Aftermath (12 page)

“Your father made a mistake,” Logan said to Sharon.  “We all do, it’s part of the human condition.  It doesn’t alter how he felt about you and your mother.  He lost the plot, saw what he thought was a way to dig himself out of trouble, and didn’t look ahead at what might happen.”

“What are you saying,” Sharon said.  “That I should forgive him for what happened to my friends, and for what is happening now?”

“I’m saying that life is full of twists and turns that can be hard to figure out.  What is, is.  If you loved your father and you know that he loved you, then maybe you should cut him some slack.  I have the feeling that if he’d had the sense to realize that he was putting you both or anyone else in physical danger, then he wouldn’t have done what he did.”

Sharon closed her eyes and thought about what Logan had said.  Rita looked at the wall, not seeing it, with a thousand yard stare.  Logan poured more coffee into his mug and finished the chicken sandwich.

An hour later they arrived at the trailer park, to be met by Tom Ellerson as they climbed out of the Discovery.

Tom showed them to the doublewide that Rita had stayed in before.  Rita and Sharon talked with him for awhile, but all Logan wanted to do was sleep.  He excused himself, used the bathroom, then undressed and got into bed.  He fell asleep thinking that they were safe.

He was wrong.

Captain
Frank Macklin was sitting in an easy chair watching Fox News, almost dozing when the report of a double homicide in Charleston brought him to full alertness.  A picture appeared on the mammoth screen of his wall-mounted plasma.  It was a life-size image of an ex-con who Frank recognised immediately as being Roy Naylor.

The talking head was reporting live from outside a crummy apartment block.  She said that it was believed to have been an execution-style slaying of the couple, but had no further details.

Frank got on the phone to Charleston PD, gave his details and asked to speak with the officer in charge of the double homicide case.  Said he had information that may be pertinent.  He was asked to leave his number and told that the officer would get back to him.  He disconnected and waited:  Thought that they would check him and his number out, and that he could expect the phone to ring in several minutes.

“This is Detective Garfield,” Charlie said when he got the message and rang the cleared number he was given.  “What can you do for me, Captain?”

“Still funnier than Bill Cosby, huh?”  Frank said.  He’d met Charlie Garfield at a few seminars, and they had got on well and enjoyed talking football and fishing.

“I try to keep it light, Frank,” Charlie said.  “What’s your interest in this case?”

“We had one of your deceased, Roy Naylor, in hospital up here.  He had a broken jaw and pointing finger, and was missing both big toes.  Said he’d been mugged, but it was a crock of shit.”

“Well someone finished the job,” Charlie said.  “He was double-tapped through the top of his head, and his girlfriend got her brains splashed over a wall.”

“Have you got anything yet?”

“It’s coming together, Frank.  We have an ex-con spilling his guts.  Looks like his boss was being blackmailed and put a contract out on a guy and his wife and daughter.  There are a couple of loose ends; one of the hitmen, who is still out there, and a guy who appears to be protecting the women.  We think that he may have killed Naylor.  And we know that he warned the contractor off by breaking his arm and a few fingers.”

“Maybe he was the one that initially maimed Naylor up here in my neck of the woods,” Frank said.

“Could be.  But why come down to Charleston to kill a man that he’d effectively taken care of?  That’s one of the questions I need an answer to.  I checked on the employee that got whacked, one Richard Jennings.  His wife is missing.  And his daughter, who was attending university in D.C., is also off the radar.  Two fellow students were found murdered at the address the three of them lived at.”

“Sounds like the wife and daughter are on the run with the big guy playing guardian angel.”

“That’s my take on it.”

“OK, keep me posted.”

“Will do,” Charlie said.  “Be careful out there.”

Frank laughed.  “You too, my friend.”

Lynn saw the change in the man’s eyes: Could see the malice that lay behind his pretence.  She didn’t believe a word that he had said.

Sal sensed the vet’s thought process.  He was attuned to other people’s moods and body language, and recognised the look of resolve that transformed the bitch’s expression.  He moved fast, letting instinct guide him.  People unused to extreme violence were never prepared to deal with it.  And hesitation was a natural reaction.

He grasped the stainless steel tray by its edge from the trolley next to the table and threw it in the same way that as a kid he had thrown flat stones out onto the surface of a reservoir to see how many times he could skip them.

Lynn instinctively jerked backwards as she pulled the trigger of the gun.  The bullet whined over Sal’s head and ricocheted off a steel water pipe affixed the wall, to then shatter the glass fronting a poster-size picture of her beloved golden retriever, Mindy, that had died of heart failure aged twelve, three years previously.

