“Shut up. It’ll work.” Bubba flicked his wrist and the cylinder snapped open. One golden eye of a slug stared up at us, disrupting an otherwise unbroken circle of small black holes. “See? There’s one in there.”

“One,” I said.

“One’ll do.”

Cody suddenly vaulted up off the floor toward us.

I raised my foot, stepped on his chest, and knocked him back down.

Bubba flicked the cylinder closed and pointed the gun. He dry-fired once and Cody screamed. He dry-fired a second time, and Cody made this weird laughing-crying sound.

He placed his hands over his eyes and said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” then did that laughing-crying thing again.

“Sixth time’s the charm,” Bubba said.

Cody looked up at the suppressor muzzle and ground the back of his head into the floor. His mouth was wide open, as if he were screaming, but all that came out was a soft, high-pitched “Na, na, na.”

I squatted down by him, yanked his right ear up to my mouth.

“I hate people who victimize women, Cody. Fucking hate ’em. I always find myself thinking, What if that woman was my sister? My mother? You see?”

Cody tried to twist his ear from my grip, but I held on tight. His eyes rolled back into his head and his cheeks puffed in and out.

“Look at me.”

Cody wrenched his eyes back to focus and looked up into my face.

“If the insurance doesn’t pay for her car, Cody, we’re coming back with the bill.”

The panic in his eyes ebbed as clarity replaced it. “I never touched that bitch’s car.”

“Bubba.”

Bubba took aim at Cody’s head.

“No! Listen, listen, listen. I…I…Karen Nichols, right?”

I held up a hand to Bubba.

“Okay, I, whatever you call it, I stalked her a bit. Just a game. Just a game. But not her car. I never—”

I brought my fist down on his stomach. The air blew out of his lungs and his mouth repeatedly chomped open and shut trying to get some oxygen.

“Okay, Cody. It’s a game. And this is the last inning. Understand this: I hear a woman—any woman—is being stalked in this city? Gets raped in this city? Has a bad fucking hair day in this city, Cody, and I’m just going to assume it’s you who did it. And we’ll come back.”

“And paralyze your dumb fucking ass,” Bubba said.

A burst of air exploded from Cody Falk’s lungs as he got them working again.

“Say you understand, Cody.”

“I understand,” Cody managed.

I looked at Bubba. He shrugged. I nodded.

Bubba unscrewed the silencer from the .22. He placed the gun in one pocket of his trench coat, the suppressor in the other. He walked over to the wall and picked up the tennis racket. He walked back and stood over Cody Falk.