“I don’t care.”
“They could put you away—forever, and I don’t wanna spend the rest of my life talking to you from behind bars.”
“I-don’t-care.”
“Behind bars—me, too, for that matter as an accomplice to murder. Conspiracy to murder, all for this human garbage bag?”
“You heard me,” she said through clenched teeth, her bow and arrow replaced now by her scalpel. “I don’t give a damn about afterwards.”
Cantu continued howling and braying wolf-like in horrid pain and perspiration, rolling about, causing himself even more jolting torture.
“This’s payback!” she was shouting at Cantu.
“But you will give a damn, Kat, in future. This way we have no future, you and me.”
She put a third arrow into Cantu, this one piercing his scrotum where he lay. He let out with a keening scream. “Payback for Terry!”
Marcus grabbed hold of her with one hand, the bow with another. “Cantu’s not worth it.”
She again displayed the surgical scalpel. Marcus held a hand out for the shimmering blade. “Vengeance isn’t worth it. Sure, feels great for an hour, a day, maybe even a week, but it wears thin fast, and then—”
“Go-Go ‘head, Marcus, l-l-let her cut-cut away at me,” Cantu said through the pain.
She stomped the end of one of the nylon-feathered, steel-shaft arrows embedded in Cantu so that it coursed through the monster’s knee; the pain was so intense it silenced the man into a faint.
“Torturing him, Kat will do worse than get you jail time.”
“It’s for Terry, damn it, and Stan, and—”
“They’re all gone, Kat, but you’re here and I’m here, and I’m telling you, take it from someone who’s been there, you do this thing, you take your scalpel to this… this…thing that’s less than human, and your scalpel will be working on you as much as him.”
“Whataya think’ll happen when they take this piece of crap into custody, Detective Rydell? Tell me the truth.”
“They’ll lock him away, throw away the key.”
“In an asylum for the criminally insane?”
“A federal facility most likely, yes, for the insane.”
“Study him like that creep in the movies…Hannibal Lecter, you mean? Three meals a day, room and board, TV and game room, the occasional muzzle, huh?”
They glared at one another. “Kat, when you do as the monster does, you become monstrous in turn.”
“Don’t think you can talk me out of this, Marcus. Tie his hands and legs and just let me dig out a useless organ or two.”
They heard sirens in the distance.
“Kat, it’s over.”
“Not yet it isn’t.”
“You hafta at least let me take his eyes,” she said to Marcus. She then knelt over Cantu, prepared to take his eyes with her upraised scalpel, saying, “Without eyes, not likely he’ll ever escape to harm anyone ever again.”
Marcus stayed her hand, squeezing until she dropped the scalpel. The first rays of sunlight filtered through the forests, and the odor of burned flesh met their flaring nostrils as Kat and Marcus stared into one another’s eyes. “Kat, I know what I’m talking about. You’d come to regret—”
“Bullshit. You don’t know that. You don’t know me.”
“I know how much you hate him. I do, too. But Kat hatred is a hellion in itself, and it will eat you alive.”
“Why should I regret maiming the man who took Terry and who’s caused all of us so much pain?”
“What you will regret is that you were capable of maiming anyone, Kat…that you have that in you.”
“Damn it, Marcus, it is in me.”
“Not once you do it; once you release that creature, it’s in the world—outside you.”
“Sounds good to me—a release.”
“But not a relief, Kat. Kat, it’ll come back to haunt you.”
She calmed somewhat. “I took out his knees pretty damn well, didn’t I?”
“You did, and that should be enough.”
“He’ll be in a lot of pain for a long, long time, won’t he?”
“He may never walk again, and if he does, it’ll never be without pain, and he’ll always know he was bested by you.”
“Big professional killer, bested by a woman.”
“I’d say, he’ll have some difficulty forgiving you.”
She glared at him for a moment before bursting into laughter. It was a rich, full laughter, the laughter of happiness at having survived, at being alive.
Marcus handed the razor-sharp scalpel back to her. She took it, hesitated a moment, then put it away.
The sirens grew close, and they could hear cruisers pulling into the driveway and booted men stomping up to the house.
“Whatever happens, Marcus, don’t let those in authority underestimate the depth of evil in this sack of shit.” She indicated the still unconscious Cantu.
“He may well have a weapon on himself somewhere.” Marcus began a search of the unconscious Cantu. He found additional knives, guns, and a pair of grenades. Even unconscious, the guy was dangerous.
“You think you’ve got it all?” she asked.
He began cutting away at the other man’s camouflage suit, feeling for any additional bulges as he went.
“Over here! Help, we’re over here!” Kat began shouting for the authorities.
Paco followed suit, barking, raising a ruckus.
*
The first man to get to them was John Thomas, waving a bright torch light ahead of him and shouting, “Marcus Rydell! Marcus! You out this way?”
