Aftermath

by Michael Kerr

  “You’re fuckin’ bluffing, Logan,” Ray said, but his voice lacked confidence.

  “I told Brandon that I don’t bluff. Check it out, because I know for a fact that your orders are to get the stick and then kill us. Do you really want a triple murder rap, now that you know Brandon is finished?”

  Ray kept the gun on Logan, took his cell out of his pocket with his left hand and called Brandon’s number.

  “Give me some good news,” Jerry said.

  “I’m up in Morgantown, Boss,” Ray said. “In a motel room, with a gun on Logan and the women.”

  “Has Logan got the fuckin’ memory stick?”

  “Yeah, but―”

  “There are no buts, Ray. Get it off him and shoot them all.”

  “Logan says that he’s e-mailed a copy of it to the police.”

  “That’s bullshit. He’s lying to you, saying anything to save his skin. If the police had a copy, I’d be in a fuckin’ cell by now, wouldn’t I? Do it, finish the job.”

  A split second and that old standby, luck, can alter the course of everything and anything. History shows us that. The future is not set in stone. One spontaneous word or action can change everything.

  Rita had been moving her hand under the pillow, inchmeal, until she had a firm grip on the butt of the gun. She summoned up all her courage and drew it, knowing that part of the man’s concentration was on the phone call.

  Ray saw the movement from the corner of his eye. He swung his gun hand and jerked on the trigger in the same instant that Rita fired.

  Logan leaned forward in the chair and used the ridged sole of his right boot for purchase as he propelled himself forward in a sudden, explosive attack. And like a big cat bringing down its prey, he crashed into Ray with his full weight behind him.

  Ray felt as though he had been hit by an eighteen-wheeler. All the breath was knocked out of him as his back slammed into the frame of the bathroom door. The gun flew out of his hand to pinwheel though the air and land on the carpet just a few inches from Sharon’s feet.

  Logan drove his right fist into Ray’s stomach with the power of a jackhammer, simultaneously bringing his left knee up to make solid contact with the already incapacitated man’s genitals.

  Ray went sailing backwards into the bathroom; the backs of his knees impacted with the rim of the bath and he fell into it, gouging a deep furrow through his scalp as the back of his head smashed against the faucet. Dazed and in agony from the devastating blows to his stomach and balls, Ray attempted to sit up, only to be met by a shovel-sized, knuckle-scarred fist that seemed to detonate in the side of his face like a hand grenade fragmenting, to fracture his jaw and cheekbone.

  Logan was in a state of cold rage, but had not lost control; just let the reptilian kernel of his brain loose: the deep-rooted part of the psyche that is within all humans, and is bereft of compassion or the ability to show mercy. He leaned over and struck the now unconscious man again, shattering the zygomatic bone that formed part of the orbit around the eye.

  As he was about to inflict even more damage, Sharon used her fists to drum on his back. “Enough, Logan, you’ll kill him,” she shouted.

  Logan hammered his fist into one of the wall tiles. It cracked like ice on a lake under too much weight, and sharp splinters of it flew out and down to shower Ray as he began to regain consciousness, to be consumed in growing world of pain.

  Logan breathed out, long and hard. Refocused. Stood up straight and turned to look down into Sharon’s upturned face. Her eyes were wide and full of apprehension. The sight of Logan in action had been at once a frightening yet elation-filled episode. He seemed to have put hardly any effort into his sudden and overwhelming assault on the man with the gun. There had been no hesitation in his onslaught. On some level Sharon was in awe of this enigmatic stranger who had become their guardian. She had now experienced his extremes: the gentle giant that she had seduced and enjoyed making love with, and now the dark side of a potentially deadly man, who showed no clemency to those that crossed the hard line he had drawn and lived by. His concept of right and wrong seemed simple, with black and white rules that he would not allow himself to be swayed from.

