Dying Breath - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 2)

by J. A. Konrath

  The hysterical laughter turned to sobbing and it took a while for me to stop.

  You feel it, don’t you? Earl asked. You’re slipping away.

  “Better way to go than dying of cancer,” I mumbled. “Dying of you.”

  Is that why you let him shoot you?

  I used my shirt to wipe off my face, and then put it to my swollen tongue and tried to drink my tears.

  Then I curled up in the fetal position and passed out again.

  I woke up delirious. I was seeing things, and that didn’t make any sense, because it was pitch black in there. I saw a woman, with long golden hair, and she had a jug of water. And she was pouring the water on her feet to wash them.

  “Don’t,” I said. Or tried to say. It came out as sort of a croak. “Don’t waste it.”

  “You want to die,” the woman said. “Remember?”

  “Please let me have some water.”

  “What are you fighting for?” she asked.

  Good question, Earl said.

  Pressed my fingers into my eyelids until it hurt. Opened my eyes again and the woman was gone.

  How long has it been? Two days?

  More?

  Remembered that book about the war. Some drank their own urine.

  Others drank blood.

  Could I drink my own blood?

  Try it, Earl said. Maybe you’ll like it.

  I found the AMT with my crusty hands and held it to my right wrist. The tip was broken, but there was enough blade left to cut me.

  Do it.

  Just do it.

  Don’t think about it.

  Do it!

  I cut.

  Then I clamped my mouth on the sweaty, sawdusty wound.

  Couldn’t suck up anything.

  Cut wasn’t deep enough. I needed a vein.

  Deeper!

  I cut deeper.

  Clamped mouth.

  Wasn’t deep enough.

  Don’t be a baby and cut deep you worthless son of a bitch!

  I cut deep.

  I drank.

  JACK

  Remir’s attorney had a shopping list of demands. Among them; all criminal charges dropped, immunity from any related crimes for giving testimony, and the ten thousand dollar reward that was recently announced by the city for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the Motel Mauler. He also refused to give any information related to the car theft ring he was obviously involved in.

  Sergeant Michaels, from Property Crimes, wanted none of that. Neither did I. I explained to the attorney that in order to confirm Remir’s testimony, we needed to get samples of the swarf at the chop shop to make sure it matched with the metal shavings found in the tires of the rental car, in order to prove our case. Maybe we could have done without it, but getting shaken down by a car thief left a bad taste in my mouth.

  Captain Bains, our State’s Attorney Libby Hellmann, and Remir’s defense lawyer wasted the rest of the day trying to work out details, and Herb and I were told nothing would be on paper until tomorrow.

  My watch said it was almost six o’clock. We missed our window with Denny Dalt, the former Gomar truck employee who stated that he wouldn’t be home after four, so I gave him a call at the gas station where he worked.

  “Mr. Dalt?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Lieutenant Daniels. We spoke earlier.”

  “I’m at work now.”

  “I know that, Mr. Dalt. I called you at work.”

  “I started work at four.”

  “Can we stop by your work and talk to you?”

  “My boss won’t like it if cops show up and start asking me questions.”

  “We’ll make sure your boss knows that you are assisting us in a case. What time do you work until?”

  “One in the morning. But I really don’t think you should come over. I…I don’t want any trouble.”

  “You’re not in trouble, Mr. Dalt.”

  “Can it wait until tomorrow?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I have kind of a problem keeping jobs.”

  No shit. I wondered if he was putting me on, because no one could be this stupid. I imagined putting him on the stand as a key witness. Maybe we should just leave him out of the investigation completely.

  But I said, “Tomorrow is fine, Mr. Dalt.”

  “You know where I live?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “And this is about my old job at Gomar?”

  “Yes, Mr. Dalt.”

  “I don’t work there anymore.”

  “See you tomorrow, Mr. Dalt.”

  I hung up the phone and told Herb, “That was Mr. Dalt.”

  “How’s he doing? You know he went to work at four.”

  Police work was one percent action, eight-nine percent being mostly ineffective, and ten percent trying to entertain ourselves. The only cop show that ever had it close to real was Barney Miller. But Herb wasn’t as funny as Dietrich or Fish.

  With nothing else to do, we called it a day. Herb declined my offer of beers, and I dropped him off back at the station and considered my evening.

  Eat out? Stay in and finish my Ed McBain book? See if Phin was around for some pool?

  Go home?

  I wondered if Mom still had her special friend over, and decided to call.

  “Hi, honey. Are you coming home? Mr. Long and I made shepherd’s pie.”

  The guy with the Guinness World Record scrotum was actually named Mr. Long. And apparently he was still hanging around. In every way possible.

  “I may crash here again tonight, Mom.”

  “Okay. Love you. Give Latham my best.”

  I decided to do just that, and called my fiancé.

  “Hi, Latham. How’d your speech go?”

  “Hey, you. I killed it.” There was noise in the background. Music. Chattering.

  “At a party?”

  “Yeah, at the hotel. They booked a band.”

  A female voice said, “C’mon, Latham! Dance with me!”

  “Dancing?” I asked.

