In the Cage

by Kevin Hardcastle

  FORTY-ONE

  The constable stood in the sideyard of the house. Straight line of sight to the obliterated door and the blood-spackled framing just above the latch receiver. He did not look past to the kitchen where the detectives did their work. He had been through the house once and that was enough. All of the living room furniture was broken and thrown into one corner. The television stuck out of the lawnturf amidst a constellation of plateglass from the front window. The main hallway had been gutted of its drywall and there were blood prints on the pieces that yet hung. Out he went into the fields, eyes to the earth where the killer had driven. Constable Mike Smith came to the spot where the killer had parked in the early morning to watch the house. There the constable paced between the soil-pitted marks made by the killer’s car tires. He stopped. In the distance he spied the old farmhouse that bordered the county road.

  Constable Smith went window by window and not a room was lit. Everything had been locked down. There were plugs pulled from the wall sockets in the living room. He knocked loud on the front door. Nothing stirred. He walked the porch and looked into the living room a second time and there he saw the girl’s backpack on the hardwood. Books and papers littered about the floor. He left and came back ten minutes later with a pickset in his back pocket. Constable Smith studied the lock and took his torque wrench and rake pick out. He went to work in the keyhole. Part of the lock gave. He moved on until he’d set all the pins and then he turned the bolt. Smith twisted the doorknob and went into the house.

  There were no signs of struggle, nothing upended or damaged. Constable Smith took his boots off in the entryway hall and went room by room on the main floor of the old house and then he climbed the stairs to the second level. He found a spare bedroom that the young girl had made hers in the chaotic leavings of her days there. He saw an open closet with a long gap of naked clothes rail. Bureau with the drawers open and part-emptied. It was the same in the master bedroom. The constable went downstairs to the kitchen and looked through a clutch of bills and letters on the countertop. He read notes and lists written on a small whiteboard. Studied photographs and cards magnetted to the refrigerator door. There were no tickets or itineraries, no addresses listed. The constable felt eyes on his back. He looked over his shoulder but no one was there.

  He found the cellar door and stepped down into the damp below. He felt a ripcord on his cheek and pulled it. By a dirtied hanging bulb he examined prints in the dust-layered cement. A man’s shoes. A woman’s slippered feet. Padprints of a teenager or adolescent. The constable pulled the cord again and saw the place by the narrow light of day from the tiny basement window. He walked over to the glass and found himself staring across turf and wildgrass at the patch of field where he’d been standing not twenty minutes before.

  His radio crackled on and barked at him. Called out his name.

  “I’ll be right there,” Smith said. “You find the truck yet?”

  They said they hadn’t.

  “There’s no vehicles here either,” said Smith. “Tracks all over, but not a set of wheels to lay them down.”

  “Alright, come on back,” they said.

  “Will do,” said Smith.

  Before he left the house, the constable examined the kitchen again. He lingered on a photograph of Daniel and Sarah and the girl, centre-pinned to the fridge door. He shook his head.

  “We gotta find him now or we ain’t ever gonna find him,” he said.

  In the front hallway the constable put his boots back on. He let himself out and closed the door. Took out his picks again to shoot the bolt. It moved easy.

  FORTY-TWO

  The doctor came with his trove of painkillers and antibiotics, needles and gauze, splints and wrappings. He anaesthetized the injured man and reset the arm. Stitched the bonebroke skin and bound the limb in a soft-cast. All on the longtable where Wallace and Clayton had drugged and dropped the patient. The doc left three vials of pills for the pain and one to hold off infection. He cleaned part of Tarbell’s shoulder and readied a tetanus shot that the man tried to bat away drunkenly until Wallace pegged him to the hardwood. The doc told them what to do with the pills and that the arm would need to be cast better, and sooner rather than later. Wallace dropped two thousand dollars into the doc’s bag, rolled bills bound by elastic. The doctor left the men with the drugged patient dribbling to the bar table.

  “I don’t fuckin’ get it,” Wallace said.

  “What about it don’t you get?”

