He didn’t want to be beholden to anyone; he needed to pay his own way. Like Hewitt’s friend, Mitch Adair. Adair had gone off to find God and came back a more spiritual man for the experience. What had Hewitt gone off to find? Nothing but revenge. And where was Adair now?
She thought she knew where to start looking.
Miles turned under her wheels. Sunshine turned to darkness and still she drove, one hand on the steering wheel, the other strapped hard in the sling to her side. She stopped only for gas, coffee, to pee—the essentials of life on the road. Eureka, Nevada, population 1,013, slipped by, Cold Springs still another fifty miles ahead, nothing in between but high-country desert. No lights, no cars, not another soul in this forsaken spot in the universe. Which suited her just fine.
A little after midnight, the lights of Reno appeared on the horizon, a corrupted haze of yellow against the flawless night sky. A small casino outside of town provided a cheap room and a late dinner of overcooked Salisbury steak covered with canned mushrooms. Martha ate it all.
Back in her room, she found the single strand of her hair undisturbed in the door lock. She stripped naked, cleaning her shoulder where the wound had oozed during the long day. Her shoulder throbbed like a bass backbeat in time with the pounding of her heart.
She slept on the floor, curled up in a fetal position. The nightmares didn’t come until nearly morning.
In her shopping cart, she had a bathing cap, double-sided tape, gauze pads, an antibiotic cream, medical tape, a small purse, and an electric barber’s kit. She was studying the wigs, trying to decide if she wanted to be a blonde or a redhead when her phone rang. She recognized the number and almost ignored it. Finally, she answered, “Whitaker.”
“It’s Metcalf.” There was a long pause. “I’m sorry about Trammell.”
“Yeah, so am I.” She didn’t offer anything more.
“I was wondering if we can meet.”
“Where are you?”
“Salt Lake City, the Grand America Hotel.”
“I hear it’s a nice place.”
“I know you heard that.” Again, silence. “I was worried about you, okay?”
Martha didn’t respond.
“Whitaker, I’m sorry you’re hurt,” Metcalf said. “And I’m sorry Trammell got killed. But I’d still like to meet with you. Even with Reichart’s confession, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Like, do you know where the old man is?”
“No,” she said. “Do you know how they found us?”
“Where are you?” was his reply.
She didn’t like his answer. She didn’t offer one of her own. “Okay, tomorrow afternoon in the hotel lobby. Five o’clock.”
“You’ll be there?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” she lied. “I’ll talk to you and only you. If there’s so much as a hint that you’re lying to me, I’ll break your neck. And this time I won’t hold back.”
“I’m one of the fracking good guys, in case you forgot,” he snapped.
“And I’m fucking Florence Nightingale. Five, the hotel lobby.”
She ended the call. We’ll be meeting soon enough, she thought, tucking her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. She decided she didn’t need a wig after all. She picked up a second pair of sunglasses and a small flashlight, and checked out.
Sharing the parking garage with Target was a Best Buy. She loaded her stuff into the car. Fifteen minutes later, she walked out of Best Buy with a new Nikon camera, multiple lenses, an extra battery, a car charger, and an extra sixteen-gig memory card. At the last minute, she had decided to include a cheap phone with her purchase. She had the number activated before leaving the store.
The last stop was a thrift store she had passed on the way into town. Located in an old grocery store, it was advertising post-holiday sales, and Martha quickly found what she wanted. A mannequin was dressed in some of the best women’s fashions the store had to offer: a tight-knit cashmere sweater, $17, a matching gold necklace and bracelet, $21, a gray wool skirt that was modest enough for work, $12.
She bought it all, including the mannequin.
Martha stood in front of the mirror for a long time before making the first cut. One blue eye and one brown eye stared back at her. Black tresses, in places wavy, in other places tightly curled, framed her fine features and long nose. She touched her hair—so personal, a tangle of mystery and identity. She flicked the clippers on, took a deep breath, and raised her good arm. Clumps of long, curly black hair drifted to the floor. Once started, she worked quickly, making cut after cut until all of her hair lay piled at her feet.
