Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [183]
Scared? Beth? No, that didn’t make any sense. But still, Beth had been different before she died.
No, not died. Beth had been killed. By a hit-and-run driver. The pain settled heavily in Lily’s heart as she wondered if she would ever know the truth.
She shook her head, drank more water from the tap. Her brother and Sherlock had left, after she’d assured them at least a half dozen times that she still felt calm, didn’t hurt at all. She was fine, go, go, pack up her things in Hemlock Bay. She hoped Tennyson hadn’t trashed her drawing supplies.
She drew a deep, clean breath. Yes, she wanted her drawing supplies today, as soon as possible. She wanted to hold her #2 red sable brush again, but it would be foolish to buy another one just to use today. No, she’d buy only a small sampler set of pens and pen points, inexpensive ones because it didn’t really matter. Maybe she’d get a Speedball cartooning set, like the one her folks had given her when she’d wanted to try cartooning so many years before. Those pens would still feel familiar in her hand. And a bottle of India ink, some standard-size, twenty-pound typing paper, durable paper that would last, no matter how many times it was shoved into envelopes or worked on by her and the editors. Yes, some nice bond paper, not more than a hundred sheets. Usually, since she did political cartoons, she used strips of paper cut from larger sheets of special artist paper, thicker than a postcard—bristol board, it was called, well suited for brushwork. And one bottle of Liquid Paper. She could see herself—not more than an hour from now—drawing those sharp, pale lines that would become the man of the hour, Senator No Wrinkles Remus, the soon-to-be president of the United States, from that fine state of West Dementia, where the good senator has managed to divide his state into halves, to conduct the ultimate experiment with gun control. One half of the state has complete gun control, as strict as in England; the other half of West Dementia has no gun control at all. He gives an impassioned speech to the state legislature, with the blessing of the governor, whom he’s blackmailed for taking money from a contractor who is also his nephew: “One year, that’s all we ask,” Remus says, waving his arms to embrace all of them. “One year and we’ll know once and for all what the answer is.”
And what happens in the west of West Dementia is that criminals auction off areas to one another since civilians aren’t allowed to own any device that shoots a bullet out of a barrel. Criminals break-and-enter at their leisure, whenever the spirit moves them. Houses, banks, gas stations, 7-Elevens, nothing is safe.
In east West Dementia, every sort of gun abounds, from sleek pistols that fire one round a minute to behemoths that kick out eight hundred zillion rounds a second. There are simply no limits at all. Because of the endless supply, guns are really cheap. What happens surprises everyone: robbery stats go down nearly seventy percent after a good dozen would-be robbers are killed breaking in—to homes, banks, filling stations, 7-Elevens.
On the other side of it, killing abounds. Everything that moves, and doesn’t move, gets shot—deer, rabbits, cars, people. Some people even take to target-shooting in the rivers. Many trout, it is said, die from gunshot wounds.
There are rumors of payoffs from both the National Rifle Association and the Mafia to No Wrinkles Remus, but like his name, no matter what he does—or people believe he does—that face of his remains smooth and absolutely trustworthy.
Lily was grinning like a madwoman. She rubbed her hands together. She wanted to draw No Wrinkles Remus—now, right this minute, as soon as she could get a pen between her fingers. She didn’t need a drawing table, the small circular Victorian table in her room would be perfect. The sun was coming in at exactly the right