Rusty Nail

by J. A. Konrath

  I’d smelled so much death in the last few days I should have been used to it, but the stench down there practically knocked me over. Worse than Packer’s house in Indianapolis. Worse than Bud Kork’s root cellar.

  To my left, illuminated by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, I saw the source of the odor.

  Three corpses, seated around a card table. Clothesline bound them to their chairs. Dr. Francis Mulrooney’s face was still recognizable, frozen in a bloated, agonized scream. Below the neck, his rib cage had been broken open, and his own hands shoved inside the chest cavity, up to the wrist.

  To his left, I recognized Diane Kork from the injuries received on the video. She’d since been dressed in a push-up half-bra, which left her blackening nipples exposed. Her head tilted back, the slash on her neck yawning open like a bucket. A big bouquet of silk flowers—daisies—were shoved into the wound.

  Next to Diane was a third corpse, a man with glasses and a beard. He looked the freshest, but also had the most mutilation. His abdomen was sliced open from his groin to his breastbone, and his organs had been pulled out and placed on a silver platter on the table in front of him, like a Thanksgiving turkey. In his hands were eating utensils, a knife and fork. Atop the fork was something brown and roundish. It took me a moment to realize what it was—a kidney. Some other organ was crammed into his mouth, ballooning out his cheeks.

  Besides the smell of rot was the gag-inducing odor of urine and feces, and for the first time since being a rookie I contaminated a crime scene, bending over and throwing up between my feet.

  I recovered quickly enough, freeing my cell phone, calling 911 and requesting assistance. Then I looked past the decaying dinner party, sighting the staircase. I moved fast, not bothering to be silent, taking the stairs two at a time, anxious to get some fresh air.

  They led to the kitchen. I came through the door in a crouch, my gun pointed forward. I checked left, then right, straining to hear some kind of movement.

  The house seemed silent.

  The kitchen hadn’t been cleaned in weeks; fast food wrappers and pizza boxes stacked on the counters, the sink overflowing with beer bottles, the floor sticky with stains and spills.

  I went through the kitchen, into a living room, which was also a disaster. Besides the empty food boxes and cans, almost every surface of the room was stacked with pornography. Magazines, videos, and DVDs, littering the table, the sofa, the easy chair, and the floor. Nasty porn too. I glimpsed a few titles: Latex Bondage Torture. Pain Sluts. House of Agony. Seymore Blood’s Human Pincushion.

  A television rested in the corner of the room, next to a closed closet door. A camcorder perched on top of the TV. Even at the distance, I could make out the large letters RCA on the side of it.

  The room opened into a hallway, and I moved quick but cautious, leading with my gun, staying low. My finger rested on the trigger, but I was aware of the pressure, aware that Holly was someplace in the apartment.

  Four doorways down the hall, all open.

  “Caleb Ellison! This is the police! Come out with your hands over your head!”

  “Jack!”

  Holly, from one of the rooms.

  “Holly, where are you?”

  “Back bedroom!”

  Someone came into the hall. I dropped to a knee and sighted on the head. It was Holly. I pointed my gun at the ceiling, blowing out a breath.

  “Dammit, Holly, you scared the crap out of me.”

  Holly didn’t answer. In an unbelievably quick move her hand shot up and she fired three shots in my direction.

  I dropped, facedown, hugging the carpet, getting my gun out in front of me—Holly running at me, still firing—but not at me, over my head—four and five and six shots—and me turning to see the pudgy redheaded man coming up behind me, the knife falling from his hand, the closet door still swinging from when he leaped out, Holly’s bullets hitting his chest again and again, blood erupting like fireworks, until he fell at my feet with his tongue hanging out and his eyes wide and empty.

  Holly stood next to me, wisps of smoke rising from the barrel of her 9mm. She grinned.

  “Thirty points.”

  I didn’t understand what she meant, but then I remembered the shooting range earlier that day. Six rounds in the chest, five points each.

  “Give me the gun, Holly.”

  I held out my left hand. My right was still curled around my .38, which was currently pointed at her belly.

  “I just saved your life, Jack.”

