Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

His weight tumbled to the floor. But he was still alive, one hand cupped on the angular wound that had torn away the edge of the socket. His metal-sheathed, pointed boots kicked at the bed frame and his other hand tried to lock around her ankle.

She stood above him and cocked the revolver and fired a second time. She heard his weight flatten into the floor and one boot vibrate briefly like a woodpecker’s beak against the wall.

Then she sat down on the bed again and waited.

An hour later, when Wilbur burst into the house, turning on lights in every room, shouting, “Kippy Jo, what’s going on? There’s a plane out in the field … Oh Lord, what’s happened here? What’d this guy try to do?,” she was still sitting on the bed, the revolver on top of the pillow, her white cloth slippers patinated with blood.

Wilbur sat beside her and held her against his chest. It seemed a long time before he spoke.

“He hurt you?” Wilbur said.

“No.”

“It’s that guy Bubba Grimes,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

Wilbur took a deep breath, like a man who accepts the fact that the world is indeed beyond him.

“His coat’s got buckskin fringe on the arms. His teeth look like they was soaked in Cold Duck. He’s the guy with wings, ain’t he?” Wilbur said.

“Yes.”

“You shot both his eyes out, Kippy Jo. That’s what Indians do when they don’t want somebody’s spirit to find the Ghost Trail. They’re gonna say you murdered him.”

She put one hand in his, then drew her bare feet under her so they would not have to touch the floor.

11

The next morning I sat in Marvin Pomroy’s office. He was reading the homicide report filed by one of Hugo Roberts’s crime scene investigators. He was reading it for the third time, his elbows propped on his desk blotter, his forehead resting on his fingers.

He blew out his breath and tapped a pencil on the blotter.

“Hugo’s calling it homicide, Billy Bob. H

is work’s sloppy, but I can’t argue with him on this one,” Marvin said.

“She’s blind. He broke in her house. He had a .38 on him. He was probably going to rape her, then kill both her and her husband.”

“Why would Grimes want to kill them?”

“Because Wilbur won’t cop a plea and let Earl Deitrich collect from his insurance company,” I said.

“Kippy Jo blew out both the victim’s eyes. You think that might show deliberation?” Marvin said.

“I’ll say it again. She’s blind. From birth.”

“You told me she sees things inside her head,” he said.

“You’re going to tell a jury that?”I said.

“When they shoot once, maybe it’s self-defense. A second shot, point-blank in the head, is an execution.”

“How’d you like to have Grimes in your wife’s bedroom with a .38 revolver?” I asked.

“Just get out of here, will you?” he said.

I walked down the corridor to the concession stand by the stairs, drank a root beer, and used the pay phone, then went back into Marvin’s office. He was talking angrily on the phone, the overhead light shining on his close-cropped scalp, his face bright with a pink glaze.