by Andrew Gross
Could Dev be the one who had called me? Allied with Susan Pollack?
With Houvnanian.
Jesus, I told myself, calm down. This could all just be your own crazy paranoia, Jay. Dev could have just as easily bummed that butt from someone down the road. I stood up and looked down the path again. I almost felt him watching me, observing me coming to the conclusion. Enjoying this! I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Call Sherwood?
It would just be another of those countless uncorroborated fears: Susan Pollack at the rock with Evan; the black or dark blue Kia outside Charlie’s apartment; my brother’s thirty-year-old lyrics echoed by Houvnanian.
This time I needed something more. Something real.
And suddenly I realized that I might have something more. Something that could pin Dev to this.
I wrapped the butt in some paper and headed back to my room.
I hurried, my heart beating rapidly now. I looked back around, like he was watching me out there. Toying with me.
I got to my wing of the motel and bounded up the outside flight of stairs. I hurried down the hall and jammed the card key into the lock. It took a couple of times for it to open and I let the door shut behind me, switching the metal bolt, just to be sure.
I went over to the bed and took the book off my night table.
Greenway’s book.
I flipped it open, skimming to where I wanted to go. My blood certain that this was it.
I located the insert of photographs. All the shots of Houvnanian and his other conspirators. The evidence photos: the guns, the knives, bloody clothing. Their VW van.
I’d been through them all before.
I searched until I found the photos taken on the ranch. There were two or three of the “family” all gathered around—drifters, hippies, outcasts, as they were in their days there. Making music. Working the farm. Gethsemane. Their paradise, before their world collapsed.
One shot was of a group sitting out on boulders they had cleared from a field. The same one I had searched for my brother’s face only days before.
I recognized a younger Susan Pollack. She was there.
As were Sarah Strasser and Carla Jean Blue, who had participated in the killings.
And some other names I recognized.
But no Dev. He wasn’t there!
I skipped a few photos ahead. There was another group shot of them, this time clearing brush for their vegetable garden. I’d read that there was always a lot of work that had to be done there. Two of the gals were raking soil. Carla Jean again. And Tel. And another guy in a long ponytail, planting, who looked vaguely familiar. But when I checked, his name was Scott Oulette.
It wasn’t him.
Three or four others were standing around holding tools. None of them even resembled Dev.
Damn.
I was about to give up when behind them I noticed someone perched on a small, dilapidated tractor.
My breath stopped. It was like a hand had put its icy fingers around my heart—and squeezed. I bore in on the face.
And I felt my blood about to explode.
It was the same person, except his hair was long then, a thin dark beard on his chin, wearing a bandana. He was grinning innocently, one arm on the wheel, but I could see it, as clearly as I could see the faces of my own kids when they were young.
I looked among the credits for a name.
And I read it twice, just to make sure I had seen it correctly.
Devin Dietz (on tractor).
I put down the book and just sat there for a while, everything slowly sinking in. I knew I had to call. I fumbled in my pocket for my phone. I located my previous call—to Sherwood—and pressed Redial.
He answered on the second ring, sighing when he saw who it was from. “What’s going on there, doc?”
“Susan Pollack’s accomplice,” I said, trying to hold my voice together. “I know who it is!”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Sherwood grabbed his gun off the kitchen counter and strapped on his holster. He’d made a vow, a few days back, he wasn’t sure precisely when. Maybe it was after Pelican Bay. Or when he’d heard about the lyrics to Charlie’s song. Or maybe it went all the way back to that dollar bill in Thomas Greenway’s stomach.
Or maybe back to the doc asking what that new liver had been for . . .
If it was going to end in a fight, he’d be the one to end it.
He put on his jacket and touched the picture of Dorrie good-bye, pressing his fingers to her smile, just as he did every time he went out on the job.
“The guy’s a panhandler,” the doc had said, excited. “Near my hotel. He’s pushed his way into my life. I didn’t realize it—but for the past few days, I think he’s been stalking me.”
“Stay where you are,” Sherwood had instructed him. “Whatever you do, don’t leave. I’ll be right there.”
It was time to end this thing—and now.
He headed out the kitchen door. His Camry was parked in the drive outside. He had about a fifteen-minute ride from where he lived to the Cliffside Suites motel. He needed to warn the patrol car he had stationed outside Charlie’s apartment to be on alert, but he decided he might as well do it from the car, on his way.
He crossed around to the driver’s side, this weird sensation flashing through him: how Jay Erlich had wormed his way into his life, past his defenses. It had been a long time since he had let anyone in. One day there would be very little he would miss in this life. His friends had all moved on, down to San Diego or Arizona. The people he really loved were gone. But this past week . . . He chuckled. Something had awakened inside him. Something he hadn’t felt in a long while. Something vital. Over people he had never even heard of or given a rat’s ass about just a week before.
Funny, he thought to himself, how these things go. You never know what’s really important to you, until—
As he reached for the door handle, he heard a rustle from behind him.
Then he felt the most excruciating shock of pain cleave deep into his back.
