by Rachel Ford
“You’re good, Tanney. So good, you almost threw me off. But patterns – you were obvious with your patterns.”
“You lost your mind, Owen.” Tanney’s back was still toward him.
“The hunting season thing almost threw me off, I’ll admit. It was almost a pattern, but not quite. They didn’t all happen during hunting season. Which didn’t make sense.
“Except, of course, it made perfect sense. The timing didn’t have any particular significance to you. It wasn’t a psychological thing. It was an opportunity thing: you needed to have a reason to be on the road with a bunch of guns in your car.”
Tanney turned back to him now, and nestled securely in his bruised hands was a Smith and Wesson.44 magnum revolver. Not one of the long-barreled Model 29’s that Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry used.
This was short and snub-nosed, with a barrel just a hair over two and a half inches long. Plenty long enough for a distance of two or three strides. And it held six shots.
Not that Tanney would need six. With a kill record like his, one would do the trick.
“Well,” he said, “I guess that answers that.”
Tanney scowled at him. “You should have minded your own business, Owen. You should have let it go.”
“Why’d you do it, Tanney?”
“You know why. You just told me why.”
“Because what? They escaped justice? Because Rick Wynder – what? Took a bribe?”
“A bribe?” Tanney looked almost injured. “He took lives, Owen: lives. He put people away for years – for decades – above and beyond other judges. For money. All for money. He stole hundreds of years’ worth of human lives, Owen.
“He got rich and built himself a big house and lived comfortably.”
“So he deserved to die for it?” Owen asked.
“Yes,” Tanney said. There was no hesitation there, just conviction. “People killed themselves. Some of his victims: they killed themselves when they got out of there, because of the abuses at Reed Hill. People died there: beaten to death. Shivved. Found dead of unexplained causes. That blood is all on his hand.”
“And killing him was the answer?”
“Investigating him wasn’t, was it? The state cleared him. The journalist who investigated him ended up dead.”
“You can’t just shoot people.”
“I should sit back and let them get away with it instead? Killers, rapists, child molesters: you think society is better with them still out there, free of consequences? Free to offend again?”
“Of course not.”
Tanney shrugged. “Then we agree.”
“We don’t agree,” Owen said.
“It’s a simple question, Owen: is the world better off with more pedophiles and rapists, or not?”
“Of course not,” he said again. “But you can’t just kill people.”
“Sure you can. I just took something we both agree on – something most people agree on: the world is better off with fewer pedophiles and rapists. And I did something about it.”
Owen shook his head. “So all those people? You decided they all deserved to die?”
“You think they deserved to die, Owen. You just told me that.”
“They were all rapists and killers?”
“Every single one of them. Annie Shaw? Sexually abused her foster children. Made videos of it, posted them online. Made a lot of money doing it. Turned evidence on her collaborators when she got caught and avoided prosecution. Changed her name and moved to Michigan.”
Owen grimaced at the idea.
Tanney went on. “Ray Danielson: sexual assault of children under four years old.”
“Jesus.”
“Thomas Chojnowski: burned a Sikh temple, killed a guy. Left a bunch of others severely injured.”
“They couldn’t prove it was him,” Owen pointed out.
“No, they couldn’t. But I met the guy. He practically admitted it.”
“You met him?”
Tanney nodded. “You think I just shoot people, Owen? I investigate. I showed on my way to a hunting trip. Found him at the second bar I tried. He was already plastered. And people – they talk to me. They see a harmless old geezer. They know I’m not FBI, or the police. He bragged about it.”
“So you killed him?”
“Not that year. That was reconnaissance. I came back two years later. Didn’t stop anywhere that time. Found him, shot him, passed on through.”
“So no one would remember you.”
“Exactly. I’m good at what I do.”
“Yes you are.” Owen stared at the gun, and then he looked Tanney in the eyes. “So now what? You going to shoot me too?”
“I could. I could say you attacked me.”
“Halverson wouldn’t believe it.”
“He might. You took a bad hit to the head. And everyone knows you’re a little weird. Ted would back me up. That’s for sure. I could say it was self-defense. It might work.”
“Are you going to?”
Tanney stared back at Owen, and then at the gun. “Goddammit, Owen: why couldn’t you have just left it alone?”
“Are you going to shoot me?” Owen asked again.
Tanney shook his head and lowered the revolver. “No. I wish I had a reason to – believe me. That would be a lot simpler. But you’re a good guy. A giant pain in the ass, but a good guy. You don’t deserve to die.”
Owen watched him put the gun back in the wardrobe and come over to the side of the bed. He sat stiffly – but not as stiffly as he’d been moving these last days. That had all been part of the pretense: the old guy persona, too weak and feeble to even be a suspect.
“So what are you going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I guess that depends on you, and what you’re going to do.”
Owen didn’t say anything.
“Are you going to turn me in?”
“I should.”
“Probably. That’s what the law says, anyway.”
“Killing people makes you as bad as them, Tanney.”
