by Michael Kerr
As he took deep breaths and tried to work out how to get out of the situation he was in, headlights lit up the inside of the Pontiac.
“Please…No,” Roy moaned, convinced that the big guy had thought it over and come back to whack him.
Thirty seconds slid by. There was a sharp rap on the window.
“Put your hands on the steering wheel, now” a voice said.
Roy slowly raised his hands and placed them over the wheel. He never thought he would be so relieved to see a cop, but he was now.
The door opened. The trooper was dressed in a green uniform and wearing a campaign hat. A regular Smokey Bear. He had a hand on the butt of a gun that was holstered to his belt.
Trooper first class Gene Harris had seen pale moonlight reflecting off the car’s roof as he passed by Tygart Lake on his way home to Grafton.
“What went down here?” Gene asked Roy, taking into consideration that there was blood dripping out of the man’s mouth, and that he seemed to be in a lot of distress.
“I was mugged,” Roy replied, hardly opening his mouth and sounding like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “I pulled off here to take a nap and the next thing I knew the door was yanked open and a couple of young guys with handguns were in my face.”
“Did you see what make of vehicle they were driving, sir?”
“No. They must have cut the lights and free-wheeled up behind me.”
“And what exactly did they do?”
“They took my wallet and cell phone, and asked me for the PIN numbers for my credit cards. I said I couldn’t remember. That’s when they hit me a couple of times. I gave them the numbers, and then one of them told me to take off my shoes and socks.
“Look,” Roy said, raising his legs. “They shot both my fuckin’ big toes off.”
“No shit!” Gene said, reaching for the radio that was clipped to the knife-proof vest he wore over his uniform shirt, to call it in and request an ambulance.
It was almost noon the next day when Roy woke up in a hospital bed in Morgantown. They had operated on his feet, jaw and finger. He was bandaged up and wired up, but whatever pain reliever they’d given him was doing the job. He was uncomfortable but already feeling a lot better. Didn’t yet know how hard it was going to be to walk without his big toes. And he wouldn’t be using his right hand to shoot a gun for a long time if ever.
A nurse came into the room.
“I need a phone,” Roy said to her.
“Sorry, but the police are outside waiting to speak with you,” the nurse replied. “Would you like some water?”
“Uh, yeah,” Roy said through his teeth. He was parched. He had to use a straw to suck the water up slowly from a plastic beaker.
Five minutes later a tall middle-aged, clean-shaven guy in a dark suit, and a young woman in uniform came into the room. There was a sad lack of sympathy in their eyes. Roy knew that they’d have checked out the Pontiac and know it was stolen. He had been going to dump it after hitting the woman, and then lift another vehicle for the ride back to Charleston. Now he was in the shit, but it could have been a whole lot worse. The bastard that had hurt him had done him a big favor by taking his gun and ID. He could ride this out. It was no big deal.
The Suit settled in one of the plastic contour chairs next to the bed. The uniform stayed on her feet, almost at attention as if she was on some cop parade ground.
The guy smiled at Roy. The left side of his mouth came up like he was doing an Elvis impression. “I’m Captain Frank Macklin of the State Police,” he said. “We took your prints while you were snoozing, and guess what? We got a hit.”
Roy said nothing. Didn’t complain that they had no right to print him because he had been a victim, not a perp.
“You’ve done time, Roy,” Macklin said. “Last stretch was down in Glenville at Gilmer Federal Correctional Facility, for grievous bodily harm on a woman. Am I Right?”
Roy nodded slowly. His whole head still hurt.
“And that piece of shit Pontiac you were found in was stolen down in Charleston four days ago. What’s your story?”
“I’m the victim here,” Roy said. “I bought the car from some guy in a bar. He said he would get the paperwork to me. As for last night, I told the cop what had gone down. I got robbed and seriously assaulted.”
“What were you planning on doing up here, Roy?”
“I was just taking a break. Sightseein’ this beautiful part of the State.”
