Jack Keller - 01 - The Devil's Right Hand

by J. D. Rhoades

  He was screaming, she was screaming, but it was Ben’s cries that pulled him from the pit of the dream. Keller realized that he was on top of Marie, straddling her body, his hands around her throat. She was clawing at his wrists, her nails leaving bloody scratches as she tried to break his grip. Ben was pounding on the locked door and wailing in terrified incomprehension. Keller leaped up off the bed. He backed away from her so quickly that he slammed hard into the wall. She rolled off onto the floor, gasping for breath. Ben’s cries were rising to the point of hysteria. Marie stood up and grabbed her robe. “Get in the bathroom until I can get him calmed down,” she hissed at Keller. “He can’t see you here.” Keller obeyed numbly, his mind still reeling with shock.

  He retreated to the bathroom until he heard her close the bedroom door behind her. He could hear her voice in the hallway, the words muffled by the door but the tone reassuring. The boy had stopped wailing, but he was demanding to know what was happening in a loud tearful voice. After a moment, Keller heard the door of the boy’s bedroom close and the voices were cut off.

  Keller exited the bathroom and quickly gathered up his clothes. He dressed himself and stumbled to the door. As he passed by the doorway to the boy’s bedroom, he could hear the soft sounds of Marie singing a lullaby. He paused for a moment to listen. He rested his head against the door and reached up to touch it lightly with the fingers of one hand. Then he straightened up and walked down the hallway to the front door.

  Once outside, he paused a moment to take a deep breath of the soggy air. He realized he was trembling. He sat down on the front stoop to gather himself. He ran his hands over his face as if trying to scrape something away.

  He heard the front door open behind him. He knew it was Marie, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He was afraid of what he might see in her eyes: disgust, fear, or worst of all, pity. He felt her sit on the step above him. There was a brief pause, then she leaned against him from behind. Her arms went around his chest and hugged him tightly.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It was just a nightmare.”

  Keller shook his head angrily. “I tried to—I mean I could have—and I scared the kid. I’m sorry.”

  Another pressure of her arms around him. “He’s already asleep again,” she said. “It’ll be fine.” Keller said nothing, made no response to her embrace. After a moment, she released him and straightened up. “Come on back to bed,” she said. “It’s late.”

  “No,” he said. “You’re right. I can’t stay the night. It’s not right with the kid—with Ben there.”

  “Yeah,” she said. Her voice was puzzled and hurt. “Okay. I wasn’t talking about the whole night, but—okay.” He didn’t hear her move away. There was another long pause. Finally, she said, “I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me, Jack.” He didn’t respond. He heard the door close. He turned around as if to say something but stopped as he heard the solid snick of the deadbolt. It was a loud as the slam of a cell door. He stood up and walked down the driveway to his car. When he got there, he picked up the cell phone and looked at it. He dialed a number he hadn’t dialed in years, but it was a number he knew as well as his own.

  After a few rings, a deep voice, furred with sleep, answered. “H’lo?”

  “It’s Jack Keller,” Keller said.

  “Jack?” the voice said. “Jesus Christ, man, it’ s three-thirty in the goddamn morning.”

  “I know,” Keller said. “I’m sorry to wake you up. I need to talk to you again.”

  “Then call my office and make a goddamn appointment—okay, sorry. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “The dreams are back. And they’re worse.”

  “How bad?” the voice said gently.

  Keller took a deep breath. “I almost hurt somebody.”

  The voice sharpened. “Did you actually hurt anybody? Is anybody in any danger right now?”

  Keller looked at the closed door and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m gone.”

  “How about you?” the voice said. “You feel like hurting yourself?”

  Keller thought about that. “No,” he said finally. “So I guess it can wait.”

  “But not long,” the voice said. “Call my office first thing. I’ll be in by 8:30. Someone else can take my group therapy session.”

  “Thanks, Major,” Keller said. “I owe you one.”

  “All you owe me, Sergeant,” the voice said, “is to let me finish the job this time.”

  “Okay,” Keller said.

  “Get some sleep, troop,” the voice said. “And no dreams. That’s an order.”

