by Rex Burns
“Nine-one-one?”
“It’s worth a try.” Maybe the dispatcher would think a report of one car following another car on a busy highway would be important enough for a police response. Maybe.
“Goddamn them, why now?”
“Because we’re vulnerable.”
“We’ve got to get her someplace safe, Dev.”
The light changed and I pulled away close behind the car in front. The sedan stayed with us, its lights now shining hotly into the cab as Bunch shielded his arm with his body and dialed the radiophone.
I half listened to him argue with the dispatcher while I tried to think of a place where Susan could get safely out of the car. It would take time; she couldn’t move quickly, and not even Bunch could carry her fast enough to escape the two who stayed on us like bees at a flower. Up to the overpass across 1-25 and its river of traffic and through the series of stoplights that governed the freeway ramps.
Bunch shoved the phone back disgustedly. “She said she’d notify cars along the route. Shit—they don’t even know where we are!”
“They’re just tailing us right now—they’re waiting to get a good shot.” The gleaming headlights hung in the mirror. “If we make it downtown, we can pull in to the police garage. It’s got concrete all around it and room for only one car at a time.”
“That’s a long way.”
It was that; halfway across the city. But the other district headquarters had open parking lots and no protected approach. Trying to get Susan out of the car in one of them would be like pulling into a supermarket parking lot. “Maybe a patrol car will spot us before then.”
Ahead, on the right side, streetlights paced the mile-long darkness of Washington Park. As traffic strung out from the stoplight, the headlights behind suddenly swerved to the inside lane. In the side mirror, I glimpsed an arm hanging out the rider’s window, a pistol aimed skyward and ready to drop down when they pulled beside us.
“Grab Susan!”
Swinging hard to the right, we careened toward the gated entry to the park, the lights became a sudden swirl of dodging cars as the sedan veered after us through the scream of tires and angry horns. Occasional street lamps shone down on the tangle of meandering roads through the park, but mostly it was dark, and whipping out of the blackness on each side of the tarmac, the startled faces of joggers shouted for us to slow down. The narrow lane turned sharply left, toward the east entry of the park, and I leaned the car hard through the turn, but the faster headlights behind cut inside and hooked our rear fender.
“Hang on, Bunch!”
We slid sideways toward the curbless grass and thudded solidly into a towering spruce tree; Susan, crying now, tried to cover her face from the windshield as the seatbelt yanked hard against her. The sedan knifed across our front to pin us against the tree and I flung the door open and tumbled in a roll toward the dust cloud that swirled into the still bobbing headlights. Behind me I heard Bunch shout at Susan to get down and then the spurt of pistol fire told me where they were. One shadow loomed against the headlights, its arm lifted toward our car where Bunch fought to get out of the back door and the lights glared into his eyes and into the open front seat where Susan, hands clutched in her hair, cowered against the dash. Another shot whipped something past my ear and then I had him.
We tumbled into blackness, the jolt of sandy earth hard against my shoulder. I clamped my hand tight around the man’s wrist as I twisted and it folded back against the elbow. Something thudded my back and shoulders and in the darkness I made out his shoe swinging past my face in a savage jab. I groped for his eyes, my fingers snagging in soft flesh somewhere, and a moment later his teeth came down hard on my knuckle in a grinding gnaw. Shoving hard against the wrist, I yanked my finger away when he screamed and I drove the blade of my hand at his throat. It hit solidly and the scream choked off and the man sagged as if a string snapped. I rolled over to press against him hard and began to pound his head against the earth with long, solid, methodical swings. Then he was still.
Behind me, I heard Bunch’s voice in a steady, almost gentle chorus, and I turned in time to see, silhouetted against the oddly angled headlights of our car, two figures, one massive and standing like a grizzly with forearms raised, and in them, clamped in his hands, the writhing, kicking shape of a man silent with the effort to buck free. Then the arms flung the man against the steel of the automobile. A heavy sound—like an animal bumping under a car’s frame—then only the noise of Susan’s deep, hoarse sobs.
