Jack Keller - 01 - The Devil's Right Hand

by J. D. Rhoades

  “You didn’t want to get close to him. You tried to argue Wesson out of it. He pulled rank. He did it to show me he was the boss and if I said black, he could say white and that was that. If he hadn’t let that blind him, you wouldn’t have gotten near enough to Puryear for him to have been able to get your gun.”

  She shrugged. “So?”

  “So right now, Wesson’s being treated like a goddamn hero and a good cop can’t even get the time of day from the people who are supposed to be her backup. I don’t like it. I bet you don’t either.”

  “How do you know so much about it?”

  “Like I said. I’ve been there. I’ve had the people I trusted to be watching my back turn on me.”

  She stood up suddenly. “I need a drink,” she said. “You want one?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Keller said. “Whatever you’ve got.”

  She went into the kitchen and came back with a pair of rock glasses half-filled with ice and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She set the glasses on the coffee table in front of Keller and poured each one half-full. Keller noticed that her hand shook slightly as she poured. She sat back down in the recliner and drained off half of her glass before Keller had gotten his to his lips. He took a sip. Marie raised the glass again and he heard the edge of it rattle against her teeth as her hand shook again. He set his glass down.

  “It’s not going to help,” he said.

  She looked at him. He could see the whites all around her eyes. “What?” she said.

  “The booze. It helps blot out what happened, but the only way to get to that place is to get too plastered to think. And it doesn’t last. You sober up eventually. And you’ll still have the dreams.”

  “You don’t know me. You don’t know shit about my dreams.” Her voice shook.

  “I think I do,” he replied. “You’re back there on that roadside. Staring down the barrel of that gun. And you’re not just afraid you’re going to die. You know it. You’ve just seen someone you know, someone you’ve lived and worked with, cut down. And you’re next. You know you are. There’s no way you’re going to survive. Am I right so far?” She was looking at him with an expression of pure panic on her face. Her breath was coming in short gasps. He couldn’t stop himself from going on. “You push it down, pretend it doesn’t bother you because that’s what it takes to do your job, but it keeps coming back at you. Whenever you stop for a minute, whenever you let down your guard, whenever you lie down at night, you’re back there again. On that roadside.”

  Marie’s face went slack. Keller snatched the glass from her limp hand, catching her as she slipped off the chair towards the floor. He guided her down to the carpet. Her body shook feverishly.

  “G-g-god,” she whispered against his neck. “I was s-s-so scared!” He wrapped his arms around her. She clutched him back with the hysterical strength of the drowning. She sobbed into his chest like a child, her whole body convulsed with grief. He pulled himself up to a sitting position against the recliner and rocked her gently, stroking her hair with one hand. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I know. I know how it feels. It’s okay.” He held her like that for a long time as she cried herself out.

  Gradually, as she ran out of tears, she quieted. Keller became uncomfortably aware of her body pressed against him. Her breasts pressed into his chest. He became even more aware of how her hands had stopped clutching at him and had become gentler, almost caressing. She turned her tear-streaked face up to him. Her lips were slightly parted and her eyes were glazed. Her hand dropped lower, finding unerring proof of the effect she was having on him. She moaned. The edge of hysteria in her voice made it almost into a whimper.

  Keller swore to himself. He had experienced this himself in the aftermath of combat, a surge of pure sexual heat that was the body’s response to nearly being snuffed out. It was as if the genes within the body, realizing their fragility, desperately tried to take one last chance to reproduce. He knew that what she was feeling had nothing to do with him. He could have been any warm male body. It was wrong to take advantage of her in the aftermath of her emotional catharsis, he knew that. But her lips under his were warm and yielding, tasting slightly of the whiskey. Her hand stroking him was gentle but insistent. He reached down and pulled her hand away. She made a petulant sound and tried to grab him again. He pinned her hand and gently kissed her on the forehead. She looked at him for a moment as if he had lost his mind. Then she leaned her head against his chest and her body relaxed. She fell asleep as quickly as if she had been blackjacked. Keller sighed. He shifted her body slightly to try to get his arms under her. He stood up, with difficulty, cradling her in his arms. He carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed. He found a blanket in the closet and threw it over her. She grumbled a bit in her sleep, but pulled the blanket tighter around her. He stood by the bed for few moments, watching her breathe. He thought about Angela’s words to him.

