Page 63 of Race With The Devil

I bellowed, “Tutti. Where’s the rest of her?”

He almost seemed to be crying. “Fucking Mexicans! After she fell off the cliff they must’ve cut her stomach open. This happens all the time. They think bodies are carrying drugs! They must’ve been at the sideshow and seen her!”

I believed that Tutti hadn’t cut her stomach open. Why would he? “Why’d you throw her off the cliff? Because she was pregnant?”

Tutti’s face was screwed up like a squirrel roadkill. “She grabbed my arm, Tanner! We were up there”—he waved the gun heedlessly up at the trail—“and she grabbed my arm to say something. I teetered like I was on a teeter-totter and instinctually I reached out to grab her—oh, it happened so suddenly!”

Yeah, right. I could try a quick draw and gut the bastard. But who knew—he might be faster than me. I debated with myself in that split-second way humans tend to do in life or death matters. I just skipped right over denial and began the hearty debate about whether I could draw faster than Tutti. But for all his bawling, he wasn’t taking his eyes off me.

So I lied. “I understand, Tutti. A huge accident. I’m sure everyone else will understand too.” But why was her wedding ring hacked from her finger? Was that Mexicans, too? Had they handcuffed a dead body in case she objected to being gutted? No, Tutti had cuffed her so she couldn’t break her fall. Or phone anyone or climb back up if she survived.

He seemed to believe my false sincerity. His mouth twisted into a sob. “I loved her, Tanner! Now she’s all in pieces, nitrogen pooling around her body! Look—it’s killing off the plants! But in a year, it will be rich microbial soil . . . “

Was he serious? He was thinking about chemistry at a time like this? I took a couple experimental steps toward him. “Tutti. I know, it’s traumatic. You must be real upset right now. That’s why you should put the gun away. You don’t want any more drama.”

Tutti took a deep breath for a fresh tirade. “The power of the Holy Ghost brought me here! I had no idea where her dear body was. The Holy Ghost came to me in a vision and said ‘Tutti, go back to the trail and find her dear beloved body! That way you can bury her and give her some peace in the afterlife.’”

It sounds strange, I know, but I didn’t sense much clear danger until then. The sight of this diminutive man knee-high to a grasshopper talking like he had a mouthful of mush, that’s what set off my sense of alarm. Time and space became completely unrelated to each other. I remembered the “tactical breathing” a specialist had taught us in the Air Force. Count four in, hold for four, breathe out four.

Still, time slowed down in that highly bizarre Matrix way when Tutti’s flailing arm brought the gun barrel toward my body. He was still yammering about his vision, but I didn’t hear a word, as though my ears had been shut off. He just looked like a blustering fish with both eyes on one side of his head. Beetle capered back and forth in a very cute dance, unsure whether to run to Tutti or me.

I took a 50-50 gamble and leaped to my right.

I also didn’t hear the gun’s report. Everything in the scene was distorted as I flew in slo-mo horizontally through the air. To this day I swear I saw the bullet rotating as it came my way. Before I hit the sandy rock, a burst of almost brilliant color hit and spread through my left foot. And Tutti was plain as day, his jowls wobbling like a turkey’s, his eyeballs rolling up into his skull as his arm recoiled with the kick of the piece’s discharge.

And I swear that as I hit the ground I saw Tutti do the same. My face wound up buried in sand, but to this day I remember a dot appearing in the center of his forehead. I was confused as to why a dot would make him jump a couple inches in the air and collapse like a Jenga tower. He even let go of the gun as he crumpled. It rolled butt over barrel until it landed next to a spent casing.

How did I see all that with my mug covered in red sand? The phenomenon is called “dissociation” and cops in gun battles experience it all the time. I’d been in gun battles and had never felt this slow-mo, dramatic ballet. If it had continued longer, I might’ve dissociated right out of my body, like Unity did during sex.

