“I can’t. The night before last, someone left a picture of Kris Ann on my windshield. It was mutilated like Jason’s mother’s.”

She stiffened. “Jason wouldn’t have done that to his mother.”

“But what if she weren’t raped, if she’d slept with someone first: a lover. Jason could have killed her.”

“He couldn’t have,” she insisted.

“Terry, if you were alone that night then he might not only have killed Lydia, he may kill Kris Ann, or you.”

She shook her head, looking away. “I told the police he was here with me, remember?”

“Then you may be accessory to a murder.”

She stood abruptly and went to the door. “Please, go before he comes home.”

I got up, catching her by the wrist. “Terry, he might kill someone. You have to tell the truth.”

She turned, frightened, and then her eyes went blank. I heard footsteps again, becoming louder, felt her trembling. When the door opened I still held her wrist.

Jason stood in the doorway.

“Jason. It’s all right.”

Terry’s voice was a thin wire of fear. He looked from her to me almost glassily, flushed and swallowing. I dropped her arm. “Hold on, man.”

His face went rigid. He threw the door closed behind him and stalked between us to the bedroom. We froze watching the bedroom door. Jason came though it pointing a black revolver.

It followed me as I moved away from Terry. “I don’t like guns,” I said in a low voice.

“Jason.” She was panicky now. “Don’t.”

He didn’t seem to hear. As he came closer the small black hole of the revolver moved upward toward my face, stopping two inches from my mouth. His black eyes watched me over the gun. Terry moved next to him. “Jason, please …”

His boot jackknifed into my groin. I doubled retching as sickness numbed me and the girl screamed. Then the gun butt smashed my temple.

I was crawling on my stomach through a black hole with white flashes and a wooden door at the end while someone grappled behind me. A girl’s voice panted, “Don’t shoot him.” My head swelled and shrank. With two hands I reached grasping toward a doorknob and wrenched myself up. I couldn’t walk. A long dark moment later I fell face first down a flight of stairs, out of the universe.

Twenty-three

TWENTY-THREE

I reached in the darkness. My face brushed his overcoat, mildew-smelling. His revolver lay on the closet shelf above me. Teetering on the stool, I grasped the shelf with one hand and stretched. My fingers splayed. The tips felt cold steel …

“Adam!”

My hand fell away as the stool tipped clattering to the floor. I caught the shelf, hanging amidst his clothes. Her fingers clutched the back of my shirt. I lost my grip, fell, landed off balance. Hangers rattled as I stumbled against the closet wall and turned.