The next thing he knew he felt the pavement, cold and firm against his face. Something sharp and body-splitting deep in his back. The air rushed out of him. He didn’t know what had happened, only that he couldn’t move and that it was bad. He tried to inhale, but it was like there was a hole in his air sac, his breaths leaking out of his back.
Turn over.
Before he could, he heard a loud grunt and felt another bone-splitting blow bury into his upper back. The pain almost sheared him in two. He tried to reach for it. He tried to power his brain through the pain—What had happened? What was there to do?—with whatever clarity he still possessed.
He had to warn the doc. He was in trouble too.
That was all.
But he couldn’t move. A warm, coppery taste was on his tongue and he saw blood trickle down the driveway past his face into a growing pool. Damn. He tried to force himself up, like an animal fighting for one last breath—one last rush—but then another cracking jolt cleaved through him, his spine splitting in two.
“Ahh . . . ,” he groaned deeply. He reared back around and saw, almost with a glint of amusement, what appeared to be the wooden handle of an ax.
Chickens, he thought, and lay his head back down. Damn.
“Don’t . . .” He heard a woman’s voice. It was more of a plea than a command. His mind was fuzzy. “Please, don’t. We told you to stay out, you dumb bastard. If you had . . .”
There was another, spine-splitting blow. No longer pain, just numbness and cold. All the air sucked out of his body from his back.
He felt sad to have let the doc down. Not to have finished what he vowed to complete.
He knew it was time to let go, but as he did, something else came into his drifting mind.
He struggled forward, like a snake cut in half continuing to slide on his belly. His fingers gripped the pavement, now like sand. Each small measure forward consuming most of what was left of his strength.
No, not this time, it wouldn’t . . .
He looked up to the shining, sunlit sight. He could almost touch it. Just a few more feet.
Please . . .
Sherwood opened his eyes. The driveway was gone, and instead of asphalt, soft leaves and moss brushed against his face. Green and cool now. The soothing tide of the river felt good against him.
Just stay with me, son. I’ll be there.
Through the haze he saw the blue craft up ahead. He kept forcing himself, pushing against the current, against the dissipation of everything inside him. To get there. “Please, please, please, son, please . . .”
He reached out, desperation in his voice.
He made it. He felt the smooth, slick exterior of the fiberglass hull. The bright white stripe. His heart in panic, he turned it over and looked inside.
There he was. Kyle, all huddled up inside. Smiling at him. In his helmet. In the River Tours T-shirt they had bought him at the check-in station. The greatest joy he had ever felt coursing through him. Welcoming him.
“It’s okay, Dad,” Kyle said, reaching to hug him. “I’m okay. I’m here.”
Chapter Sixty-Nine
I hung up and waited, sitting on the bed, my right leg bobbing crazily. I didn’t know what to do.
I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t afraid. The guy was stalking me. Mocking me, in the same way Houvnanian had. He was saying good-bye. My reasons for relocation here are coming to an end. What reasons? With Susan Pollack unaccounted for, it could only mean that whatever they had planned for Charlie and Gabby was going to happen soon.
I grabbed my phone again and punched in my brother’s number. I let it ring six or seven times—C’mon, Charlie, Gabby, pick up!—but no one answered. Finally the message recording came on. Gabby. “Please leave a number . . . We will get back to you.” Shit.
I didn’t know if they even checked these things.
“Listen, Charlie . . . ,” I blurted after the beep. “It’s Jay. I need to talk to you about what’s going on! It’s vitally important you call me back. Please . . .”
I hung up, not feeling good at all. Thirty seconds went by, and it felt to me like ten minutes. I must’ve glanced at my watch three times. They wanted me out. They wanted to face this alone. Something could already have happened! It was driving me crazy. I didn’t know what to do.
Only that, in that moment, I knew I couldn’t wait for Sherwood another second. I had to do something. Why wouldn’t they answer? It was possible, even likely, that while I sat there, something was going down right then.
I threw on my jeans and a shirt and grabbed my car keys off the desk. I opened the door and headed out, phone in hand. I figured I’d let Sherwood know what I was doing on the way.
I never saw a thing, only felt the impact of a two-handed swing from the side, as if a baseball bat had slammed into the side of my head.
I fell against the wall.
“Jeez, doc, where you headed so fast? You and I still have some things to talk about, no?”
The next blow struck me solidly in the face, the butt end of a large gun. I staggered backward through the half-closed door, attempting to catch my balance.
“You eastern folk . . .” The voice was like a faraway echo in my brain. “Always in such a big rush to go everywhere . . .”
The third shot almost knocked me down.
I was pushed back into my room, my head completely dazed, my legs rubber.
“Sorry, doc.”
He hit me in the stomach, sending me to a knee, and when I looked up, it was as if every bit of air had left my lungs and I heaved in desperation to draw a breath.
Dev was in the doorway. He let the door close tight behind him with a loud and very foreboding click.
This was bad.
Through my haze, Dev was grinning at me. “Maybe I’ll just take you up on that invitation a little earlier than you planned. That fine with you, doc?”
I could make out the gun in his hands, heavy and oversize, sending a tremor of fear shooting through me. My car keys were on the floor and he bent down and picked them up, catching them once in his palm. “I don’t know, I feel like we still have a few things to hash out. No reason to rush out now.”
