Instead of heading straight out the front door, I led Sam and Moe past the archway: the candle light flickered from the altar room, and I was drawn moth-like to it. The shadows crawled in there as before, but my memory must have been wrong. I could have sworn the statue had been looking to its left toward the room where Little Moe was stashed.
Now the statue stared directly at us as we stood in the doorway, as if awaiting our closer approach. The severed breast still appeared lonely and plaintive.
“Wanna go in there and check it out?” I asked Sam. Little Moe whimpered.
“You’re fucking high,” Sam muttered, unable even to look inside after his first glance.
I tossed the hammer in Karl’s box of evidence, awkwardly picked it up off the table, and we got the hell out of there. Blowing through that front door into the clean night air was one of the happiest moments of my life.
We heard a single shot from inside and Little Moe tugged my sleeve. “Mister Markus,” he said. “I want to go home.”
I put Karl’s box down, bent to pick up Little Moe, and grunted as my leg almost collapsed under me. With one deft motion, Sam plucked the blade out from where it was embedded in my thigh. I swore and glared at him and he laughed – but then he looked down at the knife strangely.
It was an ordinary buck knife with a six inch blade, just like the one I’d owned so long ago before my incarceration. I wondered if it was the actual one I’d been framed with, and if it had somehow made its way from the evidence locker into the Driver’s loving hands.
“This would make a great souvenir. Like a trophy or something,” Sam said, his voice dreamy and greedy as he continued studying the weapon.
“Sam,” I said.
He almost jumped as I put my hand on his shoulder, but at least he was looking at me now and not at that blade. “For too many people that knife was probably the last thing they ever saw. It’s dirty, let it go.”
Sam stared at me for a few seconds, and then he used his shirt to wipe the hilt and tossed the knife into the trees. He handed Karl’s box to me, scooped up Little Moe, and we walked to the road.