I pulled the Python out again and nestled it against my face, the coldness of the steel and the acrid smell of the four-and-a-half-inch barrel somehow helping keep down my fear.
“I went to see Max that night he was killed, but I didn’t kill him,” Yarnell said. “I told him he had to give up the Superior project. The banks were going to shut us down. We were leveraged to our eyeballs. We were going to lose everything. I was going to lose everything. Goddamned Hector. I hired his Mexican gang kids to make phone threats, set the fires, be my environmental terrorists—that way we could walk away from the project.
“But Max wouldn’t play along!” he shouted from the edge of the elevator shaft. “So I went out there that night, to try to reason with him. But he was already dead. I found him with that damned petrified wood driven into his heart. For all I know, somebody else was squeezing Max. Maybe you, Mapstone. Maybe you hired somebody to shoot me!”
He paused. “Any questions?”
I had a lot of questions, but I didn’t say a word. I moved carefully back into the tunnels, navigating by memory, going in the opposite direction of the place where Andy and Woodrow had been entombed. I shuffled, trying not to kick anything and make a sound. The heavy mesh of a spider web caught on my arm and made me shudder.
Just then the lights came on and I was blinded just long enough. One of the goons dropped down into the shaft. He strafed the tunnel and something heavy tore into my left foot. My entire left leg was instantly consumed with a bone-deep, searing pain. I fell backward, firing in his direction. The heavy magnum rounds ricocheted viciously off the walls. The goon drew back, dropped to the floor. The Python clicked as it revolved around to a spent cartridge. In my panic, my fire discipline had turned to shit. Too many years away from the academy.
I had retreated to the big chamber, with its garbage and old citrus cases. I hobbled backward painfully, crashing into some wooden boxes, falling flat on my ass. There was no cover. No way out. I reached to my belt and brought out a Speedloader. Opened the cylinder. Steadied my shaking hand. Emptied the spent rounds. They fell like little bells onto the filthy floor. Steadied my hand. I dropped the Speedloader into the cylinder, turned the metal shaft and dropped six fresh rounds into the Colt. I swung the cylinder heavily into place just as the goon stormed into the room and leveled his machine gun at my head.
“Give me your fucking gun!” he huffed.
I was splayed out on the floor, surrounded by the debris of a half-century ago, a steady ooze of blood coming out of the top of my foot. I just stared at the Python and knew I was at the end. “You’re not getting my gun,” I forced out in a hoarse whisper.
James Yarnell stepped in behind him and shone a flashlight in my eyes. I could see a little chrome semi-automatic pistol in his other hand.
“The dentist’s grandson.” He shook his head, playing the light over my bloody left foot. “How much bad luck have you had this month, young man? You find things that were never intended to be found. And now you’re dead.” His expression was something between contempt and pity. “I never did like history classes. What’s the point in looking back?”
I spoke to the barrel of the gun. “Sometimes you find unfinished business.” They were lousy last words.
In the next ten seconds, the silence became just complete enough that we were all startled by a man clearing his throat.
Then the goon’s right knee buckled in a way nature never intended. In the same instant, the room was overtaken by a huge explosion. The goon collapsed, screaming, holding a bloody mass where his knee used to be. James Yarnell retreated, weakly holding out his pistol. Out of the gunsmoke stepped Bobby Hamid.
He walked to the goon, kicked away his machine gun, and shot him again in the other knee.
“There, now you have a match,” Bobby said hospitably.
“Bobby!” I winced.
“Dr. Mapstone, I am saving your life,” he said evenly, then he faced James Yarnell, who by now was on the other side of the room, his back against the wall.
“This is fun,” Bobby said, raising a gigantic, blue-steel automatic in Yarnell’s direction.
“Don’t kill me!” Yarnell pleaded.
“And why not?” Bobby asked, as if a party discussion had gotten heated and it was time for a new bottle of wine. “It sounds as if you have much to atone for, Mr. Yarnell.”
“My family built this state!” he shouted.
Bobby shot him in the left foot, releasing a jet of bright red blood. The pistol and flashlight clattered off to the side, and we were in half-dark again.
“Don’t speak, David,” Bobby cut me off coldly. He walked over, retrieved the flashlight and set it on a carton overlooking Yarnell.
Bobby rubbed his fine chin and aimed at Yarnell’s left knee.
“No!” Yarnell sobbed, clutching his mangled foot. “What do you want?”
Bobby chuckled. “You cannot possibly give me what I want. Dr. Mapstone, however, is more easily pleased. He would also tell you that you have the right to remain silent, that anything you say can be used against you.” He focused his aim. “I suggest you start talking about this kidnapping. And please don’t bore me, Mr. Yarnell.”
Yarnell’s eyes were wider than seemed possible for human eyes.
“It was Dad and Win together!” Yarnell blubbered. “They had to get Grandpa away from that little whore, Frances. She was pregnant again with his child. They were going to lose everything.”