Medusa (19 page)

Corsack’s eyes glistened in the near dark. “When the deal is about to happen, Fain and his friends show up, start gunfight. They kill everyone, and then they steal my precious Zahra away because perhaps Fain suspected I would try to save the cargo, the drugs, to try to salvage the deal, because he senses I am man of my word. My poor Zahra. They have her still.”
 

He brought forth a photograph from a pocket in the jacket of the ubiquitous blue suit. I squinted at the picture of a smiling young woman with dark hair.
 

“I’m sorry.” I handed Corsack back the picture.
 

“This is why I came to you. Someone calls me, like a child, a girl, by the sound of her voice, and she says, ‘Go to Roland Longville, for he seeks the man you seek also.’ I cannot fight them all alone. You, however, you seek this Fain. He is the strongest, the smartest of them. You search for these men for justice, but I search for these men to free my wife and to get my revenge.”

I thought about what I knew about Fain, and my promise to Danielle LeGrandville. I nodded. “We’ll find her. Then you’ll have your revenge, my friend. I promise you that.”
 

“They are somewhere in this place. Let us find them, then.”
 

“For once, we’re in agreement. Let’s finish this.”
 

We moved together down the hall.
 

“One thing, Roland.” Corsack turned to me. “They have modified the inside of this house very much. Be very careful, there may be traps.”
 

I rubbed the small of my back.
 

“Believe, me, I already know.”
 

There was a doorway on the left, Corsack’s side of the hall. “Here,” he indicated. “There are perhaps stairs down.”
 

I stood in the hall, pistol at ready, while Corsack slowly opened the door. There were stairs, but they went up, to a darkened hall. Corsack felt inside for a light switch. He shrugged when he found none.
 

“Of course they would have relocated the light switches to locations only they know,” Corsack offered in explanation.
 

“Of course,” I agreed.
 

He smiled sheepishly and moved slowly into the darkness. I followed. Corsack slowed when he reached the top of the stairs. He was feeling his way along the walls. Maybe Tiller had told him how to get out of a maze, too.
 

“The stairs just end here,” he said in the darkness. Then, “No. There is a door to the side.”
 

I heard the click of a latch and Corsack said, “Watch your step. One must step up, and the door is quite narrow.”
 

We moved, one after the other, out into a cool space, still quite dark, yet another small room, and I immediately sensed that there was someone in that close space with us. Corsack gasped, and then gave a strangled cry that was somewhere between a sob of grief and a cry of pain, and I heard someone speak: “Deal’s off, motherhumper,” and a door opened in the other end of the room and in the lighter blue darkness on the other side of the door, I saw a lithe figure run out of the door, and I knew it was the storied Culver Ray.
 

I bent and grabbed Corsack by the shoulders. “Corsack.”
 

His heartbeat was ragged and uneven. He was trying to speak. “You—Roland, help her. I am . . . tell her.”
 

Culver Ray had done quick and lethal business. Even in the dim light that filtered in from outside, I could tell that Corsack was done for. A sharp knife had come up through his bowels from below. Then two stab wounds had been quickly added, just below the heart.
 

“Corsack,” I said helplessly, and held the man while he died. After a moment, I lowered his body to the floor and stood. Outside the door, there was a landing. Culver Ray had run out and leapt down, after he had delivered Corsack the message he’d brought with him.
 

Then I heard a much closer sound, the sound of footsteps. I moved slowly to the edge and peered over. There was a man moving down there, in the full moonlight beneath the creaky catwalk. The figure emerged from behind the old concession stand, a slight, stooped figure, and somehow I knew it was Culver Ray.
 

Trying to sucker me into some kind of trap.
 

I jumped down to the lower level of the deck. I felt the pain in my right ankle from the long jump, the too-hard impact sending shivers of pain through my shins and back, but then I was up and moving, shaking off the pain, and coming up quickly on Culver Ray. The crazy bastard was turning now, and I saw the glint of the knife in the darkness, and heard that strange otherworldly cackle, and I knew he was not afraid to die. When the hand came forward I grabbed it and maybe I was extremely lucky or just that little bit faster, because I got my much larger hand around his wrist and twisted with all of my might. The smaller man went limp and let the knife drop away. But he came suddenly alive again, wildly sweeping at my feet with all the wiry strength in his flailing feet. I winced as his heavy booted foot struck my ankles, but I managed to stay on my feet.
 

Culver Ray sprang lithely to his feet and vaulted over a small wall, and around the corner of the little building.
 

“Left you a little surprise,” Culver Ray called behind me.
 

I jumped the wall and ran quickly around the building, but he was gone. Something lay on the ground in the darkness. I knelt beside the still form and found what Culver Ray had been doing here. It was a very small woman with a dark complexion. She looked Eastern European. I knew that it was Corsack’s wife, even in the dim light. I recognized her features from the photo I had seen, only minutes before. There was a lot of blood. Culver Ray had cut her throat. Her face was still warm to the touch. The quest for a better life that she and her husband had undertaken was over for good, in this nightmarish place.
 

I knelt and put my fingers against her neck. I thought I felt a slight pulse, but it faded quickly away. I sighed heavily and got back up. A figure darted away from me, running across the catwalk, back up toward the lighted area. Culver Ray.
 

Grimly, I set out after him again.
 

Culver Ray. God help me, this man has to die.

Chapter 25

I followed along at a quick run in the direction Culver Ray had gone. Had the smaller man ducked into the house, or had he gone on around the structure to lie in wait for me? Suddenly I spotted an open side door that led down to the basement. I stepped warily inside, gun in hand, then moved cautiously down concrete stairs.
 

