Bad Blood

said.
    Einstadt glanced at the other two, then said, “You know what? I keep my ear to the ground, and I haven’t heard it was his own gun. Nobody told me that. Anybody tell you boys that?”
    The other two men shook their heads, and Morgan said, “Nobody told me.”
    “What I want to know, more than whether you did it, ’cause I know you did, is why you did it. If you tell me that, I’ll give you a piece of good advice.”
    “Not even your advice is free, huh, Emmett?” she asked. And, “You tight sonofabitch.”
    Einstadt shook a finger at her, but before he could speak, she said, “That Tripp kid found out that Jake was one of the boys who was there when Kelly died. He told Jim that Jake came in with his shirt off, and he saw that Liberty head above his belt buckle, and that Kelly had told him that she was fuckin’ some rough guy they called Liberty because of the tattoo. He was going to spill the beans to some newspaper guy. So Jim killed him. But by the time he got home, he was scared to death. He knew all about this crime-scene stuff, and he thought they’d figure it out.”
    Emmett’s face had gone still, and he said, “So . . . he did right by us. Why’d you kill him?”
    “He said if they got him, he wasn’t going to prison. He said he knew what happened to cops in prison. He got a little drunk, and he started to cry, and that’s what he said. What he meant was, he’d make a deal. He started out right, but then . . . he would of took us down.”
    “A deal.”
    “That’s right. I mean, Emmett, I know you’ve got your theories and all, but the state’s got its theories, and if they knew about your little religion, they’d put you under the jail. All of you. All of us. And I think there’d be some who’d talk. Look to Alma: I hear she’s got the Bible real bad.”
    “The Bible is the core . . .” Einstadt said.
    “This is Kate Spooner you’re talking to,” Spooner said. “You’ve been talking Bible to me since I was five years old, and your dad before you, and his dad before him, and all you ever hear is Lot and his daughters and Tamar and Judah and Jacob and Leah and Rachel and you don’t hear about anything else. I’ll tell you what, Emmet, reading the Bible for the fuckin’ parts is not really reading the Bible. That’s okay with me; but now Alma is reading the other parts.”
    “I’ll take care of Alma,” Rooney said.
    “Rooney, excuse me, but you couldn’t take care of a fuckin’ rock,” Spooner said. They heard the sound of a car in the parking lot, and Einstadt stepped to the window and looked out. Pizza delivery truck.
    “You got a pizza coming?” he asked.
    “No,” she said, and she took the moment to step up beside him and away from the two other men, to look out the window, and then step quickly past them so she could sit on the far end of the couch. That was a comfort, because her .45 fell under her hand, nestled in the pocket off the end of the couch.
    She asked, “So what advice have you got, Emmett?”
    Einstadt stared at her, his mouth turned down in a sour line, and he said, “They know a woman did it. They’re probably going to get some of this DNA stuff off Jim’s body—that’s the word in town. They say you were sucking his cock, and they can get the DNA from dried spit. So if it was you, you best stay away from the cops. And after you’ve kept your head down for a while, you might think of moving someplace else. Like Alaska, or somewhere.”
    She said, “I’ll think about that, Emmett. Now, I’ve got to eat my lunch, or I’ll be no good the rest of the day. So you go along. And you remember, I put my ass on the line for all of us.”
    “Bullshit. You done it because you wanted to. If it had to be done, there’d be better ways to do it,” Einstadt said. “Coulda had him out to the house, taken him out back, and buried the body in the field. Never would have found it in a thousand years.”
    “That’s water down the drain,” she said. “I had to do something, and I did it.”
    Morgan took a step toward her, but spoke to the others: “We oughta get her airtight one more time, then wring her neck.”
    She lifted her hand from over the arm of the couch, with the .45 in her grip, and laid the hand and gun across her lap. “Time to leave,” she said.
    A quick relay of glances, and Rooney took a step back. She was crazier than a bucket of frogs.

    WHEN THEY’D GONE, Spooner put the .45 back in the couch sleeve, looked out to