“Keep coming!” Marcus replied. “We’ve got a prisoner for you, JT.”
JT made the clearing and stared at the scene. “You’ve got Cantu?”
“We have, yes,” Marcus said, going to Paco and calming him.
“Iden Cantu, finally brought to justice.”
“Only justice might be seeing him fried in the electric chair, JT, which if it happens will be twenty years off.”
“Looks like you’ve already executed some payback. Damn, two arrows straight through the knees. Hurts thinking about it.”
“Hardly scratches the surface for what he’s done,” replied Katrina.
“Nice shooting all the same, Marcus. You put him down but good.”
“Truth be known, the kudos and arrows belong to Kat here.”
“Wow, Mrs. Mallory. Gotta love the crotch shot.”
Cantu had passed out.
“Don’t mess with her, JT.”
“Count on it.”
“Look, even incapacitated, this guy…this thing can be dangerous, JT. Never get too close and use bracelets and ankle chains, and if and when he’s to be arraigned on murder charges from here to four years ago, whatever you do, don’t take the chains off. He’s as dangerous as a viper and just as fast.”
“You don’t want a dose of his kind of evil,” added Kat, indicating what was left of Carl Schramick. Marcus jammed a booted toe beneath the squared off package so that it rolled over and came face up.
“Jesus!” gasped JT, jumping back. “Like Milton all over again.”
“You’ll find another body in the lake, in the shallows below my deck area. Officer Tim Grimes of—”
“The missing Blue Lake deputy. His dispatch said he’d called in and had gone off duty, taking his cruiser with him to home but—”
“Coerced to do so by Cantu.” Marcus draped an arm over Kat. “JT, we’ll give our statements up at the house, if it’s OK with you?”
“Sure…sure. Absolutely.”
“But we won’t go until you have back-up.” He indicated the unconscious devil at their feet. “Don’t wanna leave you alone with it. Where’re the others?”
“He’s not doing any more harm. Look at ’im!”
“Take no chances whatsoever; handcuff him in my sight, JT, now.”
JT frowned but obliged Marcus. “The others’re canvassing the house,” he told them as Paco came out of
the brush. “Hey, who’s fine looking dog is that?”
“Mine, ours!” said Kat.
“Figures you two would hunt this bastard down as a team,” JT said. “Dog must’ve been a big help.”
Some of the other Atlanta police, JT’s partner, Harriman, and two Blue Ridge cops joined JT, who brought them up to speed. Kat and Marcus, arm-in-arm, made their way back toward the house, Paco quietly resigned to follow.
“It’s over, Kat…finally over.”
“Yeah…and thanks, Marcus.”
“Hey, in the end, it was you who brought that beast down.”
“Couldn’t’ve got the shot without your help.”
“Some help.”
“And thanks for…you know, stopping me from taking out the snake’s eyes.”
“I just want you to be able to live with yourself, Kat.”
“I know….I know that now.”
E P I L O G U E
Ten months later
Sitting out on his deck at the lodge style home his father had built, Marcus Rydell lifted the gun from his lap and into his hand. It felt in his hand the way a weapon always felt in a man’s hand—like a pleading creature whispering in the ear the words “Use me. I feel better when put to use; it’s my only wish, my only goal, my only purpose in life—to be put to use.”
It wanted more than cleaning.
It wanted to be fired.
But of late, these woods had had their fair share of fireworks, he silently told the gun.
It whispered back, “She’s not coming back, Marc. You’re going to spend the rest of your life out here alone, lonely, as useless as a gun on the wall. Just one shot. Fire me. Use me.”
The gun was tempting on more levels than one.
He thought of her, wondered where she was this moment, wondered if the gun was lying or telling him the painful truth.
Had she just been using him all along? As old as I am, he told himself, you’d think I’d know better.
He thought of the moment she’d saved them all with those twin bow shots to Cantu’s kneecaps. How the bastard had howled, tasting only a little of the torturous pain he’d put so many of his victims through.
Marcus now saw a boat out on the lake, filled to capacity and beyond. A large pontoon affair, and the affair aboard looked like either a wedding party or a graduation party or some such to do. Way too many people aboard as the surge of its wake indicated along with the waterline. Fools could all drown in a capsized boat of that size. Be on the ten o’clock news. Half the neighborhood wiped out in a single blinding moment yet to happen while he sat here feeling sorry for himself and playing bad with a gun.
He ought to call the local authorities. Get their water cops out here. Same ones who’d been useless when he’d most needed them. Even from his distant vantage point here on the deck chair, he could see several violations of the law onboard the pontoon. One phone call. Should he bother? Is it my call, he wondered.
He thought better of making the call. None of my business, he told himself. I’m not a cop anymore…hardly a PI either.
