The Devil's Anvil

by Matt Hilton

  When I’d phoned him the night before, he’d given a lame-arsed excuse about trying to round up a team of ATF agents to come to our assistance but had been too late to be of any help. By the time they’d arrived at the logistics depot it was a no-go area of cops and Feds and he’d backed off. When he’d enquired about Billie’s welfare I told him she was safely in my care, and would stay that way without his help. He’d offered to come get her anyway, and to place her in protective custody. It was bullshit; he wasn’t the least bit interested in Billie, only in what she could tell him. Still playing his game, he’d asked what I’d learned from her, and that was when I’d told him where and when to meet me, and I’d show him.

  ‘I fully expected you to come.’ I tapped the barrel with my spade and it rang dully. ‘I promised I’d show you what I’d found. It’s right here, Cooper.’

  He couldn’t keep the greed out of his face. He licked his lips, glancing from me to Rink and back again. Then he took a slow look at the surrounding hills, without ever fully losing sight of us. ‘How the hell did you find it all the way out here? Billie must have finally told you the truth, right?’

  ‘I’ve never been the best detective in the world, but even I was able to figure out the clues,’ I said. ‘And for the record, Billie wasn’t lying. Only you were lying, Cooper.’

  After I’d called Cooper I’d rung Harvey and had him check a few facts for me. Apparently Brandon Cooper was no longer an active ATF agent and hadn’t been for months. He was simply another interested party in the hunt for Richard Womack, or more pertinently those missing millions of dollars. I should have checked his story earlier, and saved myself a whole heap of trouble. But there you go.

  ‘You know, I should’ve known you were lying the first time we met and you told me that a facial recognition program had got a hit on Richard. If it had he wouldn’t have progressed through border control without being detained. You knew that was bull, but to be fair it was reasonable enough for me to believe you at the time. You mentioned there was a mole in the ATF; that was true. But the mole was yours, he was feeding you intel, getting you the equipment you needed to put me in place, make your fantasy story ring true. You hoped that by having me stick close to Billie she’d finally relent and tell me where the money was, eh?’

  Cooper’s lips made a thin line. He had no need to lie any further, or to add the details of his fiendish plan like the bad guy in the final act of a mystery movie. All he need to do was allow that I was right and that would have suited me fine. But he felt that he must unburden himself, maybe to make room for all the cash he hoped to carry away from here. ‘The ATF burned me, Hunter. After all my years of loyal service to them they kicked me loose, without as much as a kiss my ass. Well they got rid of me, but they couldn’t take back what I knew up here.’ He tapped his head with the barrel of his pistol. ‘I knew about the Womack cold case and about the missing money. And, yeah, I wanted a piece of it.’

  ‘So you dropped Procrylon the tip-off, and set me up as Billie’s guardian, hoping to set us against each other, make everyone desperate and draw out the truth from Billie?’

  He shrugged. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You piece of crap,’ Rink called him.

  ‘Shut your pie hole,’ Cooper said. ‘This has nothing to do with you.’

  Beside me I felt Rink coil like a spring. I shook my head gently at him and leaned on my spade handle again, eyeing Cooper. ‘So was it you who told Procrylon about the beacons your ATF mole put in those bulletproof vests?’

  ‘I had to give them a fighting chance, didn’t I? If you’d driven Billie away they’d have had no hope of finding her again. I had to make sure that she was a prize that both of you would go after. If it’s any consolation I never expected you to get shot, Hunter. I had faith in your abilities, and believed you’d get Billie safely out of the way, where she’d then feel indebted to you and tell you the truth about the money.’ He looked down at the steel barrel I’d unearthed and smiled, but it was at his own ingenuity rather than mine. ‘When you called me with the news that Billie had been taken, I admit I was a bit worried. Shit, for a second or two I even thought you were going to go along with my plan to call in the FBI. If you had, well, I guess everything would have gone to hell. But my suspicion played out; knowing your way of working, you’d want your chance to go after her yourself. I allowed you to talk me out of it and go along with your idea to rescue her. Luckily, everything worked out for the best, eh? My idea seems to have worked, even if it took a little longer than I anticipated.’