“There, honey; it’s okay now—it’s okay now, Suze.”
“Jesus, did you see that? Those guys were shooting at them!” From the surrounding darkness a cluster of faces—joggers, bicyclists—hovered with shiny, startled eyes and stared at the tangle of cars and oddly twisted bodies.
“An ambulance? You need an ambulance?”
“The cops are on their way! Somebody called the cops already!”
Bunch was cradling Susan against him, his voice a steady murmur under her jolting sobs. I felt for a pulse in the limp arm of the one sprawled on the edge of the asphalt. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t quite alive, either; the other one, moaning and wagging a knee slowly back and forth, lay wadded beside the dented car door.
“Can you hear me?”
“Uh.” It was the fat-faced one, the one with the pony-tail and the gun.
I lifted his head clear of the ground by the throat and his eyes popped open in a hoarse scream. “My shoulder!” The words were squeaky through my fingers. “God—!”
“Can you hear me!”
“Yes—goddamn—stop—!”
“Listen good: if anything happens to Margaret Haas—anywhere, anytime—you are dog meat. I’ll kill you, do you hear?”
“I hear!” Then, “Who?”
“The woman you ran off the road two days ago.”
“What …? I didn’t … Goddamn, man, we weren’t even here two days ago. Vegas. We just came in.”
I stared at his face shadowed by darkness and blood. “It was Neeley, wasn’t it? He wanted her hit.”
“Never heard of Neeley. Ow! You—you were the hit!”
“Who hit her?”
“I don’t know—goddamn you, stop it—I don’t know!”
The whine of the siren grew into a pulsing wail, and flashes of red, white, and blue emergency lights began to dance through the night to lift the grass blades out of darkness. The man stared back at me with eyes stretched by pain and fear, his face a pinched triangle between my fists. “We never hit on her. I swear! Just you—you were the hit.”
“Neeley?”
“Fuck you. Ow! Yes—but just you!”
“All right, what’s going down—leave that man alone, there!” A flashlight shone over us and the creaking bulk of a policeman loomed against the dark sky. “What’s going on here?”
Bunch had been shot in the fleshy part of the neck, a clean wound just above the collarbone and a fraction from the artery. He was lucky. Susan was less so. A ricochet caught her low in the side of the abdomen. Those are the worst kind. The slug hits something and gets knocked into a ragged shape and begins spinning so that when it hits, it tears and chews a wide path through the flesh. There’s a lot of bleeding, much of it internal from so much ripping, and the victim needs help as quickly as possible. Susan, crying and stunned, slipping into shock and still unable to speak clearly through the damage to her brain, couldn’t tell us anything except “Hurt,” and it was too long before anyone noticed the blood seeping under the side of her blouse and down into the crack of the car’s front seat, so she died.
It happened sometime in the early morning to the accompaniment of the hiss and ping of pressure tubes and monitors, and the support systems that work so many miracles. Bunch, taped and with an angry nurse fluttering behind, sat at one side of the bed and held her hand. Mrs. Faulk held the other. When they started disconnecting the wires and tubes, I went out and left them. Sergeant Whelan from Crimes Against Persons was waiting.
“I need to fill in the gaps, Mr. Kirk. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
“Can you tell me more about this Neeley and why those two assaulted you?”
“It was a professional hit. Neeley ordered it. Have either of them told you anything?”
“No. The one who could talk, Dunahay, asked for his lawyer and that was it.” Whelan added, “He has a broken clavicle and some cracked ribs, and he was damned lucky to get off with just that. Bunchcroft used to be with DPD, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
The sergeant wagged his head. “He’s tough.”
“What about the other one?”
“Jones is in a coma. Severe brain damage. If he makes it, he’ll be a changed man.”
“Good.”
“We could be talking a manslaughter charge on that, Mr. Kirk. I have to inform you of your rights.”
“We’re talking self-defense.”