  “Why he ain’t under ground.”

  “You think that’ll help?” Clayton said. “It won’t.”

  “We’re fucked then.”

  “I don’t think that’s settled yet.”

  Wallace leaned up against the wall. He looked anywhere but at the man lying prone on the table in front of him.

  “Clayton,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I’m an emotional guy. But I hate that motherfucker like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I know. It was a mistake to bring him here. But now we’ll need him.”

  “For what?”

  “For the only thing he’s good for.”

  “Look where that got us,” Wallace said.

  “Daniel will come for him and neither of them will walk away whole,” Clayton said. “He isn’t dead after then we correct the fucking error I made.”

  Wallace King slumped some against the panelling.

  “The idea of him killin’ Dan makes me sick.”

  “Me too,” Clayton said. He went over to Wallace and reached up and grabbed him between his neck and shoulder. “I love that man. But I loath that he’ll fucking kill me.”

  Wallace nodded.

  “I want to be here tomorrow,” Clayton said, shook Wallace once. “I don’t love anybody enough to not take the right steps to be.”

  Tarbell left in the late afternoon when his meds wore off. He drove out in his car. Clean-shaven by his good hand. Showered and dressed in Clayton’s suit. He had arms enough to storm a police barracks. He was to secure the safehouse where they would soon join him and hole up. Wait for what might be coming. Tarbell walked past two newly arrived men in body armour, grinned at them as he went. Moreau and Armstrong entered the tavern one after another. Armstrong stopped long enough to see Tarbell drive away through the tired streets of that town.

  There were no men at the gate when Tarbell arrived. He had to get out of the car to work the keypad. The great steel barrier unlocked and began to move. When he passed through he stopped on the other side, made sure the gate slid shut and locked again before he drove on through the forest corridor. He parked in the frontlot and carried an army duffel onto the front deck, set it down heavy and went back for another. He brought the bag up the steps and unbolted the security door. Then he carried each duffel bag inside, one by one. When he came out again he surveyed the grounds. No other soul but he, bound by woods and fencewire and water to the south. The firs bowed gently in the wind.

  He went through the house room by room, checked the locked metal doors and barred windows of the main floor. Then he took the bags upstairs. The man wore a military issue ballistic vest and he tightened it by the straps. He inventoried his arms and set them by on a huge spruce roundtable in the study. He checked a bank of monitors, each with a live feed from cameras set up throughout the grounds. Last, he fastened a leather sheath to his belt. Took his time with the one unslung hand. He picked up the buckknife that he’d stole from the murdered Mohawk and sheathed it, drew the blade and sheathed it again. Tarbell stared down at his injured and bound arm. Worked his fingers slow in the half-cast. He unfastened the sling and let it fall to the floor. His sawed-off lay on the table and he broke it to load the shells. Afterward he holstered his pistol and went back downstairs. There he sat on the bottom step and watched the door. The shotgun lay across his knees like an offering.

  FORTY-THREE

 
Wallace King stood in front of the tavern at dusk. The lanterns came on and shone soft. He saw nothing out there that worried him. Inside the bar the two armoured men were sitting at a longtable, guns and water glasses on the tabletop in front of them. Wallace made a call from his cell but heard only dial tone. He pocketed the phone and went back into the building. Moreau and Armstrong turned to him expressionless, but Moreau’s leg was dancing under the table, up and down. Wallace went past them and rapped his knuckles on the office door. Clayton came out.

  “I can’t get Dan,” Wallace said.

  “What about my fucking nephew?”

  “He’s all set up.”

  “Get ready to move,” Clayton said.

  Clayton came out from the office and went to the front windows of the bar. Moreau got up and Clayton shook his head at him. The man stayed standing. Clayton moved the drapes and stared out into the street. He came back toward the office and Wallace passed him going the other direction and stood near the entryway. He took his cell out again and turned to take another look through the window. The world darkened all at once. The phone dropped but quick from Wallace’s hand and he dove to his left as the wall broke open and threw jagged timber and brick across the room. Sound like a train derailing into mountain woods.

