by Thomas Perry
“Get up, lover,” she said. “You’ve got to get out of here now.”
He tugged on his clothes while she opened the window for him, and then he was out and slipping into the woods at the edge of the clearing. He did not linger this time, didn’t look at his watch or pause to listen for footsteps.
When he got to the storage building, he paused at the edge of the woods for a moment to be sure the way was safe. Across the green a hundred yards away he saw a light come on in a window. He moved quickly to his door and grasped the knob.
It wouldn’t turn. He crouched on the steps, put pressure on it, then examined the space he’d created to see if the crack was wide enough so he could jimmy the lock with his pocketknife.
Suddenly the door swung open, and Lonny Mann was standing above him in the doorway, grinning. “Hi, Ed.”
“Let me in.” Ed ducked low and barreled in under Lonny’s arm, as Lonny tried to lower it to hold him out. Ed closed the door behind him and set the lock. “That wasn’t funny,” he said.
“I think it was,” Lonny said. “I’ll bet it’s the first time I’ve laughed since that trip to Weldonville—you looking all wide-eyed and scared, like you got caught stealing something from somebody while he was away.”
Leonard was silent for a moment, thinking carefully about the consequences of the various things he could say. Finally he said, “I guess it’s time to get up anyway, so I will. You can go back to sleep for a while if you want.”
“I’d rather stay up while you tell me all about it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just got up to go to the outhouse. I thought I heard something, so I waited around a little to see if somebody was here who didn’t belong. But I didn’t see anybody. I thought I must have locked the door by accident.”
“Nope,” said Lonny Mann. “That was me. I locked it. Tell me about you and Charlotte.”
“There is no me and Charlotte.”
“Good,” said Lonny. “I’m relieved to hear that. It leaves the way clear for me.”
Leah had been following the Subaru since morning. They were heading south on Route 71 again, after taking detours that lasted most of the day. When she looked at the map on her phone, she thought they could be heading for Shreveport, Louisiana.
The ideal strategy for her would be to get a transponder onto their car. She had adapted the plan for the Subaru, but so far, when the Subaru had stopped, they’d never all left the car at once.
All she could do was keep following, keep watching, and keep using the methods she had learned for tailing suspects without getting noticed. She would change lanes when they went around a curve so they wouldn’t see her doing it, change the look of her headlights in rural areas by falling far back and turning on the brights for a while, hide behind a truck for as long as she could stay with it, or join a pack of cars and stay in the middle long enough for the driver ahead to lose track of what vehicles were behind him. She had even pulled over on a deserted stretch to get out to pee and then drove hard until she saw them ahead again.
She didn’t understand the trip or the way the four men were making it, but she was sure that the face she had seen belonged to Lee Wolf. She would follow him for as long as it took.
The next day was difficult for Ed Leonard. He had denied having a relationship with Charlotte Carpenter, but there was no way in the world that Lonny Mann had believed him. Leonard had barely slept because he had left Charlotte’s house just before dawn, so he felt as though his brain were drugged and couldn’t stay alert. He worked hard all day in the summer heat and humidity, digging a trench for a second pipe leading from the upper lake to a lower-level reservoir that he had suggested. The idea was to have a wide and deep cistern underground made of bricks and concrete, for the times when drinking and bathing water was scarce.
The shovel work made his back stiffen and his arms feel limp and strained. Whenever he had a chance to stop, he tried to spot Charlotte and warn her about Lonny Mann, but he never saw her.
At the end of the day, he washed at the upper lake with the other men working there, came down and changed in the storage building, and went to the area near the central kitchen for dinner. He exchanged friendly conversation with the family sitting at the same picnic table while eating dinner, had a drink of whiskey to relax his sore muscles, and then went back to the storage building.
In the morning he felt better because of the extra sleep. He went up the hill to work. He stayed at it all day, trying to help his image, to stay away from Lonny Mann, and to hope Mann got over the idea that he had a relationship with Charlotte.
Late in the day, as he was getting ready to quit work, he saw her. She was in the woods, walking the perimeter of the lake. He stepped into the path and waited for her to reach him.
When she arrived, she looked upset. She gave him no greeting, just said, “Last night I got a visit from Lonny Mann. He came to my front door.”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry,” Ed said. “He asked me about you and I denied it. What did he say to you?”
“That he figured it out and you admitted it. Then you told him all about it. He said that you wanted me to sleep with him too. He said you told him you wouldn’t be jealous. He told me that you were close in prison and shared everything. I told him there was nothing between you and me. He laughed at that and told me that if I didn’t do it, he’d tell my husband. He said I already have two men, why not three.”
“None of that’s true. I’m sorry he said that.”
“I told him that all I had to do was scream ‘rape,’ and there would be a dozen armed men bursting through the door to kill him.”
“It worked?”
“He left. And that’s what I’m going to do now. I thought you had a right to know. I’m going to stop meeting you for a while and see if he gives up.” She stepped onto another branch of the path, and she was gone. In a moment he heard other female voices, and then hers.
