“Get out!” Marty screamed.
Daniels smiled cordially at Marty, at Royce, and at Slake, and then she and Herb left the office. They met Leman in the hallway, holding his shoulder.
“You little—”
He didn’t get to finish because Jack threw another palm at Leman’s bad shoulder, putting her body into it and spinning the ex-cop to the floor.
“Am I a vicious person, Herb?” Jack asked, stepping over Leman.
“Not at all. You’re a pussycat.”
“Then why is it I got the biggest kick out of smacking that dirtbag around?”
“It’s probably just too much caffeine.”
They took the stairs down to the door and exited through the bar.
Daniels waited a moment before putting the car into gear after starting it. Her hands were still pulsing from the adrenaline rush, and she was thinking through her recent actions and wondering if they’d come back to haunt her. Jack Daniels wasn’t a strictly by-the-book cop, but she was honest, and she didn’t like trampling over people’s rights or engaging in police brutality.
“Seriously, Herb. Did I push it too far in there?”
“I think you met a resistance with an equal amount of force.”
The answer satisfied Jack, and she pulled into traffic.
“What’d you think of Mr. Royce?” she asked her partner.
“Scary son of a bitch. I think I’ve heard of someone named Royce, but I’m not sure where.”
“We’ll run his name, see what comes up. What stone do you want to turn over next?”
That was how police work went sometimes. Just keep turning over stones and watch if anything scurries out from under them.
“Let’s find Frank Michaels, get him to ID Slake. I liked that creep even less than Mr. Royce.”
Benedict radioed the surveillance team watching Michaels’s apartment, only to find he hadn’t shown yet.
“Do you think we scared Marty off Tequila’s trail?” Jack asked.
“Hell no. You see Marty’s eyes bulge when you mentioned Tequila’s name? He wants that guy, bad.”
He’s not the only one. Jack wanted him too. Tequila was the cause of all this violence, and once they got him, Jack knew the violence would stop. But as long as Tequila was free, there would be more bodies. Jack was sure of it.
So where the hell was he?
Tequila parked the stolen Trans Am two blocks away from Slake’s house in a strip mall lot. He had no plan of action, because there were too many variables. The first move would be to see if Slake were home or not, and then go from there.
Most of Palatine, as was typical of all Chicago suburbs, was residential. Ranks and files of houses and housing developments, interspersed every so often by a convenience store. Slake’s neighborhood was woodsier than most, with full grown trees and bushes separating the half-acre lawns from house to house. Tequila walked along the well-kept sidewalk, his feet crunching on the salt that the township had spread out to melt ice. When he came up on Slake’s address he cut across the neighbor’s lawn and entered the property via the backyard.
It was a mid-sized ranch, white and gray wood paneling and black tar shingles. Tequila couldn’t picture a psychotic like Slake living in it. The house was better suited to a young yuppie family or a wealthy elderly couple. But everyone had to live somewhere. Every spider had a web.
He sprinted over to the side of the home and crouched next to a window. It was curtained, preventing Tequila from seeing inside. The next window he tried was similarly draped.
He moved cautiously around the perimeter of the house until he reached the back of the adjacent garage. Like most garages, it had a rear door leading into the backyard, and at the top of the door was a window. Tequila peeked in. The garage was empty. Tequila recalled the front of the house, and Slake’s silver Monte Carlo hadn’t been parked in the street or the driveway. He probably was with Marty, helping with the search.
Still, no reason to get killed because of a bad assumption. Tequila hit the button and demagnetized his holsters, and he walked around to the front of the house and rang the doorbell.
No answer.
He rang again to make sure, holding his ear to the door, listening for movement.
Nothing.
Tequila went around to the backyard again, thinking things through. Either no one was home, or no one was answering. If Slake had owned a dog, it would have barked or at least come to investigate the doorbell. He scanned the backyard for dog crap and found none. His guess was that the house was probably empty.
He chose a backyard window, breaking the glass with his elbow and then clearing the excess off the pane with the butt of a .45. Heaving himself up easily, Tequila pulled through the opening and landed hands first inside Slake’s bedroom.