That might be true, but he was a cop who’d seen a lot of weird things come out of the courts, and he read me the Miranda as a matter of policy. Then he got as much as he could about Neeley and Aegis. But without an admission from Dunahay, the most he could do would be to question Neeley about his alleged involvement. And Dunahay would not admit anything; he would do the right thing—do his time like a good soldier and when he got out in eight or ten years, would find a job waiting for him.
“That’s it?” Whelan asked.
“Compare notes with Lewellen in the White Collar section. He’ll have some background for you.”
“Thanks.”
Denver General sits right downtown, and when you come out in the morning you can hear the rush and clatter of the new day’s traffic from the surrounding streets, and from one corner of the building you can look across to the gleam of the state capitol’s gold dome on the high ridge above downtown. You can see the birds fluttering in the trees along Cherry Creek Boulevard, but during the rush hour you can’t hear them, and of course the fragrance from the flowers spotted around the hospital and parkway grounds is buried under the spew of traffic. I left the dented Ford for Bunch to use when he finally felt like it and caught a cab back to the office. Then I drove the Healy over to my place and stood for a long, long time in the shower.
At nine, I called Margaret to give her the news about Susan. When that was over, I called Neeley. The police had already questioned him. I told him that I wouldn’t turn the papers over to McAllister but I’d keep them in a safe place for insurance and McAllister would get them automatically if anything happened to me or mine.
The line was silent for a breath or two. “If I knew what you were talking about, I’d call it a deal.” Then he added, “But I don’t, so you can just sweat, you son-of-a-bitch.”
Which told me that he was pulling out. Aegis would still be around, and Neeley would still be in the distant background. But with the heat from the shooting and their fear of what McAllister could do with those papers and tapes, they were going to stay quiet and dump the properties and move to a cooler frying pan. Which got Loomis off their hook, too, because now he wasn’t worth bothering about.
In the pockets of my stained and torn trousers, I found the key that he had given me. I’d forgotten about it, and I stared at the worn brass disk with weariness. But I wasn’t going to sleep, I knew that, so I might as well spend the time wrapping up the loose ends.
The locker was in the Trailways terminal on Nineteenth, and it didn’t take much detection to count down the numbers until I came to the one matching the key. The only thing inside was an unaddressed large envelope lying on the scuffed plywood floor, and inside that a packet of papers that began somewhat smugly, “If you are reading this it is because I want you to.” They went on to say why Loomis had written the contents. The main reason, he admitted, was insurance; it might pay to have this story written down if he needed something to trade. The second reason was revenge and he wasn’t certain at the time of writing whether the holder of the key had received it personally from him or had it mailed to him. Either way, the conclusion said, there was no sense trying to find Loomis because by now he had disappeared into a world that offered abundant shelter to those with enough money. And, it added, he had enough now.
Between salutation and conclusion, he said who the revenge was on and why, and I read it several times with a kind of sick numbness until I could almost quote the words from memory.
CHAPTER 17
PETERSON ANSWERED THE door. He had heard from Margaret about Susan and Bunch, and there wasn’t much to say. “I’m sorry, Dev.”
My father had told me something about the distance between a man’s wants and what life allowed—its capricious ironies in answering his pleas, as if some malevolent god delighted in twisting painful fates out of those pleas. “But the thing is, Devlin, I don’t believe there is a malevolent god. And there’s a good possibility there’s nothing—that we’re on our own, and somehow that’s even worse than being subject to a demon. But if so, that’s where we have to spin our web of faith, Dev—out of ourselves. It’s all we have to hold ourselves up with, and maybe to hold up God, too.” But his faith had not been a strong enough support; and even if I could now understand its weakness, that didn’t make it any less bitter. I gave Dutch his final assignment and told him he could pack up. “Send me your bill. I’ll get your check in the mail.”
“Sure. I’ll get my gear.”
Margaret was waiting for me in the living room, and, wordless, she stared at my face that had a numb and stiff feeling. “Oh, Dev!”
Everything was familiar about the way she felt against me. The fragrance of her perfume and hair, the small, strong grip of her hands on my back pressing me tightly against the yield and softness of her body. And then the slight stiffening as she leaned back to study my face again.