  Keller smiled slightly at that. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  Raymond had finally broken down and taken one of the pain pills, since Delmer was driving. Delmer wasn’t good for much; Raymond sometimes wondered if the kid was a retard. But he sure could drive, and Raymond had employed him in that capacity for several years at the request of Billy Ray, Delmer’s cousin, who was leaning over the back of the front seat, talking to Raymond.

  “Buddy,” he said. “That don’t look good. We better get you to that doctor and get you stitched back up.”

  Raymond shook his head. “A doctor’ll call the cops,” he said. “It’ll quit in a little while.” Billy Ray shook his head.

  “He ain’t bleedin all over my seats, is he?” Delmer asked.

  “Shut up, Delmer,” Billy Ray said. He turned back to Raymond. “We got a call from our friends down south. They was worried when I told them you was in the hospital.”

  “You tell ‘em I was under arrest?”

  “Yeah, but I told ‘em it didn’t have anything to do with the business. I told ‘em it was personal.”

  “Shit,” Raymond said. The last thing he needed was the Colombians getting nervous about him. Paco Suarez was fully capable of having Raymond killed just to make sure he didn’t say anything incriminating while under sedation. It was the kind of paranoia that had kept Suarez alive and out of jail through twenty years of drug wars and government task forces aimed at him. It made dealing with Suarez a tricky proposition, however, especially since all communications were filtered through several layers of equally paranoid and trigger-happy lieutenants.

  Billy Ray went on. “They was asking when we would be able to move some more product for ‘em.”

  “Right away,” Raymond said automatically. “Who’d you talk to?”

  Billy Ray’s eyes flickered towards Delmer, but the younger man was intent on the road. “Geronimo,” he whispered.

  An idea began to form in Raymond’s mind. Geronimo was their nickname for one of Suarez’ chief muscle boys. His real name was Guillermo, but Raymond had misheard it as Geronimo at their first meeting, and he thought the crazy Colombian had actually liked it. He apparently thought it was some sort of Native American honorary title, and Raymond had never bothered to set him straight. Geronimo had access to firepower and people who weren’t afraid to use it. That was exactly the kind of people Raymond needed right then.

  “Good,” Raymond said. “Pull over at this phone booth. Geronimo’s just the boy I want to talk to.”

  DeWayne was out of rocks, out of money, and running out of patience with Debbie’s whining. “Stay in the car,” he ordered. He got out and slammed the door. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  “I ain’t gonna stay in no car,” the girl said. “I ain’t a dog. I’m comin’ in with you.”

  “Damn it.” DeWayne said. His nerves were jangling like a multiline phone with all lines ringing. His eyeballs felt sandy and irritated by the morning sun. He felt as if he hadn’t slept in a month. His skin felt scoured and raw. If he concentrated he imagined he could identify each and every nerve ending, and they were all screaming. “There ain’t nothin’ for you to do in there,” he said. “I’m just goin’ in to visit my cousin.”

  “What, I’m not good enough to meet your family?” Debbie said in that whiny voice that bored into Dwayne’s ear like a dentists drill set on high. For one
brief moment, he contemplated pulling his pistol out and shooting her right there. The number of other people in the hospital parking lot saved her. Instead, he stood up and slammed the door on her, turned around and walked towards the glassed in entrance. He ignored her squawks of muffled outrage.

  The woman behind the reception desk was a fortyish blonde with an ample bosom barely contained by her blue and white uniform. She eyed DeWayne suspiciously as he came in. “May I help you?” she said.

  “I’m here to visit Crystal Lee Puryear,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster.

  “Are you a family member?” the woman said as she turned to her computer. Her fingers began clicking busily on the keys.

  “Yeah,” DeWayne said, “I’m her brother.”

  The woman’s fingers stopped for a brief second. She kept her eyes straight ahead and her voice neutral. “And your name is…?” she asked.

  The too-casual tone in her voice made a chill of paranoia run down DeWayne’s spine. “Uhhhh—” he said. “Leonard,” he blurted out.

