Atonement

by Michael Kerr

  Larry drove back to the Creek without a care in the world. Stopped off at the Beavertail Bar on 285 near Conifer and nursed a beer until Connie could take a break and sit a spell with him.

  Connie Bartlett lived in an old Airstream situated on a rundown park overlooking the South Platte River. She was an ex-hooker who had seen the light, found God, weaned herself off drugs and started over away from the city.

  Connie was thirty, looked forty on a good day, and was determined to stay clean and live right. Too many of her friends had OD’d or been murdered. Having a regular job and just getting by in a rural setting suited her just fine.

  “Hi, Larry,” Connie said, sitting on the bench seat next to him. “What brings you out here?”

  “To see you, Connie. It’s been a week or two.”

  “As I recollect, you said you’d give me a call.”

  “I’ve been off duty with a bad back, hon. But I should’ve let you know. Sorry.”

  “No problem.”

  “Can you get tomorrow evening off, Connie? I’d like to take you out for a meal, and then you could stay over if you want.”

  Connie liked Larry. He was fun to be around, didn’t take her for granted, and showed her some respect. They got on well; were good for each other, even though she knew that it would probably not lead to anything more permanent. Larry wasn’t the marrying kind. And neither was she. “Sounds good,” she said.

  Larry put his hand over hers. “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty, okay?”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Larry drove back to the Creek feeling mellow. The knot in his stomach was loosening, now he knew that Logan would soon be history.

  Logan slept late. It was a luxury that he took full advantage of these days. Throughout his life of duty he had grabbed sleep when and where he could. Now, he was his own master, and lived by a new set of rules; his own, which were extremely flexible. Maybe he was eccentric, or unconventional, which was a term he preferred. He chose not to own a wristwatch and only carried a pay-as-you go cell phone in a pocket of his rucksack in case of emergency. The twenty-first century was technologically too advanced for his liking. There was a lot more to life than computers and what he considered to be a virtual reality that governed the masses of peoples’ lives.

  After showering and getting dressed, he drank two cups of coffee before heading out to walk into town. A midmorning breakfast at the Steamboat would set him up for the day. And walking kept him fit in both body and mind. He could think better and clearer as he put one foot in front of the other and let his subconscious throw out information for him to collate and attempt to make sense of.

  He had decided that Carl Purvis was not a viable suspect. The deputy was just a big, slow-witted young guy with a bad disposition. It was personal with Purvis. After their first encounter he had wanted to get back at Logan. Hopefully the injuries he had sustained would keep him incapacitated until after the killer had been identified. Logan would be heading south before Purvis was fit enough to mount a further attack. Not that he was particularly worried. But he preferred not to go out of his way to seek trouble; it just seemed to be attracted to him. He was a honey pot, and the bees just kept on coming.

  Kate was in her office. She had developed a habit of glancing out of the second-floor window, which was next to where she sat at her computer. She stopped tapping the keys as Logan came into view. Just the sight of him caused her to feel a farrago of emotions. She had wanted him to stay over the previous evening. Knew that if he had, then they would have slept together, taking their relationship to a new level. But he had not made any advances, and so neither had she. Raising her hand to her face, Kate imagined that she could still feel the sensation of his lips on her cheek like a warm feather brushing it. Stupid! She needed to get real. Logan was a drifter, with no intention of settling in a place like Carson Creek, or anywhere else. And she was not the type to contemplate a nomadic lifestyle. She needed to have more of a goal in life than to just follow the sun, or to wake up every morning with no plan or structure to her life. There could be no future with Logan, and probably out of respect for her, he had not attempted to bed her. Or maybe she just wasn’t his type. She needed to know. He had concentrated her mind. Made her wonder what the hell her long-term plan actually was. She had run away from a past that she had needed to put behind her in miles as well as emotionally. But you couldn’t run away from the memory of a single event that had branded your psyche. Logan had caused her to question her whole outlook. He had some kind of ability to not look ahead, nor need any goals. His past had obviously shaped the man that he now was. He was a guy that had truly got his act together; knew what he liked and liked what he knew. That was uncommon, and therefore made him interesting in some indefinable way. Enigmatic was the word that she felt best described him. He was as big and as strong and apparently as resilient as an oak tree, and obviously had the ability to look after himself. He could use violence if necessary with no hesitation or apparent regret. That was a little frightening. And yet there was also a gentle side to his nature. She believed that he was essentially a good man, who in an old-fashioned way would stand up for what was right and not bow down to any form of pressure.

  Kate pushed aside her thoughts of Logan. She had the urge to phone her mother in Peoria, Illinois, just to hear her voice. Their relationship had suffered after Kate had been raped. The unfounded shame she had felt had caused her to pull away from everyone she knew. It was as if she had in some way made herself even more of a victim; feeling to a degree at fault for being selected. Knowing that it was not true had not dispelled the seed of self-condemnation that had germinated and subsequently grown. Her mother had begged her to return to the family home, but Kate could not contemplate going back to the nest she had flown from. Her father had died in two thousand nine after a routine hip replacement had been followed by the development of septicemia, which he had not recovered from.

