The Passenger by Jack Ketchum Page B

now.
    Ahead of her on the stairs Emil was
hauling Marion down, cursing and fighting him all the way but Janet knew his
strength firsthand and knew it wasn’t going to do her a damn bit of good. Billy
was smiling, having a fine old time with all this, laughing and poking her with
his index finger from behind. Ray ignored him but seemed to consider Marion
with something like regret.
    In one way or another each of them was
focused on Marion. She stopped and turned.
    “Micah Harpe,” she said. “Big.”
    He looked puzzled. How would this woman know his name ? So did the black guard behind him.
    “Yeah?”
    “Two things. My name’s Janet Morris. Does
that ring a bell?”
    “You been on the bands all night. I know
who you are.”
    “You don’t understand. I’m a lawyer. I
represent your brother. And our defense is based solely on you, Mr. Harpe.
We’re saying it was you who killed George and Lilian Willis and not Little.
That’s the first thing.”
    She was talking for her life now and she
knew it. She also knew learning of her defense strategy wasn’t going to make
him happy.
    “I’m interested. The second?”
    “I read your rap sheet. The attempted
murder, the one in prison.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    She glanced down the stairs. The others
had reached the bottom and Emil was staring hard at them, suspicion knotting
his brow.
    “The man was your cellmate. He’d been
there just three days. You beat him into a coma. Why?”
    “I didn’t like him.”
    The guard was smiling.
    “You didn’t like him because he’d
murdered his wife and children. His children .
You seemed to feel very strongly about that.”
    “Nobody on the inside likes a
baby-killer. Maybe me less than most. So what?”
    “What if I told you what you haven’t heard on the police bands yet?”
    She looked over her shoulder. Emil had
handed Marion off to Ray now and was climbing back up the stairs. He was
already halfway there.
    “What if I told you I just saw these
people shoot a four- or five-year-old girl to death in her parents’ car, just
to steal the car ? Would you still let
them walk on out of here? Because that’s what they did. A man, a woman, a
teenage girl and a five-year-old child ,
Mr. Harpe.”
    She was aware of Emil right behind her
now and knew he’d heard that last part but she didn’t give a good goddamn what
or how much he’d heard and her anger was real when she whirled on him.
    “ Tell
him !” she said.
    Emil looked too damn surprised to answer.
    “That true?” said Harpe.
    Emil just looked at him.
    “You a pimp and a baby-killer, asshole?”
    Then suddenly his confusion seemed to
resolve itself. He threw his arm around her neck and yanked her off the stair
she was on and slid the gun out of his belt and jabbed the barrel to her
forehead, his breath hot and sour against her face.
    “ Fucking
bitch !”
    The guard behind them raised his rifle.
    “Go ahead,” said Harpe. “Shoot her. And
then I guess you’re gonna shoot your way outa here, right?”
    She glanced down at Billy and saw him
draw Marion’s .22. Harpe saw it too.
    “Looks like you are,” he said. “You are
one bunch of stupid people, you know that?”
    “Back off!”
    He slammed her forehead with the gun
barrel. His arm was choking her. She saw stars and tried not to fall.
    “Back off, goddammit!”
    He hit her again, harder this time,
exactly where she’d hit the windshield hours ago so that she was bleeding
again, yet even through the bright spreading pool of pain she could feel him
trembling, fear or anger or both, and that drove her own anger, keeping her
afloat above the pain. She was aware of all the people watching them below and
that the place had gone practically silent, that somebody had finally killed
the chaos they’d been listening to all night. So that the third time he hit her
it thundered in her ears like a single blow on a drumhead.
    “ You
want a dead lawyer here? I’ll damn well give her to you! ” Emil screamed.
    “You