Jack Daniels Six Pack

by J. A. Konrath

  “No stops.”

  “You can either stop, or trade places with me back here.”

  “I really have to go.” Fuller puts on a million-dollar grin. “I’ll be quick.”

  Corlis glances at his partner in the passenger seat, another state trooper named Hearns. Hearns shrugs.

  Corlis flips on his signal, and turns into the rest area.

  Route 57 is a divided highway, the lanes separated by thirty yards in stretches. This oasis sits between the north and south lanes, serving travelers going in either direction.

  Perfect, Fuller thinks.

  “Does anyone have change for the vending machine? I haven’t had any junk food in three months.”

  No one answers. Fuller nudges Robertson.

  “You got a buck? I’m good for it.”

  Robertson rolls his eyes, fishes a dollar out of his pants.

  “Thanks, man.”

  The car stops, and Fuller’s door is opened. He steps out, tries to stretch, but the shackles prevent it.

  Hearns takes off his ankle irons. Fuller thrusts his wrists forward, but Hearns shakes his head.

  “How am I supposed to wipe my ass with cuffs on?”

  “You know procedure. I should cuff you from behind. That would make it even harder.”

  “Maybe Robertson will help you,” Hearns says.

  Snickering from Hearns and Corlis. Fuller chuckles too, and takes a quick look around. They’ve parked away from the other vehicles: four cars, plus two semis. On the other side of the rest area, the side servicing cars going north, there are three more cars and another truck.

  Fuller guesses there are between ten and twenty people here, all taking potty breaks.

  Corlis stays with the car, and Robertson and Hearns escort Fuller up the sidewalk to the building. It’s typical of rest areas in Illinois—a Prairie-style ranch, brown with oversized glare-reducing windows, surrounded by a copse of firs. This one has a large roof, giving it the appearance of a toadstool.

  In the lobby sits a large, illuminated map of Illinois, a brochure rack filled with tourist attractions, and the requisite vending equipment. Fuller pauses in front of a soda machine, feeds in his dollar, and selects an Orange Crush.

  Robertson and Hearns herd him into the men’s room. Fuller notes two little boys at the urinals, a black guy washing his hands, and a bald man adjusting his comb-over in the stained mirror. It smells of urine and pine disinfectant. The tile floor is wet from people tracking in rainwater.

  Fuller goes into the nearest stall and closes the door, latching it behind him. He sits on the toilet seat with his pants still on, and removes his leather loafer and his white athletic sock. His shoe goes back on, sockless. He places the can of Crush into the sock and pushes it down to the toe. Holding the sock firmly by the open end, he stands and takes a deep breath.

  Time slows. Fuller can feel his vision sharpen. Whole encyclopedias of sensory input bombard him; the sound of a toilet flushing, Hearns talking to Robertson about football, the two boys giggling, his bare toes rubbing against the inside of his shoe, the weight of the sock in his hand, the throbbing in his temples . . .

  Throbbing that is about to stop.

  He opens the door and sights Hearns, swinging the can at the trooper’s right temple, putting his weight into it.

  The Crush can explodes on impact, and there’s a burst of orange soda and red blood that hangs in the air a millisecond after Hearns hits the floor.

  Robertson reaches for his gun, but Fuller brings his large fists together and clubs him across the jaw, bouncing him off of the sink counter.

  He kneels next to Hearns, and pushes the button on his safety holster to release the Colt Series 70, a .45 with seven in the clip and one in the chamber.

  The first one goes into the back of Hearns’s head.

  A scream; the two little boys. Fuller winks at them. The comb-over guy scrambles for the door, and gets one in the back. The black guy is backing up into the corner, his hands over his head.

  “I’m cool, man. I’m cool.”

  “Not anymore.” Fuller shoots him twice in the face.

  Robertson is on the ground, moaning, slapping at his holster in a most comical way.

  “Thanks for the dollar,” Fuller tells him, arm extending. “I guess I won’t have to pay you back after all.”

