Killer (23 page)

“I’m as real as rain, Jack. I EXIST. At the very
least
you’re guilty of plagiarism.”

He pulls a pack of Marlboros from his jacket pocket and flicks open the top on his Zippo.

“Do you mind if I smoke in here?”

I look at him. He’s serious, holding the lighter and waiting for my response.

The nicotine may calm him.

“No… Go ahead.”

He lights the Marlboro with his silver Zippo.

They didn’t search the drain traps…they didn’t pull the books off the shelves…they were in too much of a hurry, on their way to Michigan after the phone in the oranges…

He lights the cigarette and inhales, then exhales, talking around it.

“All the great men had their biographers. Presidents. Emperors. Old Jesus sure had his. But now everyone thinks
YOU
did those things you wrote. And that cuts me out. You didn’t
DO
those things, you were
TOLD
those things, and we need to set the record straight. That’s why I came here. We have some things to sort out, and quick, before any other cops or feds show up.”

I sit on the floor, watching him smoke, trying to think through the fear, to sort through the meaning of his words. I try to think of things to say, anything, and I think of a hostage negotiator for NYPD who once told me,
“Best thing to do is keep your mouth shut. When in doubt, say nothing. Do nothing.”

The music fades out, leaving only the sound of the howling blizzard outside the bedroom window.

“They’re gonna write books about both of us now, Jack,” the smile back in his voice as he looks down at me.

There must be backup—someone to relieve Claire—how long before—?

“After you went to the cops in L.A. I kept on you. I knew once they dug up Temescal they’d be asking a lot of questions. I paid you a visit here when you got back. You had the book about Sharon Belton on your nightstand and I knew you’d be going to St. Stephen.”

He stands there with a strange smile, looking down at me over his cigarette, dangling from his lips, which are curled in a superior half-smile. Master to apprentice.

“I wasn’t sure if I should kill you or not in St. Stephen,” he says. “On the one hand, I didn’t know if you had told the police about me, so I figured I should. On the other hand, how could I kill my St. Paul? So I decided, since we were at Calvary Assembly of God, I’d put you in the grave and see if you rose like Jesus did at Calvary. And sure as hell, you did. You’re a bulldog, Jack. Once you get a bone between your teeth you don’t let go, do you?”

“No,” I say.

“Then when I saw you went fugitive I knew where you’d be headed,” he says, cocking his head back toward Laurie Vonn.

“You were right,” I say.

“Yes. Well, we can catch up later. Right now we’ve got work to do,” he takes one last drag off the cigarette, then grinds it out casually against Laurie Vonn’s neck. She screams in agony behind her taped mouth, and her red-rimmed eyes brim with fresh tears.

Dave turns and looks at her with mild interest. Then he looks at Nicki.

“This one here says she’s your lawyer. Is that true?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Are you fucking her, Jack?” he smiles at me.

Which is better, yes or no? Which will keep her alive?

“Come on, tell the truth,” Dave says to me.

“No,” I say.

“I wasn’t expecting her, but now that she’s here we have to take care of business and be on our way. The little headless horsewoman out front is bound to have somebody out here soon to check on her, so let’s get to it. I took a big risk leading you here and I don’t like to take risks, as you know. So we have to get to it. To the work.”

He grips the black rubber handle of the knife and walks over to Laurie Vonn and grabs the high back of the chair and Laurie screams behind her gag—

“Please—don’t—” I say.

“Oh, I’m not gonna kill her,” he says, then drags Laurie’s chair over beside me and tips the chair back so that Laurie’s head is right near my lap as she lies on her back.

Dave throws the knife at me suddenly. It sticks in the floorboards, an inch from my right foot.

“You are,” he says. “That’s why I left your right hand free. You’re right-handed,” he says, as if he had shown me a great courtesy.

“You do that one and the other one gets to live another day to sue somebody,” Dave says, and then he slides back into his trucker’s drawl. “If you’re not up to it then I do ‘em both, Doc.”

He looks at me, waiting.

Think, think, think…

“Do it and get it done and we’re outta here in that Sheriff’s four-wheeler outside,” he looks at his watch. “Pick up the knife, Doc.”

