Deadline (36 page)

“No guns?” I said.

“Short notice.”

He slammed his door shut.

We drove in silence, the headlights picking up black ribbons of tire tracks in the snow-covered road. When I swung off Route 108 onto the mill road, there was only one set of tracks in front of us. When I pulled off and headed for the canal, the pavement was white, the area deserted.

“What time do you have?”

Vern held his watch to the window. “Twenty of.”

“We should be able to see him coming, then.”

“And he can just follow our tracks,” Vern said.

I pulled up to the canal, right where they'd pulled Arthur out under the searchlights that night, and turned the car around to face
back toward the road. I killed the lights and the motor. The snow fell heavily in the dark.

We sat for a minute. I turned the key to hit the wipers but the windshield was fogging up on the inside. We both wiped with our hands.

“Is this overtime or what?” Vern said.

We wiped some more. There was no sign of lights. No sound.

“Let's get out of the car and go stand in the dark,” Vern said. “I feel like a sitting duck in here.”

“You have your bat, don't you?”

“Well, let's get out so I can take a few practice swings. It's tough coming off the bench.”

We climbed out and Vern left the bat in the backseat but brought the lug wrench. He held it close to his leg.

When we got to the edge of the canal we stood beside the wall and waited. The ice was white but there was a patch of open water in the middle. I thought of Arthur and stepped away from the edge.

Vern stood with his back to the canal and looked toward the darkness that stretched all the way to the streetlights on the mill road.

“Think it was a joke?” I said.

Vern didn't say anything.

“I can think of a few people around here who would like to give me a hard time, but this doesn't seem hard enough. Not so far.”

I turned back toward the water.

“We've got better things to do than play these kinds of games.”

“It's no game, Jack.”

Vern's voice came from behind me, to my left. Different.

I turned. Tensed.

The wrench fell to the ground by his feet. The gun was in his right hand, pointed at my chest.

Vern grinned sheepishly. The gun aimed higher. I couldn't think of anything to say.

“Yeah, I know, Jackson. Low blow. Especially from a drinking buddy.”

“Not you?”

“Hey, don't look so blown away. Life's full of surprises. I didn't want you to be on the receiving end of this one, but what can I say, buddy? No choice. No choice at all.”

He looked at me. I blinked snow from my eyes.

“Arthur?”

“Yeah, I suppose. Jackson, you must think I'm a real psycho. Loony. Now I don't think so, but I'd be the last to know, wouldn't I. No, I just got backed into a corner and I had to consider all my options. With old Arthur, I didn't have any. I was trying to make some with you, but Jesus, you're such a tough old big-city newsman, you wouldn't take any of the outs I gave you.”

“And now there aren't any more?”

Vern shrugged. The gun, a revolver with a six-inch barrel, pointed at my chest.

“The whole thing with Roxanne? All of that? The pictures?”

“Yeah, I know. Pretty sleazy. But it was for you, Jack. I like you. Hey, why do I feel like I'm in a bad movie? No, I do like you. All you had to do was take Roxanne and pack up that old car of yours and go. Anywhere. Just go and leave us here to our own devices. That's what I wanted you to do. Just go.”

“I'll be glad to.”

Vern shook his head, no.

“You say that, Jackson, but I know you better than that You can't do it, and I'll tell you why. Hey, I even considered it. I did. Right up until tonight, when this guy calls with the cab story.”

“Reggie Lockman. You know him.”

“Yeah, you could say that. I am him.”

I felt sick. Weak. Short of breath.

“It's a long story. Gist of it is that Reggie Lockman did three years in a real nice place called Marietta Correctional Facility in the beautiful city of Marietta, Ohio. Three years. Problem was, he was supposed to do eight, minimum.”

“For what?”

“For what? For something I don't even remember. Not at all. Funny, huh? No, I drove a car into this little VW Rabbit and killed a woman and put her kid in the hospital for about six months. Yeah. Nice guy. Stupid. And no way to make it better, you know what I mean? Had a few beers and went out and killed a perfect stranger. Lady was on her way to the grocery store or something. To get a gallon of milk. I went from being a respectable sportswriter to the worst scum on earth. Just like that. Everybody hated me. Oh, walking into that courtroom and feeling those eyes on you. All those people wishing you'd die some horrible slow death. Her husband really did want to kill me, which is understandable. Cops had to threaten him with a conspiracy-to-commit-murder charge to get him to back off. Wanted to hire somebody in prison to cut my throat. Some of 'em would have done it for a pack of cigarettes.”

I was getting stiff.

“How'd you get out?”

“Oh, getting out is the easy part. It's staying out that's tough, boy. Hey, when I was inside I was a good boy. Didn't fight unless I
had to. Let people spit in my food. Try to kiss me. Oh, yeah. A fun place. When they put me in this minimum-security yard for being a good boy, I threw my shirt up on the razor wire and went over. Never looked back, as they say. When I got here I had a nice résumé. Turned out all I needed to get hired was a pulse.”

I watched the gun. The gun and his eyes.

“Six years now and it's getting so sometimes, not all the time or anything, I can really forget Reggie Lockman. Hey, he's from somewhere else. Another time. An earlier life. I'm just the mild-mannered sports reporter. Chronicling the trials and tribulations of high-school athletes. Even spell the names right.”

“What's with the gun?”

“Residual paranoia,” Vern said. “The great equalizer. Best part is, I can even use it on myself, if the need arises.”

“Vern, this is crazy. We can—”

“We can't anything, Jack. Because I'm not running anymore. I don't have it in me to run anymore, and you know they'd chase me down. God, I'd be on the dashboard of every cop car within five hundred miles. Killer. Escaped convict. Armed and dangerous. Use caution if approached. I'd have no chance.”

