The Triggerman Dance

"Damn straight. Up to you, John. Totally your call. Follow your heart."

Where are they?

John glances at Partch: arms loose at his side now, full attention directed back at him.

When he shifts his gaze to Baum, he sees something different in her eyes. But is it resignation or understanding?

She lifts her water glass and drinks.

She picks up her fork again and pokes at the bloody, ash-strewn paper. Then she looks at Holt.

"Mr. Holt, how was this meal prepared?"

"With tender, hating care."

"No, I mean, did you saute the paper, or brown it in an oven?"

"It's newsprint tartar."

"Well. . . let's see how it. . ."

She gets a little mound of shreds on the forktip and looks at it. She brings it to her nose and takes a quick whiff. The wind blows some of it back down to her plate. She breathes deeply, opens her mouth, closes her lips around the fork and looks to John in complete and utter capitulation.

Then she spits the paper toward Holt and hisses: "You killed Rebecca Harris and I know it. You thought she was me." She whirls to face John, her nose inches from the muzzle of the revolver. "Okay, Mr. Sporting Life. You were in love with her. I could see all the way across the office. What are you going to do about her now? How could you throw in with this . . . pig? I hope the FBI busts both your asses wide open."

Holt regards John from behind his yellow glasses. He is smiling, but John sees that he knows. The realization has broken on Holt like a wave on a fatal shore. Strangely, there is disappoinment in the big, handsome face. "Well, John. She can't be telling the truth. Wouldn't know how, would she?"

John knows he's out of options, out of stalls. He understands that Joshua has stranded him here in the high lonesome to fend for himself and for an innocent woman who very well might die. Was that his goal, all along?

His heart is thumping. His stomach feels like it's down around his boots. The revolver has grown heavy in his left hand but he eases it four inches to the left of Baum's head and aligns the sights on Partch's chest. He still can't free the .45 from his coat pocket. It is snared in a tangle of strings and folds, and I knows that any hint of this problem will be Partch's cue to draw down.

"The truth is I loved her," says John. "And you killed her in the rain."

Holt stares at John for a long moment. When he speak his voice is tremulous and soft. "Yes, I did. Forty years of law enforcement and never made a mistake like that one. An accdent. Bad one. Forgive me?"

"Never. I'll shoot Partch if he moves. And I'll shoot you by the time your hand reaches that plate. That's my follow-through Mr. Holt."

But the truth of it is that John is too afraid to move. Things seem to be proceeding in slow motion. Every muscle in his body is locked tight, cold, nullified. In the center of his chest is a hard frozen anchor that fastens him in place. He has finally worked the automatic in his coat pocket to point, roughly, at Holt, but his fingers are so numb he can hardly feel it.

"I'm real sorry, John. Could have used you. Here on the Ridge. Everywhere. Tricked my girl, didn't you?"

"I guess I did."

"Can't let you get away with that. Scared now? Bad feeling, gun on a man. Real life."

"Yeah, it's a bad feeling."

"I don't think you can fire."

"I will."

Holt looks over to Partch and nods.

It is pure reaction now. John holds on the middle of Partch silhouetted against the sky, and pulls the trigger. The click is the most final sound he's ever heard in his life.

Then Partch is bending into a shooter's crouch, one hand inside his jacket, just as something shifts on the periphery of John's vision—gold flashing in sunlight. To his left Partch's gun points directly at him. But two phantoms have already materialized from the shadows of the tombs and into the bright day. Two sharp explosions jerk Partch onto his heels and over.

Baum is screaming horrendously and the vibrations of that sound rattle into John's brain. Because for him it's an eternity in a moment as he tries to yank the .45 from his coat pocket. In that second he sees a figure turning a gun toward Holt. And the next thing he knows his whole body is being pulled across the table, his head clamped in Holt's big arm and something hard jamming into his forehead. The world is sideways. Baum is screaming so loud his ears whine. Holt yanks his face into the lunch plate. John feels the arm cutting off his blood and breath while straight in front of his eyes he sees the bullet tips in Holt's revolver, and past them the thick finger locked around the trigger and beyond that the unfocused figures of Joshua Weinstein and Sharon Dumars frozen in sunlight and gold.

Holt's voice reverberates through the arm that chokes him. "My show now, kids. I'll absolutely kill him. Drop the guns. Lie down. Be good boys and girls. Now/."