“Bullshit. If you believed that for half a second, you’d already be on your way to Halverson.”
“I might yet.”
Tanney nodded his head. “Yeah, you might. But not because it’s just as bad. Because you’re going to do some complex kind of moral calculus, and either you come down on the side of more free rapists and pedophiles and murderers in the world, or less.”
Owen said nothing.
“I could tell you that I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll stop. I’ll go down to California or Texas and leave things alone.” Tanney shook his head. “But I’d be lying. I’m an old man, Owen. I figure I’ve only got so many years left to do the right thing.”
“This isn’t the right thing.”
Tanney shrugged. “That’s what you’ve got to decide, isn’t it? Is the world better off because I made sure Ray Danielson never harms another child? Is the world more just because Rick Wynder answered for his crimes? I know where I stand. You’ve got to figure out where you do.”
Owen said nothing again, and for a long time they sat in silence. Finally, he said, “You lied to me.”
“About a lot of things, yeah.”
“You tried to make me think the killer was a woman.”
Tanney grinned. “I did, didn’t I? Sorry about that. But you can understand why I wanted to avoid this conversation. You’re a little too black and white. Law and order.”
“You mean, I actually follow the law?”
“You almost beat a guy’s brains out earlier today, Owen.”
“That was self-defense. And I didn’t kill him.”
“But you didn’t know that at the time. You would have killed him if you had to.”
“It was self-defense,” he said again.
“Bullshit. Self-defense would have been going to Halverson right away. You would have killed him to protect me and Ted. You understand the morality of the situation the same as I do. You just struggle with the lega
lity.”
Owen didn’t reply.
“So, what are you going to do? You going to turn me in?”
“I don’t know,” Owen said. And that was the truth. He didn’t know what to do. Tanney was a criminal, a killer, an unrepentant murderer; and at the same time, the world was undeniably a better place because of his actions.
“Well, try to make up your mind soon. I don’t like suspense.”
Owen got to his feet and nodded. “Alright. You’ll know by tomorrow morning, one way or the other.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Sheriff Trey Halverson whistled as he strolled into the hotel. His morning was going swimmingly. His case – the case of a lifetime – just kept getting bigger.
The boys in the lab, the computer techs, had pulled the Range Rover’s GPS. They’d noticed detours out to the old quarry, and a hunting cabin.
That had led to the discovery of the black Cadillac, and more bodies: the four guys who had attacked him, and one innocent. Not a good thing, obviously, but it answered a lot of questions. It explained how the kill teams had been able to do as much as they had: there were two of them.
It gave them more leverage over Walker. His gun had fired the bullet that killed Ryan Campbell. It would make turning him a little bit easier.
And, best of all, his town was getting smaller. Owen Day had already gone home. William Tanney would be leaving soon.
Not that he didn’t appreciate the roles they’d played in cracking the case. But they’d been at least as much of thorns in his side as they had been help. And the case was cracked. The sooner they were out of town, the sooner Ted Walters would calm down, and the sooner things could go back to normal.
He stopped at the front desk and exchanged greetings with the kid working there. “You have a William Tanney staying here?”
The kid checked the register, and nodded, and said, “Room 110.”
Something he probably shouldn’t have done – not without a warrant – but something the sheriff appreciated anyway. He nodded, and thanked the kid, and headed down to room 110. He knocked twice.
Half a minute later, the door opened. Tanney looked a little paler and frailer than usual. Not surprising, considering the stress of the last few days. It couldn’t be good for an old guy’s constitution.
He said, “Sheriff?”
“Mr. Tanney: good to see you again.”
Tanney said nothing.
“You holding up okay?”
“Well enough. Can I help you?”
“On the contrary. I think I can help you.”
Tanney stared at him, confusion evident on his face.
“I got a call from the shop. Your vehicle is ready.”
Tanney’s confusion only seemed to grow. “They called you?”
“Apparently, they called you first, on Friday, but you weren’t in your room. And they didn’t have a cell number. So, they called me.” Halverson grinned. “I think they were afraid you might have skipped out of town.”
“Oh.”
“So I thought I’d stop by and give you a ride to go pick it up if you needed.”
Tanney glanced down the hall, presumably to where Owen Day’s room had been.
“Oh, and that’s the other thing. Day stopped by this morning. To give me his contact info and everything before he left town. He wanted me to give you a message if I saw you.”
Tanney said again, “Oh?”
“He’s sorry he missed you, but he had to head back. Something to do with work. Oh, and he said, ‘good hunting.’”
Tanney smiled. “He said that, did he?”
Halverson nodded. “Yup.”
“Huh.”
“Well, I can wait in the lobby if you like?”
“What?”
“While you pack?”
“Oh.” Tanney glanced behind him, into the room. Then he shook his head. “No, I can pack later. I can go now.”
Halverson nodded again. “Okay. Let’s go, then.”
Note from the author
Thank you for reading Vengeance is Mine. Please consider leaving a review to let others know what you thought.
Thanks very much,
Rachel
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