Lynn made a loud coughing sound as the edge of the whirling tray impacted with her throat.  The blow fractured her hyoid bone, and she collapsed backwards, cracking her head on the tiled floor as she began to convulse, unable to swallow or take a breath.

Sal winced.  The effort of moving so quickly and throwing the tray had caused the freshly sutured wound in his side to throb with pain.  He maneuvered himself into a sitting position and stared at the dying woman.  Her face was plum-colored, and her eyes were rolling in their sockets, full of terror, reminiscent of a steer smelling the blood of others as it was herded into a slaughterhouse, to be stunned before the butchers commenced to bleed it out and dismember it.

Sal was entranced by the spectacle of the woman’s final moments.  Her arms flailed, her legs thrashed, and the heels of her shoes drummed on the tiles as her bladder voided and the fight for life was slowly lost.

Pleasure and pain
, Sal thought.  That was what life was all about.  He had experienced both.  He was savoring the unanimity of them at that moment in time: the pain of his wounds and the pleasure of watching the woman die in front of him.

When the body became still, Sal took a couple of minutes to take stock.  He wanted to sleep for a few hours; he was exhausted and knew that his body needed to recuperate from the trauma inflicted on it.  But he could not stay here.  He had no idea of the vet’s habits or plans.  Maybe she was expecting company that evening, or was due to be somewhere.  She could be missed.

Getting dressed was a laborious procedure.  Sal limped through to private living quarters at the rear of the surgery, to sit on an easy chair and rest a little from the effort, only to fall asleep cradling the recovered gun in his lap.

It was pre-dawn dark when he woke up.  He went into the kitchen and opened the fridge.  Ate some meatloaf and drank a pint of milk.  His side and thigh were sore, but he felt a little refreshed.  A plan sprang into his mind.  He took out his cell and scrolled through his contacts.  Found the one he wanted and made the call.

Ritchie Jessop was a hacker; a ‘wizard’ in computer-speak.  He made a good living out of being able to filch information illegally for clients.  But he was no dummy.  Didn’t push the envelope and mess with government agencies.  Knew that they had people as good if not better than him to protect their sensitive data.  And he wasn’t totally obsessed.  Cyberspace was a place that he could immerse himself in for profit, but was not somewhere that he spent twenty hours a day in.  He enjoyed using the proceeds from his endeavours on good food, expensive wine and beautiful women.

When the phone rang, Ritchie checked the caller ID and answered.

“Yeah, Sal,” he said.

“Hi, Ritchie,” Sal said.  “I need a location on a call I’m plannin’ to make.”

Ritchie went over to his computer, sat down in the swivel chair and said, “No problem, Sal.  Give me the number and let’s see what magic we can make.”

Sal read out the number of Sammy’s phone.  “How long will I have to keep him talkin’ for you to get a location?”  Sal asked.

“You don’t,” Ritchie said.  “Have you got a rough idea where the subject is?”

“In the state, most likely out in the boonies.”

“Music to my ears, man.”

“Yeah?  Why?”

“Because there are so many cell phone antennas in cities that to triangulate a signal is tricky, Sal.  Cell phones have GPS chips in them, and those chips bleep every fifteen seconds.  If the one that you’re interested in is in a rural area and switched on, I can probably give you a location within twenty feet.”

“And if it’s switched off?”

Ritchie’s left hand danced across the keyboard, and seconds later he said, “It is off, Sal, so I’m getting nada.  I’ll flag it, and if it goes live I’ll get back to you.”

“Thanks, Ritchie, you’re a star.  I need to find this guy,” Sal said and disconnected.

After checking through the windows all around the property and seeing no sign of life, Sal went out to the car and eased himself into the driver’s seat.  The blood on the faux leather had almost dried.  It was time for a change of vehicle, but not the vet’s.  He drove northwest, sure that his marks would not head back south to the Charleston area.  After ten miles he was in higher country on a narrow, paved road that was just a couple of miles short of a town called Davis.

The single mailbox at the end of a narrow driveway caught his eye as he passed by.  He rightly assumed that the pot-holed trail between lofty pines must lead to a single private dwelling, so checked his rearview mirror, then stopped, reversed back and nosed the car into the opening.

