There are no cars in the parking lot of the welcome center when Edgers’s Saturn creeps in, running without lights. It is past midnight. Janis wonders again what it is that Edgers has in mind.
Whatever it is, she is ready. Janis has two guns and four quick loads in the deep pockets of her coat. The killing kit and all of her papers, her computer, are at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain in the stolen truck. Luckily, in Tennessee, guns are as easy to come by as fireworks and fried food, and she’d stopped at a flea market in Pigeon Forge to buy what she needed.
The flea market had the usual selection.
She’d avoided the Lorcin L-22s, which were half-assed pocket plinkers, and inaccurate to boot. Most of them self-destructed anyway, after going through a couple hundred rounds. Janis wasn’t big on Lorcin guns, or anything manufactured by Standard Arms, which had picked up where Lorcin left off when they’d gone out of business in ’98, but there were so many of them floating around, cheap and available, that they made a good choice for a low-profile murder weapon. She’d settled on a Lorcin L-9 millimeter, after checking to see that the magazine wasn’t glitchy, as they sometimes were. She had talked the seller down to forty-seven bucks because in the world of gun buying he would be more likely to remember her if she hadn’t tried to negotiate.
She’d come across the Davis P-380 by chance. It wasn’t a bad bet for reliability and price, and was a good, rudimentary shooter, common enough if she had to use it. It would be a decent backup gun, always a wise idea when you used a Lorcin. The Davis had cost her seventy-eight bucks. Even with the ammo, she’d spent less than two hundred dollars. It had been a good day—bargain hunting at the flea market, catching a long look at a couple who were actually getting married at a drive-through wedding chapel in Pigeon Forge, just down the road from Sevierville. The area was overflowing with wedding chapels, welcome centers, antique markets, and signs for Dollywood. A strange place, even when you considered how far south it was. They didn’t have anything quite like it in Texas that Janis can remember.
The guns are loaded, the Lorcin in the right pocket of the barn coat, the Davis in the left. Janis chews her lip, waiting. The Saturn pulls into a spot along the far left side of the lot. The engine continues to chug for a full ten minutes before it cuts off abruptly and a man gets out of the car. He is wearing black, secret agent man, and he goes to the trunk, and takes out a rifle case. Janis, fingering the half-assed Lorcin in her right pocket, is annoyed. She wishes she’d bought a Mack ten.
The man looks around; he is alert, not nervous. Clearly this is Cory Edgers—the height and the air of smug competence give him away. Janis finds the game of murder tag less complex than she expected, finding so many people to be across-the-board lazy, and often enough, not overly bright. She’d expected to be caught early on in the game, but had eventually reached the conclusion that she might get the chance to retire someday.
Janis gets to her feet just as the cop starts up the pathway. She stretches. She has been frozen in position for an hour and a half.
When the target is about two hundred feet away she decides that she’ll talk to him first.
He is heading just for the spot behind the trees where she’d found the Almond Joy wrapper. His, she figured. No doubt he’d done a reconnoiter before writing the note.
The cop, like an ex-Eagle Scout, carries the gun properly, broken in the middle, and through the crook of his left arm. Janis takes the Lorcin out of her pocket, right arm draped down her side, waiting for the cop to get closer. She raises the gun, aims, fires.
The bullet hits the cop in the left elbow and passes through the bone. He groans and drops the rifle.
Janis frowns. She was aiming for the shoulder. On the other hand, the cop was moving, albeit slowly, and it is very dark. The force of the bullet causes him to turn and face her, giving Janis a quick window of opportunity where he is vulnerable. She closes one eye and fires again. The second slug slams into the cop’s abdominal cavity and he drops like a rock.
Janis bites her bottom lip. It is a fine line to walk, trying to keep him alive and conscious for a short amount of time, but making sure he can’t use the rifle. Better he winds up dead and quiet, than talkative and able to shoot. Janis errs on the side of caution.
She checks once over her shoulder. If Curly Girl is in the car, she’s sitting tight. Janis is pretty sure he is alone, and she walks over to look at him.
