The Quiet Game

Presley's chin quivers with rage, and the gun trembles in his hand. "It cost you? You could pass out half a million bucks and you wouldn't feel it. You'd make it back in a couple of months. But time? You don't never get that back. Make your peace with the Lord, Judge. And be quick."

"Ray!" I shout, trying to hold his attention. "If you shoot him, you'll spend every hour you have left behind bars."

Presley laughs. "If I stick around to get arrested. Which I ain't. Tomorrow night I'll be in Mexico, and nobody in this world can stop me getting there. I know ways in and out that the wets ain't even thought of."

"I can see why you'd want to shoot him," I go on. "I'd like to shoot him myself. But the way I figure it, you two are already square."

He gives me an uncertain look. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I just found out what you did to him in seventy-eight."

"What you talking about?"

I nod at Livy. "Well, to her, I mean. That's the same as to him, isn't it? It damn sure gives him the right to shoot you, if anything gives a man that right."

"Shut up," Livy hisses.

Presley starts to turn the gun on me, but he steadies himself and holds it on Marston.

"What's that, Cage?" Leo asks. "What are you talking about?"

"Tell him, Ray." Keep tapping on the pressure point.

Presley takes a step closer to Marston, but he doesn't fire. I think he wants Marston to know the truth before he dies.

"Do you know a girl named Jenny Doe?" I ask Leo.

"Please," Livy begs.

"I've met her," Leo says.

"Do you know who her father is?"

His eyes flash with anger. "You are, you pissant."

"Sorry, Judge. I never knew that girl existed, and I am most definitely not her father."

"Then who is?"

"The man holding the gun on you."

Leo blinks three times quickly. Livy has gone white. But Presley's face is a strange mix of wonder and defiance. He obviously knew nothing about Jenny Doe until this moment.

"You and me got a kid?" he says, his eyes on Livy.

"Olivia?" Leo says quietly.

"Tell him, Livy," I urge her.

"He raped me," she says simply. "When I was eighteen, Ray raped me three times one night and got me pregnant."

"That's a goddamn lie!" Presley bellows. "She give it to me, Judge. Teasing me with it all the time, passing around like a bitch in heat, grabbing my privates. She told me she wanted it that night."

"Livy?" Leo says again.

The mere fact that he's asking tells me Leo believes Presley's story could be true. Livy knows this too. Her lips are pressed tightly together, her nostrils flared. She stares into the middle distance for a few moments, alone with her demons. Then she looks at her father with absolute sincerity.

"He raped me, Daddy. I should have told you when it happened, but I was too afraid. He told me he would kill Mother if I did. All these years I let you think Penn was the father. He wasn't. It was him."

Leo's face goes through a dozen different emotions, only a small number of them readable. But the one that finally settles in his features is rage. Pure, unalloyed rage. This is the natural reaction of any father, but there is more here. Ray Presley served Leo for more than thirty years, performing deeds too dirty for his master to soil his hands with. But whatever bond this forged between them, Presley was always a servant. A hired man. The realization that he transgressed this class boundary-trespassed into the very flesh of the Marston family line-probably offends Leo more than the act of rape itself. His jaw muscles are working with enough force to grind his teeth to nubs if he keeps it up, and his blue-gray eyes burn with a fearsome light.

"You white-trash bastard," he says, each word dripping with contempt. "You touched my little girl? I'll snap your neck like a stick."

Presley shakes his gun in front of him like a man waving a crucifix before a vampire.

"You're the one, goddamn it! Ratting me out after all I did for you? So I fucked your slut daughter. You think I was the first? She handed it out like candy in school, and God knows what she did after she left this town. Like father, like daughter, I guess."

To my surprise, Leo does not explode at this but instead seems to calm down. He drops his hands to his desk drawer. "How much will it take to buy you off, Ray? To make you go to Mexico and never come back?"

"More than you got, Judge."

"I've got a lot."

"That's the Lord's truth. But you ain't got enough to buy your life. Not this time."

Leo reaches into the drawer and feels around inside. His mouth goes slack.

Presley smiles darkly and takes a step forward. "What you lookin' for, Judge? You lose something?"

Leo freezes, his hand still in the drawer. His face has lost all color. It's the face of an animal, a predator backed into a corner by a larger one.

Presley reaches into his pocket with his left hand and removes the derringer Leo pulled on me the day Kelly backed him down. "You're too predictable, Judge." He points the derringer at Livy, who's standing to his left, and straightens the arm, pointing the.357 at Leo's head.

He means to shoot.