Twisted: The Collected Stories (22 page)

“You still see her?”

“Who? Betty? Naw. We went our separate ways.”

“You have any kids?”

“Nope.”

Of course not. When you had kids you had to
think about somebody else. You couldn’t think about yourself all the time.

Like Doug did.

Like Mo.

Pete was looking around again. For squirrels, for rabbits, for witnesses.

Then Doug stopped and he looked around too. Pete wondered why but then Doug took a bottle of beer from his knapsack and drank the whole bottle down and tossed it on the ground. “You want something to drink?” Doug asked.

“No,” Pete answered. It was good that Doug’d be slightly drunk when they found him. They’d check his blood. They did that. That’s how they knew Hank’d been drinking when they got what was left of the body (80 mph, after all) to the Colorado Springs hospital—they checked the alcohol in the blood.

The fence was only twenty feet away.

“Oh, hey,” Pete said. “Over there. Look.”

He pointed to the grass on the other side of the fence.

“What?” Doug asked.

“I saw a couple of rabbits.”

“You did? Where?”

“I’ll show you. Come on.”

“Okay. Let’s do it,” Doug said.

They walked to the fence. Suddenly Doug reached out and took Pete’s rifle. “I’ll hold it while you climb over. Safer that way.”

Jesus . . . Pete froze with terror. He realized now that Doug was going to do exactly what Pete had in mind. He’d been planning on holding Doug’s gun for him. And then when Doug was at the top of the fence
he was going to shoot him. Making it look like Doug had tried to carry his gun as he climbed the fence but he’d dropped it and it went off.

Roy bet on the old law enforcement rule that what looks like an accident probably is an accident. . . .

Pete didn’t move. He thought he saw something odd in Doug’s eyes, something mean and sarcastic. It reminded him of Mo’s expression. Pete took one look at those eyes and he could see how much Doug hated him and how much he loved Mo.

“You want me to go first?” Pete asked. Not moving, wondering if he should just run.

“Sure,” Doug said. “You go first. Then I’ll hand the guns over to you.” His eyes said, You’re not afraid of climbing over the fence, are you? You’re not afraid to turn your back on me, are you?

Then Doug was looking around too.

Looking for witnesses, just like Pete had been.

“Go on,” Doug encouraged.

Pete—his hands shaking now from fear—started to climb. Thinking: This is it. He’s going to shoot me. Last month I left the motel too early! Doug and Mo had kept talking and planned out how he was going to ask me down here and pretend to be all nice then he’d shoot me.

Remembering it was Doug who’d suggested hunting.

But if I run, Pete thought, he’ll chase me down and shoot me. Even if he shoots me in the back he’ll just claim it’s an accident.

Roy’s lawyer argued to the jury that, yes, the men had met on the path and struggled, but that Hank had fallen accidentally. He urged the jury to find that,
at worst, Roy was guilty of negligent homicide. . . .

He put his foot on the first rung of wire. Started up.

Second rung of wire . . .

Pete’s heart was beating a million times a minute. He had to pause to wipe his palms.

He thought he heard a whisper, as if Doug were talking to himself.

He swung his leg over the top wire.

Then he heard the sound of a gun cocking.

And Doug said in a hoarse whisper, “You’re dead.”

Pete gasped.

Crack!

The short, snappy sound of the twenty-two filled the field.

Pete choked a cry and looked around, nearly falling off the fence.

“Damn,” Doug muttered. He was aiming away from the fence. Nodding toward a tree line. “Squirrel. Missed him by two inches.”

“Squirrel,” Pete repeated manically. “And you missed him.”

“Two goddamn inches.”

Hands shaking, Pete continued over the fence and climbed to the ground.

“You okay?” Doug asked. “You look a little funny.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

Fine, fine, fine . . .

Doug handed Pete the guns and started over the fence. Pete debated. Then he put his rifle on the ground and gripped Doug’s gun tight. He walked to the fence so that he was right below Doug.

“Look,” Doug said as he got to the top. He was straddling it, his right leg on one side of the fence, his left on the other. “Over there.” He pointed nearby.

There was a big gray lop-eared rabbit on his haunches only twenty feet away.

“There you go!” Doug whispered. “You’ve got a great shot.”

Pete shouldered the gun. It was pointing at the ground, halfway between the rabbit and Doug.

“Go ahead. What’re you waiting for?”

Roy was convicted of premeditated murder in the first degree and sentenced to life in prison. Yet he came very close to committing the perfect murder. If not for a simple twist of fate he would have gotten away with it.
 . . .

Pete looked at the rabbit, looked at Doug.

“Aren’t you going to shoot?”

Uhm, okay, he thought.

Pete raised the gun and pulled the trigger once.

Doug gasped, pressed at the tiny bullethole in his chest. “But . . . but . . . No!”

He fell backward off the fence and lay on a patch of dried mud, completely still. The rabbit bounded through the grass, panicked by the sound of the shot, and disappeared in a tangle of bushes that Pete recognized as blackberries. Mo had planted tons of them in their backyard.

The plane descended from cruising altitude and slowly floated toward the airport.

Pete watched the billowy clouds and his fellow passengers, read the in-flight magazine and the “Sky
Mall” catalog. He was bored. He didn’t have his book to read. Before he’d talked to the Maryland state troopers about Doug’s death he’d thrown
Triangle
into a trash bin.