  Rita was unharmed. The bullet from Darrow’s gun had plowed into the mattress to bury in the floor beneath the bed. And the shot that she had fired had gone high, to pass through the ceiling.

  “What are you going to do with him?” Sharon asked Logan.

  “Put him in the trunk of his car and drive him back to Charleston, after I’ve had a cup of coffee.”

  Logan hauled Ray out of the tub and into the room to dump him on the floor with his back up against the foot of the nearest bed. Searched his pockets and relieved him of his phone, wallet and car keys. He then picked up Ray’s gun and held it to the now alert man’s temple.

  “If you’ve got a god, then I suggest you pray to him, Darrow,” Logan said. “Or maybe you can just talk to him in person in a few seconds.”

  Ray felt his bladder void its contents as he squeezed his eyes shut, grimaced and waited for a bullet. His whole life didn’t flash through his mind, just the hope that he would not feel any further pain.

  Logan tossed the gun on the bed. Maybe if Rita and Sharon had not been there to witness it, he would have killed Darrow. The man had come to kill the three of them, and so to Logan’s mind had no right to live.

  Ripping strips from a bed sheet, Logan bound Ray’s wrists and ankles, and then asked him the make and location of his car.

  Ray found it hard to speak. His face felt like a broken egg. He answered Logan’s questions in a slurred, weak mumble.

  Twenty minutes later Logan was good to go. He had found the BMW and driven it round to park next to the Discovery. Checking that there was no one in sight, he picked Ray up like a baby and dumped him in the car’s trunk and closed the lid.

  “Time to go,” Logan said to Rita and Sharon after he had told them how best to handle the inevitable questions that they would be asked by the police.

  They took turns to embrace him, and Logan felt big and clumsy and slightly uncomfortable with the effusive thanks. He’d done what needed doing, no more or less.

  He stopped once on the way down to Charleston to take a leak and check on Ray. And when he arrived in the city he pulled into an alley only a couple of blocks from the police department, untied Ray and helped him out of the trunk.

  “You need a hospital,” Logan said to Brandon’s lackey, handing him the car keys. “And then you should get the hell out and start over.”

  Ray took the keys and got in the driver’s seat. Decided that he would call in at the nearest A and E and tell them that he had been mugged. Once his face had been fixed up he was going to do what he should have done a long time ago, head for Ohio.

  Logan walked away carrying a plastic supermarket bag containing the money he had taken from the holdall. He went to the Greyhound Station and placed the bag in a luggage locker, then bought some Scotch tape in a store and entered a Mac’s on Lee Street East, used the restroom to wash his face and hands and run his fingers through his hair, which needed cutting, and then went to stand in line at the counter. He ordered two quarter-pounders and a large coffee, black.

  He ran through what he was going to say to the cop again as he ate. And finally, before leaving, he nipped a strip of the tape off the reel, pressed the small locker key onto it, and firmly attached the key to the underside of the tabletop, out of reach of where anyone would find it unless they had cause to lay on the floor and look up.

  Charlie Garfield came out to the front desk in a hurry when he got the call that a man by the name of Logan was in the building, asking for him.

  “So you’re Joe Logan,” Charlie said, his face tilted slightly up to look into the big guy’s impassive eyes.

  “That’s right, Detective. How can I help you?”

  “By coming out back and giving me a statement,” Charlie said. “A lot of people have got hurt, been killed, or gone missing, and like I s
aid, your name keeps coming up.”

  “OK,” Logan said.

  They sat in a bright and airy interview room on the first floor. Logan had expected a windowless room with a bolted-down table and two no-frills cheap chairs.

  It started slow. Charlie asked the big man for his full name and address.

  “Joe Logan, no fixed abode.”

  “You’re a vagrant?”

  “No. I prefer nomad. I keep moving, but am self-sufficient, in that I have a pension and money from the sale of a house. I’m no burden to you taxpayers’.”

  “And just how did you hook up with Rita and Sharon Jennings?” Charlie asked.

