Page 178 of Cold, Cold Bones
“Or worse.” Pure acid.
Henry shrugged.
Smiled her deranged smile.
Ratcheted back the slide on the Glock.
Aimed it fixedly at my right leg.
I glared, hating Donna Scott Henry as much as I’ve hated any other human being.
Henry inhaled. Spread her feet.
I closed my eyes. Braced.
Fleeting thought. Does a bullet hurt? Does shock blanket the initial pain?
I heard a pop.
Shattering glass.
Raised my lids.
Henry’s arms were down, the Glock gone. A small circle glistened dark on the right side of her forehead, blood streaming down from it toward her right ear.
Henry’s eyes were open, her lips shaped into a lopsided oval.
The expression held as its owner pitched forward onto the floor.
I must have looked as shocked as my suddenly dead tormentor.
My iPhone said 3:41 a.m.
I was calmer now. More rational than when they’d first brought me out of the basement, screaming and demanding a report on Katy.
I scanned the scene through an open door of Slidell’s 4Runner, a cold compress wrapping my neck.
An unlit road fed the isolated cul-de-sac, empty fields flanking it on both sides. Only one house occupied the little dead-end circle. One enormous oak, winter bare. One nonfunctioning streetlamp.
My first reaction had been creative but irrelevant. The isolated court looked like a set awaiting breakdown after shooting a scene forThe Grapes of Wrath,maybe an episode of Ken Burns’s Dust Bowl series.
I know. But my head had taken multiple blows.
The home was one-story—not a ranch, bungalow, mid-century, or craftsman. Not anything with sufficient style to warrant a name. It just looked old.
My battered brain was still trying to untangle what had happened inside those walls while around me the usual crime scene three-ring played out.
Shagbark Court—I’d heard that shouted—was a hive of activity. Patrol units had shot into it and stopped at random angles, their headlights piercing the darkness, their flashers strobing blue. Unmarked cars and SUVs, later arrivals, sat behind the ragged semicircle of cruisers, other vehicles along the curbs lining the street.
Uniforms mingled with plainclothes detectives and CSU techs. Some shouted orders, others shouted back, others conversed in clusters of two or three. Journalists strained behind yellow tape stretching across the street, frustrated at being held fifty feet back from the action. Everyone seemed tense.
The ambulance had screamed off before I was brought up from the basement, taking Katy to the nearest hospital before I could join her. Leaving me furious and fuming.
The ME van had left for the morgue, Henry’s body strapped to a gurney in the rear.
The SWAT team had departed in their Humvee.
I was glad Slidell had been called away from my side. His repeated insistence that I be checked by medics hadn’t been helping my head.
