(LB1) Shakespeare's Champion (25 page)

They were torturing Jack.

As we worked our way to the front of the storage area, I saw more and more. I saw too much. Jack was tied to a chair, a wooden one on rollers. His arms were tied to the chair arms. He had the beginning of a black eye, and a cut on one cheek, maybe from when they’d grabbed him in his apartment. They’d taken off his shirt. They’d pulled the bandage off his bullet wound. Darcy had a hunting knife, and Cleve had devised his own little implement by heating an arrowhead with a lighter and putting it on Jack’s skin. Jim Box looked nauseated. Tom David was watching, and though he did not look sick, he did not look happy, either. His eyes flickered toward whoever was seated out of sight, and back to Jack.

Darcy turned away from cutting Jack right under the nipple. The knife glistened with blood. I would kill him first, I thought, so consumed by the thought that I could not reason, could not plan what I should do. I had forgotten Mookie’s existence until she nudged me. She pointed a slim finger to a man sitting on his haunches in the shadow of a shelving unit, a man I hadn’t seen before, and I thought I would vomit. I recognized the pale floppy hair instantly. Bobo. Darcy said something to him.

Bobo raised his face to look at Darcy, and I saw tears on his face.

“I gotta ask you, boy, where you went just a while ago,” Darcy said genially. He raised the knife so the light caught the part of the blade that was not red. Bobo stood up. His shoulders squared.

“I’m hoping you didn’t betray your family by telling anyone what we’d caught here,” Darcy said, waiting for Bobo to answer.

When the silence dragged on, everyone turned to look at Bobo, even Jim Box. Jack was taking advantage of the respite by closing his eyes. I saw his hands working under the tight cord around his wrists. He was biting his lower lip. There were a dozen cuts and burns on his chest, and they’d reopened the bullet wound. Streaks of blood clotted his chest hair.

“Did you go tell that blond bitch?” Darcy asked, quietly. “You tell that gal her little bedmate was in trouble here?”

Bobo didn’t speak. He stared at Darcy, his blue eyes narrowed with turmoil. Something hardened in his face as I watched.

“I hope she does come looking,” Cleve said suddenly. “We get to reenact her worst nightmare.”

Darcy looked at Cleve in some surprise. Then he realized what Cleve meant. He laughed, his head thrown back, the overhead light scouring his face of any sign of humanity.

Jack’s eyes were open now, all right. He was looking at Cleve with a brand new nightmare for Cleve in his eyes. Cleve looked down, flinched. Then he seemed to recall that he was in charge.

“We can give her a real good time right here,” he told Jack. “You can watch, Bobo. Learn how it’s done.”

Tom David’s eyes were slitted in distaste. He was looking at his coconspirators as if he’d just learned something about them that he didn’t like. Bobo’s face said he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. He was waiting for some other explanation of the words to occur to him.

“This is going to be a pleasure,” Mookie said in my ear. She pulled a knife from one of her pockets, handed it to me.

“I cover you, you cut him free,” she said. “We get out the best way we can.”

I nodded.

“Or maybe I’ll kill them all,” she said, to herself.

“They killed Darnell?”

“Yeah, I do believe. My mother got some calls after Darnell’s death, anonymous, nasty, really explicit about Darnell’s injuries. They came from this store. She has caller ID,” Mookie whispered. “Dumb shitasses didn’t even think about a black woman having caller ID. Get ready.”

She stepped out then, her rifle up at her shoulder.

“Okay, assholes,” she said. “Down on the floor.”

They all froze, Darcy in the act of bending over to put the knife to Jack’s chest again; Cleve had the arrow in one hand, the lighter in the other. Beyond them, Tom David was still leaning against the wall, his arms crossed on his chest. Jim Box was beside him. Bobo, who’d been close to the door into the store, turned and stepped through it, and the clunk as the heavy door closed behind him made Cleve jump.

In that flicker of time, Darcy threw the knife at Mookie and dived to his right. Mookie fired and ducked to her right. Her bullet hit Jim Box, who’d been beyond Darcy; I glimpsed a red flower blossoming on his chest. And the knife missed her, but got me. I felt the sudden cold where my shirt sliced open, felt the pressure, but I was running for Jack. Cleve charged me, his thick chest and heavy chin making him look like an angry bull. I stepped aside as he came to me, and I extended my arm. It caught him in the throat. His head stayed still, but his feet kept on going. When the rest of his body didn’t follow, they flew up in the air, and down he went. His head thudded against the concrete floor. And I heard the clunk of the door again. Someone else had fled into the store.

