I don’t know how long I was in that state, total focus, but by the time I was finished checking and rechecking everything, and the satchel was closed up again, ready to go, I realized I hadn’t heard Ellen leave. Hadn’t heard her move, even, not across the creaky board at the base of the stairs, not in the kitchen. I put the satchel on crosswise and walked back upstairs.
The needle was visible before I saw him. Sticking out of Ellen’s neck, with her facedown on the couch. A little runnel of blood coming down from where the needle had penetrated. I ran toward her, and right into the iron cylinder of the Ragman’s arm.
“Speeding things up a little, Martin. I’d hate to give someone as clever as you a big head start on planning.” I pushed against his arm, which was wrapped around my chest, holding me against him, and he responded by straightening up and lifting me into the air.
“Don’t kick me in the shins or knees, I’ll be annoyed. Stop. Stop it.”
I did. My living room looked different from this vantage, a few inches higher off the ground. The two wooden turtles I’d picked up at that gigantic flea market in Maine were on the mantel, and Ellen had unsuccessfully tried to conceal them with vases that were usually empty. One of them, the dark blue one, had some half-dead peonies in it. The fireplace would be lit soon, in a month or so, if I ever made it back into this room. If Ellen woke up. If she wasn’t dead already.
“Don’t worry about her yet,” the Ragman said. “She was sleeping when I came in, and she’s just going to sleep for a little longer now, then wake up headachy. If things go bad tonight, if you’re not obedient, I’ll come back and do her in a proper, painful way. Break bones. Shoot her up with something much less tame. Watch her have seizures with those shattered legs and arms bucking out of control. That’s a lot of pain, Martin. Worse even than anything Kylie’s gone through under my watch.”
“Stop it,” I said. Unexpectedly, the Ragman let me go, and I ran to Ellen. Pulled the needle out without thinking, taking her pulse. It was there. I pushed my nose into her hair and smelled her, past the shampoo and into the sweat, the traces of breath leaking in and out of her mouth. I clenched the syringe, hard, and turned to face the Ragman. No mask this time. Frank Connell laughed at me.
“You going to stick me with that? It won’t do you much good.”
“You didn’t have to do this. I’ve already chosen someone for us to go for. Someone to kill.”
The Ragman leaned in, that civilian mask dropping off. I put the needle in my back pocket. “Who is she?”
“I don’t want that. I don’t want a typical kill, not for us. I want a man.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s no sex to it for me,” I said. “That was never what I wanted when I went digging. That’s coarse, and it leads to mistakes, to fuckups like the ones Jason Shurn and Carl Hillstrom made. It’s over for me now: you too. There’s no getting out of this, going back to normal.
“So if we’re going to kill someone, if that keeps Ellen and Kylie safe, I want to kill someone I really want dead. Someone I hate. And I don’t want to do the same thing you did with Shurn or Carl. I want our thing to be unique. Powerful, perfect. Then finished.”
I used a bit of spit to clean the thread of blood off Ellen’s neck. I rolled her onto her side, and she napped on, chemically aided, but still just napping. I really loved her then, and always had. I’d just never actually thought about it when I said the words. I took my phone out of my jeans pocket and set it on the coffee table in front of her. Wiping the blood off her skin was more meaningful than a verbal goodbye, so I left her with that.
“You’ve got to tell me one thing,” I said to him. “Please.”
“I don’t have to do anything for you, but maybe I will, Martin. What?”
“Kylie. You didn’t hurt her, did you? You didn’t. I need her back as soon as we’re finished tonight. I need her. If not, you might as well kill me and Ellen now.”
“You’ll see Kylie soon, Martin.”
Frank and I left through the garage, walking to his big Ford on an invisible path he led me along, between the limits of the neighbor’s driveway cams. As we walked toward it I saw the covered bed of the pickup. When we climbed in, I looked over my shoulder to the digging gear in the back seat. At that point, it was just hope, but it felt like knowledge: Kylie was under that cover. Alive or dead, she was there. The agony of waiting, of not tearing it off to see, was almost more than I could take. But I took it, because I knew the Ragman now. He wouldn’t want to lose the chance to have me see her alive before he killed her, and then killed me.
