Darktown (38 page)

“Brian Underhill, an ex-cop.”

“I never caught the gentleman's name. I followed them, but he pulled some crazy U-turn and hit a light and got flagged down by Negro policemen. I had to drive away but eventually I found him again, then lost him, and then I saw her running through the streets.”

The lid of the trunk opened again and Dunlow backed up two paces to give Boggs room. “Out.”

“You're making a mistake, Dunlow.”

“I don't want your blood all over my trunk but I'll shoot you now if I have to. Out.”

Boggs wondered how far away from Auburn Avenue he was. He had been hoping that perhaps by some miracle Smith might have been tailing Dunlow, that his partner was creeping through the woods to rescue him, but if so, that would have happened by now. It had taken Dunlow a good half hour to dig the grave that Boggs expected would be the last thing he'd ever see, and the white man was panting and sweaty and he smelled very drunk indeed even from a few paces away but the gun was steady in his hand.

Boggs slowly got out of the trunk. He held one of his hands to his ribs, as if they hurt—they did hurt, actually, quite a bit, but the reason he held his hand there was to conceal the sheared bottle neck that hand clasped. When he braced himself against the lid of the trunk to lift himself out, the neck cut into his palm but he took the pain because he couldn't drop the neck or let Dunlow see it. He stood and his head pounded, like the night he and Little had broken up a fight in the street.
Lord God, twice already I've had bottles broken against my skull.
The experience was not any easier to endure the second time.

“Step over there.”

He turned and took one step to his right, then slumped over as if falling. He braced himself against the side of Dunlow's car and let his body go limp. His knees were buckling and he was about to hit the ground when he felt one of Dunlow's hands at his neck.

“Goddammit, nigger, don't be falling on my car.”

But he wasn't falling, only pretending to. With Dunlow right behind him now, he swung around with his right hand, the sharp edge of the bottle neck facing out, and struck Dunlow. He'd spun around so fast he wasn't entirely sure where he hit him. Then an explosion and the sound of shattering glass. Boggs swung again, and again, and with his other arm he hit at Dunlow's right hand, the one with the gun in it, and there was another explosion and a cloud of gun smoke was hanging in the thick air between them. Boggs swung again with his right and
this time the bottle's neck wasn't in his hand anymore, he'd dropped it, and Dunlow fell back a step and Boggs heard a metal-on-metal sound that hopefully meant the gun had fallen against the car and was on the ground somewhere.

Dunlow held a hand to the left side of his neck, then pulled it away and looked at it and his eyes were wide and white and now Boggs could see the darkness pumping out of his neck and flowing down his chest, like Boggs had simply reached over and opened the man up, turned a spigot. Dunlow was pressing his hand against his own neck as if trying to shut the spigot but there was no way. He tried to back up again and this time he fell.

Boggs's hands were shaking but he dropped to the ground and found the gun, which was hot because he touched the barrel first. He stood again and aimed it at Dunlow's chest. It was rising and falling so fast, as though he was full of life and breath, as though he could never die.

“Oh Jesus. You black son of a bitch.”

The bottle neck had cut a four-inch gash in Dunlow's artery.

Boggs used his other hand to touch himself now, searching for a bullet wound, and though he felt the sting from some of the places where the shattered glass had cut him, nothing hurt enough to be a bullet wound.

Dunlow's chest was rising and falling less enthusiastically now. He was no longer looking at his foe, just staring into the sky.

The thought of offering some final words to Dunlow never even occurred to Boggs. The shock was enough, as was the thought that Dunlow might remember that he had another gun in his pocket or somehow heal himself.

Boggs was still aiming the gun at Dunlow's chest even past the point it was clear that the chest wasn't moving anymore.

Then Boggs sank to his knees and, seeing the shallow grave only a couple of feet away, scrambled toward it and threw up. After he was finished, he coughed, spat again, then sat back.

That's when he heard someone approaching on foot.

The son of Congressman Prescott continued his tale.

“I confronted her about the money. I told her all the things that had
been percolating in my mind over those few days. I was . . . so angry at her.”

“And you had a .22 on you.”

“I would have been a fool to tramp through Darktown without it. I don't even remember taking it out of my pocket. I told her what she'd done to me, the shame she'd brought on me, and then she started screaming. Just completely mad. Saying that . . . she was my father's daughter. She just . . . seemed deranged. She wouldn't stop. She wouldn't stop.”

“Until you stopped her.”

Prescott didn't contradict him. Rake continued, “Underhill was circling the neighborhood for her, and he heard the shot, and that's how he found you. Does your father know?”

Prescott glared. “
I
certainly didn't tell him. I don't know. Underhill came to my place the next day and told me not to worry, that everything was being taken care of. I did not see fit to ask him how informed of all this my father was. I just . . . tried to forget about it.”

