The Hanged Man

by T. J. MacGregor

  “Fuck,” Sheppard said. “You and Rae Steele, Gerry?”

  Young turned slowly, like a man in trance, his eyes wide with shock, with pain, with emotions that burned as brightly as sunlight against snow. And then he covered his face with his hands, his shoulders slumped, and for long, terrible seconds he said nothing, did nothing. When his hands fell away from his face, tears glistened in his eyes.

  “It ended seven months ago,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “It isn’t in her nature to sneak around. She wanted to leave him, but she was afraid he would win custody of Carl. It was a mess, Shep, the whole fucking thing was a mess from beginning to end, but I was so goddamn in love with her it didn’t matter.”

  “Christ, Gerry. You knew about the cabin. You could have at least given me some hint about the goddamn cabin.”

  “How the hell could I do that without telling you the rest of it? It would look like I killed him, for Christ’s sakes. I didn’t kill him, Bennet did. But you wouldn’t have believed me if you’d known about me and Rae.”

  “Bullshit. I know you’re no killer. Give me credit for that much. Your problem is that you can’t trust anyone enough to open the fuck up to them, Gerry.”

  Blood rushed into Young’s face, he glared at Sheppard. “What horseshit.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Sheppard snapped, and turned away to search the rest of the chickee.

  Everything here smacked of an odd precision: the way the shutters fit, for instance, the hinges exactly right, the edges sealing seamlessly. Each piece of handmade furniture was a work of art, a thing of exquisite beauty and ultimate practicality. It was as if Bennet had discovered the better part of himself out here and it had found expression through his hands.

  They loaded Rae’s clothes and what remained of the videotape collection into lare garbage bags to take back into town. They removed the sketches from the walls and packed them in Sheppard’s waterproof bag. Bit by bit, they dismantled the chickee and packed up the evidence. And through it all, they spoke only briefly. Help me with this, do that.

  Young heard the noise first, a kind of hapless squeaking too loud to be a rat. He hurried out onto the platform to investigate and Sheppard followed quickly. She climbed up the ladder, a woman with the gaunt, fallen features of a Holocaust victim. Her hair was slicked back against her head, but Sheppard couldn’t tell if it was water or sweat. Her bare arms looked as if swarms of insects had feasted on them. One eye darted about wildly, desperately, the other was swollen shut.

  The blood leaked from Young’s face and he tore toward her. “Gerry,” she whispered hoarsely, and collapsed against the platform floor.

  “Christ,” Young whispered, and slipped an arm under her head and with his other hand smoothed the hair away from her face. “Rae, come on, wake up, talk to me.” His head snapped up. “Help me get her inside the chickee, Shep.”

  My store hasn’t been the same since the day you walked in there and offered your opinion on the cards I’d drawn…

  Fletcher kept turning that sentence around and around in her mind, examining it from every conceivable angle. But no matter how she looked at it, she came up with the same answer. Mira had been warning her.

  The day she’d gone to the bookstore, Mira had been studying one card only—The Hanged Man. And in the old days, that had been Bennet’s card. Maybe Mira didn’t know that. Just the same, Fletcher felt sure she’d been telling her that Bennet was there, forcing her to make the call.

  She walked out to the edge of the roof of Evans’s building. From here, the dark, sagging sky looked close enough to touch. The drizzle had started again, a slow suppuration. Even if it started to pour, though, Mira’s car would be visible as soon as it turned onto the street.

  And then what, Lenora?

  She signaled to Hood, who stood behind the far right corner of the roof with a high-powered rifle slung over his shoulder. Laskin waited on the beach, a barefoot fisherman in a raincoat. She switched on her handheld radio. “You guys copy? Over.”

  “Loud and clear,” Hood replied. “Bruce?”

  Laskin replied, “Okay down here.”

  “Rich? You with us?” Fletcher asked.

  “I’m here, watching the road from the side balcony,” Evans replied. “I suggest we all take our positions.”

