The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  Jackie Garner was tired of being wet.

  ‘We can’t just stand here in the rain,’ he said. ‘We need to get going.’

  ‘We could split up,’ said Paulie, ‘take a road each and see what happens.’

  What happens if we do that is we end up dead, thought Willie. The Fulcis and their pal were clearly nuts but at least they were armed and nuts. Five of them together had a better chance than two, or three.

  ‘It’s still a lot of ground to cover,’ said Jackie. ‘They could be anywhere.’

  At that moment, a hill to the south was suddenly altered by an enormous ball of smoke and wood and dirt that soared into the gray sky, and their ears rang with the sound of the explosion.

  ‘You know,’ said Jackie, ‘it’s just a guess . . .’

  Louis and Angel climbed to their feet. They were surrounded by debris: wood, sacking, burning grain. Louis’s coat was on fire. He shrugged it off and tossed it to one side before he began to burn too. Angel’s hair was singed, and there was a bright red scorch mark upon his left cheek. They surveyed the damage. Half of the barn was gone, and the grain store had collapsed. In the midst of the wreckage, Angel could make out the body of the young man who had, briefly, held a gun on them.

  ‘At least we have one gun,’ he said.

  Louis took it from him.

  ‘I have a gun,’ he corrected. ‘Which would you rather have: you with a gun, or me with a gun at your side?’

  ‘Me with a gun.’

  ‘Well, you can’t have it.’

  Angel gazed beyond the remains of the barn.

  ‘They’re all gonna come now.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘At least they’ll bring some more guns.’

  ‘I’ll get you one when they do.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘Bliss will come too.’

  ‘Yes, he will.’

  ‘So we still going to see Leehagen?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘That is good.’

  They began to walk.

  ‘You know, my shoes are wet,’ said Angel.

  ‘But at least you’re warm now . . .’

  26

  Bliss heard the explosion, and knew that Louis was near. He had no concerns that his target might be dead, for he knew in his heart that Louis was his to take. This reckoning was his due, after all that he had endured.

  He had underestimated Gabriel’s protégé, but then Gabriel had always been seeking the perfect Reaper, the one whom he could mold to do his bidding without question. Bliss had seen so many of them come and go, their dying bringing grief to Gabriel only because their failure was his failure. What he had not realized, but Bliss had, was that a man or woman who could be broken to Gabriel’s will would be useless in the end. What made Bliss special – and, he had come grudgingly to acknowledge, what made Louis special too – was that there was a streak of individuality to them both, perhaps even a kind of perversion of the spirit, that meant they would ultimately break free of the constraints placed upon them by Gabriel and by those who, in turn, used him to serve their own purposes. That was why they had stayed alive when so many others had not, but Bliss had been wise enough to know that such a situation could not go on forever. Eventually he would tire, and his thinking would slow. He would make a mistake, and pay the price; that, or he would attempt to slip quietly into anonymity, taking his secrets with him, but there would be some, Gabriel among them, perhaps, who might prefer if Bliss’s secrets were buried with him, and sooner instead of later. So Bliss had taken a calculated risk: he had named a price, and it had been met. He had made one mistake: Louis had survived. Now it was time to rectify that error.

  The explosion made the next part of his task easier. He now knew Louis’s location, even if it was farther south west than he had expected. Curious, he thought, that Louis and his lover should be moving into the trap instead of trying to break out again. He knew from Leehagen’s son that they had tried to find a way through the cordon and had been forced back into the woods. Had they persevered, they might well have broken through the line at another attempt. With luck, even to reach one of the bridges over the stream might not have been beyond them, although they would have managed to get no farther, for their movements had been tracked from the start. Their fate lay entirely in his hands, and he had written that they should die.

  Moving in, not out. He thought about finding some way to warn Leehagen, then decided against it. The old thug could work out for himself what was happening, and if he couldn’t then he didn’t deserve to live. Despite all the obstacles that had been placed in his way, Louis was still coming for Leehagen. Bliss admired his dedication. He had always considered Louis impure, for no one had Bliss’s purity, but something of his own tenacity lay buried deep in the younger man.

