“Oh, my God! Sadie!”
After that, things happened very, very fast.
Clayton had forced the front door lock so it wouldn’t latch. Sadie didn’t notice, but Deke did. Instead of knocking, he pushed it open and stepped inside with the casserole dish in his hands. Clayton was still sitting on the hassock, and the gun was still pointed at Sadie, but he had put the knife down on the floor beside him. Deke said later he didn’t even know Clayton had a knife. I doubt if he really even noticed the gun. His attention was fixed on Sadie. The top of her blue dress was now a muddy maroon. Her arm and the side of the sofa where it dangled were both covered with blood. But worst of all was her face, which was turned toward him. Her left cheek hung in two flaps, like a torn curtain.
“Oh, my God! Sadie!” The cry was spontaneous, nothing but pure shock.
Clayton turned, upper lip lifted in a snarl. He raised the gun. I saw this as I burst through the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. And I saw Sadie piston out one foot, kicking the hassock. Clayton fired, but the bullet went into the ceiling. As he tried to get up, Deke threw the casserole dish. The cover lifted off. Noodles, hamburger, green peppers, and tomato sauce sprayed in a fan. The dish, still more than half-full, hit Clayton’s right arm. Chop suey poured out. The gun went flying.
I saw the blood. I saw Sadie’s ruined face. I saw Clayton crouched on the blood-spotted rug and raised my own gun.
“No!” Sadie screamed. “No, don’t, please don’t!”
It cleared my mind like a slap. If I killed him, I would become the subject of police scrutiny no matter how justified the killing might be. My George Amberson identity would fall apart, and any chance I had of stopping the assassination in November would be gone. And really, how justified would it be? The man was disarmed.
Or so I thought, because I didn’t see the knife, either. It was hidden by the overturned hassock. Even if it had been out in the open, I might have missed it.
I put the gun back in my pocket and hauled him to his feet.
“You can’t hit me!” Spit flew from his lips. His eyes fluttered like those of a man having a seizure. His urine let go; I heard it pattering to the carpet. “I’m a mental patient, I’m not responsible, I can’t be held responsible, I have a certificate, it’s in the glove compartment of my car, I’ll show it to y-”
The whine of his voice, the abject terror in his face now that he was disarmed, the way his dyed orange-blond hair hung around his face in clumps, even the smell of chop suey… all of these things enraged me. But mostly it was Sadie, cowering on the couch and drenched in blood. Her hair had come loose, and on the left side it hung in a clot beside her grievously wounded face. She would wear her scar in the same place Bobbi Jill wore the ghost of hers, of course she would, the past harmonizes, but Sadie’s wound looked oh so much worse.
I slapped him across the right side of his face hard enough to knock spittle flying from the left side of his mouth. “You crazy fuck, that’s for the broom!”
I went back the other way, this time knocking the spit from the right side of his mouth and relishing his howl in the bitter, unhappy way that is reserved only for the worst things, the ones where the evil is too great to be taken back. Or ever forgiven. “That’s for Sadie!”
I balled my fist. In some other world, Deke was yelling into the phone. And was he rubbing his chest, the way Turcotte had rubbed his? No. At least not yet. In that same other world Sadie was moaning. “And this is for me!”
I drove my fist forward, and-I said I would tell the truth, every bit of it-when his nose splintered, his scream of pain was music to my ears. I let him go and he collapsed to the floor.
Then I turned to Sadie.
She tried to get off the couch, then fell back. She tried to hold her arms out to me, but she couldn’t do that, either. They dropped into the sodden mess of her dress. Her eyes started to roll up and I was sure she was going to faint, but she held on. “You came,” she whispered. “Oh, Jake, you came for me. You both did.”
“Bee Tree Lane!” Deke shouted into the phone. “No, I don’t know the number, I can’t remember it, but you’ll see an old man with chop suey on his shoes standing outside and waving his arms! Hurry! She’s lost a lot of blood!”
“Sit still,” I said. “Don’t try to-”
Her eyes widened. She was looking over my shoulder. “Look out! Jake, look out!”
I turned, fumbling in my pocket for the gun. Deke also turned, holding the telephone receiver in both of his arthritis-knotted hands like a club. But although Clayton had picked up the knife he’d used to disfigure Sadie, his days of attacking anyone were over. Anyone but himself, that is.
