by Scott Pratt
“It was him or me.”
“Let me help you get the coat and shirt off. I need to take a look.”
I gasped as she removed the sling, my coat, and my shirt. The pain was becoming more intense as time passed, and the area around the entry wound had become red and swollen.
“I’m going to go call the doctor right now,” she said. “I suppose you want the body in the barn with the pigs.”
“If that’s possible,” I said.
“I’ll call Ronnie and Eugene, too. What about the car?”
“It needs to disappear.”
“Is there any way you were followed? Does anyone at all know you’re here?”
“I wasn’t followed. Nobody knows I’m here.”
“Where’s your cell phone?”
“At a motel in Knoxville where I’ve been staying.”
“I thought you were living with Grace.”
“That’s another story.”
She stepped back and gave me a stern look. “These aren’t small favors, Darren.”
“I know that, and I’m truly sorry for dumping this on you. I had nowhere else to go.”
She turned and walked out of the room. I could hear her talking quietly on the phone for a few minutes, and then she returned.
“The doctor will be here in an hour,” she said. “Ronnie and Eugene will take care of the car and what’s in it. How long do you need to stay here?”
“As soon as the doctor is done with me, I need to go,” I said. “As long as he says I can travel—hell, even if he says I can’t travel—I’m leaving.”
“How? Do you plan to walk back to Knoxville?”
“I was hoping for one last favor,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“I need a ride to Petros.”
“I’ll get Eugene to take you.”
After Granny walked out of the room to call Eugene, it finally dawned on me that I’d survived. I’d survived a gun battle with a vicious murderer. I wanted to tell someone other than Granny, to share the news with someone who cared about me. But there was no one. I thought about Grace. She would have been horrified. I shook my head at the thought of her, and I realized that I missed her terribly.
CHAPTER 60
The doctor cleaned and stitched the wounds, set my collarbone as best he could, and put my arm in a real sling. He gave me enough pain medication to last for a month. My collarbone was broken, he said, along with one rib. He didn’t have an X-ray machine, so he made the diagnosis by pushing on my ribs. When I screamed, he deemed the rib broken. He said from the amount and color of the blood he was seeing, he didn’t believe any internal organs had been damaged. Once the wound and the bones healed, I’d be good to go. I gave him $1,000 of the cash I’d taken from Pappy’s trunk—there was $25,000 in that wad—and thanked him. Eugene gave me a ride to Petros to pick up my car. Eugene had never been much of a talker, and he said very little on the way, which was fine with me. The less he, or anyone else, knew about what happened there, the better. When we got to the range, I asked Eugene to dispose of the pile of Pappy’s things that I’d left on the ground. He agreed and loaded everything into the back of his Jeep.
I drove my car back to Knoxville and pulled into the motel around two in the afternoon. I’d been gone for less than twenty-four hours, I hadn’t had any sleep, and I’d been shot. The pain medication was helping some, but I could still feel twinges whenever I moved. I went into the room and immediately sensed that something was wrong. I couldn’t quite identify it; it just seemed that the room was a little different from when I’d left. It felt like someone had been there, and there was a distant, faint smell of lemon and musk hanging in the air.
Katherine? Had her perfume lingered that long?
My cell phone was on the table where I’d left it, and I walked over and picked it up. I’d received two calls, both from Dan Reid. He’d left me voice mails both times and asked me to call him back. He said it was important. Before I did, though, I walked out the door and to the motel office. The motel was managed by a young Indian couple who also lived there. I’d gotten to know them on a shallow level. I was friendly; they were friendly. I knew their names—Chanda was the wife and Kishan was the husband—and they knew mine. Kishan was behind the desk when I walked in. He was slim with jet-black hair and dark eyes, and he sported a thin mustache above his upper lip.
“Hi, Kishan,” I said as I walked in.
“Ah, Mr. Street, you don’t look so good,” he said. “What happened to your arm?”
“Went skiing with a friend in Gatlinburg this morning. Didn’t work out.”
“Ah,” he said. I could tell he didn’t believe me.
“Listen, Kishan, did you by any chance notice anyone around my room last night or this morning?”
“I saw a young lady. She didn’t drive in; she walked from somewhere, but I saw her coming out of your room. Same lady I saw earlier yesterday. Very pretty.”
“Black hair? Blue eyes?”
“Yes. Very pretty.”
“When did you see her?”
“Last night near midnight. I thought you were there. I was taking out the trash and saw her come out of the room. Is there a problem? Should I have called the police?”
“No, Kishan, no problem at all. Thank you for keeping an eye out.”
I went back to the room, wondering two things. How did Katherine get into my room without a key, and what the hell was she doing in there? When I got back to the room, I picked up my cell and called Dan Reid.
“Sorry I missed your calls,” I said when he answered. “I’ve been a little under the weather.”
“I have something for you on your girl, Katherine Davis.”
“Something good or something bad?”
“I don’t know. Actually, I probably do. I don’t think it’s good.”
“What is it?”
“I finished my background check on her, looked into her family history. Guess who her aunt is? Her mother’s sister?”
“No clue.”
