by Jack Ketchum
Emil nodded toward Marion.
“Sir, this one in particular. Have somebody try her out, that’s all I’m asking. She’s a little crazy, see? She’ll do anything. You don’t think you can use her? Fine, no car. We’ll figure out something in the morning.”
“Hey, Emil,” Marion said, “screw you!”
“That’s all I’m asking, sir.”
“Fuck you, Emil!”
She turned on her heel and went for the door, turned the knob. Twisted it. Shook the door and pounded it.
“What have you got to lose, sir?” Emil said.
“You fucking prick! Open the fucking door!” she yelled to the guard outside. She turned to Emil. “Tell him to open the fucking door!”
Thaw leaned back in his chair and sighed. Marion twisted at the knob one last time and then she was moving fast across the room to the glass double doors to the widow’s walk beyond, and to Janet it looked like she just might kick the damn things in in order to get out of there. Thaw stood up from his chair and shouted.
“Big!”
The glass doors parted and Marion stopped dead in her tracks. The man standing in front of her was big all right—as big as a goddamn bear and looked easily as dangerous. She recognized the long square jaw and scraggly beard. The arms beneath the cutoff sleeves of his faded denim shirt were easily as wide as her thigh. A massive chest tapered down to an almost graceful waist. Six-foot-six, 320pounds, she remembered. “Big” Micah Harpe. In person.
He didn’t move.
He didn’t have to.
And seeing him there finally after having searched for him ever since arriving scared the hell out of her and made her heart leap all at once. With Micah Harpe it would be all or nothing. She’d known that from the very start.
Thaw sat down again and leaned back in his chair.
“You heard?” he said.
“I heard a talking asshole, sure. How about you?”
Harpe’s voice had a Kentucky twang to it that surprisingly was not at all unpleasant.
“About the same, Big. About the same. I’m wondering, though. Is Mr. Harrison still here?”
“Downstairs, I think.”
“Downstairs?”
“Think he was planning to stay awhile.”
“You might try him, then. If he’s happy, perhaps we can accommodate these gentlemen. If not . . .”
“Will do.”
He took a single step toward Marion, reached out and wrapped his huge hand in her hair and pulled her toward him. Then he turned to Emil, released her hair and shoved her at him like a kid would pass a basketball and with no more effort.
“You’re the one trading here,” he said. “You handle her.”
The waiting was making Alan crazy. He guessed it wasn’t doing Frommer a lot of good either. The man kept lighting one cigarette after another. A couple of puffs and he’d stub it out and a couple minutes later light another. It was as though he wanted to smoke but was determined to be smokeless if and when any news came through. The roadblock was one of dozens throughout the area but standing at this one felt like being all alone in the world, cut off from everybody and everything, waiting for a train that was never going to pull on in.
“I don’t get it,” Frommer said. “Homes are pretty few and far between around here and we’ve pretty much covered them all. We’ve got the roadblocks set and we’ve checked the access roads for miles damn near to the state line. We’ve got enough highway patrol units working these mountains to flush out a jackrabbit. They can hide overnight in the woods but the car sure can’t. So how come I’m doing everything right and they’re still not showing?” He lit another smoke. “You maybe thinking what I’m thinking?”
He was.
“Hole-in-the-Wall,” Alan said.
“We’ll need a warrant. Know any judges who are early risers?”
“As a matter of fact I do,” he said.
A year ago he’d slept with her. Janet never knew.
Now, she thought, it’s got to be now.
Ahead of her on the stairs Emil was hauling Marion down, cursing and fighting him all the way but Janet knew his strength firsthand and knew it wasn’t going to do her a damn bit of good. Billy was smiling, having a fine old time with all this, laughing and poking her with his index finger from behind. Ray ignored him but seemed to consider Marion with something like regret.
In one way or another each of them was focused on Marion. She stopped and turned.
“Micah Harpe,” she said. “Big.”
He looked puzzled. How would this woman know his name? So did the black guard behind him.
