by Jude Hardin
Even so, he tried to keep the conversation going.
“Keep talking,” he said. “We can work this out.”
“You want to know why I killed the stripper?” the man in the plaid flannel shirt said. “Get your ass out here where I can see you. Then we’ll talk.”
Wahlman didn’t get his ass out there where the man in the plaid flannel shirt could see him. Instead, he gripped the black market grenade he’d taken from Lancaster and pulled the pin and squeezed the lever and hoped for the best.
19
A billowing plume of smoke shot out. Which was good. It was exactly what Wahlman had wanted to happen. He launched the device in a high arc, hoping to land it on the other side of the white SUV where the man in the plaid flannel shirt was standing.
But the canister didn’t land over there. In fact, it didn’t land at all. Wahlman had thrown it too hard. He’d put too much muscle into it. The grenade had gotten stuck, somewhere up in the treetops.
Which was not good.
Now there was a nice thick purple cloud rolling out, but it was way up in the air and of absolutely no use to Wahlman.
Or so he thought.
But he was wrong about that. Because out of the nice thick purple cloud came a different kind of cloud, a swirling black funnel of anger, a buzzing squadron of black dots, descending as a single unit, with a single purpose, to eliminate the sudden threat, to attack the nearest and largest target, which just happened to be the man in the plaid flannel shirt.
He started shouting.
And screaming.
And dancing around.
He waved his arms frantically in an effort to bat the hornets away, but there must have been a thousand of them. They covered his body like too many sprinkles on a sundae.
Wahlman trotted across the clearing, toward the SUV. Janelle was on the ground, lying on her back. The hornets weren’t paying any attention to her. Maybe because she was so low. And flat. And still. Wahlman picked her up and slid her into the driver seat, and then he climbed in and squeezed past her, and past the center console, and he plopped into the passenger seat and reached over and pulled the door shut.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“I think I’m bleeding,” Janelle said.
Her speech was slurred, and her eyes weren’t tracking right. It was possible that she’d taken a hit to the head, or that she’d been drugged. Or both. Wahlman looked her over. There was a bright red spot on the lower part of her shirt.
Wahlman lifted the hem.
“I need to get you to the hospital,” he said.
“Marshall has the keys.”
“The man in the plaid flannel shirt?”
“Yes.”
Wahlman turned and looked out the passenger side window. Marshall was the one on the ground now, lying on his back, staring up at the canopy. His face and hands were swollen. Fat and lumpy, as if someone had inflated them with a bicycle pump. He was having trouble breathing. Maybe an allergic reaction, Wahlman thought, but not necessarily. The venom from that many stings would probably put anyone down, allergic or not. Even a man as large and fit as Marshall.
The gun he’d been holding was gone. As were most of the hornets.
“Is there a first aid kit in the car?” Wahlman said.
“It’s a rental,” Janelle said. “I don’t know.”
Wahlman ripped his shirt open and started to take it off, intending to use it as a dressing.
“You’ve been stabbed,” he said “I need to stop the bleeding.”
“I have some tissues in my purse,” Janelle said. “Maybe—”
Her voice trailed off. Wahlman grabbed the purse and opened it and found the tissues. He figured they would be better than his shirt. More absorbent, and less likely to cause an infection. He pulled the entire stack out of the little plastic package they were in and instructed Janelle to press them against the puncture wounds as hard as she could.
Janelle looked at the tissues.
And then she looked at Wahlman.
She seemed lost.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” Wahlman said.
“Can you say it again?”
Wahlman placed the tissues in her hand, and then he guided her hand to the wounds.
“Like this,” he said.
Janelle nodded.
Wahlman climbed out of the car and walked over to where Marshall was lying. It appeared that Marshall wasn’t having trouble breathing anymore. It appeared that he wasn’t breathing at all.
Wahlman reached down to feel for a pulse, but before he had a chance to palpate the carotid artery on the left side of Marshall’s neck, a pair of bloodshot eyes opened widely, and a pair of congested lungs gasped deeply, and a pair of red and bubbly hands reached up and grabbed him by the throat.
Suddenly, it was Wahlman who couldn’t breathe. He tried to break the grip, tried to pry Marshall’s thumbs away from his windpipe, but it was no use. It was like trying to loosen a rusty bolt with a popsicle stick. Just wasn’t going to happen.
The pistol.
The .40 cal.
Wahlman reached around to the back of his waistband, but it wasn’t there. It must have slipped out at some point, probably while he was scrambling through the interior of the SUV, trying to maneuver Janelle and himself away from the ill-tempered swarm of hornets. The gun was probably on the backseat floorboard, with a nice full magazine and one in the chamber and of absolutely no use to anyone at the moment.
Wahlman managed to suck in a little oxygen, but not nearly enough to meet his current demands. His heart was pounding like a jackhammer, and his arms and legs felt as though someone had tied anchors to them. The knife Marshall had thrown was still in his back pocket. He could feel it. But it had slipped down into a horizontal position, and he couldn’t get to it. The angle was wrong. He couldn’t slide his fingers far enough down into the pocket.
