The Overnighter's Secrets

by J. L. Salter

  Beth wasn’t sure when Ricks plugged her ears or when Kaser whacked her head. So she had no idea how long she’d been in there. Right now she felt nauseous—not a good thing with tape over your mouth. Additionally so dizzy after being bound in one position, she feared she might faint.

  “Hang in there, baby.” Shane’s voice was surprisingly soothing. “This thug’s already dead and just doesn’t know it.” Shane watched as Beth tried to shake off her wooziness. Then he turned to Kaser. “You won’t live to see that slimy cave you oozed out of—”

  “You think because you’re a biker you can take me down?” Kaser re-aimed the pistol at Shane and then leaned over, close to Beth’s face. He kissed her sweaty forehead with exaggeration.

  As Beth recoiled from his lips, he ripped the tape from her mouth. She howled.

  Shane acted like he didn’t notice her pain. He probably had to block it out. “Oh, there’s a small chance you’ll survive, but the only thing that beats you to the emergency room will be the ambulance headlights.”

  “Bring it on, biker.”

  Shane edged slightly closer. His club was in front... ready.

  “Ricks called him Kaser. You should know the name of the garbage sack you’re about to tear apart.”

  Kaser shifted the aim of his .45 again, this time from Shane’s torso to Beth’s head. “Got some spunk left, do you?” The gun’s muzzle pressed into her left cheek.

  Beth froze. Couldn’t help it. All she remembered from self defense class was Randy’s admonition not to leave anything at home: Give ‘em all you’ve got! She’d seen Kaser rub the knuckle of his gun hand with his other thumbnail. He probably wasn’t even aware of that tic. Beth didn’t yet know what she was going to do, but she knew precisely when—the very next time that Kaser rubbed his knuckle.

  Neither Shane nor Kaser moved. It was either a championship chess match or a full contact iron man bout. The first one to make a mistake would lose. Badly.

  That close to her face, the pistol looked like a cannon. Beth fought the urge to empty her bladder.

  Kaser was still yakking, so things had obviously not gone the way he’d wanted; he’d certainly planned on being long gone by now. His left thumb twitched slightly, as though he was about to dig into his inflamed right knuckle. But he didn’t.

  Beth watched intently. Breath was shallow, heart pounded, skin tingled, and her throat was dry. Would she do something? Could she do anything? What was the right move? She looked at Shane, but his eyes were on Kaser’s.

  Kaser’s thumb eased over to his gun hand and he dug in the nail. Now!

  Beth jerked her face to the right, brought up both bound wrists in a heavy blow to Kaser’s gun hand, and the .45 discharged into the ceiling with a deafening blast.

  Kaser did not lose his grip on the pistol, but before he could recover, Shane had closed the distance and was clubbing him senseless.

  ****

  About 10:20 p.m.

  Jeff trembled slightly as he entered the Verdeville Police Station on the opposite side of old downtown. His first visit. He still remembered what his grandfather and great-uncles told about the old days when, at best, blacks were often given the short end of the stick... sometimes, quite literally. In the Jim Crow days, said those relatives, a black man caught in certain neighborhoods after sundown was viciously beaten if the wrong people found him. If formal complaints were ever filed, few charges were processed and no arrests made.

  Though two or three generations removed from that lopsided brutality, Jeff nevertheless felt a lot of apprehension. He’d also heard, more recently, of blacks being hauled in for minor infractions and beaten by police. No repercussions, of course. He couldn’t swear those old reports were true, but had no reason to doubt them.

  Supposedly times had changed, and Verdeville had matured. Most people were quite different than they once had been, largely color blind in many respects. But the cultural memory ran deep in those with dark skin.

  The entire station interior was bleaker than normal because only the backup emergency lights functioned. The desk sergeant looked up, perhaps more surprised at Jeff’s wetness than his color. “Problem?”

  Jeff tried to explain, logically and economically, with an eye on the battery operated wall clock and a vocal tremor he couldn’t completely quell.

  Sergeant Travis interrupted Jeff and called over Corporal James. “Get him a towel and take his report. Something about a hijacking at the old hotel.”

