The shotgun fell away from me.
His mouth stayed open, but all that could be heard was a faint gurgling sound. He clamped one hand to the wound, blood spilling out between his fingers. He held on to the shotgun with the other hand, turned it toward Orville. Before he could fire, Orville shot him again, this time in the chest, and Timmy dropped to the floor.
Orville took a step forward and in the moment before Timmy Wickens closed his eyes, Orville said, “He’s my brother.”
39
BY THE TIME THE SUN CAME UP, Hank Wrigley was in Braynor District Hospital getting patched up, Betty at his side. What was once a farmhouse was nothing but a pile of smoldering embers. A pumper from the Braynor Fire Department was still pouring water onto the site. They’d run a hose down to the lake and were pumping from there.
After Orville shot Timmy Wickens, I flicked the lights at Dad’s cabin on and off until he came back in the boat with May and Jeffrey. Lawrence showed up not long after that, once the ambulance attendants had arrived and left with Betty and Hank. We both made a point of keeping May and her son away from cabin 3, where Timmy lay in a pool of his own blood.
Dr. Heath was roused from his slumber so that he could pronounce Timmy Wickens and Wendell dead. Nobody was able to find enough of Dougie or Charlene to make a similar assessment.
The coroner was good enough to retrieve our car keys from what was left of Wendell’s jacket and pants. The dogs had chewed through them, and him, pretty thoroughly.
The phone company even sent someone out to get the line to Dad’s cabin reconnected. The cops—and they were from every level imaginable—were turning Dad’s place into a temporary command center, and wanted the phone operating pronto.
Once the phone was working, I called Sarah and gave her the short version. I told her I’d be home sometime in the late afternoon, and would write something for the next day’s edition of The Metropolitan. About a family of homicidal psychos who’d planned to blow up a parade.
“You still want this other information you were asking me about the other day?” she said. About a shelter, where a woman with a child on the run could go.
“She’s not exactly on the run now,” I said. “But she’s going to need some help. Everything she had is gone. No clothes, nothing.”
“I’ll start making some calls,” Sarah said.
“See if we have some old stuff of Paul’s that would fit a ten-year-old.”
Lawrence, who’d walked into Dad’s study in the middle of my conversation, said, “They can stay with me till we get them set up someplace.”
“That’d be great,” I said to Lawrence. I told Sarah of Lawrence’s offer and added, “She’s a nice woman. She’s been through a lot. And she and Jeffrey are on their own now. That’s actually going to be a plus, given who she was with, but she’s still going to be traumatized for a while.”
“Sure,” said Sarah. “And you? Are you okay?”
I smiled. “I’m a complete disaster.”
“Get home safely.”
I hung up and found Dad in the kitchen, sitting at the table, looking dazed and tired. I asked him about the ankle, and he said it was a bit swollen again.
“But I don’t need you here anymore,” he said. “I’m closing the place for the rest of the season. Soon as Hank’s released, he and Betty are going. Bob’s taking off end of the day. Leonard Colebert’s family is due here today to pick up his things. And there’s a lot of stuff to deal with, of course. Insurance, for one thing.”
“Well, at least you don’t have to worry anymore about finding a way to get the Wickenses out of your house.”
Dad gave me a tired smile. “No Wickenses. No house. No problem.”
I found Bob Spooner down by the water, sitting in his boat, just looking out over the lake.
“How was the tractor?” I asked.
“Fast,” he said.
“I was serious, what I said last night,” I said.
“About what?”
“About going fishing. Are you packing up yet?”
“Not till the end of the day. I might even hang in until tomorrow. Are you serious? After all that’s happened? You want to go out one last time?”
“Yeah,” I said. “If you don’t mind. Something a bit restful, for a change.”
“Sure.”
“In an hour?”
Bob said sure, again.
The parade, we heard later, went off without a hitch. Stuart Lethbridge and the rest of the Fifty Lakes Gay and Lesbian Coalition failed to show. Turns out Stuart couldn’t get anyone to run the comics shop, and Saturday being his busiest day, he couldn’t afford to close.
May and Jeffrey were going back to the city in Lawrence’s Jag. They’d given statements to the police, and Lawrence had let them know that they’d be staying at his place, at least for a while.