Which meant that he was going to have to fight with his bare hands. Which ordinarily wouldn’t have been a problem. But Marshall had extremely long arms. If he and Wahlman had been engaged in a boxing match, an observer might have noted that Marshall had the reach on Wahlman. A distinct advantage in a boxing match, or a cage fight, or a desperate struggle at the top of a park.
Marshall had extremely long arms, and they were locked at the elbows, and it was impossible for Wahlman to land a solid punch. He tried, again and again, but the blows just didn’t have enough force behind them. They didn’t knock Marshall out, and they didn’t break his nose, and they didn’t cause him to loosen his grip. If anything, his thumbs seemed to dig in deeper with every punch.
Wahlman tried not to panic. He tried to break the grip again, and couldn’t again. He tried kneeing Marshall in the ribs, and he tried ripping the sweaty hair out of his head, and he tried pinching the blistered skin off of his face. Nothing was working. Nothing was going Wahlman’s way, and his muscles were getting weaker by the second, and multicolored dots were dancing in front of his eyes, and he started thinking that maybe this was it, that he’d somehow allowed this lowlife piece of shit to get the better of him.
Or at least to break even. Because it didn’t seem likely that Marshall was going to make it either. Not without immediate medical attention.
So the race was on.
The race to see who died first.
20
Janelle knew where she was.
She knew that she was at the top of Iroquois Park. She’d been there many times as a teenager. Sometimes with a boyfriend, sometimes with a group, sometimes all by herself. She knew where she was, but she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there, and she couldn’t imagine why those guys were fighting, out there in the clearing.
It appeared that they were trying to kill each other.
But why?
Janelle tried to think, tried to piece some things together, tried to assemble the jumble of images swirling through her brain. She’d been drunk plenty of times, but never like this. Something was
wrong. She needed to call her dad. He would know what to do. He would come to the park, and soon everything would be all right. Soon everything would be back to normal.
Janelle reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone.
No service.
Of course. You never could get a good signal up here. Because of the density of the forest. Janelle had known that for as long as she’d known anything. She just hadn’t been thinking. She’d forgotten. Which wasn’t like her.
Something was definitely wrong.
She needed to do something. She needed to get away from this crazy place.
She reached for the ignition.
No keys.
She grabbed her purse, turned it upside down, emptied the contents onto the passenger seat.
No keys.
They had to be somewhere, Janelle thought. She reached down and felt around on the floor. She felt behind the brake and the gas pedal, and she leaned over and checked the passenger side, and she twisted around and checked the back seat, and the floorboard back there, and she didn’t see anything except an empty soda cup and an empty French fry box.
And a pistol.
She picked up the gun and looked at it and wondered how it had gotten there. Her father had taught her how to shoot when she was younger, but she’d never felt the need or the desire to purchase a gun for herself. Especially out in California, where the ownership and carry laws were much stricter.
She checked the magazine, and the chamber. The gun was fully loaded, and the safety had been switched off. Whoever had been carrying the weapon had been ready to use it. One squeeze of the trigger was all it would take.
Janelle looked out the window again. Her vision was starting to clear. One of the men looked familiar. Then they both looked familiar. Then it all came flooding back.
Marshall. He’d kidnapped her. He’d stabbed her with a knife.
The other guy, the one whose face was currently a disturbing shade of purple, had helped her. He’d picked her up and had carried her to the car.
She set the gun on the passenger seat and lifted the bottom of her shirt, looked down at her abdomen and carefully peeled back the stack of facial tissues. The bleeding had stopped, for the most part, although the wound closest to her belly button was still oozing a little.
The blade must not have penetrated very deeply, she thought. Half an inch, maybe. Just the tip. She would probably need stitches, and a course of antibiotics, but she didn’t think that any internal organs had been damaged.
That being the case, she couldn’t think of any reason why she shouldn’t climb out of the SUV and try to help the man who’d helped her.
21
Wahlman struggled to maintain consciousness. He was teetering on the edge, knowing that the battle would be lost if something didn’t happen soon.
Then something did happen.
The driver side door of the SUV swung open, and Janelle staggered out into the clearing and aimed the barrel of the pistol she was holding at Marshall’s head.
“Let go of him,” she said.
“Is this your boyfriend?” Marshall said.
“He’s the good guy. You’re the bad guy. Let go of him.”
“I’ll let go of him when he’s dead.”
Marshall’s speech was garbled, barely comprehensible, as if he’d recently shoved a heaping spoonful of mashed potatoes into his mouth. Wahlman figured his tongue was swollen, from the hornet stings.
“Last chance,” Janelle said. “Let go of him, and put your hands behind your head.”
“Or what?”
“Or you’re not going to have a head.”
Marshall laughed.
“Is that a line from one of your movies?” he said. “Get real. You’re not going to—”
Janelle pulled the trigger.
A bullet thudded into the dirt, inches from Marshall’s right ear. An expression of sheer terror washed over his face. He loosened his grip. His arms fell to his sides.
Wahlman rolled away, coughing and gasping and greedily sucking in as much of the sweet and woodsy park air as he possibly could.