  Quickly and steadily, Bliss began walking toward the site of the explosion.

  Something moved in a ditch near the ruins of the barn. A pallet shifted, followed by a sheet of corrugated iron. Beneath it lay Benton. The left side of his face was charred and blackened, thin streaks of raw red flesh visible where the skin had broken like magma bursting through a volcanic crust, and he was now blind in that eye. The pain was excruciating.

  He raised himself to a sitting position using the palms of his hands. The backs were burned and cracked, but the palms were unscathed. He looked down at himself. Part of his shirt had been burned away, and the skin beneath was covered in heat bubbles, and punctured by multiple fragments of wood. Beside him lay what was left of Quinn. When the barn had ignited, Quinn had taken the brunt of the explosion. His body had been lifted off the ground, striking Benton and inadvertently shielding him from the worst of what followed, assisted by a fortuitous accretion of debris.

  He got to his feet, and brushed red and black matter from his trousers. He suspected that some of it was part of Quinn, and felt a surge of indignation at the death of his friend. He put his hand to his head. His skull ached. There was a bare patch where hair used to be. His palm came back bloodied.

  The pain in his eyeball was the worst because it was so specific and intense. His depth perception was gone, but he was aware of something protruding from the socket where his left eye used to be. Carefully, he raised his right hand and brought it closer to the eye. The palm of his hand brushed against a sliver of wood, and Benton yelled in shock. Tears fell from his right eye, and his vision blurred. He tried not to panic, forcing himself to stop taking short ragged breaths and instead draw air in deeply and slowly.

  There was a splinter in his eye. He couldn’t leave it there. You couldn’t leave a splinter in your eye. It was just . . . wrong.

  Benton held his hands before him and turned them sideways, one palm facing the other. He drew them toward him until they were almost touching his head, one at either side of his damaged eye. Then, slowly, he brought his index fingers together until they touched the splinter. The pain was still ferocious, but this time he had been expecting it. He tightened the tips of his fingers against the shard of wood, and pulled. It was buried deep, so there was some resistance, but Benton didn’t stop. There was a noise like sirens in his head, high-pitched and intense, and it was only when the splinter had come free and something warm was trickling down his cheek that he realized it was the sound of his own screams.

  He examined the splinter, holding it close to his left eye. It was almost two inches long, and nearly half of its length was coated in blood and ocular fluid. Sons of bitches put a splinter in my eye, he thought. He was going to get them for that.

  Benton got to his feet. His brain didn’t seem to be working the way it should. It wasn’t sending the right messages to his limbs, causing him to stumble and drift as he walked. Still, he managed to leave behind the ruins of the barn while falling to his knees only once. He had already forgotten his burns and the remains of Quinn, and the fate of Roundy did
not even impinge upon his shattered consciousness. All that mattered was the splinter that had blinded him in one eye. After all, what kind of men would blind another man? Men who didn’t deserve to live, that was what kind.

  Somewhere in the distance, he saw two shapes moving, one tall, the other shorter. He found his rifle, half hidden beneath Quinn’s remains, and picked it up. He began following the men.

  The Detective had gone only a mile in the direction of the explosion when the first car appeared. It was a red Toyota Camry, moving away from them at speed. Willie’s hand tightened on his gun, even as the Detective eased up on the gas, allowing the men to pull ahead. Behind them, Jackie Garner and the Fulcis also slowed down.

  ‘You got any plans for when we get there?’ asked Willie.

  ‘The same plan as earlier: not dying.’

  Thick clouds of smoke were now drifting across the road. It made driving difficult, but it also meant that they would be hidden from the men before them. As it was, they almost drove into them as they reached the site of the explosion. The red car seemed to materialize out of nowhere, stopped with its front doors open, two men still sitting in the front seats. The Detective braked sharply and went right as soon as they came in sight and, behind them, Tony Fulci swung the wheel of his truck to the left, taking it around the Mustang and bringing it to a stop almost level with the men in the car.