“How come I don’t believe you, Roy?” Macklin said.
“Because you’re a cop and I’m an ex-con,” Roy came back.
“True,” Macklin said. “So here’s what’s going to happen. I’m not going to pursue the issue of the stolen vehicle. I don’t want to waste taxpayers’ money on a crappy little matter like that. As for the assault on you by unknown perpetrators, I don’t buy it. I think you know exactly who attacked you, and maybe you got just what you deserved.
“I’m going to let you make one phone call. I suggest that you arrange for one of your lowlife buddies to come and collect you. The sooner you’re out of my county the better. And Naylor, don’t come back here. You’re not welcome.”
“That it?” Roy said.
“Yeah. All told, I think you got a result.”
That was all. The cops left and the nurse brought a phone into the room and plugged it into a jack on the wall. Roy rang Sal and told him the story.
“I’m back in Charleston,” Sal said. “I should be able to get up there in three, four hours. I’ll tell Sammy what went down. He won’t be happy.”
“Fuck him. Shit happens. We need to find the guy that poked his nose in and did this to me. I’m not going to get a good night’s sleep till he’s dead.”
It was the next morning when Sammy Lester got back to Sal.
“I’ve been in touch with the contractor,” Sammy said. “He’s obviously pissed with both of you, but he still wants the job done. OK?”
“OK,” Sal said. “But we need the computer you’ve got that’s gettin’ the signal from the tracker on the broad’s 4x4.”
“You got a smart phone, Sal?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll link it to your phone. Last location I got up for the Discovery was Morgantown.”
“We’re on it,” Sal said.
“Hope so. They may change vehicles.”
Sal waited for the link to come through and checked the GPS. The Discovery was northwest in the Monongahela National Park area. But it wasn’t giving a pinpoint fix. Maybe when they got near to the mountainous region it would home in on their quarries. First thing to do was to go to the trailer park Rita Jennings had stayed at and start from there.
Roy should have stayed at his apartment, where Sal had dropped him the previous evening, and given himself time to heal up. He was just a spare limb to Sal’s way of thinking. But Roy wanted to be there when Sal found the woman and the big guy that had maimed him, so he picked him up on the way out of town.
When they reached the turnoff, Sal drove straight up the trail and stopped outside the motor home with the office sign in the window. He got out of the Taurus and checked his immediate surroundings. There was a half dozen people having a barbeque, and a kid throwing a Frisbee for a yappy puppy to catch. He knocked on the door. An old guy in overalls opened it.
“Hi, old-timer,” Sal said to Tom Ellerson.
“Hi back at ya, son,” Tom said. “You want to rent a trailer?”
“Not today. I’m lookin’ for a friend. Thought she might be stayin’ here.”
“I’d have thought if you had friends, they’d have been city slickers like you. You look a long way outside your comfort zone in these woods, dressed in that snazzy suit.”
Sal wanted to pistol-whip the old fart, get the information he needed, and then put a couple of bullets in his head for good measure, but this wasn’t the time or the place.
“I do work in the city,” Sal said. “Maybe I should do what my friends do and get away from it mor
e often. So can you help me?”
“I don’t know yet. Who’re you looking for?”
“Her name is Rita Jennin’s.”
“Then you came to the right place, son, but the wrong time.”
“What does that mean?”
“Had a woman by that name staying here for a day or two, but she took off the other night. When I got up, she’d gone.”
“By herself?”
“I reckon not. There was a big guy staying in that Airstream over there,” Tom said as he pointed at it. “He was missing the next morning as well.”
“You got his name and address?”
Tom stepped back inside and lifted a binder up off a shelf. Opened it and nodded at Sal. “Yup,” he said. “He said that his name was Johnson, and that he hailed from Oklahoma City.”
“What was he drivin’?”
“Nothing. He just walked in. Didn’t even have any luggage, ‘cept for a little rucksack”
“Thanks,” Sal said gruffly as he turned to leave.
