A Welcome Grave lp-3

by Michael Koryta

  “Stand back a bit, Perry. Get too close and more people might get shot. That doesn’t need to happen.”

  He rolled Gaglionci over, onto his back, and I looked down, seeing him clearly for the first time, a man of medium build and height with a dark complexion, dark hair combed straight back off his forehead, opaque eyes staring at a starless sky. There was blood around him, soaking the grass and forming little pools and rivulets as it ran away from his body and melted into the wet earth. I could see a ragged hole punched through the top of his chest, near the collarbone.

  “How you doing, buddy?” Doran said. “Looking a little rough.”

  Thor was standing in the doorway of the trailer but coming no closer. His gun was still holstered. Amy lay on the grass behind Doran. I tried not to look at her. Each time I did, I wanted to move for her, and that would only invite Doran into a dangerous reaction.

  Gaglionci used his elbows to slide backward across the dirt.

  “You know how many times I thought about killing you?” he said to Doran. His voice was a graveyard whisper, but it took a lot of effort just to manage that.

  “Too bad you passed on the chance. Perry tells me you collected a nice check for killing Jefferson. Half a million, was it?” Doran made a displeased sound with his mouth, like a scolding mother. “A cut of that could have made me long gone. It’s a shame that didn’t work out. I’m going to need to know who paid you.”

  Gaglionci’s jaw muscles were working even though he wasn’t speaking, and his right hand opened and closed around a small mound of dirt he’d gathered in his fist.

  “Who was it?” Doran laid the gun against Gaglionci’s skull. “You’re not dead yet, man. That little hole in your chest? Shit ain’t gonna kill you, trust me. Seen a lot worse than that in guys who were running miles a few months later. But where the gun is now? That is going to kill you. And I will pull the trigger if you do not tell me the truth.”

  “Paul Brooks.”

  He said it without hesitation, as I knew he would. Gaglionci no sort of stand-up guy, just a killer and a hustler whose decisions were motivated only by guns and cash. Brooks had used the latter to motivate him, and now Doran trumped with the former. In Gaglionci’s world, that’s the way it would always play out.

  Doran looked over his shoulder at me.

  “You said you had a guess. You said you weren’t sure, but you could make a guess. Is Brooks it?”

  “Yeah. He’s it.”

  “Paul Brooks.” Doran said the name slowly. “Son of the guy who owned the winery where Monica was killed, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “If he paid you . . . if he killed Monica, then what the hell was Jefferson doing in it to begin with?” This to Gaglionci, not me.

  Gaglionci drew another breath and pushed it out slow, each one taking concentration. His eyes kept sliding down, trying to see his chest. He didn’t answer, and after a few seconds Doran reached forward and shoved the barrel of his gun into the wound.

  Gaglionci howled. He pulled his lips back and screamed and tried to push away, but Doran held him. I’d felt no pity for him until then—he’d kidnapped Amy, had been on his way to kill her when Doran shot him—but the sound and the look on his face made my stomach recoil, and I turned my head.

  “We were waiting on an answer,” Doran said. His voice was soft.

  Gaglionci breathed for a long time, fighting the pain back, waiting until he could talk.

  “I didn’t know he killed her. Not at first. Night Jefferson sent me to kill you, I asked what you had on him. You told me about his son. That you thought he’d killed the girl, because there was no reason to frame you if that wasn’t the case. That was a surprise to me.”

  “But you were in Monica Heath’s house with them,” I said. “Brooks and Jefferson both. You had to know who you were protecting.”

  “No. Jefferson said . . . well, he made it sound like it had been someone at the party that night. A friend or someone who worked with Brooks, along those lines. Told me I didn’t need to know the details and gave me enough money to make me agree.”

  That much explanation took a lot from him, and he bit down on his tongue and squeezed his eyes shut as the pain rode at him harder and faster.

  “You aren’t done,” Doran said. “Keep talking.”

  After a moment, Gaglionci spoke again, but he kept his eyes shut.