  Logan ran through it from the day he’d met Rita at the Golden Valley Trailer Park through to the present. He made it concise and skipped any wrongdoing on his part that could result in any charges being brought against him.

  Charlie thought that the man in front of him had done a lot that he would never admit to. “Sounds like you were doing my job, Logan.” He said.

  “I was doing what needed to be done, Detective. The ladies are safe, and you have all the evidence you need to put Brandon away. I’d call that a result.”

  “What about Sal Mendez?” Charlie said.

  Logan shrugged. “What about him?”

  “You know where he is?”

  Logan shook his head. “Probably took off. You may never hear of him again.”

  Charlie caught the inflection in Logan’s voice. Would have bet his pension that Logan knew exactly were Mendez was. And that he would be wasting manpower and money by continuing to search for the hitman.

  Logan asked for coffee. Knew that Charlie was going to start at the beginning and go over it all again, asking different questions. He was happy with that. He had no other place he needed to be.

  Charlie eventually gave it up. He couldn’t find any holes in Logan’s story; even though he knew that they had just been filled in, like graves with their secrets buried.

  “I think that we’re done here,” Logan said. “I’ve come forward and given you all the help you’re going to get from me. Time to cut me loose or charge me.”

  “I could hold you for another twenty-four hours without having to charge you with anything,” Charlie said.

  “That means you have no evidence that I’ve committed any crimes worth spit. But I’m happy to save a few dollars on a motel room tonight,” Logan said with a half-smile on his face. “Do what you feel you have to, Detective.”

  Charlie personally drove Logan to a motel on the edge of the city.

  “Are you prepared to appear as a witness at any upcoming trial that may ensue?” Charlie said as Logan climbed out of the car.

  “No,” Logan said. “You’ve got the file on Brandon’s tax evasion, and probably a lot more that I don’t know about. My only part in this was to keep Rita and Sharon Jennings out of harm’s way.”

  “I know that you beat up at least three guys, including Brandon. And you even blew a couple of Roy Naylor’s toes off.”

  “I don’t think any of them will be bringing charges against me,” Logan said.

  “Stay put till I give you the all clear, Logan,” Charlie said. “I don’t think you want to leave Charleston a wanted man, do you?”

  Logan smiled at the detective and went into the motel’s office to register. Decided that he would then see whatever sights the city had to offer, catch up on sleep, and just hang loose until he had Charlie Garfield’s permission to hit the road again.

  EPILOGUE

  Jerry denied everything. But the evidence Charlie had was enough to charge him and have him incarcerated in the county jail. Gloria Brandon was a different story. There was nothing to implicate her with her husband’s crimes.

  Three months in jail took its toll on Jerry. He was not wearing his toupee, had lost almost fifty pounds, and shuffled about like an octogenarian. Gloria had filed for divorce, and he knew that his future was bleak. He thought back to the day he had made the decision to have Richard Jennings whacked. Of how he had considered what the aftermath of that might be. At the time he’d decided that nothing could go wrong. But it had, in most part due to the interference by the man called Logan.

  Jerry walked from his cell to the shower room, stripped off his orange jumpsuit – which was garish in such dismal surroundings – and turned on and stood under the lukewarm jets of water.

  Sammy Lester had friends. He was on a legal visit with his lawyer. His biggest threat at his upcoming trial would be whatever Brandon had to say, as his former employer attempted to lay off the blame on him.

  Sammy looked at the clock on the wall and smiled.

  Jimmy O’Sullivan and Ronnie White stepped into the shower room.

  The attack was fast and fatal. Jerry felt a white-hot stab of pain as the sharpened plastic toothbrush speared him in the right kidney. O’Sullivan withdrew the homemade shiv and kept stabbing, again and again.

  Jerry collapsed to his knees. He could see his bright, cherry-red blood streaming down his hips and legs to turn pink as it mixed with the running water.