I shifted on my feet and the gun jerked up at my face. I swallowed. Wet my lips with a sticky tongue.

“So Arthur knew?”

“Goddamn Arthur. He knew a lot of stuff, the little weasel. He found out stuff because he was always there. You'd look up and there he'd be. Just listening. You know—I don't know why I'm telling you this. I just want you to know that I'm not doing this because I want to. I've got no choice.”

“Sure you do.”

“Nope. Really. See, I had this arrangement. I'll tell you this because I like you.”

“That helps a lot.”

“Really. See, I had this arrangement. It was back when I first got here, and I'd had a few beers—yeah, I know. Never learn. Powerful stuff, that demon rum—and I'm driving home and Vigue stops me. I knew him some. He talked basketball a little and made me walk the line. Touch my nose. I'm borderline, maybe. A judgment call. So he puts me in his cruiser and starts asking me about drinking and stuff, and if I've been arrested before and all this, and Jesus, I'm half in the bag, trying to keep everything straight, and the son of a bitch knows something's not kosher. Cops, good ones, just know. They've been lied to so many times they can smell it. So anyway, he has me in the car in the front seat and I'm still not sure how he did it, but he got a print. A good one. The bastard. He gives me a ride home, lecture and all that, and a couple weeks later he comes knocking.”

“You came back a hit?”

“NCIC computer. Name and everything. The whole schmear.”

“So why didn't he arrest you?”

“I don't know. He put me on what you might call probation. He says he'll think about it. Leaves me turning in the goddamn wind. I didn't sleep for a week. So a month goes by and I don't hear anything, so I send him a couple hundred bucks. Cash. I don't hear anything, so the next month, I send him a couple of hundred more. I've been doing it ever since. It's like a car payment, except the coupon book never gets any thinner. I don't know what he does with it. Maybe he gives it to Mother Teresa, for all I know. But for me it's an investment. The more he's in, the safer I am.”

The snow fell. The gun moved slightly. My neck. My chest. Back to my neck.

“How did Arthur find out?”

“Little weasel. Vigue comes in one night. Looking for somebody and nobody is there but me, I think. So he says, just standing there by my desk, ‘You know, we could both go down for this, and it's worse for me 'cause I'm a cop.' So I say, ‘You want more money or what?' He says he'll get back to me. I told him he couldn't get more blood out of this stone, and he says I might have to squeeze harder, 'cause who are they gonna believe, him or Reggie Lockman, escaped killer. Something like that. He names the name. Lets it sink in. So he leaves and I'm standing there and I hear this little noise out front, and there's Arthur, scrunched down in a chair behind the counter. Sitting there the whole time. Said he came in to wait for a cab. Not a goddamn word, I said. I told Vigue and he made sure. He'd bagged him for the dirty pictures and let him off.”

“He held that over him to keep him quiet?”

“You got it. A triumvirate, sort of. Separation of powers. If one talked, we all took a fall.”

“So what happened?”

“Who knows. Arthur got jittery. Too much on his little pea brain. He calls me and says he has to see me. I picked him up and we went for a ride and ended up down here. Turns out the little weasel wants to take off. He's got some relative in New York State. Albany or someplace. Says he can't live like this anymore, it's destroying his nerves and all this crap. His stomach is bothering him.”

“So you killed him?”

“Jack. That sounds so cold-blooded. We were standing here, not too far from the edge, and it was like my arm decided it wanted to
go home. Had enough of this talk. Like it wasn't attached to me, it just reached out and gave him a shove. Then another shove and—”

“It's too late, Vern.”

He looked at me, startled.

“When I went home to eat I called Roxanne. I told her about Lockman. I told her and she was gonna call the staties she knows down there. Right then. Detectives. She was gonna have them run the name right then. As a favor. She gives them a smile and a wiggle and those guys are like puppy dogs. So it's too late for all this. Don't you understand? You're just making it worse. Two murders? One set up like this? It's just—”

I broke to my left.

The shot didn't come, didn't come. Zigged once and crouched, running toward a chain-link fence thirty yards away along the canal.

Twenty … ten … I jumped.

The top of the fence hit my chin. Neck. Legs. There was a shot. I flipped and the sky spun. My back hit and I was up, running along the wall. I heard another shot and my leg hit something hard and I was sailing and my head hit and there was darkness and cold and my arms churned, clawed at the burning cold water.

26

T
he scream caught in my throat. Teeth clenched. Don't exhale. Don't exhale. No! Arms flailed against something.

Ice.

Each blow shoved me deeper. I had to breathe … had to breathe … face against ice … feet coming up … don't let it out … don't let it out!

Would the hole be light? Dark? It was darker behind me. Light from the mill. I went past it. It had to be to the right.

Air started to slip between my teeth. I clenched them. Two kicks. My head grazed the ice and the air started to come faster.

I kicked. Broke through.

Ice slashed my neck and air shrieked from my lungs.

I sucked in a breath, started to go under. I kicked. The air was hot. Snowflakes that burned.

The strobe lights were blipping on the mill tower. I turned in the water. When I'd fallen through the ice, I'd made an oval-shaped hole, maybe five feet across. I'd come up on the far side of the hole and broken through with my head. Now the canal wall was about
ten feet away, separated from my hole by six feet of unbroken ice, maybe an inch thick.

And God, it was cold.

I tried to pull myself up onto the ice, like a seal out of a breathing hole, but the ice cracked away underneath me and I was back under. I came back up, boots pulling me down. Hoisted myself and broke through. Again.

The water numbed my face. Three times I went through until the ice near the wall held my chest and my hands scraped the granite wall.