’s Monday, ain’t it? Monday’s always a busy day, but my boys could maybe find time for you.”
Victor cursed, got back into the car, slammed his fist on the steering wheel. Lissy said, “I’m thinking maybe that female cop could have written down our license plate. I mean, she was sitting in the cop car with nothing else to do, right? And you said she was talking on her cell—no telling how close the cops are to us, Victor.”
He took a deep breath, nodded. He hated it when she told him what to do. It made him feel small and helpless. He looked over to see her eyes unfocused and knew she was in pain again. He hated that a lot more. He only nodded to her.
Thirty minutes later they were driving a little blue Corolla, the old Impala now tucked away behind a bowling alley next to an overflowing Dumpster that stank in the hot night air.
It was dark already; the few businesses in downtown Fort Pessel that opened on Sunday were shut down tight now. Victor pulled into the alley behind Kougar’s Pharmacy on Elm Street. He took her bottle of pills and quietly got out of the Corolla. “You stay still,” he whispered to Lissy. “Don’t come in after me, you hear me?”
He jimmied the back door, eased it open. The alarm didn’t go off, just as Victor knew it wouldn’t. Old Mrs. Kougar hadn’t ever had the alarm fixed after it burned out in the big storm of 2006, and everybody knew it.
Victor held his .22 in one hand, the bottle of pills in the other. All he had was a big flashlight, and he hated to use it, too much of a risk. He went behind the pharmacy counter, switched the flashlight on just long enough to find the narcotic pain meds, then off again. Thank God everything was labeled or he’d never find the right pills for her. He didn’t spot the same pills that were in Lissy’s bottle, but he did find Vicodin, and that was just fine. He