Spencerville
count to three, and if this bitch isn’t up and getting dressed, your fucking brains will be laying on your ass. One—”
“Annie… get off…”
“Two—”
“It’s okay… remember what I said—”
“Three.”
He felt her arms loosen around his chest, then felt her weight lifting off him.
Baxter gave her a shove, then stepped back, but kept the shotgun pointed at Keith’s face. Baxter said to him, “When I get through fucking her, there’s not gonna be any fucking left in her.”
Keith tried to raise himself up, but Baxter kicked him in the head, and he fell forward on his face. He heard someone shout from the doorway, “Chief! State police on the way!”
Keith kept passing in and out of consciousness. His vision was blurred, and sounds seemed to reach him from far away. He could see Annie’s bare legs, then saw her legs again with jeans and slippers on, then the legs of uniformed men walking away with her, and heard her voice calling him, but couldn’t make out what she was saying, except for his name.
He heard Baxter’s voice more distinctly, and the voice said, “Look at you, lying there, naked as a skinned buck.”
He opened his eyes and saw that Baxter was kneeling in front of him and that Baxter had the K-bar knife in his hand. Baxter said, “You’re mine now. All mine.”
“Fuck you.”
Baxter spit in his face and brought the heavy pommel of the knife down on Keith’s head.
Keith was vaguely aware of hands on him, then his body rolling so that, when he opened his eyes, he saw the ceiling. He saw Baxter squatting over him, the knife in his hand, and he heard Baxter saying in a soft voice, “I’m just gonna relieve you of those things that got you in trouble.” Keith could feel a tug at his scrotum and thought he felt Baxter’s hand fondling his testicles, but he might have been imagining that, then realized he wasn’t, and Baxter’s voice was still droning on in a soothing tone. “So, we’re just gonna take these home with us, and for the rest of your life, you can think about who’s got ’em, and about who’s fucking my wife and who’s never gonna fuck her again—”
Keith jabbed two fingers into Baxter’s right eye, and the man howled and tumbled backward, covering his face with his hands.
There were hurried footsteps in the room, the sound of urgent voices, and the image of Baxter being half dragged, half carried away by Ward and another policeman.
Keith couldn’t feel any pain, except for the heavy pounding in his head, and the feeling that his eyes wanted to burst out of their sockets. A wave of nausea came over him, and he was on the verge of blacking out, but he knew he had to get on his stomach so he wouldn’t drown in his own vomit. Somehow, he managed to get on his side, then got sick and felt well enough to let himself go, slipping into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“W hat day is this?”
The nurse replied, “First tell me your name, then I’ll tell you what day it is.”
Keith thought that was a fair deal, so he said, “Keith Landry.”
She smiled. “Today is Tuesday. You got here Sunday night—Monday morning, really.”
Keith looked at the sun outside the window. “Is it morning or afternoon?”
“My turn. Who is the president of the United States?”
Keith told her and added, “He’s a delightful man. I had a chat with him last week.”
She frowned.
Keith realized this was not what she wanted to hear from a head injury patient, so he added, “Just kidding.”
She nodded.
He tried to sit up, but she put her hand on his shoulder. “Lie still, Mr. Landry.”
He regarded her a moment as she hovered over him. She was about mid-thirties, plump, friendly face, but with enough experience, he guessed, to be stern if he got frisky. He asked her, “What time is it?”
“It’s eight-fifteen A.M. You’ve been unconscious for about thirty-six hours.”
“Oh…” He felt a little foggy, and his head and body ached, but otherwise he thought he was all right. He tried to remember exactly what had happened, and he recalled parts of it, but it was like a piece of broken china whose fragments had to be fitted together.
The nurse asked him, “What is your address?”
He told her, and she kept asking those kinds of questions, and he saw now that she was marking a sheet of paper as he responded. He wanted to think about what happened, but she was going on and on with the questions. Finally, he remembered the last minute or
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