The Triggerman Dance

John's hand is still in his pocket and he knows it's still in his pocket but there's nothing getting to his brain or lungs and the world is getting fuzzy, warm and distant. He tries to focus on the agents but can only see the bullets right in front of his eyes. Are they starting to rotate? Then there's a roaring, percussive cluster of blasts and John feels his flesh shudder with the impact, feels the crack and splinter of bone around his face and the sudden splatter of blood into his eyes, and the terrible surge of something weighty and pressurized exploding. John falls thinking, so this is how it feels. You fall. Just like I thought. The next thing he knows he's on his back staring up at a clear blue sky and there's a warm breeze on his face and the air is rushing back into his lungs and someone is screaming call the ambulance, call thefuckingambulancejosh while her fingers dig into his neck. He can smell something metallic and wet on his face cooling in the breeze. A lot of it. But he realizes that he still has his hand on the gun. He grabs Sharon's arm with his free hand, climbs to his feet and finally draws it. It doesn't take him long to find what he's after. To get the sonofabitch in his sights. No. Because Holt is right there at John's feet with a blank look in his eyes and a big black hole between them, just above the frame of his glasses, another one in the middle of his forehead and another one an inch from that John feels himself swaying. He tries to follow the sight of the automatic passing back and forth across Holt's chest.

"Easy, John," someone is saying. "Easy, John. We got him, You did your job. It's over."

He stands there and for a moment feels above it all, sees himself from above looking down at himself standing over a dead body and pocketing his gun, looking down at a young man sprawled on the gravel with an automatic beside him, at a woman with dark hair and blood on her blouse and a lithe little guy with a pale face and a telephone in his hand, speaking but making no sound.

I'm still alive, he thinks, but I've gone to hell anyway.

A few moments later a red Jeep flies over the rise and skids to a stop. Valerie Holt stares at him from the driver's seat. Fargo sits next to her.

The sight of her brings John back to himself. He strips off his coat and covers Holt. He steps to meet her as she breaks into a run. She pulls up just short of him and glares at Dumars and Joshua. Then she brings her full attention to what lies on the ground.

"Oh," she says. "No? No."

John sees her confusion turn to horror as she raises her eyes and beholds his face. He tries to guide her to the Jeep but she slugs and kicks her way past him. Joshua and Dumars converge, badges flashing. Then Joshua is barking his Bureauspeak while he and Sharon defend their prey. Fargo joins in, helping them drag Valerie back to her vehicle. Her arm trails out, hand open and fingers stretched, reaching back toward her father. As they pass John, Valerie fixes him with an utterly comprehending stare and Fargo adds his own malevolent gaze. "We have a date now, friend," he says.

John stands there, watching them stuff Valerie back into her Jeep. The tablecloth skids across the gravel in the wind. The silver domes and china lie on the ground like old treasures. Susan Baum still sits at the table, silent, shivering and unseeing beneath the monumental bronzes of the Holt family.

Fargo drives the Jeep away.

You did your job.

A while later a helicopter descends toward Top of the World in a lazy spiral and three Bureau sedans trail their way up from the road below.

John is sitting on the stone bench next to Baum when the cars make the summit. Though he has an arm around her shaking body and though he mutters words of comfort to her, John feels nothing but darkness inside. And as he gazes out at the autumn splendor of Liberty Ridge, he sees nothing but darkness there, too.

CHAPTER 41

Late that afternoon he packed up his things and set them on the breakfast counter of the cottage. Not that he had much: his personal effects, the clothes that he and Valerie had bought, half sack of dog food, his birdgun and a couple .boxes of shells. He stood for a while in the little kitchen and looked out at the lake watching his dogs in the water fighting over a ball. He slipped shell into the shotgun, let the action snap shut and put on the safety, leaving it on the bar, pointed toward the door. He took the .45 from his coat pocket and set it on the bag of kibbles.

For the third time that day he walked across the meadow to the Big House. But for the first time, Lane Fargo was not there to turn him away at the door. He brushed his way past one of the cooks and walked down the tiled entryway, beneath the big timber beams, past the wrought iron candleholders and the oil paintings of the rancho days.