Aftermath (11 page)

“If that’s true, then why didn’t you go to the police?”  Lyn asked.  “Defending yourself isn’t a crime.”

“I don’t have a permit for the gun,” Sal said.  “And reportin’ it to the police would only make me a sittin’ duck.  I needed to get away.”

Lynn was unsure as to what action she should take.  He seemed sincere, and his dark eyes did not look like how she imagined a killer’s would.

“If you let me walk out of here, Lynn, you’ll never see or hear of me again.  I appreciate what you’ve done, and I’m sorry for the anguish I’ve caused you.  I was desperate.”

Lynn relaxed her grip on the gun and stood up.

Sal wanted to smile.  The stupid bitch had fallen for his story and was scant seconds away from being just another statistic.

Logan
pulled into the lot of the Eagle Rock Overlook and parked in a slot at the rear, up next to mature evergreen trees that fronted the lake trail.  The trail was thirty feet below the level of the lot, accessible by either steps down to it that had a handrail, or by a winding path to make it accessible for people in wheelchairs.

There was no sign of Rita or Sharon yet.  Logan looked about him.  There were two other vehicles parked up; a black PT Cruiser and a beaten-up pickup truck that was made up of more rust than metal.  There was no one in them.  He walked over to the restrooms and went inside.  Was standing in front of one of the three urinals when he heard a toilet flush.  The door to the stall squeaked open, but whoever had been inside did not turn right in the direction of the wash hand basins or exit.

Logan saw the distorted shape of a man approaching him from behind, reflected in the stainless steel panels affixed to the wall just a foot from his face.

There was a sense of pressure in the middle of his back as he zipped up and made ready to deal with the situation.

“Give me your wallet, man, or I’ll fuckin’ shoot you” a gruff voice demanded.

Logan almost smiled.  He could tell the difference between a gun muzzle and a finger or thumb.

Jason Wheeler was nineteen and lived in a shack six miles from Eagle Rock Overlook on a pig farm owned by his ageing grandfather.  He’d had next to no education, possessed no skills to speak of, but had a habit that needed financing with money he couldn’t come by honestly.  So Jason had become an opportunist thief and mugger.

Logan immediately brought his right arm back behind him, to connect hard with his assailant’s wrist as he turned to face him.

Jason was spun forty-five degrees to the left, to be put off balance.  His right foot was still off the floor when Logan’s fist hit him square on the nose, breaking it with an explosive blow that sounded like a whip crack and echoed around the rest room.

As Jason keeled over and hit the floor, Logan’s booted foot smacked into his side, breaking two ribs.

Logan held back from meting out further punishment.  Saw that his would-be mugger was just a teenager.  He hunkered down and helped the dazed lad up into a sitting position with his back against the side of the end stall.  Frisked him, confiscated a lock knife from a pocket of his jeans and tossed it into a waste bin almost full of crumpled paper towels, before changing his mind and rummaging in the bin to find it and tuck it in his right sock on nothing more than a whim.

“What’s your name?”  Logan asked the boy, who was cradling his mashed, bleeding nose and moaning.

“Go fuck yourself,” Jason said, spraying a red mist from the blood that had run down from his nostrils over his top lip and into his mouth.

Logan said nothing, just straightened up and went over to the basin to rinse his hands before walking out into the sunlight.

Through the trees, below him and maybe a hundred yards to his right he saw a flash of movement.  He felt a jolt of relief: knew that it was Rita and Sharon, but also felt a stab of disappointment, because he also knew that one of them had been lying to him.

Events were like a jigsaw.  The more pieces you could put in the correct place, the clearer the picture became.  After being a homicide detective for so many years, Logan had learned not to take anything or anyone at face value.  Very few unpleasant incidents were what they seemed to be.  Driving up from Charleston had given him time to review all that had gone down since he’d met Rita at the trailer park.

The basic premise was that Jerry Brandon had put out a contract on his accountant, Richard Jennings.  That had been confirmed, and led Logan to wonder what had happened to the proof of tax evasion that Jennings had undoubtedly been in possession of.  Had there been a USB memory stick or CD at the Jennings’ home, then it would have been retrieved.  Same for the house in D.C. that Sharon had shared with the other two slain girls.