  Jeff turned to James. “Kidnapping. My friend, probably late last night. Her boyfriend went to the hotel to get her. These guys are playing hardball. I think they murdered an old lady in Los Angeles a couple of days ago.” He realized it sounded rather implausible and way too frantic.

  The corporal pointed to a vinyl chair and disappeared inside a distant supply closet. He returned with two small towels. “Kidnapping. Who?”

  Jeff explained everything again and provided all the names and addresses.

  “Back up to the biker from California. Holder, did you say?” James looked over toward the desk sergeant, who was out of normal hearing range, and yelled, “Does a biker named Holder ring a bell? Out of town.”

  Travis checked a clipboard and started to type something on his keyboard before he cursed, obviously remembering the power was still out. “We had him all afternoon... on B an’ E, as I recall. Made bail... finally... from a cute blonde.” The sergeant left his desk and walked slowly toward James. “What’s all this about?”

  Jeff explained for the third time. This was his worst nightmare: in a police station with two white cops who didn’t believe him or just didn’t trust his story. “Look, my friend’s in grave danger. Two bad guys, at least. One’s a drugged-up kidnapper and the other’s probably a killer. Shane went in alone and unarmed to rescue her. He sent me here to get you guys.” Jeff pointed to the clock. “In the time that we’re rehashing this, the guy in charge might be killing them both.”

  “The big hotel boarded up on the east end of town?” Still standing, Travis hoisted his heavy belt.

  “Mount Vernon. At Fourth and Washington... Fifth and Adams. We’ve got to hurry.”

  “Back up to the part about the man in charge.” When James shifted his weight, the chair groaned.

  “We don’t know anything about him... at least I don’t. All we know is that he hired Ricks and the crippled thief.” Then Jeff re-explained their significance to Beth’s dire situation.

  “So you want us to send a unit to an abandoned hotel in the middle of the night, during a pouring rain... with the power out, to look for a guy you don’t know anything about, because a biker…who just bailed out of jail today…sent you here?” Corporal James was surprisingly succinct.

  “Exactly.” When Jeff shook his head vigorously, drops of rain from his tightly-curled hair lightly splattered both officers.

  “And why does this mystery guy want your local friend and her California biker?” It was the sergeant again.

  Jeff knew it would accomplish nothing to discuss the movie actress or her overnighter... or the diary, or the Jones hanging. In fact, he realized he was barking up a fruitless tree. He’d never been in trouble with the law before, not so much as a parking ticket. And in his entire lifetime, he’d never stolen nor cheated, and rarely even told a fib. But with his friend’s life in the balance, Jeff McCabe had to lie like a twelve-year-old dog. In the current day and age, there were certain words which still commanded respect and attention. “They have a bomb.”

  “A what?”

  “The bad guy left Shane a text message about a bomb... and it’s big enough to take out the entire hotel. Probably a few blocks in each direction, too.”

  The sergeant waved over a patrolman. “Get the bomb disposal unit from Nashville over here. We got a situation.”

  Finally, they were moving. Jeff’s duty here was done. He spotted a flashlight on the corporal’s utility belt, which draped over his inbox. He pressed the switch and it lit up. Perfect. He shoved i
t under his tattered plastic poncho.

  James returned. “You ride with me and show me where you got in.”

  “Can’t. I’m in my wife’s car and she’ll kill me if I leave it here. I’ll go ahead and you follow.”

  James grumbled. “Okay, but you stay outside ‘til I get there. We’ll have to wait on the bomb unit before we go in.”

  “I understand.” Jeff ambled out to the rain, distinctly relieved to have ended his first police station visit... and strangely untroubled by his felony prevarication and misdemeanor theft.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  About 10:25 p.m.

  Shane continued to beat Kaser and Kaser pounded him back. It was incredibly ugly.

  Of everything Kaser was known to have done, his biggest recent mistake was poking Bethany with a loaded pistol. That made Shane more than ballistic—all the way to thermonuclear.

