Phineas Troutt Series - Three Thriller Novels (Dead On My Feet #1, Dying Breath #2, Everybody Dies #3)

by J. A. Konrath

  I nodded.

  “Okay. Later, bro. And don’t worry about Pasha. We’ll get her. It’s inevitable. We’re the good guys.”

  And like the ending to a bad story, he left, the overpowering smell of Axe body spray lingering on.

  I made a tent out of the blanket with my raised knees and privately examined Poopsie Bear, pulling out the gun. A revolver, thirty-eight caliber, scarred and greasy and older than I was. I unloaded the four rounds and gave the cylinder a few spins. Then I dry fired it about thirty times.

  As long as it didn’t blow up in my hand, it would do.

  After reloading and making sure the cylinder was properly aligned, I tugged out my catheter and heaved myself out of bed, intent on going to the can. My muscles were molten lead, and the blood drained from my skull and threatened to leave me unconscious. I sat down and waited for the moment to pass.

  I was still exhausted from my ordeal, but strangely I wasn’t in too much pain. Even Earl seemed tamer than usual. Putting two and two together I looked at my chart and saw they had been giving me morphine.

  Great. Codeine withdrawal wasn’t bad enough. Now I had to try and kick the hard stuff. I’d become so used to painkillers lately that I hadn’t even noticed I was on them.

  This certainly wouldn’t do if I was going to meet with my brother. I didn’t have much in the way of reflexes left anyway, and I couldn’t let the little I had be dulled by drugs.

  Gaining my feet, I held the gun in one hand and took the IV bag with me. There weren’t too many places to hide anything in the tiny bathroom. The garbage was a bad idea, since it was constantly being removed. There was a small cabinet which held gauze and toilet paper, but I didn’t want to risk a nurse or orderly finding the weapon.

  While I was thinking, I pulled the IV from my arm and opened up the drip clip. As my drugs poured down the sink, I had an idea.

  Taking the plastic bag off the hook on the stand, I carefully ripped open the bottom and dumped the remaining liquid out. Using half a roll of toilet paper, I dried the bag, inside and out. I put the gun inside the bag, twisted the top closed, and tied the rubber tubing around it several times, as tight as I could. Hoping it was airtight, I put the package in the reservoir tank of the toilet, replacing the porcelain cover. Assuming the bag didn’t leak, and assuming the guns didn’t interfere with the toilet mechanism and cause it to jam, I had a perfect hiding place.

  Then I went back to bed and tried to sleep.

  Sleep didn’t come.

  I wondered where Pasha was right now, and if she were sleeping. Or if she were even alive.

  Wherever she was, at least my maniac brother wasn’t with her.

  We’d never had one decent moment together, me and my brother. My mother once told me she kept a fire extinguisher next to my crib because as a toddler Hugo liked to throw lit matches at me. From the time he could walk, he was a monster.

  Doctors get rich writing books on child rearing, and psychologists tour talk shows extolling nature versus nurture. In the end, a bad person is a bad person, no matter how they got that way. You don’t think about how the apple got a worm in it. You simply throw the apple away.

  But that’s not what we do as a society. We keep giving the bad elements second chances. More opportunities to be violent.

  If the world had properly dealt with Hugo when he was younger, Pasha would be safe right now. And Hugo would be locked up, or dead.

  Of course, the same could be said about me.

  I’ll never get the chance to have kids, and maybe that’s a good thing, being the type of person I am. I’m probably every bit as violent as my brother is, I just direct it at those who deserve it rather than whomever is in the room. There just happened to be a lot of people who deserved it lately.

  Or maybe that was self-justification for being a sociopath.

  When I finally fell asleep, I had my usual nightmare.

  I was sitting on a beach, watching the sunset, with a big scar on my stomach where a doctor had removed Earl and proclaimed me cancer-free. Pasha was with me, holding my hand, and I knew that we were married, and that she was expecting. The tide came in, and we talked about names for the baby, and I put my hand on her belly and felt our child kick.

  I had this nightmare a lot, and I called it a nightmare because in the dream I knew that I was dreaming, and eventually I’d have to wake up.