I ASKED THE RAGMAN TO stop at a store SO I could pick up a throwaway phone, and he reached past me and popped open the glove compartment. Inside were the registration, the gun he’d pointed at me outside the Pemberton, and a still-packaged TracFone. I hesitated for a second.
“The gun’s not a toy, but it is useless. No firing pin, no bullets. Nothing to it. Never been a gun guy, Martin.”
“Me neither,” I said, wishing that weren’t true. Even if the gun had been usable, I wasn’t Lee Marvin. Couldn’t have pulled it out of the glove box and put a bullet in Frank before he had pulped my skull with that big fist of his. I took the TracFone out instead, attending to the difficult task of opening an already unopenable plastic package with gloves on. When it was done, I dialed Gary. It took three calls before he picked up. Like everyone else, he wasn’t exactly up for answering a phone call from an unknown phone number, unless taking it would end the annoyance of a constantly vibrating phone.
“I have what you want. Two-thirds of it, anyway,” I said, right after his wary “hello.”
“Martin?”
“Yep. Two of the three. I have it. Will get you the rest once you’re securely out of the country, in Thailand or wherever the fuck you want to end up. But we need to work some of the details out in person before I can give this to you.”
“You want me to meet you somewhere?”
“Like you said, I can’t hurt you. It’s impossible. The cops would tie Rochelle to you, then to me, and that’s that. And, by the way, the cops are all over me today. So don’t make a single weird move, tell anyone what’s up, or they’re going to have questions as to what you and I are up to together, okay?” The truck had slowed down a little: the Ragman was still headed where I told him I wanted to end up, but he was tuned in for warnings, code words. Or just interested, I guess.
“Can’t we just wait?” Gary asked. “I don’t need the cash today.”
“I need to get it to you today, or not at all. I can’t explain on the phone. But I’ve got a lot more to lose than just some fucking money. If you’re scared of me, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Why didn’t you call from your phone?”
“We’ve got to keep this as secret as possible. You have to realize that. Ellen can’t know, my accountant can’t know, there can be no trail on this cash. You leave me to worry about the paperwork pain-in-the-ass side of that. But if there’s any trace, any at all, of me handing you a vast sum of money and then you leaving the country, we’re both fucked. You for blackmail and me when you inevitably rat me out. So that’s why I used this phone, and that’s why I want to keep this call as short as possible.” I could tell that Gary was in his apartment, from the relative lack of background noise. Some music—a John Carpenter score, maybe—was behind him, but no voices.
“Where do we meet?”
“Bring your car to the alley across from the store. Plenty of traffic around so you can feel nice and safe, but dark and quiet enough that we can talk before I give you the cash.”
“Let’s meet at a bar. Somewhere public.” We were turning into the alley I’d just mentioned to Gary. The Ragman killed the lights, and we hunkered in the large vehicle as it went dark, looking at the cars darting briefly across the alley’s mouth. The tinsley logo was visible, tiny, across the road. I wouldn’t have been able to read it if I hadn’t already known what it said.
“We me
et in public, we have to deal with security cameras, with witnesses, with people saying that they saw that dot-com guy whose daughter got kidnapped hand a huge suitcase of cash to some Asian guy. We meet in an alley, that doesn’t happen.” I waited for the inevitable result. The mention of the suitcase had done it. Gary said okay, and hung up.
The Ragman opened the driver’s door and checked out the laneway, a place I assume he already knew well, from watching Ellen and me over the weeks, the months. When he walked back, he came up to my window and started talking. The window fogged up with his words, hiding the lower half of his face for a second. I fumbled for the control. When he inhaled, he sucked that cloud off the window.
“What’d you say?” I asked.
“Nothing important. Maybe I didn’t want you to hear,” he said. There was a new, abstracted intensity in his face. He looked like a guy concentrating on not orgasming too quickly during sex, both focused and distracted at the same time.
“You going to wait out there?”