  He ends Robertson with a cap to the dome, and it’s the messiest one yet. He takes Robertson’s gun, a Sig Sauer 9mm, and his wallet and badge. Then he goes back to Hearns and locates the handcuff keys in the trooper’s breast pocket. He removes the cuffs, and also takes the trooper’s badge and wallet; it will take longer to ID the body and sort out what happened.

  Crying, to the left. Fuller swings the gun around.

  The two little boys are hugging each other, hysterical.

  Fuller smiles at them. “You kids stay out of trouble, you hear?”

  They both nod so eagerly Fuller laughs. The pain in his head is a memory, the adrenaline pounding through his veins makes him feel like he’s woken up after a very long slumber.

  He steps out into the lobby. Two people stare at him, a man and a woman. As expected, people don’t tend to believe violence when it happens around them. They had probably been asking each other, “Were those gunshots?” “No, they couldn’t be.”

  Wrong.

  He squeezes off three rounds. One catches the man in the chest, one hits the woman in the neck, and the last flies between them and finds the tinted glass window, punching through with a spiderweb of cracks.

  Fuller drops the Colt, checks the Sig. It’s a P229, chambered for 9mm. Thirteen-round clip, plus one in the throat. He thumbs off the safety and walks into the women’s bathroom.

  Empty, except for a stall. An elderly woman opens the door.

  “You’re in the wrong bathroom.”

  “Nope.” Fuller grins. “You are.”

  The Sig has a lighter recoil than the Colt, and the results aren’t as messy.

  Fuller turns back to the door and eases it open a crack. Corlis bursts into the lobby, his .45 clutched in a two-handed grip.

  Unfortunately for him, he’s looking in the direction of the men’s room, rather than behind him.

  Fuller gives him four in the back. Corlis sprawls onto his face, arms and legs splayed out like a dog on ice. He’s still clutching the gun in his right hand, but Fuller is on him in four steps and he stomps hard on Corlis’s wrist. The hand opens, and Fuller shoves the Colt into the front of his pants.

  He kneels next to Corlis and speaks above the man’s whimpering.

  “Thanks for stopping, buddy. I appreciate it.”

  At this close range, the Sig does quite a job on the trooper’s crew cut.

  Minding the blood, Fuller takes the wallet and badge, and exits through the opposite doors, the side where the cars are going north. The semi is still there, parked off to the side. Fuller walks over, then uses the side bar to hoist himself onto the running board. He peers into the cab.

  The driver is at the wheel, eyes closed and snoring pleasantly. The guy is white, mid-forties, and his brown hair is cut into a mullet.

  Haven’t seen one of those in a while, Fuller thinks.

  He holds up Robertson’s badge and taps on the window. The guy wakes up, startled.

  “What’s going on, Officer?”

  “Please step out of the vehicle, sir.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I need you to step out of the vehicle, please.”

  The man complies. He’s awake now, and copping an attitude. “What’s the problem?”

  “No problem. I didn’t want to get your blood in my new truck.”

  Two in the chest, and Fuller takes the man’s keys and wallet, hops into the driver’s seat, and starts the engine.

  He figures he has a twenty-minute lead. That will be enough to get him to Interstate 80, and from there, he can take back roads and side streets.

  Fuller flips on the CB, and switches it to the polic
e frequency. Standard chatter, no mention yet of his little dalliance.

  He yanks the Colt out of his pants and sets it on the passenger seat. The Sig he keeps on the dashboard. Fuller pulls out onto the highway.

  He’s two miles away from I-80 when the news breaks. Fuller picks up the mike.

  “This is car 6620. Suspect is an African American male, five feet ten inches tall, in his mid-thirties, driving a brown sedan. He was last seen heading south on Route 57. Over.”

  “Car 6620, what’s your position?”

  Fuller smiles, doesn’t answer. That will keep them confused for a few more minutes. He merges onto I-80, squad cars screaming past him. A large green sign reads: CHICAGO 40 MILES.

  “Ready or not, Jack. Here I come.”

  CHAPTER 44

  “You’ve always been like this, since you were a little girl.”

  Mom sat on the sofa with Mr. Griffin, who had fallen asleep sitting up, his head tilted back and his mouth open wide enough to drive a car into. She removed the half-finished drink from his hand—I guessed it to be a bloody Mary from the red color and the celery stick—and raised it to her own lips.