  Fletcher eyed the road again. “Let’s go over it once more, people. Jim, you’ll be the first to see the car. You alert the rest of us and keep your rifle aimed at Bennet. If anything goes wrong, you shoot him before he reaches the steps. But that’s a last resort. I want him inside the building, preferably outside the apartment, before you open fire. Got that?”

  “What’s there to get?” Hood replied dryly.

  “Bruce, as soon as the car stops out front, you start heading back toward the building. Jim will tell us when Bennet enters the building. Give him to the count of ten, then follow. He’ll have to take the stairs because the elevator will be stopped up here. By then, Jim will be inside the elevator and we’ll all be on an open radio channel.

  “If the woman’s with him, she’ll probably be the one to ring the bell or knock. Either way, you’ll hear me say, ‘Just a second.’ That’ll be your cue, Jim and Bruce. You count to three by thousands and come out firing. Aim for his neck, chest, or upper back. The tranquilizer darts will work fastest there. Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” said Laskin. “What the fuck do we do if none of this works?”

  Fletcher rubbed the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. “It’ll work.”

  “But what if it doesn’t?” Laskin repeated.

  “Then you pray, guys, and you keep firing until he’s on the floor. Keep your ELFs on the pulsating mode.”

  Fletcher took one last look at the road, flashed a thumbs-up at Hood, and hurried over to the trapdoor that opened to the roof. She slipped down inside it, lowered the hatch, and climbed down the ladder into Evans’s pantry. He stood there, waiting for her, a gun tucked into his belt, another gun in his hand. He handed that one to her.

  “No darts in these,” Evans said. “If he makes it into the apartment, the fucker’s dead.” He started to walk back into the living room, but Fletcher caught his arm. “This better be worth it, Rich. I’m putting my ass on the line for you and the goddamn favor you owe someone.”

  Evans smiled, his eyes unnaturally bright, and patted her cheek with his hot, dry palm. “You’re not doing it for me, Lenora. You’re doing it because you want to head the Bureau or be appointed attorney general and you know that I can get you there faster than you can get there on your own merits. Now c’ mon, let’s get settled.”

  He turned away from her and strode into the living room.

  The rain fell harder as they crossed the intracoastal bridge to the beach. The wipers whipped back and forth across the windshield in a maddening, metronomic rhythm. And to Mira, even the light seemed to grow dimmer, as if the devil’s hand had grabbed the sun and slowly squeezed out the heat and radiance.

  She somehow managed to keep her fear locked up, shoved down deep inside her. Now and then she heard the echoes of its shrieks, but mostly she heard the rain tapping the Explorer’s roof. Bennet didn’t say a word. He sat with his back to the door, the gun aimed at her and his psychic sentry standing at attention inside of her, watching, listening.

  As soon as they turned onto A-1-A, he consulted the map folded open in his lap. Turn right, turn left, turn right again.

  She did what he said because she didn’t know what else to do. And yet, she remained vigilant, alert for a chance, however small, to escape.

  As they approached the street where they were supposed to turn, Hal said, “Keep going. You’re going to turn after that cluster of pines just ahead. There should be a dirt road there that parallels the pines.”

  She passed the pines and turned onto a dirt road that angled between the pines and a small, deserted playground. The Explorer splashed through puddles, hit potholes.
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  “Pull into the pines and stop,” Bennet said.

  Mira stopped, turned off the engine, removed the keys from the ignition and started to pocket them.

  “Uh-uh. Give me the keys.” He extended his hand and she dropped the keys into them. He put them in his pocket, then unsnapped a pouch at his waist and brought out a roll of heavy electrical tape. “Give me your hand.”

  “For what?”

  He grabbed her wrist and wound a length of tape tightly around it. He wrapped the other end around his own wrist. “I can’t worry about you bolting. Now pull your hood up and get out nice and easy.”

  She pulled the hood of her rain slicker over her head; Bennet did the same with his raincoat. They slid out of the car together, the tape binding them more closely than handcuffs. He kicked the door shut and they headed into the trees.

  “I want a look at the building first,” he said.

  “You think it’s a trap?”