  You think it’s your job to rescue the world, she had said. So now you’ve found yourself another damsel in distress. He sighed and shook his head. He walked back out into the living room and stretched out on the couch.

  It was dark when he awoke. He sat up, checked his watch. 11:30. He heard the sound of the shower running. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. His back felt cramped from sleeping on the couch. He hadn’t realized how tired he was.

  After a few minutes, she came out into the living room. She was dressed in a short white silk robe that belted at the waist. Her hair was still wet from the shower. She sat on the recliner. They looked at each other for a while, neither one speaking.

  “Hey,” she said finally.

  “Hey,” he said. “Sleep good?”

  She smiled. “Yeah. I, uh…I guess I needed that.”

  “It’s a start. Some things take a while to get over.”

  “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been there.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “I know.”

  “You get over it?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not yet.”

  “And it’s been how long?”

  “Ten years”.

  Marie shook her head. “Jesus.” They were silent for a minute. She turned to him. “Look, um, Keller, the way I acted…”

  “Don’t worry about it. You needed to let it go.”

  “Did you ever lose it like that?”

  “No.” he grimaced. “It’s probably why I’m still so fucked up.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “But anyway, that’s not what I meant. Not the crying. The—the other thing.”

  He looked away and cleared his throat. “Don’t worry about that, either,” he said. “Stress reaction. Happens a lot to people who…”

  “I don’t act like that, Keller,” she interrupted. “Ever.”

  “I didn’t think so,” he said. “Like I said. Stress.”

  She looked down for a second, then back at him. “What I want to know is—damn it!” She shook her head angrily.

  “You want to know why I didn’t take you up on it.”

  She bit her lip. “It’s not like I wanted you to—I mean I did at the time, but I’m not—I mean…” She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You’re not queer or anything, are you?”

  He barked out a laugh. “I think you know better,” he said. “You had a pretty good grip on the evidence.” Her face reddened with embarrassment and Keller immediately felt contrite. “Look,” he said. “You know how confused you are right now? Imagine how you’d feel if we had done it.”

  This time it was her turn to laugh. “Okay,” she said. “Point taken.” She gave him a crooked smile. “A regular Sir Galahad, you are.”

  He shook his head. “It would have been unfair. Like you say, you weren’t yourself. I’d only want it if…” he stopped.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  She stood up and walked over to stand in front of him. “You’d only wan
t to make love to me if I was myself, is that want you were going to say?” she said softly.

  He looked into her eyes. His mouth felt dry. “Yeah.”

  She looked uncertain for a moment, then took a deep breath. “So what about now?”

  He could only nod.

  “That may be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she said. She reached up and unbelted the robe. She was naked underneath. She moved forward and seated herself across his lap, straddling his hips.

  “I’m feeling a lot better now,” she whispered as she kissed him. He hesitated for a moment, then kissed her back, his hands sliding around her to caress up and down her back. She moaned deep in her throat. This time, there was no hysteria, no pain in the sound. She reached down to undo his belt. He raised his hips slightly as she hooked her thumbs into his waistband and yanked his jeans and underwear down to his knees. She moved further up on him as he grasped her buttocks in his hands and pulled her down. She gasped as they fit together. “Go slow,” she whispered. “Please—go slow.” He did as she asked, entering her slowly, gasping at the feel of her inner muscles gripping him. She threw her head back for a second and groaned as she slid further down onto him. Then they were joined together, fitting like puzzle pieces. She opened her eyes to look into his as they began to move.

  They took it slowly for a long time, each trying to prolong the exquisite sensations as long as possible. Then control fell away from both of them and they moved faster, their gasps and moans filling the room. He buried his face in her shoulder and clutched her to him tightly as she screamed in climax. He groaned and came as well, feeling as if he was emptying himself into her, all the rage and pain and fear leaving him in one long rush.