  “I went back to Jefferson and said I knew about his son, and now he’d be paying a lot more than the fifty. He went crazy. Said his son hadn’t killed the girl. He thought you were coming after him because he framed you, and going after his kid because he helped. But when he found out what you really thought . . . that you believed his son murdered the girl, it changed things. He told me he was going to the police, explain what had happened, give himself up for what he did. He wanted me to go back to you one more time, give you the fifty you wanted and tell you he was going in, that you’d be cleared. I said I didn’t like that idea . . . he went to the cops, cops would come for me.”

  Gaglionci coughed, and although his eyes went wide with pain I didn’t see any blood in his mouth, no sign of critical internal injury. Doran gave him a few seconds, then lifted the gun and moved it back toward Gaglionci’s chest. That got him talking again.

  “I told him I thought he was lying, that his son killed her, and he wouldn’t have spent so much money otherwise. He laughed, said it was never his money and that anything he gave me was pennies to the guy who killed her. I’d gone to see that girl’s family with Jefferson and Brooks’s father. I knew how rich he was. So I went to Paul Brooks.”

  “Told him that Jefferson was talking about going to the police,” Doran said.

  “It was a gamble. Worked out.”

  “You killed Jefferson and got rich and still went after his wife for money. Wanted to turn your half million into three and a half. Let Perry deal with the cops.”

  Gaglionci didn’t respond, just watched Doran. His wound wasn’t bleeding badly anymore, and Doran was right—I’d seen worse. Gaglionci wasn’t going to die tonight. Not from that, at least.

  Doran stared at nothing, the gun in his hand. He sat that way for a while, and then he shook his head slightly and looked at Thor, making sure he was still just standing there, no weapon in view. When he stood, it was with the slow, unsteady motion of an old man who’d sat for too long. The gun barrel lifted off Gaglionci’s chest and came around to me. Doran used his free hand to toss me the handcuffs he’d removed from Amy’s ankles.

  “Put those on him.”

  I walked around Doran, knelt over Gaglionci, took his wrists, and fastened the cuffs. Gaglionci didn’t try to fight me, didn’t take his eyes off Doran.

  “All right,” Doran said. “We’re going to take that van and get out of here. You drive, Perry. Me and my buddy here will ride.” He tapped Gaglionci with his foot.

  “You go wherever you want with that piece of shit, but I’m not going along. I’m taking Amy out of here.”

  “He’ll take her.” Doran nodded at Thor. “I got no problem with that. Walk her down to meet your partner, and then they can take her to the cops or the hospital or wherever the hell they want. But you and me, we got a trip to take.”

  “Where?”

  “To see Paul Brooks. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d finish this tonight, and either you go with me now, or people start shooting again. I don’t know how that would turn out, but I do know your girl’s safe now. Be a shame to jeopardize that again so soon.”

  Amy sat between them, right where the crossfire would be if anyone pulled a trigger. It wasn’t worth it to challenge him. Not now, when Amy was safe and the danger—at least here, in this spot, in this moment—was done.

  “Get her out of here,” I said to Thor. “Get her someplace safe. I’ll go with him.”

  42

  There was an old van parked behind the trailer, set back on a dirt access path cut into the trees, screened from sight. Doran had keys for it. I drove dow
n the gravel road, Doran in the seat beside me with a gun, everything just as it had been on our trip to the lake except for the addition of Gaglionci bleeding all over the backseat of the van. Doran sat with his back pressed against the door and the gun aimed at my head. We drove past the trailer down the rutted gravel road and came to a stop where Joe’s car was parked sideways, blocking the exit. Joe was not inside.

  “Step forward and put your gun down,” Doran called loudly. He had both windows down, the gun pressed in the soft tissue under my chin. “I’ll count to five, and then your partner dies.”

  There was a movement in the trees to the left, and Joe stepped forward. He hadn’t lowered his gun, but I was a hell of a lot more confident that he wouldn’t take the shot than I had been with Thor.

