Nailed

by Joseph Flynn

  He stopped a nurse and asked if Carolyn Mason was in the intensive care unit. He wanted to find out how she was doing. He wanted to see Sherm and Geneva, and tell them the man who had hurt their daughter and burned down their restaurant had been arrested. They had the right to be the first to know. But he doubted the news would give either of them much comfort.

  It certainly seemed poor compensation to him.

  After she’d sucked him dry and laid twenty grand cash on him, straight out of a floor safe in her bedroom, Didi DuPree had finally agreed to help Gayle Shipton with the dialogue for her screenplay. Of course, he didn’t know spelling and he certainly didn’t know typing. So he had to dictate to Gayle what all the characters should say to each other.

  Didi had made it only to the eighth grade before he found his life’s work, but he noticed a few things about rewriting a screenplay right off. Like they started with a scene he knew she’d already finished a couple days back. So ol’ Gayle was not only rewriting somebody else’s dog poop dialogue, she was also rewriting her own. Worse than that, she was rewriting him, changing what he had to say right as it came out of his mouth.

  He’d give her lines that were funny and sharp. But she’d type them out her own way. Change a word here or there. Do just enough to fuck up the rhythm, take out all the sly fun.

  If he hadn’t needed a place to lay low, he’d have slapped the shit out of her.

  Wasn’t right to hire someone with talent to do a job and then fuck with him. It was no wonder movies sucked the way they did. You ran beef through a grinder you got hamburger not sirloin.

  Gayle looked up at Didi when he stopped talking.

  “What’s next?” she wanted to know.

  Didi put his artistic ire aside and swiveled her chair around. He slipped his hands under her arms, and lifted her to her feet. She’d been amazed how easily he’d picked her up the first time he’d done it. Told him she’d never have believed how strong he was. It made her hot just thinking about it.

  Didi had said she didn’t know the half of it.

  “What,” Gayle asked, “you want more? Now? Can’t you get enough? We’re working here.”

  “Don’t frown, baby. You’ll sprain your face-lift.”

  “God, you’re such a natural,” Gayle enthused, taking no offense. “I think we can use that line in act two somewhere.”

  Didi sat down on Gayle’s chair and pulled her onto his lap. He felt almost paternal toward her now. Maybe he should have kids someday, he thought. He’d be good with them. Teach them to deal with the world on their own terms.

  “Listen to me now,” Didi said gently, stroking Gayle’s bare inner thigh. “The show’s gonna go on. I’m gonna hunt and peck around this computer, and write some stuff that’d make you pee your pants, if you ever wore any. But right now, I got a favor to ask.”

  “What’s that?”

  Didi heard the uncertainty in her voice, so he hugged her a little closer and licked her spine at the base of her neck. Goose bumps popped up all over her shoulders and back, and a tremor ran through her. He had her now. No doubt about it.

  “It’s nothing illegal, is it?” Gayle wanted to know.

  “Of course not, baby. I’ll do all the law breaking around here.”

  Gayle quickly squirmed around so she was straddling Didi; he wasn’t wearing any pants, either. “You keep talking like that, I’m going to fall in love with you.”

  “Mmm, mmm, mmm,” he said as he felt her warmth surround him. “I believe you already have.”

  Didi knew enough to keep quiet then, except for some pro forma sound effects, until they finished. When Gayle slumped in his arms, she asked him what he wanted her to do.

  “There’s a man I want to meet. An Englishman. Name of Colin Ring. Big red-faced guy is what I hear. The way I got it worked out, he’s going to be at one of three places tonight between ten and midnight. All I want you to do is find him for me. You smile at him real nice, and invite him back here. Tell him there’s somebody he’s just got to meet. Can you do all that?”

  Gayle Shipton said she could and she would.

  Just as long as Didi kept writing and let her take the credit for it.

