Part 91 (1/2)

”Your sister lives in Seattle, f.u.c.k. She and her husband and their-”

”-children, yeah, Scott, just went on vacation,” I said. ”My treat. I sent them tickets last Monday, s.h.i.+thead. They left this morning.”

”She'll come back sometime.” He stared directly up at the roof, and from here I could see cords in his neck strain against the skin.

”But by then, Scottie, this'll be over.”

”I'm not that easy to shake up, Pat.”

”Sure you are, Scottie. A guy who bayonets a roomful of dying women is a guy who snaps. So, get ready Scott, you're about to start snapping.”

Scott Pea.r.s.e stared defiantly at his windowpane. He said, ”Listen to-” and I hung up the phone.

He stared at the phone in his hand, shocked beyond reason, I think, that two people had dared hang up on him in the same night.

I nodded at Nelson.

Scott Pea.r.s.e gripped the phone between his hands and raised it over his head and the window beside him exploded as Nelson fired four rounds into it.

Pea.r.s.e vaulted backward onto the floor and the phone skittered out of his hand.

Nelson pivoted and fired again, three times, and the window in front of Scott Pea.r.s.e imploded in a cascade, like ice pouring from the back of a faulty tailgate.

Pea.r.s.e rolled to his left and up into a crouch.

”Just don't hit his body,” I said to Nelson.

Nelson nodded and fired several shots into the floor a few inches behind Scott Pea.r.s.e's feet as he scampered over the blond wood. He sprang up like a cat and vaulted over the bar into the kitchen.

Nelson looked at me.

Angie glanced up from Bubba's police scanner as Scott Pea.r.s.e's alarm bells ripped through the still summer night. ”We got, maybe, two minutes-thirty.”

I backhanded Nelson's shoulder. ”How much damage can you do in a minute flat?”

Nelson smiled. ”f.u.c.king boatload, dude.”

”Go nuts.”

Nelson took out the rest of the windows first, then went to work on the lights. The stained-gla.s.s Tiffany lamp over the bar looked like a pack of fruity Life Savers stuffed in a cherry bomb by the time he was through with it. The track lights over the kitchen and living room shredded into popping shards of white plastic and pale gla.s.s. The video cameras went up in blue and red blurs of electrical spark. Nelson turned the floor to splinters, the couches and slim leather recliners into piles of white moss, and punched so many holes in the refrigerator, most of the food would probably spoil before the cops finished writing their reports.

”One minute,” Angie yelled over the roar. ”Let's go.”

Nelson looked back over his shoulder at the glittering ma.s.s of bra.s.s sh.e.l.ls. ”Who loaded the mags?”

”Bubba.”

He nodded. ”They're clean, then.”