Deviation (23 page)

She crawled out from under the
bench. Her head was pounding, rivaling the relentless pain of her
mashed hand. She needed pain pills, at the very least. Probably
more. A trip to the emergency room. It occurred to her that she
still had health insurance. She could drive to the hospital and have
her hand administered to. No one really knew she was involved in
anything yet. At least she didn't think so.

She stood up and a wave of
dizziness and nausea overtaking her and almost causing her to
collapse. She instinctively reached out to grab the workbench with
her left hand and screamed when another shock of raw pain blossomed
in her hand and shot up the length of her arm. She twisted and
leaned forward, bent over the bench for support. This was not going
to be easy.

It took her a minute to steady
herself. When her vision cleared and she was able to move again, she
began taking small steps toward the door. Something inside her
wanted to return to Frank, but she knew Frank was gone. She didn't
want to see him again, not the way he was now. She wanted to
remember him as he'd been.

She reached the door, which was
still open, and slowly made her way back into the house.

* * *

Despite her shortage of time,
Dianne spent two minutes in the shower, washing the blood and vomit
from her body. She knew it was risky, but she simply couldn't
continue on as filthy as she was. When she was finished, she dried
off using one of the Brenner's bath towels. It was terribly
difficult to do with only one hand, and the other one screaming with
pain, but she knew she was going to have to get used to being
handicapped, at least for awhile.

While she was in the bathroom,
she took a moment to rummage through the medicine cabinet over the
sink. She got lucky and found a roll of bandaging material and some
tape. Knowing she was pushing her luck, she quickly wrapped her hand
and wrist into a secure sort of cast. It did nothing to alleviate
the pain, but it did make her feel fractionally better, if only
because she didn't have to see her ruined hand anymore.

There was a bottle of ibuprofen
staring at her from the medicine cabinet. She opened it with her
teeth and spit the cap out onto the floor. Then she dumped three of
the pills into her mouth, washing them down with water from the sink.
She left the bathroom in a hurry, returning to the bedroom to get
dressed.

As she was struggling into her
shirt, she heard the first police siren. It was still very faint.
More than likely, they'd send only a single car to investigate the
shots. More would come later, she knew, when they realized what had
transpired in the house.

She pulled on a pair of pants,
hopping around and wincing as she fought to get them zippered and
buttoned. Some of Frank's weed would be a big help; his larger bag
was still out in the Honda. She'd have plenty of time to smoke some
later, when she wasn't so pressed for time.

She sat on the edge of the bed
to put her shoes on. She did it without much trouble, but had no way
of tying the laces; it was completely out of the question. Leaving
them loose and dragging on the floor, she got up and scrambled
through the house, attempting to collect her things. All she really
needed was the gun, her purse and her duffel bag. She would leave
Frank's things where they were. It broke her heart to have to leave
him behind, but there was nothing she could do about it.

“I'm sorry, Frank,”
she whispered. “God, I'm so sorry.”

The siren was getting louder
very quickly. She found her things and rushed into the living room
before realizing she didn't know where the keys to the Honda were.
If Frank had them, she was going to be in big trouble. She set her
purse down on the coffee table and dug through it, growing more
frantic with each passing second. Even if she found the keys now,
she wasn't sure she'd be able to get out in time; the sirens sounded
like they were only a block or two away.

There! She had them all along.
She pulled them from her purse and stuffed them into her front
pocket. Then she grabbed the gun and her duffel bag and was moving
toward the front door when the volume of the siren grew impossibly
loud.

Through the front window, she
saw a cop car pull up right in front of the house.

“Not now!” she
yelled. “I'm so close!”

The siren cut off abruptly,
drowning the house in silence. She stood and watched as two
uniformed cops climbed out of the car and slowly made their way
toward the front door. One of them was talking into a radio, and
they were both unholstering their pistols.

“Fuck! This can't be
happening!”

She considered running to the
back door. The problem was, there were probably neighbors watching
the house. Someone had called the police, after all. She stood
there, shaking, feeling sick in every imaginable sense. She was
frozen. It was all over.

One of the cops reached the
front porch and pounded loudly on the door.

One chance. Her mind was
spinning out of control. She reached out blindly and grabbed at
something.

An idea.

Leaving everything on the table
except for her gun, Dianne took off down the hall, returning to
Donnie's bedroom and the three corpses that were waiting there.

* * *

The three bodies were slumped
alongside one another and still bound to the iron bed frame. The
expressions of sheer terror frozen on their waxen faces and the
crusted, bloody wounds on their necks and bodies left little question
that they were dead. Dianne pulled the bedspread from the bed and
draped it partially over Kim, sitting down beside her and snuggling
up close. She pulled the bedspread over herself, as well, trying to
make it appear that she was part of the family.

She sat very still, listening
intently and trying not to breathe through her nose. The stench in
the room was beyond disgusting. It caused her eyes to water and left
a sickening taste in the back of her throat. As the seconds ticked
by, she began to wonder if she'd made a mistake by coming in here.

From the living room, she heard
one of the cops announcing that they were coming in. This was
followed by a loud crash as the front door was thrown open and then
she could hear them scurrying around, muttering to each other.

She sat and waited, knowing it
wouldn't take long.

Within 30 seconds of them
entering the house, she heard one of the cops directly outside the
bedroom door. They were announcing themselves, loudly, not wanting
violence but ready for it if it presented itself. She sat there,
completely still, feeling more frightened than she'd ever been before
and running all her options through her mind. As far as she could
tell, she really only had two.

