House of Blues

probably from the kitchen.
    " We're here to see Delavon."
    " Delavon?" The woman's head swiveled. "He
on the phone. Y'all come in, won't you?" She opened the door.
    Something was wrong here. This was not a home where
pure evil could flourish.
    Skip could see a room full of kids, eyes glued to the
tube. She glanced at Abasolo. He looked a lot more nervous now, his
neck practically a swivel, checking out everything and then some.
    " I'm Martha Redmann—here from Illinois,
visitin' my daughter. Used to live here, though—still miss it, can
you imagine? We havin' a big family reunion this week. Y'all want
some gumbo?"
    Skip stepped inside, Abasolo following. Martha
Redrnann turned toward the kitchen, but Abasolo didn't. He walked
around Skip into the room where the kids were.
    Skip turned to follow their hostess. Behind Redmann,
against a wall of the living room, was an old-fashioned secretary,
shelves above a fold-down desk. The shelves were glass-enclosed, and
in the glass Skip saw a man reflected.
    He was wearing a T-shirt and baggy, bright print
pants. He was pointing a gun at her.
    She couldn't tell if it was Delavon or not, and it
didn't occur to her to wonder. She dropped into a deep crouch, a
squat almost at floor level, and whirled, pulling the gun from her
pocket.
    The secretary exploded behind her, and Martha Redmann
screamed.
    Glass rained on Skip's head. She fired.
    The man fell, dropping the gun, blood spewing onto
his white T-shirt. Skip tried to stand but couldn't. She ended up
sitting on the floor, watching Abasolo fly into the hall, feeling
Redmann come from behind her. For a moment she thought the two were
going to collide, but each managed to stop in time.
    "Police," said Abasolo, gun drawn. More
women were pouring from the kitchen, keening. To her left the
children, the tube hounds, were frozen; not screaming, not moving.
    " My baby, my baby," said one of the women,
Delavon's mother perhaps, or maybe the mother of one of the children.
And then Shavonne, the little girl in the pink jeans, stood up and
screamed, "Mama!"
    Skip got only a glimpse of her face before Shavonne
began to run toward the women, but she could see that the child, in
her Little Mermaid T-shirt, her impossibly tiny jeans, knew that her
world lay about her in shards. She tripped on her clumsy thongs
almost as soon as she was in motion, and fell with a noise like a
brick dropped from above.
    She seemed not to notice that she had fallen.
    "Mama! Mama!" she cried again, and she
began to crawl, very fast, as if a wolf pack were chasing her. Skip
didn't understand why her mother didn't run to her; later remembered
Abasolo's gun pointed at the women, pinning them in place.
    She finally managed to stand.
    " You okay?" asked Abasolo.
    "I think so." She looked around,
reorienting herself. In the kitchen behind the women stood one of the
uniformed officers, gun drawn. The other was just inside the doorway,
radio at his mouth.
    Abasolo said, "Everybody be still. Just be still
for a minute and everything's going to be all right." He spoke
to Skip: "You want me to make the check?"
    Someone had to see if there was anyone else in the
house.
    Skip's legs had about as much starch as a pair of
rubber bands, but she wasn't about to say so.
    "I'll do it."
    Shavonne had reached her mother, who was holding her
and crooning to her: "You fine, baby, you fine. Everything gon'
be okay now."
    Skip turned to the room full of children. "Everybody
stay still a minute. I'll be right back."
 
"I'll be right back." Like I'm their mama,
gone to fetch a glass of water. One of the uniforms went with her,
the other went to the fallen man.
    The shooter was the only man in the house. Everywhere
else she found open suitcases, children's dirty clothes, in piles and
simply strewn, suitcases—all the appurtenances of the family
reunion Martha Redmann had mentioned.
    She went to the man on the floor. She knew as soon as
she knelt that he was dead. That she had killed him.
    He was Delavon. Delavon the Evil. Lying on the floor
in a pool of blood surrounded by women and children, at a family
reunion. Presumably one of the women was his wife. Skip had shot him
dead in front of her; in front of his own children, and their
cousins, and their aunts and their grandmother.
    The room started to blur.
    "Langdon!" Abasolo called sharply. "Sit
down and lower your head."
    She obeyed and in a few moments began to feel
sharper. She must have been swaying.
    Oh, great. First, you kill