Jerry watched the colors dance and bit down on the tip of his tongue, trying to clear his head. It didn’t work. He bit harder and tasted blood but still the room reeled, and when he felt someone moving his hands he could make only the slightest resistance. A cord bit into the flesh of one wrist, then the other. AJ was tying his hands.
“Is the girl coming back?”
Jerry didn’t say anything. When he tried to pull his hands forward, he felt unyielding resistance. He was tied to something. Maybe the Lexus. He heard AJ walking away, blinked hard, strained to lift his head. The gun was out of sight now, but AJ was at Jerry’s toolbox, had the drawers open, was lifting a ten-pound maul out. No, no, no. Put that thing down. Please put that thing down.
“Is the girl coming back?” AJ repeated, his back to Jerry as he hefted the maul, took a practice swing.
“Yeah.” Jerry’s head was clearing fast now, and the pain was no longer a presence in his mind.
“How long till she does?”
“Maybe an hour.”
“She go to the cops?” AJ was standing over Jerry, the maul held down against his thigh.
How to answer that? Instinct said to tell him no, but why? If the guy thought cops were on the way, maybe he’d cut this short. Was that a good thing, though?
“Mr. Dolson? Jerry, buddy? You want to give me an answer.”
Split the difference, maybe. Tell him she was planning to go the cops, but hadn’t yet. Was that good?
“She went to pick up that kid. I think they’re . . . could be they’ll go to the cops. But that ain’t my fault. That’s your buddy’s, man. You hit a woman, then knock a cop around like that, you’ve got to expect—”
“What kid?”
“One who jacked up your friend last night.”
“Why’s he involved?”
The pain was coming back now, but so was his sense of guilt. He shouldn’t be giving this asshole so much information. Shouldn’t be rolling over like this.
“Don’t know.”
There was a whistle of metal through air as the maul came down, and Jerry had just enough time to tense before it caught him square in the hip. A hellfire shot of pain cut through his leg and into his stomach, filled his chest. He arched his back and hissed through clenched teeth.
“Want to answer that one again?” AJ said.
“He thinks he knows something about you.”
“About me? How does he know something about me?”
“I’m not sure, man.” He had his eyes squeezed shut against the pain but still sensed the maul being lifted again, yelled out, “I don’t know, okay? She didn’t say. Just told me that she needed to talk to him to decide what to tell the cops. The kid thinks he understands something more than the police, and he thinks he knows where your boy went, the one drove this car.”
“He knows where to find him?”
“I think so.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re a lying piece of shit. Where?” The maul was drawn back again, and as much as Jerry wanted to look strong, he couldn’t help but cower.
“She didn’t tell me.”
“But she knows.”
“Yes. Maybe. I mean, the kid says he knows.”
“And she went to get the kid. Where was she going to pick him up?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying again. Where did she go?”
AJ’s voice had intensified, and this time Jerry knew he had to shut up. Had to. If he told this asshole, the guy was going to leave immediately, chase after Nora. Jerry wasn’t about to do that to her. No chance.
“Where did she go?” AJ repeated.
“Tell you where you can go. Straight to—”
This time the maul was swung with far greater force, straight into Jerry’s thigh. He heard the bone snap a tenth of a second before he felt it, and this time he couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t have screamed if he wanted to. The pain slid into his brain like a fast-moving storm cloud and he faded beneath it. AJ’s voice was somewhere outside the cloud, questioning him, maybe the same question or maybe another; he no longer could translate the words of his own language.
“You’re going to die.”
He got that sentence, held it for a second, figured it out. Yes, the man was telling the truth. Jerry was going to die.
“One more chance, Mr. Dolson.”
So maybe he was not going to die? One more chance. That meant a chance to live, right? Had to. Jerry tried to look at his leg, expecting to see bone and blood. There was nothing of the sort. Just his jeans going down to a foot that he could no longer move. Could he? He tried and nothing happened. Or was he even trying? So hard to tell. So hard to know what to do.
There was something between his eyes and that immovable foot now, swinging in the air. What was it? Oh, shit, the maul. He remembered the maul. It was what had caused all of this. Thing shouldn’t even be in the body shop. It was for splitting wood, but he’d brought it down because it was heavier than the hammers and easier to use than a sledge, a good all-purpose pounder. He hadn’t considered this purpose.
“Where did she go?”
Where did she go. That question again. Asking about Nora. Don’t tell him. Remember that, Jerry. Don’t tell him. The pain’s going to come back soon, going to make you forget some things, but don’t forget this.
“You’ve got to start talking again,” AJ said. “Does she have the tracking device? I don’t think she does. You said it was in your locker yesterday. I bet you still have it. You wanted that money.”
AJ moved away and the pain moved back in. Jerry took in a long breath and choked on it. There was so much spit in his throat. Or was it blood? You wouldn’t bleed in your throat from a broken leg, would you? No. No, that didn’t seem to make sense. His leg was in two pieces. That didn’t make any sense, either.
“Thatta boy,” AJ said, and a locker slammed shut. What was he so happy about? Oh, right, the tracking device.
