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by J. Carson Black

  Both hands holding the gun, he shot. The gun kicked. He thought the butt hit his jaw.

  Funny thing—the kid reacted. He fell over like a rag doll. Flopped for a second and was still.

  Tess, who was still struggling with her harness, turned her head in the kid’s direction. Her face was pale. She said, “Did you shoot him?”

  “No, no, I was aiming away from him!”

  “Ricochet,” she said.

  He looked at the surrounding rocks. The kid lay still, blood seeping out underneath him. He was dead. No question about it.

  “Help me with this,” Tess said. “You may have to cut me out.”

  He reached over, still in shock. He had a jackknife and he sawed on the shoulder harness belt’s heavy material. His thoughts were slow, but he knew he was missing something.

  “Where is the woman?” Tess said.

  The woman.

  He squinted past the kid. Everything surreal. “I don’t see her.”

  “Maybe she’s still in the truck. Maybe she’s hurt. Get me out of this and I’ll go look.”

  He cut her loose and she shoved at the door. It creaked open. She slipped out. She ran from boulder to boulder, just like they did in the movies, and all Max could do was watch.

  He stared at the kid. Thinking: get up.

  The kid lay there. The blood soaking into the ground. It was a reddish stain, diluted by the dirt.

  “Get up,” he mumbled.

  Time floated.

  Shower Cap peered in through the window and grinned.

  “Where’s your boat?” Max asked.

  He heard the Caprice door grate open. Tess leaned in. “You OK?”

  “I think so.”

  “The woman’s in the truck. She’s not moving—has a big bruise on her forehead. There’s a place up the road—I’m going to call it in. You should stay still. I don’t like that cut on your leg.”

  He wished he hadn’t thrown her phone out the window. But it had seemed like a good idea at the time…He glanced down and saw blood. Moved his foot and heard the squishing sound of blood.

  “Wait! I’ll go with you.” Realized he was shivering.

  It was the wind. The temperature was dropping, the sky dark. The car must be facing west, because he saw the sun near the horizon like a baleful red eye, narrowing against the onslaught of the clouds.

  She stared back up the embankment at the truck. Nodded. “OK, let’s go.”

  They left the car and started walking along the highway. Max felt himself shivering. Thunder grumbled and the wind picked up even more. Rain spotted the highway with drops the size of quarters.

  Then came the onslaught.

  He looked back in the growing twilight of rain. One last ray of sun gleamed off the windshield. He squinted. Did he see movement? Or was the woman inside unconscious, or even dead?

  He was so tired. He didn’t want to think about the boy. Put one foot in front of the other. He held the gun, though. He wasn’t going to give up the gun. But he stayed with the cop. She was the leader.

  Did that mean he would be turning himself in?

  He cleared his throat. “I didn’t kill anybody.” Amended it. “Except for the boy, and that was an accident.”

  She said nothing.

  “You believe me, right? Those guys that died in the house—I saw the woman and the boy searching the house. They were there. I could put them there. I’m a witness.”

  “What about the two men at the mine?”

  “What two men? What mine?”

  The detective said nothing.

  He reached for her arm, but stopped short of grabbing her. It was as if she were protected by a force field. “What’s going on? They killed someone else?”

  She looked at him, her face inscrutable in the gloom and the rain. “Are you just being a good actor?”

  He stepped back. “Actor? No! I didn’t kill the guys in the house. I did not! Why should I? Why would I? I have everything I want in the world. I have a career. I’m well paid—very well paid. I have a wife and…”

  He faltered. He knew she could read through him. He knew the question that was coming.

  She said it. “Then why are you in rehab if your life’s so good?”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  She started walking again. “It’s not what I believe. It’s what the county attorney will believe.”

  “Then I’m under arrest?”

  “Look at it this way: you’ve got a chance to tell your story.”

  He laughed. “It’s a moot point, isn’t it? You can’t hold me if I don’t want to stay. What are you going to do? Shoot me? If I try to escape, are you going to shoot me?” He glanced at her holstered weapon. “You might need those bullets, if that woman wakes up and comes after us.”

