As upset as she was at what she believed was a callous disregard for the loss of her best friend, her thoughts turned to John Metcalf, who was somewhere in Chicago, alone and maybe in trouble. With the thrill of discovery, the misery of loss, and fear for Metcalf’s safety flashing through her mind like different colored sheets in a clothes dryer, she arrived home and went inside.
She’d barely taken two steps when the doorbell rang. Wanting it to be John, but also alert to the possibility of trouble, she took the .38 from her bag.
Returning to the door, she looked out through the left sidelight to see who it was.
No . . . that was impossible.
Standing on her front porch, looking at her from under a porkpie hat, as alive as she was, stood Harry Bright.
37
BRIGHT PRODUCED A scrawled note and held it to the glass.
We have to talk. I know everything that’s been going on at the Latham Clinic. My death was faked to throw them off.
Astounded at this development, Sarchi opened the door, the .38 trailing out of sight behind her leg. She unlatched the storm door and stepped back.
Stooped like an old man, Bright opened the storm door and awkwardly came inside, relying heavily on a cane. Although they’d never been friends, Sarchi felt a twinge of pity for whatever had happened to him.
Suddenly, quicker than any man should be able to move, he was on her, his left hand snaking around to grab the .38, the V formed by the thumb and index finger of his right under her chin, driving her back so they weren’t standing in the doorway.
Behind the death mask of Harry Bright’s face he’d made by applying quick-drying liquid latex to the inside of a plaster cast, Jackie had suspected Sarchi might be armed. Feeling that it was a revolver, he clamped his fingers firmly around the cylinder, rendering it impossible to fire. There wasn’t a woman in the world he couldn’t subdue by force even if she was armed. But this assignment had the constraint that he had to prevail without leaving any bruises on her, and without producing any signs in the room that there’d been a struggle. Otherwise, when she was found with a lethal drug overdose in her blood, there might be questions about how it got there. He therefore, had to be careful that his fingers didn’t exert too much pressure on her neck.
He moved quickly to Sarchi’s right, intending to circle behind her, bend her gun hand up to her shoulder blade, and get her neck in the crook of his elbow so he could once again drop her by carotid compression as he had the night he’d left her in the park. But Sarchi turned toward him and stepped forward so they remained face to face. Then, shit . . . despite his best effort to keep the gun pushed away from him, he felt it lifting, coming up. And he couldn’t stop it.
Christ, this woman was strong. For the first time since he’d arrived in the city, he felt a twinge of doubt about the outcome of his plan. With control of her weapon the focus of his concern, his hand left Sarchi’s throat and went to the gun, which was now pointing at him. He still had hold of the cylinder, but it was not good to have the barrel in his chest.
AS JACKIE’S RIGHT hand joined the struggle for the revolver, Sarchi took advantage of the open route to his face and clawed at it with her free hand. Feeling her nails tear into the latex of the death mask, she grabbed it and yanked, peeling the appliance free. For half a heartbeat, they stared into each other’s eyes, then Sarchi put her foot behind Jackie’s leg and pushed. He lost his balance and fell backward, but he still held tightly to the gun and her wrist, pulling her down with him. When he hit the floor, the impact caused his fingers to loosen on the revolver’s cylinder, and the gun discharged into his chest.
IN THE CONFUSION, Sarchi ripped herself free from Jackie’s grasp, but the hammer of the gun caught on the fabric of his jacket, pulling the weapon from her hand and leaving it in his possession. Believing he’d been shot, but without checking to see, she ran for the kitchen.
JACKIE LAY THERE stunned, a blazing trail of pain on the inside of his right forearm, gun smoke burning his eyes. The bullet had plowed a furrow along the skin of his forearm, then hit him just to the right of his sternum between his second and third ribs.
Though he never would have believed something like this could happen, he was also a careful man, which is why the round had been stopped by his Kevlar vest. He checked to see if he was bleeding onto the carpet, but all the blood was pooling inside his jacket, held there by the tight elastic at his wrist. He heard the back door open as Sarchi ran from the house.
