“It’s wheat,” Soto said of the soybeans.
“Yeah? Don’t know about that. Never seen any wheat. Or oats.”
Soto’s head bobbed, and he said, “I can tell you one thing about Tennessee farmers for sure.”
“We’re in Alabama,” Kort said.
“Same exact thing,” Soto said irritably. “Anyway, one thing about Tennessee or Alabama farmers is, they’ll have a gun handy in the stairwell. Somebody breaks into your house, won’t be any cop close enough to save your ass. They got guns, like that kid in Franklin and old man Poole.”
Kort shifted uncomfortably. She was sitting on a soft donut pillow intended for hemorrhoid sufferers, and while it helped, her ass still felt like she’d been hit with a baseball bat, and she was still seeping some blood into the Kotexes they were now using as bandages. “What are you sayin’ here?”
Soto had a cinnamon-flavored toothpick rolling around in his mouth and stopped to pick out some obstruction in his lower jawline. “I’m not saying we can’t do it, I’m just saying we got to becareful. We’re not dealing with some street kids, here. These guys are hard-core criminals.”
“Who must be doing well,” Kort said. “That looks like a Benz sittin’ in the driveway.”
“Well, we know we’re looking for a few suitcases full of hundred-dollar bills. A Benz is small change.”
“Fuck it, then. Let’s do it,” Kort said.
Soto pulled on a pair of silvered sunglasses and put the car in gear.
—
LUCAS HAD GOTTENone valuable thing from the interview with Janice Darling. The couch table had an array of family photographs on it, including several with a husky middle-aged man that Lucas thought must be Sturgill Darling: Darling with Janice Darling, the two of them posed with three girls of elementary-, middle-school, and finally high-school age, a photo of Janice and Sturgill on a big-game fishing boat with a boy who showed Sturgill’s cheekbones and smile. If Lucas ran into Sturgill Darling, he’d recognize him.
A half hour after he’d arrived, Lucas picked up his legal pad and pen and was about to thank her for her time, when they both heard another car crunch up the gravel drive.
Darling frowned and asked, “Now who could that be? I’m not expecting anyone...”
She and Lucas both stood and looked out the living room window. A blue Toyota had pulled up behind Lucas’s truck and a heavyset woman was climbing out. She looked around, then reached into the car to pick something up. When she turned, she had a clipboard in her hand.
Lucas turned to Darling and asked, “Do you have a gun in the house?”
“What?”
“A gun! Do you have a gun in the house?”
“A shotgun in the mudroom...” she said.
“Run and get it, then get in a bathroom, load it, and point the gun at the door and don’t come out until you hear me yell for you.”
Darling looked at the woman outside, who was headed toward the side door. “You think...”
“Almost for sure,” Lucas said. “Now go! Go!”
She hurried off to the back of the house. Lucas pulled out his.45 and jacked a shell into the chamber and went to the door. He pulled it open as the woman was about to climb onto the bottom step. He couldn’t see her right hand, which was under the clipboard. He pointed the.45 at her chest and said, “Get back! Get back! Get on the ground!”
She was surprised, but instead of protesting, she stepped backward and sideways, and Lucas followed her with his eyes and then snapped his head back toward the car, where he saw the far door opening, and a moment later a man stepped around the door and lifted a rifle over the hood of the car.
Lucas didn’t quite think,Rifle, but the idea was there, and he threw himself back into the house, and a split-second later a burst of a half dozen slugs tore through the closing screen door as he dropped and rolled to his left and then scrambled to the living room window.
The walls of the house were almost no barrier to the bulletspunching through the aluminum siding and interior drywall, but the shooter was making the mistake of sweeping the outside wall at waist level, while Lucas was rolling across the living room carpet to a window in the corner.
Another burst of bullets punched through the kitchen walls at the other end of the house, and Lucas risked standing up and then stepping in front of the window. He didn’t bother breaking the glass but simply opened fire on the man behind the car, the window blowing out as he fired. To his left, the heavyset woman had gotten back to the car and was running around the back side.
Lucas had missed the man behind the car and the rifle turned toward him and he dropped again as a gust of slugs blew through the window. The guy behind the car had a fully automatic weapon, which was not surprising but created an awkward situation for a cop armed with a handgun.
Lucas rolled back toward the door and kicked it open and emptied the rest of the magazine at the car. The man popped up again, beside the driver’s-side door, shooting over the roof now, and Lucas rolled the other direction this time, as more shots pounded through the door and the siding around the door, and crawled behind an antique Hammond organ that sat behind a side window.