  “Go on and holster it, Joe,” I said. The pressure from Doran’s gun under my jaw made it difficult to talk loud enough. “Amy’s safe. She’s in the trailer with Thor. Let us pass and then get her out of here. That’s what matters.”

  Joe holstered his gun. His face was pale in the glow from the headlights, his thin gray hair damp and windblown.

  “Get her out of here,” I repeated.

  “I will.”

  “Move the car,” Doran said. “Then go somewhere and wait. We’re almost done here, but don’t get stupid. Any cops show up behind us, your partner will die. That’s not just talk, Pritchard.”

  Joe walked back to the Taurus and started the engine, backed it out of the way, and sat with the motor running while I drove us past. I looked in the rearview mirror as we pulled away and saw the taillights of the car moving toward the trailer where Thor and Amy waited. She was safe.

  “Brooks still in the winery?” Doran said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t lie. He lives out there. I remember there was a house. Big, fancy-ass house. That’s where he lives, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Your woman is fine,” Doran said. “You got that? You saw her, Perry. She’s fine, and you can thank me for that.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and I was serious. Regardless of whether he held a gun on me now, he’d been ready for Gaglionci in a moment when I had not.

  “Shooting Gaglionci was my pleasure, Perry. My absolute pleasure. I may well do it again before the end of the night.”

  Behind us, Gaglionci was quiet. I could see his face when I looked in the mirror, though, the shine that showed his eyes were open and watching us. Even unarmed and injured, with handcuffs on, he still seemed like a threat.

  “When you took off, I thought you were gone,” I told Doran. “Headed for the highway or something.”

  He shook his head. “Only two buildings in that entire camp are still solid. The third cabin and the trailer. Once I figured out he wasn’t in the cabin, I knew they had to have moved to the trailer. It made more sense, being closest to the road and I knew he wouldn’t have left her alone.”

  “Where’d you get the gun?”

  “Inside the trailer. That’s where I’d been staying for the last few weeks. I knew where the gun was, but he didn’t.” Doran shifted in the seat and lowered the revolver. “Point is, your girl is safe now, so you can just relax, all right? Shit’s done, as far as you’re concerned. Me, I got a little left to handle. You just got lucky enough to go along for the show.” He cocked his head at me. “Jefferson’s kid—why’d he kill himself? If he wasn’t responsible, why’d he do that?”

  There was regret in his voice, and it surprised me. I looked back at him for a moment, then away.

  “You told him you were going to kill him, Doran. Torture him and kill him. I think he believed you.”

  “Why let it come to that, though? Why not go to the cops, give Brooks up? If he’d done that . . .”

  “Giving Brooks up would mean giving himself up, too. And his father. His father would have gone to jail. They might have been estranged, but I don’t think he was ready to do that. By the time he guessed that his father was already dead, I was standing in front of him, and he assumed you weren’t far away.”

  “I wish he’d gone to the cops,” Doran said. “Could’ve changed some things.”

  I looked at him, saw his face lined with shadows. “Let me out of the van, and you take over. Only don’t go to see Brooks. Go north, south, west, wherever. But don’t go there, Doran. It won’t end well.”

  “Just shut up, Perry.”

  For a while neither of us spoke. We were the only car on the road, nobody coming in the opposite direction, just us in that musty old van listening to the wind and the tires on the pavement.

  “There was a time,” Doran said, “right before Monica got killed and I got arrested, that I about had my shit together. Be the first to admit it had been a long time coming, but, man, I was getting it together. Cutting back on the booze, cutting back on the pot, working steady hours, honest hours. It was that place in Geneva that did it, you know? Out there with the trees. Not even an hour from where I grew up, but, damn, it was good to be out of the city. I liked those trees. I was happy out there. Had a savings account, even. Putting some dollars in there when I could, thinking about upgrading to a better place after winter.”

  I saw it in my mind: a trailer in the woods, tall trees surrounding it. I saw that, and then I saw Alex Jefferson’s sprawling house by the country club, Paul Brooks’s winery and estate just off the lake.