She takes the rifle before she even looks at the cop, checks the load, snaps the weapon together, and aims it at the cop, who is crumpled sideways and still. Janis nudges him with the muzzle of the rifle, but he does not move. She takes the butt of the rifle and thumps him hard in the spot where blood gushes from the stomach wound. He groans but does not move. He is unconscious, likely in shock, and can’t be counted on to wake up soon, if ever.
Janis shrugs. She fires two more times, obliterating the cop’s face. She is close enough to be hit by spatter. She steps back into the trees and watches his car—a crappy Saturn. If Curly Girl is there, she’s still not coming out. Janis gives it fifteen minutes, then pockets her gun, sets the rifle down, and drags Edgers back into the woods. He is heavy, and the position puts an awkward strain on her back. She can’t do anything much about the blood trail, but with the body out of sight she might get a few extra hours give or take, before the body is found.
Janis checks the cop’s pockets, taking the wallet and the cell phone. She straightens up, takes a minute to look around, see if she’s left anything behind that she shouldn’t. The cop’s right eye is still intact, but rests an inch away from the socket. She has put an eye back into a socket once before, helping Bones Jones see to a couple of team ropers who’d gotten into a bar fight with three Argentine tourists. Jones, ostensibly the resident rodeo vet, required to be on site by Pro Rodeo animal welfare rules and regs, has a sideline business of treating patients who don’t care to have their gunshot wounds reported by the local ER, or who simply have no health insurance. There are a growing number of clients in the second category, and Janis was the vet’s second pair of hands. She was good with the animals, even the human ones. Sometimes she was the first pair of hands when Jones lost the ongoing wrestling match with Jack Daniel’s.
Car keys, Janis thinks, and goes back through the cop’s jacket, finding them in a pocket she missed.
She walks down the pathway to the Saturn. She is tired and unhappy. She needs to track Curly Girl down—the last person who knows Janis is Rodeo. She doesn’t have much time—not with Rugger dead, and what is left of the cop lying at the edge of the woods. She needs to disappear.
Janis keeps a hand on the Lorcin, preparing to fire right through the fabric if Curly Girl really is in the car. She is exposed as she approaches, but she is short on time, and she doesn’t think the girl is there.
The front seat of the Saturn is empty save for a neatly folded map and a pair of cop sunglasses. A quick check of the backseat reveals handcuffs, a straitjacket, and ankle cuffs. Edgers had been making plans. Bringing her in? Playing supercop?
Janis shrugs. She’ll never know. But Edgers has brought a lot of hardware, and she feels flattered.
It takes less than an hour to get back to the truck. Traffic is threadbare, and the highway is easy to cross. Janis is relieved to settle into the front seat, turn on the engine and the heater, lock the doors. She stows the rifle in the back section of the extended cab, covering it with a blanket. She unfolds the half-eaten bag of M&Ms, sucking the candy coating off one by one while she takes out the cop’s cell phone and spends over twenty frustrating minutes of trial and error before she can access his messages.
“Babe? It’s me. I’m halfway there, hon, and I just realized I left the directions at home. I’m sorry …” A girlish laugh. “I think I can find my way to the house, but I’m not sure I remember which exit. Is it Emory Valley Road or Raccoon Valley? Give me a call, studly, and let me know. Good hunting, by the way. I’ll be waiting for you at the Dairy Queen by the exit. I’ll be the
cute one drinking Cherry Coke.”
Janis smiles. The message had been left two hours ago. Maybe she’ll get lucky, and Curly Girl will live long enough for a short conversation. Janis sheds the barn coat and one of the sweaters, then peels the ball cap off her head, shaking her hair out and pulling it into a low ponytail. She’s hungry. She considers stopping at Waffle House on the way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I have not been able to sleep since that afternoon in Mendez’s office. I talked to Brady, typed up a summary of everything I’d done on the case, and spent another afternoon at the movies. The only source of information I had concerning developments in the case came from the newspapers, and there was nothing there. Edgers hadn’t been arrested yet, and I wondered why.
My nightmares were back—deadly quiet now, full of silent open-mouthed screams and the vibration of running feet. People’s lips moved but no words came out.