  They stayed like that for a long while, him still buried deep inside her, her head on his shoulder. Then she looked up. She opened her mouth to say something, but he stopped it with a kiss. They got up and walked together into the bedroom.

  “Hey,” Raymond called through the curtain. “Hey!”

  The cop outside poked his head in the door. “Yeah?”

  Raymond lifted his hand. The chain on the handcuff jingled as his arm reached the limit of its tether. “Ain’t I s’posed to get a phone call if I’m under arrest?”

  The cop gave him a nasty grin. “Doesn’t look like there’s a phone in your room here.”

  “I want to talk to a lawyer. You keep me from doin’ it, my civil rights are violated. Maybe you even have to let me go. You think about that.”

  The cop’s smile vanished. He withdrew into the corridor. Raymond could hear the crackle of the cop’s handheld radio and a few muttered words. He lay back against the pillow and waited. His gut ached like a bad tooth, but he had carefully stashed his painkillers. After about a half hour, a young black guy came in, dressed in the blue coverall of the maintenance staff. He was carrying a white plastic phone in one hand. Without a word, he plugged the phone into a wall jack behind the bed and placed the phone on the bedside table. “You dial 9 to get a outside line,” he mumbled. He didn’t look at Raymond as he left.

  The cop stuck his head back in. “You got fifteen minutes to make your phone call. Then I’m coming back in and unplugging it. You ain’t going to spend the whole night calling 900 numbers on the county’s dime.”

  “I don’t want you listenin’ at the door,” Raymond said. “Move off down the hall.”

  The cop’s face reddened. “Listen, you son of a bitch, You ain’t givin’ me orders.”

  “I got a right to talk to my lawyer in private.” He showed the cuff again. “I ain’t goin’ nowheres with this thing on.”

  The cop’s jaw worked for a moment. “I’ll be right down the hall,” he said. “Don’t try anything.” He backed out into the hall again.

  After he was sure the guy was gone, Raymond picked up the phone. He dialed a number he knew by heart, but it wasn’t a lawyer that he called.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Fuck,” DeWayne said.

  He was looking at the back end of the Crown Vic, which stuck halfway out of a ditch at the side of a two-lane country road. Too many beers, too little sleep, and DeWayne had drifted off behind the wheel. His first warning of any danger was the sound of the car’s tires ripping through the soft grass and earth of the shoulder. By then it was to late to keep the car out of the ditch. He had sat there for a few moments, too stunned and dazed to realize what had happened. Then he clambered out of the car, toting the paper sack containing the remaining beers and the rest of his cigarettes. He stuffed the pistol inside the bag.

  “God damn it!” DeWayne fumed. “What the fuck am I s’posed to do now?” A soft glow over the nearest hill rapidly brightened, then resolved into a pair of headlights. DeWayne briefly considered hiding in the woods, then realized that it was too late for that. The car slowed as it approached. DeWayne tucked the bag tighter into his armpit and waved. The car stopped in the opposite lane.

  It was a metallic blue Trans Am with tinted windows. As DeWayne approached, he could hear the pulse of rap music from inside, loud enough that DeWayne could feel the pounding of the bass in his chest, even with the windows rolled up. As the driver’s side window came down, the music got even louder. DeWayne couldn’t see the driver clearly, beyond a glimpse of blonde hair and a pale blur of face in the green glow of the instrument panel.

  “Need help?” a female voice called over the beat.

  “Yeah,” DeWayne said. “My car…a deer ran in the road. I ran into the ditch. I need a lift.”

  “Hop in.” DeWayne ran around to the passenger side and got in. The interior was as dimly lit and smoky as a nightclub. He smelled the sweet reek of pot smoke as he closed the door. A joint smoldered in the ashtray.

  “Whatcha got in the bag?” said the girl behind the wheel. She was a skinny blonde who looked no more than eighteen or nineteen. Her blonde hair was cut short and framed her pale face. Her slightly receding chin and pronounced overbite robbed her of any prettiness she might have had. Still, DeWayne thought, not a bad body, although he would have liked a little more in the tit department. She was dressed in a thin tank top and denim shorts.