“Yeah?”
‘Two things. My name’s Janet Morris. Does that ring a bell?”
“You been on the bands all night. I know who you are.”
“You don’t understand. I’m a lawyer. I represent your brother. And our defense is based solely on you, Mr. Harpe. We’re saying it was you who killed George and Lilian Willis and not Little. That’s the first thing.”
She was talking for her life now and she knew it. She also knew learning of her defense strategy wasn’t going to make him happy.
“I’m interested. The second?”
“I read your rap sheet. The attempted murder, the one in prison.”
“Uh-huh.”
She glanced down the stairs. The others had reached the bottom and Emil was staring hard at them, suspicion knotting his brow.
“The man was your cellmate. He’d been there just three days. You beat him into a coma. Why?”
“I didn’t like him.”
The guard was smiling.
“You didn’t like him because he’d murdered his wife and children. His children. You seemed to feel very strongly about that.”
“Nobody on the inside likes a baby-killer. Maybe me less than most. So what?”
“What if I told you what you haven’t heard on the police bands yet?”
She looked over her shoulder. Emil had handed Marion off to Ray now and was climbing back up the stairs. He was already halfway there.
“What if I told you I just saw these people shoot a four-or five-year-old girl to death in her parents’ car, just to steal the car? Would you still let them walk on out of here? Because that’s what they did. A man, a woman, a teenage girl and a five-year-old child, Mr. Harpe.”
She was aware of Emil right behind her now and knew he’d heard that last part but she didn’t give a good goddamn what or how much he’d heard and her anger was real when she whirled on him.
“Tell him!” she said.
Emil looked too damn surprised to answer.
“That true?” said Harpe.
Emil just looked at him.
“You a pimp and a baby-killer, asshole?”
Then suddenly his confusion seemed to resolve itself. He threw his arm around her neck and yanked her off the stair she was on and slid the gun out of his belt and jabbed the barrel to her forehead, his breath hot and sour against her face.
“Fucking bitch!”
The guard behind them raised his rifle.
“Go ahead,” said Harpe. “Shoot her. And then I guess you’re gonna shoot your way outa here, right?”
She glanced down at Billy and saw him draw Marion’s .22. Harpe saw it too.
“Looks like you are,” he said. “You are one bunch of stupid people, you know that?”
“Back off!”
He slammed her forehead with the gun barrel. His arm was choking her. She saw stars and tried not to fall.
“Back off, goddammit!”
He hit her again, harder this time, exactly where she’d hit the windshield hours ago so that she was bleeding again, yet even through the bright spreading pool of pain she could feel him trembling, fear or anger or both, and that drove her own anger, keeping her afloat above the pain. She was aware of all the people watching them below and that the place had gone practically silent, that somebody had finally killed the chaos they’d been listening to all night. So that the thi
rd time he hit her it thundered in her ears like a single blow on a drumhead.
“You want a dead lawyer here? I’ll damn well give her to you!” Emil screamed.
“You already did that, remember?”
“What?”
“I said you already did. You’re damaging your own merchandise. Fool.”
And that was true enough. She could feel the warm blood crawling down her cheek. Emil didn’t seem to understand.
She did, though. Hope seemed suddenly to fly away down those stairs.
“Did I say what you did or didn’t do changes anything?” Harpe said. “Mr. Thaw says to try Harrison, I try Harrison. You get it now, you ignorant sonova-bitch?”
Then he did get it finally and lowered the gun and let go of her and she fell to her knees against the stair. Harpe held out his hand. Emil hesitated and then handed him his pistol. Then turned to Billy downstairs.
“Put it away, Bill.”
“I don’t have any accord with this man,” Billy said. The gun was pointed directly at Harpe.
“The man don’t like you either. Put it away.”
“It’s all right,” said Harpe. “Let him hold it if he wants. Don’t matter.”