He gave a fleeting thought to Iden Cantu. The man was going nowhere ever again. There was enough evidence to fry him many times over and Georgia—thank goodness—remained a capital X offense state. He’d have one last choice in life—death by legal injection or electrocution. Unless that swift Johnnie Cochran styled lawyer who took up his appeals case, Phillip “Loophole” Meredith got him off with the insanity plea, which would land the bastard in a federally run asylum for the criminally insane, just as Marcus had predicted. Either way, Marcus decided he’d never see Cantu or the like of him again until he himself reached the gates of Hell. One pull on the trigger of the old Colt .45 from his dad’s collection would guarantee that.
He placed the muzzle to his temple, scratching an itch there when he heard the unmistakable scream of a woman in distress coming from the pontoon boat. He put the gun aside and examined the pontoon now with the binoculars he’d earlier brought out with him. He soon assessed the situation on the boat. Frat party of some sort. All men save three hired dancers—strip tease ladies. It appeared the party had gotten out of hand and the professional ladies aboard, essentially trapped, surrounded by water and frat boys—men far stronger than they. Zooming in with the binoculars, he read the face of at least one of the women. Her expression said it all: no escape.
He watched as the young college men became rougher and more threatening. Marcus opened his cell phone and made the call. “I can always kill myself later,” he muttered.
After reporting the increasing violence he was witnessing on the lake boat, and being assured a police boat was in the vicinity and on its way, Marcus heard another sound back of him, coming off the road and driveway. A car—most likely a police cruiser—coming into the gravel drive at the front of the house.
He took the steps down from the deck and walked around the house to find Paco had leapt from the car window, racing toward him, wanting petting. Kneeling, he said a warm hello to the German Shepherd and looked up to see Kat Mallory leaning against her newly purchases red convertible Jaguar, her features beaming with a smile. “Why so shocked?” she shouted at him. “Told you when I got my life in order, finished my residency, that I’d be back!” Then she noticed the gun in his hand. “What’s with the rod, Bogey? You shooting skeets?”
He quickly placed the .45 on the porch now jutting beside his head where he continued to kneel, petting Paco. “I…I’m just surprised you guys’re here! Why didn’t you call, give me a head’s up? I coulda cleaned up, made dinner…”
“Warning? Do I need to warn you I’m coming?”
“I coulda prepared for your arrival,” he repeated, now looking down at his own appearance.
“You look like hell. Tell you what, I’ll cook dinner, you shower and shave. How’s that?”
Off in the distance came the anguished cry of what sounded like a woman. Kat’s eyes grew large as the howl recalled those of Grimes and Schramick. “What was that?” Her eyes went to the .45 on the porch.
“Bobcat,” he lied. “Forests is filled with ‘em.” Which was not a lie.
“Sounded like a woman’s cry for help.”
“That’s exactly how a bobcat cries; does sound like a woman’s plea.”
“All right…if you say so. You got a martini for me inside?”
“Can rustle one up right quick.”
She grabbed hold of him as he stood, and she hugged him to her firmly, and he lost his balance and bumped into the porch with her in an embrace, the two of them laughing at their clumsiness. They ground in their feet, found their footing and twirled in a dance below the pines, the only music the birds and chirping of squirrels and insect life. Over his shoulder now, Kat saw a police lake boat pulling alongside a pontoon boat at the center of the lake, close to where Marcus had caught up to his boat that night she still had nightmares about, the night she had surprised herself. “Where were those water cowboys when we needed ’em?” she asked, pointing now to the commotion coming over the water.
“The water cops of Blue Lake were on vacation the whole time Cantu was among us.”
“You’re kidding! All of them?”
“All two of them.”
“Only two water cops?”
“And one a woman.”
“What’s that ‘spose to mean?”
“Means they’re married to one another so—”
“—so when they took off time, it was together, and the lake was left unpatrolled.”
“For a week, yeah.”
They walked back toward the deck, Paco at his heels. He’d retrieved the .45 and kept it at his side for now. And for now, the thing wasn’t saying a word.
“And how do you know all this about the water cops?”
He kissed her long and passionately. “Kiddo, I get all my info around here like everyone else.”
“From Buck’s down at the foot of the mountain.”
“But I admit,” he said with a wide grin, �
�Buck knew nothing of your completing your residency.”
“Nary a word?”
“ Nary, but hey, we’ve gotta celebrate.”
“My and Paco’s homecoming?”
“That yes, indeed, but also you’re being officially Doctor Mallory now!”
She beamed at his good cheer. “Shall we start with that martini?”
“I’m with you.”
They kissed again and held onto one another for a long, long time. When they pulled apart, she said, “Marcus, I’m going to set up shop here.”
“Start a practice in Blue Lake?”
“That’s right, and people are going to talk.”
“About us?”
“How we’re living in sin.”
“But we’re not ahhh…living in sin, yes.”
“We are now.”
Together they made their way into the cabin home, and Marcus locked out the world, including Paco.
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