The conclusion was a little disheartening, but not surprising.  People with secrets always tried to employ damage limitation.  It was true of governments and bankers and lawyers and just about every agency and individual on the planet.

Logan had a theory to work with, and at its root was greed.  And he was interested in finding out the details, because although at heart he was a loner, he had an inquisitive mind and enjoyed cutting through the layers to uncover the truth at the heart of any mystery.

Rita and Sharon climbed up the steps to meet Logan at the top.

“You both OK?”  Logan asked them.

They nodded like toy dogs on a car’s parcel shelf.  They were out of breath and understandably shocked and distressed at the recent incident with Sal Mendez.

“What now?”  Rita asked after regaining some composure.

Logan thought it through as he averted his eyes to watch the young mugger slowly walk from the rest room to the old pickup.  He was pressing one arm against his cracked ribs for support, and held a wad of paper towels to his broken nose.

“Did you do that?”  Sharon asked Logan as the pickup started up at the third try, and then left the lot almost hidden by a cloud of oily exhaust fumes.

Logan shrugged and said nothing.

“He’s only a boy,” Sharon said.

“In some countries, kids as young as three will walk up to an American soldier and smile at him as they hold out a hand grenade and blow him to kingdom come,” Logan said.  “That young guy tried to mug me in the john.  I stopped him.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Get in the car,” Logan said.  “We need to find a place to stay.”

Rita and Sharon both got in the back of the Discovery.  Logan drove over to the parked PT Cruiser and quickly changed plates.  The average person hardly ever looked at their plates, and most did not commit the number to memory:  Human nature.

He headed north and drove for ten miles before deciding that the safest place to go was the Golden Valley Trailer Park.  No one would expect them to retrace their steps.

“I’m heading for your uncle’s place,” Logan said to Rita, looking at her through the rearview mirror.

“Shall I phone him and let him know we’re on our way?”  Rita asked.

Logan shook his head.

Thirty minutes later, Logan took a gravel road off the paved highway that was signed to Pumpkintown.  After two miles he pulled onto a dirt lot riddled with weeds and wild flowers at the side of a diner that had all the outward charm of a large, decrepit timber-built henhouse.  A faded sign over the door identified it as The Bolt Hole.

They were the only customers.  A fleshy, flaxen haired woman of about sixty came through a door at the rear and gave them a smile that was spoilt by the lack of teeth in her mouth.  She wore baggy jeans, a too-tight, food-stained T-shirt, and pink, fluffy carpet slippers.

“Hi, y’all,” she said, sounding like how Logan imagined Patsy Cline of the song
Crazy
fame might have.  “Ma name’s Tanya.  What kin I git ya?”

“A menu, please,” Rita said.

Tanya looked up to a blackboard on the wall.  The sunlight entering the diner was dimmed by the grime and grease on the front window, and the list of chalk-written offerings was hardly legible.

“I got what’s on the board, hon’,” Tanya said.

Logan could smell cigarette smoke and the lingering odor of fried food.  It did nothing to take the edge off his hunger.  “I’ll have three burger patties, no buns, and two eggs over easy, and a pot of coffee, Tanya,” he said.  He had eaten monkey brain in Singapore, and plenty of other food that many westerners would baulk at even looking at, and certainly wouldn’t devour unless they were starving to death, and maybe not even then.  So whatever Tanya served up would be just fine.

Rita ordered a grilled chicken sandwich and coffee, and Sharon just asked for a diet Coke as they seated themselves at a booth near the window.

“Is it over?”  Sharon asked Logan when Tanya had retreated through the rear door to prepare their order.

Logan said nothing.

Sharon frowned and asked, “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you,” Logan said, “But we have a problem.”

“You mean the man that tried to kill us?”  Rita said.

“He may still be a threat,” Logan said.  “Or maybe you hit him someplace vital and he’s dead in the vicinity of the cabin.”

“So what is the problem?”  Sharon asked.

“The information that your father took.”

Sharon’s face flushed with anger.  “My father was an honest man, Logan.  He would never have tried to blackmail anyone.”