“You haven’t slept all night, have you? Would you like some coffee?”
“Where’s Shauna?” Austin would be in preschool by now.
“Upstairs cleaning her room. Why?”
“I found Loomis yesterday.”
“Oh.” She backed away, her arms hugging her own ribs. Somewhere upstairs a piece of furniture rumbled clumsily, and then came the distant, muted whir of a vacuum cleaner as Shauna busily straightened her room. “What did he tell you?”
I don’t know what I expected her to say. Something that would prove Loomis a liar by showing puzzlement or shock or even disbelief. But she wasn’t surprised; she was waiting. “It wasn’t what he said, it’s what he wrote. Along with some documentation.”
“What was it?”
So I told her what she already knew: about the deal between her and Loomis and Aegis, and how the two of them convinced her husband to steal McAllister’s proposals. About Loomis making the telephone call to McAllister to establish a reason for Austin’s suicide. I told her about Loomis keeping the payoff money after Austin was dead and how she borrowed a trick from him by hiring me to look into the theft in order to frighten Loomis into paying her share—two-thirds of a half million dollars. When it was paid, she would take me off the case. Then I began the guessing, but it was right, too: I told her that the telephone number for Neeley that I “found” in that envelope containing her husband’s effects had been planted there, and that Loomis’s name in Busey’s purse had been put there, too, so I would be led closer to the professor. And I told her the names were planted by the same person—the one who killed Busey.
“You’re accusing me?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t prove it. You can’t prove anything!”
“We have a witness who saw another woman follow Busey up to Landrum’s office. And I called Tammy, your babysitter. She says she sat for the children from six to eight on the night Busey was killed. Where did you go?”
The green eyes gazed toward me, not seeing but thinking hard. Upstairs, the vacuum cleaner fell silent and a moment later Shauna’s legs flickered down the banistered stairs with light thumps as she hopped, rabbit
like, until she saw me. “Devlin! Hi, Devlin!” And then she ran, her fine hair like a light gauze behind her. “Hi!” Reaching her arms up to be swung and I lifted her, lighter than my heart, high and giggling and happy almost to the ceiling and she stretched to touch it with a finger. “When is Dutch going? He won’t let me play outside unless he’s along. He says I have to stay where he can see me. Where’ve you been?”
“Shauna, calm down. Go in the other room. Mr. Kirk and I have to talk.”
The girl looked at her mother and suddenly sagged to be let back to earth. “What’s the matter, Mama?”
“Nothing,” I said. “We just have some business to talk over.”
She looked at me across a new distance, aware, now, that her mother, too, had withdrawn from me, and an edge of fright knifed into her glance.
“Go on now,” said Margaret more gently. “I’ll be in soon and then we’ll go shopping. Just the two of us. Without Dutch or anyone else. Just us. And we’ll buy lots of things.”
At the door, Shauna turned to look back at me, a mixture of puzzlement and acceptance, and a new knowledge—uncomprehended but real, that we were saying good-bye to each other. And to something else, too. Then she was gone.
“Loomis was driving the van.”
“What?”
“The van that ran you off the road. It was Loomis. When it didn’t work, he ran.”
“He told you?”
“No. But it fits. With everything else.”
Margaret stared at me. She did not ask why he had tried to kill her.
“You knew about Carrie Busey and your husband.”
“Yes! Yes, I knew. That slut. Both of them … “ The rage still in her eyes, she glared hotly at me. “You said you were judge and jury, Devlin. You said you were that in your work. So was I—it wasn’t any different from what you would have done!”
“Loomis described how you killed your husband. The first bullet in his head. Then reload. The second one fired with his own hand to leave powder residue on it. You wore a pair of disposable rubber gloves, and that’s what little Austin meant when he heard the second shot and thought he dreamed that you were peeling the skin off your hands.” Behind her, the large rubber tree stood like a healthy sapling, its broad leaves dark with food and light. “Is the second bullet still in there? In the dirt?”