  “You know how conferences are. Big group thing. Everyone drinking too much, and we’ll all be up until 2am singing Louie Louie in the lobby.”

  I had no idea that was what happened at accounting conventions, but I took his word for it.

  “I’ll let you go then,” I said.

  Then I hung up, realizing I’d become that woman. The passive/aggressive one who was so insecure she didn’t trust her future husband to leave town for a few days.

  Of course, I actually did trust him. I was just feeling down. I missed him, this case was frustrating, I missed living in Chicago, and I hated my house in the suburbs, and the fact that my mother was getting laid and I wasn’t.

  The fact that jealousy, envy, and regret—feelings I actively despised—were creeping into my life, made me dislike myself more than I normally did.

  So in two phone calls I’d gone from a moderately discouraged yet highly successful Homicide Lieutenant to a self-loathing, whiny, insecure jerk.

  Maybe I just needed a good cry. Were cops allowed to cry?

  But that wasn’t my style. My style was beer and pool and shopping. Since I’d maxed my credit cards for the next few months, maybe beer and pool would salvage my evening.

  I popped by Joe’s Pool hall. It was packed with assholes from the suburbs, hogging all the tables. I would have gotten irritated with that, but I couldn’t.

  I was one of those assholes from the suburbs.

  I left without getting a beer, found a gyro place, drowned my melancholy in tzatziki, and then went to Latham’s, making sure I didn’t park in the loading zone.

  After three hours of Home Shopping Network, staring at stuff I wanted but couldn’t afford, I turned off the TV and got on Latham’s desktop computer and looked up depression, insomnia, and signs your boyfriend is cheating on you.

  Two more fruitless hours later, I climbed into bed, hugging a pillow that smelled like him.

  I tried
to sleep.

  Sleep didn’t come.

  HARRY

  My shoe sailed through the air toward the ringing phone, which might seem like an unproductive thing to do but my horse, Rover, and I were pinned down by a sniper and our only chance at avoiding cannibalism was knocking that receiver off the hook and yelling for help.

  For the under-forty crowd, I’ll explain.

  Once upon a time, phones had actual cords that attached the handset to the base. That’s where the term hanging-up comes from; you actually hung up the phone on a hook. And get this; you couldn’t own phones. You had to rent them. What kind of scam is that, am I right?

  But you probably want to get back to the action.

  My shoe cartwheeled through the air, heel over toe, and it looked like I was going to overshoot my target and be forced to go full Thunderdome with Rover over the rights to who could eat who, but thankfully my throw was weak and it lost power, smacking right into the Princess model phone, knocking it off my desk.

  A voice came through the receiver, soft but clear.

  “Mr. McGlued? It’s the Holy Sunbeam Resurrectionist Church. Have you reconsidered subscribing to The Weekly Advent and receiving a free copy of Good News, an enlightening and spiritually uplifting pamphlet to bring you closer to Christ?”

  “Listen very carefully,” I said, loud enough for this bible-thumping telemarketing idiot to hear. “Someone is shooting at me. I need you to call the police, and send an ambulance.”

  “We all need things, Mr. McGlued. Genesis 15:9; ‘And he said unto him, Take me a heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other—”’

  “Shut up with the bible nonsense!” I yelled. “You need to help me!”

  “Psalm 121:2; My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth. You should learn your bible, Mr. McGlued. If you subscribe to The Weekly Advent—”

  “I’ll subscribe!” I yelled. “Call 911, tell them someone has been shot, and I’ll subscribe to your magazine for ten goddamn years!”

  “Three years is the longest I can put you down for a subscription. And with the three year package, you receive a genuine grain of mustard seed. As our Lord and Savior said in Mark 4:30; the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which—”

  “CALL 911!”

  “No need to yell, Mr. McGlued. I’ll need your address.”

  I spit it out as quickly as I could, then said, “Now hurry, send someone. Tell them it’s a sniper. He’s shooting at me from across the street.”

  “Before I can process your order, I’ll need a credit card number.”

  “JESUS CHRIST!”

  “I know you’re excited, and you’ll receive your first copy of The Weekly Advent in three to six weeks, once you give me your credit card information.”

  Unbelievable. I fished my wallet out of my pocket and read off some digits.

  “And the expiration date?”

  “April of next year. Can you call the cops please?!?”

  “How about that three digit security code?”

  Just after I read it off, the phone leaped several inches in the air, a bullet blowing a huge hole in the side of it.

  “Hello?” I said to the shattered phone. “You still there?”

  He wasn’t still there.

  Rover whinnied, trying to get up.

  I held him closer.

  “It’ll be okay, boy. He heard us. He’ll send help.”

  But I knew that wasn’t very likely.

  So, what were my options? Wait for fate to dictate my fate, like some kind of fate waiter? Or take matters into my own hands?

  I wasn’t a fan of waiting, so I made my move.

  I pulled the fifty pound kitty litter bags over to me, one at a time, staying below the sniper’s line of sight. Then I tossed them over the back of the sofa, onto the seat cushions, until I had a pile of them.

  Was it enough to stop a bullet? We were about to find out.

  Putting my back and legs into it, I managed to slide my couch a few centimeters toward my front door.