  “I know. Protocol. Backup will be here any minute.”

  She nodded, handing me her weapon butt-first.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah. You?”

  “You check out the party in this freak’s basement? One more and he’d have enough for bridge.”

  I tucked Holly’s piece into the back of my pants and got to my feet. I could hear the sirens approaching.

  “How much trouble am I in, Jack?”

  “I don’t know. You broke the law, but saved my life. And probably saved the taxpayers millions of dollars in an expensive trial.”

  I gazed back at Caleb Ellison, whom I could ID from his mug shot. Like Steve Jensen, he had a fair share of tattoos slathering his arms, several of them the triple D symbol. His chest looked like he’d spilled a plate of spaghetti on it. There was no need to check for a pulse.

  “But I’ll be out by tomorrow, right? The wedding is at noon, and I haven’t picked up a dress yet. Which is fine with Harry, because he wants us both to get married in the nude.”

  Not an image I needed in my head.

  “I don’t know, Holly. It depends on if the state’s attorney wants to press charges. Either way, it’s going to be a late night.”

  “How about if I give you the gun and you say you killed him?”

  I shook my head.

  “What if I gave you five bucks?”

  Which was such an absurd thing to say, I began to laugh. Holly laughed too, and we kept laughing right up until the CPD kicked in the front door.

  CHAPTER 38

  FIRST ONE’S BY those bushes.”

  Lorna Hunt Ellison extends both arms and points. Her wrists are cuffed together under the sleeves of her Day-Glo orange prison jumpsuit. The elastic is tight around her middle, and the legs are too long, but the color reminds her of the hunting jacket Bud used to have, the one he used for deer season, and Lorna likes that memory. She and Bud had gone hunting dozens of times, and Lorna was the one who usually brought the game down—Bud couldn’t shoot for shit. He loved dressing it, though. Bleeding the carcass, stripping off the hide, butchering the meat. Sometimes he couldn’t even wait for her to cook it before having a little taste for himself.

  Bud.

  She’ll see him again. Very soon.

  One of the FBI guys walks up to the tree she’s pointing at.

  “Right here?”

  Lorna spits. “Looks about right.”

  She’s leaning up against the squad car, looking for the spray-painted rock. This should be the right place. She wrote the directions down. Rosser Park, in Liverpool, the second dirt road off of Oregon Street, heading east toward the lake. Take the road until it stops. But she doesn’t see any rocks, painted or otherwise.

  Lorna walks away from the car and takes a few steps onto the grass. She’d insisted they remove the leg irons, or she wasn’t showing them where any damn bodies were, guaran-fucking-teed. They listened to her. What harm could an old lady do, right?

  The pig with the rifle—the one who is supposed to be pointing it at her the whole time—is scratching his nuts, the rifle butt-first on the ground. Two more cops, holding shovels, are standing next to that FBI asswipe, poking them at the dirt, trying to decide where to start digging.

  “Right there!” Lorna shouts. “About four or five feet down.”

  She looks to her right. No rock. To her left. The black sedan the Feds drove is parked there. One of the Feds is standing beside it, talking to some f
atty sheriff.

  Lorna looks beyond the car, to the lake. The area is mostly open: ankle-high wild grass, a few saplings, and those bushes she pointed at. The weather is cool, in the high fifties. No activity, no fishermen or joggers. Too early in the morning.

  Everything is perfect, if she can just find that damn rock.

  The fatty sheriff walks over, eyeing Lorna like she’s something he stepped in.

  “After this, you’re taking me to see Bud, right? Blessed Mercy Hospital in Gary?”

  He scowls at her. “That’s the deal. I didn’t make it, though. I don’t deal with scum.”

  “You probably don’t deal with much. An ass that fat, you probably ride a desk all day.”

  His eyes get dark and mean. “Watch your mouth, bitch.”

  Lorna spots it: a small gray boulder about a foot high, surrounded by dry grass and fewer than five yards away. There’s a big red X on it.

  “I apologize, Sheriff. You mind if I stretch my legs a little? I haven’t been out in the open in twelve years.”

  He grunts.

  “Thank you, Sheriff.”

