Justice

by Doug Sutherland

  He wasn’t sure when she’d let herself into his bedroom, at first wasn’t sure it was really happening. Then she was sitting beside him, her hand reaching beneath the covers.

  “I think you’ve been expecting me, Frank.”

  “This is a bad idea,” he said.

  She hesitated, moved her hand away. There was movement in the darkness and then she was straddling him, her hand reaching for him again. He heard her breath catch as she guided him inside her.

  “Now you tell me.”

  35

  Vince was pissed off at himself. He’d fucked up badly with Angela Lowry. He’d left it too long, for one thing. He’d forgotten the old two lane road wasn’t completely deserted. He thought he had a couple more miles to work with, no chance of witnesses, and he’d been absolutely wrong. He’d also been flat dumb lucky. He’d never had any intention of ramming her car, thought that if he got close enough and was aggressive enough he’d just panic her into going off the road. As ill-formed a tactic as it was, it might have worked, but even going off the road was no guarantee of a fatality, not on that stretch. He should have done it a few miles before, where at least the road was bordered by unyielding trees. The whole thing had been a stupid, unnecessary risk. If he’d somehow gotten entangled with the Miata when it had braked for that driveway he would have blown the whole thing.

  What worried him more was that he’d been sloppy, nowhere near as methodical as he should have been. For a man who prided himself on his thoroughness and preparation he’d been far too impulsive. He’d been pissed off after blowing so much time stalking Whittaker and then coming up empty. As soon as he’d seen the Miata he’d made a snap decision, something that went completely against his so-called plan. Other than McIvor, the ones he’d gotten to so far were all old white guys. If you used a little imagination you could knock off guys like that until the cows came home and nobody would bat an eyelash. Most of them had been on the way out anyway and it wasn’t hard to help them along.

  For that reason alone he’d initially decided to leave the women for last and then get the hell out of Dodge. He’d always known that it would be much different with the women. They were still relatively young, beautiful – ice somebody like that and all the righteous indignation in the world would fall on you.

  Well, fine. He realized now that all his planning had been a conceit. He’d presupposed that he’d be somehow impervious to the reality of what he was doing. He wasn’t. The reality was that he was killing people, something he’d never even contemplated before Tommy died. No battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy. He’d read that once somewhere, part of a wasted attempt to educate himself while he was inside. He could see the truth of it, though, because that was exactly what was happening. Angela had been a target of opportunity that hadn’t worked out. It could have, though, and if it had been successful he’d have congratulated himself and scratched one more name off the list.

  He realized that he was thinking differently about the women than he had with the men. When he was planning things – or more correctly, he thought ruefully, when he wasn’t planning them, he’d taken to thinking of the women by their first names, as if they were somehow friends or maybe something more than friends. There was a strange intimacy about it, although he supposed there could be few things more intimate than taking someone else’s life. That was something he hadn’t done with the men, even though all his shadowing and preparation meant that in some ways they’d become his familiars.

  He hadn’t expected Angela to suddenly slam on the brakes and turn into that driveway. He’d missed her by scant inches when he’d swerved around her. It was a miracle she hadn’t rolled the car when she’d made the turn. If that had happened the whole thing might have worked, in spite of the fact he’d done virtually everything wrong.

  He told himself that she’d probably been blinded by his high beams, but there was still no way to be sure she couldn’t ID his car. It was a chance that he couldn’t take, so that meant another road trip. For all his planning he hadn’t anticipated how much he’d have to juggle vehicles and how far afield he’d have to go to do it. After he’d taken out McIvor—there you go, McIvor, more impersonal—he’d driven back to Buffalo to ditch the Lexus and retrieve his own car, but this time around he’d decided to stay clear of Buffalo and go to Cleveland instead. He’d just sanitized the Pontiac as best he could and stuck stolen plates on it, abandoned it in the worst part of town he could find. Scavengers would take care of the rest. He came back with an elderly and anonymous brown Taurus that he bought outright with cash.

  Other than the fuck- up with Angela he’d had a hell of a good run, done better than he had any right to expect, but it was just about time to change his coordinates. He’d made a point of keeping a low profile, kept his contact with the locals to an absolute minimum. The exception to that was Hopkins, the guy who ran the motel. He’d clocked the Taurus right away—hard not to—and Vince had had to get into a song and dance act about how he couldn’t trust the Pontiac anymore, that it was too unreliable. The man apparently had no life and Vince could hardly make it to the pop machine in the breezeway without running into him and ending up in some meandering conversation. It had been useful, to a point, because if Vince was patient enough and tolerant enough he could occasionally pick up useful pieces of information. The trouble was he had to listen to so much meaningless shit to get it.

  It was obvious Jed Hopkins would talk to anyone who would listen, whether they wanted to listen or not. That meant that at some point, if he hadn’t already, he’d end up telling someone about this guy who was living at the motel, had no job and apparently little interest in getting one, and spent most of his time locked up in his room. Vince had thought briefly about taking the precaution of killing him but just as quickly dismissed the thought as counterproductive. The trade-off just wasn’t worth it. Besides, the guy hadn’t done anything to Tommy, and that’s what this was about.