  Then I did it again.

  And again.

  Each time, I pulled Rover along with me.

  Each time brought me closer to escape.

  The sniper must have realized my intent, because my condo became a shooting gallery. A petty, vindictive shooting gallery. I can understand plugging my expensive couch full of holes, trying to hit me, but the sniper was also hitting things nowhere near the couch. My computer. Pictures on my walls. My Dyson bladeless fan. What did my Dyson bladeless fan ever do to anyone? That was just plain mean.

  When we got up to the dick condo manager, I managed to loop Rover’s leash under his armpits, and my horse helped me drag him along the floor.

  Slowly, so slowly, we inched toward my door, and when we were so close I could almost touch it, a bullet punched through the sofa and hit Rover in the chest.

  Kidding! No animals are harmed in this book.

  The bullet actually hit the dick condo manager in the chest.

  Ignoring the very real threat of bloodborne pathogens that a little weasel like him probably had coursing through his veins, I clamped a hand over his wound and pressed down hard.

  He opened his eyes and stared at me.

  “It’s…” he mumbled. “It’s…”

  “It’s what? Spit it out. These are probably your last words.”

  “It’s… a horse,” he said.

  “You’re a dick,” I told him.

  Then the cops announced themselves and kicked in my door.

  PHIN

  Scratch vampirism off my bucket list.

  It was harder to keep the blood down than it was to cut myself. The nausea began in the back of my throat, almost making me gag, but I choked it down and my stomach became a writhing knot. I had to clamp both hands over my mouth until the cramps stopped.

  It wasn’t the best meal I ever had, but it was liquid, and it was protein.

  I figured I drank maybe half a pint. Then I started to get real dizzy, and I had the presence of mind to tie my shirt around my arm before passing out.

  When I woke up again I felt a little better. I wasn’t delirious anymore. I was still thirsty, but I was able to function at a reduced capacity.

  I bet my breath was awful, though.

  What you been drinkin’ boy?

  I used the knife to keep widening my hole, which was now deep enough to stick my index finger to the second knuckle.

  It was slow going. Even harder to carve with the tip broken off.

  I doubted my chances of survival.

  But that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Earl asked.

  I ignored him. But he had a point.

  I’d expected Tucker to kill me, and had welcomed it.

  Why didn’t he?

  Why the whole dart-in-the-chest-and-lock-me-up game?

  I’d thought about it over and over, not having anything else to do but scrape at the crack and think. At first I figured he wanted to question me later, about what I knew. But he hadn’t come back, and death was creeping up on me.

  So maybe he did want to question me, but something came up that prevented him from letting me out. Like he was arrested, or slipped and hit is head in the shower.

  Or maybe, somewhere in this wooden box, was a night vision camera, and he and a bunch of buddies were watching me while sharing a bowl of popcorn.

  I decided to take a chance. I pushed the barrel of the AMT into the hole I had carved out, and fired twice.

  The muzzle flash blinded me, two icepicks jammed into my eyes, the sound so loud it hurt my jaw.

  I coughed, waited for my senses to go back to normal, waited even longer because an afterglow had burned itself onto my retinas.

  No… not afterglow.

  Light.

  The bullets had gone the rest of the way throu
gh the door.

  And light was coming in from the other side.

  It was daylight. Dim, but unmistakable. I pressed my face against the hole to look around.

  The box holding me was in the back of a large closet. There were shoes on the carpeted floor. Shirts and slacks hanging up. The closet door was open a crack, and that’s where the glorious daylight was coming in.

  The hole I made was only about the size of a quarter, but my minor success came with a surge of adrenalin that helped me and my broken tip knife widen the hole to half dollar size in less than an hour.

  Then fatigue started setting in again, made even worse by the fact that the sun was going down and taking my light source with it.

  I rested, stretching my crippled fingers.

  And the pain came back.

  From Earl, from all my cuts, my wrist, my back, my neck, my fingers, my chest, my kidneys, my stomach. A dozen different types of pain. Hot pain, raw pain, dull pain, throbbing pain, hunger pain. But rather than fight the pain, I embraced it. Chomped down on it like a stray dog who wasn’t letting anything get the bone he found.

  All this pain and all this effort and all this struggle had galvanized me. Forced me to see the truth.

  I didn’t want to die.

  Why would I be fighting this hard if I wanted to die?

  Why didn’t I just eat the gun?

  Congrats on the self-realization, Phin. You never wanted to die. You just didn’t want to fight anymore.

  “There’s a difference?” I croaked.

  Of course there’s a difference, Earl said. Everyone gets tired. Everyone loses hope. But look at the cuts on your hands. Look how much you want to live. If you really wanted to die, you would have sliced your wrists deeper. Or put a bullet in your head. But look how excited you are to see a tiny sliver of daylight.

  “And this is what you want?”

  Of course this is what I want. I don’t want you to die of dehydration.

  “You want to be the one to kill me.”

  Damn right. Now move your ass and get us out of this goddamn box.

  Because I wanted to live through this.

  I wanted to see Pasha again.

  I wanted to start another round of chemo and radiation, so I could kick Earl’s ass.