Again she fixed on her image in the mirror. A stranger in all but the eyes stared back at her. The bald head could have been that of a Buddhist acolyte. It could have been, from a sideways glance, the pate of Lance Trammell. It could have been the skull of an assassin.
The look pleased her.
Heading north out of Reno on US Highway 395, she soon entered California. Next to her, Manny was doing fine, the seatbelt/shoulder harness holding her motionless figure securely in the passenger seat. Martha’s ebony hair, taped and glued to the bathing cap, hung limply against the black cashmere on Manny’s shoulders. Manny desperately needed to see a hairdresser, but it would have to do. Dark sunglasses hid her blank eyes.
Holding the instruction manual against the wheel, Martha began to read how to use her new camera. Before entering Interstate 5 outside of Mount Shasta, she pulled off at a scenic vista and spent a half hour practicing taking photos and movies of the mountain that had lifted its cloudy skirt to reveal its snow-white summit. Just another tourist in awe of nature’s splendor. Manny stayed in the car.
Once Martha hit the Interstate, she set the cruise control to eighty and pointed the rented car toward home. Outside of Roseburg, Oregon, her work phone rang. Metcalf. She ignored it. The clock on the car dash read 5:31 p.m. The phone rang every ten minutes for the next half hour. Finally, she shut it off and stuffed it in her new purse and bumped the cruise control up to eighty-four.
THIRTY-THREE
To bait her trap, Martha sneaked out the back door of the garage and followed the muddy trail back down the hill. A brightening in the western sky hinted that the afternoon might offer a reprieve from the winter rains, but for now, a steady drizzle penetrated the woods, the leafless trees offering little protection. Minutes later, she pulled the rental car into the driveway and parked in front of the Carriage House. Without looking right or left or back, she scampered up the steps, calling out, “Beatrice, Dante, where are my kitties? I’m home.”
In case they missed the Subaru parked in front of the garage, she went around the apartment flicking on all the lights.
She looked around. Manny, now cut in half just below her slim Barbie-doll buttocks, sat on the sofa, her back to the door. Her newly curled wig cascaded to her cashmere-covered shoulders. She still wore her matching gold necklace and bracelet. The computer, open and operating, rested on the afghan that covered her sawn off legs. The sleep mode had been deactivated and the computer screen flipped through random images from Martha’s picture files. The iPhone and a cup of coffee sat near Manny’s feet on the coffee table. She checked the ring volume of the phone. It was set on high. The ringer on the phone in her pocket was off.
From the kitchen, the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee wafted through the small apartment. She looked up: the hole where the fish-eye lens of her new Nikon camera took in the sweep of the Carriage House from the main door to kitchen to Manny to the bathroom door was obvious, but she had to hope he wouldn’t look up. The drill was back in its place in the ground-floor shop. All remnants of dust and particle board had been cleaned up and disposed of. With the click of one button from her hiding place in the coat closet, the camera would start shooting video.
She checked the gauge on the pressure tank, nestled once again into the corner near the main door. It was fully pressurized and holding steady. She had documented the exact location of everything with the ca
mera, and replaced everything exactly as it had been when she had entered shortly after midnight. The hoses were coiled clockwise over the tank and the nail gun was in the exact same position on top of the coiled hoses as it had been for the past several weeks—except the finish nail gun had been replaced with the framing nail gun and its larger sixteen-penny spikes. The safety catch was off.
In the bedroom, Beatrice and Dante lay curled together, like Yin and Yang, on top of the covers. “Stay out of the way, guys,” she admonished them. Neither raised a whisker.
Again, she checked the latch on the closet door. The wedge jammed into the throw of the latch and the duct tape were holding fine. The door opened and closed without a whisper. She looked around. She was ready. All she could do was wait.
Sliding into the closet, she settled into the back corner and closed the door behind her. She fluffed the pillows into a nest and threw a blanket over her legs. There was just enough room to stretch them out straight. Trammell’s black turtleneck and her own black sweat pants, black socks, and black shoes would keep her from being seen through the slats in the bottom half of the door. Even her coffee mug was black. With a slight turn of the head, she could peer out the one-inch hole she had drilled through the side of the house. Idling away time in the dark, with ibuprofen masking the pain, she would soon be asleep. She couldn’t risk being surprised by him. She had to be the one creating the surprise.
