Aftermath (6 page)

“Where are you going?”  Sharon asked him.

“Not far.  I’ll be back in time for supper.”

He drove out to the highway, made a left, and after a few minutes on the looping mountain road he came to a truck stop called The Gap.  He parked next to a big truck in the lot at the rear and checked that no one was around.  Walked to the rear of the truck and quickly knelt down and clamped the tracker to the inside of a wheel arch.  The metal was clean and the grip was fine.  He would have liked to go inside for a cold beer, but didn’t.  Last thing he needed was to be seen in the area.  Back in the Discovery he waited.  Fifteen minutes later a guy with a bushy walrus moustache and wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, ankle boots and a sweat-rimmed ball cap came out of a rear door, walked over to the truck, climbed up into the cab and within a few seconds had fired-up and left the lot, heading south.

Logan drove back to the cabin.  Had it not been for the two women, he would have kept the transmitter and waited for the hitman to find him.  He liked things to be wrapped up and put away, permanently.  Loose ends bothered him.

Rita
and Sharon locked the door after Logan left; then checked that all the windows were secure.  His absence seemed as enormous as the man himself.

“What if he doesn’t come back?” Sharon said.

“He will, sweetheart,” Rita said.  “I don’t really know why he has got involved, but I do know that he isn’t the type to walk away.  As long as we’re in danger, he’ll be here for us.”

Sharon looked as if she was suffering from a serious illness.  Her face was too pale, and her hands started to shake.  Sometimes tragic events take a while to hit home.  She had stoically been attempting to come to terms with her father’s death.  Had in some way put a mental shutter up and not grieved properly: couldn’t get past that first stage of disbelief at her loss.  But now two of her friends had been murdered, and even though she knew it was irrational, she felt that it was her fault.  She should not have let Claudia borrow her car.  The killer had thought that he was following
her
home, and had just erased Claudia and Pam as if they were houseflies, not vibrant young women who would now never marry, have children, or lead a full life.  To Sharon it somehow made everything pointless to a degree.  There was no guarantee that you would exist for another minute.  Life was a brief episode that promised nothing but the certainty of death at the end of it, be it tomorrow or in fifty years.

“Sit down, Sharon, you look really ill,” Rita said, placing the firearm on the pine table and going to her.  “What is it, honey, what’s wrong?”

Sharon sat down, lowered her head onto her mother’s breast and began to sob.  Rita comforted her, and just held her and waited until she found some composure.

“I…I just realized how unimportant most of what we do is, Mum,” Sharon said shakily after a few minutes had elapsed and she was able to speak.  “I grew up feeling so safe and happy with you and Dad.  And now it’s all changed.  I can’t see the point to any of it, if all we love is eventually taken away from us.”

Rita didn’t know what to say.  She had been putting on a brave face to friends and relations, and especially for Sharon, but could empathize with everything her daughter had just said.  Living was a hazardous journey on a road that seemed to have as many potholes as smooth asphalt.  More dreams were shattered than realized, and no one got out of life alive.

The bright glare of headlights through the window and the sound of a vehicle pulling to a stop brought both Rita and Sharon to full alertness.

Rita grabbed the gun up, pointed it at the door and waited.

He rapped on the sturdy timber door once.  “It’s me, Logan.” he said.

Rita had been holding her breath.  She let it out and took another deep gulp of air as she placed the pistol back down on the tabletop again and went to the door.  Life might seem to have little meaning at certain times, but when there was a threat to it the survival instinct kicked in hard.

“You two OK?” Logan said, looking from one to the other and seeing nothing but sadness and stress.  “Sorry, stupid question.”

“What did you do with the tracer thing?”  Rita asked him.

“It’s on a Peterbilt semi-truck, heading south,” Logan replied.

Forty minutes later, after a supper of Jimmy Dean beef patties and scrambled eggs, Logan went out and ambled down to the jetty again.  Just stood and looked at the moon and the shimmering silver path its light painted the lake with.

Sharon helped her mum wash up the pans and plates before going out to speak to him.

“A penny for your thoughts, Logan,” she said, standing next to him, looking up at his face in profile.

“I’m just enjoying the view,” he replied.

“Doesn’t all this worry you?”

“All what?”