He nodded. Just once. And suddenly the room exploded in gunfire, all of it pouring across the floor at Billy, at least a dozen guns at once, Ray and Marion pitched flat-out beside him with their hands covering their heads as Billy danced and twitched like some boneless thing erupting flesh and blood, muzzles flashing and bullets tearing into him from every which way keeping him on his feet until he dropped like a sodden sack, the gun still clenched in his bloody right hand.
She smelled cordite thick and vile for the second time that night and thought of the little girl again. She felt nothing at all for Billy—not even satisfaction. It was no surprise to her at all.
She looked at Emil. His face was white, his mouth slack. Without his own gun he seemed smaller, diminished down to just another weak aimless man. Harpe moved on past them down the stairs, saying nothing to either of them, past Marion and Ray peeling themselves up off the floor and past Billy’s pooling blood, and Emil stooped and helped her up and they followed, Emil’s legs just as unsteady as her own, she thought, the guard a step behind them. Followed him as he moved through the crowd and gunsmoke like a walking boulder or some living, breathing god past a biker leg-wounded in the crossfire, patting him on the shoulder, the man grinning at that, followed him to the back of the room where he opened a door and led them down to more stairs and darkness.
Billy was there one moment and not there the next and that was the way of it, the way it always was, Emil thought, for the cop and for that family back there and for all the others, nothing too fucking astounding about that, nothing to worry a man particularly. So he had to figure it was the fucking room and what was going on in it that was troublesome, the dark of the room and the long moving shadows against the rough stone walls as they came off the stairs, the room dark except for some candles and a flickering fireplace way down at the end. So the room was bothering him? The fucking room?
Or maybe it was the fucking altar?
Because that’s what it was all right, a goddamn altar, three long wide slabs of what looked like solid granite—these assholes and these rich bitches gathered around it a bunch of weirdo zombies going about their business crowded around the altar toward the back, the word RISE painted across the ceiling, some dumb-ass pentagram thing on the wall behind them just like in the horror movies, diamond necklaces and formal ties showing above black robes, diamond earrings and Rolex watches, no bikers or Nazis in this neck of the woods, no sir, all these rich-fuck weirdo zombies moving along one by one, washing their hands and faces out of a great big copper bowl and toweling dry and throwing the towels in the fireplace.
All that was bothering him. Yes it was.
The six big Dobermans prowling around were bothering him too. Their eyes gleaming by firelight, their wet panting. The chattering sounds their toenails made against the fieldstone floor.
And the one he guessed was the Big Kahuna, the only one facing him, the one with the hooded robe and the upraised bloody hands and the goddamn blood streaked all over his goddamn bony face, he was sure as hell bothering him.
“Who the fuck are these guys?” he whispered to the guard.
“Ever hear of the Church of Final Judgment? Meet your basic pastor.”
And then he was coming toward them, smiling, face and hands washed and dried now just like the others who parted to let him pass and Emil could see what else besides the bowl was on the altar.
It had been a guy once. Now it was naked body parts. A hand here. A leg there. A cock and a pair of hairy, bloody balls.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Healthy, Mr. Harpe?” said the man.
“Depends on your point of view,” said Harpe. “Healthy enough, I guess.”
And then the goddamn fruitcake was walking around inspecting them. All of them. He took a while checking out Whatsername’s tits in particular.
“Seedy,” he said. “I like that.”
“The price is ten thousand,” said Harpe.
Whatsername had already begun to cry. Fuck her.
Two black-robed women took her by either arm.
“All right. They’ll do,” said Harrison.
“Hey. We’re only talking about the ladies here, remember?” Emil said.
“Really?” said Harrison.
He looked at Harpe and Harpe looked at Emil.
“Not really,” he said.
She watched them bolt up the stairs and hit the door at a dead run. The door wouldn’t budge. Ray stumbled and fell and Emil backed off and tried again.
“This one’s excepted,” Harpe said.
“Why?” said Harrison.
“She’s a lawyer. A defense attorney.”
Harrison laughed. “Quite right, Mr. Harpe. No policemen, no lawyers and no Supreme Court justices. I suppose I can live with the other three.”
