Peter flattened himself to the floor. Round after wild round sprayed across the room. Plaster cracked from the walls, feathers flew from couch cushions, the television screen shattered, it went on and on and on. Until, finally, the gun was silent.

Peter looked and saw Helene holding Roy upright. It seemed impossible, because he was so much larger than her and his knees had begun to buckle. But she held him on his feet anyway, perhaps by force of will alone. Roy’s eyes sagged and his head dipped and he spoke into her ear. Just a few words, his fading voice too soft for Peter to hear.

Then she let him go, or maybe she pushed him, because he fell backward from his heels like a poorly planted tombstone. Dead, he hit the floor hard enough to rattle the dishes in the china cabinet.

The chest and shoulders of Helene’s zip sweatshirt were smeared with his blood. On the round dome of her belly was a bright red handprint. She was breathing hard, as if at the end of a long, hard, race. Then she began to cry.

In the leather chair, the fat man with the dark mustache stared at her, but he didn’t share his thoughts with the room.

He was too busy bleeding out from the bullet holes in his neck and stomach.

72

Waiting for the Montana state troopers, Bobbie and June clustered with Helene in the kitchen, out of sight of the dead. Peter and Lewis, temporarily unwelcome because of their gender, sat on the porch drinking Bogaloosa’s instant coffee and watching the light gather in the east.

After photographs and initial statements, with reassurance from Agent Campbell’s Montana counterparts, the troopers had escorted Peter and Helene to the hospital in Glasgow, where Peter got a cast on his forearm for his broken ulna and a referral to a knee specialist in Rochester, Minnesota.

He had no desire to hang around the waiting room, so he and Lewis and June sat on the picnic table outside the emergency room entrance. Helene was still inside the hospital with Bobbie, who had appointed herself Helene’s protector and advocate, getting a comprehensive ob-gyn workup.

Peter drank some bad vending machine coffee. “How much trouble is she in, do you think?”

“Hard to say.” June was typing up her notes on her laptop. “Legally, Helene’s an accessory to murder, but she’s not without leverage. This is already national news. If we’re right about Roy and all those missing women, the story will only get bigger. I’m hoping she’ll let me help tell her side.”

Lewis chuckled. “Once people read about the coyotes in the woods and the bodies in the freezer, won’t no prosecutor indict her for anything. ’Cause she slayed the monster and no jury will vote to convict.”

Peter looked at his friend. “When are you headed home?”

“Depends,” he said. “You need me to drive that antique pickup? Hard to use the clutch with that knee.”