When Pine reached me, he snatched me upright, holding me in front of him as if I were a child.
I found the small can of Fredericka’s hairspray, brought it up with my left hand, and sprayed it in his face.
It was no more than a minor annoyance but he released me to wipe it out of his eyes.
As he did, I removed the lighter from my right pocket and lit it.
Holding the small flame in front of his face, I sprayed the hairspray again.
It burned his face. His hair and the top of his shirt caught on fire and I sprayed some more.
He shrieked and began patting out his hair and shirt, dropping the bat as he did.
Bending down and grabbing the bat, I brought it up into his chin like an uppercut. He staggered back, still stamping out the fire.
I swung the bat again, this time at his enormous midsection. The blow was hard and landed well, doubling him over.
With him lowered now, I swung at the back of his head, a cracking hit that felled him.
On his hands and knees now, I hit him again, another hard shot to the back of the head.
This time he went all the way down and didn’t move.
I stamped out the last of the flames on his shirt, took his radio, and ran to look for Anna.
48
As I searched the laundry building for Anna again, I turned up the volume on Pine’s radio just enough for me to hear and pressed it against my ear.
Butler was saying, “I can’t find him.”
“Scott, what about you?” Randy Wayne said.
“Negatory.”
“Chase? Dale? What about y’all?”
No response.
“Pine? Did he come back there?”
“Ain’t here,” I said, trying to sound like Pine.
“Chase? Dale? Y’all there? Over?”
“Fuck,” Butler said. “You think Cantor got them too?”
As they continued to talk and I steadily searched the building, I began to devise a plan that might both create a distraction and get us some help.
“I’ll get Cantor,” Randy Wayne said. “Y’all just get them to the chapel. And hurry. We’re runnin’ out of time.”
“Ten-four,” Butler said.
“Pine, you got Jordan and Cardigan or just––”
“Just the chaplain,” I said. “Ain’t seen Cardigan.”
“Anybody seen him?”
No one responded.
“Even better,” he said. “We’ll send in the response team to take him out as soon as we finish with his victims. Hurry everybody. IG’s about fifteen minutes out. Let’s finish this shit and give her a good show when she gets here.”
Grabbing as many towels and sheets and T-shirts as I could find, I piled them into one of the canvas carts and rolled it into the back right corner beneath the gas heater hanging from the ceiling.
There were thousands of blankets stacked against the walls in the back corner, but my guess was they had been made of flame retardant material.
Sliding one of the folding tables against the closest dryer, I jumped up on it, clutching a sheet in my hand as I did. I then climbed up on top of the dryer. Confirming the pilot was lit, I draped the sheet around the heater, letting it hang down to the cart below.
Climbing back down, I used the hairspray and lighter to set the cheap cotton clothes in the cart on fire.
Before they even reached the hanging sheet, the pilot from the heater had already lit the top part and flames were beginning to run down.
As the fire grew, I rolled other carts with clothes in them over and began lighting them.
The fire continued to grow and spread.
As I ran over toward Pine, gas from the heater began to feed the flame and with a giant whoooosh it shot flames out, lighting other clothing and carts.
When I reached Pine, he was beginning to stir a little.
I slapped him hard across the face, trying to avoid his burns.
“Fire,” I said. “You need to crawl out of here. Now.”
He moved his head and moaned a little, but that was all.
I slapped him hard again, and again got the same response.
Leaning down and grabbing his arms, I began to drag him toward the front door.
It was very slow going, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could do it.
Smoke was beginning to fill the building and it was hard to breathe.
About halfway to the door, he looked up at me drowsily, coughed, and said, “What . . . What . . . are . . . you . . . doin’?”
“Fire,” I said. “Got to get you out of here. Can you help? Can you crawl or walk or––”
“Yeah. I got it. I can get it from here.”
“You sure?” I asked, releasing his arms.
He nodded and began to crawl toward the door.
As he did, as a fire alarm began to sound in the quiet night, I ran out the back door, back out into the night, back beneath the beginning-to-wan blood moon in search of the girl I had been in love with since we were children.
49
What the fuck is that?” Randy Wayne yelled into the radio.
If the timing had worked out the way I hoped, he was out of the control room and on the compound with us. His question indicated that he was.
“Fire alarm,” Butler said.
“No shit. Where?”
“Don’t know.”
“Scotty?”
“No idea.”
“Pine?”
I was running as fast as I could toward the chapel, scanning the area around and in front of me for movement.
“Pine?”
I didn’t respond. Kept moving.
Lights on the compound began to flicker on and in the distance a fire whistle whined in the unnaturally quiet night.
“Firefighters and emergency response will be here soon,” Randy Wayne said. “We have even less time than we thought.”
As I reached the chapel, I could see Anna through the back windows.
To my surprise, she was being held by Randy Wayne himself.
The back door was propped open. Without slowing I went inside.
Anna was cuffed and barely conscious, held up by Randy Wayne just a few feet in front of where Emmitt was nailed to the podium. Branson and Butler stood nearby.