  There came the front-end of Daniel’s truck fixed with a v-plow and it climbed the rubble and ran Moreau and Armstrong down where they sat at the bar table, plateglass in their armour. The truck rode over its front axle and scudded on toward the rear of the building. It stopped short of the back office and the metal frame of the vehicle rung like a church bell as it came to rest in a fog of brickdust and insulation fibres.

  Wallace King lay on the ground with his right leg crushed and turned unnatural at the knee. He hollered for Clayton. Daniel started climbing out of the truck by the broken driver-side window. The man could barely fit through the mangled framework and he gouged his hips on stuck windowglass before clearing the gap. Handplanted on a slab of wood siding as he tumbled out. Daniel got up slow, his nose broke and cut through the bridge, blood in his mouth and beard. He had a raw spot on his forehead and his knuckles and elbows were part skinned. He spat filth to the bar floor and then turned to see Clayton scrambling toward the back office, red dribbling to the ground as he went. Daniel ducked low to study the men he’d run over but he couldn’t make out what weapons they had through the mess of brick and cloth and meat. He shrieked into the wreckage and went after Clayton, caught him at the door and turned him around. There he grabbed the man’s neck with both hands and throttled him. Clayton purpled and tried to claw loose before giving up one hand to reach for his belt. Daniel caught the hand as it came back up, wrenched it wide. Clayton fired twice into the ceiling plaster and Daniel put his forehead into Clayton’s mouth and sat him down in the doorway.

  Daniel stood over the man and hauled breath past his bloodied teeth. The pistol had gone behind the bar somewhere. He reached for Clayton again. Crack of gunfire as he bent down. Plaster rained down over his shoulders and the back of his neck. Daniel got hold of Clayton and rolled so that Clayton sat straddle-legged on the floor in front of him. Daniel put his right arm around Clayton’s neck and held his own left shoulder with the palm of that hand, his left forearm behind Clayton’s head. He shuffled backward into the office with Clayton in tow, the injured man sputtering and stomping at the floor.

  “Wallace,” Daniel hollered.

  Another shot went high and wide and something fell from the wall in the barroom. Daniel dragged Clayton ­farther into the office and when he loosed the man he felt wet through his jeans and shirtcloth. He lifted his shirt, studied his stomach for damage. Shifted back onto his haunches and let Clayton loll to his side and hit the hardwood. A pool of red brimmed around the man. Daniel pulled Clayton’s shirt up and saw part of a chair leg run through his liver-side, broken off crooked where it showed through his back. Clayton had a revolver hung there in the bloodwet leather of its holster and Daniel pulled the piece clear and tried to clean it with his shirtsleeve. He did not know if it would fire. No matter. He stood up and went back into the barroom with the gun drawn. Wallace shot again and hit the bar itself and on his next shot the hammer clacked and no bullet fired. Daniel came out from cover as Wallace pulled the slide back on his pistol to clear the jammed round. Daniel took aim with both hands around the revolver and fired on Wallace. Wood and plaster flew and the windowpanes shattered above Wallace’s head. The second-to-last round tore a furrow through the top of Wallace’s right shoulder and he dropped his pistol and cried out and clapped his left hand over the wound. Daniel kept trying to fire but the chamber spun with spent casings. He pitched the revolver at Wallace and then strode over and dragged the jammed pistol clear with his shoe and pocketed it. Got down low to see the destroyed leg and the shoulder shot through. He stared into Wallace’s eyes and then stood up and round kicked him in the face. The big man’s eyes rolled white and he doubled over to the carpet. Daniel left him there and walked to the back room over wreck and ruin.

  Daniel lifted Clayton off of the hardwood and dropped him heavy in his leather armchair. The man groaned and looked up at Daniel with sickly eyes. He’d gone pale and sweat trickled from his hairline and rounded his sharp cheekbones.

  “Did you know?” Daniel said.

  Clayton shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Out at the lakehouse. Waiting for us. All the guns in the world.”