A naked bulb lit the basement, a large room with a concrete floor and rows of empty shelves. In the wall opposite the entrance was a large metal door. I quietly approached it and lifted the simple bar latch that kept it closed. With a studied groan, the door opened. Beyond lay a hallway. I pushed the door back and locked it in place with a flip-up foot latch that was set into the floor.
 

My eyes went to the right side of the hallway.
 

There was a small door there, and I heard movement from inside. I felt ragged and tired. My eyes suddenly burned with fatigue, and yet I was far from done here, I knew. I flung the door open. There was a dark space in there, and I felt along the wall for a switch. I found one and flicked it on. A single bare bulb suspended from a wire lit a cramped ten by ten space. There was a girl in there, a small, fragile looking girl, and she rolled into a ball and whimpered when I entered the room.
 

Danielle LeGrandville.
 

She was dressed only in the soiled t-shirt and panties that she had been wearing when she disappeared. She was trembling and regarded me with eyes that were wild with pain and fright. I took off my coat, and wrapped it around her.
 

“Danielle. Danielle, get up, honey, I’ve come to get you out of here.” The girl’s head shook, and she looked at me, trembling.
 

She tried to speak several times before any sound came out. “Y-you’re Roland?”
 

“Yes, that’s right. I’m Roland Longville. Don’t worry. I’ve come to get you out of here.”

Danielle LeGrandville smiled somehow through the tears that streaked her face. “She kept telling me that you would come.”
 

“Who told you that?” I asked as I pulled her gently to her feet.
 

“The other little girl. She told me that you would come and save me.”
 

“There’s another little girl? Where is she?”
 

“Sometimes she’s here with me. Sometimes she has to go away.”
 

I shook my head. Maybe the girl was delirious. Maybe . . . but there was no time to think about that right now. “Can you walk?”
 

“Yes.”
 

I took a penknife from my pocket and sawed through the knotted rope that held her ankle to a metal ring set in the floor. I took her hand. “Come on, honey, let’s get you out of here.”

We moved slowly up the steps and out into the night. I shook my head to fight off my own gnawing fatigue and opened the door.
 

Almost there. I felt beyond tired, beyond exhaustion. The death I had seen weighed heavily on me. Corsack, Zahra. They had been innocent, other than wanting something better. Now they were dead, and the scum like Fain and Culver Ray who had killed them, and done God knows what horrible things to this poor young girl, were still alive.
 

Don’t freeze up on me now.
 

I froze.

Before me stood the creature out of all my nightmares. Samson Fain, alive and well . . . powerfully, invulnerably well. He was smiling. When he spoke, there was a carefree bemusement in his voice that sent a chill through my blood. Fain and Culver Ray were blocking one of our two ways out.
 

Behind them, in the distance, I could see the lights of police cars heading our way. Help was coming.

I pulled my gun and pointed it toward Culver Ray. “Get out of the way.”
 

Samson Fain chuckled. “Go ahead, Culver Ray. Step aside. They won’t get far.” Culver Ray reluctantly let the girl pass.

I looked at the planking on the rickety old bridge. It was all wood, but beneath it was black water and whatever waited within it, thrashing and twisting with serpentine patience and primordial hunger. I hoped the bridge was stronger than it looked.
 

“Run toward the police lights, Danielle,” I yelled to the girl, without taking my eyes off Fain. “Shout really loud, so they can find you.”
 

Fain sighed visibly as he watched her run across the bridge toward the flashing police lights. He did not appear too terribly shaken, though, as he turned his gaze back to me.

“Easy come, easy go,” he said. “First Georgia Champion, now Danielle. We had our good times. I can’t let you harm my man Culver Ray here, however. He’s been of enormous help to me.”
 

Fain shook his head with admiration. “I have to hand it to you, Longville. You seem to be the only person alive who is able to hunt me down. Here you are. Looks like you’ve done it again. So, before I make my way out of here, I’ll have to make sure that you aren’t around to do it a third time.”
 

I lunged and hit Culver Ray in the chest with my left fist, flattening the man. I brought my gun up and squeezed a round off toward Fain, then turned and ran back along the boardwalk. I jumped down to the lowest level of the deck that was built over the swamp below, praying that the boards were sound.
 

They were. I landed on my side, and rolled and came up up on my feet. I went to the left, over a short dividing wall, and around behind one of the booths. Pain lanced through my right ankle, reminding me of the jump I’d taken earlier, and the kick I’d gotten from Culver Ray. I grimaced and raced to the nearest shadows.
 

Come on, come on after me. That’s right.
 

The boardwalk was ringed with little sheds like the one I took cover behind. Once upon a time people enjoyed themselves at those booths. They bought cotton candy, fired toy rifles at plastic ducks, and pursued other happy pastimes, back before the place had become a living nightmare, a front for murder and God in heaven only knows what else. I kept to the shadows behind the little booths, moving as silently as possible.
 

Fain and Culver Ray were coming after me. I could hear their footsteps. They were walking carefully and methodically around the dark deck. The old boards, so long out of use, creaked with their passage, however stealthy they tried to be. They were searching methodically, with a far better knowledge of the grounds than I had. Apparently my punch hadn’t landed very squarely on Culver Ray, and my wild pistol shot had missed Fain. But Danielle had gotten away, and the police would be swarming all over the grounds in five minutes.
 

Fain planned to kill me and be away before that happened.