Twisted

chase me down and shoot me. Even if he shoots me in the back he’ll just claim it’s an accident.
    Roy’s lawyer argued to the jury that, yes, the men had met on the path and struggled, but that Hank had fallen accidentally. He urged the jury to find that, at worst, Roy was guilty of negligent homicide. . . .
    He put his foot on the first rung of wire. Started up.
    Second rung of wire . . .
    Pete’s heart was beating a million times a minute. He had to pause to wipe his palms.
    He thought he heard a whisper, as if Doug were talking to himself.
    He swung his leg over the top wire.
    Then he heard the sound of a gun cocking.
    And Doug said in a hoarse whisper, “You’re dead.”
    Pete gasped.
    Crack!
    The short, snappy sound of the twenty-two filled the field.
    Pete choked a cry and looked around, nearly falling off the fence.
    “Damn,” Doug muttered. He was aiming away from the fence. Nodding toward a tree line. “Squirrel. Missed him by two inches.”
    “Squirrel,” Pete repeated manically. “And you missed him.”
    “Two goddamn inches.”
    Hands shaking, Pete continued over the fence and climbed to the ground.
    “You okay?” Doug asked. “You look a little funny.”
    “I’m fine,” he said.
    Fine, fine, fine . . .
    Doug handed Pete the guns and started over the fence. Pete debated. Then he put his rifle on the ground and gripped Doug’s gun tight. He walked to the fence so that he was right below Doug.
    “Look,” Doug said as he got to the top. He was straddling it, his right leg on one side of the fence, his left on the other. “Over there.” He pointed nearby.
    There was a big gray lop-eared rabbit on his haunches only twenty feet away.
    “There you go!” Doug whispered. “You’ve got a great shot.”
    Pete shouldered the gun. It was pointing at the ground, halfway between the rabbit and Doug.
    “Go ahead. What’re you waiting for?”
    Roy was convicted of premeditated murder in the first degree and sentenced to life in prison. Yet he came very close to committing the perfect murder. If not for a simple twist of fate he would have gotten away with it.  . . .
    Pete looked at the rabbit, looked at Doug.
    “Aren’t you going to shoot?”
    Uhm, okay, he thought.
    Pete raised the gun and pulled the trigger once.
    Doug gasped, pressed at the tiny bullethole in his chest. “But . . . but . . . No!”
    He fell backward off the fence and lay on a patch of dried mud, completely still. The rabbit bounded through the grass, panicked by the sound of the shot, and disappeared in a tangle of bushes that Pete recognized as blackberries. Mo had planted tons of them in their backyard.

    The plane descended from cruising altitude and slowly floated toward the airport.
    Pete watched the billowy clouds and his fellow passengers, read the in-flight magazine and the “SkyMall” catalog. He was bored. He didn’t have his book to read. Before he’d talked to the Maryland state troopers about Doug’s death he’d thrown Triangle into a trash bin.
    One of the reasons the jury convicted Roy was that, upon examining his house, the police found several books about disposing of evidence. Roy had no satisfactory explanation for them.  . . . 
    The small plane glided out of the skies and landed at White Plains airport. Pete pulled his knapsack out from underneath the seat in front of him and climbed out of the plane. He walked down the ramp, beside the flight attendant, a tall black woman, talking with her about the flight.
    Pete saw Mo at the gate. She looked numb. She wore sunglasses and Pete supposed she’d been crying. She was clutching a Kleenex in her fingers.
    Her nails weren’t bright red anymore, he noticed.
    They weren’t peach either.
    They were just plain fingernail color.
    The flight attendant came up to Mo. “You’re Mrs. Jill Anderson?”
    Mo nodded.
    The woman held up a sheet of paper. “Here. Could you sign this, please?”
    Numbly, Mo took the pen the woman offered and signed the paper.
    It was an unaccompanied-minor form, which adults had to sign to allow their children to get on planes by themselves. The parent picking up the child also had to sign it. After his parents were divorced Pete flew back and forth between his dad in Wisconsin and his mother, Mo, in White Plains sooften he knew all about airlines’ procedures for kids who flew alone.
    “I have to say,” she said to Mo, smiling down at Pete, “he’s the best behaved youngster I’ve ever had on