Slice (36 page)

“I wish there were words. Something I could say."

“Me too. Jack.” She tried a brave smile. “But nothing can hurt him now. He's at rest."

They exchanged a few more words, then Peg and the boy walked toward the closed casket. There had been heartbreakingly little to put in there for burial, and the cops dealt with it the way they always did.

“Ain't got nothin’ in there but his fingernails and some pubic hair,” Dana whispered irreverently to Eichord as they walked slowly up the sloping hillside toward the gravesite, a marshal in front and in back.

“I swear to CHRIST, Chunk, you got more shit in your head than a fucking busted toilet."

“Say what?"

“Say what. You oughta have a fucking handle mounted on your forehead so we could flush your brain once in a while."

“Not my fault they gotta bury a ninety-five-pound coffin with about six ounces of Chink innit. Shit!” He flecked imaginary filth from him. “He's STILL coming down."

“I can't take you anywhere,” Eichord said as he brushed against the heavy cop's arm. “You know what—you're about as much fun as prostate trouble."

“You know something, Blackjack? You're about as much fun as a fucking root canal."

They put their arms around each other's shoulders as they walked. When the sky opened up with a crack of lightning and the beginnings of a heavy downpour, they both ran for umbrellas.

“Sheeeeeeit."

“Just great."

“I just had my hair styled, too,” Dana puffed. “Ain't it the shits?"

“Can't you do anything right?” Eichord said as he looked up into the soggy sky.

He shivered from the cold of the chill rain, or something else. It was a sense of foreboding, the kind of thing that's often written off as a lucky guess or pure coincidence, but Eichord had long ago learned that hunches were as good as anything else. There was something right there in front of him, asking to be noticed, and yet he couldn't see it.

The harder he tried to focus on it, the blurrier it became, and he shrugged it off the way someone will an elusive phrase or word that's right on the tip of the tongue but refuses to hop out. He sensed that he was trying too hard and he relaxed.

Despite Dana's crudity there was a blackly laughable aspect to the formality of burying their dear friend's skimpy remains. The family had wanted a service of this type, which had surprised everybody, but Jimmie had made his fear of cremation well-known and they all understood the desire to pay tribute to a loved one, bizarre as the circumstances were.

The brief service began but Jack heard not a word of it. He was standing facing the woods trying to keep his mind in neutral, trying not to think of anything, and it came to him in that relaxed state: a dark shape sensed more than seen, a flash of light off something metallic perhaps, a discarded can, or just a trick of the weather. He'd spotted it as he and Dana had run for the umbrellas.

It came back to him the way a lost object can be found by retracing one's steps. He'd relaxed, taken his brain out of gear, and allowed the current of information and thought to pour over him. It was in the killer's frighteningly brilliant MO. He had studied it the way a kid studies his catechism—religiously, doggedly, committing it to memory, taking it to heart and soul. In that flash of light he saw the deeper reality. He KNEW that the man he wanted was out there in the woods somewhere watching and the knowledge of it fell across the back of his neck like that cold, itchy feeling he got when somebody was pointing a gun at him. He sensed the cross hairs, the foul breath, the pig eyes squinting through a high-power scope. It matched everything in Bunkowski's package: the precognate's unique vision, the killer's genius IQ, his coldly logical ability to analyze. It was absurd of them to think he would have fallen for a lame ruse like the airport theatrical. He would have found it child's play to stay a jump ahead of them as he always had.

Someone had mumbled to him.

He turned and said to Dana, “Huh?"

“What?"

“I asked you what you said."

Chunk looked at him as he turned and replied, “
I
didn't say anything.” They were whispering back and forth as a man who hadn't known Jimmie spoke profound but profoundly meaningless words. Eichord realized that he was afraid, and he shivered again, chilled to the bone.

This would be the perfect place for Chaingang to nail the cop he hated, to scope him down with a rifle from those dense woods, beyond the protecting umbrellas and the federal marshals. The knowledge of this filled Eichord with a fiery hatred that suffused his face, leaving his cheeks flushed scarlet, and he could no longer contain the rage. A scream of defiant pain escaped. A howl of anger and sadness and loathing for the madman who had snuffed his treasured friend. A marshal started after him as he ran from the graveside into the nearby woods, dropping his umbrella, but Dana stopped the man, tears mixing with the rain on his face. “Let him be alone with his grief,” he told the officer, thinking Jack had screamed from anguish at the loss of Jimmie, and the marshal allowed himself to be turned away and led back to the service.