“I’ll give you a hint. She’s a redhead and a detective. Works for the Knoxville Police Department.”
“Dawn Rule?”
“You got it.”
“Shit. They’re using her to try to set me up, and she’s playing along. I wonder if the DUI charge is even real.”
“It isn’t,” Reid said. “After I found out she was related to Dawn Rule, I tracked down the cop who supposedly arrested her, Earl Anderson. I showed him my old FBI identification and told him I was investigating some possible official misconduct. He couldn’t talk fast enough. Said he warned them about it, that he didn’t want to be a part of it, that he’d always liked you. He said he agreed to do it because Rule and Kingman promised him a promotion as soon as it was over.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “They’ll stoop to anything, won’t they?”
“Maybe, but in their defense, they think you committed three murders.”
Four now, I thought to myself. Four. Plus I had somebody’s face melted.
“What are you going to do about it?” Reid said.
“I’m not sure, but thank you. I mean it. You did a great job.”
“Appreciate the business,” Reid said. “Let me know if you ever need me again.”
“I will,” I said.
“I heard a rumor that you and Grace split up,” he said.
“I’ll get her back,” I said. “I just need some time.”
“She’s out of your league.”
“I know, but I’m going to get her back, anyway. I miss her.”
“You never know, do you?” Dan said.
“Beg your pardon?”
“How things will happen, how they’ll turn out. You just never know.”
“You’re right about that, my friend. Absolutely right.”
CHAPTER 61
I signed the paperwork to move into the furnished apartment on Friday and hired a small moving company to take my things out of storage and haul them to the apartment. I s
imply couldn’t do it with the sling, and I paid them with some of Pappy’s cash. I received phone calls and texts from Katherine all that day, but I ignored them until Saturday afternoon, when I replied to a text with: I’m in my new place. Can you come New Year’s Eve and help warm things up? I don’t have any plans.
Casual? she wrote.
Very.
Should I plan on staying?
Sure. Let’s get drunk together and celebrate. I’ll pick up some champagne.
Wouldn’t miss it, she wrote.
I gave her the address and asked her to show up around eight.
On Monday, New Year’s Eve, not long before Katherine was scheduled to arrive, I bought some takeout from an excellent Chinese place that was only a few blocks from my apartment and put it in the oven to keep it warm. I’d also bought four bottles of expensive champagne the day before, all on Pappy’s dime. I opened one of them after I put the food in the oven and put it in a bucket that was half-filled with ice and water.
Katherine showed up right on time and walked in wearing tight blue jeans that were rolled up a few inches above her ankles. She had on a light sweater, horizontally striped in navy blue and white. Over it she wore a short tan jacket with the sleeves rolled up. On her feet were navy-blue pumps with four-inch spiked heels. As always, sexual allure oozed from her like sap from a maple tree.
“You look great,” I said when she walked in.
She kissed me on the cheek. “What happened to your arm?”
“I have a friend in Sevierville who likes to ride horses. He invited me, so I went. Got thrown off.”
“Is anything broken?”
“My collarbone and a rib. You’ll have to be gentle tonight if you stay.”
“Oh, I’m planning to stay, and I can be gentle. I can be anything you want me to be.”
She looked around the apartment. I’d lit candles and placed them on a couple of tables and on the gas fireplace mantel. “This is nice. A little impersonal, maybe, but nice.”
“I don’t have a lot of personal things left,” I said. “Pretty much everything I owned was destroyed when Mom’s house was bombed.”
She reached up and touched my cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
“Let’s not talk about sad things,” I said. “It’s New Year’s Eve. I have great Chinese food, and I have even better champagne.”
“Sounds wonderful,” she said. “What can I do to help?”
“I guess just help me get the food plated. I’m not very handy right now.”
We set about getting the food out of the oven, and I poured champagne. As we sat down at the table, I offered a toast. “To learning from the past and moving toward the future.”
“Cheers,” she said, and we both drank some champagne.
“That’s good,” she said. “That might be the best champagne I’ve ever tasted.”
“I like it, too. Drink up. Maybe we’ll get drunk and dance naked around the apartment.”
She took another drink from the glass, and I refilled it immediately. “Why don’t you tell me more about yourself? I mean, I know the basics, I guess. I know you’ll graduate with a master’s in criminal justice in May and then you’re going to law school in the fall. I know you’re beautiful and charming and the best lover, by far, I’ve ever been with, but I want you to tell me about Katherine. Where is Katherine from? Where does she see herself going? What makes her happy? What makes her sad? What’s her definition of beauty?”
“No politics,” she said. “No religion.”
“Later. Another time. Where are you from?”
“Chattanooga,” she said. “My dad was an FBI agent. When I was young, we moved around a lot, but by the time I was in the fifth grade, they sent him to Chattanooga, and that’s where I went to middle school and high school.”
“He and your mother still married? I know a lot of FBI marriages don’t work out.”
“They’re still married, in a manner of speaking. He died of an aortic aneurysm when I was a sophomore in college.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay. He had a great life. He loved being an FBI agent, fighting the bad guys. And he went quickly. The aneurysm popped and he died immediately. He didn’t suffer.”