Rita just stared at Logan.  He couldn’t read her.

“Sometimes what we’d like to believe and the truth of it are poles apart, Sharon,” he said.  “I met the guy that organized your father’s death for Brandon.  And then I talked to Brandon at length and impressed on him what would happen if he didn’t call off the hit.  What came across loud and clear was that Brandon didn’t have your dad killed for nothing, or because he just
thought
that he had evidence that would ruin him.”

“And you believe someone like Brandon?”  Sharon said.

Logan said nothing.

Sharon raised her voice.  “Answer me, damn you.”

“Your father wanted half a million off Brandon to forget about his tax evasion,” Logan said.  “Like it or not, that’s a fact, Sharon.”

“Have you got any proof of what you’re telling us?”  Rita said in a flat, emotionless tone of voice.

“I don’t need any,” Logan said.  “But I think that one of you has.”

“What do you mean?”  Sharon asked.

“Pass me your shoulder bag,” Logan said to Rita.

“And if I choose not to?” Rita replied.

“Then I eat my meal, drink my coffee and walk out of here.”

Rita hesitated for a few seconds, then picked up her bag and threw it at Logan.  It hit him on the chest and bounced off onto the tabletop.

He opened the bag and emptied the contents on the table.  Used his fingers and thumbs to inspect the bag itself for anything that might have been sewn into the lining, then handed the empty bag back to Rita and quickly checked the items in front of him.  The small, black memory stick was in a zipped compartment at the back of the soft leather tan and maroon purse.  He took it out and put it in the breast pocket of his shirt.  Pushed all the other items across to where Rita used her hand to scoop them back into the bag.

Rita had the desperate look of a caged animal searching for a way out.

“OK, Rita, fill in the gaps,” Logan said.

She said nothing.

Tears formed in Sharon’s eyes.  “Mum, is it true?” she said.  “Did Dad really try to blackmail Jerry Brandon?”

Rita closed her eyes and frowned. “Yes,” she said.  “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“I don’t understand,” Sharon said.  “Why would he do such a thing?  He got himself and my friends killed.  And it’s only because of Logan that
we’re
both still alive.”

Rita took a deep breath and was about to reply, but stopped herself from talking as Tanya came through with a loaded tray and set it down on the table.

“Enjoy,” Tanya said, and Logan immediately took a sip of the coffee and nodded his approval.  It was just how he liked it.  He removed the pot and his plate of food from the tray, picked up a fork and started eating.

“I don’t approve of what Richard did,”  Rita said when Tanya had gone back through to the kitchen, to where Johnny Cash was singing
Ring of Fire
on an old transistor radio that had belonged to her late mother.

“So why did he do it?”  Sharon demanded.

“We over-extended, then took a second mortgage on the house.  Before we knew it we were in serious financial trouble.  Your father asked Brandon for a raise in salary, but the bastard just laughed at him and told him he was lucky to have a job.

“Richard told me that Brandon had been dodging tax for years.  He hated the man, and became very bitter.  I didn’t know what he’d done until he gave me that USB flash drive.  I haven’t looked at what is on it.  I asked him to destroy it, but he said it was too late and that he had asked Brandon for a lot of money and threatened him.  Told him he would go to prison and lose everything.”

Sharon was on the outside of the bench seat.  She got up and headed for the door to the restroom.  Logan was surprised that The Bolt Hole had one.

“I’m sorry,” Rita said to Logan.

“No damage done,” Logan said.  “Brandon figured that Richard was smart enough to have hard evidence.  Even if there hadn’t been, he would still have done the same.”

“Will you still help us?”

Logan shrugged in a way that suggested he would.  “Are you going to eat that chicken sandwich,” he asked Rita as he finished up his own meal.  She shook her head, and so he took it off her plate and started in on it.

Sharon came back a little red-eyed.  Sat back down but said nothing.  She had a lot to mull over.  Logan knew that when someone you thought you really knew, and who you loved and respected, let you down or did something that you had not thought them capable of, that it took a while to assimilate the breach of trust and get past it.  No one’s perfect.