  ‘Do you realise how many people died because of your greed?’ I asked.

  Cooper laughed at the inanity of my question. ‘So a bunch of mercenaries and thugs died? Do I look as if I give a fuck?’

  ‘Good people could have been hurt.’

  ‘Good people always get hurt,’ he said. ‘You should know that.’

  Sadly he was correct. But it didn’t make it right.

  He waved his gun in our general direction. ‘Stand the barrel upright. I think it’s time I got a look at all that lovely cash, don’t you?’

  I looked at Rink and he nodded. We left our spades buried in the loose soil, and each grabbed a hold of the barrel rim. It was heavy, and took effort to tug from the earth’s embrace. We jostled it to an upright position, then stepped aside. But Cooper shook his head.

  ‘One of you prise off the lid,’ he ordered. He aimed his gun at my stomach. ‘Rington, you do it.’

  Rink fed his fingers into the groove between the lid and the barrel. He grunted in effort, but couldn’t get the lid to move. ‘I’ll have to use the spade to lever it off,’ he said.

  ‘Go for it, but no funny business. If I see that shovel move even an inch in my direction, you’ll be shovelling Hunter’s guts into a grave alongside his corpse. Understand?’

  ‘I get you, man. Lighten up, will ya?’

  ‘Just get the damn lid off or I’ll shoot you both and do it myself.’

  Rink inserted the tip of his spade in the groove and pushed down on the handle.

  ‘Cooper,’ I warned. ‘You might want to hold your breath.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Cooper took a step forward.

  ‘I told you Billie was telling the truth. She said Richard was dead, and she meant it. She said that she knew nothing about the money, and she was telling the truth about that too.’ I nodded at Rink, and he flicked off the lid with a final grunt of effort. ‘Billie murdered her husband long before she heard anything about the money he had stolen.’

  The stench of decomposition must have hit him at much the same time that Rink threw his weight against the barrel and toppled it towards Cooper. Richard Womack’s semi-decomposed corpse spilled from the barrel, his fleshless skull still sporting matted black hair, and a huge indentation in the bone that had ended his life. Billie had once told me she would happily smash in Richard’s skull given the chance, but she’d been replaying a happy memory rather than fantasising. Seeing a grinning skull staring back at him rather than bundles of cash was the last Cooper expected.

  ‘The money’s lost, Cooper,’ I told him. ‘It’s just random numbers in cyberspace now.’

  His dream of untold riches was dashed, and he sagged in defeat, a moan of dismay hissing out of him. For that briefest moment his attention was on his dissipating joy and off us. It was all I’d been waiting for. I snatched up my spade and hurled a pile of dirt in his face. He was blinded, some of the muck invading his mouth and nostrils, and easy game as I knocked the gun out of his hand. I was about to swing the shovel at his head, knock the fucker senseless, but Rink beat me to it. He snatched up the lid, swung it overarm, and the spinning metal disc struck Cooper smack in the middle of his face. He went over on his back, and lay there groaning, as I stooped down and picked up his gun. I was tempted to put a few rounds in his body for good measure, but instead I bent my head to the hidden microphone clipped inside my shirt and said, ‘I hope you got all that on tape?’

&
nbsp; ‘Loud and clear,’ said a voice in my earpiece. Then tactical ATF agents moved in from the forest above us to effect the arrest of the rogue ex-agent. Unbeknown to Cooper a second team had already rounded up his pal, Ray Monaghan, who’d accompanied him when first he’d approached Billie at the farm. Monaghan was Cooper’s mole – an active agent still inside the ATF – the man responsible for sourcing the equipment, and for ensuring the bulletproof vests could be traced when it had become necessary.