  Unable to open his door because of the proximity of the Fulcis’ truck, the driver had simply decided to begin shooting, but because of the size of the truck he had to wind down his window and stick his hand out to hit anything. By the time he had managed to do all of that, Tony had fired four shots through the roof of the car, and the driver collapsed sideways, his left hand hanging uselessly from the half open window, his gun lying on the ground beneath it.

  The passenger, clearly wounded but still able to hold a gun, opened the door farthest from the Fulcis and tumbled out, coughing loudly and his eyes streaming from the smoke. The Detective hit the accelerator of the Mustang. The car shot forward, striking the gunman’s lower body and cutting the door from the Toyota. The force of the impact doubled the passenger over at the waist and sent him sailing onto the hood of the Mustang. He fell off as the Detective swung the wheel to the right and stopped the car. The Detective opened his door and stepped out into the smoke and rain, Willie following.

  Now there were two men running from the direction of the fire. Both wore yellow slickers and jeans, the slickers standing out even in the smoke, and both carried what looked like shotguns. Willie saw them before anyone else. He tried to speak, but the smoke entered his mouth, causing him to splutter instead. Jackie Garner and one of the Fulcis were still getting out of the truck, and Parker was kneeling beside the man on the ground.

  Willie raised the Browning.

  I don’t want to do this. I believed that I could, but I was wrong. I thought that we’d be in and out, that we’d find Angel and Louis and get them away from here. I didn’t believe that there would be all of this, this killing. I’m not a killer. I don’t belong here. I’m not these men. I can never be.

  The smoke drifted, carried by the breeze, and the figures in yellow disappeared from view for an instant.

  Go away. Just turn back. Lose yourself in the smoke. Let this be the end of it.

  And then they were back, closer now. He heard shots, and saw muzzle flares in the smoke. Willie fired twice at the man on the left, aiming at his upper body. The man dropped to the ground and didn’t move again. A fusillade of shots came from the direction of the Fulcis’ truck, and the second man joined the first. Willie saw Jackie Garner and Tony Fulci move toward the fallen men, Tony covering Jackie as he removed their weapons and checked for any signs of life. The Detective was now looking at the driver of the car. Paulie Fulci joined him, and Willie heard the Detective tell Paulie that the driver was dead, and the other man soon would be. All four of them then began walking in the direction of the ruined barn, but Willie did not join them. He walked over to where the man whom he had killed lay spread-eagled on the ground. One shot had missed him entirely, the other had taken him in the chest. He looked to be in his forties, an overweight, balding figure wearing cheap denims and worn workboots.

  Willie put his hands on his knees, leaned down, and tried not to throw up. Stars burst before his eyes. He felt anger, and grief, and shame. He moved upwind of the drifting smoke and sat beneath a tree. The rain was easing, and the tree didn’t offer much shelter in any case, but Willie didn’t trust his own body to hold him up. He leaned back against the bark, tossed the Browning aside, and closed his eyes.

  He stayed that way until he heard footsteps. The Detective was approaching. His face was blackened with smoke. Willie guessed that he must have looked just the same.

  ‘We have to keep moving,’ said the Detective. ‘There’ll be others looking for them as well.’

  ‘Is it worth it?’ asked Willie. ‘All of this, is it worth it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the Detective. ‘I just know that they’re my friends, and they’re in trouble.’

  He reached out a hand. Willie took it.

  ‘You’ll need your gun,’ said the Detective.

  Willie stared at the gun on the ground.

  ‘Pick it up, Willie,’ said the Detective, and in that instant Willie hated him.

  But he did as he was told. He picked up the gun, and joined the others.