She could see down the driveway, its gravel glistening charcoal from the persistent rain, all the way to the road. The green hedgerow bordered one side of the driveway, the main house the other. The back door of the house, the Heidens’ Prius and the top of the rented car were visible. Would he wait, or did he have the Carriage House under surveillance? She suspected he would wait. He had to know she was coming home, had to know she was coming for him. He would be cautious, but he would come and he would come to kill the last person who could tie him to Hewitt’s forgery ring and the murders of Ralph Hargrove, Povich, and Martoni.
And Lance Trammell.
She realized she didn’t even know what Trammell’s middle name was. Or if he even had one. There was so much she didn’t know. She pulled the neck of his turtleneck up over her nose. Now it smelled more like her than it did him. Would her memories of him fade the same way? Strawberries, the Louvre, and Shakespeare, she reminded herself. Fishing with her father, Paris in the spring, and sunset over the Olympics. So hard to remember what was good in the world.
But she did doze. Road fatigue and injuries and the night spent preparing her trap overcame her vigilance. Her eyes sagged shut. She snapped them back open, then took to pinching herself. Finally, she fell asleep.
She awoke with a start. Her subconscious had picked up something. She closed her eyes and focused. For the longest time, she heard only silence. She glanced out the peephole. Nothing was new in the driveway, except that sometime during her nap, the rain had ceased. The sun had broken through the clouds. Then she noticed the Heidens’ second car was gone. Was that what she had heard, the crunching of tires on gravel? Then it came again, a quick and furious scratching. Martha swiveled her head to look behind her. Through the slats she could see one of the cats—it had to be Beatrice—scratching at the closet door. She didn’t understand why Martha’s lap wasn’t available for a nap, why she hadn’t been fed yet.
In time, Beatrice stopped scratching, and she disappeared.
Martha resumed her vigil. The Prius pulled in the driveway, and Iris Heiden and the three girls quickly disappeared into the house, lights blinking on. School was out.
Moments later, she saw the wild mane of hair and bushy beard of Harry Callison round the corner of the hedge and immediately come to an abrupt halt. Rebecca bumped into him from behind. So he was playing it straight: father and daughter coming to feed the cats, just like they had been doing for weeks now. He hadn’t known she would be here. Good, a small element of surprise tipped her way. Callison turned and said something, pointing behind him and waving with his hand. Rebecca broke into a run, disappearing the way she had come. Callison began to edge down the driveway. He was still in sight when Martha saw him remove a gun from the pocket of his faded Carhartt jacket. Not from his shoulder harness, she noted, but from a pocket. He was screwing a silencer onto the barrel when he disappeared from view.
Martha stood up and pushed the button to begin the video. She stretched her legs and one arm. Slow and easy, she reminded herself. A coiled spring on the outside, relaxed on the inside. Revel in the paradox. Disarm then disable. An armed man is always more of a threat than a disarmed man. Thank you, Jonesy.
She never heard the key turn, she never heard a step creak or footstep fall. There was just the sudden poof poof poof of gunshots fired off through the silencer. She flinched for the briefest instant as Callison’s shadow crept past the louvers.
She hit Number 1 on the automatic speed dial of her phone and tossed the phone into her nest of pillows. With the first ring of the iPhone on the coffee table, she came silently out of the door.
The drifting Styrofoam from Manny’s missing head and the ringing of the phone distracted Callison enough that he twisted back a second too late. His eyes went wide. With a harrowing scream, she launched herself in a flying kick, her right leg snapping out at the last second to drive the gun from his hand. It skittered across the hardwood floor. Her follow-up jab, delivered with all the force of a killing blow, was thrown off balance by her immobile left arm and glanced off his ear, grazing the back of his head. Still, he staggered and she immediately moved inside his defenses to finish her task.
She snapped a left fist at his face. Only her left arm was strapped securely to her body, and she momentarily faced him with all her defenses down. Callison charged her like a middle linebacker zeroing in on the ball, driving his solid frame squarely into her wounded shoulder.