  Silence.

  “Who else did she kill?” he asked. “Who else is dead?”

  “Ah, the right question at last.” She looked up at him. Those steady eyes, so calm. Calm and in control. “We think she killed a man named Hogart and a man named Riis. They were the men who kidnapped you in the limo.”

  And that was when he knew he was well and truly fucked.

  DAVE FINLEY CHECKED his watch for the hundredth time. He’d been parked on the street by the tamarisk tree for almost an hour, had walked over to check out the Subway twice and the Pizza Hut once. He’d driven around the parking lot and up and down the main drag of Paradox and onto the patchwork of intersecting streets, which petered out quickly into desert. Not much of a town, that was for sure.

  Now he just sat in his truck, waiting.

  He’d tried the number Max had called him from, but it just kept ringing. Max wasn’t answering his cell either.

  “Where the hell are you, buddy?”

  Dave took a drag off his cigarette (his fifth—he always smoked more when he was nervous). He had the radio on, but so far all he was hearing was country music.

  For all he knew, Max was on a nice cushy jet heading back to LA. While he sat out here waiting.

  But he doubted it.

  Max had always attracted trouble. Look at that wife of his, Talia. Now ol’ Max had painted himself into a corner with that baby from Africa and no matter what he did, he was screwed.

  Dave flicked the cigarette out into the street and watched the cherry bounce. He needed to quit. In fact, he needed to do a lot of things. Dave stared into the rain and darkness, watching the light show over the mountains. Still keeping an eagle eye out for Max, but he had the feeling Max was gone. Had no idea where he was, or what he should do now.

  He’d already done that little favor for Jerry—Dave had found a woman and her daughter who fit the bill. The mother and daughter had been ahead of him in line at the Safeway, believe it or not, and he had seen the mother using a food stamp card. He’d struck up a conversation with the mom and handed her a line of bullshit about an audition for a small part in a film, that it would mean good money—“union scale.” She was starstruck, all right. He told her not to tell anyone because they were behind schedule and didn’t want to audition too many people—they wanted to cast the film as soon as possible.

  He got her number and told her he’d call her with the where and when.

  Dave didn’t know why Jerry had asked him to go looking for a woman and a girl. Jerry was always scheming over something, and Dave figured anything that could hurt Max was fine with him. When he brought Max back—if he could bring Max back—he’d get the whole story later tonight.

  Revenge was a dish best served cold.

  And so he waited for Max. After all, he was Max’s buddy, his wingman, the guy who could always be counted on to look the other way while his best friend boffed his wife.

  UP AHEAD MAX saw an old gas station by the side of the road. The pumps had been torn out. The place was now an antiques and curios store. Just beyond it was a ramp up to the freeway. The building had a colorful sign that said “Jeepers Creepers.” All sorts of weird stuff had been stuck to the outside wa
ll: dolls, farming implements, serapes, small appliances. Max walked with the cop, only because he didn’t know what else to do. He was an American. He was innocent. He hadn’t killed anybody—except for the boy. (And that was an accident.) He could take off and hitch his way out of here, but then what would he do?

  He would be a fugitive.

  He had to think about this.

  When he’d escaped the Desert Oasis, he’d wanted to be a sort of everyman. Live out of the spotlight, do a good day’s work. Be normal. But what was normal? Because he knew that even though he lived in America, even if he was innocent, there were plenty of people on death row all over this country who were innocent. Plenty who had been executed. He’d been on the mailing list to save Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas. And look what happened there.

  No, he didn’t want to be everyman. Everyman had the odds stacked against him. Max had power. He had fame. He had influence. All the things he’d disdained recently.

  Now he needed them.

  So he would go with the female cop. He would act like an innocent man because he was an innocent man. And he would get the best fucking defense lawyer in the business.

  Once Gordon fixed him.

  And so he walked with her, an innocent man, and relied on her strength, her presence. Her straight back, the way she moved.

