But if he planned to kill DeMarco immediately, why not do it in the house? In fact, why come after DeMarco at all? What did that accomplish? None of Inman’s actions made any sense.
What also made no sense was the peculiar feeling of calm that enveloped DeMarco when he stepped inside the barn. So cool inside, so dark. He hadn’t parked his car in here in years, hadn’t opened the door except in daylight, to pull out the lawn mower or get one of his tools. He liked the strangeness he felt now, the slow sense of dreaminess, as if he could die in slow motion here and let all the past slip away from him, all mistakes quietly swallowed by the darkness.
Inman shoved him toward the rear of the Stratus. At the turn, DeMarco told himself. That’s where to do it. He knew exactly where the machete was, thought he could grab it even in the darkness. On a long plank shelf behind the car, he had long ago laid out every tool he owned, always returned each tool to the same place after its use. Nearest to him now were the power tools, the circular saw and the portable jigsaw, the sander and power drill in its plastic case. Then the hammers, the ball-peen and claw and the rubber mallet and the roofing hammer. Then, organized in boxes of various kinds, all of the smaller items, nails and screws and tapes and cords.
On the far edge of the shelf he had mounted a vice clamp, and below it, hanging by a leather thong, was the machete he infrequently used to hack down the weeds that grew alongside the garage. The weeds were three feet high now and bent double by their own weight, but if he could get to the machete, he would put it to use tonight. When he made the turn around the rear fender, he would have his only chance. Three powerful hops—not pretty but maybe effective—then he could yank the machete off its nail with his bound hands, spin and swing with all his strength and, with luck, disembowel Inman with a single stroke. Then, since Inman would probably have just enough juice left to lash out with his own knife, DeMarco would more than likely drop beside him, and they could lie there looking at each other until the lights went out.
DeMarco shuffled toward the rear of the car. He remembered Bonnie suddenly and for a moment wondered where she was, but then he let the question go and only thought about the machete. He was calm now but looking forward to the explosion of crimson rage that would occur when his hands seized the machete and he pivoted and swung. He could see it all clearly now, and even the thought of his unavoidable death filled him with a deep peace.
He let the back of his hands brush against the cool side of the fender. One step around the rear of the car and then he would go.
Inman’s hand clamped down on his left shoulder and suddenly the blade was against his throat. “Easy now,” Inman told him.
DeMarco’s sense of peace dissolved. He had no options now. He had thought that he wouldn’t mind dying, but he wanted to die while doing something productive, such as eviscerating Carl Inman. Now Inman was shoved up against him, pushing him sideways against the rear bumper, back in control.
Inman put a hand on his shoulder and drove DeMarco headfirst into the trunk. It all happened in an instant, and even as DeMarco tried to roll over to kick at Inman, his legs were seized and crammed into the trunk, the trunk lid came down hard and fast, and the darkness was complete.
DeMarco lay very still. Kicking against the trunk lid was useless. His only chance now was to somehow get the tape off his mouth, then somehow chew through the tape binding his wrists. He had four hours to accomplish it. No doubt Inman had searched the duffel bag DeMarco kept in the trunk, found only the sneakers, socks, chinos, and sweatshirt. But had he searched the little compartment on the side of the trunk, where DeMarco kept his father’s old Harrington & Richardson .22? The cylinder held only three good bullets, the first three loaded with birdshot. But three loads of birdshot in the face would work nicely to improve Inman’s countenance, then three .22 longs to the heart would improve his demeanor. DeMarco’s only regret was that he would have to wait four hours to pull the trigger.
He heard the driver’s side door open. Next he expected to feel Inman’s weight settling onto the seat, then he would hear the engine turn over. Instead there was a soft thud and a grunt, then another thud. Then silence for ten seconds or so. DeMarco held his breath and listened.
The scrape of a key at the trunk. The lid popped up and was lifted open. A man was standing there looking in at DeMarco. Smaller than Inman, slender, smiling, the rubber mallet in his hand.
“You okay?” Thomas Huston asked.
DeMarco cocked his head.
“I’m glad,” Huston said and closed the trunk lid atop him.
Fifty-Nine
All DeMarco could do was listen. Scraping and clinking noises, something metal knocked off the shelf to clatter on the floor. More scraping noises. Then silence. Five full minutes of it. Then the tick of the key going into the trunk lock again, the click of the lock springing open. The squeak of the hinges as the lid was raised.
“I’m sorry I had to do that,” Huston said. He spoke softly, half leaning into the trunk. “And I’m sorry that I’ll have to leave you like this for a while. I just need to talk to you now. Can we do that? Can I trust you to just stay where you are for a minute and talk to me?”
After a moment, DeMarco nodded.
“Thank you,” Huston said. “Just lie still for a second.” Gently, he peeled the tape off DeMarco’s mouth.
“Now you listen to me,” DeMarco began.
Huston leaned back, raised both hands to the trunk lid.
“Okay, okay,” DeMarco said. “I’ll listen to you.”
Even in the darkness, Huston’s smile looked sad to DeMarco—so tired and sad. Huston nodded toward the floor. “What’s this piece of shit want with you?”
