Paul Kavanagh - Not Comin' Home to You

She was saying something but he couldn’t hear her. It was talking about the cat, he decided. That must have been it. It put his mood wrong and threw him out of balance, and when you were out of balance things went wrong as sure as they went right when you were in control. But he had it back together now, he could feel it all coming together, and now all he needed was the littlest good break and they’d be out of this.

He took a corner, tires squealing, and there was his good break.

A car at the roadside. A big long shiny car at the roadside, the other side of the road, pointing the way he would have to go now, pointing back the way they had come from. A big fast car and they would streak right past those cops before they knew what was happening and be fifteen miles gone before they thought to turn around.

He slewed across the road, braked, piled out of the car with the gun in his hand. Big shiny car with a farmer standing up against one fender smoking a cigarette. He ran at the farmer and Betty was getting out of the car and coming after him and he pointed the gun at the farmer and asked for the keys.

The idiot just stood there.

“The keys. You dumb shit, give us those keys!”

“Won’t do no good.” The words came in a maddeningly slow drawl. “You can’t go nowhere in this car.”

“You dumb bastard. Do I have to shoot you? You stupid son of a bitch—”

“You can shoot, but you can’t drive this car nowhere. Just you look.”

He heard a siren approaching. Too late now, even if the idiot gave him the keys. Too late unless—

And then he saw what the farmer was pointing at. The car was up on a jack, its right rear tire off.

“Flat,” the farmer was saying. “These roads, and the way they make their tires nowadays.”

Two sirens now, one from either direction. Betty just behind him saying, “Oh God, oh God,” over and over. The idiot farmer in front of him, talking, talking, and he was flashing the cat and the rabbit and every bad image that ever printed itself on his mind, and there was a band of fire behind his forehead, and he put a bullet through the car’s rear window.

“Now that won’t help you none,” the farmer said.

He shot the left front tire and watched the car settle down a ways before slipping off the jack.

“Well, now,” the farmer said.

He shot the dumb son of a bitch.

And turned, the gun in his hand, and the world went into slow motion and his eyes took in everything, registered everything. The police car pulling up on the other side of the road, and another car coming into view from the opposite direction, and Betty with her hand to her throat and her mouth open but nothing coming out, and the cops kneeling down with their car screening them, and the second car braking to a stop on the other side of them, and Betty’s hand tightening involuntarily on the Apache tears necklace, and the farmer’s blood vivid against the front of his shirt, and the string breaking and little black stones spilling and floating as slowly as feathers to the ground, and—

And Betty screaming.

“Help! He’s crazy, he’s shooting everybody, he’s killing everything!”

Screaming at the top of her lungs and running toward the police.

They always disappointed you. No way you could help that. You expected everything and for a time it looked as though they could give everything, for a time, for a time, but in the end it was always the same.

He leveled the gun at her.

They were shooting at him. Bullets whined into the car in back of him, the farmer’s car, the car he had already shot to death. But the bullets did not hit him. None of them could hit him.

He drew a bead on her.

And flashed the rabbit, and the tomcat, and the way she looked when she slept.

He turned and threw the gun with all his strength. And turned again. One of the cops was holding her now, letting her sob into the front of his uniform. The other one moved cautiously from behind the car. Other cops from the second car were moving toward him now, their guns drawn, and in the distance he could hear still more sirens.

“Why don’t you shoot,” he said.

He was still saying it when they reached him.

From: Phil Posmantur

To: Murray Hutter

Subject: HOME treatment (enc.)

Murray—

I’m sending along the treatment for the last act of HOME. Between the novel and some research I’ve done on the original case, I think I have a good understanding of the dynamics of the principals.

Assuming it’s possible to understand them.

I’ll let my treatment speak for itself. One minor point, though. Kavanagh describes the gun as a .357 Magnum revolver on a .38 frame, whatever that is. I assume he means a .38 chambered for Magnum loads. Fine. But JJ has trouble with the safety, and as far as I know there’s no such animal as a revolver with a safety catch, exc. for very oddball foreign makes. I suppose we either make the gun an automatic or have it jam for some other reason, but could you check with K. and see if I’m off-base on this?