  “I think that Fletcher’s a very bright woman who’s always prepared.”

  He reached into her then, grabbing, and she heard his voice in her skull, as if they’d fused, merged, melted together. Act normal. Do what I say. If you try anything at all, I’ll squeeze. And he squeezed just to show her what he could do in spite of his fatigue, a squeeze of agony so intense she gasped. Then it vanished, leaving only a trickle of blood trailing an erratic line to her chin.

  “Any sign of the car, Jim?’ Fletcher asked. “Over.”

  “Not yet,” Hood replied. “Bruce? Is the beach still clear?”

  “Clear and wet,” Laskin replied.

  Fletcher frowned and glanced at Evans, who paced across the living room. “If anyone appears on the beach, Bruce, and gets too close to the building, you’ll have to turn them away. Got that?”

  “Got it,” he replied.

  Chapter 30

  Hal’s shoulder ached; the painkillers had begun to wear off. But adrenaline pumped through him now, abrading the fatigue that had dogged him since he’d left the Glades. It sharpened his senses, heightened his awareness, and would make reaching easier.

  He stopped at the edge of the pines and, still holding the gun on Mira, reached into the building. Static seemed to fill the place. Instead of withdrawing as he’d done in the past, he embraced it, sank into it more deeply, tried to work with it.

  Gradually, he realized he could sense several different pockets of static. Two pockets emanated from an apartment on the top floor. Another seemed to be located above the apartment, on the far side of the roof. A fourth felt more distant, out on the beach somewhere. He sensed no other people in the building.

  He withdrew and hurried through the trees, to where they grew the thickest. Only five or six feet of exposed area stood between them and the side of the building. Hal figured the person on the roof wouldn’t spot them from here and if they moved along under the building’s awning, they could make the front door without being seen.

  “Fast,” he hissed, and ran out from under the cover of the trees, Mira stumbling alongside him. When he reached the wall, he jerked her toward him and pushed her up against the wall. “Stay under the awning.”

  “Look, let me go,” she said. “You don’t need me for this.”

  Hal grinned. “You’re my insurance.” With that, he crept along the side of the building, moving toward the front door.

  As Young helped Rae Steele climb into the back of the plane, Sheppard’s cell phone rang. He dug it out of his backpack. “Sheppard.”

  “This is Nadine, Mr. Sheppard. I’ve been calling Mira’s house since early this morning and she didn’t answer, so I came over here. I think something has happened.”

  Sheppard’s chest tightened. “She’s not at the street fair?”

  “She was supposed to pick me up. One of the screens has been removed from a window, the locks on the window are broken, and the blood… I also found an address scrawled on her wall calendar. It’s not her handwriting.”

  Sweet Christ. Bennet. Bennet got to Mira. “Give me the address.”

  She ticked it off, he told her he would be in touch, and hung up. Then he shouted at Young.

  Mira saw the man first, darting up from the beach, through the rain. He clutched a fishing pole in one hand and held a radio to his mouth with the other hand. Before she could react, Bennet’s head snapped around, the man stopped, stared, then suddenly the air turned tight, electric, as if its molecules had sprung to life.

  The man went for his gun but never retrieved it. His hands flew to his head, the fishing pole struck the ground, and he stumbled back, his raincoat hood slipping off his head. In a single blinding moment that would be burned into Mira’ s memory as long as she lived, she saw blood pouring from the man’s nostrils and oozing from his ears and the corners of his eyes. Then he just fell over backward and lay there, twitching.

  A scream raced up her throat but Bennet slapped his hand over her mouth before it reached the air. “You want to end up like him? Huh? Do you?”

  She shook her head and he took his hand away from her mouth. Even as they moved toward the man, Mira sensed he was dead. Bennet leaned over to scoop up the guy’s radio and gun. Every time he moved in a direction that she didn’t, she felt the electrical tape loosening slightly, and it buoyed her hope.

  Bennet examined the gun. “Tranquilizer darts. Like I’m some kind of fucking animal.” He went through the man’s pockets, found three more loaded darts, and a black device that she recognized. An ELF device. Bennet fiddled with the ELF’s knobs, turned it off. “The white noise,” he muttered, and dropped it to the ground, slamming the heel of his shoe over it.

