by Blake Banner
There were three men. Two were standing, leaning against the wall with their arms folded across their chests. One of them was in his early twenties, clean shaven, with thick red hair and a spray of freckles across his face. The man next to him was in his forties, with dark hair and a moustache which would have been at home in the 1970s. They were looking at me and leering. Directly in front of me there was a bed with a blue duvet. Sitting on that bed, with his back to the window, was the third man. He must have been in his late twenties and also had red hair and freckles. I logged that the two might be brothers. He was also leering. On his lap was Abi. Her face expressed astonishment at seeing me, but also fear and distress, because the man holding her had a Remington .45 pointed at her temple.
He shook his head and said, “Woah! Man, you are a mess! Joe said you might be dropping in, so we was looking out for you.”
I heard myself speak and my voice sounded dead. “What’s your name?”
“Huh? My name?” He looked at his pals and they all laughed. It sounded oddly adolescent, like none of them had ever made it to adulthood. “My name is Sir, because I am holding a gun. And you are going to hand your gun over to my brother over there.”
I shook my head. “You don’t want to hurt her. I have just killed twelve of your pals up at the mine. Eight of them I slaughtered with a fire axe. If you hurt her, there will be nothing standing between me and you.” I plucked at my shirt and showed him the blood. “See this? This is the blood of your friends.”
For just a moment he looked worried and glanced at his brother. “I think this feller is a bit crazy, Mike. What do you say?” They started laughing again. “Take his gun from him, Mike.”
Mike moved off the wall and stepped over to me. He reached out for the Sig. I stopped him dead with a question.
“Were you going to rape her?”
He looked me in the eye for a second, then grinned his idiot grin again. “Yeah. No. We are going to rape her, just as soon as we get through with you.”
I shook my head again. “No, you’re not.”
I angled the Sig down and shot his balls off. He looked down, gawping as blood cascaded onto the floor, draining out of his body and saturating his pants. His brother stood, screaming hysterically, “What did you do? What did you do? Jesus!”
He kept aiming the gun at my head, then back at Abi, then at me again. I could have shot him, but the risk to Abi while he was hysterical like that was too great. Now he was screaming, “You freeze! You freeze! I swear I’ll shoot her! I swear it! Freeze! Freeze!”
Mike sagged at the knees and keeled over. His brother’s lip curled and he began to sob. He was losing concentration. Another couple of seconds and I could take him and the moustache. But before that happened, a fist like a boulder smashed into the side of my head and everything went dark.
Consciousness came back to me as I was being dragged by my heels up the frozen path toward the kitchen door. The ox with the moustache had a hold of me and was walking backwards, hauling me after him. Mike’s brother was ahead of us, holding the gun to Abi’s head as he shoved her forward. The ox spoke over his shoulder. “He’s awake.”
He dropped my heels and pulled my Sig from his belt. He waved it at me and said, “Get up.”
My head was splitting, but I wasn’t going to let him see that I was in pain. I sat up, then got to my feet. Mike’s brother had opened the door and pushed Abi through into the kitchen. He went in after her and the ox pushed me up the step and inside. Then they both got behind us and pushed us into the hall and toward Al’s study.
I looked at Abi. “Any news?”
She shook her head. “Is it true, what you said?” She looked at my shirt, my jacket and my face. “About the blood, is it true?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s true. Rochdale is a mine. The were using child slaves up there.”
“Shut your mouth, you son of a bitch!”
Mike’s brother slapped me hard across the back of the head, then moved forward and opened the door to the study. He went in, tears were streaming down his cheeks and he could barely talk for sobbing. He stared toward where I knew the desk and the French windows were, and said, “We have him, Mr. Groves. He killed Mike, but we have him.”
The ox thrust us into the room. I staggered and stopped, then looked. Al was standing by the fireplace looking at me. He had a Ruger P90 .45 caliber in his hand. I knew it was a reliable, accurate gun, and my guess was that Al was an experienced marksman, and a damn sight more dangerous that Mike’s brother. On the sofa was Karen. She also had a pistol in her hand. I couldn’t see what it was, but it looked like a .22. Sitting beside her, with his ankles tied and his wrists behind his back, was Sean. And in the armchair, with one leg crossed over the other, was Joe Vasco. He had a Desert Eagle in his lap, and he looked as mad as a wild dog with a hornet up its ass.