  As the late afternoon sun slouched toward evening, Corrie Knox decided to call it quits. She remembered all too clearly what had happened the day before when she and Tuck had pushed their hunt too far into the twilight. Oliver Gosden was truly a brave man, she had decided, one who didn’t let his obvious fear keep him from doing an important job. But when it came to being an outdoorsman, he was never going to remind anyone of Lewis and Clark.

  Martin and Lewis, maybe.

  No, that was uncharitable. After several hours in the woods, he no longer made all the noise of a marching band. Even so, there wasn’t a creature in the forest that wasn’t going to hear the deputy chief coming from a long way off; at one point, before she suggested he stop it, he’d even been clicking a cigarette lighter open and shut. The only way they were going to spot the mountain lion they wanted was if it got pissed at Oliver for interrupting its sleep.

  They had seen signs of the animal, though. They’d followed his tracks, his blood and his dung. They’d chased the tracks right through the bed of a crystal clear mountain stream. The icy water must have helped the cat’s wounded paw to stop bleeding, because there was no more blood to be found on the other side of the stream. Then the footprints disappeared as the mountain lion moved onto a patch of rocky terrain. From there, the only way the hunters could try to follow the animal was on pure instinct. Corrie’s not Oliver’s.

  Still, there were times when Corrie thought all she had to do was look up and there it would be, perched on a tree limb like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. But no such luck. Not even a ghostly, mocking feline smile to shoot at.

  Most likely, the animal had ultimately done just what she predicted hours ago: found a hidey-hole in which to lick its wounds.

  “Let’s head for home, Deputy Chief,” Corrie said.

  Oliver, who was one big raw nerve by that time, didn’t argue. Instead, he asked, “You think the state will have someone here to help you tomorrow?”

  “Let’s hope,” she answered.

  They made it back to Corrie’s 4x4 without incident. When they were underway, Oliver turned to Corrie and said, “You know it was out there with us today, don’t you?”

  “Most of the day, anyway. Right up ’til the end. But then where else would it be?”

  “I mean, it was watching us.”

  There was no question, Corrie knew, that people could feel when they were being stalked. The awareness came without the aid of conscious sensory input. You didn’t see, you didn’t hear, you didn’t smell the predator … but just like a lobster at a seafood restaurant, you were aware that something was sizing you up for dinner.

  Corrie told Oliver a story.

  “There was this trapper name of Caleb Marsh who lived in Idaho a little over a hundred years ago. Guy was something of a local legend. He routinely shot grizzlies and wolves, and thought nothing of it. Then one day he felt he was being followed, and he spotted this mountain lion.”

  Corrie glanced over to see if Oliver was paying attention. His eyes were as big as a kid’s, one listening to a ghost story. “This isn’t bullshit, is it?”

  The game warden shook her head, put her eyes back on the road, and continued.

  “Anyway, this went on for almost two years, the lion stalking this guy. The really strange part was, the lion seemed to be teasing him, giving old Caleb Marsh little glimpses of himself. Because, normally, if a mountain lion doesn’t want you to see it, you don’t.”

  Corrie interrupted her narrative to negotiate a sharp curve in the road.

  Once that was taken care of, Oliver demanded to know, “So what happened? Marsh shot the lion?”

  “That’s not the general conclusion. Caleb Marsh disappeared. The only way anyone ever learned of his story was from a journal that was found in his abandoned cabin.�
�

  Oliver waited until Corrie braked for a stop sign and then he said, “I hate that story, but it fits right in with a theory I’ve got about this animal.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I think it’s gotten personal with him. I think he’ll keep right on going after people.”

  Corrie believed that there were always sound, scientific reasons to explain animal behavior … but she’d come to the same conclusion.

  “I do, too,” she said.

  Oliver stopped into Ron’s office before he went home. He dropped like a sack of cement into a guest chair, and regarded the chief bleakly. “I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoyed my day,” he said.

  “Didn’t get the cat, huh?”

  Oliver shook his head. “We managed a draw, though. He didn’t get us either.”

  “Just so you know, I’d have gone out there myself if it were politically possible.”

