Leonard raised both arms, taking the slashes on the floor mats taped around his forearms. He rolled off the bed away from Mann, who tried to pursue his advantage by leaping up onto the bed and running across it at him.

Leonard swung the tire iron low this time and caught Mann on the side of the left knee. He heard a howl that rose as Mann dropped to the bed. He swung again, this time at Mann’s right arm, and caught him just at the wrist. Mann’s knife fell to the floor.

Leonard saw Mann’s left hand move to his waistband. Leonard hit the left hand with the tire iron and then stabbed his own knife into the space below Mann’s rib cage. He ran the knife upward under the ribs and completed the maneuver inmates called “running the gears,” moving the handle in an H-shape like a person shifting the standard transmission of a car. Then he moved Lonny Mann’s damaged left hand and took the gun from his belt. He didn’t have to examine him further to know that Mann was dead.

He stood in the dark room pulling the duct tape off the floor mats he’d wrapped around him and dropping them on the floor. The rubber mats suddenly seemed smothering and tight, and he could barely get them off fast enough. He opened the door on his end of the building and walked to the other end to do the same, and felt the cool air move through freely, lifting the heat from his sweat-soaked body.

The open doors admitted some light from the moon and stars, and that helped him focus his thoughts. He had to do something to make all this blood and Lonny Mann’s body look like a case of self-defense and not murder. He didn’t know the people in the community well enough to be sure what their first reaction would be, and Lee Wolf was away, so there was no way to ask him what to do.

Then he knew. He had his car, if only it still started. If it didn’t, he could take a battery from another car and return it later. He could load Mann’s body into the car trunk with the weapons and bloodstained sheets and so on, drive it somewhere in the mountains, and bury it. He would need help cleaning up the storage building, but he knew exactly whom to ask.

He trotted across the open meadow. He was not able to spare the time to walk around the community’s perimeter tonight. He was aware that he must be covered with Lonny Mann’s blood and looking terrible, but he needed to use every second of time and hope that nobody woke up and saw him.