All my dreams involve strangers who need me to help them escape. We are behind enemy lines in a nameless war, and I have to get everyone on the train that will get us over the border to safety, whatever border that is. My charges come in twos and threes, bringing their children, their dogs, their grandmothers. Some of them are in wheelchairs, some are pregnant. The faces change; the only constant is they are all helpless; they use crutches, they can’t hear, they are too afraid to move. They won’t leave without the family cat or the rabbit they’ve raised since birth.
Roughly half of these dreams end badly and the bad ones tend to repeat. My psyche launches the sequence again and again until I know who waits outside the door. I know that one of the children will fall off the train if I don’t get to the window now, and shut it tight. The body will still be there behind the couch, but if I am careful to get everyone through the room quickly, then the mother won’t see and refuse to leave, and we can all get away this time, without being caught.
Mendez is deeply asleep beside me in our bed. He worked late tonight, stayed at the office through dinner, and avoided my eyes once home. We don’t talk unless we have to. Twice I’ve come across him sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at nothing in particular. He eases away from me to his side of the bed even in sleep, and I curl away from him to mine.
I don’t know what finally woke me the next morning, only that I sat up suddenly, wide awake. The house was quiet and I felt that disconnected confusion you get when you seriously oversleep. I usually wake when Joel gets up in the morning, and it was strange to be so suddenly alone, save Maynard, who was curled on my pillow over the top of my head.
The clothes Joel left draped over the footboard were gone. Even Joel finds it difficult to be neat without the majority of our furniture. The shirt and pants are missing, he has left the tie. I walked down to the kitchen. The coffeepot was clean and empty. There was no water in the sink. I padded back upstairs and looked into the bathtub drain. No dark curly black hairs. Joel had left in a hurry, no shower, no coffee, in the shirt and pants he wore the day before. Whatever it was that was critical enough to get him out of bed so quickly, he did not see fit to share with me.
Events were moving along all around me, and I was out of the loop.
I picked up the phone to call Miranda. I still had the key to Cheryl’s apartment and I was ready to give it back and be done with it. I pulled on the shirt and jeans I wore yesterday and paused just long enough to brush my teeth and put on enough makeup to keep from scaring the unwary stranger. I would drop by Miranda’s apartment, and if she wasn’t there I would leave it in the mailbox or shove it under the door. Then I’d be done with the whole business, which sounded pretty good to me.
Miranda lived in the Lamplighter apartments on East Reynolds Road, right next to the Landsdowne post office. She rents what is called a garden apartment, which means basement in less friendly terms. The parking lot was small, there are only four buildings, and I didn’t see Miranda’s car. She was in the first building on the left, and I knocked on her door with little hope that it would be answered.
It wasn’t.
The mailboxes were the locking kind, and there was no room under the door for a key. I have a girlfriend, Kay, who lived in one of these apartments after her first divorce. It was easy enough to get in. I shoved the front door hard with my right shoulder and the door swung through the frame. I had the grace to be slightly ashamed, but it didn’t stop me from going inside.
The apartment had the aura of a fake smile plastered over a less than friendly face. The carpet was tan and new and the walls were cream-colored and relatively unsmudged. Miranda had hung a depressing array of posters—recent movies, most of them bad, and a few obscure heavy metal bands with softly pornographic names. The place was clean enough, which surprised me, though I’m not sure why. The faint but unmistakable aroma of McDonald’s scented the air.
“Hello?”
No one answered, but the phone rang. In three rings the machine picked up, parroted Miranda’s canned message, and I heard Miranda’s father on the line.
I picked up the extension on the wall in Miranda’s tiny kitchen.
“Paul? This is Lena Padget.”
A pause. “I guess you and Miranda are wrapping up the details. Can I speak to her, or would you ask her to call me in the next hour or two?”
“She’s not here.”
“What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
“No, I just came by to drop off the key to Cheryl’s apartment. The door was unlocked, so I thought I’d just leave it on the kitchen counter.”
“I wanted to talk to you anyway. Do you know what the details are on Edgers’s plea bargain? How easy is he getting off?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ah. I’m sorry. I’ve been indiscreet. Miranda told me you asked her to keep things quiet until everything settled out.”
