Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

“Do you really think you’re just going to walk out of here?”

“No. I have to say goodbye to some people first,” she said coolly, “but then-It’s getting late. You can follow me, of course. But what will you find? Friedrich’s gone. So there is no Corporal Waters. Then my work-well, that’s over. You see, I don’t even have to be careful anymore. Unless you have something else to tell me?”

Then, smoothly, she began to turn away, and Connolly, in an instant of panic, looked around the room-Emma still lurking by the doorway, the kitschy art, people laughing outside-and felt everything slip away. Without thinking, he grabbed her arm, jerking her back toward him.

“It’s not about Eisler. It’s about Karl. You’re not listening. I don’t have to prove a thing about your ‘work.’ I’m arresting you for murder.”

“Let me go.”

“That wasn’t careful, killing Karl.”

“Let me go,” she said, pulling her arm away, but Connolly held it. “What do you think you’re doing? On whose authority? Whose authority?” Her voice, louder now in the empty room, caused a few people out on the patio to look up.

“The police are outside. On their authority. You can say your goodbyes later.”

Her face, gone white, now twisted itself in a cold rage. “Take your hands off me,” she said, so self-possessed that Connolly obeyed the order and dropped her arm. “Madman. I never killed anybody.”

“Yes, you did. Technically, you might get away with being an accessory,” he said. “I don’t think so. Either way, you’ll be gone for years and years. I’ll see to it.”

“You,” she said, almost spitting the word.

“What’s the problem?” A deep voice: Hector, looming next to them.

“Come,” Hannah said, another order.

Connolly looked up at him, feeling suddenly dwarfed. Black eyes. “Hannah says you killed Karl all by yourself,” he said, improvising. Again the question mark. No one had known Karl’s name. “The man in the alley at San Isidro. You shouldn’t have done that, Hector.”

Hector glanced at her, then stared at Connolly, stunned. He seemed to lean back, as if he had been struck.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s crazy,” Hannah said.

“All by yourself. We thought she helped, but she said no, you did everything.”

Hector’s confusion made him jumpy. Connolly could see the tension creep into the broad, impassive face, the eyes as alert as an animal’s.

“You should have thrown away those boots,” Connolly said, pointing at his feet. “We matched the prints.” A lie, but would Hector know? “Just like a fingerprint. All over the bushes. When you pulled his pants down.”

Now the eyes, no longer confused, took on a shine of menace.

“Come,” Hannah said. “Foolishness.”

“You weren’t trying to kill him. I know. Just knock him out, the way you do.” As he said it, another blackboard leap. Someone else looking up at the tall, glowering man, black eyes flashing. “Like Batchelor. The soldier at the PX. You weren’t trying to kill him. Just teach him a lesson, right?”

“Shut up,” Hector said, his voice a low rumble.

“You didn’t kill him, just roughed him up a little. I can’t blame you. So why’d you kill Karl? We thought she told you to.” He nodded his head toward Hannah. “But she says she wasn’t there.”

Hector turned and looked at her, obviously surprised.

“Don’t say anything,” she said coldly.

“We know you killed him,” Connolly said quickly. “We didn’t know you did it alone. See, the way we saw it, you knocked him out-he’s just out. Messed up. But she said you had to kill him, you had to finish it. Did you even know who he was? Did she tell you? Eisler said you didn’t know.”

“Shut up,” Hector said again, louder now.

“It was smart making it look like the murder in Albuquerque. To tell you the truth, we thought that was her idea too.”

“Hector, come,” she said, a pet command, and took his arm to lead him away.

Connolly glanced from one to the other, feeling he had to do something, say anything to hold him.

“But that was you. See, I didn’t put two and two together until you beat up the guy at the PX. I didn’t realize you were queer too.”

The fist, exploding, came up and smashed into Connolly’s face. He staggered back against the wall, blood spurting out of his nose in a rush.

“I’ll fuckin’ kill you,” Hector said, moving toward Connolly and chopping his fist down against the side of Connolly’s neck, forcing him to drop to his knees, stunned. He heard a woman scream in the other room, saw in a hazy flash of peripheral vision people turning on the patio to see what was going on. Connolly leaned forward for a second, catching himself, afraid he would black out.

“Hector, no!” Hannah shouted.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, pushing her aside, heading for Connolly.

But it gave Connolly the second he needed. He brought the gun out of his pocket and held it up before him with two hands. He saw that they were shaking, one of them smeared bright with blood. “Stop,” he said, the word garbled by the blood in his mouth.

More screams. Footsteps. Hector looked down at him, hesitating for a split second, then, sneering, brought up his foot and kicked from the side, knocking the gun out of Connolly’s hands. It slithered across the polished wood floor toward the corner, and Connolly lost sight of it as the workboot came up again, kicking him. He fell over, his face hitting the floor with another crack.

“Stop it!” Emma’s voice. Dimly, Connolly saw her pounding Hector’s back. His face raging, Hector turned away from Connolly and flung her aside as if her fists were nothing more than wasp stings. She fell against the pedestal, the scrap-metal cowboy crashing to the floor beside her.

Connolly tried to stand, but Hector’s foot caught him in the stomach, and when he fell this time he put his hands around his head, curling his body into itself to protect it from the blows. “Stop it!” he heard Emma scream again. Then there was another kick to his chest. He groaned. Hector kicked him again, a machine now, uncontrollable. Connolly realized that if he didn’t move, he was going to die, bludgeoned to death like Karl. Then, in some bizarre transference, he turned to look up and saw not Hector but Emma, her hand held high in the air, swinging the metal down toward him, just the way it must have happened at San Isidro. When he turned his head slightly to protect his eyes, he heard the statue connect, a crack, a thud into flesh, and heard Hector grunt, rearing his head back so that the force of the smash was strengthened and the horse’s hooves pushed into his scalp. There was an explosion of blood from Hector’s head, spattering in a circle around them, an oil well of blood, before he fell over, partially covering Connolly, his body twitching in one long drawn-out spasm.

Connolly heard the statue fall to the side. Now there were lots of voices, screams of surprise, and he knew it was almost over. He looked along the floor to the gun in the corner, but it was gone. Raising his head to see better, he felt the nausea that he knew meant he would black out. He stretched his fingers to grasp the statue and drew it toward him by the hooves, so that when the crowd finally arrived it was clutched in his hand, and with his breath crushed by the weight of the body on top of him and his face sticky with blood, he did pass out.

He couldn’t have been out more than a minute. He felt Hector’s body being lifted off him, then hands hooked under his arms, pulling him to his feet, holding him from behind. “Jesus Christ,” someone said, and Connolly looked at Hector too, his head still oozing blood. Connolly weaved, dizzy, trying to draw breath through the dull pain in his chest. For a moment nobody moved, and Connolly saw the drops of blood on the painting next to him, the end of the arc. One of the guests was leaning over Hector’s body, turning it so that his face, absolutely still, stared up at them. His legs, twisted, hadn’t moved with the rest of him. Connolly tried to move toward him, but someone still held his arms, restraining him.