  Once I’d learned from Harvey Lucas about Cooper’s enforced retirement and bogus status, I’d got in touch with his old employers. In exchange for immunity from prosecution – something I’d demanded in writing from the director of the ATF himself – I’d promised them I’d give them Brandon Cooper, his mole, and the evidence they needed to bring down Procrylon, and to prosecute them for their part in the illegal arms trade. Their actions in their pursuit of Billie Womack, her subsequent kidnapping and torture, were enough for them to indict Amanda Sheehan at the very least, and from there those people on whose behalf she worked. Considering that we’d discovered she was highly placed in the company’s management structure, it would give the ATF a doorway into their activities they’d never had access to before. Procrylon was finished. And now so was Brandon Cooper.

  But they weren’t the only ones I’d handed to the cops.

  42

  I’d grown uneasy about Billie Womack pretty early on after meeting her, even if I hadn’t wanted to believe what my gut was telling me. It wasn’t so much what she said as her reactions to danger and violence. She enjoyed it far too much for my liking, almost to a point where she had gleefulness in her expression when she should have been horrified. The first time she mentioned bashing in Richard’s head, it had been delivered with such intent I should have worried for my own skull. Later, after I accidentally killed that dope on the mountain trail, she’d been filled with such excitement, admiration for what I’d done, that I could almost smell the sexual tension coming off her. She’d been turned on by the violence, and it had made me think back to the way in which she’d been watching me in her house while she thought my back was turned. She was studying me like a predatory insect, like the mantis that first satisfies its sexual desires before chewing off the head of its mate. I’d misconstrued her attention at first, and actually scolded myself for thinking of her in a sexual way. She’d offered other clues, but the most telling was the attack on Amanda Sheehan carried out with such vitriol and murderous intent, and then the cold-blooded shooting to death of Daniel Jaeger. Instead of making her escape as quickly as possible she’d gone off in search of further bloodshed, to a point where she’d almost got herself killed but had still been keen for a fight with Erick. Even during that desperate fight she couldn’t help crowing, and had come so close to admitting to Richard’s murder that it had almost stunned Erick and me into inactivity. Only after our escape from the logistics depot had she realised that she’d been so out of control I couldn’t help but spot her psychopathic tendencies. In an effort at throwing me off, she’d sunk into silence, playing the hurt victim. But she couldn’t help bragging about leaving a fingernail sticking in Amanda’s face when I’d asked about injuries. Once all my suspicions had fallen into a row, I thought again about that painting, of how Nicola pointed at a desolate hole in the ground, and what its significance was, and deep in my heart I realised that I already knew.

  After I’d taken the walk outside, made those telephone calls to Brandon Cooper and Harvey Lucas, I’d gone back to the motel room and taken Rink to one side. I told him my suspicions about both Cooper and Billie, and, give him his due, he hadn’t questioned their validity. He’d asked Noah and Adam to join him outside while I spoke with Billie alone. Billie was no fool. She suspected what was coming, and she watched me from where she lay on the bed with a veiled expression on her face. She had an impromptu ice pack on her injured hand, cradling it with the other. I checked for hidden weapons lying close by, but there were none.

  ‘Is there something wrong, Joe?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Tell me that you didn’t intend to harm your daughter,’ I said without preamble.

  For the first time I saw genuine remorse in Billie’s eyes. ‘If I could change anything, it would be that my Nicola had to die.’

  I felt sick. But I didn’t let it show. If she thought she was having that effect on me it might encourage her darker side and I didn’t want the situation to grow uglier than it already was.

  ‘It wasn’t Richard driving the car that went over the bridge, was it?’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘Richard was already dead by then.’

  That explained why his body had never been found in the river. It was elsewhere, and it was Billie who’d been behind the wheel. I sat down on the bed, my back to her, because I didn’t want her to see the disgust I felt for her. ‘What happened, Billie?’

  ‘He was cheating on me. He was threatening to leave me, and to take Nicola with him. I couldn’t allow that.’ She laughed to herself. ‘By all accounts he was setting himself up with a nice little windfall, eh? All that cash he stole from Procrylon’s accounts? He would have disappeared and I’d never have seen my daughter again.’

  ‘You didn’t know that then.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know about the money, but he told me he was leaving, and that I’d never find them.’

  ‘You weren’t going to allow it though.’