  Oliver understood. He even believed the chief.

  “Wasn’t a great day here in civilization, either,” Ron said. He told Oliver about the attack on What the Hell.

  “How’s the girl?” the deputy chief wanted to know.

  “Alive but suffering. Clay had her flown out this afternoon to a burn specialist in San Francisco. Her parents went with her.”

  “You get the asshole who did it?”

  Ron told him the story of the idiot’s mother dropping the dime on him.

  “Good for her. The DA going for attempted murder?”

  The chief shook his head. “Not immediately, anyway. The mayor turned the perp over to the feds. They’re going to prosecute him for hate crimes and civil rights violations. If he gets less than fifty years, then the state will prosecute. This way, we get Horgan out of our hair. Maybe for good, but at least for a little while.”

  “Is he going to try to claim credit for the arrest?”

  “Can’t. Clay already talked to the media mob. Told it straight. A tip was called in; an arrest was made. The credit goes to Shirlee Fansler for doing the right thing instead of protecting her mutant offspring.”

  “Too bad we don’t have somebody’s mama who knows what happened with Isaac Cardwell,” Oliver said.

  “Yeah, that is a shame. But we did get some news on that front.” Ron told Oliver about the call from Charmaine Cardwell. And what Mahalia told him about her grandson visiting the Berkeley library.

  The deputy chief picked right up on the salient point. “If Isaac knew somebody represented a threat to his father, and that person found out Isaac knew —”

  “Isaac gets nailed to a tree,” Ron finished. “I talked to the librarian down in Berkeley. She remembers Isaac coming in, said he was reading in the magazine stacks for the most part. But he didn’t borrow any materials.”

  “I don’t supposed, just this once, he had a moment of weakness and left the magazines he was reading out for somebody else to put back on the shelf. Somebody who might remember what they were.”

  Ron shook his head. “No. He stayed right in his saintly character and tidied up after himself. But I did ask the librarian to cull any mention of Jimmy Thunder or Jimmy Leverette that appears in their collection, copy it and fax it to us. She said we should have the material sometime tomorrow or possibly the next day.”

  “Better than nothing,” Oliver opined.

  “The mayor left something for you,” Ron said, handing Oliver a manila folder. “He left it with me when he saw you weren’t back. I took the liberty of reading it.”

  Which is just what Oliver quickly did.

  “Colin Ring was an SAS commando.”

  “Elite soldiers,” Ron said. “Like our Special Forces people.”

  Oliver continued reading. “He was separated from the service less than honorably after the accidental training death of a recruit under his command.”

  “Clay said even his people couldn’t get the details on that, but the fact that whatever happened has been hushed up tells you something, doesn’t it?”

  Oliver replied, “Tells us Ring screwed up, maybe got a little too reckless or brutal. Some poor kid dies, the brass cover their asses. But Ring, he gets booted out of his pretty uniform. That gives him a permanent hard-on against the establishment, and he decides to become a character assassin.”

  Ron nodded “And, as you pointed out, maybe a real killer, too. Clay said that his publishing contact told him Ring has to be desperate for his book on Jimmy Thunder to succeed. He’s been down so long that if this one doesn’t go big time, he’s finished. I think we should have another chat with our British friend real soon.”

  That point raised a question in Oliver’s mind. “You ever find Didi DuPree?”

  “No. The man is not staying in any public lodging in this town. Maybe he rented some private digs, so tomorrow I’m going to have Sergeant Stanley start calling real estate offices. But, on the chance he’s left town, I had to ask the feds to look for him, too.”

  “Outside of town, you mean.”

  Ron nodded again.

  “So, are we going to look for Ring now?” Oliver wanted to know.

  “Not immediately. The mayor’s called a town meeting for tonight. My presence is required.”

  “Me, too?”

  “No, but Lauren would like to see you. She called this afternoon. There was a little fracas with Danny at the Sunshine Ward today.”

  Oliver’s heart turned to ice at the idea that anything bad had happened involving his son. “Nothing serious?”