Eichord plunged headlong through the woods, the crazy amputation of a shotgun clutched in a death grip as he tore his best suit on things that reached out to snag him, and sunk his best shoes into the mud, and as he reached the center of the dense woods, he stopped and held his face up to the rain and shook himself like a black Labrador who had just jumped out of a lake.

“What a maniac. Dumb piece of shit,” he cursed himself aloud as he slogged on through the woods. That was really brilliant. Ruin the services for everybody else so he could play Hairbreadth Harry. Dumb fuck. He was freezing in this rain, but he didn't turn around. He had to satisfy his curiosity now that he'd made a total moron out of himself and he kept on going, drenched to the skin as the heavy downpour intensified.

Then he saw the car backed into the little opening between some trees on the other side of the wooded area and he started running for it, but he was too wary to get trapped and he stopped. Waited. Listened. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up just the way they had earlier. He knew somebody had a weapon on him. He stood motionless. He couldn't hear anything for the fucking rain and there was no movement. Only the empty car.

“Hey,” he said loudly, just to hear his own voice, and it sounded wet and hollow, the word swallowed by the rain and the trees.

“I know you're here,” he said, feeling like a fool. Nothing. No answer. No gunshot. He took a deep, shuddering breath, letting it pour out of him like a chain-smoker, trembling not just from the cold damp day, and he took a few slow and cautious steps as he moved around the car.

“COME ON YOU FAT YELLOW SHIT,” he shouted into the rain. Not caring how ridiculous he looked or who heard him. He felt a momentary pain in the vicinity of his heart. Gas. A little morning heartburn from all the anxiety and the aggravation. No response. He allowed himself to cast his eyes downward, looking for the huge, fifteen quintuple-E footprints of the monster's feet in the muddy earth. Nothing. No sign of anything but Eichord, and the empty car.

He moved closer to the side of the vehicle. The water-soaked cardboard box that held his sawed-off shotgun was collapsing in his hand. The outline of the gun felt hard and dangerous in his grip. There was no movement. No noise. No sunlight to flash on metal this time. And he just stood there by the car, wondering for a second or two if he'd given in to professional paranoia. This could be somebody who had car trouble and left their...

And in midthought the thing was on him, roaring, crashing out of the woods on its tree-trunk legs, huge and powerful and blindingly terrifying as it charged out at him with something in its hand. Eichord saw it just as he had leaned over toward the car and spotted the little newborn baby in the seat. The thing in his hand flashing again suddenly, as the lightning cracked down around them close by in the dark woods, and he saw metal, and the enormous thing was coming at him, but he jerked the car door open with one hand pulling the baby out roughly holding the sawed-off Master Disaster Blaster to the baby's infant head on instinct, screaming, “ONE MORE FOOT YOU UGLY SHIT!” Not even knowing why he did it. Why not just shoot the sonofabitch? Shoot the man charging toward you this beast that will not stay dead. But his brain was at some level analyzing that thought and telling him. Hey, no way. Too far. A shotgun, especially a hacksawed shorty, has no carrying power. This guy is like an elephant. You've got to let him get close and make sure this time.

“PUT IT DOWN,” that bass voice growled.

“ONE MORE FOOT THIS BABY IS
DEAD
!"

“I'll RIP YOUR HEART OUT,” he bellowed back at Eichord, but the thing stopped in his tracks.

“JUST ANOTHER FOOT YOU SHIT! I'll BLOW THE HEAD OFF THIS BABY!” What if he didn't care? Then he'd shoot the son of a bitch. He didn't see a gun. No telescoped hunting rifle after all. Just that THING he carried. He jammed the twin death hurricanes against the infant's head. “I MEAN IT."

“YOU CHICKENSHIT FILTH!"

“You want this baby splattered all over these woods? Listen to me goddammit I MEAN IT YOU COCKSUCKER STOP MOVING I
WILL
BLOW THE BABY TO BITS. YOU THINK I'M BLUFFING?” He screamed it with a cracking voice, scared out of his wits at this second, as much as anything because at that very instant he meant it. He would pull those triggers all right, but not with the gun aimed at the newborn. He'd blast Daniel Edward fucking Flowers Bunkowski out of his looney misery once and for all. Oh the sweet feel of those triggers and the power of the poisoned loads at his fingertips. He wanted to kill the son of a bitch. HE WANTED TO SHOOT HIM AND SEE THE MONSTROUS HEAD COME OFF AND ROLL INTO THE WOODS. HE WANTED...