Unity. There she was, firm in the isosceles shooting stance, still gripping her derringer, and it was purple. I had to smile with my face full of sand. Leave it up to a woman to have a purple gun.

As if the fast-forward button had been pushed, time sped back up to, I suppose, its normal pace. I sat up in the dirt as Unity ran toward me, still gripping the piece with both hands, but at least it was lowered to the ground.

“Tanner! What the fuck? Where was Tutti hiding? We didn’t see any vehicle at the top!”

Beetle was upon us, delightedly licking sand from my face and Unity’s arm.

I wiped sand from my nose and mouth. “Who knows where his vehicle is stashed? He knew we’d be here.” Something slowly occurred to me. Unity had a purple pistol in her hand. I frowned. “Why is Tutti lying on the ground? Did he have a heart attack?”

My love frowned, too. “What? You mean just now, when I shot him? Let me make sure he’s dead.”

I remembered the dot on his forehead. I grabbed Unity by the forearm. “Don’t worry. He’s dead.”

Wolf was barreling downhill toward us now from the path above. In one hand he waved the controller for the quadcopter. His leather cut flapped open, making it easy to see the ace bandage wrapped around his middle. Only now there were spots of fresh blood in the rib area.

“Tanner! Unity! Who shot who? I heard two shots!”

“Put that away,” I told Unity, who stuck her little gun in her jean waistband, like we did. Louder, I said, “Unity shot Tutti.”

“Just as he shot you!” she cried. My eyes followed hers. She was looking at my . . . foot?

Only then did I remember the almost psychedelic feeling of being shot in the foot. Dragging my boot closer to my body as I sat Indian style, I saw the toe of my steel-toed boot had been blown away. Great, just great. Even as I knew it could’ve been much worse, I knew I’d lost at least a couple of toes. “Did you find the rest of the body?” I asked Wolf, to change the subject, although Unity was untying my boot.

“Yeah!” He grinned widely, squatting with the rest of us. He pointed down the hill. “There’s a head down there, and I’ll bet you ice cubes on a red-hot stove will melt, but that’s Lavinia Dock’s head. Oh, sorry,” he said to Unity.

She didn’t seem to hear him. Too involved in yanking off my boot, and now my foot felt like a red-hot stove.

I grabbed her by the wrist. “Stop, Unity. It is what it is. We need to get Wolf to a hospital. Maybe Maddy’s old one in Flagstaff.”

“And you!” she declared, gesturing at the massive mess of my foot. I had to grab my boot from her to jam it back on. Wouldn’t do to hobble back uphill without it. “You look much worse than Wolf.”

I said, “I’ll bet you a drowning man’s very first word is ‘help,’ but Wolf’s condition is worse than mine.” I flashed a grin at Wolf as we shared the Funkadelic lyrics in brotherhood. “He was shot yesterday, and it’s still spotting through his bandage.”

Wolf looked abashed. “It’s nothing,” he said, although he stood and reached a hand out to me. “Come on, old man.”

Unity stood too and took my other hand. Beetle assisted by nosing me in the butt. Wolf slung one of my arms around his shoulders, but I didn't want to lean on Unity. We eyeballed Tutti as we hobbled past like some Vietnam statue. He was as dead as the Roman Empire. His tongue even stuck stiffly from the corner of his mouth like a little dog under anesthesia.

Wolf said, “Maybe the coyotes will concentrate on him, until we can come back to collect Lavinia’s body.”

“Body parts,” corrected Unity. Apparently learning her friend’s fate had ironed her out, as she seemed serene and focused on getting us men to the hospital. Or maybe being the one to pull the trigger on the crazed chemist had done the trick. Now she knew which end was up. Conversationally, she turned to me. “I didn’t even know I had a whole self until you came along.”

That sounded nice. “Do you feel more unified now?”

She grinned, dimpling her diamonds. “A unified Unity. At last.”

I kissed her forehead. A surge of fierce humanity rolled through me. Maybe I was becoming more unified too.