  “Been like what?” I asked.

  “Been moody, when you should be happy. Remember when you won your first medal in tae kwon do?”

  “No.”

  “You won it for sparring. You must have been eleven or twelve. I think you were eleven, because you were wearing pigtails and on your twelfth birthday you declared yourself a grown-up and that you’d never wear pigtails again.”

  “Do all old people ramble on like you?”

  Mom smiled at me. “We do. When you turn sixty, you get a license to ramble from the federal government.”

  “Mine may come in the mail, in the time it takes you to finish this story.”

  Mom sipped the drink and shuddered. “No wonder he’s asleep—he managed to fit a whole bottle of vodka into a ten-ounce glass. Now, what was I saying?”

  “You were rambling about my tae kwon do competition.”

  “You’ll miss my rambling someday. So anyway, there you were, with all the winners, and the grand master put the gold medal around your neck, just like he did with the others in the row. Every one of them was smiling. Every one of them, except for you.”

  “I remember now.”

  “You always tried too hard to win, but when you did, you never seemed happy.”

  “That’s because I was thinking of the next match, and wondering if I’d win that.”

  Mr. Friskers hopped onto the sofa and bumped his head into my mother’s thigh, demanding to be petted. She complied, eliciting a deep, throaty purr from the cat.

  “You can’t let the uncertainty of tomorrow interfere with the joy of today, Jacqueline. May I offer a little bit of wisdom?”

  “I thought that’s what you were doing.”

  “You should be taking notes. This is the meaning of life I’m talking about.”

  “I’m all ears, Mom.”

  My mother took a deep breath, sat up straighter. “Life,” she said, “isn’t a race that can be won. The end of the race is the same for all of us—we die.”

  She smiled at me.

  “It’s not about winning the race, Jacqueline. It’s about how well you run.”

  That sounded vaguely familiar.

  “In other words, it’s not if you win or lose, but how you play the game?” I said.

  “I prefer my analogy.”

  “How about something simpler? Like, ‘Try to have fun’?”

  “That works too.”

  I pulled myself out of the rocking chair, destination: kitchen. Alan had his head in the fridge.

  “My mom says I need to have fun.”

  Alan looked at me. “I’ll agree with that.”

  “So maybe we can go do something fun.”

  “A movie?”

  “I just saw two of them.”

  “A few drinks?”

  “That’s a possibility. What else?”

  “Dancing?”

  “Dancing? I haven’t been out dancing since kids were spinning on their heads on sheets of cardboard.”

  Alan held my arms, drew me close.

  “I was thinking something more adult. Something that involved moving slowly to old Motown classics.”

  “I’ll get my shoes.”

  I kissed Alan on the cheek and went back to the living room. Mom was trying, unsuccessfully, to get Mr. Griffin’s mouth to stay shut. Every time she eased it closed, it yawned back open.

  “Alan and I are going out dancing.” I plopped on the sofa and slid on my flats.

  “Good. Take your time. I may wake Sal up and do a little dancing of our own.”

  I leaned over, reaching for my cell phone on the table.

  “Leave it, Jacqueline.”

  “My phone?”

  “It’s a phone? I’m sorry—I thought it was a leash.”

  I left the phone where it sat.

  “Fine. See you in about two hours.”

  “No sooner. You’re putting a cramp in my love life.”

  I pecked her on the forehead. “Love you, Mom.”

  “Love you, Jacqueline. And I’m proud of you. I raised a pretty good daughter.”

  “The apple never falls far from the tree. See you later.”

  From the sofa, Mom waved me and Alan good-bye.

  CHAPTER 45

  Fuller ditches the truck on the West Side and takes a cab to Jack’s apartment. He pays with Robertson’s cash, and quickly cases the building.

  No doorman. The security door is a joke for a guy his size—one solid kick from a size thirteen and the door opens with a bang.

  He knows Jack’s apartment number. While in prison, he would recite her address over and over and over again. A mantra.

  His patience is about to be rewarded.