  And face the truth.

  “Mr. Troutt.”

  I peeked through heavy lids and recognized the face of the morning shift nurse.

  “Good. You’re awake. Do you know what happened to your IV?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did you take it out yourself?”

  “No,” I said, testing my voice. It was still raw from the fire and a thick layer of mucus had settled in overnight. I sounded like I was gargling.

  “Would you like some water?”

  I nodded. The nurse poured me a cup from the pitcher on her cart and went to check my stats again. I glanced at the clock on the wall and saw it was coming up on nine o’clock.

  The water felt good going down, and with a slightly more respectable voice I asked for a refill. She granted my request and gave me a sharp stare.

  “You really don’t know what happened to your IV?”

  “I sort of remember someone taking it, late last night when I was sleeping. A guy in a white coat.”

  “A doctor?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There’s nothing on your chart. Same with your catheter.”

  “That I took out. I preferred going on my own.”

  “How’s your pain?”

  “Fine,” I lied. My entire body was suffused with a deep ache. Earl rose slightly above the rest with his continuing conquest of surrounding organs, but my neck, leg, mouth, face, head, and throat made for some good competition. My stomach also ached, probably yearning for more morphine. That was the last thing I wanted, if Tom had made good on his promise and gotten me a meeting with Hugo.

  “You have pancreatic cancer,” the nurse stated.

  “You can tell by looking at me?”

  “I can tell because we have your records. Same computer system as St. Joe’s. Are you experiencing any pain from that?”

  “Chordotomy,” I said, mentioning the operation that had cut the nerve endings to my carcinogenic nucleus, making my left side completely lacking in feeling. Earl had long since passed those ganglion nerve blocks and moved on to new territory, causing new pain, but she didn’t have to know that.

  “Well, that’s a good sign Mr. Troutt. No pain is a very good sign.”

  “When’s breakfast?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Nine-thirty. You’re sure you can’t remember who took your IV?”

  “He seemed like a doctor. Do they ever forget to mark the chart?”

  “Oh, never,” she winked.

  I gave her a conspiratorial smile, and she smiled back and left my room.

  I wondered where Hugo was.

  I wondered if the bag holding the gun was water-tight.

  I wondered how I’d react if my brother decided he wasn’t going to give up Pasha’s location.

  Minutes passed into hours. Breakfast came and went, a tasteless lump of egg-product that hurt my throat going down.

  I flipped through channels on the idiot box to give my fidgeting hands something to do, my attention elsewhere. Pain lived within me at many different levels, and I played a game of trying to sort out each particular hurt and where it was coming from.

  It was tough, because many overlapped.

  Lunch was brought in and I choked down some bland spaghetti to keep my strength up, which was a joke because I had no strength to begin with. More time passed. I got up and went to the bathroom, checking on the gun and finding it still there. I tried to nap but thoughts of Pasha wouldn’t let me. There were fifteen channels on my television, and nothing on at all.

  Detective Tom Mankowski came around one.

  �
��I set it up,” he said. No small talk. No pleasantries.

  “Thanks. When?”

  “Now. I can take you to his room. Can you walk?”

  I nodded.

  “Can you get me my coat?” I asked, pointing to the drawers next to the television.

  Tom attended to that while I got out of bed. Before handing me the jacket he felt through the pockets. When I was standing he gave me a pat down as well.

  “Where can I hide anything in this hospital gown?” I asked, trying to be playful.

  “I’ll take your word for it and assume I won’t need to do a rectal search.”

  “You’d better. I’ve got a grenade up there. One more hospital meal and the whole ward blows.”

  Tom put his hand on my shoulder, staring deep into my eyes.

  “You have to play it cool, Phin.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Ready?”

  “I’ve got to lose a little liquid first. Hold on.”

  I headed for the bathroom, but Tom went in first and did a quick search. Not finding anything, he allowed me entrance.

  I locked the door, urinating to cover the sound of removing the reservoir tank lid. I quickly unwrapped the gun and stuck it in my jacket pocket. It seemed wet, but I wasn’t sure if that was due to a leaky bag or my already wet hands. I’d find out soon enough.