“You got it,” Jerry said. Tried to say, at least. The words were tough to form. AJ had the tracking device now, so he would leave, right? He would leave now, go away and let Jerry alone.
“Yes,” AJ said. “I got it. But that’s not the only thing I need. Where did he go, Jerry, old buddy? Where is the guy who goes with the car?”
Jerry didn’t know. Nora hadn’t told him. Maybe Nora didn’t know. He couldn’t remember anymore. Wait—AJ had the tracking device, and that meant Jerry had failed. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? Not to give him the tracking device. No, the point was Nora. Not to tell him where Nora had gone. Where had Nora gone? The Willow, that was it. She’d gone after the kid at the Willow.
“What’s that?” AJ was standing above him now. “What are you saying?”
He’d been talking. No good. Don’t talk, Jerry. Keep your damn mouth shut, for once in your life.
“Willow?” AJ said. “Is that what you said? Keep going. Keep talking.”
Don’t keep talking. Don’t say a word. You almost made a mistake, a bad mistake. Don’t say anything, Jerry. Bite down on your tongue. Is that your tongue? Doesn’t matter. Bite it. Bite it and hold it and don’t say a word.
“Okay,” AJ said. “I think you’re running out of usefulness. Good news is, you’re not going to feel that leg anymore.”
The maul was gone, discarded in favor of a knife with a small blade. Good. Jerry didn’t know if he could take another swing from the maul. Snapped that bone, probably the thickest bone in his body, like it was a piece of rust. No, he couldn’t take another one like that. But the knife wasn’t good, either, was it? Not in AJ’s hand. He should ask AJ to stop. Just stop and go away. Jerry was hurt. Couldn’t he see that Jerry was hurt?
17
__________
It’s not going to be quite that easy,” Frank Temple said as Nora drove down Business 51 and into Tomahawk. He’d been offering so many comments of this sort that she was beginning to feel uncomfortable wit
h him. Even if everything he’d told her was the truth, it seemed odd to be so leery of calling the police. She was telling him, flat-out, that there was going to be a meeting with Jerry and these guys, and he was still trying to discourage her from calling the police. Who did that? Any normal person would be ordering her to call them. So was there something more involved here? Was the man in her passenger seat connected to these guys somehow?
“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. I’m saying, if they do it right, this is a good chance. These guys think Jerry’s working with them, Frank.”
“I don’t know if they really believe that.”
“Well, they agreed to the meeting. And at the time that he set it up, he was all about giving them that tracking device, too. So I don’t think his demeanor would have done anything to create suspicion.”
“Guys like these don’t need something to create suspicion, Nora. The idea of going for some sort of trap with a handful of small-town cops whose idea of high crimes probably includes poaching seems like a piss-poor plan to me.”
“You spent this morning convincing me that I should be terrified of these men.”
“That wasn’t the idea.”
“Well, it was the effect. You do that, and then I tell you that there’s a good opportunity to have them arrested, and you’re trying to discourage it. Forgive me if I say that doesn’t seem right.”
“All I’ve said, Nora, is that I’m not sure you appreciate the background these guys have.”
“You don’t know what their backgrounds are. You said that was just a lot of guessing.”
“Very educated guessing.”
“In your own opinion, sure. I don’t know if the police, if the people whose jobs it is to deal with situations like this, would agree.”
She was snapping at him now and didn’t want to be, so she stopped talking before any more hostility crept into her words. He was quiet, looking out the window, and she felt a quick pang of foolishness and guilt. Why, though? Why should she believe him? He was a twenty-five-year-old kid who wanted to be a writer, for crying out loud. Just because his father had killed some people didn’t mean he was James Bond. And who knew if any of that was even true? What she should have done was get on the Internet and see if she could verify his story.
It was ridiculous not to go to the police. Ridiculous, and probably dangerous. She didn’t really know Frank Temple or anything about him, and that odd sense of trust she had in him could be simply the product of the way he’d come to her aid. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d read something like that in a psychology class. Her emotions from the previous night were causing her to put too much faith in him, when he could be just as dangerous as the men she was worried about.
“I’ll let you talk to Jerry,” she said, “but then I’m calling the police. Okay? This is not your decision. I was the one they attacked yesterday, that damn car is in my shop, and it’s my responsibility.”
He just nodded.
“So it’s up to me to decide what we do, and we’re going to call the police and give them that little box Jerry found and tell them about the meeting. I can’t make you tell them any of the things that you told me this morning, and I won’t try. That’s up to you. But I will tell them everything I know.”
Again he didn’t say a word. Fine, Nora thought. In an hour or so the police will be dealing with all of your strange moods, not me.
She drove into town, into the shop parking lot, through the open gate, and parked just behind the building, facing Frank’s Jeep. As she opened the door and stepped out, she saw that one of the overhead garage doors hung about two feet off the ground. Probably getting too stuffy in there for Jerry. Might as well open it up all the way.
Frank was out of the truck and walking beside her as she went to the side door, which she found was locked. She rapped on the door, and they waited. There was an awkward tension now; Frank’s silent, blank-faced reaction to her rant in the truck left her uncomfortable. It would be nice if he’d responded, or at least if the silence seemed like a response, as if she’d angered him and he was sulking about it. Instead, he was impossible to read, just stood there with every thought and emotion tucked in a locked box and hidden from the world.