This was a mess. There was no way now to kill her in the controlled way he’d planned. He could handle the failure, the fact that all the work leading up to tonight had been wasted. He could deal with being bested by a woman, could even ignore the pain from the gunshot; that was all just a matter of willpower. He needed now to get off the floor and leave, to finish the contract in some other way at another time. But she’d seen his face, the first person to do so in twenty-three years. She’d violated him. And tomorrow, she’d be describing him to a police sketch artist. The thought of being so exposed turned his stomach. Despite the risk, he had to end it tonight, any way he could.
KEENLY AWARE THAT the man in the house was the one who’d abducted her and had probably also killed Harry Bright, Sarchi darted out the back door and ran to the front gates. In the dim light from the half moon, her fingers, clumsy with urgency, clawed at the bolt that held them shut. It gave ground slowly, squealing in protest as she worked it back and forth. Then, over the gates, she saw Jackie come around the front corner of the house.
There was no time for thought, only action. Flashing on the two fence boards some kids had loosened in the back of the yard, she ran for the spot, lifted them, and slid through the opening. She quickly learned what a bad idea this was. Beyond the two rows of pines screening her house was a huge field of prickly bushes that crowded against the pines so she couldn’t go left or right. But straight ahead the bushes seemed smaller.
IGNORING HIS THROBBING arm, Jackie scaled the gates and dropped into the backyard just as Sarchi disappeared through the two-board gap in the back fence. He, too, realized her mistake, for he had scouted the area when he’d first arrived in town and knew that the field of wild blackberry bushes behind the house would hinder her flight.
“DANNY? THIS IS John.”
“Where are you?”
“Memphis airport. When’d you get back?”
“About six o’clock.”
“Do you know where Sarchi went?”
“Home, I guess.”
“I just called her there, but she didn’t answer. Couldn’t raise her on her cell phone either.”
“Want me to come and get you?”
“No thanks, I’ll catch a cab. Thanks for everything you did today.”
“What’d you find out? Where’d that bald guy go?”
“I’ll talk to you later about it.”
John hung up, went outside, and hailed a cab.
“Where to?” the cabby asked.
Worried now about Sarchi, He gave the cabby her address and settled back for the fifteen-minute ride.
THE BUSHES SNAGGED Sarchi’s thin jeans and tore at her flesh, thousands of tiny claws trying to hold her until she was overtaken. But slowly, she pushed forward, high stepping, so as each foot came down, it pinned and crushed a few of the wild blackberries’ looping branches. But she was still being sliced into stew meat.
She glanced behind her and saw Jackie duck through the gap in the fence.
JACKIE PLUNGED INTO the bushes, wondering if he was leaving a trail of blood that could be used against him later.
This was so out of control.
He’d snatched up the death mask before running out but had left the cane. And his prints were still on the handle of the storm door. Worse, he was out here undisguised. At the least, he had to get back to the house after he finished her, g
et the cane and wipe the door handle. Then he must get to his car. His prints were all over that, too. And with all he’d had to do in the last few days, the four-by-four with the horseshoe nailed to it he’d used to kill Timmons was still in the trunk. The sound of the gun firing had been muffled by his jacket, so he was fairly certain it wasn’t heard outside the house. Big deal—a small handhold above a raging sea of shit.
SARCHI LOOKED AGAIN and saw that Jackie was slowly closing the distance between them and was now no more than twenty yards away. Her course was taking her directly to the drum reclamation plant, a sprawling building that lay darkly across her route for fifty yards in each direction. She prayed for a path between the building and the bushes.
A minute later, when she reached the building, there was, indeed, a small area devoid of bushes close to the wall. With no knowledge of the place and no time to reconnoiter, she lurched to the left.
Most of the plant was constructed of cement blocks, but in places the block was replaced by corrugated metal sheets. As she ran past such a place, her foot caught on a metal corner that had curled outward, cutting her ankle and pitching her to the ground.