  The woman turned and looked at him. “Well, the computer says you were here yesterday. Don’t you remember the room?”

  The shiver down his backbone shot back up and set alarm bells clanging in his head. “Ahhh—yeah,” he said. “I ahhh—I forgot the number.”

  “Your sister has been released to a—to another facility,” he woman said, still eyeing DeWayne up and down. ”She didn’t tell you?”

  Dewayne smacked himself on the head with the palm of his hand. “Boy,” he laughed nervously, “I’d fergit my head if it weren’t screwed on. Where’d she go again?”

  The woman stiffened and reached for the phone. “I’m not allowed to give out that information,” she snapped. “Wait here, and I’ll call somebody.”

  “No, no,” DeWayne said, “That’s okay, don’t bother. I remember now.” He turned and bolted out the glass doors, pursued by the woman’s shout.

  DeWayne slowed to a brisk walk as he headed for the parking lot. Someone had been to see Crystal, pretending to be him. Or Leonard. He could only think of one person who would do something like that.

  “Keller,” he muttered under his breath. The guy was always there, following him. He needed to do something about Keller. He walked to the place where he had left the parked car.

  It was gone.

  “You fucking bitch!” DeWayne screamed. An elderly couple walking slowly by looked up in horror. DeWayne didn’t care. He ran at the nearest car, kicking the rear bumper in a frenzy. He slammed his fists down on the trunk lid, screaming in rage, then kicked the bumper again. The old couple scurried faster to get away from the madman. DeWayne nearly pulled the gun and shot them, but then he heard the beeping of a car horn. He turned. Debbie was sitting in her car, fifty feet away. She had moved to the end of the row and had been watching him. He could see her laughing.

  DeWayne snarled deep in his throat and ran towards the car. He yanked the gun out of his waistband and pulled the slide back to chamber a round. She started the car, but didn’t pull away. She was still laughing. When he got to the door, he saw that the windows were rolled up and the doors locked. He stood beside the driver’s side window and pointed the gun. “Open the goddamn door!” he screamed.

  “I coulda left you!” she shouted, still laughing, but with an edge of hysteria, so that it sounded more like crying. “But I didn’t! Now you see! Now you see!”

  “See what!?” he yelled. “Goddamn it, you crazy bitch, open the door!” He looked up and saw a pair of uniformed men standing in the doorway. Hospital security. Rent-a-cops, but still trouble.

  “You need me!” Debbie yelled. By now she really was crying. “You need me! Say it!”

  The rent-a-cops had located the source of the yelling and were moving purposefully towards him. Debbie was still screaming at him. “You need me!” she repeated.

  “Fuck it,” DeWayne muttered. “Right now, it’s true.” He bent down, close to the car window. “Okay, baby,” he said, trying to sound placating through his near-panic. “I do. I need you. Now please, sugar, open the fucking door!”

  A smile burst across her face. “I knew it,” she sniffled. She leaned across and unlocked the passenger side door. “Get in,” she smiled at him. “I’ll drive.” DeWayne bit back another snarl. He ran around to the passenger side and slid in. He was barely in the car when she stomped the gas and peeled out of the parking space; the door slammed shut from the forward momentum of the car before he had a chance to pull it closed. They blasted past the startled rent-a-cops, one of whom had to leap out of the way to avoid being run down. DeWayne looked back and saw them standing there, their mouths half open in shock.

  “So,” Debbie said. “How was she?” her tone was conversational, as if the previous altercation had never happened.

  “She’s gone. They moved her somewhere. They wouldn’t tell me where.”

  Debbie plucked a cigarette out of the pack wedged under the sun visor. “Drug rehab,” she said positively as she popped the cigarette lighter in.

  “How do you know that?” DeWayne said.

  She lit the cigarette, then shifted it to one corner of her mouth. “ ‘Cause they wouldn’t tell you,” she said through the cloud of smoke. “It’s a law. They can’t even say if a person’s had drug treatment. So when they get all secret-like—then you know.”

  “Well, I got no way of finding out where,” DeWayne said.

