Mortal Fear (79 page)

 Feeling Drewe at my side, I reach out and close my hand around hers. Berkmann’s whole body is smoking, but his eyes are open so wide that the irises look like blue buttons on white saucers. Even as I see the nickel-plated pistol still gripped in his right hand, I realize that both the hand and arm are shattered.

 “Can you do anything for him?” I hear myself croak.

 “I could,” Drewe says. “But I won’t. I have other patients.”

 Berkmann’s empty left hand jerks, and I yank Drewe back, afraid that he’s trying to get the gun into his good hand. But he isn’t. The scorched hand rises into the air and reaches toward us, as though beckoning to Drewe. But the blackened fingers close on nothing, and the arm slowly falls.

 The instant it touches the ground, the gun in his other hand fires, igniting the spilled gasoline in a blinding blast of heat that drives us backward into the dark. Berkmann’s charred body curls away from the flames like burnt paper from a trash fire. As I stare into the inferno, Drewe drags me down the drive, away from our cars. Yielding like an exhausted child, I gaze up the road at my neighbor’s cotton fields. A regiment of red flashing lights is hurtling toward us like a train of flaming chariots.

 All I want to do is lie down.

 * * *

 Bob Anderson arrived before a single deputy. Drewe had set up shop just outside the toolshed, and was working on Mayeux and me by the light of the burning house. Bob and Patrick and Special Agent Wes Killen came charging around the house like marines clearing a hostile ville. I recognized Killen by his nose bandage.

 Bob told us he’d seen a man lying on his back beside Drewe’s Acura, but had no idea who he was. Killen was afraid it might be Mayeux. While Drewe bound my shoulder with a towel, I asked Bob whether the man was dead. I had visions of an ambulance bundling Berkmann into its antiseptic belly and spiriting him away to a miraculous recovery. Bob said the man wasn’t dead but would be soon, and would be better off when he was.

 I told Bob who the man was.

 He stood there a moment, his mouth working silently. Then he took a deep breath and walked back toward the roaring fire.

 Nobody followed him.

 Patrick took over treating Mayeux, Drewe explained to Wes Killen what had happened, and by the time she was done Bob was walking back toward us, a black silhouette against the flames. We all looked quietly at him until he said, “He’s dead now.”

 We sat some more while Drewe removed a shard of glass from my leg and Killen talked to Daniel Baxter on his cellular telephone. I asked Drewe if she could get the other piece of glass out of my right shoulder, and she told me she couldn’t because there wasn’t any piece of glass. I’d been shot. Berkmann had gotten off a round during the second that the message was being transmitted to the printer. The bullet went clean through.

 Sheriff Buckner arrived with an army loaded for bear but found the bear already dead. He might have been unpleasant about that, but Bob’s presence had an amazing effect on his demeanor. He couldn’t seem to do enough for us.

 Now everyone sits or stands watching the house burn while we wait for the paramedics to arrive. The sight of a human dwelling being consumed by fire is a powerful, almost sacred thing. It eats at our sense of security, reminds us that all we have built can be wiped away in a matter of minutes. Ironically, the fire seems a fitting ending to me, who was born and raised in that house. My past has always been a chronic wound. Now it’s being cauterized before my eyes.

 The paramedics load me into a double-wide ambulance beside Mike Mayeux. He’s still unconscious, but Patrick hovers over him, monitoring his vital signs. Drewe squats between the front seats, her hand on my forehead. The pain in my shoulder is becoming a serious nuisance, but then I think of Berkmann. He’s riding a couple of spots back in the convoy, in a plastic bag in Sheriff Buckner’s trunk. The son of a bitch is right where he belongs.

 A lot of lonely and innocent women died because of Edward Berkmann. Most of them I never really knew. But one I did. Better than I should have. And because of Berkmann, she is gone. Holly has no mother. Patrick has no wife. Drewe has no sister. I share that guilt, of course. If I hadn’t pushed myself into Berkmann’s path, Erin would still be alive. The temptation to second-guess is strong. But I must remember one thing.

 Life is simple.

 You are healthy or you are sick. You are faithful to your wife or you aren’t. You are alive or you are dead.

 I am alive.