  He knew and she knew that he had a gun. He could take her any time. But of course he wouldn’t. Because he was innocent.

  But she didn’t seem to mind that the man who’d held a gun on her before was now walking alongside. Maybe because of his condition.

  He looked back at the truck again. Dim in the dark and the lashing rain. Smaller and smaller. The truck didn’t move. Nothing moved. Maybe the woman was dead.

  He hoped so.

  They were on the porch of Jeepers Creepers. The old door rattled in its frame as the cop knocked on the door. The clock in the door was turned to 5:00 p.m. He glanced at his watch. It was going on five-thirty.

  It was good to be out of the rain.

  I killed that kid.

  He couldn’t get away from it. It kept coming back. In the culvert he’d wanted to kill the kid, and now he had. And here he was in the gloom and the rain coming down like a waterfall around them, completely untethered from the world, everything still going in slow motion, and his only thread to reality was the cop.

  TESS TOLD HIM to stay on the porch. There was a house out back. She said she didn’t know the people well, but knew their names and whatever she’d picked up from driving around the county. So she went looking for the Olsens.

  Max stared down the highway. He could barely see the truck. It was far away.

  Max was shivering. He rubbed his arms to warm himself and looked at the artifacts stuck to the wall.

  Then he heard it. A howl.

  And everything he’d just thought went out the window.

  TESS HEARD IT too. The house behind Jeepers Creepers was dark. There was no vehicle in the carport, which surprised her. She knew they had come from Wisconsin in 1984, that they owned a 2009 Ford-350 truck with a matching camper shell and a “Choose Life” license plate on the back bumper (she knew the plate number too, of course). She knew they had an Australian sheepdog named Pearl with one blue eye and one brown. She knew they kept to themselves except for their regular attendance at the Streams of the Desert Pentecostal Church in Paradox. She assumed they did their shopping in one of the suburbs north of Phoenix. She’d been 99-percent certain that the Olsens would be home.

  But she was wrong.

  The car was gone.

  The dog looked out at her through the curtains.

  No help here. But they were close to the on-ramp to the freeway, so they could go up there and flag someone down…

  Then, the unearthly cry. It wasn’t a wolf. It wasn’t a coyote. It was human, but there was something feral about it too. Like she imagined the damned in hell would sound.

  The hairs on the back of her neck rose.

  The howling went on and on. It gave her goose bumps.

  She looked in the direction of the howl. A light arrowed along the road, then flared. Headlights passed over the store in front. She heard the car slow, stop. The woman? Had the woman been able to start up the truck? It didn’t sound like a big truck, though. She started back around the house and headed for the porch of the antiques/general store.

  She heard a car door slam, and the sound of a car accelerating.

  She reached the porch.

  Max Conroy was gone.

  She watched the taillights wink as the car turned onto the on-ramp to the freeway.

  Max had hitched himself a ride. Should’ve known he would take off.

  The howl again. She looked down the road and saw a figure in the darkness. The figure held something in its arms. As Tess’s eyes adjusted to the light, she saw it was the woman who had chased them. The woman held the boy, lifeless, against her chest. And she howled.

  Max had not been lying when he’d told her about the woman and the boy. Tess sensed that if the woman saw her, it would be all over. She could feel the woman’s anger, the hatred. It scared her. Tess had been a cop for a long time. She was very rarely scared, even a little. Adrenaline would come to her aid, and she would act. But the screaming of this woman, and the sight of the woman herself, made Tess want to slink away. To shrink into the shadows and become anonymous.

  This was a mother bear who had lost her cub. There was despair, but overriding it was rage. It was palpable in the air, in the rain, and there was a raw edge that seemed to pry into Tess’s internal organs. Danger. High-voltage danger.

  And so Tess did slink. She hid. She hid because she could not stand the raw grief of the woman who had killed at least five people.

  Tess waited.

  The howling stopped.

  The rain continued. Incessant, but softer now, whispering.