  ‘No. I’d given that bastard the best years of my life; I wasn’t going to let him dump me like a soiled rag when he was the one at fault. So, yeah, it’s what you want to hear: I bashed his head in with a hammer from my dad’s toolbox. I stuffed him in a steel drum, and drove him around the lake in my pick-up and buried him.’ She waited for my reaction, but I felt it important to remain calm, non-committal. ‘Can you really blame me, Joe? You’re a man who will use violence when necessary. I’ve seen you use it, seen what you’re prepared to do for what is right. We’re alike in so many ways. Can you honestly say that you wouldn’t have smashed in Richard’s head if you were in my shoes?’

  No, I wanted to say. Never. I was a violent man when pushed, but I wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer, a fucking borderline psychopath, like her. I wondered that time about what made once-honourable men like the Jaegers become monsters, and decided that they had been pounded and shaped into something despicable on the devil’s anvil. Well, warfare hadn’t turned Billie into a monster; she’d been born that way. Instead of replying, I changed the subject. ‘Why kill Nicola?’

  She was silent for a moment, but for the creaking of the bed as she adjusted her position. I felt her left hand touch my back and it was an effort not to flinch away. ‘Remorse, I guess. Call it what you want. I was broken, Joe. You must see that? I didn’t know what to do and panicked. I thought the best thing for us all was if I ended it. I couldn’t leave Nicola behind. I drove us off that bridge, but wouldn’t you just know it? The barricade wasn’t as weak as it looked and the car got stuck up in the support wires. As we hung there, I kind of came to my senses and realised the madness of what I’d been driven to by Richard. I climbed out, and was going to the other side of the car to help Nicola out when the damn wires gave way.’

  I wasn’t sure if what she was telling me was the entire truth, but she’d been forthright enough about everything else. I gave her a lifeline. ‘So you tried to save Nicola?’

  ‘Of course I did. But it was no good. The supports gave way before I could reach her and the car fell into the river. She died on impact, but was then washed away on the torrent. I would have looked for her, but again I panicked, I didn’t know what to do, so I ran. I went home to my parents’ old place. By the time the police arrived I’d showered and changed, and had got a plausible story in my mind. Why should I suffer for what that bastard Richard had pushed me to? I told them that Richard had left me and taken Nicola with him. They investigated me, but I fooled them. I got away with it, Joe
.’

  Jesus Christ. If she’d had the decency to sob I might have felt some pity for her, but she didn’t. She ran her hand down my spine almost suggestively. I stood up, facing her. Billie lay down on the bed, staring back. ‘You do understand, don’t you, Joe?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t. And I don’t believe Nicola’s death was an accident. It was too convenient. You’re a fighter, Billie, a survivor. Not the type to give in to suicidal urges, like you claim. There’s a reason why Nicola had to die: I think that she either witnessed you killing her dad, or she figured it out.’

  ‘Nicola always did have a wise head on young shoulders. I knew she didn’t buy my story the way everyone else did.’ She snorted scornfully. ‘She didn’t believe her dad would leave without her.’

  ‘So before she could take her suspicions to anyone else you had to get rid of her.’

  Billie only looked at me, and her silence spoke louder than any screamed confession.

  ‘How could you murder your own child?’

  ‘Richard was going to take her anyway,’ Billie said, and her mouth turned up at one corner. I saw coldness in her soul that chilled me to the bone. ‘Nicola wanted to go with him. Who am I to deny the wish of my child?’

  I could no longer bear to look at her.

  I called Rink and the fellas back inside. Told Adam to take out his pistol and watch her. Rink had already explained to them what was going on, but it didn’t lessen the shock on the duo of private investigators’ faces. The only consolation I could think of for them was that the payout on Richard’s life insurance policy was now forfeit and the company employing them would be able to reclaim it from Billie’s estate – they’d be getting their percentage after all. For Rink and me there’d be no payday, but right then it hadn’t been a consideration. We’d plotted how to catch Cooper, find the evidence of guilt we needed, and brought up the subject of Erick Jaeger.

  ‘He’s long gone,’ Rink reassured me.