  Vince decided to leave early enough in the morning that Hopkins would be asleep or passed out, if he was in the office at all and not back at his parents’ place. It would probably be hours before he even knew he was gone. It was just a matter of packing up tonight, wiping the place down and doing an idiot sweep to make sure he’d left nothing behind. He’d paid cash and he didn’t need or want any of it back, hadn’t signed anything, and used a name he’d picked out of thin air. He already had a fallback set of license plates in the Taurus. It was all basic stuff and far from foolproof. In spite of the wipe down he knew his DNA had to be all over the place, but from the lack of reaction to what had happened so far no one had any reason to look.

  In spite of all that Vince knew he was running out of time and space. Sooner or later he’d make a mistake, and the longer this took the more likely it would happen. It was time to accelerate the schedule and get it over with. He had another no-tell motel picked out about thirty miles away, and from now on he’d just commute, like anyone else with a job to do. It was the safest way. He had no intention of turning this into a suicide mission, and the people left on the list would draw a lot of attention.

  Things were about to go noisy.

  36

  “Ted, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Sure you are, Karen thought. Nobody seemed to know how old Ted Saunders actually was, but just looking at him Karen would have guessed late sixties, maybe older. She hadn’t known him long, only started working at the bar a couple of months ago when he finally decided he couldn’t be short-staffed any longer. She felt vaguely guilty about it – everybody in town knew that he thought a lot of Sherry, the girl Karen replaced, although Ted didn’t talk about her much. Karen had asked about her a couple of times, how she was doing, but the look on Ted’s face was enough to tell her that the subject was off-limits.

  She knew most of the story anyway. Early that spring Sherry had nearly been killed, caught in the crossfire when the local cops had raided her boyfriend’s place. Like everyone
else in town Karen knew who the boyfriend was. She’d even gone out with him briefly, long before he and Sherry had become an item. The difference was that she’d decided Kenny Langdon was the kind of trouble she didn’t need. She’d gotten out in time.

  Sherry hadn’t. By all accounts she was a nice girl who’d seen something in Kenny no one else did, thought she saw enough to turn him away from the hellbent path he was on. Good luck with that, Karen had thought at the time. Even as it crossed her mind something made her glance over at Alex.

  He was still sitting at the far end of the bar with a couple of scruffy types who not long ago had been tied up with Kenny Langdon. The similarities between Sherry’s relationship with Kenny and her own with Alex Stromberg were getting scary, something Karen was finally willing to admit to herself. Bad boys were always fun for a while, but she was starting to get the same vibe about Alex that she’d gotten about Kenny all those years ago.

  Alex glanced over, caught her staring at him, probably thought of it as more proof she thought he was irresistible. At first, she thought, he had been. She gave him a perfunctory smile, then turned back to Saunders. He could be a cranky old bastard, but in the last couple of months Karen had developed a grudging affection for him. It was obvious he was really worried about Sherry and it had taken a physical toll, aged him.

  If she could get Saunders out of there she wanted to do it tonight, at the bar. It wasn’t crowded but it was public enough that maybe Alex wouldn’t make some kind of a scene about it, and if he did she’d have the bouncers to back her up. She felt vaguely guilty about that, knew that depending on how Alex reacted people could get hurt. It took her only a moment to put that thought away. That was what bouncers were for, and this was something that had to be done.

  Even so, Karen thought enough of Ted Saunders that she definitely didn’t want him getting involved. After being around him for a while Karen could see why he and Sherry had been so close, like he was her uncle or something. To a certain extent she got the same vibe from him, had come to realize that Ted Saunders’ gruff, tough guy persona was just an act, something he used to control the clientele in the bar. There was another side to him, and she didn’t have any doubt that if she and Alex got into it Saunders would take her side. She didn’t want the old man getting worked up and having a heart attack or something.

  “You should go home,” Karen told him. “I can close up.”

  She expected him to grunt something in protest but it didn’t happen. He just stared at her for a long moment, then nodded. Karen caught herself gaping at him in disbelief and then turned away in case he changed his mind.

  It was a first. Saunders didn’t say anything, just fussed around doing unnecessary busywork for a couple of minutes and then took his ratty old jacket off its hook on the back wall. He reluctantly shrugged it on, patted Karen lightly on the arm, and left. The bouncers traded surprised looks as he went out the door. A few minutes later one of them came over and leaned an elbow on the bar.

  “Ted okay?” he asked.

  She shrugged, did her best to be nonchalant.

  “I just said I could close up and that he should go home. He looked tired.”

  “Just like that? You’re kidding.”

  “Just like that.”

  She didn’t say that she had her own reasons for wanting him out of there. Alex had stepped over the line tonight, gotten visibly drunk in a way she’d never seen him before, at least not in Ted’s place. That reflected on her, and she didn’t like it. Since they’d started seeing each other he’d made himself a fixture in the bar, holding court every night like he owned the place or something. At first she thought it was cute, that maybe he was there because he was concerned for her welfare or because he cared for her so much.