  Another kick. The apartment door buckles in.

  Fuller, gun in hand, strolls into the living room and finds two old people on the couch, holding each other. He laughs.

  “Were you just necking?”

  The old man, eighty if he was a day, stands up with his fists bunched. Fuller ignores him, walking through the kitchen, finding the bedroom and bathroom empty.

  “Get out of here, right now.”

  The old man points a finger at him.

  Fuller asks, once, “Where’s Jack?”

  The man reaches for the phone.

  Fuller hits him with the butt of the Sig, busting open the old guy’s head like a pin~ata. The fossil falls to the ground, twitching and bleeding out.

  The old woman is still on the sofa, gnarled hands trying to work a cell phone. Fuller slaps it out of her hands.

  “You must be Mom. Jack’s told me so much about you.”

  The woman stares at him. Fuller sees fear. But he sees anger too. And a hardness that he’s never seen in prey before.

  “You must be Barry. Jack has mentioned you as well. Still humping dead hookers?”

  Fuller laughs, despite himself. Gutsy old bitch. He sits next to her. The sofa creaks with his weight.

  “Where’s Jack?”

  “You’re not only a disgrace to police officers everywhere, you’re a disgrace to the human race.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m a big disappointment to everybody. Now, where’s Jack?”

  The mother sits up straighter.

  “I spent half my life putting scum like you behind bars. I’m not telling you anything.”

  “Tough talk. But you’ll tell me, sooner or later. I can be very convincing.”

  “I doubt that, Barry. I’ve seen you play football. You’re a real candy-ass.”

  He doesn’t use the gun—doesn’t need to. Her bones are old and brittle.

  Snap! There goes an arm.

  Snap! There goes a leg.

  Fuller laughs. “Didn’t anyone tell you to take calcium supplements?”

  He cuffs her across the face, feeling the cheek shatter.

  The old woman’s face
is wet with tears and blood, but she doesn’t make a sound. Not even when he grabs her broken arm and twists.

  “Where’s Jack?”

  The attack catches him off-guard. Something hits him in the face. Something soft, yet sharp.

  Fuller cries out in surprise. There’s a yowling sound, and the thing attached to his face is digging at his left eye, scratching with needle-sharp claws.

  A cat. Stuck tight.

  Fuller grabs. Pulls.

  Mistake. The cat holds on, and Fuller almost tears out his own eye.

  He punches the cat. Once. Twice.

  It drops off and limps away.

  Fuller is in agony. The eyelid is rapidly swelling shut, his eye a hot coal burning in the socket.

  Both hands pressed to his face, he stumbles through the apartment, finds the bathroom.

  The Elephant Man stares back at him in the mirror. His left eye has puffed out to the size of a baseball.

  Fuller lashes out, smashing his reflection with a meaty fist. He finds some gauze pads in the medicine cabinet, presses one to his face, and howls.

  He needs a doctor. Without medical attention, he’ll lose the eye. And the pain—Jesus—the pain! He searches the bathroom and finds a bottle of ibuprofen. He takes ten.

  What next? What to do next? A hospital? No. Can’t risk it. He needs a safe place. To heal. To plan.

  Fuller hurries back through the kitchen, stepping over the mess left by the dead guy, and pauses briefly in the living room. Jack’s mother is lying facedown on the carpet. Dead? Possibly. No time to check. He speeds out the door, down the stairs, and onto the cold, wet streets of Chicago. After a frantic moment of wondering what to do, Fuller hails a taxi and knocks on the driver-side window. The driver rolls it down.

  “You need a cab?”

  The guy has an accent. Indian, maybe, or somewhere in the Middle East.

  Fuller says nothing.

  “You okay? You are bleeding.”

  “You are too.”

  He places the Sig against the man’s head and fires, causing quite a mess on the passenger side. Then Fuller opens the door, shoves the guy over, and hits the gas.

  He stops the taxi under a bridge, searches the driver’s pockets. A cell phone. A wallet, with a few hundred bucks. A set of house keys.

  Fuller checks the driver’s license. Chaten Patel, of 2160 N. Clybourn.