Jerry must have the radio on, because he didn’t hear her knock. Or he’d reverted to typical Jerry form and chosen to ignore it. She got out her keys and unlocked the door and pulled it open, held it for Frank.
“Thanks.” He walked past her and into the shop, and she followed, letting the door swing shut behind her. She’d made it maybe two steps inside when he whirled back to her, put his hand on her shoulder, and guided her backward.
“Outside.”
“What?”
He didn’t answer, just kept his hand on her shoulder while reaching for the door handle. Her confusion switched to irritation, and she twisted free from his grasp.
“Let go of me. What are you doing?”
He had the door open and was reaching for her again as she stepped around him and saw the blood.
It should have induced immediate terror, maybe, but instead her reaction was simply to follow it with her eyes, some natural curiosity telling her to find the source before she responded. There was a drain in the center of the concrete floor, a big rusted grate with nickel-sized holes, and a thin trail of blood was leaking into it now. Up from that the flow widened, and then she saw Jerry.
He hung in an awkward half-lean from the front of the Lexus, his hands bound to the car’s grille with a length of wire, his head flopped sideways onto his left shoulder. There was a thick dark line across his throat, just under his chin, and beneath it was the pool of blood that had spawned the rivulet running into the drain. His left leg was bent unnaturally, and there was a strange bulge high on his thigh, almost at the hip. Nora’s eyes recorded all of this in a split-second stare, and then she said, “No, Jerry,” and started toward him.
“Don’t.” Frank had her arm again, his grip rougher than before.
“Look at him! He’s—”
“Dead. He’s dead. Don’t go over there, don’t touch him. We need to leave now.”
She started to fight him, twist her arm loose, but then her eyes focused on the bulge on Jerry’s leg again and for the first time she understood what it was. The bone. That was the bone pushing at the skin, trying to escape. They’d broken his leg. That understanding brought the nausea on in a wave, and she started to sink to her knees. Frank caught her and kept her upright, moved her back toward the door. Her jaw went slack, and for an instant she was sure she’d be ill, but then he had her outside and into the fresh air.
“Oh, no, Jerry.” She was on her knees on the pavement now, aware of a sudden heat in her face and neck. “No, Jerry, what did they do, what happened to him, what did they do to him?”
She tried to get to her feet, and Frank put his hand on her shoulder and shoved her gently back.
“Stay down. I’m calling the police.”
She put her hands flat on the gravel and squeezed them into fists, wanting to hold something, watching idly as one short fingernail split against the stone.
“Did you see his leg?” she said. Frank was talking in a low voice into his phone. She repeated the question, and still he talked only into the phone. Her hands were trembling now on the gravel. She asked the question a third time as he put the phone back into his pocket and knelt beside her, wrapped his arm around her back.
“Did you see his leg?”
“Yes.” His voice was soft.
“They hurt him,” she said.
“I know.”
“They did that to his leg.”
“I know.”
From the time he’d called Nora and left the first message the night before, Frank had tried diligently to convince himself that most of this was undue worry. That his impression of the men who’d come to her body shop was inflated by the adrenaline of the moment, that bad memories of a man he barely knew had driven him to exaggeration and paranoia. All of tha
t ended when he stepped into the body shop with Nora behind him and saw Jerry Dolson tied to the car, his blood drying on the floor. There’d been no exaggeration, no paranoia. He knew these men now, not by name, maybe, but he knew them. Waiting for the police with his arm around Nora’s back as she wept, Frank felt a pang of desire to see his father in a form he’d been sure he would never wish to recall—with gun in hand.
These men were good, but his father had been better. Faster of body and faster of mind, a deadlier shot, superior in every quality of combat. The image of his father as the violent but righteous crusader, an idea that Frank had come to love as a child and loathe as an adult, returned to him in a desperate ache. Come back, he thought as he felt Nora’s jerking sobs under his hand. Come back and make this right. Settle this in the only way that it can be settled properly—in blood. You could do that. I cannot.
His world disappeared into a cacophony of sirens then, three police cars arriving in succession, men emerging with weapons drawn as if there were anything they could do.
18
__________
They separated Frank from Nora almost immediately, and for the next six hours he didn’t see her again. None of the cops bothered to search him for a weapon at first, but he was conscious of the gun in his shoulder holster, and eventually told the officer who seemed to be in charge of the scene that he was carrying. The guy didn’t handle it well, took the gun and then searched Frank with rough hands, as if he might have voluntarily given up the pistol only to attack them with a knife a few minutes later.
At first it was nothing but local cops, small-town guys who all seemed to achieve a certain level of shock with the realization that someone had been tortured and murdered at noon on a Saturday in the middle of town. They ran through the basic motions, asked Frank the basic questions, but nobody seemed focused, a high level of confusion permeating the group.
He was left alone in an interrogation room at the little Tomahawk police station for more than an hour. People came and went outside, talking in soft voices, and he caught snippets of their words, muttered curses and musings, references to Mowery. Tomahawk’s police department had just hit the big time, and Frank probably understood this better than they did.
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