A Perfect Life by Mike Stewart

still swimming in exhaustion. “What?”
    Canon placed a hand on Scott's back and pushed gently. “We here now. Can't look around standin' out on the porch.” He shoved harder at the small of the young man's back. “Go, boy.”
    Both men stepped inside. Canon called out now—not just hello, but that his name was Walker, that his car broke down, that he needed help, that he needed to use a phone, that he was just an old man. Pretty much anything and everything he could think of not to get shot.
    Finally, he seemed satisfied. “Okay. You want upstairs or down here?”
    Scott ran his hand through his hair. “Neither.”
    “Too late.” Canon pointed to a dark room on the left. “You go that way. Meet you at the back of the house, then we can head upstairs.” The older man moved quietly away, leaving Scott standing alone beneath the foyer light.
    The room Scott entered was some kind of office or study. He located a small desk lamp and clicked it on; a forty-watt bulb bathed the room in stained yellow light. The furnishings were bare but serviceable. Nothing but a particle-board door on sawhorses for a desk, but the computer was a new desktop with high-speed Internet access that—this far out in the country—was probably hooked up to the icicle-covered satellite dish outside. The desktop also held typing paper and a dark red Harvard mug full of ballpoint pens. A cheap task chair sat neatly beneath the desk; a printer squatted on the floor.
    Nothing else. Nothing personal. Nothing to reflect the life or personality of the owner.
    This, it seemed, was a house with no history—a place where someone was only preparing to live. Scott was thinking that he had committed breaking and entering for no more viable reason than lack of sleep when he heard movement in the foyer behind him. Turning, Scott came face to face with the man who had driven him to this place.
    “What is it?”
    Walker's voice came dry and hoarse. “I need you to come this way.”
    “What? It looks in here like somebody's just moving in. What'd you find?”
    The old man's eyes narrowed. All he said was “Now,” but he gestured awkwardly with his hand and arm when he said it. Scott glanced down. Cannonball Walker gripped a small black revolver in his bony fist, and the muzzle was pointed at Scott's chest.

CHAPTER 12
    “What the hell?” Scott couldn't move his eyes from the gun.
    “Now.” Canon motioned again. “You don't wanna be fuckin' with me right now.”
    “You're going to just shoot me?” Scott's mind felt weighed down with the sludge of exhaustion. He felt the room tipping. “Is that why you brought me out here, Canon? Get me out in the country away from everybody and put a bullet in me?”
    “Startin' to think maybe you brought
me
.”
    “How . . .”
    “Sent the girl, Kate, to my hotel. And then you all hang-dog when I found you with the po-lice. I'm thinkin' you worked me, Doc.” Canon blinked hard as if he didn't believe it himself. “Don't matter. Get in here now, or I'm gonna pull this trigger.” He shrugged. “Nothin' else I can do.”
    Scott moved unsteadily across the room. The old bluesman backed through the foyer into a large, brightly lit living room. The whole time he kept the barrel pointed at Scott's abdomen, as if pulling him along by an invisible line.
    A thrift-store easy chair was visible through the doorway. Canon backed to it and sat down. His eyes drooped. His blue-black skin looked ashen. For the first time since Scott had met the man, Canon Walker looked old and tired and ready to quit life.
    “Keep comin', Doc.”
    Scott stepped into the living room and froze.
    All four walls were plastered with pornographic images of women being mounted by tall, short, skinny, fat men—pale-skinned women on all fours mounted from behind, spread-eagle women mounted from above, contorted women mounted from the side and from below in ugly tangles of legs and arms. Scattered among the copulating nudes were black-and-white