The Sound of Broken Ribs(37)

“Fuck you,” said Wales.

“Yoo-hoo? Sheriff? Why don’t you sit up for me? You dropped your piece out here when I shot the first time, but I need to make sure you don’t have a backup. Come on. Show yourself.”

Then came the telltale sounds of an approaching car.

Engine sounds.

Gravel crunching under tires.

Belinda’s heart raced.

Tony said, “Who the fuck is this?”

In the front seat, Wales said, “Backup’s here, asshole.”

*

Jenna was fighting with the lock on the dash that held her service shotgun in place when she heard who she hoped was her deputy approaching.

“Backup’s here, asshole,” she muttered to herself. Smiling through the pain of her ravaged foot, she continued working on the lock. Her hands were shaking too badly to get the key in the first dozen times she attempted to jab it home. On what must’ve been the hundredth time, the key slid in and she twisted it. The lock popped, and she slapped away the bracing bar. She stretched out on her back, racked the slide, and sat bolt upright.

Tony came into view over the driver’s seat. He was standing in the cruiser’s blind spot, less than a foot away from the back door. The rifle she’d seen in the rack on the back window of his truck was socked into his right shoulder. He was aiming at something or someone. Jenna assumed this someone was her approaching deputy.

Jenna scooted her ass toward the open driver’s side door. She leaned out and aimed at the back of Tony’s head.

“Tony!” Belinda screamed in the back seat.

Anthony Marchesini, gun up and eyes wild, spun.

Jenna kept her promise.

She blew his face out his asshole.

*

Belinda saw her brother’s brains explode from the back of his head. She continued to scream for her brother long after she knew him to be dead. It was pointless, but she screamed for him to be all right. Like Humpty Dumpty before him, there was no putting Tony back together again.

In the following silence—not even the engine sounds from the approaching car could be heard now—Belinda watched as the sheriff lay back down across the front seat. The quiet was broken by a moan, a great trembling exhale, and soft crying.

A happy little tune played, one of those silly ringtones of which modern society had become so enamored.

The music stopped, and the sheriff said, “H-h-hello? Rob? Rob? Where the fuck are you?”

*

Jenna hadn’t actually seen the car Marchesini had been aiming at, but now, with her deputy Robert Huntington in her ear, telling her he was running late because he’d come across a car accident in town and was waiting for the PD to arrive, Jenna wondered who Marchesini had seen coming.

“Rob. Rob, listen. I’ve been shot. In the foot. I’ll live, but I need you to get out here now. You hear me? Now!”

“Oh shit. All right. Fuck. Okay. Leaving now. Goddamn. Stay on the phone with—”

Jenna hung up. She didn’t have time to be babysat.

Minding her blown-to-hell foot, she sat up and looked over the front seat. Belinda Walsh was looking out the window at her brother’s corpse and crying. Past Belinda, Jenna couldn’t see much. Only trees. She lay the shotgun down beside her in the seat and used the steering wheel and seatback to slide herself forward on her rump. Then she grabbed the shotgun once more and racked the slide.

Her pulse thudding in her ears, Jenna leaned out with the shotgun leading her. She watched over the barrel as Tom Warden waddled her way. The rotund man was looking down at Marchesini’s corpse and shaking his head.

“Stop right there!” Jenna hollered. She knew the man, knew him not to be any kind of threat, but didn’t want him disturbing her crime scene either.

“No problem, Sheriff. Goddamned mess you got here.” Tom shook his head at the tragedy of it all. “You got Belinda Walsh in there? She in the back seat?” Tom leaned to one side to peer into the rear of the cruiser.

Jenna raised the gun in an intimidating manner. “Go back to your car, Tom.”

“Belinda? Bee, you in there?”

Jenna took her eyes off the fat man for all of two seconds to look into the backseat of the car. Belinda was gazing right back at her.

Belinda said, “You killed my brother.”

Belinda being in the back seat gave her voice an odd, distant quality even though she was technically still in the car with the woman, only she was leaning out, so Belinda’s voice was both close and far away at the same time.

A fist crashed into her chest. At least that’s what she thought at first—that she’d been punched. She was thrown back onto the steering wheel. When she tried to take a breath, someone whistled.

Another invisible fist slammed into her neck. One moment she could draw air just fine. The next instant there was an obstruction in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. No matter how hard she tried to pull air, none came.

Her eyes rolled up, and she saw the smoking .357 in Tom’s fat hands. The fat fuck had shot her. Twice. The seemingly harmless man glared at her over the smoking barrel of his massive revolver. Where had he hidden it?

In her final moments, she noticed the apron of pale flesh dangling from the bottom of Tom’s shirt. Murderous fucker probably hid the gun under his belly—the fat fuck.

Tom said, “He was my friend. I liked him more than I like you, Sheriff. Hell. I didn’t even vote for you. Woman sheriff—who’d ever heard of such nonsense.”