  “No bleeding. Some bruised feelings and a lesson or two that needed to be learned, that’s what it sounded like to me.”

  “I’m going home then.”

  “Okay,” the chief agreed, “but be sure to tune in the town meeting.”

  Chapter 44

  Clay Steadman stood at the lectern on the stage of the Civic Auditorium that evening sipping from his customary glass of water. He looked calm as he waited for everyone to enter the room and settle down. The audience that was filling the seats and had been lined up since that morning to hear the mayor speak, and to tell him what was on their minds, was considerably more agitated. The mayor’s staff people on the auditorium floor tested the microphones that would be used to take questions from the audience.

  On the stage, seated behind the mayor, were Ron Ketchum, Corrie Knox, Annie Stratton, Bob Heath, the district attorney and Francis Horgan of the FBI. Off to one side, were a pair of technicians, one to handle phone calls, the other for Internet questions.

  The working press had been limited to ten front row seats in the section to the mayor’s left. They’d been told that they would have a chance to ask questions like anyone else — but they would also be subject to questioning if any of the citizens of Goldstrike so desired.

  In due course, the last seat was filled. Ron looked around to make sure the ten cops he’d assigned to the meeting were in place. Annie cued the pool TV camera. The town meeting began.

  “Good evening,” the mayor began. “My thanks to all of you here for waiting so patiently to attend this town meeting. A number of serious issues bring us together tonight. I’ll bring them up point by point, and then we’ll discuss them. Anyone among you here, or those watching at home, may question any one of us. The person who has the floor at any given time will be heard out. Any attempts to heckle or shout down a speaker will meet with forcible ejection, courtesy of the police officers you see at various points around the room.

  “Anyone who objects to another speaker’s point of view with a punch, kick, or other hostile physical response will be arrested and prosecuted. I trust, however, that this will not be necessary.”

  The look Clay directed at all corners of the audience said it had damn well better not be. He then introduced the others who shared the stage with him. Just as he finished, the phone rang.

  The mayor gave the phone tech a mild glare and the ringing stopped abruptly.

  The audience reacted with laughter.

  “Please give me a chance to speak first,
” Clay said dryly. “Everyone will get a turn. We’ll be here as long as it takes.”

  The mayor looked down, took a sip of water, and began to talk to his town.

  “There are three very serious subjects that need to be addressed here tonight. The death of Reverend Isaac Cardwell, the recurrent attacks by a mountain lion, and the response of our community to the first two situations.”

  Clay paused to look closely at his audience, taking long enough that it almost seemed as if he was weighing the character of every person seated in front of him.

  “When I first saw Isaac Cardwell nailed to a tree, I was appalled. I was sickened that such a thing could still happen in our country. I almost refused to believe my eyes that a murder so heinous could happen in Goldstrike.

  “Despite my revulsion, I took comfort in certain facts. I knew then, and know now, that we have a chief of police, a deputy chief, and a police department staffed with men and women who have the ability and experience to make sure this outrage is brought to a just resolution. Beyond that, I was certain that the people of our town are far too decent to let a killer find shelter among them. It is on this second point, however, that I’ve experienced a measure of disappointment, and to some extent have had my eyes opened.

  “As the investigation into the killing of Isaac Cardwell began, Chief of Police Ronald Ketchum was given a stack of hate mail received by the Reverend Jimmy Thunder, Isaac Cardwell’s father. More than a dozen pieces of this filth-spewing mail were postmarked locally. Needless to say, none of the cowards who sent this garbage backed up his twisted convictions with a return address.

  “I never would have thought such lowlife scum could be found in our beautiful town. I also never thought of myself as naive, but in this case I was very badly mistaken. Perhaps a lot of you are, too, if you think Goldstrike doesn’t have the same problems as every other town in this country. Take a look around you now. See if you can tell which of your neighbors is a hater.”

  Clay let them have the time to follow his suggestion. Some did, some didn’t.