by Brian Hodge
Jamey, are you okay? I’ve been so worried for you.
No, I really have, I really really have.
And he had believed her. Every manipulative lie, he’d swallowed each one and let them settle with a warm glow. The gullible sap that Melissa had known he would be.
“I asked you why once already,” Jamey said, and jabbed Kristophe’s boot with the sword. “I’m asking again, and this time you better answer.”
Kristophe drew back his foot but started to laugh, a vicious and petty sound. “Not any too smart, are you, you actors,” he said. “You cash out…we cash in.”
A week later and Jamey could still hear her voice, had clung to it as one more positive thing to extract from the mess that the journey to his wedding had become. A chance to rebuild what little family he had left. Fresh starts for everyone—get ’em while they last.
“You heard what Alfred Hitchcock said about actors, ja? He said they should be treated like cattle.”
I’ve been so worried for you.
“Well, sometimes cattle get slaughtered.”
Jamey didn’t realize he was crying until Kristophe pointed it out. His would-be assassin laughing through sweat and pain—laughing because it was the last weapon left to him and it went deeper than bullets. And if Jamey had still had the crooked foot, Kristophe would’ve laughed at that too, instead of clamming up with his eye going wide as soon as Jamey launched himself from the stairs.
Strange. Most people who didn’t know when to quit were usually trying to get a little further in life.
****
After the man in the ski mask had stuffed their mouths with rags and walked away, it took only moments for the commotion to begin. Dawn turned her face toward Duncan and wriggled closer, lying with her cheek pressed to the floor and their eyes inches apart. How awful she must’ve looked, jaws agape and cheeks distended with a bolus of flannel.
Duncan seemed as though he could hardly bear to face her, as if he bore the guilt of bringing her to this moment. A sound welled up deep inside him, trapped there, a terrible animal sound, and he began to pound his head against the floor. She shook her head no, Duncan, no, trying to speak it low in her throat, wriggling closer still, to press against his bare shoulder and stroke it with her cheek until he stopped. She could feel every quickened breath he took as if it were her own.
Then came the ruckus but she held out little hope, Jamey doing what he could instead of doing the smart thing like bailing out the bedroom window, and Dawn loved him for that even as she feared it would be only a matter of moments before they heard the gunfire that would signal the end of everyone.
It never came. He’d done it.
Voices then, rising and falling, and the longer it went on the more she wondered what was happening, unable to make out their words in the quieter moments, just that the tone of Jamey’s voice was sounding more and more brittle.
She squirmed down Duncan’s side, spinning around to flop onto his back, pushing her mouth against his fingers until he pinched them onto the wad of flannel while she pulled away. Turnabout for Duncan, then they met for the most dry-mouthed kiss she’d ever treasured.
“Listen,” she whispered. “Jamey…he’s crying.”
“Oh god,” Duncan said. “Something happened to Sam?”
“I don’t think so…”
It came then like a sound from a nightmare, a hoarse cry of sorrow and rage ripped up from someplace within Jamey that was darker than she’d ever imagined. They swallow it all down, don’t they, Sam had said hours before. They take all that and force it as far down inside as they can.
Yes. They did.
And she’d just heard the sound of it erupting back out into the world.
Again, the sound of a scuffle, a pitiful cry of protest. It didn’t last long. Instead, there was nothing but aftermath, the sound of a fight turned one-sided, of resistance broken along with bones. The wet sound of something living succumbing to brute force. Steady, pounding, relentless in its rhythm.
She met Duncan’s eyes, going wide as he listened.
Even in Phoenix, Duncan had not looked like that.
Dawn rolled onto her side and drew one thigh beneath her, pushed herself up onto both knees. She inched this way toward the front of the loft, Duncan following, until they reached the low wall and knelt before it, as if at the prayer rail across the front of a church.