“You a cop?” Tom asked him.
“No,” Sal said without breaking stride or looking back. “A PI. The woman’s husband is payin’ me to locate her.”
Sal drove out onto the highway; told Roy what little he’d learned, and kept going till he came to a timber-built diner that looked as though it had been there since the Civil War. He parked in the side lot and got out.
“You want some take out?” Sal asked Roy.
“As if I could eat with my mouth wired up,” Roy said. “Get me a Coke and a straw.”
Sal gave him a hard look. “This isn’t goin’ to work, Roy. You can’t fuckin’ walk. You’re a mess and a liability. You need to be at home chewin’ pain killers, restin’ up and letting that bimbo you’re screwin’ look after you.”
Roy thought it over while Sal was inside the diner. He was in agony, and couldn’t ignore it and function properly. Common-sense told him that Sal was right. He needed timeout to recover.
“OK, Sal,” Roy said after taking a few sips of the soda and wishing he was able to eat the cheeseburger that his partner was working on. “I don’t want to slow you down on this. Get me back home, then find the woman and the guy and take them out. And make the guy suffer for what he did to me.”
Sal finished the burger, took a mouthful of coffee and then placed the plastic cup in a holder on the console. Wiped his hands on a paper napkin and patted Roy on the shoulder. “Good thinkin’, Roy.” He said. “You know how it is. I’m gonna need to move fast and not have to worry about you. I’ll find them, and blow the toes off the creep that did this to you, before I gut shoot him and watch him die.”
“Do me a favor, use your phone to video him croaking,” Roy said.
Sal grinned. “You got it, pal.”
Logan got the woodstove in the cabin going while Rita and Sharon checked the place out and selected the largest bedroom and unpacked what little they had.
After a few minutes, Rita came back into the large kitchen/living area, found the coffeemaker, used a clean filter and coffee from the welcome pack on the counter and set it going.
Sharon came through from the bedroom wearing a cream T-shirt, denim shorts and bulky air-trainers that made her feet look massive.
“What now?” Sharon said to Logan.
“We eat, and then get a good night’s sleep.”
“I mean about the trouble we’re in.”
“I’ll work it out and fix it.”
“How?”
Logan sighed. The girl was understandably uptight and fearful. This was a situation outside her life experience. She was obviously intelligent, but in an educated way. The nearest she would have probably ever come to violent death, previous to this episode, was on TV or in movies, and that was easy to disassociate yourself from. That her father had been murdered, and seeing the bodies of two friends that had been shot dead, and knowing that it was you that had been the principal target, must be a lot to take on board and cope with. Most people were naïve. They lived ordinary, orderly dull lives, and thought that a flat tyre or a sprained ankle was a big deal.
“I don’t know yet,” he replied, and then blew the dust out of a mug, filled it with fresh coffee and went outside the cabin to be alone and think.
All the cabins were angled to give a view of the lake behind them. It was a nice setting. The reflection of the mountain peaks on the smooth water looked like a painting.
He walked down to a small landing that had several canoes and kayaks stacked next to it on the shore and sat at the end of the solid timber jetty with his legs over the edge and his feet just a couple of inches above the water. He cleared his mind. Just enjoyed the moment in a place he’d never been. He could smell the scent of pine and hear geese honking way out on the lake. Maybe a cabin on its own somewhere in an area like this would be a good base to travel from when he got the urge to see pastures new.
A frown creased Logan’s brow. He closed his slate-gray eyes and for a few seconds looked ahead to what might be a future he was still a part of. It struck him that he was now almost fifty, and that drifting from town to town, state to state, was not something he could do forever. But the truth was that until he couldn’t, he would just keep moving. It was all he knew and felt happy doing. Being alone suited him just fine, because he never felt lonely.
Back with the current program, Logan thought how best to deal with the threat to the two women in the cabin behind him. The situation was stable at the moment. One of the hitters had been effectively dealt with, and the other had no idea where they were. But whoever wanted Rita and Sharon dead would not be discouraged. He obviously thought they had information that could seriously harm him.