“I'll KILL A
THOUSAND
OF YOU WORTHLESS SHITS IF YOU TOUCH A HAIR ON THAT BABY'S—"

“FUCK YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH, COME ON IF YOU THINK I'M BLUFFING I'll KILL THIS BRAT,” he said, spitting out the word, “and then I'll blow your crazy ass all over crea—"

“Listen to me, listen you arrogant garbage. Listen to what I'm—DON'T HURT THE—don't,” forcing himself to speak normally. “Would you trade your desire for revenge against me, the desire to see me suffer retribution which you think I have coming, if it would spare the lives of many?” Moving slightly as he spoke, trying to get close enough to make a move.

“Come on you piece of shit. Keep coming. Get a little closer."

“I thought about killing you for a long time. Making you pay for what you did to me. I missed. I killed your friend. So we're even."

“Bullshit."

“The score is tied."

“There IS no score. This is no game, you're crazy as a fucking bedbug and you should be put to sleep.” Only one chance. When that trigger was pulled he was a dead man if he missed. God, if only about two dozen feds would come tearing out of those woods like the cavalry in a John Ford western.

“In due time,” the deep rumble said, “but not by you. Put the baby down you gutless wonder. Let's make it just you and I."

“A fair fight, eh?"

“If I'd wanted you dead at a distance I could have taken you out a couple of times already. At six-twelve you were parked at the red light at East Main and Buckhead Highway. I could see your head clearly through a reticular starlight scope. If I only wanted to see you dead I could have scoped you out with a gun. But I want a PIECE of you,” he said, and just as Eichord was starting to answer him, saying, “I'm suppose to—” something or other, the flexible club of tractor-strength chain came snaking, whirling, whipping low, boloing out like a flying chainsaw, aimed at the legs, a daisy-cutter, sure to cripple and maim, flung hard but low enough to miss the child, and the beast charging forward as Eichord pulled the trigger just as the chain reached him, jerking the shot for fear the baby would be hit by the deadly chain—throwing the little boy back into his nest in the car seat knowing that those two hot loads of poisoned pellets were gone and nothing was between him and Death and the hands taking him and powering him down to the ground, Eichord immobilized in a grip more powerful than any he'd ever felt. It was like being caught in a pair of huge, steel vises. The idea of putting any kind of move on this mountain of muscle was out of the question.

“Now,” the hard voice hacksawed into his ear, “you will feel my wrath, you insolent—"

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Eichord screaming in pain, screaming over the thunder as he felt the little finger on his left hand being bent back but for some reason not just being bent back, the beast not stopping, bending it all the way, keeping on with it, breaking it easily as he intoned the word “insolent,” snapping it with almost gentle insouciance, Jack yelling into the rain and thunder as Bunkowski's steel cigar-thick fingers that had once furiously squeezed a FLASHLIGHT BATTERY began to twist and rip and Eichord passed out.

The pain was not of this world. It was like slamming one's finger in the car door again and again, and Eichord blacked out, collapsing, coming back, blacking out, coming back, the pain merciless but not quite enough to send him completely over the side into blackness. My God why would anyone want ... Ohoooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh the pain washed over him in a wave of dizziness and that fearsome voice grunted in its distinctive bass register, “A little souvenir for you,” Jack gagging as he felt the bloody thing being forced into one of his suitcoat pockets, the wet clothing wrapped around him like a shroud. “Your
FINGER
. From the hand that touched my picture that time on television.” Eichord began retching. It was a voice that made no concessions to the social amenities. Rough-edged like a hacksaw. Tough and sharp. Crude. Like a jailhouse knife ground from a file. Not pretty but it got your attention with its surprising edge. A voice made to cut. It said, “And now, Mr. Policeman, do you know what I'm going to do?"

Eichord felt himself being manhandled over onto his back. He screamed again in pain as his hand struck something. The monster loomed over him. He could feel the thing's hot breath on him. There was a shift in the massive body weight.