The Ranger - Ace Atkins [106]
“What do you say, Ranger?”
“I can clear that room in under twenty seconds.”
“What about your girl and baby?”
“I can work around them unless they make a break.”
“Let’s go,” Gowrie said.
He had his sweating forearm around her neck, Lena trying to breathe and hold Joy at the same time. The baby was screaming and Gowrie was yelling, making her move faster than her legs could work. She wanted him just to ease up a little, let her catch a breath before they broke out, because if she couldn’t breathe she’d drop the child.
He kicked open the gas-station door and walked her out onto the pavement, pointing the gun to her head and then back at the long row of policemen and cruisers. Lena had just a single moment of clarity then, looking at all those red and blue lights, all those guns aimed at Gowrie, and kind of took comfort that this wasn’t something being done at Hell Creek but in plain view of so many people.
If she or her baby died, someone would at least know about it.
He tightened the grip around her neck, his mouth hot and wet in her ear. “Get in the fucking car.”
He let off her neck and opened the passenger seat to the old muscle car. She tried to get inside, hold that baby close, but not fast enough for Gowrie, who kicked her in the ass and sent her toppling over, nearly crushing her child. She screamed at him and then just started screaming at all of it—at Charley for all he’d done and then Ditto for bringing them back here and then herself for the goddamn mess she’d caused. She’d thought she could grab Ditto, make Charley Booth see that some men were a hell of a lot smarter and stronger.
But Gowrie just ate her up.
She was in the car now, the .22 tucked into the blanket with Joy.
The keys were in the ignition as Gowrie tried to crawl over her.
She started the car with a free hand, baby in her right arm, and slipped her foot onto the pedal, knocking the car into first gear. The car lurched forward in a rush before she hit the brake, and Gowrie smacked his head against the windshield, spiderwebbing the glass, as Lena took a shaky aim at his chest with that ole peashooter and fired three times.
Her baby screamed. Gowrie fell out of the open door and rolled onto the grease-stained asphalt and ran for his boys.
She took her foot from the accelerator, slowing at a pile of creosote crossties, trying to stop that war-cry scream. Her baby screaming and crying.
Two cops looked into the window and tapped on the glass. The engine revved, but she wasn’t going nowhere. She tried to calm Joy, that .22 still frozen in her fingers.
She looked at herself in the rearview mirror, the red eyes, and tears causing some confusion. She climbed out, tossed the gun in the dirt, and saw Gowrie surrounded by his shitty daddy, Charley Booth, and two more boys.
Ditto wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
Quinn Colson, two old men, and that big black man with one arm walked onto the grounds of the station. That woman deputy stood with them, aiming a rifle at Gowrie and his boys. Gowrie, bleeding in ragged spurts onto his T-shirt, seemed to think this whole mess was funny.
His gun was out.
All of ’em had guns out.
What followed lasted only thirty seconds but would often take hours to debate.
No one ever said who fired first, but it was thought the first shot came from the town water tower, no one being able to say—officially—who was up that high.
Gowrie was knocked back, covered in so much blood it was hard to tell where he’d been hit, and his daddy whipped his pistol up before being shot twice through the throat. He fell to the ground, crawling for his El Camino and making it only to the door handle before he died.
Charley Booth made a run for it, turning once to fire his revolver at the cops and getting two rounds of 16-gauge shot through him, opening up his chest like two solid fists. He bled out within a minute.
The other two boys, names later released before they headed to Parchman, dropped their guns and put up their hands. A large black man with one arm knocked them to the ground, holding them underfoot.