I look at the knife stuck in the floor by my leg. I can see Laurie Vonn’s terrified eyes beyond it, looking up at me, pleading.

S
tall, talk, anything…

“How? How do you want me to—” I begin.

“You know exactly how, Jack,” he says, impatient, dropping the trucker drawl. He points at Laurie Vonn’s neck. “You wrote about in perfect detail. Decapitation between the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae, amputation of the hands at the radiocarpal joint.”

He waits, watching me. Then he reverts to the low, deep drawl again. “Or, as Killer would say, you just cut between the big bone and the little bone at the back of the neck. You’ll feel a snap when the blade cuts through and then it’ll lie still and the rest is easy. Like carvin’ off a drumstick.”

Laurie begins to sob, her chest heaving uncontrollably, tears from her eyes and her nose running as the blood runs down her front.

“Time’s a wastin’, Doc.”

“I—”

“Shut up and cut, Jack, or I’ll carve up both little Thanksgiving turkeys. Breasts and thighs,” he says. Then he pulls Sallie Fun’s Ruger from the back of his waistband. “It would be a shame for all those fans of yours to hear that the bestselling author Jack Rhodes was found with two dead women and a bullet hole in his head, self-inflicted, his prints on the knife. It would be a neat out for me, but I’d prefer to keep you alive, to tell you more stories. But
c’est la vie
,” he drawls out the French: “Say law vee.”

“Now, cut.”

Anything, talk about anything to stall…

“You’ve read all the books,” I say.

“Oh yeah. I’m your number one fan,” he husks a short laugh.

“I never mentioned your name,” I say. “I didn’t remember…talking to you.”

“Yeah. Pretty fucking clever how you did it,” he says. Then he looks at me funny. “You really didn’t remember those three nights we spent. Talking. Hearing all about my Angels?”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t know what was going on.”

The low, mirthless laugh. “I guess it’s been a long, strange trip for you, then,” he says. “A little mind-fuck for the big shot writer.”

“It was.”

“Cut, Jack. You can’t stall or placate me with talk.”

“How long have you been following me?”

“Oh, I came out here after I read the first book. Paid you a few visits right here in this room, just to keep tabs. I’ll say one thing for you, Jack. You know how to keep ‘em guessing.”

“So do you,” I say.

“Enough. Cut, Jack. Cut
now.
”

He stands still as a statue, coiled, waiting for me to make a move.

I lean forward and stretch my right hand out and grab the handle of the knife, pulling my left wrist against the cuff behind me. The steel handcuff cuts into my wrist and I feel blood drip down my hand. Pain from the cut makes me wince and tears come to my eyes. I grip the knife and look down at Laurie Vonn, who stares at me with such terror that I have to look away. She is making horrible little sounds with every breath—short, sharp little whines, muted pleading and crying. The knife is heavy in my hand and my other hand is wrenched in a way that cuts the steel cuffs deeper into my skin and I feel the blood flow around my wrist, making it slippery.

“
CUT
,” Dave says.

I twist around to move the knife toward Laurie Vonn’s neck. I avoid looking in her eyes and pull my left wrist harder, behind my back, the pain ravaging but the blood pouring over my hidden hand is making it slippery and I can slide the cuff another half-inch down, over my thumb joint.

If I can just…

I lower the knife toward Laurie Vonn’s neck and pull my cuffed hand harder, pulling and wrenching hard—and with a sudden, muted SNAP and a shot of
PAIN
I feel the chrome and polyurethane joint come apart inside my wrist and it is all I can do to keep from screaming. Tears course down my face.

“Get it over with,” Dave says, impatient with my tears.

If I can just… If I can take it…if I can take the pain I can…

I slide the knife under Laurie Vonn’s neck as I pull my left hand with all my strength against the cuff, tearing into my skin, peeling it back, peeling off muscle and digging into bone—

Oh Dear Sweet Jesus God the PAIN…please let me go…please let me…

Dave comes over me and leans forward, his hands on his knees.

“Last chance,” he says.
“Cut.”

I press the knife along the back of Laurie Vonn’s neck and she screams behind her gag and I pull my left hand one last time, breaking the knuckle between my second and third fingers—

THE PAIN—! Almost…almost…

“How do I—” my voice shaking from the raging pain, “How do I know you won’t kill me and my lawyer if I do it?”