Getting to his feet, he took a look around. It was a normal bedroom; a dresser, a closet, a four poster bed. Except this four poster bed had chains and shackles attached to the posts. Tequila searched through the drawers and wasn’t too surprised to find several whips, black leather masks, ball gags, and a riding crop. There was also a rusty car antenna, and a black box with a handle that Tequila figured out was a hand crank electric generator, complete with clamps to enhance anyone’s perverted sex life.
He opened the bedroom door and looked down the hall into the kitchen. Two things caused immediate panic in Tequila. The first was the sight of five oversized dog bowls all lined up on the kitchen floor. The second was movement behind him.
Tequila whirled around, the .45s in his hands, and fired as fast as he could.
The first of the pit bull mastiffs, as broad in the chest as Tequila and weighing damn near as much, was already in mid leap when the bullets thudded into its body. Tequila shot it three times from each gun, but momentum propelled it onward and the animal slammed into him with the force of a football tackle.
Tequila fell back, trying to push the dog off of him. It wasn’t quite dead yet, and it snapped its massive jaws feebly at Tequila’s neck. While he struggled with the beast, he felt white-hot pain surge through his left ankle as another dog bit into his foot.
Screaming, Tequila emptied his right .45 into the biting pit bull’s head. The dog fell back, taking Tequila’s shoe with it. Sensing movement behind him, Tequila swung around his left .45 and fired four times at the charging black form. He hit the dog in both front legs and twice in the mouth. The animal fell forward and ate the carpeting, choking on blood.
With the last bullet in the gun, Tequila delivered the coup de grace into the forehead of the first dog still quivering on top of him. With a sharp explosion of gore the beast went limp and Tequila pushed the dead weight off his lower body, gaining his feet.
He hadn’t brought extra clips with him. He had figured if he couldn’t kill Slake with fourteen bullets, then a few more wouldn’t help much. So he holstered his .45s and took Terco’s back-up .38 from his waistband.
Two dogs dead, one out of commission. But there were five bowls in the kitchen. Where were the other two?
Tequila whistled, hoping to draw them out. He wasn’t surprised that it didn’t work. These dogs were highly trained. They didn’t bark. They didn’t make any noise at all. And they’d flanked him on both sides like a wolf pack. The other two were probably watching him right now, waiting for the right moment to pounce. The thought made Tequila’s bladder feel tight.
Tequila looked down at his wounded foot. It was covered in blood, but that might have been the animal’s. Walking slowly, he eased past the dying pit bull whose legs he’d practically shot off. It was gagging, pushing itself slowly forward with its rear paws. Tequila ended its pain with a quick switchblade slash across its throat, then advanced in a crouch to the kitchen.
He immediately recognized it as a bad move. The kitchen had four different entry points; the hall, the foyer, the living room, and the dining room. Tequila couldn’t cover them all at once. Acting quickly, he went into the dining room and the fourth dog sprung from its hiding
place.
One hundred and twenty pounds of highly-trained, finely-tuned killing machine. It pinned Tequila down and went straight for the throat, its claws digging furrows in Tequila’s chest and its slobbery breath smelling like meat gone bad.
Tequila tucked his chin in and twisted his body, letting the dog sink its long teeth into his shoulder. He couldn’t bring the gun up to the beast’s head, but he got it to chest level and fired five times.
The animal continued to gnaw on his shoulder, seemingly unaffected by the five slugs in its body. That was the difference in stopping power between a .38 and a .45. Tequila shifted his body and rolled hard, breaking the dog’s pin. He came out of the roll with the switchblade in one hand and the gun in the other. The dog was on him before Tequila could get to his knees, but this time when the huge head lunged to tear out Tequila’s throat, he thrust the knife under the V of the creature’s jaw and through the top of its snout.
The dog tried to open its mouth but found it skewered by a seven inch blade. It brought a paw up to its face and scraped at the knife, repeatedly filleting its own foot on the exposed point. Tequila took advantage of the dog’s confusion and pushed the revolver between the animal’s eyes, firing point blank.
