Part 24 (1/2)

Vanessa wheeled and fired Bear tried to wrestle the gun away from her, but Vanessa, who possessed the adrenaline power of the de everything in sight Horse parts exploded, zinging all over the room I cowered, hands over head She must have run out of bullets at last because she stopped shooting

Bear sprang and caught ainst Marlboro Man, who toppled and broke Lifting s so I couldn't kick, Bear cla me like a hu ”Pick up that leg bone there”

Eyes glittering with malice, Vanessa snatched up the horse's cannon bone, shattered at the knee by one of her stray shots It hed thirty pounds, but Vanessa hefted it as easily as though it were a cookie spatula I sawat me in slow motion; Vanessa would whale away at me until I was a bloody pulp, and when they found h I'd been pulverized by plastinated sculptures

With the skill engendered by years of swinging golf clubs, Vanessa leaped forward and brought the cannon bone crashi+ng doard my head Lotsa muscle, lousy aiony and droppedthe bone down against eredthe cannon bone back for a killer blow Torquing rabbed a fistful of Vanessa's skirt, yanked it with all th, and hauled her off balance She crashed to the floor, toppling poor old Archer, whose body parts scattered like flung dice

But Vanessa was the Energizer Bunny of crazed in-laws, single- around with reility, she flailed ata blow onme wild

Growling like an animal, I clamped my jaws around Vanessa's hand and bit so hard my teeth jarred She squealed in pain and dropped the bone I jerked her up by her hair and got so far in her face ere bared teeth to bared teeth ”Listen, you insane hag! I didn't kill your idiot son But guess what-I'otten about Bear, who now lurched up behindVanessa, I scrabbled frantically for a weapon, snatching the first thing that came to hand-the broken-off end of the archer's bow I swiveled and jabbed blindly, driving the jagged wood into Bear's flesh with all , he floundered backward into the remnants of the horse and rider sculpture It wobbled, tottered, and swayed Bones cracked,wood Then, twelve hundred pounds of dead horse collapsed onto Senator Stanford Brenner

Suddenly the roo mauled by psycho-senator? Labeck hauled htly I couldn't breathe, babbling incoherent stuff intoency techs, fire into the exhibit, coughing and getting soaked and scoping out what I earing Which was basically nothing

Labeck took off his torn, bloody tuxedo jacket and draped it over ratitude I experienced felt almost like love

A bodies, and the wreckage, it ain Rico had soed to insinuate himself into the mob-his chauffeur's uniform made him look sort of official, like the dictator of a minor banana republic He came up to me and whispered, ”The limo's just out back C'mon, Maze-echa la cookie”

I admit I was tempted But that wasn't the plan

It was tiled myself from Labeck and spoke to Rico ”Get Eddie over here The two of you are going to walk me over to the uy's a porker”

”He's Irving Katz He's a federal porker You and Eddie are going to turn me in to hi in our whole sche Katz, the only person I trusted to be immune from Brenner contamination

I stood on tiptoes and kissed Rico's baby-faced cheek ”You and Eddie are going to split the fifty thousand reward It's for college Use it for anything else and I'll break out of prison again and beat your pimply little butts”

Escape tip 33: It's not what you know; it's who's on your side

That's life You've got the se of a dozen once-human bodies, and the Real Murderer-and you're still the one who goes to jail

The prison staff punishedto escape I'd made them look foolish, eluded capture for a week, and drained theher office I was hauled back to Taycheedah the night of the iven an ice pack for e forhead Then they shoved htened days, Rehabilitative Seclusion was called Solitary Confinement, but we live in more humane times and the euphemisms are a with the other inmates-the staff didn't want me made into a hero No exercise period, television, books, or newspapers The cell was eight by ten feet, less, virtually airless, furnished only with a bunk and a toilet Meals were delivered through a hole in the cell door I wasn't restricted to bread and water, but RS is a long way froot to my cell I refused to eat most of it anyway, on the theory that the staff had probably spit in it

I wasn't physically abused, but uards were cruel in that quietly vicious way only woe

Where's your Mazie- around practically naked

You still stink like cow crap!

I let it all float over my head When you've been buried alive, almost electrocuted, practically incinerated, and nearly brained with a horse hock, everything else shrinks to mere inconvenience I ached all over My mosquito bites itched My sliced hand throbbed My shoulder was turning the reddish purple of grape jelly

And I missed Bonaparte Labeck with an ache that was asthe closetlike confines ofinhowthat muffin hadn't been returned to Vanessa

If there were any justice in the world, Vanessa would be here in Taycheedah, wearing a neon orange ju off the advances of Mona the Monobrow She and I could swap beauty tips: Pu skin off your heels with recreation yard dirt Condition your dull, lanky hair with Crisco oil swiped from the kitchens

And what about Bear? Had he survived? Dead was good, but second best would be shackled hand and foot in a cell with a dozen other drug-dealing, pedophilethe arine off uard unlocked my cell door and Winnifred Stuckey, the assistant Warden, strode in She was a tall, stoop-shouldered woe hair scraped back by a plastic headband ”C'er

I followed Stuckey downa floor in the E wing hallway, her dreadlocks swinging into her face as she worked She looked up dully, but when she saw uire!” she said ”Hey, Maze-how you doing?” She fist-bu as we touched how much I'd missed simple human contact Annoyed, Stuckey ordered the inrapevined up and down the hallways; prison news travels even faster than Twitter By the time I was hustled down the next halloainst cell s Whistles, cheers, hoops

”Way to go, girl!” That was Tina Sanchez, beaned as cellmates

”Nice work, babes!” A double thu Queen

”I wormed the warden's con anything without an attorney present!” Liza Loonsfoot, jailhouse lawyer

Winnifred Stuckey, who now looked as though she were chewing a giant wad of aluminum foil, opened a door and shoved ht daylight I was in the Unrestricted Visitors Roolass between inmates and visitors You could sit and talk on the kind of furniture they have in motels where the television is chained to the wall

Aat theon the far side of the roorounds He turned when I ca Katz

”Miss Maguire” He held out his hand and I shook it, surprised Last tiht I'd turned myself in to his custody, he'd been stiff, cool, and still royally pissed at having had to chase me all over the state for six days Noas relaxed and suy who'd picked a ticket up off the sidewalk and discovered he'd won the Powerball He'd ditched the suit and earing khakis and a black knit shi+rt with a US Marshal's Office logo on the chest I was starting to like the Zorro mustache

As a favor to him, I decided to stay doind I hadn't been allowed a shower, shae of underwear since I'd been thrown into RS I earing paper slippers and a le-sack blankets advertised on late-night television

The sharp dark eyes ski as X-ray vision, Irving Katz had it

”I'd like to speak privately with Miss Maguire,” Katz said, turning to Stuckey

She bristled ”It's against the rules She's an escape risk”

”I'll take responsibility for her”

Stuckey left, ulations, and Katz turned toto try to escape, are you?”

”I never rule it out”