She struggled to her feet and looked back.
Close. He was so close. She’d managed to surprise him in their first encounter, but she knew it would be a different story this time. Run.
She flew along the wall for another ten yards, then ran into a tangle of bushes taller and more impenetrable than any she’d seen. Jackie had already shown he could move faster through the shorter bushes than she could, so if she went back and set off again through them, he would change course and intercept her. But maybe . . .
She dashed back to the metal flap that had tripped her, grabbed it, and peeled it back. Yes. It was a way into the building. She dropped to her knees, ducked, and slithered through the opening.
Inside, the plant was a cavernous space dimly lit by occasional bulbs fixed to the high ceiling. In the poor light, Sarchi saw thousands of empty buckets stacked inside each other, forming hundreds of white plastic stalagmites that towered over her. Behind her, she heard Jackie pulling at the metal flap.
Sarchi darted into the maze of buckets to hide herself.
JACKIE CAME THROUGH the hole, stood up, and took Sarchi’s .38 from his jacket. Holding his breath, he surveyed the area, listening carefully. In the darkness, he heard the telltale hiss of Sarchi’s labored breathing.
FROM WHERE SHE cowered, Sarchi could hear him moving toward her. Suddenly, there was a tremendous racket as Jackie began kicking over stacks of buckets that fell into neighboring stacks, toppling them.
With her source of concealment rapidly vanishing, Sarchi ran, heading for a collection of chrome lattice boxes, each containing an empty plastic container as big as a car.
SEEING HIS QUARRY flushed from hiding, Jackie spun to his left and fired the .38.
SARCHI FELT THE bullet nip the arm of her sweater. Before he could fire again, she ducked behind the lattice boxes.
JACKIE SPRINTED TO his left and circled the lattice boxes, approaching Sarchi’s new hiding place from the opposite way she’d come to it. Prepared to fire the instant he saw her, he popped around the corner and saw nothing.
Jackie moved as quietly as he could along the container wall where she’d been. He flashed around the next corner and again failed to see her. Where the hell was she?
There . . . He whirled to his right and snapped off a round at the fleeing figure that had come from the opposite side of the boxes.
THE LAST ROUND sliced past Sarchi’s head and buried itself with a hollow thunk into one of the blue plastic barrels stacked along the other side of the wide aisle down the middle of the building. Why had she come in here? It was a death trap.
The blue barrels were stacked high enough that once she rounded the corner and got behind them, she rose out of her bear walk and ran upright, toward the far end of the building, where she prayed she would find a way out.
THE BLUE BARRELS stretched along the aisle for about twenty yards, stacked so closely that Jackie couldn’t see behind them. Unaware of what Sarchi was doing, he skirted the lattice boxes back the way he’d come, charged across the aisle, and muscled the blue barrels aside. He burst through the wall just in time to see Sarchi disappear into a huge doorway on the left.
He reached the spot a few seconds later and ran into a large room in which hundreds of short chains capped with metal hooks dangled from a maze of tracks overhead. Except for that, the room was bare. At its far end it opened into another massive chamber filled with thousands of fifty-five-gallon steel drums. Dismayed at all the hiding places they offered, Jackie sprinted toward them.
AGAINST THE WALL opposite where Jackie had come in, Sarchi watched him from behind a screened alcove where reclaimed steel drums were spray painted. With his attention taken by the far room, she moved quickly to the opposite end of the alcove and ran back the way she’d entered.
Her heart beating so hard she could feel the blood surging behind her eyes, Sarchi burst through the doorway back into the room with the big center aisle. Though Jackie hadn’t seen her, he’d heard the echo of her footsteps behind him. Now she heard his, coming for her. If there had been time, she would have gone back to the entrance hole and tried to outrun him through the bushes back to the house. But he was too close.
To her left she saw the same room full of steel drums they’d both seen a moment ago through a different doorway. Believing it offered her only hope, she fled that way.