Rake hadn't actually told Prescott that he was under arrest, and perhaps it was best not to. The words might jar him from the fugue that had settled over him. He was docile now, doing what he was told, and Rake guided him into the hallway where he could put on some shoes so he wouldn't have to walk out barefoot.

“I'd like to write a note for my father first.”

“You can do that later.”

“Please. Just . . . It will take only a minute. You can watch me. I've nothing left to hide, do I?”

Beyond the dining room was a small room with a desk and a mostly empty bookshelf. Prescott opened the desk's top drawer and it was as though Rake had seen this before when the man took from it a .22. Things did slow down this time. Rake reached to the small of his back and was pulling his gun from the holster while Prescott was lifting his own gun, held awkwardly in his fingers, held like someone who had used it often enough to know how it worked but not often enough to grip it properly or even lift it the right way, and now Rake's gun was at his side and his arm was swinging forward and he was just realizing how stupid he was, realizing that he wasn't going to get his gun in position
in time, when Prescott's pistol pointed very much the wrong way and he shot himself in the temple.

Now Rake's gun was ready but there was nothing to aim at anymore, because Prescott had fallen to the floor. The entire body had folded into itself so fast, as though gravity is twice as strong on the dead.

Prescott's legs did not twitch and his eyes did not flutter—the lids were down, as he must have closed them at that awful moment. He was just
there,
a heap on the ground, blood flowing from his skull. There was more redness and a fleck of what might have been bone on the wall. The bullet hole was a few inches from the blood splatter. Rake paused to note how surprising it was that the bullet and the blood could land in such different places, and he wondered about that for a moment, because he was stunned and it was an easier thing to think about than the huge amount of trouble he was in.

Boggs was sure he wasn't imagining the footsteps. He pointed Dunlow's pistol before him, though he could see only the first few feet of trees before all became darkness.

“Who's there?”

“You put that gun down!” The voice was high-pitched but commanding. It wasn't coming from very far away.

“I said who's there!”

“I see your pistol but this here's a rifle and you don't drop that in three seconds I'ma lay you flat.”

Boggs tried to focus on the region of darkness from where the voice seemed to be coming. He couldn't see anything but the intermittent lightning bugs that he half wondered were his own damaged neurons misfiring.

“I'm a police officer! From the city of Atlanta! If you have a rifle in your hand, you'd best lay it down, now!”

The unseen man's three-second warning passed, then twice as much time passed, then far more. Boggs felt dizzy from the blow to his head and weak from not having eaten in he couldn't remember how long, and he had no idea where he was or when the sun would rise.

“You ain't no cop.” The voice was ratcheted down a few notches.

“How many colored men you think would lie about that, huh?”

Silence for a few seconds. Boggs still couldn't see anyone.

“Listen here,” the voice said. “I'ma walk toward you a bit. I got this here rifle trained on you, so don't get to thinking nothing stupid. I'ma just get a bit closer so's we can talk. You so much as flinch and you're on the ground, got it?”

“I'm not lowering my weapon, if that's what you're asking. But come on over if you like.”

“Just don't do nothing we gonna regret.”

Twigs snapped and leaves crunched beneath the footsteps. A second later, a good many feet to the right of where Boggs had been pointing Dunlow's pistol, a figure emerged from the woods. The first thing Boggs noticed was the shine of the man's forehead, from the heat that would not abate even at night and from the terror of realizing he'd just come upon a crime scene. The second thing Boggs noticed was that the man was colored. He was wearing a gray T-shirt over brown canvas work pants.

The men were still aiming their weapons at each other.

“Sir, my name is Officer Lucius Boggs. I'm an officer with the Atlanta Police Department. This man tried to kill me.”

“Looks like you beat him to it.” When the man spoke, Boggs saw places where teeth should have been, as well as a few teeth.

“Just lucky.”

“Looks like you just barely lucky.”

“Where am I?”

“Tillsboro.” It was twenty miles south of the city. There was a paper mill and the area produced amazing strawberries, according to the grocer Boggs frequented. Lucius had never set foot here before. “You really a cop?”

“Yes. You can call the Atlanta police and ask them if you want. Is this your property?”

“No. Mine about three hundred yards behind me. I heard shots an' came looking.”

“Do you know this man? Any idea who he is?”

“No.”

Boggs believed him. He'd wondered whether Dunlow had used this spot before, whether it was a favored destination for disposing of bodies.
Perhaps Lily Ellsworth had been bound for here once, until Boggs and Smith's traffic stop of Underhill had thrown that evening's plan into disarray.

Boggs asked, “This kind of thing happen around here a lot?”

“Not that I've noticed.” The man was perhaps ten years older than Boggs, perhaps twenty.