Again she screamed, but this time from a pain more profound than anything she had ever known in her life.
Those years of practice now saved her. Her body instinctively went into a free fall, letting his momentum and energy be as much his enemy as she was. She hit the floor twisting, and her strong legs flipped Callison over her head, driving him against the sofa and the headless Manny. He bounced off the back of the sofa and started to scramble to his feet, but he only made it to one knee. She used the momentum of the roll to somersault from the floor back to her feet. And her foot lashed out at his face with the short, powerful force of a lethal piston.
He partially deflected the kick with his arm. Still, his head spun sideways. This time her follow-up blow didn’t miss, and she drove her right hand into his ear, snapping his head back. He dropped to the floor and tried to roll away. She crushed his knee a with leg strike. A second kick to his jaw sent a tooth and blood flying out. It was Callison’s turn to scream.
She towered over him, poised for another blow if he still found the will to move. He didn’t, so she did it for him. She grabbed his wild mane of hair and raised his face to the hole in the wall where the camera silently recorded everything.
“How does it feel to be helpless, Callison?” It came out as a whisper. She let his head hit the floor with a bang. “I trusted you. I trusted you, goddamn it. And you set me up, used me, and betrayed me. Used your own daughter to spy on me, you fucking prick. You killed Trammell as surely as if you had pulled the trigger. You were the only person who knew where we were. The only fucking person on the entire planet.”
Then her voice dropped low. “How does it feel to know you’re going to die?”
She reached inside his jacket, removed a second pistol, and tossed it away. “Feeding kitties appears to be a dangerous job. How long have you and Hewitt been scamming the church?”
A bloody, gap-toothed snarl answered her. His words came out slurred. “Can’t prove a fucking thing.”
She kicked him in the balls, driving him into the fetal position, where he lay moaning.
“Is Metcalf in on this, too?”
She heard him, b
ut she needed the video recorder to hear him, too. “I’m sorry, Callison. You’re mumbling. Is Metcalf in on this, too?”
She brought her foot back to kick him again.
“That prick . . . of a choirboy . . . wouldn’t keep a twenty if he . . . found lying on the sidewalk.”
In a whisper, she snarled, “Good, so I won’t have to kill him, too. How long have you been working with Hewitt?”
His answer was to spit blood and another tooth in her face.
“How long?” For emphasis, she grabbed his chin and wiggled it back and forth. “I’ve got a lot more bones to break, Harry. How long?”
“Since the Lincoln . . .,” he whispered. “Knew it was a fake . . . but couldn’t find . . . liked my idea . . . make a little extra . . . This was . . . the big payoff . . . He ran . . . Tried to hide . . . you . . . behind Harbor . . . and that Mormon prick . . . Had to smoke . . . smoke him . . . out. . . . Found the others . . . found you. Old bastard betrayed—”
“He didn’t betray you, you asshole.” Her voice was harsh, barely audible. Her hand hovered over his face. A sharp stab of the heel of her palm into his nose and he would be dead. They both knew it. “Don’t you get it? Hewitt set you up. You and the Reicharts and the rest played right into his hand. For anyone to believe his story, he had to show proof of the Death Angels. And you provided the proof. You made the story so much more believable than a bunch of old documents.”
She sat back with a bitter laugh. “Such a fool. The one person I trusted. Was it worth your thirty pieces of silver, Callison? Was it worth the lives of Povich and Martoni and Ralph Hargrove?” She whispered, “And Lance Trammell?”
She rose and strode back to the closet. Looking back, she saw Callison’s hand inching toward his boot. She waited another second before reaching in and turning off the camera. Video time was over. She went to the corner where the nail gun remained undisturbed. When she turned back, she saw he had his hand inside his boot. She marched back at him with the nail gun firing. She was too far away for it to do too much damage, but the nails penetrated his jacket and pricked his skin. It scared him more than hurt him, but it kept his hands busy flailing at his chest instead of reaching for his gun. His jacket looked like a sixteen-penny pin cushion.
Out of the Cold Dark Sea Page 31