Ben laid his hand on hers and squeezed it. ‘Who did it, Lottie? If you know who hurt you, you have to tell me. I’ll find them. I swear. Who did it?’
But Lottie had given all she had to give. A last sigh hissed from her lips and her eyes closed, her body relaxed and Ben held her as he felt the life leave her.
He remained kneeling on the blood-soaked carpet next to her for some time, still clasping her hand in his, his head bowed with sadness for this woman he’d only just met and knew so little about. Wishing he could remove the sabre pinning her to the floor and let her lie there with a little dignity, if it wouldn’t have been messing with a murder scene.
And wondering, who in God’s name was Peggy Iron Bar?
Ben was so lost in that moment that he barely registered the sound of the approaching siren until the police cruiser screeched to a halt outside the guesthouse and the open doorway behind him was lit up with flashing blue. It was no big surprise that one of the local residents must have called the cops. If they hadn’t, he’d have had to call them himself.
He laid Lottie’s limp hand down to rest on her chest and stood up. He glanced down at himself and saw that he was a mess. The parts of his clothing that weren’t torn and tattered from sliding down the road were covered in bloodstains. Anyone who saw him would think he’d been attacked by something wild. It was how he felt, too. The abrasions on his back were hurting. But he had more important things to deal with.
He turned towards the doorway to see the solitary cop from the cruiser running up the path towards the guesthouse’s front entrance. The cop was hatless, in a tan deputy’s uniform shirt and black trousers, a drawn pistol in his hand. It struck Ben as a little odd to send just one officer to attend to the scene of a violent crime, but he supposed that the fact that they’d managed to send anyone at all so quickly was fairly impressive, given that this was the rural Deep South. The UK was no better, at the best of times. There were enough accounts of residents in the middle of London waiting twelve hours for a response to a 999 call.
As the cop approached the house Ben recognised his face. Fleshy, pasty features burned red by the sun. Brown hair, spiky on top and shaved up the sides like a Marine. It was the deputy called Mason, one of the pair who’d accompanied Sheriff Waylon Roque to the scene of the liquor store holdup in Villeneuve. The one Roque had said was as sharp as a bowling ball. Better than nothing, Ben thought, and ran through in his mind what he needed to tell the guy.
But Ben never got the chance to say much at all. As Mason hurried up the steps and entered the hallway, he saw Ben standing there and raised his drawn weapon to aim at him. The cop’s finger was on the trigger, which definitely wasn’t correct protocol for dealing with a nonthreatening civilian. Ben noticed that the gun wasn’t Mason’s issue sidearm, either. His Glock was still tucked and clipped into his duty holster, next to his cuff pouch, baton holder, Taser and CS canister. What he was aiming in Ben’s face, with a little more aggression than Ben felt was warranted, was a big black revolver. Probably a forty-four, going by the size of the bore and the chamber holes in the cylinder.
Ben put his hands up at shoulder height, palms facing the cop to show they were empty. ‘Easy, Officer. I’m a witness to a murder. If you wanted to shoot someone, you should’ve been here when the bad guys were still around.’
The deputy made no move to lower the weapon. He came closer. Ben retreated a couple of paces, carefully stepping back around Lottie’s body, slow and easy, no sudden moves, keeping his hands raised and in plain view. Mason came on another step, still keeping the big revolver pointed squarely at Ben’s face.
He was standing on the bloodstained area of the floor. His weight was pressing blood up from the carpet pile, so that it welled and bubbled up around the soles of his large, black police issue shoes. Lottie’s body was between him and Ben, right there in the middle of the hall, a large mound of dead flesh with an antique sabre sticking up grotesquely from its highest point, like a banner raised on some conquered hilltop. It wasn’t a sight that was easily missed. And yet Mason hadn’t given Lottie’s body even a single glance from the moment he’d entered the house. His focus was fixed totally and intently on Ben.
Hands still raised, Ben wagged a finger towards the floor and said, ‘Watch you don’t trip, Officer. There’s a body on the floor.’ Sharp as a bowling ball. Maybe it was true.
The deputy gave a grunt and shook his head, still holding the gun steady. ‘Boy, y’all sure know where to go lookin’ for trouble. Reckon you found more’n you bargained for, this time.’
Which struck Ben as a curious thing to say, under the circumstances. Very calmly he replied, ‘Maybe you should lower the weapon so we can have a conversation about what happened here.’
Mason didn’t lower the weapon. Ben could see his fingertip whitening against the blade of the trigger. Properly speaking a .44-calibre handgun was really a .43, firing a bullet of .429 of an inch diameter. But it was still plenty big enough to blow a fist-sized hole right through the middle of a man’s chest. Hunters used them for killing grizzly bears. And the way Mason was pointing it at Ben, he seemed pretty serious about killing him with it too.
Ben considered his appearance, and it flashed through his mind that someone all covered in blood the way he was might, in a cop’s way of seeing things, look exactly like the kind of person who’d just smashed their way into an innocent woman’s house wielding a sabre and turned her entrance hall into a slaughterhouse. From that point of view it was fairly understandable that Mason was wary of him.
But none of that explained what happened next.
Mason fired. The BOOM of the big revolver in the confines of the hallway was stunningly loud and its muzzle flash was a tongue of white flame that spouted a foot from its muzzle.
If Ben hadn’t seen it coming, there would have been two corpses on the hallway floor and a lot more blood. Even as Mason’s finger tightened all the way on the trigger and the hammer was released and the firing pin began its short arc of travel, Ben was in motion. Superfast, he crossed the space between himself and the gun and deflected the barrel sideways and upwards from its point of aim, hard and brutal, so that the gunshot discharged into the ceiling.
The blast and shockwave from the revolver were tremendous. He would have tinnitus for days, but a little ringing in the ears is preferable to fifteen grams of hardcast lead alloy entering your skull at over a thousand miles an hour.
Ben’s training, and the way he taught his students, was to first take control of the weapon and then neutralise the assailant. In the same single continuous fluid movement that had been rehearsed a zillion times and saved his life for a percentage of that number, he twisted the revolver out of Mason’s hand and kept hold of his wrist as he sidestepped in towards him and used his own body as a fulcrum to yank Mason off his feet and dump him hard on the floor.
Ben could have finished his disarming move with a stamp to the neck or an arm-breaking twist, or beaten the guy’s brains out with his own ASP expandable baton. Instead, not wanting to hurt him any more than was strictly necessary, he just reached down to where Mason lay half-stunned on the floor and snatched his badge wallet, then removed his duty belt and tossed it away across the room.
In retrospect, Ben could come to see that as his first mistake.
Relieved of Glock, cuffs, tear gas and baton, Mason wriggled away across the floor like a beaten dog. His uniform was all bloodied from the mess on the carpet, his face mottled with anger. Ben quickly examined the revolver, then shoved it into his own belt behind the right hip. Pointing at Lottie’s body he said to Mason, ‘That there is a murder victim. I’m a witness to said murder. You’re a cop. Remember how