One of the reasons the jury convicted Roy was that, upon examining his house, the police found several books about disposing of evidence. Roy had no satisfactory explanation for them.
 . . . 

The small plane glided out of the skies and landed at White Plains airport. Pete pulled his knapsack out from underneath the seat in front of him and climbed out of the plane. He walked down the ramp, beside the flight attendant, a tall black woman, talking with her about the flight.

Pete saw Mo at the gate. She looked numb. She wore sunglasses and Pete supposed she’d been crying. She was clutching a Kleenex in her fingers.

Her nails weren’t bright red anymore, he noticed.

They weren’t peach either.

They were just plain fingernail color.

The flight attendant came up to Mo. “You’re Mrs. Jill Anderson?”

Mo nodded.

The woman held up a sheet of paper. “Here. Could you sign this, please?”

Numbly, Mo took the pen the woman offered and signed the paper.

It was an unaccompanied-minor form, which adults had to sign to allow their children to get on planes by themselves. The parent picking up the child also had to sign it. After his parents were divorced Pete flew back and forth between his dad in Wisconsin and his mother, Mo, in White Plains so
often he knew all about airlines’ procedures for kids who flew alone.

“I have to say,” she said to Mo, smiling down at Pete, “he’s the best behaved youngster I’ve ever had on one of my flights. How old are you, Pete?”

“I’m ten,” he answered. “But I’m going to be eleven next week.”

She squeezed his shoulder. Then looked at Mo. “I’m so sorry about what happened,” she said in a soft voice. “The trooper who put Pete on the plane told me your boyfriend was killed in a hunting accident.”

“No,” Mo said, struggling to say the words, “he wasn’t my boyfriend.”

Though Pete was thinking: Of course he was your boyfriend. Except you didn’t want the court to find that out because then Dad wouldn’t have to pay you alimony anymore. Which is why she and Doug had been working so hard to convince Pete that Doug was “just a friend.”

Can’t I have friends? Aren’t I allowed?

No, you’re not, Pete thought. You’re not going to get away with dumping your son the way you dumped Dad.

“Can we go home, Mo?” he asked, looking as sad as he could. “I feel real funny about what happened.”

“Sure, honey.”

“Mo?” the flight attendant asked.

Mo, staring out the window, said, “My name’s Jill. But when he was five Pete tried to write
mother
on my birthday card. He just wrote
M-O
and didn’t know how to spell the rest. It became my nickname.”

“What a sweet story,” the woman said and looked like
she
was going to cry. “Pete, you come back and fly with us real soon.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, what’re you going to do for your birthday?”

“I don’t know,” he said. Then he looked up at his mother. “I was thinking about maybe going hiking. In Colorado. Just the two of us.”

T
he couple were returning from the theater to the Thames ferry, through a deserted, unsavory area of South London, at four hours past candle-lighting.

Charles and Margaret Cooper ought, by rights, to have been home now with their small children and Margaret’s mother, a plague widow, who lived with them in a small abode in Charing Cross. But they had dallied at the Globe to visit with Will Shakespeare, whom Charles Cooper counted among his friends. Shakespeare’s family and Charles’s had long ago owned adjoining acreage on the Avon River and their fathers would on occasion hunt together with falcons and enjoy pints at one of the Stratford taverns. The playwright was busy this time of year—unlike many London theaters, which closed when the Court was summering out of the city, the Globe gave performances year round—but he had been able to join the Coopers for a time to sip Jerez sherry and claret and to talk about recent plays.

The husband and wife now made their way quickly through the dark streets—the suburbs south of the river had few dependable candle-lighters—and they concentrated carefully on where they put their feet.

The summer air was cool and Margaret wore a heavy linen gown, loose in the back and with a tight bodice. Being married, she cut her dress high enough to cover her breasts but she eschewed the felt or beaver cap customary among older wives and wore only silk ribbons and a few glass jewels in her hair. Charles wore simple breeches, blouse and leather vest.

“’Twas a delightful night,” Margaret said, holding tighter to his arm as they negotiated a crook in the narrow road. “I thank thee, my husband.”

The couple greatly enjoyed attending plays but Charles’s wine-importing company had only recently begun to show profit and the Coopers had had little money to spend on their own amusements. Until this year, indeed, they had only been able to afford the penny admission to be understanders—those crowded in the central gallery of the theater. But of late Charles’s industry was showing some rewards and tonight he had surprised his wife with threepence seats in the gallery, where they had sat upon cushions and shared nuts and an early-season pear.

A shout from behind startled them and Charles turned to see, perhaps fifteen yards away, a man in a black velvet hat and baggy, tattered doublet, dodging a rider. It seemed that the man had been so intent on crossing the street quickly that he had not noticed the horse. Perhaps it was Charles’s imagination, or a
trick of the light, but it appeared to him that the pedestrian looked up, noted Charles’s gaze and turned with haste into an alleyway.

Not wishing to alarm his wife, though, Charles made no mention of the fellow and continued his conversation. “Perhaps next year we shall attend Black Friars.”

Margaret laughed. Even some peers shunned paying the sixpence admission at that theater, though the venue was small and luxurious and boasted actors of the highest skill. “Perhaps,” she said dubiously.

Charles glanced behind them once more but saw no sign of the hatted man.

As they turned the corner onto the road that would take them to the ferry, however, the very man appeared from an adjacent alleyway. He had flanked their route at a run, it seemed, and now stepped forward, breathing hard.