The Husband

diameter of a dime. On the underside they were yellow with stiff black legs. They were on their backs, balanced on curved shells, and a gentle eddy of wind spun them in slow circles.
    Cuffed to a chair, sitting in urine, Anson would make a pathetic figure, and he would play the victim convincingly, with the skill of a cunning sociopath.
    Even though Taggart had implied that he heard truth in Mitch's story, he might wonder at the hard treatment Anson had received. With no experience of Anson, having heard only the condensed version of events, the detective might think the treatment had been worse than hard, had been cruel.
    Crossing the courtyard, where the wind badgered again, Mitch was aware of the detective close behind him. Although they were in the open, he felt crowded, pinched by claustrophobia.
    He could hear Anson's voice in his mind: He told me that he killed our mom and dad. He stabbed them with garden tools. He said he'd come back to kill me, too.
    At the back door, Mitch's hands were shaking so much that he had trouble fitting the key in the lock.
    He killed Holly, Detective Taggart. He made up a story about her being kidnapped, and he came to me for money, but then he admitted killing her.
    Taggart knew that Jason Osteen hadn't earned an honest living. He knew from Leelee Morheim that Jason had done a job with Anson and had been cheated. So he knew Anson was bent.
    Nevertheless, when Anson told a story conflicting with Mitch's, Taggart would consider it. Cops were always presented with competing stories. Surely the truth most often lay somewhere between them.
    Finding the truth will take time, and time is a rat gnawing at Mitch's nerves. Time is a trapdoor under Holly, and time is a noose tightening around her neck.
    The key found the keyway. The deadbolt clacked open.
    Standing on the threshold, Mitch switched on the lights. At once he saw on the floor a long blood smear that hadn't concerned him before, but which alarmed him now.
    When Anson had been clubbed alongside the head, his ear had torn. As he'd been dragged to the laundry room, he'd left a trail.
    The wound had been minor. The smears on the floor suggested something worse than a bleeding ear.
    By such misleading evidence were doubts raised and suspicions sharpened.
    Trapdoor, noose, and gnawing rat, time sprung a coiled spring in Mitch, and as he entered the kitchen, he slipped open a button on his shirt, reached inside, and withdrew the Taser that was tucked under his belt, against his abdomen. As he'd delayed getting out of the Honda, he had retrieved the weapon from the storage pocket in the driver's door.
    "The laundry room is this way," Mitch said, leading Taggart a few steps forward before turning suddenly with the Taser.
    The detective wasn't following as close as Mitch had thought. He was a prudent two steps back.
    Some Tasers fire darts trailing wires, which deliver a disabling shock from a moderate distance. Others require that the business end be thrust against the target, resulting in an intimacy equal to that of an assault with a knife.
    This was the second Taser model, and Mitch had to get in close, get in fast.
    As Mitch thrust with his right arm, Taggart blocked with his left. The Taser was almost knocked out of Mitch's hand.
    Retreating, the detective reached cross-body, under his sports jacket, with his right hand, surely going for a weapon in a shoulder holster.
    Taggart backed into a counter, Mitch feinted left, thrust right, and here came the gun hand from under the jacket. Mitch wanted bare skin, didn't want to risk fabric providing partial insulation against the shock, and he got the detective in the throat.
    Eyes rolling back in his head, jaw sagging, Taggart fired one round, his knees folded, and he dropped.
    The shot seemed unusually loud. The shot shook the room.

Chapter 56

     
    Mitch was not wounded, but he thought about John Knox self-shot in the fall from the garage loft, and he knelt worriedly beside the detective.
    On the floor at Taggart's side lay his pistol. Mitch shoved it out of reach.
    Taggart shuddered as if chilled to the marrow, his hands clawed at the floor tiles, and bubbles of spit sputtered on his lips.
    Faint, thin, pungent, a ribbon of smoke unraveled from Taggart's sports jacket. The bullet had burned a hole through it.
    Mitch pulled back the jacket, looking for a wound. He didn't find one.
    The relief he felt did not much buoy him. He was still guilty of assaulting a police officer.
    This was