The staked Goat

different from Marco killing the Coopers. They helped you get his brother, so he gets them. The man you shot, what was his name?”
    ”Crowley.”
    ”... Crowley gets your friend, so you get him.”
    I thought back a lot of years. ”Sounds like a good law school point, Nancy.”
    ”So?”
    ”So law school is law school, and the real world is different.”
    ”I’m not in law school anymore. I’m in the real world, every day.”
    ”That’s a start,” I said, feeling the painkiller lift and blur me a little.
    Nancy rubbed at her eyes like a seven-year-old in need of a nap. She dropped the debate and put on a smile. A real smile, full of warmth and hope and...
    I said, ”If you’re not too beat, I’d like you to take a walk with me.”
    ”Now?”
    ”Yes.”
    ”Sure. But why?” she asked.
    ”There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
    ”I’ll get my coat.” She stood and turned away from me. Back over her shoulder, she said, ”You’re a good man, John Cuddy.”
    ”No, but I used to be.”
    She stopped at the doorway but did not turn to face me. ”Sometimes that’s enough,” she said.
     
    I went to the bathroom while she bundled up. The walk would probably dispel the dull buzz I was experiencing from the painkiller, but I had fourteen more of them.
    When we hit the sidewalk, Nancy locked her right arm into the crook of my left. The early evening was clear and bright, a little damper but a lot warmer than Pittsburgh. The last few working people were pulling into their virtually reserved parking places in front of their three-deckers. Here and there, one waved to her. She waved back with a name and a greeting. ”You grew up in this neighborhood?” I asked.
    She gestured behind her toward the massive Edison plant, puffing impossibly high and full clouds from numberless stacks and vent holes. ”Two streets over. Dad died when I was three. Mom died my last year in law school.” She shook her head. ”We rented, you see, and she worked so hard to put me through. Oh, I had scholarships and loans, and part-time jobs, but it was her effort really, and she never got to see it.”
    ”Oh,” I said, ”I think she saw it.” I took a deep breath. ”I know I have.”
    Nancy pressed her forehead into my shoulder for a few steps. Then we walked up the hill. We got to and walked through the gate. Nancy never broke stride or hesitated in any way.
    ”They’re pretty good about leaving the place accessible,” I said.
    Nancy nodded, patted my forearm.
    ”Usually either this gate or the K Street one is open.” We climbed the car path for the forty yards or so to the second walkway that cut right. Except for a car that I heard pulling onto the wide path behind us, the place was empty.
    We walked the right path, then eased left. We stopped a few steps later at the familiar marble stone. Nancy slid her arm out from mine.
    ”Beth,” I said, ”this is Nancy.”
    Nancy didn’t say anything. She didn’t look at the stone or at me. She just stared down at the ground, where I used to look. Where Beth was.
    I said nothing. Nancy glanced up at the inscription, then down again.
    ”Thirty was too young, Beth,” she said. ”Way too—”
    The first shot hit her high on the left shoulder, spinning her around and down. She bounced off the marker of Edward T. Daugherty, d. 1979. I dropped and felt the stitches tear out of my right arm. Not much pain, just the parting sensation and a feeling of warmth flowing outward. My blood.
    I skittered crablike in an arc five or six headstones wide. The second shot took a chunk from an angel’s granite wing, and I quick-crawled three or four more monuments away, leading the shooter away from Nancy.
    He spoke to me. ”I wanted her first, shithead. I wanted her down so I could come after you.”
    I recognized the voice, and I rubbed some snow on my face. It Stung away whatever painkiller effect the adrenaline was missing.
    ”Just like you hunted my brother, shithead.”
    I moved three headstones more, quartering toward the gate and further away from Nancy.
    ”Your brother was the shithead, Marco,” I yelled and dived, a round pinging off my former cover.
    ”Keep talking, big man,” said Marco, sounding closer. ”I torched that nigger and his whore. And I thought I got you.”
    I zigzagged twelve paces. ”I’ve got nine lives, Marco,” I said, diving again as he fired twice at my voice.
    I heard him clicking new bullets against a cylinder, so I moved as fast and as