He jacks a round into the chamber of the Ruger.

“Have I ever lied to you, Doc?”

Pulling—PAIN! PAIN!! Jesus PLEASE Jesus if I can—if I can—if I can keep my head while all about me are—

And then I rip my left hand free and lunge up at him with the knife, aiming at his chest and plunging the knife into him, just above his collarbone—

He staggers back, more from surprise than anything else, and then roaring. “FUCKING—SHIT!” Twisting the knife out of him and away from my grasp. I throw a wild right cross at him and connect with his chin, but I’m off balance and I don’t have my weight behind it. Dave staggers back and waves the Ruger in my direction. I dive out the doorway of the bedroom as he fires and I hear the sharp whistle of the slug past my left ear.

I scramble across the hallway and into the office and grab
The Dangerous Summer
off the shelf as Dave fires again from the bedroom doorway. I duck behind my desk and take my .45 from the wooden box—my hand shaking violently as Dave appears at the doorway and fires again, right over my head.
Three rounds fired, he’s got one left.
I suddenly rise up from behind the desk and fire at Dave, grazing his shoulder. He fires back as I dive back behind the desk. He pulls the trigger again and I hear the empty click of the firing pin. He’s out. He ducks behind the doorway as I rise up and fire again, blowing apart the door jamb. I hear him running down the hall and I follow and fire again, blowing out the window by my front door as he opens the lock on the door I aim carefully—
aim at the center of mass—
and I fire and he yells as he opens the door and grabs his right leg and I see blood on his leg and he is out the door and I fire again, too high, over his head, and I fire again, running, as he gets in the SUV and I run after him, firing, shattering the back window of the truck and it starts and pulls away, spinning and careening through the snow covering my rutted drive.

I run out onto the porch and aim at the left rear tire carefully and pull the trigger but I have emptied the cylinder and the hammer clicks uselessly and the SUV bounces and slides away down my drive and onto the county road and the headlights disappear in the snow and the darkness.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Thirty-six hours later I wake up in a hospital room from a long, dreamless, narcotic sleep, and I see Melvin Beauchamp standing over me. I know it is Melvin before I can see clearly. Melvin is hard to mistake—a 6’5” African American man in a Hugo Boss suit that fits him like a coat of paint.

“Morning,” he grins at me.

“Nice suit,” I say, my voice dry and rasping, my mind foggy from medication. Melvin opens a bottle of water and hands it to me. I take it in my right hand—after discovering my left arm is hanging from traction wires in a bulky plastic cast.

“If I have to wear a suit to work, it might as well be a
good
suit,” Melvin says.

“So you’re here on official FBI business,” I say, slurring the words slightly.

“I am.”

I look at him for a moment, waiting for my mind to clear.

“You gonna tell what that official business is?” I ask.

“You mean, am I here to arrest you?”

“Something like that,” I say.
“Nah, we don’t want you any more.”

“You here to recruit me?”

“Like I said, we don’t want you,” he laughs.

Then the fog clears and I recall the events at the cabin.

“Nicki and Laurie—?”

“They’re okay,” he says. “Nicki’s here, she just stepped out to take a call, and Laurie Vonn is right down the hall, in her own room. She’s shook up and pumped full of meds, but physically she’s okay. How about you?”

“I’m alright,” I look at my arm, hanging in the air in its bulky plastic cast.

“Nicki gave us a full statement about the cabin, and Laurie corroborated it.”

“Have you found him?”

Melvin shakes his head. “Found Sheriff Boyle’s car—and Sheriff Boyle—in Manwalk, New York. A mile from the Canadian border. Sheriff’s shotgun and service revolver were gone, along with the first aid kit. RCMP is here and we need to know everything you know about this guy. Nicki and Ms. Vonn’s descriptions of him only went so far. Doc says you’re probably not gonna be awake for long so we need everything you can give us and we need it quick, before you fade on us.”

Nicki enters. She is wearing jeans and a pink cashmere turtleneck sweater. Her face is pale and there are red marks around her wrists from the nylon rope. She comes to me and leans forward and kisses the corner of my mouth.

“Thank you,” she says.

“For what? Getting you into a situation where you nearly got killed?”