“You
know
what.  There are killers after us, and you act as if there was nothing out of the ordinary happening.”

“I deal with things as and when necessary.  I try to not to lose sleep over events that haven’t happened yet.”

“Who are you, Logan?”  Sharon said.  “Where are you from?”

“I’m just a guy that moves around.  I’m not from anywhere.”

“That doesn’t make sense.  Where were you born?”

Logan said nothing.

“Please, Logan, I need to know you as a person.”

“You don’t.” he said.  “When this is over I’ll just walk away and you’ll never see me again.”

“Humour me.”

He sighed.  Getting too close to people didn’t work for him.  It was a distraction that he could do without.

“OK,” he said, sitting down and swinging his legs over the water again.  Sharon sat next to him.  It crossed his mind that they should have had fishing poles.  “My name is Joe Logan.  I was born on Staten Island, did a stint in the military, and then became a cop.  And now I just drift.”

Sharon waited, but that was it, he said no more.

“And?”

“And what?”

“Don’t you have a home, family, and friends?”

“No.  My parents are both dead.  And I don’t like being too long in one place, so I don’t tend to make friends.  I feel trapped if I’m in one location for any length of time.  Maybe I’m like a wild animal.  I remember being taken to the zoo when I was a kid and feeling sorry for a polar bear that was pacing up and down in a confined space, slowly going insane.”

Sharon couldn’t imagine why anyone would choose to be by themselves and have no meaningful connection with others, or not want to have a place that they could call home.

“Have you ever been married?”  Sharon asked him.

“Hell, no.  Women need a whole lot more than I could give them.  I owned an apartment once, in the Bronx.  Living in it made me unhappy.  I have no wish to wake up in the same bed every morning, or to be a prisoner of taxes, utility bills, and all that goes with that kind of structured life.”

“Don’t you worry about where you’ll end up?”

“No.  We’re all headed to the same destination; just going there by different routes.”

Before the sudden violent deaths of her father and her friends, Sharon would not have been able to understand Logan’s values or take on life in general.  Now, she believed that she had some insight to his way of thinking.

A shape hurtled across their field of vision, just a few feet away from the jetty.  Sharon gasped and pulled back, but Logan didn’t move a muscle.  The night owl vanished into the trees that fringed the lake.

“Doesn’t anything frighten you?”  Sharon asked him.

“No.”  Logan said.  And he meant it.

They walked back to the cabin.  Rita had made fresh coffee.  Logan drank a cup and washed his mug out and placed it upside down on the drainer before saying goodnight to them both and going to his bedroom.

He lay on the bed and clasped his hands behind his head.  Thought about how the world was populated by good and bad people, and how he always seemed to unwittingly find himself between the two factions, taking sides and doing what needed to be done to protect the sheep from the wolves, and wondering why he did it.  He then ran through the present danger that Rita and Sharon were in.  He knew that he would have to go to Charleston and make certain that Jerry Brandon ceased to be a threat to them.

He got up and went to the bathroom.  Brushed his teeth and went back to undress and get into bed.  As usual he was asleep in a minute.

Sal offloaded Roy at his apartment on Pacific Street in Edgewood, near Cato Park.  He was relieved to be rid of him.  Roy was just a burden now, and didn’t seem to realize that he had a lot of physiotherapy ahead of him before he would be able to get about again on his maimed feet.

Carmen Fontana helped Sal half carry Roy down the short hall and across the living room to where they lowered him onto a black faux leather sofa.

Roy’s girlfriend was not amused.  “How come you’re lookin’ peachy and Roy is in such a mess?”  Carmen asked Sal.

“I wasn’t with Roy when it happened,” Sal said defensively.  He didn’t like Carmen; she was an ex-hooker with a bad attitude, who’d picked Roy up in a seedy bar in the State capital’s red light district.  Carmen was beginning to lose her looks, and was smart enough to know that her best years were behind her.  Roy had a nice apartment and always seemed to be flush with money.  For some unknown reason he was besotted by Carmen:  Couldn’t see that he was just a meal ticket to the woman.