The dog’s head jerked back and it flipped onto its side, legs jerking spasmodically. Tequila placed his foot on the canine’s muzzle and yanked his knife back out. His shoulder was on fire, and he chanced a quick look and saw at least three puncture wounds that would require stitches.
But that wasn’t his biggest worry at the moment. There was one more dog in the house, and Tequila didn’t have any more bullets.
He stuck the empty .38 back into his waistband and spun around, eyes and ears on alert. He held his breath, listening for any sound that would indicate where Number Five was hiding.
Seconds ticked by. A minute. Two. The blood seeped from Tequila’s shoulder, down his side, wetting his sock. He didn’t hear a damn thing.
Maybe the fifth dog was at the vet. Or maybe it recently died. Or maybe it was locked in the basement, or was hiding from the gunfire.
Or maybe it was…
Tequila cocked an ear to the kitchen, detecting the faintest sound of slurping. Treading as silently as possible, he made his way to the dining room door.
He saw it in the hallway, next to the body of the first dog he’d killed, its snout buried in the ripped open underbelly.
Eating. It was eating its fallen pack member. Tequila wondered why a trained attack dog would bother stuffing its face when there was an intruder in the house. When the dog looked up at him, he realized why.
It was covered with scars. They streaked its fur, long jagged welts and bare spots, some still unhealed. Tequila knew that one of the best ways to train attack dogs was to teach them to fight their own kind, preferably dogs bigger than themselves. To give the smaller dogs a chance, the bigger one was usually tied up or muzzled.
This was the training dog. Though it was the largest, its will had been systematically broken by the attacks of the others. Now that the others were gone, it was top dog again, and it had taken advantage of the fact by gnawing on the body of one of its tormentors.
It stared at Tequila, fangs dripping gore. The years of pain were over. It could finally fight back. The beast leapt casually over the carcass and began moving slowly down the hall. Stalking. Head low, ears back, tail straight.
Tequila had never known unfettered, primeval terror until this moment. The dog had to weigh twenty pounds more than he did, and the switchblade he clutched seemed like a toy. The dark, massive figure advanced, its eyes never leaving Tequila, bloodthirsty and intent.
Tequila considered backing up and locking himself in the dining room. The only problem was it had two more doors, both of which were open. The beast would undoubtedly get in one while he was closing the others.
“Sit!” he commanded the dog.
The dog didn’t sit. It continued coming at him, low on its haunches, like a lion in the grass.
Since there wasn’t any place to run, and fighting was suicidal, Tequila decided on a different approach. He tucked away his switchblade and remagnetized his holsters.
Then he ran at the dog.
The dog bowed down, snarling, ready to spring. Tequila tried to pretend it wasn’t there, concentrating on a floor exercise routine from years ago. After five steps he dove into a hand spring, bounced from his hands to his feet, flipped into one more hand spring, and then pushed hard off his toes and executed a double summersault in the air, going over the head of the jumping animal and landing several feet behind it.
The dog spun fast and sprinted after Tequila, but Tequila was already tearing ass over to the bedroom, not having bothered to stick the landing for the required three seconds. He beat the dog to the door and slammed it as the animal leapt.
Tequila had been braced for the hit, but the weight and force of the animal bounced the heavy door off of Tequila’s chest and sent him sprawling backwards over Slake’s bed. The dog recovered from its encounter with the door and shook its patchwork body, lunging into the bedroom after its prey.
In the instant it took to the air, Tequila saw his own horrible, screaming, bleeding death, and he cried out in fear and anger.
The pit bull landed front paws first on Tequila’s chest, forcing the air from his lungs, interrupting his war cry. Tequila shot his hand out at the dog’s throat and tried to keep the snapping jaws away from his face. It was like wrestling with a bear. The dog shook angrily, its mouth jerking open and closed like a steel trap, spittle and gore showering hot and wet over Tequila’s face. The animal went for Tequila’s arm, and he adjusted his grip so one hand pushed away the jaw and the other clamped tight on the huge neck. The dog was stronger, and Tequila’s arms were slowly being forced back. Seeming to sense victory, the dog increased its efforts, razor sharp teeth inching ever closer to Tequila’s unprotected throat.