“He’s down there?” DeMarco asked.
“Hog-tied. With a big, ugly bump on the side of his big, ugly head.”
“I like the sound of that.”
Huston said, “I don’t understand why he came after you.”
“I don’t either. I also don’t understand what you’re doing here.”
Huston smiled. “I’ve been staying upstairs in the little apartment you’re making. Ever since the night at the lighthouse.”
“You’ve been out here all this time?”
“You believed me. I thought I’d be safe here.”
“Jesus,” DeMarco said. “How did you get here?”
“After the lighthouse, I just walked along the shore for a while. I came across three kids sitting there drinking beer, two boys and a girl. They had a pickup truck, so I offered them sixty dollars to drive me to my friend’s house.”
“The sixty I gave you.”
“Originally I thought I might just knock on your door. But then I saw this little barn and… I used to sleep in my grandfather’s barn when I was a boy. In the summer, when I’d help him make hay. A couple times in college, before my grandmother passed away and the place was sold, Claire and I sneaked in for a while. I can still smell the hay, the night air…the way she always…always made me feel.”
There was a quality to Huston’s voice now that made DeMarco uneasy, a timbre of melancholy, of longing resigned to loss. DeMarco said. “No hay in my barn, though.”
“No, but…it was very comforting to look out and see a light on in your house, you know? I watched you come and go to your car. Then tonight I looked out and saw you standing on your back porch. Then not long ago I heard your car being pulled inside, and then I watched this asshole marching you across the yard. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.”
“I’m glad you’re good at arithmetic.”
Huston smiled.
“So how about you cut me free now? Let me take care of things from here on in. I guarantee he’s going to suffer a long time for what he’s done.”
“Time is short, my friend,” Huston said. He continued to smile. “So I think I’ll take care of the cleanup myself. No use getting your h
ands bloody.”
DeMarco knew that kind of smile. He knew it held no happiness, only a peculiar feeling of calm and the pleasant strangeness of knowing that the end is near. He said, “You can’t do what you’re thinking, Thomas. You can’t go down that road.”
“It’s the only road there is now.”
“Thomas, please, you have to trust me on this. I have some experience with what you’re feeling. I lost a child too.”
“I lost all of them. Everything and everyone.”
“I know you did. I did too. And yet I managed to go on. I’ve been doing it now for a dozen years.”
“You have to want to,” Huston said. “And I don’t.”
“No, I never wanted to. I just did it.”
Huston smiled awhile longer. Then he said, “I found your handgun in the house.”
“My service weapon? In the bedroom?”
“I’m going to have to take it with me. I’m sorry.”
“You’re a writer, Thomas. You’re not a killer.”
“I am and I want to be. The writer is dead. The husband and the father are dead. All that’s left is the other guy.”
DeMarco lifted his legs, hooked his heels over the edge of the trunk, and pulled himself into a sitting position. Huston stepped back toward the shelf. He reached behind his back then, pulled DeMarco’s handgun from his waistband, and aimed it at DeMarco’s chest. He said, “Keep doing what you’re doing. Just do it very slowly now.”
“You’re not going to shoot me,” DeMarco said.
“Him, you, me… In the end, what difference does any of it make?”
“It makes a difference and you know it.”
Huston said nothing. Then he stood to the side until DeMarco managed to crawl out of the trunk and stand. He placed a hand against the back of DeMarco’s shoulder and directed him to the passenger side of the car. There, to an eyehook screwed into the garage wall at waist level, Huston had tied a six-foot length of nylon rope. He turned DeMarco to stand facing the eyehook, then tied the free end of the rope around the sergeant’s wrists.
“You’re just going to leave me like this?” DeMarco said.
“You’ll get yourself loose.”
Huston returned to the car, laid the service weapon on the shelf, and retrieved from the trunk the strip of tape he had peeled off DeMarco’s mouth. “I’m afraid this has to go back,” he told DeMarco.
“Even if I promise to be quiet?”
Huston smiled and pressed the tape into place. He remained standing close. “I wouldn’t have shot you,” he said.
“I know that,” DeMarco mumbled.
What Huston did next seemed a strange thing to DeMarco. Huston laid his hand atop the sergeant’s head; he leaned against him, their bodies touching, heads touching side to side. He remained motionless, eyes closed, for several seconds. DeMarco felt like a little boy again, and his breath caught in his chest. Then Huston moved away from him and returned to the rear of the car.
For the better part of five minutes, Huston struggled with Inman’s body, dragging and lifting and pushing until he had it crammed into the trunk. There was plenty of slack in DeMarco’s rope so he was able to turn and watch the struggle. Inman had regained consciousness but was far from fully alert. He squirmed against Huston’s efforts but with his legs bent back at the knee and tied to his wrists with nylon rope, his mouth taped shut, his resistance accomplished little more than to slow Huston down.
Next, Huston went to the opposite side of the garage where a dozen cement blocks were stacked underneath the stairs leading to the apartment. He laid two of these blocks on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Then he picked Inman’s knife off the floor and stuck it under his belt. When he returned to the shelf, he picked up the handgun and stuffed it into his waistband, then faced the car and closed the trunk lid. DeMarco grunted and moaned as loudly as he could to get Huston’s attention.