FIVE SECONDS LATER, Jackie reached the aisle and saw her. He was a marksman with any kind of firearm, but Sarchi’s dark clothing and hair made her tough to see in the gloom. She was also quick. Neither of these facts comforted him. He’d missed twice, and that was inexcusable. This time, instead of just snapping off a round, he took time to get into a decent stance.
SARCHI HEARD THE sound of the gun and felt the hot skewer in her side at practically the same instant. She had to find cover.
To her right was a two-tiered cache of steel drums with metal rings around them at the top and middle that kept adjacent drums from touching. This produced at their closest point, approximately an eight inch space between them. From years of experience gauging the accessibility of tight spots in subterranean passages, Sarchi believed she could navigate those spaces. Throwing herself to the ground, she turned on her good side and thrust herself into the cleft between two drums.
38
BY THE TIME Jackie got there, Sarchi was fully out of sight. He thought he knew exactly where she’d gone, but he couldn’t look down from above to check because the drums on the upper tier were offset so that they sat over the spaces between those on the bottom. Pocketing the gun, Jackie tried to pull an obscuring barrel off the upper tier, but it was too heavy. He tried another. They were all immovable.
He looked around for something he could use to get at her. Spotting a forklift over by a stack of wooden pallets, he ran to it and checked the ignition. No key.
Frustrated and without another idea, he circled the drums where Sarchi was hiding to make sure she wasn’t coming out the other side. Returning to where he started, he knelt, thrust the .38 into the hole where he believed she’d gone in, and fired the two remaining rounds in the gun.
IN THE MAZE of drums, Sarchi’s nose scraped against cold steel as she negotiated an impossible turn into a side passage. But her legs were still in the cleft where she’d started. The first round from the .38 hit the cement floor an inch from her shoe and ricocheted upward, punching through the bottom of a drum on the second tier. From the hole, used engine oil dribbled onto her. The following slug clanged off the side of a drum at a spot a quarter of an inch from her hip, pinballed into two more drums in a potentially deadly fusillade, and exited the maze through a rear opening. As the echo of the ricocheting bullets died away, Sarchi’s heart leapt at the sound of the revolver’s
hammer falling on an empty chamber. He was out of ammunition.
Then she heard a sound that brought all the terror she’d felt a moment earlier flooding back, a sound she’d heard next to her at the firing range with John—a round being chambered into an automatic.
The maze became a war zone as Jackie ran from cleft to cleft, firing blindly into its dark recesses, sending slugs whining and clanging on a search for Sarchi’s hide.
Inside the maze, it was impossible to tell exactly where Jackie was at any given moment. Along with the unpredictable course of every round he fired, there was no place in there that seemed better than another. So all Sarchi could do was lie helplessly and curse the decisions that had led her to this.
Suddenly, the echoes of gunfire and ricochets faded, and there was only the sound of her heart hammering against her eardrums. Was he reloading? She listened hard for the snap of a clip being removed from his automatic and another slamming home. But it didn’t come. What was he doing?
JACKIE STOPPED FIRING when he had two rounds left. Was she hit, wounded, or dead? It was like poisoning a rat and having it die in your walls. The only way you could tell if you got him was when he started to smell. And he couldn’t wait for that.
“I hope you understand I don’t dislike you,” he said. “In fact, I admire you. You’re smart, resourceful, and incredibly strong. What do you think of me?”
He waited to see if his ploy would work. He knew she was too intelligent to respond, but he was after an emotional reaction, an epithet perhaps, anything to tell him if she was still alive and approximately where she was.
IN THE MAZE, Sarchi wanted to curse him in defiance, but she kept quiet, hoping he’d think she was dead. Though she needed to concentrate on a way out of this, her focus shifted to the fiery notch the .38 slug had clipped from her side. Then, in her left calf, the start of a cramp, growing.
Jesus, not now.
She flexed her foot to stretch the muscle, but the cramp pulled it back, knotting her calf into a fleshy rock that made pain seem like something you could see. To her horror, an almost inaudible cry of agony slipped from her lips.
The Killing Harvest Page 29