Jamey was kneeling too, in that cavernous room below, on both knees and one hand, his back arched as he pinned down a tangle of black-clad arms and legs that sprawled from beneath him but no longer moved. His other hand held the sword, although he was not using the blade. Instead it was reversed, blade in the air as he smashed the round steel base of the leather-wrapped pommel down and down into a face that his shoulders blocked from view.
“Oh, stop,” she tried to tell him, her heart shattering for him, “please stop,” but she hardly made a sound because her mouth was still so dry.
So he did not stop.
Until Samantha wailed for him to.
32
THE first thing Duncan did was wash the sword. He wiped it clear of blood and hair and tissue, then put it in the shower so hot water could beat the rest from the crevices before it dried. When that didn’t seem enough, he sacrificed his toothbrush to the task. Knew he should get rid of it, but couldn’t bring himself to scrap the thing.
Only when he returned the sword and its mate to their mounts above the fireplace did he realize that each had been blooded this past week. Two lives by two swords—they could never again be just for show.
He dragged Jamey to the shower next, got him to rinse his hands first because they were the worst, then had him strip down because the rest of him needed warm water and his clothes would need burning. Jamey was compliant about it, red-eyed and shivering under the hot spray.
“So you knew him?” Duncan asked, getting soaked too.
Jamey nodded.
“You can tell me about it later. Right now, just listen.” He clamped his hand on Jamey’s slick shoulder. “Stay in here as long as you need to get yourself together. But not too long. We’ve got a lot ahead of us tonight, and I can’t take care of it all by myself. Are you following me?”
Jamey mumbled that he would be all right, so Duncan closed the shower curtain and left him alone.
Next he looked in through the doorway of the bedroom where Dawn sat with her arms around Samantha. Nobody any too talkative in there, either. Sam had been the one to come up to the loft and untie their wrists and ankles. Now she seemed to want to be as far from the front room as she could get.
Which was just as well—after he bagged Jamey’s clothes, he started going over the things the dead man had brought along. The only item in the gym bag was a can of black spray paint. Whatever. Duncan checked the machine gun next, had never handled anything this sophisticated before. He found the release to eject the curved magazine, then saw by its open-ended top that it hadn’t even been loaded.
Anything else this would-be killer carried had to be in his pockets. Duncan crossed the room to where the body lay flat and smeared onto the tiles.
Only once before had he seen anyone this destroyed, and it had taken Jordy’s shotgun to do it—impersonal, by comparison. This was so godawful hands-on. Seeing the damage drained the bloodlust he’d felt upstairs, tied facedown beside Dawn and his mouth packed with the tatters of his own shirt. He had to force himself to even look at the body above the shoulders. The breakage, the rearrangements, the grotesque skew of its jaw and the front teeth knocked away.
Duncan stooped and went through the pockets of the black jeans, but the only thing he found was a key attached to a big plastic diamond, printed with the name and address of a motel on the north edge of town. Not much, but enough to dictate what the next move had to be.
While he waited for Jamey to finish in the shower, Duncan opened one of the hall closets and retrieved the pair of Sig Sauer nine-millimeter pistols stashed there since they’d moved in on Sa
turday.
And even though he knew they were loaded, he checked anyway.
****
Close her eyes, and she could still see it. Sleep, and she knew she would dream of it: the rising and falling of Jamey’s arm, and the feeble spasms of the man he’d held pinned to the floor.
With Dawn’s arms around her, cradling her in a manner almost maternal, she could feel herself retreating. As if she’d withdrawn the life from her limbs and rolled it into a tight warm ball deep in the center of her chest.
“You’re like ice,” Dawn said, and briskly rubbed each hand between her own.
“What we were talking about earlier?” Samantha said. “The faces people have in their closet?”
Dawn began rubbing her shoulders next. “Yeah—what about them?”
“I just saw one on Jamey…that I never knew he had in there.”
“Maybe it’s not really his. Maybe he just borrowed it tonight is all.”