Donny McGill was chopping logs for the wood-burning stove when he heard the engine noise approaching.  He was almost a half mile from the highway, and lived in splendid isolation in a sturdy, one-story, sixty-year-old cabin that was constructed of old-growth round logs laid horizontally and interlocked on the ends with notches.  It had a cedar shingle roof in good repair, and Donny had lived in it since shortly after his wife, June, had died of breast cancer nine years ago, and he had sold up the tract house in Morgantown and left city life for the peace and quiet of his mountain retreat.

Donny was sixty-three, tall and lean, with what was labeled designer stubble these days.  He had fought in Vietnam, to be medically discharged in seventy-three with a few gongs – including a purple heart – and a stump where his left arm had once been, before some AK-47-wielding gook dressed in black pajamas had blown it off.  Maybe he’d been lucky.  A lot of his buddies had wound up in body bags or suffered horrific injuries that had robbed them of any quality of life.

Donny hated war, but couldn’t see a time in the near future when it would become obsolete.  It seemed to him that the flames of religion, oil and politics kept greed, hatred and the pursuit of power for power’s sake burning like an everlasting funeral pyre.

Sal pulled to a stop in the dappled morning sunlight of a new day.  Took in the scene before him and carefully exited the car.

Donny swung the axe one-handed and left it with the razor-sharp blade buried in an upturned log.

Sal smiled and limped slowly across to where a man wearing a black and red check shirt and blue jeans was standing.

“You look like you’ve been shot, friend,” Donny said.  “Where’s the war?”

“Down in Charleston,” Sal said.  “I think that non-payment of a loan to the guys I borrowed from, rubbed them up the wrong way.”

“So what can I do for you?” Donny asked, having already decided that the stranger was a liar and potentially as dangerous as a wounded bear.

“I need to rest up for awhile, and could use a cup of coffee and some painkillers,” Sal said.

“Well come on in,” Donny said, walking over to the cabin door and opening it.  “I brewed a fresh pot of coffee not fifteen minutes ago.”

Sal read the man.  Knew that he was the type that didn’t care or want to know too much about anyone else’s business: a loner, but not like Logan, who seemed to enjoy poking his nose in where it didn’t belong.

“My name’s Tony,” Sal said, sticking his hand out.

“Donny McGill.  Pleased to meet you, Tony,” Donny said, shaking the proffered hand.

They sat at a timber-built table that Donny had put together himself, on polished rail back chairs that he’d brought up with him when he had quit Morgantown pulling a twin axle U-Haul trailer behind his 2001 sienna pearlcoat-colored Jeep Cherokee.

“You gonna be alright?”  Donny asked.

“I reckon”, Sal replied.  “I got the wounds treated and sewn up.  How’d you lose your arm?”

Donny took a drink of his coffee before answering.  “Got in the way of a Kalashnikov.  Two rounds tumbling around in your biceps is an attention-getter.”

“Where’d it happen?”  Sal asked.

“Some paddy field in Nam.  Long time ago now.”

Sal knew by his tone that the old soldier didn’t want to talk war.  Neither did he.  “So is there a problem with me crashin’ here tonight?”  he asked.  “I can pay.”

“No need to pay, Tony.  Just don’t outstay your welcome,” Donny said.  “I don’t live in a forest because I’m a social animal.  I’ve got a shirt and pants without bullet holes in them that’ll just about fit you, a bottle of Tylenol to help ease any pain you’re suffering, and a bunk for the night.  OK?”

“Appreciate it,” Sal said.  And he did.  Being a paid killer didn’t mean that he hated the whole human race.  In fact he couldn’t help but like the grizzled-looking man who was happy to help him out in his time of need.  Trouble with America was that in the main folk would walk past you if you were dying in the street.  It was a selfish consumer-driven society, which he used and abused as and when necessary.  Being away from the city was beginning to grow on him.  Not that he could live like some nineteenth-century mountain man, but he did like the peace and quiet: the calm that the near wilderness offered.  Maybe a couple weeks a year in this kind of situation would be good for his karma.

They made small talk and emptied the coffee pot.  Donny set a fresh one going and started to cook a meal of eggs and bacon and grits and toast for them both.

Sal almost wished that he could move on the following morning without having to kill Donny.  Leaving a trail of bodies behind him was not something he’d planned on, but the fact was Donny could identify him, and he had never been in the habit of leaving witnesses alive.  Not that the old man had witnessed anything, but Sal needed to take the Jeep Cherokee, and so he would reluctantly cap his benefactor after breakfast the following morning.  Until then he would enjoy the present company and a few more hours’ recuperation.