Page 47 of Hero

Mick Noore, Ducky Sanders, and Vaughn Pineda all suddenly held pistols in their hands.

“What is this?” Mr. Conger said. “Some kind of joke?”

“No, it’s like a firing squad,” Pineda said. “When it’s over nobody knows who fired the shot that killed you. Nobody’s to blame. Nobody’s a hero.”

33

James Peter Turpin’s house had been healing itself over the past few weeks like a big living organism. The burned parts of the grass and garden had begun to grow back in as soon as the charred areas had been scraped clear and replanted. The five 9-millimeter rounds that Leo Sealy had fired at Justine Poole had been dug out of the garage wall and a couple of trees by the police forensics people, and then the wall had been spackled and repainted.

The swimming pool had been drained, and while it was empty Turpin had hired the Augustino Brothers Pool Service to replaster it and replace the scorched pool deck with a surface of caramel-colored sandstone set off by streaked rocks big enough to sit on, so the pool didn’t even look like a pool. It looked like a boulder-ringed oasis.

Justine Poole was lying on a chaise longue in a bathing suit. Her sunglasses were big and dark, and she was wearing a wide-brimmed white hat, so the effect was to make her seem small. Joe Alston sat under the umbrella at the big round table a few feet away with his laptop open. He said, “I’ve only got a few more questions. I promise I’ll finish it by tomorrow.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m not your editor. I don’t care when you finish it.”

“Since this happened to you, the papers and other media have all apparently agreed that you’re a heroine.”

“I don’t love that term. It always sounds like it means the hero’s girlfriend, not a girl hero. That or the drug.”

“I’ll make a note of that. How do you think that’s going to change your life?”

“I hope it will get me a job. It’s all a blizzard of bullshit, though. Whether or not you believe it is a test of your common sense. I don’t mean heroes aren’t real, but heroes risk their lives for other people.”

“That’s just what you did.”

“Not really. I’m glad it ended this way because he had killed Ben Spengler, a good man I owe a lot to. But Ben was already dead by then, so I must have been doing it for myself.”

“What do you mean? You didn’t have to be there at all. You could have left.”

“I did it so I would still be me.”

“Did it work?”

“I’m still me.”

“Does that feel like enough?”

“The water in the pool is like a bath. When the sun shines on me it makes the water evaporate and cools my skin, but makes it feel tight and clean. The sky is that deep, perfect blue that makes me feel as though I’m looking all the way up into space. I have these great new sunglasses, so you can’t see my eyes, but I’ve been able to watch you typing and I’ve noticed that you don’t take your eyes off me even then. It’s sort of flattering.”

“So you’re saying that is enough?”

“For now,” she said. “But we’re only here for now.”

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