“Depends. How long will it take?”
“You know where Gary lives, don’t you?” I said.
“I do. Just making conversation.”
The Ragman got back in. I considered switching the battery on, burbling the radio to life, but the Ragman hadn’t told me to, and he hadn’t offered. He said nothing, but I could sense him sinking deeper into that strike zone he clearly had. I was counting on that focus narrowing to a pinpoint when it came time for us to do the thing, the killing business. I needed all of his attention on that.
“Give me a dose,” I said. “A needle, for Gary.”
“What if you just turn around and stick me with it? And what if I don’t have one strong enough? Or only one that’s too strong?”
“I’m not trying to outsmart you anymore, Ragman,” I said. “I want this guy gone. I don’t want a mess here, across from my wife’s store. I want another kill the way we do it.”
He’d twitched a little when I called him “Ragman.” I could tell he liked it. He opened his jacket and dug into an inside pocket, drawing out two needles, one with an orange sticker on it, one with a blue. He put the orange one back.
“Gary’s what, 150?”
“About that, maybe a little less.”
“There’s your dart, then.” The Ragman handed the needle to me by its sheathed tip. We were both gloved. I put it into my own inner pocket, conjuring a little reverence to go along with my fake cool as I did so.
“When’s Ellen going to wake up?”
“An hour or so.”
The car was beginning to smell like man, like breath and enclosed perspiration. Ten minutes into the wait I hazarded a question, a relevant one.
“What did you do before you came to my place?” The Ragman cocked his head, like a feeding dog who’s heard a distant call.
“Thought of a good kill site. You’ll like it. Your friend is going to show up alone? He won’t tell anyone, won’t leave a note?”
“No. He can’t imagine he’s lost control. And he’s not scared of me. To him I’m a guy who had an affair and tried to cover it up. To him, I’m the scared one.”
“You are scared,” the Ragman said.
“Of you. Not him.”
That was it, until Gary rolled into the inviting space right in front of tinsley, just under the fifteen minutes he’d predicted. I waited to see if he’d stay parked there, if he was going to try to walk over to us. That would ruin everything, or at least complicate it. But he couldn’t give up the false armor of the car around him, so he started it up again. I asked the Ragman to duck down, but he’d beaten me to it, reclining his seat and sliding down into a coiled crouch. Gary’s car began edging into the mouth of the alley, the lights picking me out in the passenger seat of a vehicle he’d never seen me in.
I moved out of the truck before Gary could think too much, and waved him forward. I held up my satchel, trying to position my arms in a way that suggested the bag was heavy. I had no idea what two million dollars would have looked or felt like, in any denomination, but figured Gary’s greed wouldn’t be up to doing the spatial math.
I walked toward Gary’s slowly advancing car, then stood right next to the driver’s side door, so he wouldn’t have space to open it. When he rolled down the window, I had the needle out. I fumbled with the cap for a second before pulling it off with my teeth. Gary wasn’t quick enough with his window control—I had the thing in his neck and was pulling the door open as he pressed the up button. I shot the venom in, then pulled the needle out and pounded my fist into the back of his head, just once, for luck. His forehead bounced off the wheel. There wasn’t a drip of blood, not a trace. I checked, before bundling him out into the alley. The Ragman was edging out of his truck, which made the next second crucial: I opened my satchel and lunged into Gary’s car in one motion.
“What the fuck are you doing in there?” the Ragman asked when I came back up to face him.
“I tripped. His leg kicked out at me.”
“Ah. They do that, you know.”
“I do now.”
We quickly loaded Gary into the Ragman’s truck, nestling him into the same fatal berth that Rochelle Stokes had occupied a couple of days prior. Before taking off, I asked the Ragman if I could lock Gary’s car up. I wanted to make sure it got towed at worst, not stolen, but I didn’t tell him that. Just that it would look odd for Gary to leave his BMW unlocked when he left it, and that might eat into what little time we had, right?
“Right,” Frank Connell told me. I was starting to get a grip on how distracted he was. How done. How sure he was that he was going to kill me and himself as soon as we finished with Gary.