Anna, who must have been drugged, was finding it difficult to stand.
“We’re running out of time,” Randy Wayne said into the radio he was holding. “Hurry to the chapel, John.”
He then tossed the radio to Branson.
The chapel was eerily lit, its darkness streaked with carmine-colored light from the moon, three emergency backup lights, one of which was below Emmitt and cast wicked shadows on the ceiling and back wall, and some weak, random illumination spilling in from the front where now lamps were blinking on.
“Yep,” Randy Wayne said when he saw me. “All that was for your benefit. Well, not all of it, but a lot. Okay, some. I appreciate you obliging and rushing on up here for us. The fire alarm your work?”
I nodded.
“How about Chase and Dale and Pine not joining us?”
I shrugged.
“Surrender your weapon,” he said, wrapping the hand that had been holding the radio around Anna’s throat.
I looked down at the bat. I had forgotten I had it.
Butler stepped over and took it from me.
Gripping it by the wrong end, he then slung it around and tagged me on the side of the neck with it. The blow was hard but glancing.
I took a step toward him.
“NO,” Randy Wayne said, and he punched Anna hard in the stomach.
Anna gasped and began to cry.
I stopped. “Okay. Just don’t do that again.”
“What?” he asked. “This?” And did it again. “That’s for making us chase your ass all night. Now, while we wait for Cantor to get here, if we hit you, you turn the other cheek. Got it?”
I nodded.
“Here, come hold this fat bi
tch up,” he said. “I’m too tired to deal with this shit.”
I rushed over to Anna and wrapped my arms around her.
“I wish you two didn’t have to die tonight,” he said. “I truly and sincerely do. But . . . come on . . . since you do, isn’t it nice to be in each other’s arms? Life’s little consolation. Am I right? Gotta be grateful for the small stuff. Between you and me . . . that’s all there is.”
The front door to the chapel opened and they all turned to see who was coming in.
“I love you,” I said to Anna. “I’m so sorry about all this.”
“I think I’m losing the baby,” she said. “I’m so scared.”
Pine walked through the doors and up the center aisle toward us.
“Just come when you can, big fella,” Randy Wayne said. “What’s burning?”
When he got closer, his missing hair, charred shirt, and the burns on his face and neck could be seen.
“Besides you,” Randy Wayne said. “Shit. What the fuck happened?”
“Laundry was burnin’. ’Bout out by now. Chaplain got me when we were fighting.”
“He did that to you?”
“What’s goin’ on here?”
“Just waitin’ for Cantor to haul his big knife up here.”
“Then what? Stand around and watch as he does that to them?” he asked, nodding at Emmitt.
“I hope he won’t just repeat what he’s already done,” Randy Wayne said. “He’s far more creative than that. Although . . . if he did . . . he could do the two thieves crucified with Jesus. That could be interesting. Who do you think he’d choose for Christ, though? The chaplain’s the obvious choice, but I’d be disappointed if he went with something so on the nose. Wouldn’t you?”
Pine began shaking his head. “I can’t just stand here and let that sick psycho carve them up. Thought I could, but I can’t.”
“No problem. Go back outside and keep an eye on things. We’ll be out in a––”
“No, I mean I can’t stand by and let it happen.”
“Come again?”
“I just can’t. Chaplain could’ve let me burn in that building down there. He didn’t. I can’t let that go un––”
“Pine, he burned your fuckin’ face and half your hair off. The fuck you mean you can’t do it?”
“He could’ve let me die. He didn’t.”
I had seen the power of mercy change people before, but never as immediately as this. It wasn’t why I did it, but as unintended consequences go, it wasn’t a bad one. Of course, Pine was probably having doubts about what they were doing already. Me helping him out of the burning building may have had nothing to do with it.
“Two choices, Pine. Both involve them dying. Only one involves you dying with them.”
“Can’t let you kill them.”
“You’ll lose your job,” Randy Wayne said. “Be arrested. Go to prison.”
“Look at that,” Pine said, nodding toward Emmitt. “You can stand by or worse watch while he does that to them?”
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but we got no other choices now––especially now. We’re too far in. It’s way too late to . . . The point of no return was way the fuck back there.”
Pine looked over at Branson and Butler. “Come on guys. Think about this. You can’t be okay with this.”
“What we’re not okay with is the alternative,” Branson said.
Pine shook his swollen and burned head and began laboring toward us.
“Y’all are gonna have to kill me too,” he said.
“No problem,” Randy Wayne said. Then turning to Branson and Butler added, “Finish him off.”
“With what?” Butler asked. “We got no weapons.”
“You’ve got a fuckin’ baseball bat,” he said. “Worked pretty well on you.”
“I got this,” Branson said.
He stepped over and prepared to attack Pine.
“Help him,” Randy Wayne said to Butler.
Butler halfheartedly followed Branson a little way down the center aisle, staying several steps behind him.
Pine crouched in a defensive stance, his arms up, ready to take the bat away from Branson in the same way he had me.
As Branson charged him, Cantor came out from behind the podium, striking me on the back of the neck with the handle of his huge knife.
