Jack Stone - Wild Justice (17 page)

The bar went
up in flames with a
‘whoomp!’

Stone knew he only had seconds. He smashed more bottles open and emptied the contents on the carpet, then threw a bottle of tequila against the far wall. It shattered.

The fire spread quickly, leaping flickering fingers of flame that glowed bright orange in the dark blackness of the night. The timber burned quickly. Fire leaped up the walls, finding the seams between the paneled boarding and climbing up them. When the flames reached the sagged structure of the ceiling they paused, and then arced hungrily outwards. Night air was sucked into the building, feeding the fire, fanning the flames. Stone stood and watched, wasting precious time, but he wanted to be sure. He waited until the flames had spread across the carpet, and the whole building was engulfed.

He pushed and heaved his way through the t
angled wreckage until he was back outside, standing on the footpath, in the cool of the night, leaning heavily against the flatbed truck.

Twenty seconds
, he guessed.

Stone
glanced the length of Main Street. Saw no signs of activity. Turned and stared at the police station. Saw the front door coming open and shadows under the porch light. He turned away quickly. Stuffed his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders. He walked back along Main Street towards the narrow alley where he had waited patiently for the out-of-towners just hours before.

It was raining hard.

Stone
was limping.

And he was smiling
a cold vengeful smile.

Twenty-Eight
.

Stone counted slowly to one hundred and then stepped back out of the alley. The bar was an inferno; fire licking up through the roof of the building and smoke billowing into the dark sky. It was still raining, but the fire was too intense and fed by too much fuel to ever be doused.

Stone walked out into the middle of the road. A crowd of people had gathered, all standing in the rain, all just staring at ‘Stan’s Bar’ burning to the ground.

Maybe twenty, maybe twenty-five people just standing around, helpless to do anything but watch. There were others on the far side of Main Street, sheltering under awnings. The fire reflected everyone’s face to flickering shades of yellow.

Stone didn’t look at the blaze. Stone looked at the crowd. Closest to the flames, and edging closer in a rage of
impotent frustration, was Hank Dodd. Back from him, mixed amongst the other bystanders, Stone recognized the big guy who had been at the bar, and who had been driving the Dodge – and who had been firing the shotgun.

Stone stared into the crowd of people for long seconds. He couldn’t see the other man.

He joined the fringe of the group, crabbed sideways. Worked his way closer and closer to the big guy until he was standing behind him. Stone ripped Lilley Pond’s pistol out of his jeans and shoved the cold hard barrel into the man’s back.

The man froze.

“If you make a sound, if you do anything to raise the alarm, I will blow your spine clean through your body. Understand?”

The guy nodded.
Started putting his hands up in the air. Stone jabbed the barrel of the pistol harder into his back.

“Put your hands down,” Stone hissed. “Start walking backwards. Do it slowly – or it will be the last thing you do.”

The guy began to edge away from the bystanders, walking backwards. Stone kept the gun in the man’s back. When they were clear of the group, Stone steered him down along the dark side of Main Street until they were standing alone and out of view.

“Turn around.”

The guy turned. He was a big man, but all gut. He had a grey scraggly beard and long grey hair in a ponytail. Looked like the fat kind of middle-aged guy who wears leathers and rides a Harley on the weekends. He was wearing a sleeveless denim vest covered in sewn-on badges over a black t-shirt. Stone could see tattoos up the side of the man’s neck. Stone stood three steps back, giving himself enough room. He was far enough to dissuade the guy from making a lunge for the gun, close enough to strike before the guy could react.

“Where’s your friend?” Stone asked. “The guy with a slug in his thigh?”

“Rapture,” the big guy said, his face a sneer. “The hospital.”

Stone nodded.

The guy bristled with defiance and attitude. He was a big-old boy who had probably become accustomed to being one of the local enforcers around town. His size was intimidating. Stone figured he was two-ninety, maybe three hundred pounds. He had massive meaty fists, but no condition. That had gone long ago when the muscle in his chest and shoulders had begun to go soft and slide down to become the huge swell of gut that now strained against his t-shirt. But he probably still figured he was a hard man. Stone was about to show him otherwise.

“You know a man named Harper?” Stone asked.

The big guy shook his head.

“Know anything about the girls who were kidnapped?”

The big guy’s face twisted into a hostile growl. “Fuck you, boy!” He took half a step forward, expecting Stone to lift the gun up into his face and force him to backtrack. But Stone didn’t. Stone lowered the gun and smiled.

The big guy balked
in surprise – just for a second.

Stone stepped in and hit the man hard with a straight punch that crashed into his face.

The big guy recoiled. His legs went wobbly. But he was massive, and he had a lot of weight behind him. Too much weight to be put down by a single punch. He dragged the back of his hand across his face, looked down at the blood that was there and glared in outrage.

Stone didn’t have long. He really wanted to take this guy apart. He had shot at him – and he had shot at Lilley. Stone wanted to disassemble him piece by piece, but he knew there was still Hank Dodd to deal with, and he knew he didn’t have long before the fire brigade arrived from Rapture, and the crowds around the burning bar began to drift away
, taking away his cover.

Stone feinted a punch by rolling his left shoulder. Waited for the guy to react. He did. He shifted his weight back, like he was
swaying out of reach of the blow that was never swung. Instantly, Stone went forward, kicking out hard with his foot, just like he had to Hank Dodd’s front door. The kick landed flush against the guy’s left knee. The man screamed in pain and went down like a felled tree.