He drank his coffee and shook the dregs out of the mug into the water, and watched the small fishes darting in and out between the timber piles as he ran through all that had occurred since he’d come face to face with Rita Jennings.
Something was bothering him, scratching at the edges of his brain. Something that he’d overlooked. This was like combat. You had to give the enemy all due respect, and know how to think like they did, so that you were ready for any form of attack.
It came to him. There was no excuse, but he had missed something that should have been fundamental in his reckoning. As he lifted his right leg up and put his foot on the planks, he heard a footfall behind him.
“Stay there, Logan,” a voice said.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jerry Brandon was outside the showroom on the lot at his dealership adjacent to the Kanawha Mall, which was in sight of the traffic up on the West Virginia turnpike.
It was hot as hell and the sun was glinting off the gold frames of Jerry’s bifocals. He looked a like a showman, not a businessman. He was fifty-three, with thick, gray, collar-length hair. He wore a trademark pure white suit, with a belt sporting a large silver buckle with an embossed eagle’s head at its centre to keep his pants up, a red silk necktie, and snakeskin cowboy boots with extra high heels to lift him up a couple of inches from the five feet eight he stood barefooted.
Jerry’s tanned face looked strained as he spoke to Sammy Lester.
“I don’t fucking believe this,” Jerry said. “You told me that the two guys you’d hired were professionals. I’d have done better paying Abbott and Costello to get rid of my problem.”
“Who?” Sammy said. He was twenty-five and a parallel universe away from the old comedy double act.
“They were fucking idiots,” Jerry said. “Nearly as stupid as the team you recommended. Tell me that you’re going to put matters right, and quickly.”
“It’ll all work out, boss,” Sammy said.
“Why didn’t it work out the first time, before the bitches knew that they were being targeted?”
“The girl in D.C. was just lucky. One of the broads she lived with was a dead ringer for her and attends the same university. And she borrowed her car that day.”
“Luck didn’t come into it, you moron,” Jerry said. “Is the shooter
short-sighted as well as dumb? He should have identified her beyond any doubt. Instead, he followed her car and assumed that she was driving it.”
“He’ll find her and kill her, boss. I guarantee it. Sal will get the job done.”
“And what about her mother?”
“Roy Naylor followed her to a trailer park up north. Even put a tracker on her SUV when she stopped for a break. He picked his time, at night, and checked that her vehicle was outside the trailer before he went in. He said that the bed was empty, but that a guy jumped him.”
“And?”
“The guy left Roy next to a lake, after he’d hurt him bad and shot two of his toes off with Roy’s gun.”
“Unbelievable. So what’s Plan B, Sammy?”
“It figures that the daughter will go to her mother. Sal will find them and finish it.”
“What do we know about the guy that stuck his nose in?”
“Sal talked with the owner of the trailer park. Seems he was a drifter who just walked in off the highway. Gave his name as Johnson. And Roy says he’s at least six-three and built like a tank. And that he was extremely capable. Maybe ex-forces or something.”
Jerry walked away. Took a slim, 9 carat gold cigarette case from his inside jacket pocket, opened it and plucked a Parliament from behind the retaining bar to light with a gold-plated Zippo. He took a deep drag and looked at the polish on a dark green 2008 sedan that he was having difficulty moving. Maybe he’d knock a few bucks off the loaded price and make it ‘Bargain of the Week’.
Sammy watched his boss. He wanted to keep him sweet. Jerry Brandon was a psycho. To most people he came across as a self-made man; a regular guy who’d done well for himself and was known for his charity work in the right circles of Charleston. To the few that really knew him, he was nothing but a crook with a violent temper. Sammy had seen him lose the plot on several occasions. Once watched as he threw a salesman through a plate-glass window after finding out that he had given a relative a heavy discount on a car.