  He didn’t know the extent of Kaser’s fighting skills, because they were currently slugging each other just to get control of the gun. Kaser still had a partial grip on its handle, but no fingers near the trigger. That gave Shane half a second to whack it out of his hand with the chair leg and his swing was a real haymaker. The pistol flew into the darkness and knocked over one of the camp lanterns. One less light. Surprisingly, the .45 did not go off when it clattered to the floor.

  Unless Kaser had any surprises, it would be hand to hand from here on, and that was the main course for a biker with a bad attitude.

  Kaser might have been a year or two older, negligible difference in this type of combat, but he was in better shape. Kaser also seemed slightly stronger, but Shane had a phenomenal tolerance for pain. This would be an interesting fight to watch, but Shane wouldn’t have that luxury.

  Shane had put a lot into those whacks from his club and hoped he’d see a few broken bones by now. But Kaser must have had some martial arts background, because he’d effectively deflected and lessened the impact of nearly every blow. Shane’s background was mainly street fighting, with certain refinement from combat training—a lot less grace than many of Kaser’s moves.

  In the midst of Shane’s work with the club, Kaser managed to land several punches of his own. And his bare hands hit like brass knuckles. This rumble would take longer than Shane had figured.

  He couldn’t afford even a millisecond to check on Bethany. When you’ve got a tiger by the tail, focus on the tiger. But, from the corner of his eye, Shane thought he saw her crawling... which was about all Bethany could do with wrists and ankles taped. But it was bad timing to watch Bethany even for that nano-second because Kaser predicted the next swing, grabbed Shane’s forearm, and knocked loose the club. The chair leg went flying into the darkness and landed with a loud clank.

  No time to whine about losing his primary weapon. Shane let loose with every punch, kick, head butt, and elbow he could muster. Kaser’s thick body could also take a lot of punishment. And he was giving back nearly as good as he got. It was practically a stalemate; both were battered and exhausted. But Shane additionally had a wound from Ricks’s knife.

  Shane took one kick near his sternum that dropped him to the floor and almost knocked his breath out... also smashed the phone in his shirt pocket. Badly stunned, he needed a few seconds to get his wind and clear his head. Kaser obviously had no intention of providing that respite. He just closed in to finish things.

  Ankles and wrists still tightly taped, Bethany had crawled around until she’d located the .45. Shane saw the pistol in her hands and Kaser caught Shane looking. At just the point he probably could have finished off Shane, Kaser instead went for the gun... and Bethany. He tripped over a floor lantern and landed hard on top of her. When Kaser grasped for the pistol, Bethany bit his ear. Hard.

  Kaser yowled. With two bound wrists, Bethany tossed the gun toward Shane.

  Never before had Shane tried to catch a loaded pistol in midair, in the dark—and he didn’t want to now. With the safety off and hammer back, it would only take the slightest touch on the trigger to fire a round of .45 caliber ammo. And who knew what direction the barrel would be pointing? This particular firearm was probably customized by an expert gunsmith. Shane didn’t want to catch a loaded pistol with a hair trigger, but neither did he want it hitting the floor near him.

  Since Shane couldn’t actually see the gun in the dark, he just guessed at its likely trajectory and held out his hands like he hoped to catch a throw at a Mardi Gras parade. He missed. The pistol landed near him, the hair trigger jostled enough to free the transfer bar for the firing pin, and a round went off. The muzzle blast blinded all three of them and the noise was intense. Recoil sent the gun scraping along the floor and it fell into one of the holes near the bathroom.

  Apparently no one was hit and everybody quickly returned to business.

  Kaser slugged Beth in the face and sent her reeling.

  When Shane tried to grab the gun in the hole, it just scuttled further away below the floorboards.

  Kaser lurched over and clubbed Shane with two combined fists that felt like a wrecking ball. While Shane was down, Kaser reached into the hole for the gun. But he just snagged his hand on something sharp and screamed.

  In the fracas, Shane had lost the chisel from his back pocket. No telling where, because both fighters were all over that shadowy room. But with the newest flash of lightning, Shane located that tool... in Kaser’s hand! Not good. This would be a great moment for a length of logging chain.