I put a hand to my face. Warm blood streamed down the side. My brain was numb and clouded, but not so clouded that I didn’t realize I was in real trouble here. I flashed to Zorn and Greenway. And that woman from Michigan, her body all cut up. A chill shot through me. “What are you doing, Dev?”
“C’mon, Jay.” He laughed. “I may not have the fancy degree and all, but don’t play me for a complete fool.” He went over to the bed and picked up the copy of Greenway’s book I’d left there, opened to the photo of him on the tractor. “Man, I was a handsome bugger back then. A little lost, perhaps, but, hey, we all were. They called me Mal . . .” He tossed the book back on the bed and shook his head at me sympathetically. “Jeez, I couldn’t have laid it out for you any prettier, could I, Jay?”
I pushed up onto my feet and tried to run at him—all I could think to do—but he caught me on the side of the head with the gun butt, a blast ringing out this time and something thudding into the wall above the bed, creating a quarter-size hole.
I crumpled onto the floor, my head exploding.
“Damn, doc.” He chuckled, wide-eyed. “This thing really works. You know, it’s been a while.”
I flashed to Sherwood. He was on his way. “You don’t need to do this, Dev. I just called the police. They’ll be here any second.”
“The police . . .” He didn’t exactly seem worried. “If by ‘police’ you mean your ol’ buddy Sherwood . . . Hmmph, I’m afraid I have to inform you, doc . . . He’s just a shade under the weather at the moment.”
Sherwood. He was my only hope.
That’s when my fear really began to escalate. I knew now there was no one coming to the rescue. I was going to have to fight for my life.
Now.
I wasn’t a small guy. I’d played lacrosse in college. I kept in shape—forty-year-old shape. Like eighteen holes of golf or thirty minutes on the treadmill. Not fight-for-your-life kind of shape. Dev wasn’t exactly Rambo, but I knew the things he had done.
And my head was bursting.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked, scanning around the room for something I could use.
“What am I gonna do? That’s a really good question, doc. One you probably should’ve worried about a little earlier in the game. Like when I asked you nicely to get back on that plane and go on home. Or before you had to visit Russell. Now it’s just a little late for asking me that, don’t you think? Now you’re, like, part of the music. Know what I mean?”
He stepped back, drawing the curtains closed. The room became dark and a chill shot through me.
My gaze swung to the night table and I grabbed a lamp there and lunged at him with everything I had.
It was a desperate act, and the electrical cord caught in the wall. Dev easily fended it off. With a backhanded swing, he drove the gun butt across my face and sent me reeling again, blood filling up my mouth.
Like an animal, he took the same lamp, yanking it free from the wall, and cracked it into the side of my head. I felt my eyes roll back. No, Jay, you can’t let him win. If you do, you’re dead, echoed in my brain. I tried to get up again, thinking I could bull-rush him and take him down to the floor, but I was like a bloodied, beaten animal about to be put out of its misery, everything reeling and slipping away.
I suddenly found myself on my knees.
“What to do . . . ?” He shook his head and chirped. “Just what to do . . . ?” He spun around the desk chair and sat, facing me.
My brain struggled to clear.
He picked up the remote from the desk and turned on the TV. It was Everybody Loves Raymond. It was bizarre. I recognized it in
stantly. The one when Ray and Robert go out golfing when Deborah thinks he’s working on his novel . . .
He turned the volume up high.
He sat there and shrugged, his steely eyes glinting with this remote, mirthless smile. “Oh, who needs this,” he said, and tucked the gun into his belt and came back out with a six-inch blade. “I think you already know, doc, there are people who seem to think I’m quite the artist with this thing.”
I tried to stagger up one last time and he just pushed me with his boot, sending me down to the floor.
“I truly wish you’d just kept that cute little nose of yours out of things, doc . . . I kinda like you, I really do.” He kicked me over, faceup. I tried to push my way up one more time, but he pressed his foot onto my chest. My strength was gone. There was a look of inevitability in his coal-black eyes. “But I guess it’s a little late for the big show of affection now.”
I saw the blade dance before me and felt a pain across my cheek, blood trickling into my hands.
“Whoops!” he crowed.
Then with a gleam in his eye, he dug the blade into the nape of my neck, under my chin. A spasm of absolute terror sped down my spine. My eyes shook with tears, tears of just how very stupid I had been. How I’d stepped into something I had no business in. And now I was about to pay for it with my life.
“You killed them,” I said, glaring with whatever strength I still had. “Zorn. Greenway.”
“Ancient history, doc. What we oughta be a bit more focused on is what’s going to happen to you.”
“And Evan,” I said, glaring into his dull, animal eyes.
At that, he sort of chuckled and shrugged impassively. “Let’s face it, doc, it wasn’t like we were robbing the world of a future Nobel Prize winner, don’t you think? But we did think it might get a rise out of his old man.”
A last wave of anger went off in me, and I lunged for his throat. He hit me in the face with the blunt end of the blade and his fist, darkness rolling in front of my eyes. When I opened them again, he had the blade under my chin.