There was considerable strength in numbers and it didn’t take them long to pull them off the stairs—Emil’s furious terror, his flailing feet and fists be damned. Ray put up practically no resistance at all. Maybe he really was sorry about what he’d done to her. Maybe he figured he deserved this. Whether he felt that way or didn’t, she couldn’t care less.
On the floor they surrounded them and began to kick and as though that was some signal the Dobermans began to bite and growl and shake. Ray’s calf, blood flying off it, his right hand. Emil’s arm and then his shooting hand. Over the howling of the men and shrieks from Marion she heard Harrison tell Harpe he could take her now.
“You want to watch?” he said.
“No.”
They started toward the stairs. Behind her Marion screamed her name and she turned.
“Janet!” She was struggling to get free of the women behind her. There were three of them now. One of the women clenched and squeezed her breast, her diamond ring catching the firelight, just as she’d done to herself not so very long before. She wondered what passions Marion was feeling now.
“Jesus, Janet! For Christ’s sake, please! You got to help me! I didn’t kill anybody! You know I didn’t kill anybody!”
“I know,” she said.
They’d hauled Ray and Emil up off the floor to the cinderblock wall, to the shackles there. The family man was sobbing. Someone was stripping off Emil’s belt and tugging down his pants while another took his head between both hands and pounded it against the wall to make him stop his bellowing. She supposed it annoyed him.
It worked.
She looked at Marion again. The women were already dragging her toward the bloody altar.
“But this way,” she said, “you never will.”
The naked woman in the main room was still swaying from her chains as they passed. Three men were gambling, throwing dice beneath her. Another was snorting something white—coke or speed or heroin.
At the door Harpe stopped
her.
“You want to know,” he said. “Little’s full of shit. He shot those people and he was all by himself when he did it. My brother always was an asshole. You tell him for me that if and when you get him off he better slit his own fucking throat because I’m coming after him and what I do to him will be a whole lot worse.”
She nodded and turned and walked into the half light of the coming dawn.
Micah Harpe closed the door behind her and thought that you never did know what the day was going to bring. When he was a young man he’d quietly slit some lawyer’s throat in his very own office because of a padded bill for services rendered on a chickenshit DUI rap and here he was letting another lawyer go—and this one was defending his idiot little brother. Forgetting the generally damaged condition of her, a damn good-looking lawyer too. Under other circumstances he’d have poked her all night long into the morning. Life was full of surprises.
He walked over to the bar and Edwin the bartender—not Eddy, never, the man was one vain sonovabitch—looked up at him and smiled.
“You guys downstairs missed the good part,” he said.
“Oh yeah? What part was that?”
“Guy got up and walked right out of here. See that trail of blood over there? Guy went for a little stroll. “
She walked slowly, half-dazed in the clean open air and head pounding and reflected with grim humor that her head had taken a whole hell of a lot of abuse for a single night. The dog skeleton on the swing swayed on a breeze that wasn’t there and with so little light she saw too late in her approach the bloody hand that moved the chain and saw him slide around from behind the tree, Billy grinning and covered with so much blood that it could only be craziness keeping him alive and standing. The hand that darted out at her and closed over her wrist was cold and slimy red. All of him was red. Only the knife blade in his other hand glinted clean at his side.
“You swayed your charms with him, didn’t you?” he said. “You did.”
Blood bubbled over his lips and slid over his chin and she tried to jerk free so that he staggered toward her but somehow kept his stance and pulled her toward him with improbable, impossible strength and then he raised the knife.
And then screamed.
Harpe’s hands were over his wrist. She heard it snap like a dry twig in the forest and the knife fell to his feet. Billy clutched at the wrist, wailing, Billy suddenly gone boy soprano as Harpe lifted him off his feet bear-hugging him chest-to-chest and walked him from the swing and grinning remains of dog or wolf and then lifted him high to the first of the nooses hanging beyond and slipped his head through and then dropped him like a log.