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Then she looked to Mays, seemingly for permission.

Mays, his head cocked, stared belligerently at Curtis, his look saying, Who the fuck does this honky think he is, aiming a fucking Glock at Kendrik Fucking Mays?

Curtis motioned with the pistol toward the female. “Go! Now!”

Kendrik said, “Go on, bitch. I deal with you later.”

She slid the dress over her head, not bothering to put on any panties, and then moved to the wooden stairs. She looked back over her shoulder, then turned and went upstairs as fast as she could.

Curtis, the pistol aimed at Mays’s face, handed him the Wanted poster.

“This you?” Will asked.

Mays looked at it, then at Curtis. Then he smiled.

Will Curtis thought: Jesus! What rotted teeth!

At least the ones he still has.

He must be living on crystal meth.

Kendrik then said: “Fuck you! What if it is, old man?”

He spat on the floor.

“You do what it says you did?”

“Fuck you!” he repeated.

He tried to stare down Curtis. But then he suddenly started to shake uncontrollably.

After a moment, he said, “Maybe. What’s it to you?” He shook again, then tried to puff out his chest. “Yeah. I done it. All that and more. Two years ago. Why you here now?”

“I’d say, ‘May God have pity on you,’ but I think you’re past that point.”

Kendrik barked: “Fuck you, motherfucker!”

Will Curtis nodded.

And he squeezed the trigger of the Glock.

The .45-caliber round entered Kendrik’s right cheek, making an entrance wound just below the eye that looked like a pulpy crimson hole.

Kendrik LeShawn Mays’s eyes rolled back as he suddenly slumped onto the filthy torn mattress.

When he got to the top of the stairs, Will Curtis found Kendrik’s mother standing solemnly in the middle of the shabby living room. She had her head down, her face expressionless. Her arms were tightly crossed over her chest, her hands squeezing her biceps. The girl was nowhere in sight.

“I’d like to say I’m sorry for your loss,” Will Curtis said evenly. “But you lost your boy a long time ago. That wasn’t him down there.”

She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t. You right. It ain’t no good. Ain’t none of it no good.”

She looked up and met his eyes. He saw that hers were stone cold.

“Had it coming to him,” she said. “He hurt a lot of folk, good folk, not just me. That girl? He abuse her a long time. Months. Now he won’t. And I won’t be beat up no more for his meth an

d shit.”

Will nodded.