Huston peeled the tape off DeMarco’s lips but left one end attached to his cheek.
“Don’t take my service weapon, please,” DeMarco said.
“I’m sorry. I need it.”
“Thomas, c’mon. I’m too old to be demoted again.”
“I have no choice,” Huston said. He started to press the tape in place again.
“Wait, wait, wait. In the compartment for the jack on the side of the trunk. Take that weapon instead. It’s unregistered.”
Huston popped open the trunk again. With the service weapon now aimed at Inman and keeping him cowered to the side, Huston recovered the other handgun. Then he slammed shut the trunk.
“Thank you,” he said and pressed the tape over DeMarco’s mouth. “I’ll leave your service weapon on the shelf for you. Out of reach for now.”
He smiled one more time. Then he climbed into the car and drove away.
Sixty
Through the barn’s open door, the early morning mist was cool and as gray as a shadow. For the first few moments after Huston’s departure, DeMarco did nothing but inhale the morning in one deep breath after another. He was clearheaded and unhurt except for a dull throb at the base of his skull. It looks like you’re probably not going to die today, he thought and was a little disappointed in himself because of the shiver of pleasure the realization brought.
Even more pleasurable was the realization that Inman would die soon. DeMarco would do his best to prevent that because it was his duty to do so, but he knew he had small chance of success, and he considered his first priority keeping Huston alive despite the man’s obvious intent to subvert that duty.
DeMarco stood close to the wall and surveyed the possibilities. No nails within reach that he might employ as a scraping tool against the duct tape and nylon rope. But he soon discovered that if he moved as far from the wall as the rope allowed, held the rope taut, and rotated his hands downward, he could, with small, quick movements, saw the edge of the tape against the rope. Three minutes later, the tape around his wrists broke free. Now he could peel the tape off his mouth and pick at the knot on the rope. The latter was not easy with his upper arms down to the elbow taped to his body, but by bending forward, he could raise the knot to his mouth now, pull on it blindly with his teeth, lower it to check on his progress, then repeat the process until the knot finally gave way.
No longer tethered to the wall, he shuffled to the corner of the tool shelf, lifted the machete from its hook, and very carefully held the cutting edge against the layers of tape circling his chest. The tape split easily against the sharpness of the blade. With his arms free, he quickly unshackled his ankles.
He knew he should call in for backup, get an alert out on his car. But if he did that, he would have to report that Huston was armed. Any police officers encountered would be inclined to disarm him by whatever means necessary. And how would Huston react to that?
DeMarco felt certain he could track his friend down without such a confrontation. “You better be certain,” he told himself. “Because either way, you’re going to pay for this.” He recovered his service weapon and headed for the house.
In his living room he grabbed his cell phone off the floor, scrolled through the list of recently dialed numbers, found the one he needed, and hit the dial button. The clock on the DVR read 4:54.
He was grateful to hear Rosemary O’Patchen’s sleepy voice answer. “It’s Sergeant DeMarco,” he told her, “and I’m sorry to call you so early but I need your help, Rosemary, I really do.”
“What can I do?” she said.
“I need to know if there’s a place at the lake that has some special significance for Thomas. Some place private and secluded that he knows very well.”
“There is, yes. Is that where he is now?”
“It may be. I’m not sure. But I have reason to believe that I can find him there. How do I get to it?”
“It’s on the north shore,” she said.
“In Canada?”
“Excuse me?”
“The north shore of Lake Erie is in Canada, right?”
“Oh,” she said, and he heard the disappointment in her voice. “Then no, I’m sorry. I don’t know of any place along Lake Erie that was special to him. I mean, the kids loved the beaches; they usually went to Beach 7. But there’s nothing private or secluded about it.”
“I’m confused,” DeMarco told her. “What lake are you talking about?”
“Lake Wilhelm. Where we all went camping every summer.”
“Of course,” he said. “I should have thought of that first. This camping place is private?”
“Very private. In fact, each time we went there, he insisted we follow a slightly different path to the campsite. So we didn’t leave a permanent trail.”
“I need to know how to get there, Rosemary.”
“The easiest way is to go north on 19.”
“How far north?”
“About halfway between Sheakleyville and Black Run.”
“Okay, that’s good. But here’s the thing, Rosemary. GPS is useless for this. Can you give me landmarks? Tell me exactly where to make my turns?”
“Let me think for a minute,” she said.
He waited.
She said, “Just after 19 crosses over the headwaters, you’ll see an old logging road going off to the right. It starts off parallel to Black Run, but then it heads south again. It ends in a clearing maybe a hundred or so yards from Schofield Run. Kids have parties there, so you’ll see lots of litter and old campfires and such.”
“You’re doing fine. Just keep going.” As he talked he crossed toward the back door. His car was gone but he knew that Inman had not arrived at his house by taxi. Bonnie’s car, maybe with an unsuspecting Bonnie still waiting patiently inside, was parked somewhere nearby, probably within a couple blocks of DeMarco’s garage.
Two Days Gone Page 27