Janelle aimed the barrel of the pistol at the center of Marshall’s chest.
“Hands behind your head,” she shouted.
Marshall put his hands behind his head.
“Now what?” he said.
“Now we wait,” Janelle said. “Gunshots attract attention. Remember? The cops should be here any minute.”
Marshall took a ragged breath, and then another, and then he coughed and his eyes glazed over and his chest stopped rising and falling.
Wahlman advised Janelle to keep the gun on him anyway, unsure if Marshall was really dead this time and unwilling to crawl over there to find out.
Two LPD cruisers showed up, probably the same cars that had been parked nose-to-nose down at the main entrance. Wahlman figured that the sound of the gunshot had indeed attracted them, and that the smoke hovering above the treetops had led them to the right location.
A female officer climbed out of one of the cars, and a male officer climbed out of the other, and they made it clear—immediately and in no uncertain terms—that Janelle was to drop the weapon she was holding, and that she was to lie face down on the ground with her fingers laced together behind her head. They ordered Wahlman to join her, and then they checked on Marshall, and they shook their heads somberly, and they made a compulsory effort to revive him, followed by a trip to one of the cruisers for a blanket to spread over his face.
The female officer cuffed Janelle and took her aside to interview her, and the male officer cuffed Wahlman and took him aside to interview him, and when everything had been sorted out, the female officer uncuffed Janelle, and the male officer uncuffed Wahlman, and the four of them waited for the ambulance and the team from the coroner’s office to arrive.
22
Four days later, Janelle Pierce stopped by Wahlman’s house on her way to the airport. Natalie had wanted to invite some of her friends from the dorm over for a meet and greet, and Kasey had wanted to invite her parents.
Wahlman had said no to both of them.
“That’s not what this is about,” he’d said. “She’s been traumatized. I’m sure she doesn’t want a bunch of people hanging around asking for autographs.”
“Can we at least meet her?” Natalie had said.
“Briefly,” Wahlman had said. “Then you’ll need to leave us alone, so we can talk.”
“This is so exciting! Janelle Pierce, right here at our house!”
Wahlman nodded. Now the porch would have another story, one that he knew for a fact to be true.
The limo eased over to the curb at a little past noon. The driver climbed out and opened Janelle’s door for her. The cuts on her belly had been stitched up by a plastic surgeon, who’d assured her that the scarring would be minimal. Wahlman could tell by the way she walked that she was sore. He met her out on the sidewalk and offered his arm for support as they made their way up to the stoop and into his office.
“This is my wife, Kasey,” Wahlman said. “And this is our daughter, Natalie.”
Janelle smiled.
“Pleased to meet both of you,” she said.
“Pleased to meet you as well,” Kasey said. “I’m a big fan.”
“Me too,” Natalie said.
“Thank you,” Janelle said. “My agent sent me a new script yesterday. I’m going to read it on the flight. It’ll be nice to get back to work.”
Nobody said anything for a few seconds.
“Well, I know that you and Rock have a lot to talk about,” Kasey said. “So, again, nice to meet you. Maybe we can all get together for dinner sometime.”
“That would be nice,” Janelle said.
Kasey and Natalie smiled and waved goodbye and exited the office. Alice had slinked out earlier. She was a little shy around new people.
Wahlman gestured toward the church pew.
“Have a seat,” he said. “Can I get you some coffee?
Anything?”
“No thanks,” Janelle said.
She gripped the armrest and eased herself down onto the bench. Wahlman sat beside her, a couple of feet to her left.
“Have you heard back from the people at the track?” he said.
“Yes. It’s all taken care of.”
“Lancaster’s not going to press charges?”
“He says he won’t. And to be honest, it didn’t really take much to convince him. All I had to do was mention the black market smoke grenade.”
“I appreciate you going to bat for me,” Wahlman said. “What a relief.”
Janelle smiled.
“I always try to do whatever I can for people who save my life,” she said. “And I have some more good news for you.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know if you were aware of this or not, but my father’s a criminal defense attorney. He uses private investigators all the time. I gave him your number.”
“I don’t even know what to say. Thank you. I look forward to hearing from him.”
“He’s a good man,” Janelle said. “I think the two of you will get along well.”
“How are your parents coping with everything that happened?” Wahlman said. “Are they okay?”
“My dad never did like Marshall,” Janelle said. “So of course I’ve been getting a lot of I told you so lectures from him. My mom was pretty rattled for a couple of days. Crying a lot, all that. But they’ll be okay. Just worried about their little girl, like any parents would be. Which reminds me, I better get going. I have one more stop to make before I go to the airport.”
Wahlman nodded. He knew where Janelle was going to stop. She’d mentioned it earlier, on the phone.
Janelle knew that it wasn’t her fault that Rokki Rhodes had been murdered, but she wanted to be as supportive as possible toward the grieving family anyway. Emotionally, and financially. Wahlman hadn’t questioned her plans for a visit, but he wondered how Rokki’s parents would react when they saw her walk through their door. Because of the remarkable resemblance. He wondered if they would lose it. Break down and start sobbing uncontrollably. He figured they would. He figured anybody would.