“Keep what things quiet?”
Brady was silent for a long moment, and when he spoke his voice had a flattened quality. “Miranda called me yesterday and told me not to come down this weekend. She said that Edgers had confessed to killing Cheryl, and made a deal with the police, and that it was all over. I take it that’s not the case.”
“Paul, excuse the question, but I don’t think Miranda was telling you the truth.”
“No, she was, I just got off the phone with Captain Mendez. But he wouldn’t give me any details, just confirmed that there had been a deal, and that Edgers would be giving himself up in forty-eight hours. Lena? Are you there?”
“I’m here. Who told Miranda about the plea bargain?”
“She said you did.”
I thought about that. None of the thoughts were useful. “Let me get back to you on this, okay, Paul?”
“Catch me on my cell phone, will you? I’m on the way out. Do you have a pen?”
I looked around the kitchen cabinets. No pen, but a notepad. I ripped the first sheet off, then gave it a second look.
Miranda had written down explicit directions to Kate Edgers’s house on the mountain.
I let Brady give me his cell number but I did not bother to find a pen and write it down. Why would Joel tell Miranda and not me? And why would Miranda tell her father that I gave her the news? Maybe she’d gotten her information from someone other than Joel.
But it wasn’t a good thing, Miranda on her way to see Edgers’s wife. I had Kate’s number in my case notebook, but she didn’t answer.
And then, my feeble brain, long clouded by sympathy and concern for the family of victims of violence, particularly the sisters in the family, at last put the pieces together. Miranda, always jealous of Cheryl, would be instantly drawn by any man in Cheryl’s life—particularly a man Cheryl looked up to, and admired, and maybe even had a crush on. It made sense now that Miranda had lied, and defended Cory Edgers, and misled me from beginning to end. Miranda was in love with him—so much so, that she had stood by and almost let him get away with killing her sister.
Past time for me to get some distance from my clients. There are no
good guys, there are no bad guys, there are only guys.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The little trailer was dim inside, even with both lamps on, and Wilson opened the crimson curtains over both windows to let in the blaze of sunlight. The temperature had risen to fifty-two degrees, which seemed to thrill the locals. Wilson was cold.
Rodeo had left bits and pieces of furniture and kitchen utensils, a few dishes, and a dead fig tree, but the clothes—everything else—all were gone. She went by the name of Janis Winters, but no such woman existed in the Social Security registers, no such woman had a birth record, or paid taxes, possessed a passport, or had any credit card or bank accounts. She did own a truck, which was sitting beside the trailer, hopefully containing enough forensic traces to identify this woman who had not officially existed before she vanished.
Why now? Wilson wondered. It can’t be a coincidence that Rodeo disappears within twenty-four hours of Cory Edgers handing her over. He had called Mendez in Lexington, and told him to pick Edgers up instead of letting him surrender in the presence of his attorney and in the eye of the news media tomorrow at noon.
It was odd to come face-to-face with the mundane details—that the Rodeo assassin was the same woman who seemed to survive on yogurt, bananas, and Spaghetti-Os. The walls were marked where pictures and newspaper articles had been hung, then ripped away. Wilson had gotten statements from two people who had heard talk about Janis Winters’s obsession with Waco and David Koresh, and about a sister named Emma who had perished in the flames. Nashville was trying to match the sister with the list of Waco victims.
So far Wilson had gotten nowhere with the cowboy Janis had supposedly been intimate with. The kid had managed to both tick him off and stir his admiration by giving the simple statement that Janis was a sweetheart, and gentlemen did not talk about their women, then he’d completely shut down. Wilson had pushed further and elicited a phone call from an attorney paid for by the kid’s father, who was evidently wealthy, sophisticated, and in a very bad mood. The “clowns” Janis had worked with swore up and down they barely knew her, but their eyes said she’s one of us, buddy, and you can go to hell. Wilson had never known a serial killer to draw this much affection. It reinforced his faith in the stupidity of your average guy on the street. Every time Wilson closed his eyes he saw Alex Rugger’s wife sitting in the back of that paramedic unit, shirt drying chocolate brown with blood.
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