Thomas Perry - The Butcher's Boy

In the darkness it was difficult to work silently, but he moved with care and deliberation. First he took the charcoal and the can of fire-starter and moved around to the front door of the house. He banked the charcoal against the gigantic wooden door and soaked it with the odorous liquid, getting as much as he could on the door itself. Then he left it to sink in and moved back to the patio. He took all of the garden tools and spread them on the pavement in front of the door. The hose he propped between two gallon jugs of chlorine so that it aimed from the side into the doorway. He checked the loads of his rifle and pistol and set the rifle on the deck next to the swimming pool. He looked around to see that everything was ready. The hot-water heater was the key to all of it, so it would have to be first. He turned off the gas valve and then disconnected the heater from the gas pipe. He went around to the front door and started the charcoal fire.

He trotted back to the patio, turned on the gas and lit the jet, then turned it up so the flame was high enough to lick the top of the cabinet. Then he turned on the faucet and adjusted the pressure so that a steady, hard stream of water rushed across the doorway. Finally he retreated to the swimming pool. He lowered himself into the water at the shallow end of the pool and gasped. It was colder than he’d imagined. He ducked down to wait, holding the rifle above the surface and shielding himself from the growing glare by clinging to the gutter of the pool nearest the house.

It seemed to be taking a long time. He peered over the edge of the pool at the house. There were still no lights on, but he could see the glow of the fire in the front of the house, and the gas jet was flaming steadily. The eaves had caught, and part of the roof. Already the facade of adobe was crumbling, and the plywood siding beneath it crackled into flames almost instantly. He began to shiver, whether from the cold of the water or the cruelty of the night wind he couldn’t tell. It suddenly occurred to him that Castiglione might not be home. What if he wasn’t even home?

But then the lights went on, one after another, each window now glowing. The fire from the hot-water heater must have eaten its way into the back of the house. He ducked down again. When they were ready to leave, the outside lights would blaze on. He listened to the muffled shouts inside the house, trying to gauge how many voices there were. There were doors slamming and the sound of running feet. He knew when someone reached the front door, because he heard a yelp that escaped into the night air, then footsteps back toward the rear of the house. The pool, he judged, was about seventy feet from the side door. He steadied the rifle on the cement deck and lined up his sights.

At last the side door burst open and a man ran out onto the patio. When he was sprayed by the hose he turned and shot at it, then swore when he stepped on a rake. He ran toward the hose, since it seemed to his dim, confused, frightened brain to be somehow the source of the trouble. He was easy to hit because when he got near enough to see that there was no one holding the hose he stopped short, silhouetted in the growing light of the fire behind him. Another man made it far enough to kneel over his fallen comrade, then looked around him for someone to kill, before the rifle’s sights leveled on him too.

Inside the house they couldn’t tell what was happening. There had been shooting outside, and water coming from somewhere, but there was no way to put it together into a coherent idea that would tell them what to do. Somebody must be trying to put the fire out with the hose: he could tell that was what made sense to the two who rushed to the door next, because they weren’t armed. He let one of them get almost to the gas jet before he cut him down. The other stood inside the doorway, unaware that his companion was dead.

From his spot in the dark swimming pool, he decided to take a chance. He shouted, “Get the old man out!” then ducked down into the shadows and waited. There was the sound of movement inside the house and then he saw what he had been waiting for. A man in pajamas carefully eased a wheelchair into the doorway, and moved it out onto the patio. He aimed the rifle at the center of the chair’s back and prepared to squeeze a round into it. Then he sensed something was wrong. When the attendant got the chair to the patio he moved away from it toward the front of the house, his gun drawn. It wasn’t right. They wouldn’t leave the old man alone, no matter what happened. He studied the chair through his telescopic sights. There was something in it, but now he was sure it wasn’t the old man. Some hero? No, there were shoes on the footboard, but the leather back of the chair didn’t bulge in the right places. He thought quickly. It couldn’t be the front door. He could see that the front of the house was blazing now. There must be another way out. But where was it?

It had to be the garage. They’d want to get him away. The garage was behind him, too far to walk an invalid in an emergency. Suddenly it made sense. The place was built like a fortress, and yet the garage was a hundred yards away from the house. There had to be a tunnel under the yard. Then he realized that as soon as the ones who were left had made it to the garage, the old man would be driven away and then the floodlights would come on. He had to get out of the pool before they reached the safety of the garage.

He calmed himself and aimed at the only man he could see, the one in the doorway. He watched him fall backward. He dropped the rifle into the water and heaved himself out of the pool and began to sprint for the garage. He made it just as the electric door began to whir. He heard the car’s ignition, and then the dark shape of the car, its lights out, slid forward beside him, inching ahead behind the rising door. He froze and waited until the driver was abreast of him, then fired the pistol into his face. The car kept sliding slowly forward of its own volition, no living foot on its brake to halt it. When the back seat slid into view beside him he saw the old man’s face, held for an instant in a mask of surprise and terror like a photograph. When he squeezed the trigger the head jerked sideways as though it had been kicked. He walked along beside the drifting car and shot the old man twice more before he relinquished his place beside it.

He knew there would be only seconds now before someone turned on the lights. He sprinted for the nearest place the driveway ran along the wall and clambered over it. He didn’t look back, just kept running, turning the seconds of remaining darkness into whatever distance he could purchase. As he came to the end of the wall he saw a crouching shape waiting for him, both hands extended in front of it as though to steady a pistol. He heard the man shout something just before he fired into the crouching shape. The man’s gun went off in a last spasm of the fingers and he ran over the body before he realized that the man had said, “Hold it.” Hold it? Why would he say that? He kept running, but glanced back for an instant and realized the body was wearing a white shirt and tie under its coat. Strange, he thought. At three o’clock in the morning? But he didn’t have time to think about that. He was running hard along the house fronts. Behind him the floodlights went on and he heard the driverless car crash into something. When he reached the driveway where his car was parked, he jumped in, started it, and gave it as much gas as he dared without turning on the lights. In the rearview mirror he could see half the sky was lit up, a chaos of white floodlights and orange fire, and he could hear the first barking of guns back and forth across the deserted lawns and into the empty night. As he turned the corner and urged the car to fifty-five, he smiled to himself. He didn’t feel so angry now.