“I was afraid I was losing him once, last year.” Words coming from her mouth now and she wasn’t even sure why. “Someone he met, on a movie they worked on.”
“An actress, you mean?”
Sam shook her head inside the crook of Dawn’s arm. “She did makeup. Petra Lanier, that was her name. How’s that for a name you’d like to feel you’re up against?”
Dawn gave a soft, commiserating laugh. “I hate her already.”
“He said they were just friends…and I believe him…but you know that feeling you start to get? That even though there may not be anything more to it than friends now, there could be later?”
For the moment, Dawn’s hands slowed on her, then stopped. Yes, she said. She knew that one, all right.
“So last year I was afraid of losing him to her,” Sam said. “But right now…? I’m afraid I might’ve lost him to something a lot worse.”
****
Duncan drove, late enough that Sedona’s streets were all but deserted, and after a few blocks, the silence grew too much to bear.
“That’s one on each of us now,” he said.
Jamey had to have heard, but lagged a few beats behind, as if everything had to pass through a filter before it reached him. Duncan remembered that he’d been like this himself in Phoenix, those first hours after Jordy turned the world on its head. Inside a cocoon, trying to hammer the disbelief and the instant replays into something he could deal with.
“Listen. I don’t know what we’re going to find at this motel. Maybe luggage is all—fine with me. Maybe more. The point is, I have this gun here for you, but if you’re not one hundred percent ready to use it, better you don’t go carrying it at all. So think it over for the next few minutes.”
Duncan detoured off the direct route until he spotted a payphone. He parked, walked to the phone and fed it coins, punched in the motel’s number from the keyring. An automated system answered, so he tapped in for room twenty-five. A no-win ploy—this couldn’t prove the room would be empty, only if it wasn’t.
He was about to hang up when in the middle of the eighth ring somebody grabbed it on the other end. Picked up the receiver, then dropped it, by the sound. Dropped it to the floor and never retrieved it, and never spoke, either…the two of them poised on opposite ends of the open line, neither willing to break the silence. Duncan gave it close to a minute, then gave up.
“Somebody’s there,” he told Jamey, on the roll again.
“What’d they say?”
“Not one word.”
“Maybe it’s my sister there.”
Duncan took his eyes off the road to look at Jamey. Says a thing like that, so flat, so matter-of-fact, and to look at him he was unreadable. His sister was involved? This was getting uglier by the hour.
“Maybe it’s time you tell me who that is on our floor back there.”
“His name’s Kristophe. He’s been living with my sister for almost a year.”
“And she put him up to this, you’re thinking?”
“That’s the impression he gave me.”
“And I thought my family situation was a real screw-job.” Just one thing on top of another for this lad. And maybe not such a championship idea to lend him a gun after all. “You told her where you are?”
“No. Sam must’ve, at some point. Like I said yesterday, she’s been trying to play the peacemaker between Melissa and me.”
“Did a bang-up job of it, too,” Duncan said, and this brought a grudging laugh. “I know you said you and your sister never got along…but she bears you this much ill-will? Level with me now: What did you do to her?”
“It’s not what I did. It’s probably more to do with how much I’m worth right now. There’s some personal information I’ve been sitting on the past few days.”
And when Jamey finished explaining what he meant by that, and the real reason he’d been staying put with them, Duncan gripped the wheel and felt it wash over him: the secrets, the subterfuge. Had he and Dawn just been used here? A little, yeah. It sure felt that way.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Because it damn well did hurt, finding out you could save someone’s life and still not be trusted by him afterward. Especially since you were the one he had to thank for the overnight escalation of his net worth. It wasn’t even the dollar figure so much as it was the sins of omission.
“You want the truth? I thought you’d resent the hell out of me for it.”
“Yeah, and you’re fucking well right, too.” Because where would Jamey’s career be without him? More Mountain Dew commercials, maybe. Or playing the part of some other guy on the run, maybe being mistaken for him instead. “I would’ve gotten over it, though.”