I knelt by the chair, cutting at the cords binding Jack. I was awkward about it, but Mookie’s knife was sharp. I heard a rush of feet, light and quick, and then the
pow!
of the rifle. Mookie passing by, doing God knows what damage. I thought I heard the door again.

I could pay attention to nothing else while I was using the knife, and when I’d sawed through the second set of bonds and I could look up, everything had changed.

I saw no one, at least no one moving.

Cleve was down for good. I felt a flash of satisfaction. Jim Box had vanished, but there were drops of blood on the floor where he’d been standing. I saw there was a chair in the shadows, across from Jack’s. It was empty.

Jack whispered, “Help me up.”

I jumped to my feet, held out my hands. To my horror, I could not meet Jack’s eyes; that seemed worse, much worse, than what I’d done to Cleve Ragland. Jack made an awful sound of pain as he pulled himself up on me. There was a discarded brown coat, Bobo’s, lying on a nearby shelf. I grabbed it. I had in mind fleeing through the rear door, trying to make it through the back lot and hole in the fence to my house, calling—someone. Fleetingly, I thought of the FBI men, who might still be at the motel where they’d been camped since the bombing.

“Put this on,” I said urgently, holding out the coat to Jack. I was thinking of the bitter cold, Jack’s wounds, shock, God knows what.

I kept lookout while Jack tried to manage, but in the end I had to help him. I was so intent on maneuvering Jack’s left arm into the sleeve that I did not know anyone was behind me until Jack’s face gave me a second’s warning. Just as Jack began to move, something slammed against my shoulder. I shrieked involuntarily, knocked to my right, off my feet. I slammed my head into the shelves and fell to the floor hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. I couldn’t move. I stared up at the bright lights of the storeroom, high above me. I could see tall dark Jim Box, his shirt soaked with blood. He gripped an oar, holding it like a baseball bat, and he was swinging it back. He was going to hit me in the head, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Jack went mad. He launched himself at Jim, wrenched the oar from him, and slammed it into Jim’s head. Jim went over like a felled tree, without a sound. Jack stood over him, his blood-spattered chest heaving, wanting Jim to move, wanting to strike again.

But Jim didn’t move.

With a rush the air came back into my lungs. I moaned, not only from pain but from black despair. We were both hurt now, weak. How many more were in the building? Where was Mookie? Had they killed her?

Jack stood over me with the oar. Gradually some of the madness seeped from his face and he crouched beside me.

“Can you get up?” he whispered. I saw the finger marks on his throat for the first time. They’d choked him, enough to almost cost him his voice. I wanted to tell him no, I couldn’t move, but found myself nodding instead. That was a mistake. Pain rocketed through my head. I had to lie still a moment, before I rolled over on my stomach, pushed up to my knees. My arm, sliced by Darcy’s knife, was bleeding. I touched my hair, which felt—funny. There was blood on my hand when I took it down. I’d hit a shelf with my head when I’d gone sideways, I remembered slowly. Maybe I had a concussion. As if to confirm that suspicion, I vomited. When the spasm was over, I felt like I would welcome dying. But Jack needed me to get up.

I gripped the nearest upright, a corner bar for the shelves, and tried to gain my feet while Jack stayed alert for another attack. Finally I was standing, though I could feel myself swaying from side to side; or maybe I was still and the warehouse was swaying? Earthquake?

“You’re really hurt,” Jack rasped, and I could hear a little fear even in his strained voice.

I felt weak and shaken. I was letting him down.

“Go,” I said.

“Right,” he whispered, the sarcasm diminished by his voice level.

“You can move. I’m not sure I can,” I faltered. I hated the wavering of my voice. “They won’t kill me. How many more are there?”

“Two in the store, and the old man.”

What old man?

“Bobo won’t hurt me,” I reassured Jack, thinking he was counting Bobo as one of the adversaries.

“No, I don’t think he will. I think he didn’t know any of this. I hope to God he’s calling the police.”

That was funny. Speaking of old men, it sure looked to me as if Howell Sr., uncrowned king of Shakespeare, was standing right over there by the door.

“Look,” I said to Jack, amazed.

Jack turned, and old Mr. Winthrop raised a hand. To my bewilderment, it held a gun. I opened my mouth to yell something, I don’t know what, when two strong arms wrapped around the old man and lifted him from the floor.