  She walks slowly, without apparent direction. When she reaches the rock she stretches, then bends down to tie her shoe.

  The gun is there, in an old plastic zipper bag. It’s a derringer—a small, two-shot weapon that Doc Holliday always had up his sleeve in old Western shows.

  She removes the gun from the bag and cocks the hammer. The overall length of the pistol is less than four inches, and she can comfortably conceal it in the palm of her large hand.

  “Hey, Lorna! You copping a squat over there?”

  Laughter from the men. Lorna stands up and gives them the finger, then heads back to the group. There are four cops and two Feds, and the derringer only has two rounds.

  But two is all she’ll need.

  She walks up to the pig with the rifle, holds out her wrists to him.

  “Can you take these off? They hurt.”

  He snickers at her, and before he can finish she shoots him twice in the left eye.

  The sound is like a firecracker, two sharp bangs, and before the pig even has a chance to fall over, Lorna is dropping the derringer and picking up the rifle, a Remington 7400 auto loader with an eight-shot magazine. She kneels behind the squad car, balancing the muzzle on the hood, and aims at the closest body—the fat sheriff.

  The rifle is awkward to fire with her hands cuffed, but she manages to put one between his eyes while he just stands there, looking confused. Dumb-ass desk jockey.

  Several people are returning fire, the car getting peppered with bullets. Lorna ignores them. She swings over to the FBI idiot, a tall guy in a gray suit, and shoots him twice in the chest while he struggles to remove his own gun from his holster.

  The near threats removed, Lorna turns her sights onto the group by the bush, thirty yards away.

  In a gunfight, the longest gun usually wins. The two pigs and the remaining Fed are too far away to hit her. Plus, they have no cover, except for the leafless, sad-looking bush they’d been digging next to.

  Lorna had gone varmint hunting too many times to count. She could drop a possum from a hundred feet away.

  These men were closer, and lots bigger than possums.

  Lorna drops the first cop with one in the head. The second cop hits the dirt, trying to crawl into the hole they’d been digging. The Fed ducks behind the bush, which makes Lorna laugh out loud.

  She shoots the cop in the neck, and then shoots the FBI idiot in the arm.

  “Toss the gun!” she yells.

  He throws his pistol aside and places both hands on his head.

  “Stand up!”

  He stands. It’s like an FBI version of Simon Says.

  Lorna aims, exhaling as she squeezes the trigger.

  The agent’s knee explodes in a spectacular fashion.

  “I said, stand up! Or the next one is between your ears!”

  Lorna truly enjoys watching the man struggle to get up, falling over twice, and finally managing to support himself on one leg.

  She thinks about going for the other knee, but drills him through the groin instead.

  Again he falls.

  Lorna drops the rifle and kneels next to the first pig she killed, the one who took off her leg irons. He has handcuff keys in his pants pocket. She spends a moment freeing her wrists, and then pulls the cop’s sidearm—a Sig Sauer 9mm—from his holster.

  “You still alive, Mr. FBI man? Lorna will be with you in just a sec.”

  Lorna scans the horizon, doesn’t see another living soul. The fresh air smells wonderful. Like freedom. She walks casually over to the bush, past the dead pig in the hole, over to the Fed who is on his back, grabbing his crotch with both hands and breathing like he’s in labor.

  “Ain’t no bodies out here, Mr. FBI man. I was playing with you. Pretty sneaky, wussn’t it?”

  His face is soaked with sweat, but he seems more angry than afraid.

  “Don’t I scare you, Mr. FBI man? You Feds are tougher than I’d’ve guessed.”

  She brings up the Sig, thumbs off the safety, and shoots him in one shoulder, then the other.

  There’s fear on his face now. Fear and pain and some craziness too.

  “You Feds are something else. You come and visit us—me, and Bud, and people like us—and you talk about trying to understand why we do what we do. Like we’re some animals you’re studying on some nature show on TV.”

  She squats down next to the Fed, a big ugly smile on her face.

  “This’s what happens when you play with animals, Mr. FBI man. You get bit.”

  He cries out, and she fires the gun and stares, curious, as the back of his head decorates the grass behind him.