  “Oh, Jesus, no, no!” he gasped as Ronnie White dug a jagged piece of tin, fashioned from a can that had held beans, deep into his throat and jerked it sideways to sever his left carotid artery.

  The two cons wiped and dropped the weapons and left. They had only been in the shower room for twenty seconds.

  Jerry lay on the now pink and white tiles and watched as they turned to gray and then black. It was another ten minutes before an officer walked past the shower room and discovered the corpse.

  Logan was walking west on the hard shoulder of I-70, a few hundred yards short of an exit ramp that led to a strip mall outside the town of Watkins. He had stayed on in Charleston for a week, until the police detective had come to the conclusion that there were no charges that he could bring against him that would hold water, and that he was not going to be a worthwhile witness against Brandon.

  Logan had retrieved the key from the McDonald’s restaurant and picked up his money from the luggage locker when he was absolutely sure that Garfield wasn’t keeping him under surveillance. He then hopped on a Greyhound heading west, spent a few days in St. Louis, then some time in Kansas City, before deciding on the spur of the moment to keep going till he reached Denver in Colorado.

  After enjoying the ride he’d hitched from an old guy who’d been a Marine and had some great stories from several wars, Logan was walking again, now with a new lightweight rucksack holding his few possessions, and the money, that would pay for a lot of food, cheap motels and cheaper clothes. Out in the fresh air, he was just taking in the scenery, happy to be heading for the state capital that was exactly one mile above sea level, hence it’s apt nickname the Mile-High City, which had a magnificent backdrop of the Rocky Mountains.

  He chose a diner by the name of The Arapaho, which was wedged between a Burger King and a tyre and muffler workshop.

  Sitting in a booth near the window, Logan ate the ‘Chief’s Burger’ with steak fries and a side order of battered onion rings. He had a large cup of the best coffee he’d tasted in weeks, and decided that although now just a few weeks short of fifty, and with a few gray hairs at his temples, he was happy to carry on living the way he had become used to. Permanence didn’t exist. Everything was fleeting, and he had nothing to prove or aspire to. Life was what you made it, or at least how you reacted to whatever happened as you passed through it.

  He left the diner in fine mood. Walked towards the cityscape of Denver with a bounce in his step. Every yard he had and would travel was an adventure.

  # # #

  About The Author

  Michael Kerr is the pseudonym of Mike Smail the author of several crime thrillers and two children’s novels. He lives and writes in the Yorkshire Wolds, and has won, been runner-up, and short listed on numerous occasions for short story competitions with Writing Magazine and Writers’ News.

  After a career of more than twenty years in the Prison Service, Mike n
ow uses his experience in that area to write original, hard-hitting crime novels.

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  Deadly Reprisal – Sample

  PROLOGUE

  THE only safe secret is one that no one else is privy to. Steve Taylor knew that. Maybe he would be safe from retribution, but was going to believe otherwise and keep looking over his shoulder. He’d seen the results of complacency firsthand, and taken full advantage of those that had underestimated him as an enemy. One of his main strengths was that he had no real fear of the hereafter, only the here and now. But that didn’t mean he had a death wish. Every day above ground was a bonus.

  Leaving the cottage, Steve trudged beneath a canopy of palm fronds, out onto the beach; a cooler full of Coors Light swinging from his left hand. At the small of his back, tucked in the waistband of his shorts – hidden from view under a loose fitting Hawaiian-style shirt – he could feel the comforting pressure of the Browning Hi-power pistol. It gave him what would soon prove to be a false sense of security.

  Sitting on the still warm sand, Steve watched a couple of kids throwing a Frisbee to each other in the fading light, as he drained a can of Coors, belched, and lit a cigarette.

  A quarter mile distant, a lone figure approached, stopping every few yards to bend down. Steve smiled. They – whoever they were – called it the Sanibel Stoop. Not many tourists could resist picking up the shells that were left high and dry at low tide. He’d done it himself. It was a somehow therapeutic and addictive pastime.