Full Dark, No Stars

It wasn’t the wind this time. She recognized the badly tuned thump of the engine even before the headlights splashed up the curve of the drive. Tess got on one knee and yanked the brim of her cap

down so the wind wouldn’t blow it off. She would have to approach, and that meant her timing would have to be exquisite. If she tried to shoot him from ambush, she would quite likely miss, even at close range; the gun instructor had told her she could only count on the Lemon Squeezer at ten feet or less. He had recommended she buy a more reliable handgun, but she never had. And getting close enough

to make sure of kil ing him wasn’t al . She had to make sure it was Strehlke in the truck, and not the brother or some friend.

I have no plan.

But it was too late to plan, because it was the truck and when the pole light came on, she saw the brown cap with the bleach-splatters on it. She also saw him wince against the glare, as she had, and

knew he was momentarily blinded. It was now or not at al .

I am the Courageous Woman.

With no plan, without even thinking, she walked around the back of the cab-over, not running but taking big, calm strides. The wind gusted around her, flapping her cargo pants. She opened the

passenger door and saw the ring with the red stone on his hand. He was grabbing a paper bag with the shape of a square box inside it. Beer, probably a twelve-pack. He turned toward her and something

terrible happened: she divided in two. The Courageous Woman saw the animal that had raped her, choked her, and put her in a pipe with two other rotting bodies. Tess saw the slightly broader face and

lines around the mouth and eyes that hadn’t been there on Friday afternoon. But even as she was registering these things, the Lemon Squeezer barked twice in her hand. The first bul et punctured Strehlke’s throat, just below the chin. The second opened a black hole above his bushy right eyebrow and shattered the driver’s side window. He fel backward against the door, the hand that had been

grasping the top of the paper bag dropping away. He gave a monstrous whole-body twitch, and the hand with the ring on it thudded against the middle of the steering wheel, honking the horn. Inside the

house, the dog began to bark again.

“No, it’s him!” She stood at the open door with the gun in her hand, staring in. “It’s got to be him!”

She rushed around the front of the pickup, lost her balance, went to one knee, got up, and yanked open the driver’s side door. Strehlke fel out and hit his dead head on the smooth asphalt of his

driveway. His hat fel off. His right eye, pul ed out of true by the bul et that had entered his head just above it, stared up at the moon. The left one stared at Tess. And it wasn’t the face that final y convinced her—the face with lines on it she was seeing for the very first time, the face pitted with old acne scars that hadn’t been there on Friday afternoon.

Was he big or real big? Betsy Neal had asked.

Real big, Tess had replied, and he had been… but not as big as this man. Her rapist had been six-six, she had thought when he got out of the truck ( this truck, she was in no doubt about that). Deep in the bel y, thick in the thighs, and as wide as a doorway. But this man had to be at least six- nine. She had come hunting a giant and kil ed a leviathan.

“Oh my God,” Tess said, and the wind whipped her words away. “Oh my dear God, what have I done?”

“You kil ed me, Tess,” the man on the ground said… and that certainly made sense, given the hole in his head and the one in his throat. “You went and kil ed Big Driver, just like you meant to.”

The strength left her muscles. She went to her knees beside him. Overhead, the moon beamed down from the roaring sky.

“The ring,” she whispered. “The hat. The truck.”

“He wears the ring and the hat when he goes hunting,” Big Driver said. “And he drives the pickup. When he goes hunting, I’m on the road in a Red Hawk cab-over and if anyone sees him—especial y

if he’s sitting down—they think they’re seeing me.”

“Why would he do that?” Tess asked the dead man. “You’re his brother.”

“Because he’s crazy,” Big Driver said patiently.

“And because it worked before,” Doreen Marquis said. “When they were younger and Lester got in trouble with the police. The question is whether Roscoe Strehlke committed suicide because of that

first trouble, or because Ramona made big brother Al take the blame for it. Or maybe Roscoe was going to tel and Ramona kil ed him. Made it look like suicide. Which way was it, Al?”

But on this subject Al was quiet. Dead quiet, in fact.