The Door to December

and he had the biggest goddamned pistol—'
     'A thirty-two,' Dan corrected. 'There're bigger guns. Every cop comes up against bigger guns than that, all the time. And he was vulnerable for a moment, plenty long enough for you to take the son of a bitch.'
     'You know one thing I always hated about you, Haldane?'
     Ignoring him, Dan said, 'But you ran.'
     'I always hated that wide, wide streak of self-righteousness.'
     'If he'd wanted to, Dunbar could have put another slug in me. No one to stop him after you ran off behind the house.'
     'As if you never made a mistake in your goddamned life.'
     They were both almost whispering now.
     'But instead he walked away from me—'
     'As if you were never afraid.'
     '—and he shot the lock off the front door—'
     'You want to play the hero, go ahead. You and Audie Murphy. You and Jesus Christ.'
     '—and he went inside and pistol-whipped Fran Lakey—'
     'I hate your guts.'
     '—and then made her watch—'
     'You make me sick.'
     '—while he killed the one person in the world she really loved,' Dan said.
     He was being relentless now because there was no way to stop until it had all been said. He wished he had never begun, wished he'd left it buried, but now that he had started, he had to finish. Because he was like the Ancient Mariner in that old poem. Because he had to purge himself of an unrelenting nightmare. Because he was driven to follow it to the end. Because if he stopped in the middle, the unsaid part would be as bitter as a big wad of vomit in his throat, unheaved, wedged there, and he'd choke on it. Because — and here it was, here was the truth of it, no easy euphemisms this time — after all these years, his own soul was still shackled to a ball of guilt that had been weighing him down since the death of the Lakey child, and maybe if he finally talked about it with Ross Mondale, he might find a key that would release him from that iron ball, those chains.
    * * *
    The radio was at full volume again, and each word exploded like one round of a cannonade.
     '... blood ...'
     '... coming ...'
     '... run ...'
     More urgently than she had spoken before, afraid of what might be coming, wanting Melanie to be on her feet and ready to flee, Laura said, 'Honey, get up, come on.'
     From the radio: '... hide ...'
     And: '... it ...'
     And: '... coming ...'
     The volume grew louder.
     '... it ...'
     Jarring, ear-splitting: '... loose ...'
     Earl put his hand on the volume knob.
     '... it ...'
     At once, Earl jerked his hand off the knob as if he had taken an electric shock. He looked at Laura, horrified. He vigorously wiped his hand on his shirt. It hadn't been an electric shock that had sizzled through him; instead, he had felt something weird when he touched the knob, something disgusting, repulsive.
     The radio said: '... death ...'
    * * *
    Mondale's hatred was a dark and vast swamp into which he could retreat when the uncomfortable truth about Cindy Lakey rose to haunt him. As the truth drew nearer and pressed upon him more insistently, he withdrew farther into his all-encompassing black hatred and hid there amid the snakes and bugs and muck of his psyche.
     He continued to glare at Dan, to loom threateningly over the desk, but there was no danger that his hatred would propel him to action. He would not throw a single punch. He didn't need or want to relieve his hatred by striking out at Dan. Instead, he needed to nurture that hatred, for it helped him to hide from responsibility. It was a veil between him and the truth, and the heavier the veil, the better for him.
     That was how Mondale's mind worked. Dan knew him well, knew how he thought.
     But, though Ross might try to hide from it, the truth was that Felix Dunbar had shot Dan — and Mondale had been too scared to return the fire. The truth was that Dunbar then went inside the Lakey house, pistol-whipped Fran Lakey, and shot eight-year-old Cindy Lakey three times while Ross Mondale was God-knew-where, doing God-knew-what. And the truth was that wounded and bleeding badly, Dan had retrieved his own gun, crawled into the Lakey house, and killed Felix Dunbar before Dunbar could blow off Fran Lakey's head too. All the while, Ross Mondale was maybe