  Benton heard the gunfire behind him, but he didn’t look back. It was all that he could do to keep moving forward. He was afraid that if he turned around, even for a moment, he would lose all sense of direction, and if he stopped he would surrender any possibility of further movement. All that he could do was to put one foot in front of the other, to maintain his grip on the rifle in his right hand, and eventually he would reach the men he was hunting. Slowly, the connections in his brain were dying, shorting out one by one like overloaded fuses. He could barely remember his own name, and had forgotten entirely the names of the men who had died in the inferno. All he knew was that those responsible for all of it, whatever it was, were ahead of him, and he needed to kill them. Once they were dead, he could stop moving, and then the pain would cease as well. Everything would cease. There would be no pain, no pleasure, no mem ories. There would be only blackness, like drowning in a warm sea at night.

  27

  It was Angel who spotted Benton first. He was still some distance from them when Angel caught sight of his head appearing over the brow of a hill. He tapped Louis in warning, and together they turned to face the threat.

  It was clear that the man was badly injured. He was shambling rather than walking, and he seemed to be drifting slightly to the left and then, realizing what he was doing, correcting himself. His head was low, and he held a rifle in his right hand. As he drew nearer, they could see the damage to his face and body caused by the fire, and they knew from whence he had come.

  ‘Someone survived the explosion,’ said Angel. ‘He’s hurt bad, though.’

  ‘He has a gun,’ said Louis.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it’s going to be much good to him.’

  Louis raised his own gun and sighted along it as he moved toward the wounded man.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I guess not.’

  Benton became aware that the men he was pursuing had stopped. It was time, so he stopped in turn, knowing that he would never go any farther, not here and not in this life. The landscape wavered, and the two men in the distance became blurred and misshapen. He tried to lift the rifle, but his arms would not respond. He tried to speak, but no words would come from his scorched throat. All was pain; pain, and the desire to avenge himself upon those who had caused it. His injuries had reduced him to the level of an animal. Disjointed memories of unconnected things appeared in his mind only to disappear before he was able to identify and understand them: a woman who might have been his mother; another who could have been a lover; a man dying in the rain, the blood like colors running in a painting . . .
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br />   The rifle was still in his hand. He knew that much. He concentrated hard, trying to focus on it. He managed to get the index finger of his right hand on the trigger, his left still gripping the barrel. He pulled the trigger, firing uselessly into the ground. A tear fell from his eye. One of the figures was drawing nearer. He had to kill them, but now he couldn’t remember why. He couldn’t remember anything. All was lost to him.

  His brain, understanding the imminence of its own oblivion, fired itself up for a final effort, and Benton’s consciousness blazed for the last time, clearing his head of pain and anger and loss, allowing him to focus only on the man who was approaching. He raised his left arm, and it was steady. His vision cleared, and he sighted on the tall black figure. His finger tightened again on the trigger, and as he prepared to release his breath, he knew that everything was going to be fine after all.

  The load was a 250-grain MatchKing bullet, which would have meant nothing to Benton even if it hadn’t been the bullet that tore through the side of his head, entering just behind and beneath his remaining eye and exiting through his right ear, taking most of his skull with it.

  From where he lay on the damp grass, Bliss watched as the target folded to the ground. He shifted position slightly, taking his eye from the sight so he could find the others. They were already running, ascending a slight rise and making for a copse of trees to the east. Even with the XL, they would soon be out of range. He intended to finish off Louis face-to-face, for he wanted him to know who was responsible for taking his life, but the other one, his partner, didn’t matter. Bliss sighted slightly ahead of the smaller man, anticipating where the angle of his movement would take him, then breathed out slowly and squeezed the trigger.

  ‘Shit!’ said Angel, as his foot caught on a cleft in the ground and sent him stumbling forward and to his left. Louis was beside him, and paused momentarily, but Angel didn’t fall. A spray of grass and dirt erupted from the ground slightly forward and to the right of where Angel now stood, even as he regained his balance and they continued running, their eyes now fixed only on the safety offered by the woods. Angel heard another shot, but the ground was sloping down and suddenly there were trees around him and he threw himself to the dirt and sheltered behind the nearest trunk. He huddled against it, his knees drawn into his chest, his mouth open as he gasped in air.