The leather collar around the dog’s neck jingled its tags, and Tequila saw the dog’s nameplate and failed to laugh at the irony that his adversary’s name was Happy.
Tequila curled his legs up to him and tried to kick Happy backward. The dog countered by shifting its weight, attacking Tequila from the side rather than from directly on top. When the man’s muscles began to spasm with effort, he changed tactics.
Tequila jammed his left hand into the dog’s mouth, deep into its throat, trying to cram his fist into the hinge of its jaws so they couldn’t bite down. Then he used his other hand to dig his thumb into Happy’s right eye.
The combination of the two caused Happy to choke and back off, shaking the offending hand free. But it didn’t pause to lick its wounds, and as Tequila got to his knees, Happy lunged again.
This time Tequila let Happy have his right arm. As the dog clamped down, he drove his index finger hard into Happy’s left eye, effectively blinding him. Then Tequila fell back onto his butt and got his feet in front of him, rolling with the dog and then kicking up with his legs. Happy flipped over him and onto its back.
The dog released Tequila’s arm and growled like some prehistoric monster, its jaws snapping audibly on empty air. Tequila rolled to his stomach and freed the switchblade from his pocket. He’d blinded the dog, but supposedly a blind dog was even more dangerous than one that could see. Tequila didn’t know if he believed this or not, because he couldn’t see how Happy could possibly be any more dangerous.
The dog, working by smell, pounced on Tequila. He jammed the switchblade up between Happy’s ribs and tried to jerk it sideways, but the ribs were too big and the blade became stuck. Releasing the knife, Tequila held tightly onto Happy’s right paw and wedged it hard under his armpit. Then he rolled.
Happy’s foot bent, and then snapped. It howled, which was an even more horrible sound than its growling, and its teeth found Tequila’s wounded shoulder and dug in deep.
This time Tequila howled. Still holding Happy’s broken paw, he twisted it viciously, using the leverage to force the dog back
wards. Judo worked with dogs like it worked with people, and Happy released its bite and turned over onto its back.
Tequila brought a knee down hard onto Happy’s ribs, and then let go of the dog and jumped onto Slake’s bed.
Happy righted itself and sniffed the air for Tequila. It hobbled toward the bed on three legs, its whole body shaking with rage, the switchblade sticking grotesquely from its ribcage.
Tequila picked up the shackle nearest him and shook it at the dog, letting it hear the chains rattle. The dog jumped onto the bed and Tequila snapped the handcuff onto Happy’s wounded front paw, above the knee. Then he rolled away, off of the bed, and across half of the bedroom floor.
The dog howled, finding itself chained to the bed by its injured limb. It pulled and yelped and then began to dig and bite at the pillows. After mauling the pillows it tore into the sheets and the mattress, whining like the damned.
But the shackle held.
Tequila crawled out of the bedroom and headed for the bath. As he’d expected, Slake had a first aid kit in the medicine cabinet. Most men of their profession had one. Tequila dug into it and filled the sink with water.
First he washed away most of the blood on his wounds, and then searched for a bottle of hydrogen peroxide to disinfect them. Unfortunately, he only found rubbing alcohol. It stung so bad his eyes watered.
His foot turned out to have only minor injuries, but his arm and shoulder had ragged tears in them that required stitches. Luckily, Slake had a surgical needle and thread.
Tequila found a bottle of Demerol and a syringe—would have been nice to have found it before the rubbing alcohol ordeal—and injected himself wherever he hurt, which was almost everywhere. Then he did some quick stitch work and bandaged his wounds tight as he could. Slake had a pharmacy worth of drugs, and Tequila helped himself to some Vicodin, amphetamines, and amoxicillin. He took three of each, pocketing the bottles, along with the syringe and the Demerol. Tequila hoped that the dogs had all of their shots. From the way they were trained, he figured they must have. Slake would have spared no expense on these killers. You don’t spend two grand training a dog so it can die of heartworm or rabies.
Shot of Tequila Page 17