All Shots

Run!” I gestured to the front door. Holly Winter remained frozen. Desperate, I picked up one of the bright pillows from the drab brown couch. It was a small pillow and heavier than I’d expected. I took careful aim, and, with the skill I’d learned tossing dumbbells in obedience, hurled the pillow and hit her directly in the face. “Get out!” I ordered her. “Go!”
    Grant’s fingers inched toward his pistol. Calvin was shouting, “You bastard! You son of a bitch, I’m going to kill you!”
    Holly Winter finally left her imaginary rock shelf, descended her mountain of the mind, and bolted through the front door.
    Two safe: Mellie and Holly. Two to go: Sammy and me. Feeling my body relax, I was moving toward the kitchen when a patch of bright yellow caught my eye. Veering around, I saw to my horror that Mellie was coming back down the stairs. In her hands was a big yellow gym bag— the bright, eye-catching yellow I’d glimpsed. Tucked under one of her arms was a dog toy, a medium-sized duck that I recognized as a cousin of Pink Piggy’s. Damn! Mellie had been repeatedly told to get the dog toys, and, at the worst possible moment, she’d done what she’d been told.
    I heard the gunshot while I was still staring at Mellie. The sound reverberated through the little house, and Mel-lie’s immediate and terrified screams seemed to match the pitch of the reverberation and to play hideous variations on the theme of violence. Blood was flowing from Calvin’s belly. Grant, struggling to rise, had reclaimed his semiautomatic. From the street, I heard a crash I couldn’t identify, not the metallic bang of one car smashing into another, not sirens, not human voices shrieking for help. Hadn’t Holly had the sense to summon the police? Or to bang on doors? Hadn’t she...?
    Grant was upright and aiming the weapon at Mellie. I knew he’d kill her. And Calvin, of course. And me. And Sammy? I knew very little about semiautomatic weapons. The principal fact that had stuck in my brain was that a semiauto held more rounds than a revolver. If Grant started shooting, he might not stop, and he’d have plenty of ammo for all of us.
    The front door of the little house shot open, and a roaring mass of gray muscle rocketed in and smashed full speed into Graham Grant, who, for the second time that night, was body-slammed to the floor with such stupendous force that the little house shook. Once again, Grant’s pistol dropped from his hand. This time, though, instead of hitting the carpeted floor, Grant’s head struck the baseboard of the wall beneath the staircase. All color drained from his face, all but the fading purple and blackish green of his old bruises and the dark traces of those raccoon circles around his eyes.
    Sammy! How had Sammy managed to get out the back door, circle around, and enter from the front through the door that Holly had left ajar? How had danger ever registered on Sammy’s carefree puppy brain?
    I had to act. For all that Grant had the look of death, he could revive. Calvin, too, was comatose, but he might rouse himself. In seconds, I had that semiautomatic in my hand. Covering Grant, I got Calvin’s revolver.
    Only then, as I rose, did I take a good look at the dog who had saved us. He stood at my left side, his glowing dark eyes on my face. The likeness that had fooled others, the resemblance between father and son, had, for the first time, tricked me. “Rowdy,” I said. “My Rowdy. I should have known.”
     

CHAPTER 33
     
    “Her name was Holly Winter,” said Holly Winter, who had a fleecy pink Ballet Barbie blanket wrapped around her shoulders but was shivering anyway “I got that much right.”
    She, Mellie, Rowdy, and I were sitting on the steps of Dr. Zachary Ho’s porch. We were in that order, with Rowdy between Mellie and me, and with Mellie serving as a buffer between Holly and, doG forbid, the dog. The Barbie blanket was on loan from a neighborhood child who’d pressed it on Mellie, who, in turn, had insisted on wrapping it around Holly. The EMTs had offered emergency blankets, but Mellie and I had refused them in favor of a couple of old blankets I’d had in Steve’s van. The night wasn’t all that cold, and we’d been in greater need of soft comfort than of physical warmth. Rowdy gave both. Mellie was snuggled up against him, as was I. Mellie was clutching the crucifix that hung around her neck and a rosary as well. I was clutching Rowdy. Holly Winter had accepted the