  Lorna doesn’t know how much time she has before someone comes, so she moves fast. First, she pats down the Fed and finds his car keys. Next, she strips out of the orange jumpsuit and hurries over to the sheriff, pleased to see there’s very little blood on his clothes.

  She strips him, struggling with the pants, which keep getting stuck on his big feet. It takes almost five minutes, and Lorna curses at herself for taking off her own clothes before she took off his, because she’s freezing by the time she’s done.

  Lorna dresses quickly. His shirt is too big, and the pants are too long and tight at the hips, but after she tucks this in and tucks that in and puts on the sheriff department jacket and snap-brim hat, she takes a look at herself in the rearview and is pleased by the transformation.

  Next, Lorna gathers up four more guns—she can’t find the one the Fed threw into the grass—and a pair of reflective sunglasses. She brings it all into the dark sedan and starts the engine.

  Blessed Mercy Hospital is less than ten miles away. Lorna puts the car into gear and hits the gas. It’s the first time she’s driven in over a decade, and it’s almost as exciting as shooting all of those pigs.

  Lorna fiddles with the car radio, and finds a station that plays country. She hums along to an old Hank Williams tune.

  The hospital is a mess of activity. There’re media folk around, all over the roads, and Lorna drives past them and into the parking lot. She leaves the car by the ER entrance, counting seven police cars before she goes inside.

  There’s a handful of pigs in the lobby. Two of them eye her. She walks past, ignoring them, trying to imitate the cop swagger she’s seen so many times. The nurses’ station is hopping, and Lorna lets out a shrill whistle to get a little girly’s attention.

  “Where’s Kork?”

  The nurse gives Lorna a foul look. “Down the hall, to the left. Room 118.”

  Lorna tips her hat, slightly large for her head, and walks into the ICU. There are two cops guarding Bud’s room. One is asleep in a chair. The other gives Lorna a lazy glance.

  Lorna removes the hand from her pocket, the hand holding the Sig, and jams it up into the cop’s armpit. She pulls the trigger three times, but only two bullets fire. The cop flops over, and Lorna glances at the
gun and sees the barrel is all gunked up with blood and little bits of stuff. She drops the weapon and reaches for another, a .45 AMC tucked into her belt, which she levels on the sleeping cop’s head just as he opens his eyes.

  Lorna’s knuckles are the last thing he sees. She fires once, then steps into the room.

  Bud is sitting up in bed, a goofy grin on his face.

  “Hello, my love.”

  “Hello, Bud.”

  She tosses him a gun from her other pocket, then fishes out the handcuff keys she got off that cop at Rosser Park. Handcuff keys are universal, and she unlocks Bud’s thin wrist.

  Bud shoots at someone in the hall, and Lorna knows that cops’ll be all over the place soon. She aims at the window and puts three rounds through it, then uses her foot to kick the spiderwebbed glass onto the lawn.

  “We gotta go.”

  Bud fires again, and Lorna drags him over to the window and shoves him through. She follows him out and looks around, trying to get her bearings. The parking lot is fifty yards to the right.

  They run for it.

  Neither Lorna nor Bud are in the best physical condition, but fear is a powerful motivator, and they make it to the car in under ten seconds. From first shot fired until now, less than a minute has passed.

  Lorna expects the parking lot to be swarming with pigs, but the two cops she sees are running inside the ER. They probably think she’s still in Bud’s room.

  “Keep your head down, Bud.”

  Lorna pulls out of the parking lot, forcing herself to drive slow and careful and not attract attention. She drives past all the reporters, turns on the road to the interstate, and merges onto the expressway.

  “I knew you’d come for me, Lorna.”

  She reaches down, patting his bald head.

  “Family takes care of its own, Bud. We help each other.” She wrinkles her brow, trying to remember what to do next.

  “We gotta ditch the car, get you some clothes.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we got a score to settle in Chicago. Against that bitch cop who took away our Charles.”

  She presses in the car’s cigarette lighter.

  “I want her alive, Lorna. She’s a sinner, and needs to be taught the error of her ways before we send her to meet her Maker.”