Джеффри Дивер - Nothing Good Happens After Midnight - A Suspense Magazine Anthology

Meanwhile, though she wasn’t sure exactly how she was going to do it, she’d deal with Jason. Getting him under her control had never been a problem before. She’d figure something out. She knew she could distract him enough for Carrie and Emily to cover some more of the shrubbery with the TP rolls, and that pretty much directly related to how important her and Jason’s relationship was to her. The more she trashed the front of his house, the more she loved him.

He’d get that. He was cool. He totally got the code and would understand the risk she was taking to proclaim her love and devotion.

But then, all of a sudden, just as the front porch light came on overhead, Jason turned and went off somewhere, out of sight, into the house.

And now a shot! It had to be a shot. What else could it be?

“Holy shit!” she screamed, rushing up to the front door. “Jason! Jason!”

There he was, off to her left, standing in the hallway (looking pretty darned awesome with no shirt on) with a gun in his hand by the door to his parents’ room. Turning, he spread his hands. “Dawn! What the hell? What are you doing here? What’s happening?”

She moved a couple of steps into the house toward him.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what are you doing? Who’s in my parents’ room?”

“I don’t know. What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about somebody’s in there right now.”

“You’re kidding me?”

“Yeah, I’m fucking kidding you.” He flat-handed his free hand at the door again, screaming at the closed door. “Get the fuck out!”

Dawn took another step toward him. “I heard a shot. Did somebody shoot at you? Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He held his gun out so she could see it. “This thing is my dad’s and it just went off when I slammed it up against the door. I’m all right.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m God damn sure, Dawn. What? I wouldn’t know if I’m fucking shot?”

Dawn drew on a quick pout and spoke in her most authoritative voice. “You don’t have to talk to me that way, Jason. You’ve got no reason to be mad at me. I’m only here to help you because I heard a shot from out there. Jesus.”

“Well, help me by telling me who is in this room.”

“I don’t know. Some bad person. I don’t know anything about that. How would I know that?” Another step toward him. “Whoever it is, Jason, we’ve got to get out of here. We can call the police from outside. Let them take care of it.”

Jason threw a glance at his girlfriend, then slapped at his parents’ door one last time. “Whoever you are... fuck you! Get out of my house!”

Dawn reached out, took his hand and began to pull him back down the hallway to the front door. “Come on, Jason. Come on.”

Sheriff Deputies Greg Trudeaux and Paul Walker were almost terminally worn down from their shift so far tonight, which like so many other nights had entailed breaking up couples who were making out on the levee a couple of miles south of town. Typically, there was underage alcohol involved, to say nothing of underage girls, and most of the time Greg and Paul just gave everybody the relevant warnings, took and poured out their drinks, and told them to get on home.

Usually nobody was really drunk, but even when they were, the way it got handled was one of the deputies would drive the kids’ car back to one of their parents’ houses, where the parents could then deal with the problem. It was the kind of town that liked to pretend, against all evidence to the contrary, that it didn’t have a teenage drinking problem, so the word from on high was at all costs to avoid writing anybody up so the DUI would not appear on the record of any of these good kids.

Both of the deputies thought this was a stupid policy, but what could they do? Still, it left them both perpetually on edge, frustrated about what lessons were being taught. Some of these so-called “good kids,” they knew, were capable of some bad stuff. Nothing tonight, true, but every time they approached a parked and dark car down an abandoned levee road, there was a chance of something unexpected happening. And, in fact, these were not always “kids,” good or otherwise. Some were a couple of years out of high school, unable to cut it in college or even in the minimum wage job market, and they were now unemployed and angry.

Every car a possible threat. And tonight they’d pulled up behind seven of them.

Wound up tight as a spring? You could say that.

In any event, when they got the call from dispatch about some kind of disturbance from one of the Troon Estates Neighborhood Watch people, they were ready to switch gears and roll. Even though it was probably as mundane as some girls TPing some guy’s house — with school just starting, it was high season! — nevertheless, some other of the lower-rent parts of town had recently come under the apparent influence of wannabe gang members from the capitol just down the freeway. There had been an alarming rise in residential burglaries in the last year or two, especially in some of these seedier areas, although “seedy,” like DUI, was a term best left unspoken.

Except for their black and white police car, the county road back was completely deserted. To recalibrate his and his partner’s own respective equilibriums, Paul Walker was having some fun on the drive into town, pushing eighty miles an hour without his red and blue lights flashing and keeping his siren mute.

They just hit the city limit, maybe half a mile more before they’d get to their turn into the Estates proper, when dispatch came on again. “Car sixteen, do you copy?”

Greg picked up the dashboard microphone. “Car sixteen, copy.”

The dispatcher, Davon White, was normally the soul of calm, but now there was a palpable sense of urgency in her pinched and no-nonsense voice. “We’ve got a ten seventy-one on the call to Country Club Court. Repeat, ten seventy-one. Other units will be responding.”

“Ten seventy-one,” Greg said. “Shots fired.”

Paul threw a quick glance over to his partner. “I know what it means.”

“You want to pull over? Wait for backup?”

“When something real is finally happening? In your dreams, Greg.” He reached out and punched up his emergency lights and siren. Then, with his tires screeching, he took the right hand turn onto Country Club Drive.

Not even a minute after Carrie heard the shot, the siren’s wail froze her where she stood in the middle of the lawn. Relatively close to the house, she was caught in the lights over the front porch. Dropping the last couple of rolls of toilet paper, her hands went to her mouth and, unable to control her reaction, she let out a scream.

From behind her, Emily yelled, “What is it? What is it?”

“Where’s Dawn?”

“Inside. Still inside.”

“Oh my God! We’ve got to get out of here.”

“We can’t just leave her. Anyway, she’s got the keys. Jesus Christ. What are we going to do? We can’t just...”

Emily turned away from Carrie as the police car skidded around the corner into the Court, catching her in its brights as it lurched to a stop, deputies coming out of both sides, their weapons out. Emily put her hands up over her head.

“Down,” the driver said. “On the ground. Hands where I can see them. Down, I said!”

Carrie followed the movements of the other cop, who’d come out the passenger door, his gun also drawn. She didn’t know how it happened, but her reactions did not seem to be under control and suddenly she had her own hands spread apart in the air over her head. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” she wailed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Then she was on her knees, sobbing.

Both of their guns extended out before them, the deputies kept advancing toward the open front door, toward the light.