  Daniel just stared at him. After a minute he walked to the small back room of the office and flipped the lightswitch on. He threw the army cot and moved a small dresser to show the door of Clayton’s safe, the steel built into the actual wall and bricked over. He came back into the main office.

  “Open it,” he said.

  Clayton did nothing. Daniel lifted him out of the chair and dragged him into the little room. There he set the bleeding man on the floor beside the safe and waited. Clayton reached out shakily and turned the dial. When he was done he pulled a lever and the door cracked open. Daniel picked the man up again and brought him back to his chair. Clayton slumped into the leather upholstery and looked up at the ceiling. Into Daniel’s eyes.

  “That isn’t all my money, you know that,” Clayton said. “There’s people beyond me and they will come for it.”

  “You had that fella steal my rig. To keep me workin’,” Daniel said. “I suppose he’s laid out somewhere. No ceremony and no marker.”

  “I took care of you all those years.”

  Daniel was not moved.

  “I knew you since you were a boy. Knew your father. I wouldn’t ever have hurt Sarah, or Madelyn,” Clayton said. “Is the girl safe?”

  Daniel’s body nearly quit on him at the sound of their names. His hands were shaking and he grabbed one fist in the other and squeezed. He breathed and breathed. Lone whimper that slipped his teeth. Blood from his damaged nose. He had to sink to his haunches to keep his legs under him. He reached over to Clayton and took him by the shirt, pulled the man close and ground his forehead to Clayton’s. Shook the man. Clayton half-tried to put a hand against Daniel’s face. Daniel coughed hard and loosed Clayton. Took a pen from Clayton’s shirt as the wounded man came free, red mark printed to his brow. There Daniel figured out a way to stand full again and he put the end of the pen high up in his nostril. Braced it with the ridge of his thumb and forced the bone straight. He bellowed but once and then he flung the pen away. Blinked and wiped at his face until he could see Clayton plain.

  “He’s your dog,” Daniel said.

  Clayton’s eyes rolled some and then came back. Daniel took Wallace’s pistol from his jeans pocket and pulled the slide back. A cartridge lay in the chamber and he took it out and blew into the breach, studied the machine for a time before he put the bullet back and let the slide snap shut. He put the gun to Clayton’s head.

  “See you later on,�
�� he said.

  The man kept his eyes open. Daniel fired.

  He was going through Wallace’s pockets for the car keys when the big man stirred and tried to lift his head off of the hardwood. Daniel turned him over. Wallace howled and grabbed fistfuls of his own shirt. He went into his jacket insides and came back with a set of keys and his little steel container of cocaine. Daniel took the keys and watched Wallace open the vial and shove it into his nostril. Snort deep and cough blood back over his lips.

  “Clayton?” Wallace said.

  “He’s fuckin’ gone.”

  Wallace stared up at the ceiling.

  “He suffer?”

  “No.”

  “Will I?”

  FORTY-FOUR

  Daniel pulled over at the grass verge of the dirt road and got out. He saw dirty, roiling clouds perhaps a county over. But where he had parked birds still sang at the dying of the day, the evening sky clear and already lit spare with long gone stars. When night came in earnest, Daniel went to the trunk and dropped the side of his fist on it twice. He put the key into the lock and opened the door. Wallace lay there with his eyes closed, his knees to his chest, his broken leg purpled hideously under the makeshift splint. Daniel put his fingers on the big man’s neck. He slapped him hard across the cheek.

  Wallace’s eyes showed sudden.

  “Where are we?” he said.

  “You fuckin’ know where,” Daniel said.

  Wallace started trying to climb out of the trunk. Daniel pulled him clear and let the big man sit on the rear bumper. The vehicle sunk on its springs. Wallace went into his pockets for his coke and his pain pills. He took probably too much of each. Daniel didn’t know how many he’d ate on the ride.

  “If you take off on me you won’t get far,” Daniel said.

  Wallace shook his head.

  “I ain’t your enemy,” Wallace said.