He really would hate to lose his nights with her, but now that Lonnie Mann had made an overt move to butt in, the whole perfect relationship was about to end anyway. Mann was dangerous, and he would not give up. It occurred to Ed that usually the man who survived in these disputes was the one who did the most unexpected thing first.
His most unexpected move would be to kill Charlotte and frame Lonnie Mann for it. On work details Mann often carried a distinctive long-bladed hunting knife, and Ed had heard some of the men on the work crews mention it. Ed had killed a few women in the past, and Mann’s knife would be good for that. If he took her by surprise, it would be very quick and quiet. But as he considered the idea, he thought of problems. Using the knife on her wouldn’t be enough to frame Mann. The knife would have to be found in her or beside her, and why would Mann kill her and leave his knife? Ed could kill her and then leave the knife bloody in its sheath, but that meant he’d have to somehow get the local men to look at it for blood. No matter what plan he thought of, he would always be the one who said Mann had done it, and that would make people suspicious of him. His mind moved on to other strategies.
Late that night, Edison Leonard lay on his bed in the storage building. From time to time he would fall into a light, anxious sleep, but any sound or the absence of sound would bring him back to full consciousness. There was an owl’s hoot, and later for a time there was a faint breeze that rustled the leaves of the surrounding trees. For a long time he lay listening to Lonny Mann’s breathing.
This night felt like the nights he had spent in the federal prison at Victorville years ago. He had been on one side of a vendetta between two cliques, his and another, who had been fighting over ownership of certain desirable parts of the exercise yard. The issue wasn’t important. It was just all they had to fight about. During the worst of it, they had tried to get opponents hurt and into the infirmary so they could be reached during the night.
Ed had developed a fear that Lonny Mann might want to kill him in his sleep. A person who was not a wholehearted friend was a potential
enemy. Ed had already resented Lonny for not working hard and risking Ed’s reputation along with his own. He was sure Lonny had detected the resentment. And now Ed had lied to Lonny about having sex with Charlotte. They had both been out of prison for two years already, but the crazy old claustrophobic calculations were still in Ed’s mind. Why not in Lonny’s? The old aggression and intimidation of prison weren’t that easy to shake off. Lonny might be capable of killing Ed so he would have no rival with Charlotte and so she would be frightened enough to submit.
Ed Leonard listened to the breathing coming from the other end of the storage building. He tried to tell whether the long, slow breaths were genuine sleep or Lonny Mann skillfully pretending he was asleep. Fake sleep was a two-part attack on his defenses, designed to fool him into feeling safe and to actually make him sleepy.
Lonny was someone he would never have wanted to be with in this situation. Lonny had been sentenced to life at least twice, once for killing an inmate in prison. He had also bragged in Ed’s presence about his dealings with women before incarceration. He talked about things he had done to women and the things he was planning to do in Weldonville when the breakout came. Enslaving a beautiful woman like Charlotte might be too much for Lonny to resist.
Ed couldn’t be sure Lonny had turned on him, but he had thought about Lonny so hard that it would have seemed foolish not to take precautions for the night.
He had gone to his car at the edge of the woods and taken some items from it in the dark. He had taken the rubber floor mats from the car and some duct tape. Once the lights in the storage building were out, he had wrapped the two smaller rear mats around his forearms and taped them there. He had wrapped the longer, wider mat from the passenger seat around his midsection and taped it around and around to hold it. He had taken the tire iron from the trunk and a razor-sharp knife from the toolbox. He held the two weapons in his hands in the proper positions, with the tire iron on the right and the knife on the left.
For a moment he considered replacing the knife with his pistol, but a gunshot would make enough noise to bring everyone running, and he was fairly sure they would kill both him and Lonny in the dark. It was less risky for them than waiting for hours to sort things out in daylight. They didn’t owe him a trial, and they certainly didn’t owe Lonny anything.
He lay awake for a long time and then dozed. At just after 3:00 a.m. he heard the old sounds stop and new sounds start. Lonny had stopped his slow, rhythmic breathing. There was no sound of breathing at all.
Ed must have rolled over in his sleep. He was facing the wall and the door instead of facing Lonny’s end of the room. He regretted it, but if he stirred now, he could be lost.
He heard a whispery sound as a shoe moved a bit on the concrete floor. He decided it was Lonny Mann’s work boot. The sound was just a dry whisper of the hard rubber sole over the concrete. Leonard was sure it meant that Mann hadn’t wiped his feet on the mat when he’d come in, and the dust was making the shoe lose a little of its traction.
He grasped his knife with his left hand and the end of the tire iron with his right, without moving anything but his fingers under the covers.
There was the whispery sound, another, and another, moving more rapidly now. And then Ed felt the punch of the knife blade. It hit his back behind his heart between the fourth and fifth ribs, but that was where the rubber mat was wrapped thickest around him. The blade punctured the outer layer of rubber, but it was a blow, a stab not deep enough to slide into him. He rolled fast toward his assailant and swung the tire iron at him.
Lonny Mann jumped backward and evaded the swing, but as soon as the lug end of the iron swept past his face, he attacked again, advancing two steps, slashing wildly at Leonard with the long-bladed hunting knife.
Leonard raised both arms, taking the slashes on the floor mats taped around his forearms. He rolled off the bed away from Mann, who tried to pursue his advantage by leaping up onto the bed and running across it at him.
