Breaking Point

flailed his hands up, managing to knock Pendergast’s aim off as the gun exploded next to his ear.
    Operating more out of instinct and terror than thought, Joe pinned Pendergast’s wrist to the doorframe with the back of his right forearm and stepped forward and backed into him, now grasping Pendergast’s wrists with both of his hands. Pendergast’s arm was pinned under Joe’s left armpit, the gun pointed toward the dried-out lawn, and it fired again, but Joe could barely hear the roar this time because his right ear was stunned silent. Joe recognized the weapon as an old Army Colt 1911 .45 semiautomatic, and he knew what kind of damage it could do.
    Joe slammed Pendergast’s wrist against the doorframe again and again, trying to make him drop the weapon. But Pendergast was younger and stronger. He could feel the hardness of Pendergast’s body pressed against his back. Pendergast was now beating his free fist down on Joe’s head, neck, and back, and Joe wasn’t sure he had the strength or leverage to knock the gun loose.
    Although he was temporarily deaf in his right ear from the gunshot and the side of his face felt stunned, he could hear yelling from behind him inside the house and Greene-Dempsey’s high-pitched voice screaming, “
Call 911! Call 911!”
to the woman in the right duplex.
    Pendergast’s fist came down hard on the top of Joe’s head, mashing his hat down nearly over his eyes and unleashing a wave of starbursts in front of his vision. He realized that if he didn’t take Pendergast down soon—somehow—he’d be a dead man. He hoped whoever else was inside the house wouldn’t come out front and join in on the parade of blows, or bring his own gun along.
    Joe let go of Pendergast’s wrist with his right hand and reached out and grasped the suspect’s thumb, which was curled around the grip of the .45, and jerked back on it as hard as he could. The bone broke with a dull snap, and the thumb flopped back, held by skin alone. Because Pendergast’s body was pressed tight to his back, Joe could feel him stiffen as the pain shot through him.
    Pendergast howled in Joe’s other ear, but the .45 dropped to the concrete of the porch and bounced into the grass. As it did, Joe let go and wheeled, ripping the first thing he could find—a big canister of bear spray—from his belt with the intention of blasting Pendergast in the eyes. But Pendergast’s eyes were closed tight as he howled and hopped up and down on one foot, cupping his wounded right hand with his left, the thumb flopping from one side of his hand to the other, and Joe didn’t see an opening. So he reared back and struck Pendergast solidly on the bridge of his nose with the bear spray canister, staggering him.
    While Pendergast was off-balance, Joe reached in through the open door and grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked down, and the man stumbled past him and crashed facedown on the lawn, his arms windmilling. Before Pendergast could come to his senses enough to scramble for the .45, which was within his reach, Joe fell on him and forced him back to the ground and hit him three more times on the head with the bear spray canister until Bryce yelled,
“No more, man!”
    When Joe paused, Pendergast opened his bloodshot eyes and looked up. Joe quickly held the canister out and blasted the man in the face with a red burst of bear spray.
    —
    T EN MINUTES LATER, with Pendergast cuffed facedown and howling in the grass, Joe leaned against the grille of his pickup, dabbing his eyes with a moist cloth provided by the woman in the right duplex. She’d called 911, she said. He’d gotten a whiff of the bear spray’s blowback himself, and it seemed like every fluid in his body was trying to pour out of his nose.
    Lisa Greene-Dempsey stood a few feet away, shaken. She glared at him with her hands on her hips.
    When he was able to make out her blurry image, Joe said, “You saw all that, right?”
    “Of course I saw it,” she said, angry. “I saw the whole damned thing. You could have gotten yourself killed.”
    “You didn’t get hit with any of the bear spray, did you?”
    “No.”
    “Good. It’s nasty stuff.”
    He knew bear spray contained much more oleoresin capsicum than standard law enforcement personal-defense pepper spray, and it could turn a charging grizzly. It wasn’t designed for use on humans, but at that moment Joe didn’t care.
    “I hope we don’t have a lawsuit on our hands,” she said.
    “How you doing,