He said, “Walker, you are one dangerous, crazy son of a bitch. You have to be put down, and I am going to put you down right now.” He cocked the gun and stood up.
twenty-one
I was ready to die. I’ve been ready to do that for a long time. But I wasn’t ready to let Sean and Abi die. I smiled at Al and said, “I called the county sheriff from the mine.”
He scowled. “You did what? Are you insane?”
Karen looked sick and turned to her husband. “Al…? Aloysius?”
Vasco shook his head and said, “He’s bluffing,” but he didn’t look convinced. He added, “You’ve as much to lose as we have.”
I laughed. “Not if I’m dead, pal.”
He turned to Al. “He’s a damned liability! We need to get rid of him!”
I looked at Sean, smiled and winked. Then I said to Al, “How’re you going to explain the blood on your carpet, Al?”
He looked at me like I’d said something real stupid. “I? I? Explain? What about you?” He waved his gun at me. “How many men have you murdered since you arrived in this village?”
I smirked at Karen. Her eyes were bulging and her mouth was sagging open. “I kind of lost count, Al, but the population of Independence is somewhat depleted now. Tell me something, do you really think the sheriff is going to believe that one man alone accounted for almost twenty of your cowboys? You think they’ll believed I wiped out your entire mining operation? When all the evidence points to the fact that you were running the mine illegally, and using slave labor, and child slaves…”
He was shaking his head. Karen had got to her feet and stepped toward me. She said, “It was for their own good!”
He spoke at the same time. “It isn’t the way it looks. We had a reason.”
Karen interrupted him. “Do you know what would have happened if we hadn’t taken them in?”
“It was best all round!”
I silenced them both. “Those children were starving, working with their bare hands in the snow, separated from their parents! Brutalized, beaten…”
Al screamed. It was a horrible sound, like a giant parrot. His face was crimson and his left hand clutched like a claw. “It was necessary! You don’t understand! You can’t judge!”
Joe stepped forward. “Let me finish this.”
I smiled at him. “Finish it?” I nodded. “You’ll finish it. All of you, under the doctrine of joint criminal enterprise. What do you think the jury will find? Four children raped and murdered. Then their parents, and after that Abi’s husband. Then there are the charges of slavery and child slavery? How many of them have died, I wonder?” I laughed again. “And then there are all the men that I have killed. Kill me and all of those deaths will be imputed to you. It will be the death penalty for all of you. No question.”
Al had gone a sickly gray color and his wife had covered her mouth with her hands. She whispered, “Arnold…”
I nodded. “Yeah, who’s going to look after little Arn when Mommy is put to sleep?”
Al rasped, “You’re a monster…”
Joe raised the .45. “The hell with it!”
Karen screamed
, “No! Wait!” Then, “We need to think this through.” She stared at her husband. “Think of Arnold. A deal, some kind of deal.” She turned to me. “You testify it had nothing to do with us. We had nothing to do with the mine…”
I smiled. “I’m listening. Keep talking. What about the snow plow?”
She hesitated, then stammered, “The… the snow plow?”
I half-yelled at her, “It cleared a path from the mine to your damn doorstep!”
Vasco said, “He’s right, goddammit!”
Al said, “Jesus Christ!” and walked to the French doors. He stood looking out at the snow. “The whole thing is unraveling. We need to lose the snow plow.” He turned. His face was tight and his eyes were wild. “We need to lose the snow plow. Clear the road down toward Mill City, work through the night if we have to. You and the boys, you clear the road and then dump the plow. We deny everything.”
Vasco pointed at me. “What about him?”
“He has as much to lose as us. If we go down, he goes down with us.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So what’s the deal? Primrose, Sean, Abi, and I walk away, and we testify that you have nothing to do with the mine. That there was some crazed killer on the loose who passed through with the blizzard murdering most of your men. And whatever happened at the mine is a mystery. We didn’t even know the mine was working again.”