  Static crackled from the radio. “Bruce, do you copy?” Fletcher’s voice. Bennet smiled, turned the radio to RECEIVE, and lowered the volume. He put it in his raincoat pocket, then pulled Mira back to the side of the building, around the corner, and up the steps. She stumbled intentionally and went down on one knee, hoping the tape would tear. Bennet didn’t seem to notice; he jerked her to her feet again, shoved open the front door, and they stepped into the lobby.

  “Bruce, do you copy?” Fletcher asked again.

  Silence.

  “Jim, you copy?”

  “Hood here,” said a male voice. “No car in sight yet. I walked the perimeter of the roof and didn’t see anything unusual. Bruce’s radio probably went on the fritz. It wasn’t working so good.”

  “I’m going down to check on him. He should be inside the building now. Over and out.”

  Bennet hesitated a moment, glanced at the elevator, then at the door that opened to the stairs. He quickly pressed the elevator button, but nothing happened. He grinned. “She’s got it stopped up there. She’ll be coming down on the elevator. I’ll stop her on the next floor.”

  “You can’t—”

  He jammed the gun to her neck. “Move.”

  Fletcher, Evans, and Hood stepped out into the hallway. She gestured for Hood and Evans to take the front stairs, she would take the back stairs. But first, she flicked the STOP button inside the elevator and punched the button for the first floor. She stepped back, the doors whispered shut, and the elevator started down.

  Fletcher ran silently across the hall to the service stairs. Her heart knew that Bennet was down there, that he planned to ambush her when she stepped off the elevator. Fat chance.

  As she started down to the second floor landing, she heard the distant creak of the elevators cable’s and pulleys, unoiled for probably fifty years. It wouldn’t be long now, she thought, and relished the taste of her victory.

  As Mira pushed open the door to the second floor, she felt Bennet extending himself, reaching to stop the elevator, reaching so hard he momentarily forgot about her. So she spun and brought her right knee up, slamming it into Bennet’s groin.

  He gasped and fell back, jerking her toward him. Mira wrenched her arms upward with such force she felt tendons tearing in her shoulder. But the tape ripped, freeing her, an
d Mira tumbled back into the door. It swung all the way open and slammed against the wall in the hallway.

  Bennet, eyes bulging in his sockets from the pain, charged her. Mira leaped up, threw her weight into the door, and caught his arm as the door slammed shut. His gun fell to the floor. He shrieked like a panicked pig and Mira screamed, “Second floor, help, someone, help!” She tried to reach the gun, but couldn’t stretch far enough without moving away from the door.

  Then he hurled himself at her, reaching into her with such raw power that pain exploded inside her head. For seconds, it literally blinded her. She struggled to keep her weight against the door, so he wouldn’t get his arm loose, and tried to deflect his attack by singing “Jingle Bells” at the top of her lungs.

  She felt a sudden lessening of pressure in her head, heard a man on the other side of the door scream, then he came after her again, seizing her. His full weight slammed the door; she couldn’t hold him off any longer. She leaped back, scooped up the gun, and he fell into the hallway, an enraged giant. He weaved toward her, one hand struggling to pull a tranquilizer dart from his shoulder, his eyes fixed on her, the pain pulsing erratically inside of her now.

  Who shot him? Who?

  Mira raised the gun, clutching it with both hands, and fired once. She missed, Bennet still lumbered toward her. Just as her finger twitched against the trigger again, someone shoved her from behind and sent her sprawling to the floor. The gun flew out of her hand.

  As she dived into the elevator, Fletcher shouted, “That’s far enough, Hal!”

  Bennet reached for Fletcher, struck the wall of white noise, and dived through it. Not so fast, Lenora. You’re not going to shoot me.

  He felt her panic, saw her hand dart to the black device hooked to her belt, and tasted her fear when she realized it couldn’t protect her anymore. Drop the gun, babe.