  Her mother craved company, having never lived on her own, and finding it hard to adjust to the loneliness that was consuming her.

  Kate punched in the number. Let it ring four times, and was about to close her phone when her mother picked up.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, Mom, it’s me.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. You?”

  “Can’t complain, Pumpkin. I’ve started getting out more. It’s amazing just how many women of my age are divorced or widowed. I joined a local social club, and it keeps me sane. Gives me a reason to get up in the morning and get on with getting on.”

  “That’s good, Mom.”

  “And what are you getting up to out there in Colorado, apart from working too hard?”

  “Not a lot, Mom.”

  “Get a life, Pumpkin. It slips by so fast. One minute it’s all in front of you, and the next, you wonder where it went.”

  “You’re right,” Kate said, and meant it. “I’ll give it some thought.”

  “Well don’t put it off. Your dad and I planned to do so many things, but always later, down the road. Best to do things now, if you can.”

  When Kate ended the call she felt better in herself. Her mother had surprised her. She had voiced what Kate had failed to realize. It wasn’t just Logan that had the philosophy of ‘live for the day’. Her mom had adopted the same outlook. She sighed and stood up, left the office, walked down the stairs to the street and fired up a cigarette. Somewhere within her was a free spirit fighting to get out. It was time to open the door, set it loose, and see where it led her.

  After Larry had disconnected, Wade made a call. “Hi, Mickey, it’s Wade,” he said on the throwaway cell phone that for the most part was kept in a drawer of his desk, switched off. “You still over in Grand Junction?”

  “Yeah, Wade. S’been awhile. Thought that maybe you’d retired and gone to live on the Big Island.”

  “No way. Magnum shirts and baggy shorts aren’t my style. I’ve got an urgent job if you’re interested.”

/>   “I’m always interested. Who, where and when?”

  “Tomorrow evenin’. And it’s not a straight job. I need for this guy to vanish, permanently.”

  “For the right amount of money I could make the Empire State Buildin’ vanish permanently.”

  Wade gave Mickey everything he had on Logan. He was happy to pay for a professional to deal with Larry’s problem. Larry would be bought and paid for when it went down. He had the call that Larry had made to him on tape. It was business, and although his old buddy was only a deputy in a piss-ant town, he may prove useful in the future. People were assets.

  Mickey Morgan looked a few years younger than his actual age of thirty-six. His boyish features and slim, five-eight build masked a ruthless sociopath. He did not have the capacity to feel empathy for others, and possessing no conscience he was happy to hurt or kill anyone, usually for money, but also if he thought someone had slighted him in any way, however insignificantly. He knew that he was always right about everything, and truly believed that no one else’s views – if they differed from his own – had any credibility. He could appear to be a pleasant, caring young man, and present a personality that was wholly manufactured to fool everyone.

  Mickey Morgan was a very seriously fucked-up individual, and was now running through various scenarios of what would be the most suitable method to kill Logan and dispose of his body. He would have liked more time to plan and prepare for the hit, but realized that sometimes things came up that needed a quick resolution.

  Mickey slept well, as always, to rise just before dawn and take the stairs down to the boiler room in the basement of the apartment building, for which he had a copy of the door key, to enter and lock himself inside it. Moving a tubular steel-framed chair into a dimly lit corner, he stepped up on it, reached behind a thick, hot steam pipe and carefully pulled a cinder block out and put it down on its edge between his feet. Reaching into the space behind where the block had been flush to the wall, he carefully extracted an oilcloth bundle that contained his Sig-Sauer nine-millimeter handgun, a suppressor and a box of ammunition. Replacing the block, he aligned it perfectly, running his hand across the wall to ensure that it was undetectable. He supposed that being paranoid went hand in hand with what he did for a living. He had never trusted another person in his life, and was suspicious of everyone’s motives. However inferior to him, some people – like the law enforcement agencies – needed to be given a certain amount of respect for their limited capabilities. What he did was for some reason deemed as criminal activity, and so he had to always be on guard and protect himself from close scrutiny.

  By ten a.m. he was on the road, after cleaning the gun and enjoying a breakfast of grilled ham and scrambled eggs. He had stolen a nondescript gray Nissan the previous evening after dark, affixed a false plate, and was now heading east on I-70, which he planned to leave at Georgetown and use back roads for the final hour’s drive south to Carson Creek.

  It occurred to Mickey that every hit he carried out was an adventure. Killing the mark was an impersonal act. His pleasure was derived from fulfilling the contract. It gave him a sense of accomplishment and inflated both his ego and bank balance. He would reconnoiter the area, pinpoint were Logan was, and then shoot him and put the body in the trunk of the car, to bury a long way from the town and any main road. The authorities would not even know that a crime had been committed. As far as they would be concerned, a drifter had moved on. End of story.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Logan was in the sheriff’s department to talk with Lyle.

  “And what can I do for you today?” Lyle said, intimating that Logan should pull up a chair.

  “I just wondered if you’d come up with anything new.”

  “Nothing yet,” Lyle said. “Have you?”

  “An idea. I’m positive that you’re looking for a local. This is a small town, so it would narrow the search if you initially look at every unattached male between say twenty-one and forty-five that holds a current driver’s license.”

