“You reading from Psalms?” he said.
“I just flipped open the pages. I wasn’t—”
“You seem quite concentrated. What did you find that’s so revelatory in nature?”
“‘I’m the alpha and the omega. I am the beginning and the end. I am he who makes all things new.’”
“My father used to say, ‘When you see a man run for his Bible, he’s usually in the situation of a track crew trying to build a trestle over a canyon after the locomotive has gone over the cliff.’ I don’t think you would have liked my father. He wasn’t a likable man. There was a story that he beat a man to death with his fists. But I never believed it. Yes, that’s quite a quotation. But when I was having my face rebuilt, it didn’t strike me as altogether convincing.”
She heard Leslie pull back the hammer on the pistol. She breathed through her mouth and looked straight ahead, trying to concentrate on the symmetry of the countryside, the snow high up on Swan Peak, the normalcy of the world beyond the Wellstone compound. She could feel a tic begin to form in the skin under her left eye. “What are you doing?” she said.
“Setting the hammer on an empty chamber. That’s the safest way to carry a revolver. If I should drop it, there’s no way it can fire. See, a revolver doesn’t have a safety. I always set the hammer on an empty chamber so I don’t have to worry. Worry is like guilt — it can drain a person, can’t it, Jamie Sue?”
“Please don’t stand behind me with that gun.”
“A revolver is a pistol, not a gun.”
He stepped within her line of vision and propped one hand on the balcony’s rail. Something had frightened the robin. It flew to the barn roof, perched briefly on the apex, and seconds later, returned to the nest. “Would you like to fire a round?” Leslie said.
“It’ll frighten the animals.”
“I doubt it. They’re hardy fellows. Besides, I don’t have the Magnum cylinder in the frame. The twenty-two long-rifle doesn’t make much noise. Just a little pop. Give it a try.”
“I don’t want to.”
He studied the sugar maple, then lifted the revolver and pointed it out in front of him, closing one eye as he aimed. “Either you take a shot or I do,” he said.
“Don’t do this, Leslie.”
“Just one shot. I don’t miss. But you just might. Give it a try. You might like it. Women do it once and sometimes fall in love with it. I think it’s a guilty pleasure with them.”
“Why are you so cruel?”
He notched back the hammer to full cock with his thumb. “Last chance. If I can bust a beer bottle at ninety yards, I should be able to pot a robin.”
“You’re sickening and hateful. You make everyone over in your image. You’re like a virus that spreads from one person to the next,” she said, closing the Bible, getting up from her chair, her blood draining into her stomach.
The corner of Leslie’s mouth flexed in a smile, exposing a canine tooth. He lowered the pistol and reset the hammer on half-cock, then rotated the cylinder to an empty chamber again. He eased the hammer softly onto the firing pin, locking the cylinder back into place, effectively disarming the pistol. “I just wanted you to say it. Your husband both sickens and inspires loathing in you. But tell me, Jamie Sue, do you think you might be guilty of marrying up and screwing down? I think that’s the term for it. Is it possible the blight is on your soul and not just on the face of your disfigured spouse?”
LATER ON SATURDAY, Clete walked up to our cabin but did not knock. Instead, he sat down heavily in a wood chair, propped his hands on his knees, and watched a flock of wild turkeys pecking in the grass across the dirt road. I opened the front door and looked at the b
ack of his head. “Want to come in?” I said.
“Not particularly,” he said. His porkpie hat was slanted on his forehead, his shoulders rounded like the back on a whale. The truck was gone, so he knew Molly was not at home. “You dimed me with Alicia?”
“You mean did I tell her you and I both thought Gribble was using an alias and that he was a fugitive? Yeah, I did.”
“You want to explain why you took that upon yourself?”
“The guy is a material witness in a homicide, specifically a homicide you committed. In case you haven’t heard, the person whose life you saved, Candace Sweeney, didn’t see a gun on Whitley. We need Gribble or Greenwood or whatever his name is to clear you.”
“I know all about that, Dave. You should have let me talk to Alicia.”
“You seem to be taking your time in getting around to it.”
“She accused me of being a sexual Benedict Arnold. She said I’d deceived and made a fool out of her. She said she might have to tell her supervisor she’s been getting it on with me. Her career might be flushed.”
“Did she bother to tell you Whitley was an FBI informant?”