“So your mom is where? Still in Chattanooga?”
“Right, she’s a prosecutor there.”
“Assistant district attorney?”
“She is. She handles mostly sex crimes, and she’s good at it.”
“Brothers and sisters?”
“One of each. My brother is a boring banker in Nashville, and my sister is married with two kids in Chattanooga. She and my mother are very close.”
“Are you the youngest?”
She nodded. “I’m the baby. My sister is close to my mother, but I was the apple of my daddy’s eye.”
“I bet you were,” I said as I kept refilling her glass and mine, but I was sipping and she was drinking hard. The bottle emptied quickly, and I opened another.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” she said as I came back to the table.
“I just want to have a good time,” I said. “I need to loosen up a little. You don’t have to drink if you don’t want to.”
She picked up her glass, which I’d just filled, and drained it.
“Let’s loosen up together,” she said.
I started bragging a little, telling her about what an excellent wrestler and football player I was in high school. I’d had several offers to go to smaller colleges in both sports, but I’d wanted to stay in Knoxville, close to my mom, and I’d wanted to go to the University of Tennessee. I was nowhere near big or strong or fast enough to compete with the guys at that level, and I’d known it, so I’d satisfied my competitive itch by playing intramural football and joining a wrestling club. She seemed interested in everything I had to say, she asked questions, she laughed a lot. Then I started telling her war stories about being a lawyer, and I shared more of what happened to me when I was locked up for two years. As I talked, I kept filling her glass. Within an hour of her walking in the door, she was drunk. She got up to go to the bathroom, and stumbled into the wall along the way. When she came back, I decided it was time.
“So you told me about your family, your mother and father and brother and sister,” I said. “Do you have any aunts or uncles?”
She looked at me quizzically in her drunken state. “No auntseruncles,” she slurred.
“That isn’t what I hear. My understanding is that you have an aunt named Dawn Rule. She’s your mother’s sister, and she’s a detective with the Knoxville Police Department.”
She looked at me for a minute, then she looked down at her shoes.
“You know what else I heard? And I got this from an FBI agent so I’m sure it’s the truth. I heard that your DUI charge is nothing but a sham, a ploy to get you close to me so you could try to get admissions out of me about the murders I supposedly committed in West Virginia. You’re doing undercover work for your aunt. Only I don’t regard it as undercover work. That’s far too glamorous a term, as far as I’m concerned. You’re nothing but a rat. A snitch. A worthless, lying piece of shit who gains the trust of others with one purpose in mind. And that purpose is to turn on them later and take every bit of trust they showed you and shove it right up their asses.”
She stood and her glass fell to the floor and shattered. “I think I should go.”
“You’re damned right you should go,” I said. “Don’t ever come near me again.”
I ran into my bedroom and picked up one of my throwaway phones as she staggered toward the door. I followed her out and watched her stumble to her car. I jumped into mine and began to follow her down the street at a distance. She was weaving all over the road. I called 9-1-1.
“There’s a woman on Cedar Bluff Drive, four hundred block, who’s all over the road,” I said. “She’s driving a blue Hyundai Sonata. The tag number is 492-OST. Yes, I’m calling from a prepaid cell. I don’t want to give you my name.
You need to get somebody out here quick. She’s going to hurt herself or somebody else. I don’t know if she’s drunk or high or sick, but something is definitely wrong. Oh! Man! She just ran up on the curb and now she’s back in the street and has crossed over the center line. I have to go. Send somebody.”
I backed off from her a ways as she continued down Cedar Bluff. In less than five minutes, a Knoxville city cruiser passed me and pulled in behind her. He followed her for about a quarter of a mile and hit his blue lights. She pulled to the side of the road, climbed a curb, nearly hit a tree, and came to a stop.
I figured her aunt Dawn would get her out of it, or at least try to do everything she could, but that was okay.
Karma can be a bitch.
Katherine was gone, and I was once again alone. I went back to my apartment and resisted the urge to dial Grace’s number.
CHAPTER 62
I laid low for the next three weeks, trying to get healed up and going about my business in a low-key manner. I hadn’t heard a word from the Knoxville police, which I took as a good sign. No one had tried to kill me, so I figured Big Pappy Donovan’s reach did not extend beyond the grave. I was sitting in a restaurant eating lunch when I got a text from Grace.
We need to talk, it said.
Change of heart? I replied, hoping it might be true. I’d found myself thinking about Grace more and more. I’d started to text or call her dozens of times, but I was afraid she’d flat-out reject me, and I just didn’t need the pain.
Can we meet? she wrote.
Sure, where?
My place. Six o’clock?
I’ll be there.
I knocked on Grace’s door at precisely 6:00 p.m. It was Sunday, January 20. My right arm was still in the sling, but it was getting better. I hadn’t had any problems with infections, and the gunshot wounds were almost healed. I carried in my left hand a vase of purple orchids, which were Grace’s favorite flowers.
She opened the door and smiled, to my surprise. She looked at the flowers and said, “Those are beautiful, Darren.”
“I know they’re your favorite.”
“Thank you. Come in.”
I walked in as she turned and set the flowers on the island in the kitchen.