Just in case anyone missed it, since LJ is down - here is Chapter 72:
Chapter 72: An Old Injury
(Saturday, October 21, 1984)
“Goddammit!” Ellery cursed as he got to the kitchen and saw the shards of glass spraying the floor. “Where are my goddamn shoes...”
Ennis bolted out of the bedroom, boots on. “Gimme the gun, I’ll go,” he said, reaching for it.
Ellery put up, aiming away from him. “I can’t, Ennis. Don’t go out there. Let me get my goddamn shoes – Ennis!” he cried helplessly as Ennis turned without pausing, snapped open the lock on the patio door and raced out, boots hitting the patio boards once as he sprang off in pursuit of the vandal now fleeing through the hedge. Ellery rushed back in the bedroom, cramming his bare feet into his loafers and followed Ennis, who was now longer in site.
“Where are you?” Ellery cried, running toward the place he saw the fleeing figure in the green parka, and heard an incoherent, faint shout from the direction of the pine woods leading to the county road. Ennis’s voice.
Ellery plunged into the misty gloom of the pine woods, heading toward where he heard the voice, the sound of his own footsteps on the frosty undergrowth and snapping twigs obliterating the subtler and more distant sounds of Ennis’s pursuit. The cold air burned in his throat, his back began to tighten and ache almost immediately, as it had during his pursuit of the sniper. I am not fit to run full speed, he thought to himself with a pang of disappointment, hoping that the person Ennis was chasing was unarmed, and that the next sound he heard would not be the sound of gunfire. Ennis, why did you have to take off like that? Beneath the anxiety, he felt an unreasoning anger at Ennis, for taking a risk he had made him promise not to take again after confronting Justin Worrell at Wes’s. And he’s done it again.
Ellery’s pace slackened, and he put a hand on his now-throbbing low back, then spotted a flash of white – Ennis’s shirt. He was bending over, but moving. “Ennis!” he shouted. “Don’t hurt em!” but his throat was parched, his voice breaking. He paused for what seemed like an hour, catching his breath, pressing his fingers into the spasm in his back, and then hurried at a half-run in the direction of Ennis’s white shirt.
Ennis was punching the man on the ground, taking full swings from the shoulder, not looking up, snarling through gritted teeth.
“Ennis! Stop! Ennis!” Ellery lunged at him, trying to stop the pumping arm whose strength had restrained Ellery so often during sex. “I got ta - ENNIS!” he shouted, dragging back on his shoulder.
Ennis’s eyes were black with rage, blowing out hard breaths, his face bright red with exertion, one eye already brightening with a blue bruise. The vandal had gotten one blow in before Ennis had beaten him to the ground. Ennis stepped back, gasping in cold lungfuls of air, and Ellery let go of him and knelt down. The figure on the ground had blood on jet-black, near-shoulder length hair, his hat several yards away, and in the sudden quiet, Ellery could hear his sobbing breaths, hands still held protectively over his forehead and face. “I’m a peace officer an I’ve got a gun - get up,” he said, quietly but forcefully.
“Don’t hurt me,” came the reply from the shivering figure, which looked to be a young man, rather than a teenager.
“I ain’t gonna hurt you unless you do somethin stupid like try ta punch me like ya did him. I said get up,” Ellery said, this time raising his voice to a harsh command. And this time – he obeyed. Ellery looked back at Ennis, whose complexion had faded to a bright pink, a shiner rising on his right cheek – the same place he had been hit by Bill. Ellery spared a worried look for Ennis, who was still glaring fixedly at the man on the ground, who turned over gingerly and sat, propping himself up shakily with his hands behind him. His face was a mass of bruises from Ennis’s fist, and he had one visible cut along his jaw and beneath his ear, probably where he had hit a rock when he went down.
“I can’t stand up,” the youth said. “Hurt my knee – he – kicked me down.”
“Is it broken?”
He shook his head. “Gimme a minute.”
“You didn’t give me no fuckin minute –“ Ennis growled from behind him – and Ellery held out a hand to ward Ennis away.
“Take it easy, Ennis. He’s under arrest.”
The man on the ground let out a sobbing sigh and struggled to his feet, and Ellery stepped back, keeping the pistol trained on him. “You gonna come quietly?”
He nodded, looking uneasily at the pistol. “I ain’t gonna run. Can’t run no more.” He was favoring his right leg.
“Can ya walk?”
“I dunno, I’ll try.” The youth put weight on his leg, hissed, and took a limping step. “Yeah. Slowly.”
“I wanna know who he is,” Ennis said, his voice still sharp with anger, unassuaged by the blows he had rained on the youth’s swollen face.
The youth turned and looked up at Ennis and then at Ellery, then away, taking another painful limping step back in the direction they had come, toward the house.
“I know who it is, Ennis,” Ellery said.
“What?”
Turning once more, the youth nodded gravely, and then resumed walking.
“I said I know who it is. That’s Larry Esteban.”
“Who the fuck is Larry Esteban?”
“Lorenzo,” the youth said. “Mr. Faggot Deputy knows my daddy. He got him fired from the Sheriff’s department.”
“Shut your fuckin hole, boy, or I’ll knock them pretty white teeth right out!” Ennis shouted.
“Ennis – please,” Ellery said, once again raising his free hand in a restraining gesture.
Esteban glared at Ennis, eyes blazing with rekindled fury. “You just try it, faggot.”
Ellery had no time to react before Enis was on him once more, knocking him to the ground with a roundhouse punch, then pommeled him once more, this time along the side of his head. Esteban stayed down this time, losing consciousness with a groan.
“Fuck, Ennis!”
“Nobody calls me that ta my face!” Ennis roared.
“You gonna carry em now? Cause I sure can’t. An I better get back inside before my back completely locks up an I can’t walk.”
“Yeah I’ll carry em. Fuckin punk kid. Right ta jail.“
“Goddammit, Ennis,” Ellery swore softly.
Ennis leaned over and heaved the slight youth up and over his shoulder, grunting under the weight. “What? You wanted me ta just do nothin? After what he done ta us?”
“No, Ennis. But he’d surrender to the law. Ya don’t punch em after they surrender.”
“This some kind a sheriff thing?”
Ellery smiled wanly. “Yeah.”
“Good thing I don’t work for you, then. Come on.” Ennis led the way back to the house, the unconscious Lorenzo Esteban lolling over his shoulder like a half-empty sack of grain.
“Damn good thing,” Ellery said under his breath.
Topic: Taking Chances, by E. L. Van Hine and L.H. Nicoll (Read 3509027 times)