My knees buckled and as I was falling he kicked me. I flew across the front of the chapel and went down hard.
Without me to hold her up, Anna collapsed.
Cantor pounced on her. Straddling her, actually sitting on her pregnant belly and bouncing.
Anna shrieked, then screamed, then began to cry.
“Sneaky son of a gun,” Randy Wayne exclaimed. “He was hiding back there this whole time.”
His attention was divided between what Cantor was doing to Anna and the fight between Pine and his boys.
I was flat on the floor, belly crawling like a baby toward Anna. I wasn’t very far away, but wouldn’t make it in time.
Cantor began cutting her clothes and peeling them off her in strips.
“Lovely,” he said. “So very lovely.”
She was crying and ineffectually struggling against the horror of what was happening to her.
“She is a good-looking woman under there, ain’t she?” Randy Wayne said. “Show us some more before you start to make a mess of her. I wanna see that pristine pussy.”
Cantor continued working as if Randy Wayne hadn’t spoken.
Between her gasps and breathy cries, Anna breathed my name. “John.”
I thought about all the different ways she had said my name over the years––the nuances and shadings and all the tiny variations. I loved the sound of my name in her mouth––especially lately when, for the first time in our lifetime of loving one another, it had been said in intense and intimate ecstasy.
I still couldn’t get my feet and legs to work. The best I could do was crawl across the carpet.
I continued to crawl.
I didn’t want the final time Anna said my name to be in pain, spoken during the terror of violation, humiliation, and degradation. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life, no matter how long or short it might be, haunted by the sound of my name said as a plea for help I was unable to give.
Pine was putting up a good fight, giving it an impressive and valiant effort, but then Branson struck him in the back of the knees with the bat and he went down.
Both men began to whale on him then, Butler kicking and stomping with his boots, Branson working the bat.
Cantor had Anna’s shirt open, and with one flick of his blade he sprung her bra loose.
Her beautiful, bare breasts being exposed like that, Cantor and Randy Wayne gawking at them, made her look even more vulnerable than she had before.
My extremities began to tingle.
“Don’t cut her yet,” Randy Wayne was saying. “More. Show me more.”
Though being brutally beaten, Pine continued to crawl toward Cantor in a manner not dissimilar to the way I was crawling toward Anna.
“Let’s see her sweet little snatch,” Randy Wayne was saying. “Come on.”
As Cantor readjusted himself, I lunged toward him, but was too weak and too far away, and fell short.
“Finish him off first so we can take a little more time with her.”
As if following orders, which I knew he wasn’t, Cantor stood and walked over to me.
Squatting down to straddle me the way he had been Anna a moment before, he rolled me over.
As he did, I reached into my pocket and brought out the small DoubleTap.
Raising the knife above his head and preparing to thrust it into my heart, he slung his head back and shuddered a little in exhilaration.
That’s when I reached up, pressed the small gun into the bottom of his chin, and pulled the trigger.
He dropped the knife and collapsed on top of me.
“Where the fuck did he get a gun?” Randy Way
ne said.
I bucked and rolled and squirmed Cantor off as Randy Wayne rushed me.
As he ran past Anna, she kicked her leg out and tripped him.
He fell within a few feet of me and reached for Cantor’s knife.
With Cantor still partially on me, I couldn’t move—not in time.
What do I do? Think. Not many options. One chance. Once choice. One bullet. Make it count.
I brought the gun down beside my leg and shot Randy Wayne in the face.
With their attention diverted onto us, Branson and Butler didn’t realize Pine was rising behind them.
It was something they would only ever know for the briefest of brutal moments.
Grabbing their heads with his giant bloody paws, he slammed them together, snapping their necks and crushing their skulls, collapsing alongside them when he was done.
50
Anna was rushed to the hospital.
Rachel Peterson arrived and began to clean up the mess and conduct the investigation. Her first comment to me was “Y’all really take the blood moon literally around here, don’t you?”
My chapel was a gruesome crime scene.
The entire upper compound of PCI was processed for evidence.
The fire department arrived and put out the fire in Laundry.
Pine and Randy Wayne, who was in critical condition but not dead, were taken into custody and to different hospitals.
Ronnie Cardigan, who was right where he had been when I tripped over him earlier in the night, was placed in protective custody, then transferred to another institution.
After the various crime scenes were processed, Cantor, Chase, Dale, Branson, Butler, and Emmitt were transported to the morgue by the same funeral home that had recently lost the body of another murder victim found at the prison.
Marty Perkins, Lewis Milner, and Jack Kirkus were arrested in connection with the death of Reggie Dalton.
Over the next few days, Rachel interviewed me, Cardigan, Anna, and Pine.
Pine was particularly helpful and would receive consideration for being so––and for attempting to help me and Anna in the end. There were many holes he couldn’t fill in. Randy Wayne, who was still in a coma and probably wouldn’t make it, was the only one who could provide this missing information––something he most likely wouldn’t do even if he were conscious.
Innocent Blood; Blood Money; Blood Moon Page 57