“Excuse me for not having your moods totally sussed yet.”
Duncan eased out a sigh. Bottom line, you couldn’t resent anyone who’d charged a machine gun on your behalf, even if it turned out to be unloaded. “Look—more power to you, all right? American dream, that kind of money. And if someone can dredge up something worthwhile out of the mess I’ve made of my life, it might as well be you.”
Jamey had nothing to say to that. Probably thinking his own life was no less a mess right now. Feeling the certainty tighten around him that he couldn’t come out of tonight without losing something.
When they got to the motel—a place with dull orange doors, filled at maybe half-capacity—Duncan veered into the parking lot and cruised the length of one wing. He followed the numbers on the doors, saw that the window for room twenty-five was dark and kept going. Hooked a left around the corner and parked, backing into the slot in case they needed to leave in a hurry.
“You decide anything about this gun yet?”
Jamey nodded. “I’ll take it.”
They stepped from the car and tucked the pistols into their waistbands. Then, since they were all that was moving out here, Duncan looped the machine gun’s strap across his shoulder and chest, and let it hang down his back.
“You ever do anything like this before?” he asked Jamey as they started across the lot. “In a movie, I mean, or on TV?”
“Nah. Going into a room where you don’t know what’s waiting for you, that’s the kind of thing the star gets to do. So far I’m more like the guy that gets blown away on the other side of the door.”
“Let’s hope there won’t be any of that going on.” Duncan reached into his jacket pocket for a folded wad of latex brought from home, kept one pair of surgical gloves for himself and handed over the other. “Easier than trying to remember what you touch. Which there might not be time for, anyway.”
Jamey put them on, seeming reluctant about it. “What exactly have you come here prepared to do, Duncan?”
“Find out if we could have more visitors, for one thing. And from what you told me in the car, I’ll bet you’ve got even more questions about who’s in there than I have.”
Outside room twenty-five, Duncan pressed himself against the narrow strip of wall between the door and the window. The curtains were pulled fully across, but he didn’t want to th
row a silhouette on them. He leaned an ear close to the glass to catch any sound from inside, then drew the Sig Sauer and motioned to Jamey, behind him, to knock. Jamey played it cool, three sprightly taps with his knuckle. They listened a few moments. Knocked again, louder this time. As far as Duncan could tell, nothing was moving in there. He handed over the room key.
“You unlock and open,” he whispered into Jamey’s ear. Heart starting to thud. “I’ll move in first. I’ll go high and find the light switch. You go low and try not to shoot me in the back.”
Jamey eased the key into the lock by increments. Whispered a countdown, then twisted the knob and Duncan rammed the door with his shoulder. It swung wide into darkness and they pushed through, Duncan slapping his hand around the doorframe until he hit a switch. A dresser lamp winked on at the left side of the room, then the door thunked shut behind, Duncan standing and Jamey kneeling, pistols extended—
—while the guy stretched out on the far bed didn’t even budge.
Jamey lowered the gun and stood, turning to him with a sheepish grin. “Overly dramatic enough for you?”
Duncan warned him not to get too relaxed yet, to watch the guy on the bed until the bathroom checked out clear. Then he rejoined Jamey and stared down at the heavy sleeper—on his back and breathing raggedly, head wrapped in a shoddy, makeshift bandage. From a small wall-mounted table between the beds, the phone cord stretched down to the receiver, loose on the floor from the call fifteen minutes ago. Duncan replaced it in the cradle to kill the pulsing buzz.
“Something stinks in here,” he said, and pointed at the bed. “Is it him?”
Jamey’s nose was crinkling. “Smells like something spoiled.”
He was right. A meat-gone-bad kind of spoiled.
“Do you know him, too?”
Jamey shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“What happened to him? Kristophe, you think he did this?”
“The size of this guy? He makes two of Kristophe. No better than he did with us, I can’t see it.”