He stepped toward me, nodding eagerly. “Yes! Yes, that could work!” He looked at his wife. “That could work, Karen. What do you think?”
Vasco snarled, “It’s bullshit. You trust this son of a bitch?”
I gave him a once over. “Face it, Vasco. You’re out of choices. You need us to fix and corroborate an alibi. We need a truce and you know it. And there’s something else.” I pointed out toward the kitchen. “You got one dead guy buried in snow outside your kitchen door, and you got another in the lodgings with a gallon of blood all over the floor. You had better get scrubbing and disposing before the sheriff decides to send in a forensics team.”
Pat turned to me. He still had tears in his eyes. “Don’t talk about my brother like that…”
Vasco was shaking his head. He was losing control of the situation and he was close to panic. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this, Al. This guy is dangerous. The only way this guy is not dangerous is dead!”
Karen was staring at me like she was hypnotized. I held her eye for a long moment, then looked at Al. I said, “He’s right. I am. I am a very dangerous man to have as an enemy. But ask Abi, ask Sean. What am I like as an ally? I am as loyal as an ally as I am dangerous as an enemy. You want me on your side.”
Vasco started laughing. It was an ugly, braying noise. “Oh, this is priceless! The lone fucking ranger just rode into town. Now he’s going to be our best friend. Halle-fucking-lujah!”
I gave Al a lopsided smile and gestured at Vasco. “This from the man who wanted a bigger bite…” I turned and looked at Karen. “…of the cherry.”
Vasco spun and advanced on Al. “If we give up our hostages we will be defenseless against him!”
Al swallowed. I could see he was trembling. I spoke quietly, reasonably. “What are you now, Vasco? This place will be crawling with Feds within twenty-four hours. If the sheriff can get hold of a chopper you’ll probably have him here before that. Right now you have two bodies to dispose of in several hundred miles of snow. And you have any alibi we care to come up with, plus independent witnesses to corroborate it. Do something stupid now, and you will have five bodies to get rid of, plus all the forensic evidence—and you’ll have to explain the damage at the guesthouse as well as the mine. Your choice.”
I turned to the ox with the moustache and held out my hand. “Give me my gun, big guy. And you two had better get scrubbing. It is going to be a long night for you.” I turned to Vasco. “And you? You had better get busy with the plow. Me, Abi, and Sean have got a lot of work to do back at the guesthouse.”
Al turned and stared at Vasco. “I’m sorry, Joe. He’s right. It is the only option we have.”
I showed Vasco an expressionless face. “I’m facing a lethal injection myself, Joe. We all are. It’s in all our interests to play ball. As long as we keep our story straight, we’re OK. And we are running out of time.”
He turned savagely on me and thrust out his arm, pointing his weapon at my head. I held his eye.
Karen said, “Joe, if you pull that trigger you sentence us all to death.”
He lowered the gun.
I said, “Go plow, Joe. We’re going to fix up the guesthouse. We meet again before the snow starts to agree our story.”
Joe turned and stormed out. The front door slammed. I turned to the ox. He handed me my Sig. I said, “Get scrubbing, boys.”
Pat’s face was constricted. He said, “…my brother!”
I snarled, “You want to join him?” He swallowed. “So get scrubbing!”
They looked at Al. He nodded and they left. I jerked my head toward Sean. “Cut him loose, Al.” As I said it, I slipped my gun into my waistband behind my back to show there was no threat.
He looked at his wife. “Untie the boy, Karen.”
She did as he told her and a moment later Sean and Abi ran to each other and embraced, holding tight like they never wanted to let go. I met Karen’s eye. “It’s a sacred bond, Karen, between a mother and a child.”
She looked away. I turned at Al.
“There is a weak link in this chain, Al.”
“I know.”
“Vasco is out of control. His prints are all over the plow and all over the mine. Plus the Mexicans will identify him. Worse than that, he has no strength of character. If the Feds go to work on him, he’ll break and make a deal. If he does that and tells them about the depot, you are sunk. And if you go down, like you said, we all go down.”