  “Got some beers,” DeWayne said. “Want one?”

  Her pale blue eyes showed a muted flicker of interest. She was stoned out of her mind, DeWayne realized. This night was looking better and better. “Sure,” she said.

  He reached into the bag and fumbled for a full can. The condensation on the cold beers, however, had rendered the bag as flimsy as tissue. It ruptured and spilled its contents onto the floorboard. DeWayne swore as he fumbled among the cans and cartons.

  “Hey,” the girl said. “Is that a gun?”

  DeWayne picked up the pistol and pointed it at her. “Yeah,” he said. “Don’t try anything. Just drive.”

  The girl showed no reaction. “You a bank robber or something?”

  Jesus, DeWayne thought. Was she simple-minded? “Or something, yeah. Now—”

  “Cool,” the girl said. “I never partied with no outlaw before.” She smiled, showing her buck teeth. “You got any money? I know where we can get some rocks if you got some cash.”

  “I got a little,” DeWayne admitted.

  “Awesome,” she said. She put the car in gear. “I’m Debbie,” she said as she pulled off.

  DeWayne blurted out the first name he could think of. “I’m Leonard—ah, Lenny,” he said.

  “You wanna party, Lenny?” she said. She picked up the joint form the ashtray, tried to puff on it. It had gone out.

  “Honey, I love to party,” DeWayne grinned. He took the joint from her fingers and put it between his lips. He punched the cigarette lighter.

  “Awesome,” she said again.

  Keller awoke with the morning sun streaming through the bedroom blinds. Marie was lying on her side next to him. He slipped an arm around her. She murmured something and snuggled back against him. He lay like that with her for a few moments before the pressure in his bladder became too demanding.


  When he came back from the bathroom, she was sitting up in the bed, blinking. She looked up at him and an expression of surprise flitted across her face. Then she smiled, a little shyly.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She looked at the clock. “Wow,” she said. “I never sleep this late.”

  He sat down next to her on the bed and put his arm around her. He tried to kiss her on the mouth, but she turned her head slightly and caught it on her cheek. She turned back to him, put a finger over her lips. “Dragon breath,” she explained. “Not you,” she added hastily, “Me.”

  He laughed. “I don’t mind.” He kissed her again, this time on the mouth. “Mmmmm,” she said. She broke the kiss. “Thanks for last night,” she whispered. “And thanks for staying. It—well, let’s just say it’s been a while.”

  “I could tell.”

  She pulled away and pulled the sheet around her defensively. “What,” she said, looking down at the floor, “You’re saying I’m out of practice? It wasn’t good?” She gave a short, abrupt laugh. “I didn’t hear any complaints.”

  “No, no,” he pulled her close again. “But it was like you were making up for lost time.”

  She thought that over for a moment. “I’m trying to decide if that was a compliment.”

  “It was.”

  She smiled and relaxed against him again. She reached up and kissed him on the chin. “Maybe you just better quit talking. It’s not your strong point.” She turned to him and let the sheet fall. “Besides, I have some more lost time to make up for.”

  Afterwards, they lay together in a tangle of limbs and sweaty sheets. Marie stretched like a cat and smiled. “Hungry?”

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  She jumped up and threw her robe on. “Wait here,” she said. “I’ll whip something up.”

  “Breakfast in bed?” Keller said.

  She laughed. “Not hardly. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

  Keller lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. He had almost drifted back into sleep when he heard a sound, a rattle and buzz that sounded oddly familiar. As he struggled to place the noise, it came again. It sounded as if some huge insect was buzzing against the floor. Keller sat up and looked over the edge of the bed. His jeans lay in a heap on the floor, his belt still drawn through the loops. It was his cell phone in its holster on one of the loops that was vibrating with its silent ring. Keller considered not answering. Then he sighed. He plucked the phone from the holster and flipped it open. “Keller,” he said.