  Lyle liked it. Couldn’t find fault with Logan’s reasoning. “And then eliminate them one at a time by confirming where they were on the night of the murder. Right?”

  Logan nodded.

  Lyle got up and went across to the coffeepot and filled two mugs. “Why do you think that the perp is a single guy?” he said as he handed one of the mugs to Logan. “And why twenty-one or older and not someone the approximate age as Ray and Tanya?”

  Logan almost imperceptibly hiked his shoulders. “Shorter odds. I don’t rule out a family guy, but think it more likely to be some footloose and fancy-free type. And I still think it was some guy on his way back to town from the Wagon Wheel or some roadhouse farther south, which excludes an underage drinker.”

  “It’s all supposition,” Lyle said. “It could have been a stranger passing through, maybe heading north to another town, or to pick up the I-70. He could be in Kansas or Utah now. Or maybe it was Ray Marshall. He’s a bright boy. He could have dumped the body and then tossed the tab from the zipper out the car window.”

  “That would be smart thinking on his part. He loses the plot, kills the girl he loves, and then removes the tab from her zipper and hopes that by some miracle it gets found to help his case. I don’t buy that for a second.”

  Logan left the office ten minutes later. Lyle was going to check out the lead he had just been given, and hoped that he would get lucky.

  Angling across Main Street towards the door of Kate’s office, Logan stopped and casually looked in the window of the hardware store; not through the plate glass but at the reflection in it. He had noticed an old model gray Nissan parked up, and more importantly the driver, who he knew had been eye-balling him. It was inbuilt radar; a facility that was some kind of early warning system that he always took heed of. He had a choice, walk straight across the street and brace the guy or, now aware that he was being watched, let it play out with the advantage of knowing that he was a person of interest to a complete stranger. He decided to let the stranger believe that he was oblivious to being under surveillance. It crossed his mind that Carl Purvis may have reached out from his hospital bed, made a call and arranged something. Time would tell.

  He went up the stairs and rapped lightly on Kate’s door with the knuckle of his index finger. Waited until she opened it. Her smile was all he needed to see to know that he was welcome.

  “Hi, Logan, come on in,” Kate said. “Is this business or pleasure?”

  “I was just passing and thought I’d drop by and have coffee with my favorite attorney.”

  “I’ll make fresh,” Kate said. “Do you ever not want coffee?”

  “Only when I’m sleeping.”

  “You’re a strange man, Logan.”

  “Define strange.”

  “Out of the ordinary, different. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you.”

  “You haven’t, Kate. Everyone’s an individual.”

  “What’s your Christian name, Logan?”

  “Joe. But it sounds odd to me. I’m happier with Logan.”

  “Okay,” Kate said as she poured coffee for them both. “So what do you know?”

  “I know that I’m not someone you need to get tight with. And that Tanya Foster’s killer is almost certainly a resident of Carson Creek. And that someone is watching me and has bad intentions.”

  “Who’s watching you?”

  “Some guy. He’s parked across the street in a gray Nissan.”

  Kate went to the window. The blinds were slanted at forty-five degrees so that she could not be seen from the street unless she put her face up close to them. She kept a couple of feet back in shadow and squinted through a gap. Saw the small saloon car, and could make out the face behind the steering wheel. Put the guy at about thirty. He was smoking a cigarette, and was obviously waiting for something or somebody.

  “What makes you think he has an interest in you, Jo…Logan?” Kate said.

  “Experience. I feel vibes. Do you r
ecognize him?”

  “No. Never seen him before, so he doesn’t live in town. What are you going to do?”

  “Let him feel safe from me, and then have a quiet word with him when he least expects it.”

  “And exactly what do you mean by saying that I shouldn’t get tight with you?”

  “That you know I can’t settle in one place and play house, Kate. I’m strongly attracted to you, but would not want you to think it could be an enduring relationship.”

  “So whatever happens between us would be as transient as you are?”

  “‘Fraid so. I can care a lot, but not enough to change being who I am.”

  “And run it past me again, who exactly are you?”

  “A guy that needs to keep moving. I don’t want to feel tied to some way of life in a place that I would have a hankering to walk away from.”

  “So we could never be anything more than passing strangers?”

  “That’s about it. I have absolutely nothing to offer anyone, Kate.”

  “I think you have. You just don’t realize it. You’re like me in a way, Logan. You’re running away from something, but you probably don’t know what.”

  “Maybe I just don’t like stability, Kate. I don’t want to be part of the accepted system anymore. Every day is like coming to a crossroad on a highway to me. I turn left or right or go straight on and see where it leads.”

  “Don’t you ever want to share experiences with someone?”

  “I tried once. It didn’t work. There was too much expectation. Her name was Maddie, and like most women she envisaged some kind of permanence, and maybe a house with a white picket fence, and a couple of kids. I’m not very good at compromise. It wasn’t the life I wanted. Maddie eventually saw the light and walked.”

  “Do you have any regrets?”

  “None. You have to know who you are, and live accordingly. I don’t look back at anything and waste time thinking how life might have turned out if I’d taken a different route.”