  She smirked. “I bet I can,” she said.

  “How?”

  She reached over, put a hand on his thigh and squeezed. “Tell me you need me again.”

  She really does have a screw loose, DeWayne thought. “I need you, baby,” he said. The patent insincerity of his voice seemed to make no difference to her. She gave his thigh another playful squeeze. “Wait’ll we get back to my place. Then I’ll show you. I’ll show you why you need me.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “You know, Keller,” Berry said, “life is kind of funny. I don’t hear from you for five years, and then I hear your name twice within twenty-four hours.”

  They were walking on a grassy lawn in front of a large white Victorian house. The home was the main building of Rescue House, the drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility where Doctor Lucas Berry, Major, US Army Medical Corps (Retired) was director.

  Berry was a huge man, almost six-seven. His close-cropped hair was streaked with gray. Combined with his broad, square, brown face, the gray hair gave him a distinguished appearance. The feeling of mass that Berry gave was complemented by Berry’s deep, resonant voice.

  Keller thought for a moment before realizing Berry’s meaning. “Crystal Puryear called you.”

  Berry nodded. “Yes. Or at least her doctor at the hospital did. But he was careful to mention your name. Fortunately we had a bed coming available. Otherwise I would have had to bump someone off the waiting list.”

  “You’d do that just because someone used my name?”

  “You don’t hit the panic button easily, Jack. If you thought enough to call for help for someone, they’re in bad shape.”

  Suddenly, incongruously, Berry grinned, which robbed his chiseled brown face of some of its accustomed sternness and made him look almost impish. “Maybe I should put you to work recruiting for me.”

  “Thanks,” Keller said. “I like the job I have.”

  “Hmm.” The sound was neutral, but the meaning unmistakable.

  “You don’t approve of what I do.”

  “It’s not up to me to approve or disapprove, Jack. I just wonder why you keep putting yourself in dangerous situations.”

  Keller shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

  Berry grunted. “Obviously. But that’s not an answer. Why do you do it?”

  Keller stopped and looked away across the lawn at the neatly kept white guest cottages that served as the center’s dormitories. “Why does anybody do what they do?” he said. “Why’d you go from treating shell-shocked grunts to drug and alcohol rehab
?”

  “It’s a growth industry,” Berry said. “But you’re still ducking the question.”

  “Maybe because I don’t know the answer. The job needs nerves, adrenaline. If I stop to think to much about what I’m doing and why, it could get me killed.”

  “Not thinking about it is just killing you more slowly.” Keller didn’t answer. Berry sighed and started walking again. Keller followed. They walked in silence to the porch of the main building and sat down in a pair of rocking chairs on the front porch. “Nice place you got here,” Keller said. “The money must be good.”

  “The house was donated,” Berry said. “The place was a wreck when we got it. No one had lived here for ten years.” He ran a hand along the immaculately varnished rail of the porch. There was obvious pride in his voice. “We worked our asses off to get the place in shape.”

  “I can tell.”

  Berry turned to him. “So, Jack, you ever thought about killing yourself?”

  “Why?” Keller said. “Are you suggesting it? Wow, treatments really have changed in five years.”

  “Damn it, stop avoiding my questions. I wouldn’t keep asking if it wasn’t important.”

  “No,” Keller said. “Nothing like that.”

  “You said you almost hurt somebody. Tell me about it.”

  Keller took a deep breath. “I’ve been seeing a woman.”

  Berry leaned back and folded his big hands across his chest. “Someone you met on the job?”

  “Yeah. She’s a cop.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  Keller looked at the lawn. “We were asleep. Together. I had one of the dreams. She was on fire.”

  “Ah.”

  Keller looked back at him. “What do you mean, ‘ah’”?

  Berry waved him off. “Just ah. Keep talking.”

  “I think she tried to wake me up. I woke up with my hands around her throat.”

  “What happened then?”

  “She has a kid. A son. I woke him up. He was crying. I scared him.” As he spoke, Keller involuntarily leaned forward, his hands wrapped across his stomach. When he had finished, he was curled over like a man shot in the gut.