Leonard swung the tire iron low this time and caught Mann on the side of the left knee. He heard a howl that rose as Mann dropped to the bed. He swung again, this time at Mann’s right arm, and caught him just at the wrist. Mann’s knife fell to the floor.
Leonard saw Mann’s left hand move to his waistband. Leonard hit the left hand with the tire iron and then stabbed his own knife into the space below Mann’s rib cage. He ran the knife upward under the ribs and completed the maneuver inmates called “running the gears,” moving the handle in an H-shape like a person shifting the standard transmission of a car. Then he moved Lonny Mann’s damaged left hand and took the gun from his belt. He didn’t have to examine him further to know that Mann was dead.
He stood in the dark room pulling the duct tape off the floor mats he’d wrapped around him and dropping them on the floor. The rubber mats suddenly seemed smothering and tight, and he could barely get them off fast enough. He opened the door on his end of the building and walked to the other end to do the same, and felt the cool air move through freely, lifting the heat from his sweat-soaked body.
The open doors admitted some light from the moon and stars, and that helped him focus his thoughts. He had to do something to make all this blood and Lonny Mann’s body look like a case of self-defense and not murder. He didn’t know the people in the community well enough to be sure what their first reaction would be, and Lee Wolf was away, so there was no way to ask him what to do.
Then he knew. He had his car, if only it still started. If it didn’t, he could take a battery from another car and return it later. He could load Mann’s body into the car trunk with the weapons and bloodstained sheets and so on, drive it somewhere in the mountains, and bury it. He would need help cleaning up the storage building, but he knew exactly whom to ask.
He trotted across the open meadow. He was not able to spare the time to walk around the community’s perimeter tonight. He was aware that he must be covered with Lonny Mann’s blood and looking terrible, but he needed to use every second of time and hope that nobody woke up and saw him.
He ran straight for the house with the bluebird cutout nailed to the door. When he reached it, he kept going around to the rear window. He stopped there and tapped on the glass. There was no response.
He knocked again, this time a little harder. It occurred to him that she didn’t sleep in the little room with the mattress. That was just a room for supplies and things, part pantry and part closet. She and her husband had a bedroom. He walked around the building and knocked on another window with curtains blocking the view. Then he went to another and did the same. He made it around the building to the back window she had opened for him other nights. He rapped harder on the glass, and a moment later he heard small, light feet moving toward him.
The window swung inward as before, and he saw her. She was wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt as pajamas tonight. She took a deep breath as she saw him and jumped back.
“Wait, it’s me,” he said in a breathy whisper. “It’s Ed.”
“Oh my God,” she said. “You’re covered with blood. Why are you covered with blood?”
“It was Lonny. He came after me in the middle of the night, and I had to kill him.”
“And you came to my house like this? At first light people can follow your bloody footsteps straight to my back window.”
“Look, I really need your help. We have to get rid of the body, clean up the mess, maybe pour water on the footprints—”
“Wait here. I’ll be right out.” She disappeared from the window into the darkness of the interior. After a surprisingly short time she returned. While he watched, she threw her head back and let out a loud, piercing scream.
She lifted her right arm and he saw the .45 pistol. She fired, and Edison Leonard felt the hot, terrible pain of the bullet in his lower torso, and it left him on his back in the fragrant grass.
She said, “This can’t be two men fighting over me, hon. It’s got to be one escaped convict killed the other and went berserk.�
�� She took the pistol in both hands and fired the second round through his head. Then she threw her head back and screamed again.
37
In daylight, as Leah drove, she checked her phone for emails. She scrolled through some lines that were the garbage that every electronic device seemed to pick up automatically, and then saw the identifier ASprague@WeldonvillePD and the subject “Forward from FBI.”
“Internal communication, not for dissemination,” the heading said. “At 0900 September 5 two deceased males were found in a wooded area 75 yards from Highway 44 in Mark Twain National Forest, near Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Both men died violently, apparently from knife and gunshot wounds. The men have been identified by fingerprint evidence as prisoners who escaped two years ago from the federal penitentiary at Weldonville, Colorado. Their names are Edison Leonard, age 37, and Lonny Mann, age 41.”
She read the email again as she drove. She couldn’t quite take in the details, or be sure of them after a few seconds. She had no doubt that somebody had killed them in Arkansas, where they had been hiding, and dumped the bodies up in Missouri. The most obvious suspect was Lee Wolf, simply because he was probably the nearest murderer, but unless he had killed them three days ago, he wasn’t around to do it. She had been following him for two days.
If they’d been staying in a compound in the woods with the pack of armed fanatics Lee Wolf had reassembled in Arkansas, maybe they had just pissed some of them off. Or maybe they had been out in Missouri on some kind of errand, and they had offended somebody there. They had been belligerent and violent. Maybe they had just bumped into some of the wrong men to bully. Their bodies were dumped near an army base. They could have found thousands of men there that it wouldn’t be wise to start up with. She knew that she wasn’t going to understand this until the rest of the investigation was done, if ever. She put away the phone and kept her eyes on the road ahead.