“You’re condemning more people to death if you let him live,” Olivia said flatly.
“Being a parent isn’t about being logical,” Joe Strong said. Those were the first words he’d spoken since he and Chuy had entered. “Shawn, what Olivia says is true. He will kill again. He’ll leave a trail of death behind him.” Joe didn’t sound as though he were making a judgment, but reporting the future.
“But I can’t consent to you killing my son,” Shawn said, his voice shaking. “What do you expect me to say? ‘Put him down, like a dog’?”
“Funny you should put it that way,” Lemuel said, and quicker than the eye could follow he stepped forward and snapped Connor’s neck.
36
Fiji and Manfred and Bobo walked back to their homes together, in a cluster, with Bobo and Manfred supporting Fiji. She was not crying, but she was clearly very shocked, if not in shock.
“Was that justice?” she said. She sounded as though she honestly wanted to know.
“More justice than he gave Aubrey,” Bobo responded.
“But isn’t that what separates us from . . . I don’t know . . . barbarians?” Manfred said. He was deeply troubled, and he didn’t know how to turn off the memory of Connor’s neck snapping.
“Barbarians.” Fiji laughed. The thin sound floated up through the cold air. Tonight felt like winter, and Manfred shivered. He’d come out without a jacket, as they all had. “I guess we are. That was justice. He couldn’t be cured.”
“You don’t know that,” Manfred began, only to be cut off by Bobo.
“Don’t try to defend him, not now, not in front of me.”
“Sorry,” Manfred muttered, glad they’d reached the pawnshop entrance. “Well, I’ll walk Fiji home. You going to be okay? You need me to do anything for you?”
“I’ll be better by myself,” Bobo said. “Thank you, Manfred.” He forced himself to look Manfred in the eyes. “This is a lot for a newcomer to absorb.”
“Yeah, well. Okay, we’re off.” He steered Fiji across the road, with their usual careful look both ways. “I don’t know why we always do that,” he said.
“Because the time you don’t look is the time you’ll get flattened by a truck,” she said, and he could feel her shudder.
“Fiji, I can’t even think how I feel about what we just saw,” he said.
“You don’t need to know right now how you felt about it or how you’re going to change as a result of having seen it,” she said. She shuddered again. “It’s a good thing that everything’s settled.”
“What about the sheriff? Do you think he knows about Connor’s past?”
“He shouldn’t, because Connor was a juvenile when he killed that Mrs. Ames, so he shouldn’t be able to find out. Right?”
“If he does suspect Connor, what’s he going to do when he finds out Connor is dead?”
“He’s not going to know that.” Fiji sounded a bit astonished at the notion.
“Why not?”
“His dad’s not going to tell anyone what happened, for Creek’s sake,” she explained. “Did you see Creek’s face? She was glad Connor was dead. Of course, she’ll have a hard time, but she could see the truth of what Olivia said, and she was so angry with him for so many things.”
“But the sheriff will want to know where Connor is.”
“Yeah, he will. But kids Connor’s age run away all the time. And he may read a confession into Connor’s absence. Which, after all, is accurate.”
“We didn’t help the Lovells . . . do anything.” With the body, he meant.
“Joe and Chuy stayed. Do you really think they’d want our help?”
They’d reached Fiji’s front door. Mr. Snuggly was there. He looked up at Fiji reproachfully. “Kept me waiting,” he said.
“You could have gone around the house and gone in the cat flap at the back,” Fiji pointed out. “Tonight, Connor died.”
“Good,” said Mr. Snuggly. “I was tired of hiding from him.”
“He tried to catch you?”
“Yes. He liked to kill things, you know.” By then Fiji had opened the door, and the cat padded in.
“Well,” she was saying as she closed the door behind her, “you could have told me.”
37
Manfred (looking both ways) went back to his own place. He turned on the heat, a step he’d been putting off. It came on instantly, with that burned-air smell. But the gush of warmth was a relief. Manfred went into his bedroom and wrapped up in an old quilt of his grandmother’s before he went into the kitchen. He would not have thought he could be hungry, but apparently his stomach thought otherwise.
Though it seemed ludicrous, almost disgusting, he turned on his television. He couldn’t bear to think of what might be happening at Gas N Go. Creek and her father had to be going through another hell, as if they hadn’t suffered enough. And what would happen to Connor’s body?
While he ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Manfred tried hard not to think of the terrible night the two remaining Lovells were enduring. Surely there must be some relief mixed in there, he thought. They’re free from the prison he put them in. And then he remembered he was supposed to be watching television, and he made himself concentrate on a rerun of The Big Bang Theory. For the first time, he saw Sheldon’s narcissism as monstrous, rather than amusing.
He settled back on the couch and presently sank into a kind of nearly sleeping dream. In this fantasy, Creek came to his door, told him she couldn’t handle being with her father anymore, asked him to take her in and make her his . . . and said that she forgave him for standing by while her brother was executed. When he made himself get up and stumble to his bed, it was past midnight.
He found out the next day that at about that time, Creek and her father had loaded everything they had of value into the old truck and had taken off.
He discovered they’d fled when Sheriff Smith stopped by. Shawn Lovell had left the sheriff a letter. At some time during the night, Shawn had dropped the envelope, inscribed “Arthur Smith,” into the old mail slot in the front door of the Antique Gallery and Nail Salon. Chuy had given it to Smith an hour previously.
“Now I’m going to tell you what he said,” Smith told Manfred. Manfred could only sit in his work chair and try to look relaxed.