“I CAN’T WAKE HER UP,” Chris said. “you still really shouldn’t have broken that glass, Sandra, Christ.”
“That’s two phones on the table. His and hers. Reese fucking took off again, or Connell took him.”
“Or he’s scared of you and sick of being hounded. You’ve got him paranoid as fuck.” Ellen Reese stirred while Chris was talking. Sandra pushed him aside and tapped her on the cheek with two fingers.
“Get water,” she said to Chris.
“I took a pill, but just—it’s just herbal stuff in it. I don’t usually feel like this.”
“We’re going to get you to a hospital.”
“No.” Even with a fat-tongued slur, Ellen was sharp, the eyes below the cloud zeroing in on Sandra with increasing focus. “You don’t wanna take care of me. You want proof of something that just didn’t, never happen.”
“You’re confusing words, Mrs. Reese. I’m concerned. This isn’t a natural wake-up.”
“Two cops coming into my house and shaking me isn’t natural, no.”
“You look like you’ve been drugged,” Chris said.
“You look like you’re still in my house, Officer. Officers. Please get out.”
“Can we have your permission to secure the house? Make sure there’s no one in here?”
“I’m on my way to a hotel.” Ellen Reese sat all the way up, opened her eyes a little wider as if to clear the murk in her head. “Just leave me alone.”
Chris and Sandra left. “Should we tell her about the busted window in the door?” Chris asked, on the front step.
“No,” said Sandra. “She’ll see it in a minute. I’ll pay out of pocket for it if I have to. I had a legitimate concern for her welfare, willing to explain that to the lieutenant, to a judge, to whoever the fuck.”
“What do we do now?”
“You stay here,” Sandra said. “If she isn’t out of the house and on her way to that hotel in fifteen minutes, you go in again, no matter what she says. Then you follow her to the hotel and make sure she gets to her room safely. Let her notice you, it doesn’t matter. I’m getting back to my car out at ReeseTech, and I’m going to look for our boy.”
“Which one?”
“Both. They’re together. Frank Connell and Martin Reese are together, right now. Maybe one of them’s dead, but I know Con
nell made his way here the second after he lit that match. I’m not going to let these animals beat me.”
I WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE surprised by the kill site, especially after that “You’ll like it” comment the Ragman had made. We drove into deepening darkness, the streetlights and headlights getting more intermittent as we branched from the highway to a small turnoff road. Traffic was thin, but I could hear it while the Ragman and I drove Gary up through the woods behind Torland’s gravel factory. The area had been developed since I’d found Jenny Starks here. Instead of the brush and spruce I’d pushed through, there was dead grass and dirt between thick Douglas fir trunks, and a good many of those had been cut to stumps. We got within fifteen feet of where Jenny Starks had been lying back when this started, twenty years ago, the Ragman’s headlights picking out the rise ahead where I’d first seen her.
I gloved up and mummied Gary’s legs with duct tape when we pulled over. When he tried to struggle on the way out, he moved like a mermaid being hauled ashore.
“Decent technique,” the Ragman said. “We’ll have to take off the tape wrapped around his face when we get into the forest. It’ll have your cells all over it.”
“Yes,” I said. It was dark, real outdoors dark. I grabbed Gary’s bound ankles.
“No dragging,” the Ragman reminded me. He picked Gary up by the head, using the tape as a handle, and we carried him over to the site. “You must be excited to be back. Martin Reese’s ground zero. Jason had this spot all picked out for Jenny Starks, way ahead of time. Told me about it. Then he went and did her on his own, starting to get antsy because he knew he was about to get caught. I can’t blame him for wanting one last go, but I was ashamed at how he left the site. Total mess.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, though. I watched you circling Jenny on the ground, making your plan. I thought you were going to touch her. I even thought of helping Jason out at that moment, getting everything pinned on you somehow. Didn’t know much about DNA way back then, though. I would have had to hope you fingerprinted her eyeballs or did something dirty to her.”
Find You in the Dark Page 31