The grass was four feet high. He'd drop down, fire to take out her knees. Then f
inish her off from close range. It'd be a risk, though. She could still get off a shot or two.
Then he noticed something: a look in her eyes. A look of uncertainty. And it seemed to him that she held her gun too threateningly.
She was bluffing.
"You're out of ammo," Tomel said, smiling.
There was a pause and the expression on her face confirmed it. He lifted the shotgun with both hands and aimed it at her. She gazed back hopelessly.
"But I'm not," came a voice nearby. The redhead! He looked her over, and his instinct told him: She's a woman. She'll hesitate. I can get her first. He swung toward her.
The pistol in her hands bucked and the last thing Tomel felt was an itchy tap on the side of his head.
Lucy Kerr saw Mary Beth stagger onto the porch and call out that Culbeau was dead and that Rhyme and Garrett were all right.
Amelia Sachs nodded then walked toward Sean O'Sarian's body. Lucy turned her own attention to Harris Tomel's. She bent down and closed her shaking hands around the Browning shotgun. She thought that while she should be horrified to be prying this elegant weapon from a dead man's hands, in fact all she thought about was the gun itself. She wondered if it was still loaded.
She answered that question by racking the gun--losing one shell, but making sure that another was chambered.
Fifty feet away Sachs was bending down over O'Sarian's body as she searched it, keeping her pistol pointed at the corpse. Lucy wondered why she was bothering then decided, wryly, that it must be standard procedure.
She found her blouse and put it back on. It was torn apart by the shotgun pellets but she was self-conscious about her body in the tight T-shirt. Lucy stood by the tree, breathing heavily in the heat and watching Sachs's back.
Simple fury--at the betrayals in her life. The betrayal by her body, by her husband, by God.
And now by Amelia Sachs.
She glanced behind her, where Harris Tomel lay. It was a straight line of sight from where he'd been standing to Amelia's back. The scenario was plausible: Tomel had been hiding in the grass. He rose, shot Sachs in the back with his shotgun. Lucy then grabbed Sachs's gun and killed Tomel. Nobody'd know different--except Lucy herself and, maybe, Jesse Corn's spirit.
Lucy lifted the shotgun, which felt weightless as a larkspur blossom in her hands. Pressing the smooth, fragrant stock against her cheek, reminding her of the way she'd pressed her face against the chrome guard of the hospital bed after her mastectomy. She sighted down the smooth barrel at the woman's black T-shirt, resting the sight on the woman's spine. She'd die painlessly. And fast.
As fast as Jesse Corn had died.
This was simply trading a guilty life for an innocent one.
Dear Lord, give me one clear shot at my Judas....
Lucy looked around. No witnesses.
Her finger curled around the trigger, tightened.
Squinted, held the brass dot of the bead sight rock steady thanks to arms strengthened by years of gardening, years of managing a house--and a life--on her own. Aiming at the exact center of Amelia Sachs's back.
The hot breeze whistled through the grass around her. She thought about Buddy, about her surgeon, about her house and her garden.
Lucy lowered the gun.
She racked the weapon until it was empty and, padded butt resting on her hip, muzzle skyward, she carried it back to the van in front of the cabin. She set it on the ground and found her cell phone then called the state police.
The medevac chopper was the first to arrive and the medics quickly bundled Thom up and flew him off to the medical center. One stayed to look after Lincoln Rhyme, whose blood pressure was edging critical.
When the troopers themselves showed up in a second helicopter a few minutes later it was Amelia Sachs they arrested first and left hog-tied, hands behind her, lying in the hot dirt outside the cabin, while they went inside to arrest Garrett Hanlon and read him his rights.
... chapter thirty-nine
Thom would survive.