  She heard a truck start up—a big engine. She heard it accelerate. Saw the pinpoint lights coming. Saw the truck flash by, slow, and turn with a squeal of tires onto the on-ramp, headed north.

  She’d seen the truck. Only a glimpse, but it was huge, gargantuan. She’d seen the damaged front end. And the light was dim but she thought she saw two figures. One taller, on the driver’s side. And one smallish, slumped against the seat.

  The woman and the boy.

  The rain lessened. Tess could smell alfalfa hay, creosote bushes, and ozone. It was full dark now. She needed to flag down someone and reach dispatch.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  MAX LET THE older couple drive him through Cottonwood as far as the turnoff for Clarkdale. There, he told the man to pull over on the side of the road. He regretted hijacking the car, regretted letting them see the gun stuck in the waistband of his pants. He could see the interview now. “He seemed like a nice enough guy, but then he told me to pull over and turned us out of our own car.”

  The couple stood by the side of the road, looking scared. The man was staring at him. “You look familiar. Aren’t you the guy in those movies? The ones with the vampires?” His face lit up and he snapped his fingers. “Max Conroy, that’s it! Lou, it’s Max Conroy.” He turned to Max and said, “Didn’t I read you were staying around here somewhere? I could swear I read something about it. So what is this? Part of a movie? Are we going to be in the final cut?”

  Max said, “No, no. I’m not Max Conroy. But I get that a lot.”

  The wife looked at her husband, then glanced around the empty parking lot. She touched his arm. “Bob, I don’t see any cameras.”

  But Bob shook her hand away. “Are you certain you’re not Max Conroy? You sure look like him…Can I have your autograph? I’ll give you my address and you can let us know where we can pick up the car.”

  His wife glared at him as he reached in, rummaged through his glove compartment, and came up with an owner’s manual for the car. “Just put the old John Hancock anywhere,” he said, fishing around for a pen.

  Max said, “I’m just his stunt
double. We don’t even look that much alike.”

  “That’s good too. I never met a stunt double before. What’s Max like?”

  “He’s OK. Made some bad choices with women. You know…movie stars.”

  The husband said, “Yeah, not a whole lot of brains there, you know? What a way to make a living.”

  Max signed the manual, “Best wishes—Dave Finley, stunt double for Max Conroy.”

  As he drove away, they stood there in the rain. Both of them waved, although Lou’s wave was less enthusiastic.

  Max vowed that when he was done with Gordon, he’d leave the car, a late ’80s Chrysler LeBaron, where they’d find it.

  He drove on 260 past the little airport and took 89A toward the mining-turned-tourist town of Jerome. The road laddered up the mountain, full of switchbacks and hairpin turns. The Desert Oasis was on the same road. Jerry had told Max that Gordon had bought the land cheap, since the property prices in the nearby upscale resort town of Sedona were sky-high. A Sedona address was a necessity for a holistic-themed celebrity dry-out center. But apparently, the Verde Valley was close enough.

  Mine tailings notwithstanding.

  Max was holding it together, but only barely. His clothes were wet and he was shivering in them. The old car’s heater didn’t help much. He thought about Tess McCrae, left in the lurch at Jeepers Creepers, but knew she’d get back on track soon enough. And he had no doubt she’d look for him. But by then he would have concluded his business with Gordon, and Gordon would have fixed him.

  Fix him. Did he really believe that?

  Max guessed that, given the choice of dying on his Two Red Hills Navajo carpet, Gordon might choose to fix him.

  If he could.

  The rain had turned to a steady drizzle. It was dark. Max could see the lights up ahead, knew they belonged to the ramshackle houses of Jerome clinging to the mountain.

  The Desert Oasis was three or four miles from the first switchback to Jerome, hidden by a stand of aleppo pines and a bushlike tree that grew like a weed around here. Max peered past the slashing windshield wipers, trying to make out pines in the darkness. Gordon had wanted the place to look and feel exclusive, so there was no sign, just a rolling gate behind the pines and a tall fence to keep the inmates inside. The good old DO.