  Now Alex’s constant presence in the bar was getting old fast. Karen had been around the bar business long enough to know when someone was using a place as their base of operations. Ted Saunders had been around even longer, should have known the signs better than anyone, but from what the other girls and the bouncers said the old man hadn’t been himself for a while, not since what had happened to Sherry.

  Kenny Langdon had done the same damn thing for years, but it had been different with Saunders and Kenny Langdon. They’d managed to coexist, but if Alex thought he could just slide in and take over where Langdon had left off he was wrong.

  Karen could feel Alex’s eyes on them. The bouncer who’d asked her about Saunders—his name was Jason—was a big, good-looking kid, chiseled features slowly finding their way out of baby fat, hired mainly because of his size and his status as a former high school football hero. He was maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, too young to appeal to Karen, but she knew Alex wouldn’t see it that way. Jason was maybe two inches taller and thirty or forty pounds heavier than Alex, but even when he was pitching drunks out of the bar he didn’t appear to have a mean bone in his body. Alex did, and Karen wasn’t sure what would happen if there was some kind of confrontation.

  She thought about going over to Alex, just to make sure he wasn’t working himself up to something, but with Ted gone she was the only one left behind the bar and she had enough to do. Jason stayed where he was for a moment longer and then went back to the door when he finally realized he was being ignored.

  It was virtually impossible to do her job without turning her head in Alex’s direction. She delayed it as long as possible, but when she looked up he’d gotten up from his stool and was leaning toward her from directly across the bar.

  “What were you guys talking about?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she shrugged, “he was just asking about Ted, wanted to see if he was okay.”

  “What?”

  “Ted. He didn’t look good so I sent him home.”

  Sent him home, bullshit, she thought. She couldn’t send Ted Saunders anywhere he didn’t want to go, but it sounded good, as if she actually had some responsibility. Maybe it would even remind Alex that she had work to do and was actually in charge of something, even if it was just for tonight. At least Ted had listened to her, and it was pretty cool that he actually trusted her to do the cash and close up for the night. From what the waitresses had told her the only person he’d ever allowed to do that was Sherry.

  Alex was staring at her, a suspicious look on his face. One of the problems with Alex was that usually you never knew just how stoned or drunk he was, maybe because he had so much crap in his system all the time that he’d built up a tolerance for it. She knew it was a half-baked theory, but it gave her an excuse for taking so long to figure out how much of a loser he was. Now that she had she was surprised at how suddenly her feelings had changed. She couldn’t wait to get rid of him, and tonight was probably her best chance to do it.

  “Ted’s gone so I have to close up tonight, Alex. No use you hanging around here.”

  It was weak but she had to start somewhere, maybe build up to it. He grinned back at her.

  “You trying to get rid of me?”

  Well, yeah, she thought but didn’t say. One of the waitresses was standing at the bar waiting for Karen to fill up her tray. She turned away from him the same way she’d turned away from Jason. The difference was that by the time she’d finished filling up the order Alex was still standing there, still staring.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said.

  It occurred to her that deliberately or otherwise he might be playing right into what she wanted. Maybe he thought he was so shit-hot that she’d just fold up the way she usually did, let him come back to her place and fuck her no matter how long she’d worked that night or how tired she was. Or maybe he was trying to set something off, just for the hell of it. Fifty-fifty, she decided, and something in that thought just made her sick of the whole thing.

  She took a deep breath, turned to face him.

  “We need a break, Alex, okay? I just want to be on my own for a while.”

  He looked so stunned and disbelieving that she almost laughed, in spite of th
e fact she was scared shitless. Then he jerked his head back to where Jason was working the door.

  “Why?” he snarled, “so you can take him home and fuck him?”

  Jason must have been watching the body language because she could see him start back toward the bar. She tried to wave him off but it was too late.

  “Everything okay, Karen?” he asked.

  She just smiled tightly and nodded, tried to shrug it off. Jason should have been treating Alex Stromberg like a live rattlesnake but instead he was too close, just off his left shoulder and slightly behind him. Alex kept staring at Karen, something dangerous simmering in his eyes. She’d seen that look before.

  “Fuck off, kid,” Alex told Jason. He didn’t even bother to turn around. “This is between me and her.”

  Jason flinched at the dismissal. He was good for tossing out drunks and kids, but Alex Stromberg was in another league. Deep down Jason would know that too, and Karen found herself hoping that he’d just back off. She was also sure that Jason’s hormones and his pride just wouldn’t allow it, especially in front of Karen. Alex was doing it all over again, doing the same thing with Jason that he’d just done with her, pushing him into a corner just to see what would happen, for no other reason than the hell of it. Jason hesitated just an instant too long. He was reaching out to pull Alex off the stool but Alex was already on his way up, fired an elbow hard into Jason’s midsection. Jason jackknifed, the wind coming out of him in an explosive rush. He was already out of the picture, barely able to stay on his feet, and Alex still hadn’t taken his eyes off Karen.