  I flushed the IV bag down the toilet and replaced the lid. Washing my hands, I gave my reflection a quick once over.

  Physically terrible. Emotionally a wreck. Mentally unhinged. I figured that standing there in the bathroom, dying of cancer, beaten and burned, the love of my life kidnapped and possibly dead, and getting ready to betray a cop’s trust and attack my brother, had to be one of the lowest points of my life.

  “All set,” I told him, coming out of the bathroom. My hands were in my pockets and Tom looked at me for a second longer than necessary.

  I think he knew I had a weapon. He was going to frisk me again. Should I let him take it, or put up a fight and find Hugo myself? I tensed, waiting for him to make a move.

  “Let’s go,” he finally said.

  If Tom knew he was deciding to play dumb. Even more points that I owed him.

  “Lead on, my friend.”

  The words were sour in my mouth. We left the room.

  Walking was like taking a pain exam. The only thing that kept me from whimpering constantly was the fact that I was too out of breath to do so. We stopped to rest twice, once in a hallway and once by the nurse’s station. We didn’t talk. I was grateful for the jacket, which hid most of my shivering.

  I drew strength from the gun.

  Hugo’s room was an elevator ride away, on the eighth floor. There was a cop sitting outside his door, looking appropriately bored with babysitting detail as he worked on some newspaper puzzle.

  “Phin, my partner, Roy Lewis.”

  We nodded at each other, and once again I braced myself for a frisk. But Roy was more interested in an eight letter word for treachery, starting with a b.

  “Betrayal,” Tom said, glancing at me.

  Yeah, dude, we’re about to show you a whole new meaning of the word.

  We went in.

  Hugo was on the bed, white bandages swaddled around his head like an old mummy movie. One eye peeked out through the wrapping, dull with meds. The arm with the IV was held to the bed by a pair of handcuffs.

  “Hello, Phineas,” cooed Hugo.

  Fright enveloped me, and I may have started to shake. I stood my ground. “Where’s Pasha?”

  My brother didn’t answer for a moment. He seemed to regard me.

  “You aren’t looking so good, brother. I always thought it was a recessive gene. You were puny as a child.”

  I moved closer to the bed, hand on the butt of my gun.

  “Tell me where she is, Hugo.”

  “It’s cancer, isn’t it? You have cancer.”

  “Stomach,” I lied, just to be lying to him.

  “I bet it hurts,” Hugo said, his voice giggly. “How much time do you have left, Phineas? Two months? Two weeks?”

  “You look pretty beat-up yourself. Heard you died a few times. What’s hell like? All fire and brimstone, like in the movies?”

  “Tell me how long you have.”

  “Tell me where she is.”

  Hugo growled low in his throat. “You dying will really fuck up my plans.”

  “Tell me where Pasha is. If you do, I’ll let you kill me.”

  Hugo laughed, a sound like a dog barking. “I’ll kill you anyway.”

  “Who’s Pasha?” Tom asked.

  “His sweet little schlammensch girlfriend.”

  “He kidnapped her,” I said.

  Tom didn’t appear pleased with this development. “Jesus, Phin. You should have told us.”

  “I couldn’t.” I met Tom’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I have to find out where he took her, Tom.”

  I grabbed Hugo on the skull. Then I clenched bandages, burnt hair, and dead skin in my fist and yanked up, trying to rip his scalp off.

  My brother, whom nothing hurt, screamed like a baby.

  Music to my ears.

  Movement—Tom—behind me, but I pulled the gun and shoved it in Hugo’s face.

  “Tom, stay where you’re at. Don’t bring Roy in here.”

  “This isn’t the way, Phin.”

  “It’s the only way. He won’t talk otherwise.”

  I pulled down Hugo’s bandage and clutched his scalp, which bled and oozed clear liquid. His head looked like a glazed donut, leaking jelly.

  He yelped.

  “I thought you didn’t feel pain,” I said, a sick grin riding across my face. “Now where is she?”