It was a quick turnaround.  Sal took Interstate 79, driving northeast, following the signal of the tracker that Roy had affixed to the woman’s Discovery.  He came off at Weston and stopped thirty miles farther on at Elkins for something to eat.  He was confidant that he would soon find the vehicle, and presupposed that the woman and her daughter would have linked up, and that the stranger who’d hurt Roy would be with them.  No sweat.  They would believe that they were in the wind, safe as bugs in a rug, unaware that their time was running out.

The signal had shown the vehicle stationary for several hours.  He left the diner in Elkins planning to find them, reconnoiter where they were holed up, and kill them before dawn.

The flashing green cursor on the screen of his phone started to move.  He followed the route it displayed and then lost it for a while.  When the intermittent signal reappeared the vehicle had stopped again.  He followed it in.  Drove past a truck stop called The Gap.  Pulled into a passing place round the next curve, out of sight of where he presumed the SUV was parked up.  Got out of the Taurus, thumbed the remote to lock it and walked back along the berm of the highway till he reached the opening that led into the car lot.  There was no sign of the Discovery.  Sal checked between the parked trucks, but it wasn’t there.  He jogged back to the car.  The image on his smart phone was frozen.  He tapped the phone against the steering wheel a couple of times.  By coincidence the cursor came alive again and was moving back the way he had come, heading toward Elkins.

Fifteen minutes later, Sal passed the big semi truck and knew that he had been suckered.  Whoever was protecting the women was not stupid.  He’d found the tracker, fixed it to the truck, and would now be feeling smug and safe, convinced that any tail would end up following the truck to its destination.

Sal considered his options.  There were only two.  The trio had either taken off in the other direction, which meant he had little chance of finding them, or they were staying in the vicinity of The Gap.

He pulled off the highway, headed back the way he had come, and was soon parked in darkness, away from the yellow glow from begrimed lights that were affixed to posts at irregular intervals around the graveled lot.  He slid out of the car and walked across to the rear entrance of the low building.  It was rustic, its cinderblock walls faced with half logs, and there was a blue and white neon Bud sign blinking over the door, with big moths fluttering pointlessly around it in circles and bumping up against it.

It was hot and dimly lit inside.  First thing Sal checked out was if there was a big guy in the joint who looked out of place.  There wasn’t.  In fact there were only seven customers, all male.  Two were sitting at the bar on high, wooden stools.  Three were at a table nursing beers, and the remaining two were playing pool.  He could smell beer and sweat and the residue of fried food.  Batwing doors led through to the front of the building, which was set up for eating, separate from the bar out back.

Sal walked up to the counter and gave the bartender a half smile.  It wasn’t returned.

“Yeah,” Chip Monroe said as he wiped the top of the bar with a gray, frayed dish towel.  “Help you?”

“A cold beer would hit the spot,” Sal said.

“I’ve got Bud, Coors, Mountain State’s Almost Heaven, and―”

“Let me try the Almost Heaven,” Sal said, not wanting to listen to the nasal voice of the pockmark-faced owner reel off a lengthy list.

“Information is extra for a city boy,” Chip said as he flipped the cap off the bottle and placed it in front of Sal with a glass that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a month.

“Who said I wanted information?”  Sal said before picking up the bottle of pale ale and taking a sip.

“We don’t get many suits in here for some reason,” Chip answered.  “When we do, it’s usually to ask directions or use the restroom.  And sometimes it’s someone like you, packing heat under his jacket and looking like he needs to know where someone is.”

Sal was surprised.  He’d thought that the loose cut of his jacket totally concealed the fact that he was carrying.

“I’m lookin’ for a guy six inches taller than you.  He could be with two women; one in her late forties, and one about twenty.  He’s drivin’ a dark-blue Discovery.”

“Haven’t seen anyone like that,” Chip said.

“I have,” an old farmer-type with a saddle nose and wearing a shapeless cowboy hat said from where he was sitting with two cronies at a table in the corner of the room.

Sal waited.

‘Farmer’ rubbed the pointing finger and thumb of his right hand together.  Sal took his billfold out from the buttoned-down back pocket of his pants.  Tossed a five onto the bar for his beer and walked over to the table.

“What can you tell me?” he asked.

“I took a leak.  The window back there in the john is open, and from where I was standing I saw a truck pull out.  Behind it was a dark-looking Discovery.  There weren’t any women in it, though, just a guy.  He drove out the other way.”