“No, Grandfather,” Bobo said. The expression on the wizened old rat terrier’s face had to be seen to be believed. Howell Sr. struggled and wriggled in his grandson’s grasp, but it was a futile effort. If I’d had any inclination toward humor, it would have been funny. Bobo walked through the storeroom and out onto the loading dock carrying the old man, who called him names I’d never heard an elderly person use.

Bobo’s face was tragic. He didn’t look at me, at Jack. He was alone with the bitterest betrayal of his short life.

I didn’t care where he was taking his grandfather, because the measure of that betrayal was unfolding itself to me. Howell Sr. had used his own son’s business as a cover for his little hate group. Howell Sr. was the reason his son, Jack’s employer, had kept secrets from Jack. Howell must have suspected his father’s involvement from the first. So he hadn’t contacted police, or ATF agents, or the FBI. He’d hired Jack.

And here we were, thanks to old man Winthrop, bleeding and maybe dying in a damn storeroom.

“Where’s Mookie?” I asked Jack. “The woman with the rifle.”

“She went in the store after Darcy,” Jack whispered. The jacket hung open over his bare bloody chest. He’d laid down the oar in favor of Mookie’s knife, the knife I’d used to slash his bonds.

“Tom David,” I said.

Jack was puzzled for a minute. Then his face cleared. “I don’t know. He may be in the store, too.”

“Naw, I’m here,” said a taut voice from a few feet away. “I’m out of the fight.”

I staggered over in the direction of the voice despite Jack’s telling me not to. I didn’t seem to have much control over my actions. Tom David was lying on the floor to the right of the door. The left leg of his jeans was soaked with red. Now I knew where Mookie’s second shot had gone. The policeman’s face was absolutely white. His eyes shone brilliant blue.

“I am sorry,” he said.

I stared down at him.

“You can call the police, it’ll be safe. I’m the only one.”

I nodded, and nearly threw up again.

“I don’t hold with what they did to Jared, and I wouldn’t have hurt you,” he said wearily, and closed his eyes.

“Did you kill Darnell?” I asked.

He opened his eyes at that. “I was there.”

“Who did it?”

“Darcy and Jim. The old man. Paulie who works over there,” and he moved his head infinitesimally in the direction of the Home Supply store. “Len. Bay Hodding, Bob’s dad. He ain’t here tonight. Wedding anniversary.” And Tom David grinned a horrible grin. Those blue eyes were now not so bright. “Who cares, anyway? Nigger. Now, Del Packard…that was Darcy. I regret it.” And his face relaxed. Looking down at the pool of blood beneath my feet, I thought Tom David Meicklejohn had closed his mean eyes forever.

But the policeman’s final testimony had taken valuable time, and in that time things once again had happened without my awareness or participation.

I was alone.

The bright storeroom, with its long stretches of shelves and dark shadows, was empty except for the silent bodies of the fallen and dead. I felt like an actor onstage after the play is over.

Then, from the store, I heard a scream.

I shuffled toward the door. The clear pane set at eye level had gone dark. The store lights had been shut off. As my hand closed around the knob, I realized that when I opened it, I would be silhouetted against the storeroom lights. I switched them off. Then I opened the door and propelled myself through it, and seconds later heard the distinctive
clunk!
of its falling shut.

There was a whoosh of sound over my head, a heavy impact. Then silence. I reached up cautiously. A hunting arrow protruded from the wooden doorframe. My skin crawled. Darcy was an avid bow-hunter. He and Jim had discussed it morning after morning this fall.

I had to get away from the door. He’d be coming. I pulled myself forward on my elbows, trying to hug the floor as closely as possible. It was all too easy, and I cursed myself for a fool in thinking my venturing into this trap could help anyone.

I tried to summon up the floor plan, see it in my head. I felt hopeless when I thought of how familiar it was to Darcy.

“I got your yellow friend,” he called to me. “She’s de-ad. Got an arrow in her he-ad.” He was singing. He was having a good time.

I didn’t believe it. Mookie had screamed; at least, I was almost certain it had been her. You can’t scream if an arrow goes through your head. But I knew my reasoning, like my sense of balance and my judgment, was very shaky just now. If only I knew where Jack was, I thought, I’d just curl up somewhere and go to sleep. That sounded good. I laid my head on the rough indoor-outdoor carpet and began to drift.