  His eyes bulged. “She’s dead. I’ll kill her slow. I’ll cut her tits off.”

  “Wrong answer.”

  Rearing the gun back, I brought it down hard across his mouth. Teeth cracked and blood leaked down his chin.

  “Try again.”

  “Fuck you.”

  I repeated the maneuver, angling lower to get the bottom teeth. He spat several pieces out, his free hand now protecting his face. I had an uncontrollable urge to keep hitting him until he was pulp, to make up for all the hurt he’d caused me in my life. I raised the gun again.

  “Phin!”

  It was Tom, and I didn’t need to look to know he had his gun on me.

  “You saw what he did to Kenny, Tom.”

  “Drop the gun, Phin.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll shoot a leg, Phin. Wound you.”

  “We both have to do what we have to do.”

  Hugo reached out to grab my gun hand and I batted away his effort, bringing the weapon down onto his face again, breaking his nose.

  “No more playing around,” I warned. I pressed the gun up to his nose. “You have three seconds. One…”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Two…”

  “You don’t have the guts.”

  His eyes challenged me, but there was no fear there.

  It frightened me.

  It infuriated me.

  “Three.”

  I pulled the trigger—

  —and the hammer rose and fell on an empty chamber in the cylinder.

  Then Tom tackled me, calling for Roy as he pinned me to the floor.

  I didn’t struggle. My plan had been to kill Hugo after he talked, but I couldn’t get him to talk. He’d called my bluff. I’d lost.

  I let Tom take my gun, and Roy cuffed me, and I caught Hugo’s eye as I was dragged out of the room.

  His teeth were shattered, and he was bleeding everywhere, but my brother was smiling like a kid on Christmas morning.

  Lt. Jack Daniels came to visit me a few hours later. I was handcuffed to the bed, though Tom and Roy hadn’t read me my rights, and I hadn’t been arrested.

  “What the hell, Phin?” she said.

  Jack was in a pantsuit and shiny black pumps, looking like she was ready to pose for the
cop edition of Vogue. Ten years my senior, she looked younger than I did. Except around the eyes. She had cold, hard eyes, and they were currently focused on me.

  “Tom get into trouble? It wasn’t his fault.”

  “He let you in there with a gun.”

  “He frisked me. I was devious.”

  “Where’d you even get a weapon?” Jack rolled her eyes. “Lemme guess. McGlade.”

  I indulged in my right to remain silent.

  “How’d you hide it from Tom?”

  “Bathroom. Toilet basin. Wrapped it in my IV bag.”

  “You’ve put me in a real shitty position here.”

  “Tom must have told you. Hugo has Pasha.”

  “I know. Why didn’t you tell me, Phin?”

  “It isn’t your fight. I put enough on you in Minnesota.”

  “But you called up shit-head.”

  That was her pet name for Harry.

  “Jack, I know I ask a lot of favors—”

  “That’s putting it lightly.”

  “—but you can’t arrest me. I have to find her.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Hugo won’t press charges,” I said. “Is the CPD?”

  She stared, not answering.

  “Jack, what if it was Latham?” That was her fiancé.

  Jack folded her arms. Not a good sign. “We’ve got him for the motel murder. He’s also the prime suspect in another slaying. Three days ago, Hugo’s parole officer was found in an alley, his throat slit so deep his head was almost off.”

  “Hugo told me he killed him.”

  “Think he’d talk to me? Try to cut a deal?”

  “He won’t deal. He’ll let her die just to prove a point. Even if he’s locked up forever, he’ll never tell us where she is.”

  “So you put a gun to his head and pulled half his scalp off. How’d that work out for you?”

  “I had to do something. If he won’t talk, I have to attack it from the other end. Find his friends, find out where they took her. But you gotta let me go.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “You know?”

  “I’ve got some vacation time coming,” Jack said. “I’ve also got the semblance of a plan.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “You aren’t asking. I’m volunteering. Do you want to hear my idea or not?”

  I was pretty floored by her generosity, but I kept it hidden. Jack didn’t like to be thanked. I got the impression it embarrassed her. Instead I gave her a nod.