The guy groaned in agony. He was
lying on the ground, writhing and gasping. Stone kicked the man again, sinking his boot into unprotected ribs. The man jerked away. His upper body was on the sidewalk, his legs in the gutter. Stone didn’t hesitate. He stomped on the guy’s knee, breaking the kneecap so his leg folded backwards, and smashing everything inside that a man needed to walk.

The man
screamed out in pain and then went suddenly very quiet, whimpering and sobbing, his face screwed up into a mask of terrible torture.

Stone crouched over the man. Clamped his hand over the guy’s mouth. Hard.

“Shut up,” Stone warned him. “If I hear another sound out of you I’ll come back and do the same to the other knee. Got it?”

The guy’s eyes went wide. He nodded.

Stone stood up. Headed back to the crowd in the middle of Main Street. Just left the guy there to bleed in the rain and never once looked back.

Twenty-Nine
.

If anything the fire was more intense, and yet when Stone returned to the bystanders gathered in the rain in the middle of the street, they had curiously edged closer to the blaze.

Stone looked for Dodd. Couldn’t see him. He frowned. He cast a glance over his shoulder. The strip light above the entrance to the police station was still on, but he saw no movement.

He turned back to the fire. The truck was burning, the whole building’s structure was charred or ablaze.

“Where’s Hank Dodd?” he asked from the back of the group, anonymous.

“In there,” an old man standing next to Stone answered. Pointed at the burning bar.

“In the bar?”

The old guy nodded. He had a leathery brown face, creased and wrinkled like a road map from too many summers in the burning sun. The pouring rain had soaked the few remaining strands of grey hair to the old guy’s head so he looked almost bald. “Crazy,” he said. He eyed Stone up and down, frowning like maybe he was trying to place him in his memory and coming up blank. “But he wouldn’t listen to reason. Went in to try to recover the money in the safe.”

“In the bar?” Stone asked again. His voice sounded incredulous, because that’s
just how he wanted it to sound. But he wasn’t. He just wanted to make sure.

The old man nodded
solemnly.

Stone
turned away. Stuffed his hands down inside his pockets and started walking towards the police station.

He got as far as the sidewalk before he heard a sudden crack
and crash of timber, felt the surge of heat against his back, and heard the crowd in the street gasp in tragic shock. Stone stopped. Glanced back over his shoulder. The roof of the bar had collapsed. The whole building had fallen in upon itself – iron, brick and timber in a haze of dust and a billowing pyre of black smoke. And still the fire raged.

Stone kept walking towards the police station.

Hank Dodd was dead, either burned alive in the blaze, or crushed to death when the building collapsed. No matter.

Dead was dead in Jack Stone’s book.

Thirty.

Stone went through the gateway, down the concrete path, and stood beneath the fluorescent light that hung over the entrance to the police station.

The door was solid timber.
Painted drab green. The door was unlocked. Stone pushed with his foot, let it swing slowly back against its hinges. The smell of industrial cleaner and antiseptic hung in the air.

He waited. The
inside of the station was dark but not completely black. The floor was linoleum. Polished. Probably polished twice a week whether it needed it or not by a janitor. Across the floor directly opposite was another door with a thin slice of light coming from the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor.

Stone turned his attention back to the space before him.

He edged into the police station cautiously. Took one slow silent step after the other. There was a long reception desk, and behind it some kind of an open space. He couldn’t see detail. The area was lit only by ambient light filtering in from the street, and the soft green digital glow from sleeping computer terminals. It looked like there were a couple of desks behind the counter, with one chair behind each desk and another chair at the side of each desk.

Stone waited.
Concentrated. He couldn’t sense any threat. His instinct told him the area was empty, but he needed to be patient.

He started counting to a hundred,
allowing his eyes time to adjust in the darkness and letting his breathing settle. He was tense. Wondered if the sheriff was waiting in the dark, or beyond the door opposite.

Seventy. Seventy-one…

Okay, there was a limit to his patience. He crossed the floor, footsteps light, moving on the balls of his feet. He reached the door opposite the entrance and pulled Lilley Pond’s pistol out of his jeans. Held it up in front of his face, curled his finger around the trigger.

The door was another solid
panel of drab green painted timber. Stone turned the handle slowly, cracked the door open an inch. Soft yellow light spilled into the reception room, coming from an open doorway on his left down a short corridor.

Stone eased the door open just wide enough for him to edge through. There was a large cork noticeboard on the wall. It was filled with different colored paper flyers for bake stalls, church fairs and police
bulletins. The wall was bare brick, painted over white. He flattened himself against it. Edged slowly towards the open door.

Stone
spun around the open doorway, pistol extended, and stood perfectly still.

A single shad
ed desk lamp lit the room dimly. The office was heavy with the stench of old sweat and the smell of cigar smoke. There were two flags behind the desk. One was the Stars and Stripes. Stone didn’t recognize the other one, but he guessed it was the Arizona State flag. In one corner of the room was a grey metal filing cabinet, and hung on the wall was some kind of a framed football jersey, covered in marker-pen signatures and protected behind thick glass.

Stone’s eyes took in everything
in an instant, and then flicked to the man in the room.

Sheriff Cartwr
ight was sitting behind a wide timber desk littered with papers, filing trays, a coffee cup, an ashtray – and a shotgun.

He was a fat
man with a heavy fleshy face, blotched red and covered in a fine sheen of sweat that beaded on his upper lip. He had black, tiny eyes and a wide mouth with thin pale lips above a couple of chins. His hair was swept back off his forehead in the style of a young Elvis. Only the sheriff wasn’t young, and he didn’t look like Elvis. Stone guessed he was in his fifties. His hair was grey, thinning. He was wearing a tan uniform with the top button of his shirt undone. He looked up at Stone as he stood in the doorway – no real expression of surprise in his face.