She could surrender. They'd
take her away, to some police station, and she'd have the chance to
tell her side of the story. She could pretend that she was nothing
but a victim, that she'd been forced at gunpoint by Frank to come
along with him and partake in his bizarre adventure. She could
explain that all the killings were the work of Douglas McKenzie and
that she was fully innocent of any and all wrongdoing. It would be
mostly believable, too, based on her history. The problem was, there
would almost certainly be physical evidence proving otherwise. She'd
murdered Cliff, of course, as well as the owner of the Honda. She'd
killed McKenzie, too, although she doubted she'd get into any serious
trouble over that. But those first two would likely be more than
enough to send her away to prison. Even if she was found innocent,
there would have to be a trial and that meant spending months or even
years behind bars while it played out.

She couldn't do it.

She wouldn't do it.

She saw through their games now
and there was no way she was going to allow anyone to put another
pair of handcuffs on her and lock her away.

That left the other option.

She crouched lower, keeping her
eyes on the doorway as one of the cops entered the room.

He stepped in slowly, his gun
held out before him. “Anybody in here? Jesus Christ!”
He pressed his sleeve over his nose, covering his mouth as his gun
swept back and forth across the room. “Mike! I've got four
bodies in here!”

He took another step into the
room, studying the faces of the corpses. When his eyes came to rest
on Dianne, they grew wider as he realized she was looking back.

“One of them is alive!”
he shouted. He trained his gun on her. “Put your hands where
I can see them!”

Dianne tried to make her
expression as pained as possible. It was extremely easy to do. “I
can't! They're tied behind my back!”

The cop pulled his arm away from
his face, grimacing. He was in his mid-40's, probably with thoughts
of retirement in the back of his mind. “What the hell happened
in here? Where's the person who did this?”

“I don't know,” she
whined. “Oh, god, I don't know!”

He glanced around rapidly. He
appeared almost as scared as Dianne felt. “Mike!” He
lowered his gun, looking back to Dianne. “Tell me exactly what
happened. Quick.”

“Could you untie me?”
she pleaded.

He seemed to consider it. “Not
yet. We've got to get the place secured first.” He slid his
gun back into its holster and pulled out his radio.

Dianne didn't hesitate. As soon
as he began speaking into it, she raised her right hand from beneath
the blanket; she was holding Lester's 9mm pistol. When the cop saw
what was happening, he dropped the radio and immediately went for his
gun.

“Freeze!” he
shouted. “Don't --”

Dianne shot him in the face.
The blast was tremendously loud in the small room. Her ears rang
painfully as she watched the stunned officer fall back, a spray of
blood and hair painting the wall behind him.

His partner stepped into the
room just as he was collapsing to the floor. This cop was younger
and appeared even more terrified. He looked as though he'd rather be
anywhere else than here, in this room, where god only knew what was
going on. His eyes swept over the lineup of corpses as his mind
fought to put together what was happening. He was clutching a
pistol, but had no idea where to aim it. By the time he met Dianne's
eyes, it was already too late.

Her second shot took the younger
cop right in the chin, most of his jaw exploding in a shower of gore.
He screamed, but it lacked the characteristics of a normal scream.
With the lower half of his face mostly gone, it was more of a wild
braying. He had just enough time to fire one shot before Dianne's
next round slammed through his forehead, toppling him backwards where
he crumbled in a heap against the closet doors.

Dianne tore the blanket off
herself and stood up. Her face was peppered lightly with fragments
of Kim's brain; the cop's bullet had tore open the top of Kim's head
and a misting of brain matter had found her cheek and nose. She
wiped it off with the bed sheet, too high on adrenaline to be
disgusted. She needed to get out fast, before anyone else showed up.

On the floor, the police radio
was broadcasting the dispatcher's frantic questions. She ignored it
as she bent over, taking the pistol out of the dead cop's hand. She
crossed the room and helped herself to the other one, too, and then
fled down the hall, somehow hanging on to all three of them with one
hand.

In the living room, she dumped
them onto the couch and quickly unzipped her duffel bag. Then she
stuffed the two police-issue guns inside. She thought about going
back for ammo, but decided against it; she was quite certain she
could buy shells at any gun shop without a permit. She re-zipped the
bag and threw it over her shoulder.

Good enough.

It was time to leave.

She grabbed her purse and tucked
it under her left arm. With the pistol in her right hand, she
slammed out through the screen door and hurried down the steps.

It was warm and sunny outside, a
stark contradiction to the chilling horror she'd just endured inside
the house. There were numerous people standing around in neighboring
yards, some of them congregated into little groups, all of them with
their full attention on Dianne. They'd been expecting the police to
come out, probably with someone in custody. Instead they got her, a
26 year old woman with a duffel bag and a pistol in one hand. They
stared, murmuring, some of them moving cautiously toward her as she
made her way down to the street and toward the corner.

She did her best to ignore them.
The Honda was still parked three blocks away; her and Frank had
never bothered to move it. As she continued to put distance between
herself and the house, she noticed one small cluster of neighbors
intent upon following her. They were trying to be subtle about it,
but it was obvious they were keeping track of her whereabouts. They
didn't like the idea of her getting away with whatever it was she was
trying to get away with.

The sight of them scurrying
after her, hiding behind trees and bushes, infuriated her.