  Kaser’s expression indicated he knew the chisel was a game changer and he moved in to close out the inning. Scarcely two seconds since the bright lightning, a crashing thunder rattled the entire hotel. Fortunately for Shane, it also jostled Kaser’s aim, because his thrust, obviously intended for Shane’s neck, instead carved a jagged groove across the trapezius muscle, along his upper shoulder. The pain was searing, but less of a problem than a chisel blade in his jugular.

  Shane pummeled Kaser like he was a slab of beef in a Rocky movie and finally wrestled the tool away from him. As a panting, exhausted Kaser tried to retreat, Shane slammed the chisel into the side of his left thigh... over two inches deep. Kaser howled like a gut shot buffalo and frantically pounded Shane’s head and back, including the freshly wounded trapezius. Like a tenacious snapping turtle, Shane somehow managed to keep a tight grip on the chisel.

  A man might not be able to actually think in the middle of a deadly battle, but the survival mode automatically kicks in: if your opponent is killing you... kill him back harder. Shane gripped the handle even tighter and sharply twisted it. A half-inch chisel blade over two inches into the meat of a man’s thigh causes a lot of damage and intense pain. But when twisted nearly ninety degrees, it grinds the tendons and scrapes the femur. Excruciating is a pale description.

  Kaser screamed like a hyena with a predator’s fangs deep into his flesh. He temporarily lost control of his arms and some bodily functions, which gave Shane a chance to extract the thick blade.

  Just as Shane prepared a second chisel strike at Kaser’s trunk, the spook rained more desperate blows to his head and face. Knocking Shane backward, Kaser hobbled to the exit, stumbled over Ricks’s unconscious body, and staggered down the hall toward the stairs.

  Shane rushed over to Bethany and hugged her tightly.

  “Get this stuff off me!” She had gnawed the wrist bindings and alternately picked at the ankle wraps, but neither effort had accomplished much. Three or four thicknesses of duct tape would hold an airplane together.

  He cut some of the tape with the chisel’s bloody edge and tore away the rest.

  When finally freed, Bethany hugged him tightly. “You knew this was a trap for you... right?”

  Shane breathed heavily and kept an eye on the door. “Pretty much.” He dropped the chisel to the floor.

  When she hugged Shane’s neck, he winced and groaned. Bethany reached for a camp lantern and brought it closer. When she saw the jagged groove along the top of his shoulder, she bawled. “But you rescued me... again.”


  “Ricks was crowding the plate... had to brush him back.” Shane leaned down into the light and examined both his wounds. He’d live. “You did all right, yourself. You learned all that in your class?”

  “Randy just said ‘don’t hold anything back’... so I didn’t.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Shane pointed to the blood around Beth’s mouth and then wiped it away gently with his sweaty shirt tail.

  “Don’t you dare ever, ever tell anyone that my mouth was on that man’s nasty ear.” She spit dramatically. Then they hugged again tightly while Bethany sobbed.

  Shane still had Kaser on his mind, however. “Help me find that gun and let’s go hunting.”

  “Can’t we just get out of here?”

  “Not with Kaser on the loose. We’re not safe ‘til he’s in a cage... or dead.” Shane reached for the lantern. “Now hurry.”

  While Shane fished below the floorboards for the pistol, Beth discreetly hovered over the un-plumbed toilet bowl and emptied her bladder finally. Then she walked stiffly over to Ricks and felt his pulse at the neck. Satisfied that he was still alive, she rolled him over, lifted up his shirt and slapped his skinny chest several times. Ricks didn’t even come to and the blows just stung her own hands. “Hmm. Didn’t turn me on at all.”

  ****

  About 10:30 p.m.

  Jeff set new speed records along Main Street from the police station, despite the driving rain. He raced straight through the flashing yellow at Adams Street, turned north on Washington, and sped the remaining four blocks to the hotel. Once there, he was not about to wait in the vehicle.

  Grabbing the pilfered police flashlight, he sprinted toward the steps of the once stately rear entrance. Inside, he paused only long enough to rip away the remaining shreds of his cheap plastic poncho. When he heard the gunshot from above, Jeff figured either Beth or Shane was a goner. He moved steadily up the interior steps to the fourth level, where whatever was happening.