  “I was doing all right,” Doran continued, “and Monica, she was good for me. Knew it wouldn’t last, she and I both knew that, but she was good for me. Her friends and her parents didn’t like me, but they didn’t know me, either. All kinds of rumors going around about me being violent and shit, but that was done. That was in the past, and Monica got it. Nobody else did, maybe, but she got it. When we split up, I remember sitting outside that night and smoking a cigarette and thinking that I was going to be clean by spring. I mean, really living solid. I’d have a new place by then, be done with the drugs and the drinking and the rest of it. I was close. All I had to do was make it through winter.”

  His voice changed, went soft and almost musical. “Just make it through winter.”

  We reached a four-way stop, and Doran motioned for me to go right, toward the winery. The wind picked up and shook water from the trees.

  “You had to know somebody was setting you up,” I said. “Why take the plea?”

  “Because someone had set me up, Perry. They’d done it well, too. It’s one thing to fight a charge when you’re sure of the facts, but I wasn’t anymore. I didn’t know what the hell they’d find, and that attorney, that paid-off prick, he was in my ear every damn day telling me I’d better think about the plea. Said I could always appeal, get out early, but that I was done if we did a trial in that county. Case was too big, my reputation too bad, I had no chance. Told me he couldn’t get a new venue, either. So take the plea and then think about an appeal, he said. The safe bet.”

  “Did you have any ideas about who set you up?” I said. “Just blame the cops?”

  “Had a million ideas, and none of them were close. I thought the cops were a part of it, but who killed her? At first I wondered about her father. He never liked me. But he never seemed like a psychotic, either. So why me? Who picked Andy Doran for the fall? I thought about that every day and every night and never got close. You know I honestly considered the Army? Can you believe that shit? I’d been kicked out, and I thought, hell, maybe those boys take things more personally than you realized. That’s how far off I was.”

  “You didn’t know Paul Brooks?”

  “Never seen the man. Still haven’t. We’re about to fix that.”

  “I’ll get you some money, Doran. Somehow. Get you a nice amount of cash, and then you take off. Go wherever you can go and just fade out. Forget Brooks. Joe and I will see that he goes down. You can watch it on TV, read about it in the papers, from someplace safe and far away.”

  Doran’s face was turned away from me, staring out at the dark countryside. “You were a
cop. You’ve been in some prisons.”

  “Yeah. Several times.”

  He nodded. “Then you know what they feel like.”

  I thought of the hollow sound the door had made banging shut and locked behind me in the jail in Indiana, the way it had reminded me of a submarine hatch, that sense of finality.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “And you know what goes on in there, when those doors close.”

  I didn’t answer that one.

  He turned back to face me. “I did five years inside, Perry. Something like that? You don’t forgive it, you don’t forget it, you don’t walk away from it. You take it back in blood.”

  43

  Brooks was home. That was obvious as soon as we cleared the pines and the illuminated windows of his big log home became visible. There were no cars in the driveway. I parked in front of the garage, watching the house and wondering if Brooks had seen us arrive or if he’d missed us entirely and was sitting there in front of his television feeling at peace with the world, any memory of murder cast aside.

  “Get out,” Doran said, opening his own door. I got out and stood beside the van as Doran came around and slid the back door open. He looked up the drive and then back at me. “Get him up. He’s coming in, too.”

  I reached in the van while Doran held the gun at my back, got my hands under Gaglionci’s arms, and lifted him clear of the seat. He got his feet down and stood under his own power, breathing hard, staring at Doran.

  “We could be counting money right now,” he said. “Instead you’re—”

  He stopped talking when Doran laid the barrel of the gun against his lips.

  We walked up to the house, Doran a half step behind me, with the gun in one hand and the other wrapped in Gaglionci’s hair, shoving him along. At the front door, he told me to knock. I dropped the brass knocker on the heavy wood, and we waited. Footsteps moved inside. The door swung open, and Paul Brooks stood before us in a bathrobe, a curious expression on his face until he recognized Gaglionci and saw the blood on his chest.