He frowned. “What are you suggesting?”
I shrugged. “One of three things. Either he takes the fall; we frame him so it looks like he was running the mine behind your back, and some kind of gang war broke out between him and some of the hands. Or we kill him.” I paused a moment. “Or better still, we do both.”
Karen was staring at the door. Al was staring at the fire. They were both working out the details in their heads.
She said, “It’s the only way. Will you take care of it?”
Al looked at me. “You’re right,” he said, though whether he meant me or Karen was unclear. “He has been a problem for a long time, attracting attention, making demands…”
I said, “I’ll take care of it. I’ll get to him before he gets too far on the plow. I’ll kill him and take him up to the mine with the others. But I need to know something. Are there any papers or documents connecting you to that mine?”
He thought about it. “Yes,” he said at last. “It belonged to a friend of my father’s. My father was a non-executive partner. The mine in those days was just the quarry at the back. It stopped producing…”
I said, “Gold?”
He nodded. “Without the gold, the land was practically worthless. When old Henkle died, he left the land to my father, who left it to me. I was always curious about the land to the west, where they are mining now. I did a private survey and found there was gold there, not a lot, but enough. And when…”
He stopped dead and Karen turned to stare at him. He took a deep breath.
“Anyway, I have friends and we made a deal. I hadn’t the capital to start a whole refining process, but I could sell them the crude ore. With the Mexican kids, it cost me practically nothing and we made a very substantial profit.”
I nodded. “I want a cut. We let the whole thing cool off for a few months. Then we start it up again. You have someone who can get you the labor from Mexico?”
Abi and Sean were staring at me with horror in their eyes. I ignored them. I was too busy watching the expression on Al and Karen’s faces. They were confirming what I had suspected.
“Yes!” It was Al. He was thinking all his Christmases
had come at once. “Yes, that isn’t a problem.”
“Good. We’ll discus percentages later. Right now, I need my knife and my gun back. I’ll have a word with the boys and then I’ll go and deal with Vasco. I need to move fast before the sheriff gets there.”
He nodded. “Yes, yes, quite so. Of course.” He moved to his desk, unlocked a drawer and extracted my Sig and my knife. I went over and took them from him. I put the Sig in my pocket and slipped the knife into its sheath in my boot. Then I turned to Abi. Her eyes were begging me to tell her it wasn’t so, that I wasn’t like all the rest.
“I need you to get Sean home. When Primrose comes in, get her up to speed. I’ll take care of Vasco, then I’ll come and collect you.” I turned to Al. “We’ll have dinner, discuss the details, get our story straight.”
His face was eager. Even Karen was looking at me in a new way. “Yes,” he said again, smiling. “That will be nice. Bring the kids. You can stay over. You don’t want to go back in this weather.”
It was all very civilized. I smiled. “Fine. Can you lend Abi a truck for an hour or so?” I turned then to Sean and looked him straight in the eye. “Remember what I told you about discipline?”
He nodded.
I smiled. “Good man. I’ll see you later.”
And I walked out, to go and deal with Pat and the ox. Behind me, I could hear Al and Karen talking to Abi like she was an old friend and they were arranging a nice social gathering. They were like voices coming from a parallel reality, where what was normal was the insane, the ghastly, and the grotesque. I blocked them out and kept walking.
I went out into the snow and followed the path to the lodgings. In a strange replay of what I had done earlier, I opened the door and stepped inside, closing it behind me. I glanced at the kitchen. Now several cupboards stood open, but there was nobody there. I waited a moment, listening. I could hear voices upstairs, sullen, griping. I climbed the steps, feeling a momentary weariness in my mind and in my heart. For a moment I longed for Marni, for her sanity, for the hope she gave me that I could be a better man: a better human being. I pushed the thoughts away and walked down the passage once again to the room where Pat and the ox were on their knees, scrubbing the floor with bleach. I wondered what they had done with Mike’s body, then decided I didn’t care.