Wilhelm, Kate Justice For Some

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crossed the road with it, and vanished into one of the ruined buildings. He emerged a few seconds later
empty-handed and returned to the jug and proceeded to make a booby-trap for her car.
She watched in icy fury now, periodically taking pictures. She finished one roll and reloaded the camera.
She put the first film in a small tightly-closed plastic container and dug a hole in the ground a few feet
from her hiding place and put the container in it, covered it carefully, scattered dust and gravel on it, and
was content. If he got the camera, she thought grimly, she still had the real evidence she had come for.
The sight of the assault rifle had unnerved her, she admitted, and she considered changing her plans
completely, not revealing herself at all.
But then he would eventually retrieve the rifle, dismantle the trap, and leave again, and have plenty of
time to get rid of everything. She shook her head slightly.
He had loosened the top of the jug, gasoline, she guessed, and had uncoiled a length of twine, twenty
feet long, thirty feet, and recoiled it more loosely. A wick, she thought. Gasoline and a wick. She was
supposed to reappear with Maria, she thought, and they would part; she would get in her car, start it,
and he would light the wick and the car would explode into flames. And then?
He must have planned to get rid of Maria, and leave the rifle in her car? Perfect solution to the problem.
Let the chicana take the blame.
In a day or two someone would come by and find the dead women, one burned to crisp in her car, the
other on the road in a different ca equally dead, with her prints on the rifle that had killed Fran Donatio.
Enough for any sane person.
"All right," she muttered then. "All bloody right.
She moved from the camera to the rifle and carefully sighted and aimed it at his car, at the back wheel,
an fired. She missed. Uncle Peter threw himself to th ground at the shockingly loud report from her rifle;
th noise echoed and re-echoed through the valley, racin from rock to rock, from wall to wall, quieting
the will pering lake.
Before the echoes died all the way, she fired again. She knew Uncle Peter would not be able't guess
where the shots came from, not with the strange acoustics the valley provided. She had target practice,
here years ago, and she knew how the echoes of the shots would distort the source. This time when she
looked through the camera lens to see if her second she had missed, she saw with satisfaction that
although she had not shot out a tire, as she had intended, she had punctured the gas tank. Gas again, she
thought, nod ding. That would do.
The silence after the two explosions was profound No bird flew, no mouse scurried, no lizard ran. Only
th lake whispered, whispered.
For a long time Uncle Peter did not show himself did not move into sight from around the side of her car
Then he dashed across the roadway and into the sam building he had entered before with the rifle. She
ha, been waiting for this, and now, the rifle already aimed, and ready, she fired once more, this time at
her own car The windshield shattered; she fired a second shot, and the front wheel exploded. She
leaned back, out o breath, almost light-headed. No doubt he knew how to hot-wire a car, she thought,
and, no doubt he had thought he could do that later, possibly after dark. They were both stranded out
here now, twenty-three miles from East Shasta.
Then there was a burst of gunfire that sounded like a bomb going off, and she closed her eyes in relief.
He was shooting at one of the buildings in the ruined town.
The noise eclipsed the shots she had fired, made them sound more like firecrackers than a deadly
weapon. The echoes of the assault rifle in the enclosed valley were deafening. I "How do you plead,
Uncle?" she said in the deep silence that followed. "Are you ready to plead?"
She spoke in a voice that was not raised particularly, and she directed her words at the hillside at the
east side of the town, not down into the buildings. The effect was what she expected it would be: an
answering burst of gunfire aimed at the eastern most section of the rising hillside. She nodded. A
scattering of rocks raced down the hill, dislodged by the fusillade. He fired again.
Arresting officer, prosecutor, judge, jury. He would have to be his own defense attorney, she decided. It
was asking too much for her to play that role also.
"You have the right to remain silent, Uncle," she said, this time directing her voice to the western end of
the valley. It echoed hollowly. This time he did not shoot.
He was on to the trick, she assumed, trying to think of some way to make her reveal her location.
"Sarah, let's talk," he called from within the buildin "there's no Maria, is there? That was a ploy?" i She
nodded silently. Yes, Uncle. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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