Good Day In Hell

by J. D. Rhoades

  Marie nodded. She stepped away from the door and stole silently off into the darkness. Keller edged slowly down the side of the trailer to the window. The curtains were drawn and he could see nothing. He stopped for a moment to consider, then walked around back. The windows there were also curtained.

  He went back around to the front and stood for a moment, watching the front door and considering the situation. He played the flashlight over the dirt driveway in front of the trailer. He could see the tracks left by a large vehicle, a truck or van.

  No lights, no vehicle, he thought. Fuck it, no one’s home. He glanced over to where Marie was standing in the tall grass. He saw her bend over to pick something up. He glanced back at the door. As a cop, she probably wasn’t going to approve of what he was about to do. But one thing he had learned in the army was the old adage “Ask forgiveness, not permission.” He slung the shotgun onto his shoulder and set the flashlight down on the trailer’s rickety wooden steps. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small, flat leather case. He stepped up onto the steps and flipped the case open. He withdrew a pair of slender metal picks and set to work. It only took a few moments for him to pick the cheap lock on the trailer’s front door. He slid the case of picks back into his pocket, then unslung the shotgun and turned the knob. There was a slight feeling of resistance as he slowly pulled the door open. Keller frowned and pulled harder, then yanked on the knob.

  Marie stalked silently through the grass, looking right and left for signs of anyone hiding out in the overgrown area around the trailer. There was no sound other than the crickets and the bullfrogs. She straightened up and holstered her weapon. If the bugs and the frogs were raising this much hell in the grass, it was unlikely there was a human crouching there.

  Ahead of her, she saw a cleared space. As she drew nearer, it resolved itself into a raised concrete slab. Someone had been building out here, then stopped for some reason. A glint in the moonlight caught her eye. She bent over to look. There was a spent shell casing on the slab. Her brow furrowed as she noticed several more scattered about. Someone had been doing some target practice and not policing up their brass. She picked up one of the casings and studied it for a moment. Forty-five caliber, she thought. She was going to drop it back onto the slab, but reflex stopped her. From her youth when her father had taught her to shoot, through her time in the military, then as a police officer, picking up her spent brass had become ingrained. She was sticking the shell in her pocket when the roar of a gunshot split the night.

  Marie’s head snapped around in time to see Keller being propelled backwards from the door of the trailer as if being shoved by a giant hand.

  “Jack!” she screamed. Oh dear God, please not again, God, not again, not Jack, oh please… She drew the Beretta from the shoulder holster and charged toward the trailer.

  Keller was lying on his back, groaning. There was blood on his face and left arm. The door of the trailer yawned like the mouth of Hell, the stench of cordite searing her nostrils. Marie screamed, a banshee howl of rage. She raised the gun and fired blindly into the darkness. She fired again and again, screaming curses at the top of her lungs. She forgot fire discipline, forget anything but destroying whatever it was that lurked in that darkness. Finally, the gun was empty and she fell to her knees beside Keller’s prostrate body, gasping for breath. She reached over him and picked up the shotgun. She held it trained on the doorway with one hand while she cradled his head with the other. “Jack,” she whispered. “Jack?”

  “Fuck, that hurt,” Keller groaned.

  Marie was weeping as she ran her free hand through his hair over and over. “You’re okay, please tell me you’re okay.”

  He tried to sit up, then fell back down with another groan. “I feel like I was kicked by a goddamn mule,” he gasped. “I think I cracked a couple of ribs.” He raised his head. “You get him?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “There’s no movement.” Keller rolled over to his side. He used his arm to raise himself until he was sitting up. Marie could see the shredded and blackened fabric covering the Kevlar vest where it had absorbed the blast. “Give me the shotgun,” he grated. She handed it to him. “Where’s the light?” She crawled over to where the flashlight had tumbled off the steps. She flicked it on and turned it on the open doorway.

  She saw a dangling scrap of wire hanging from the doorknob. As Marie played the light over the interior of the trailer, she saw the shotgun strapped to the chair inside.

  “Trap-gun.” Keller grunted, struggling painfully to his feet. “There’s no one inside.”

  Marie stood up as well. She played the light over him. “You’re bleeding.”

  Keller looked down. For the first time, he felt the wetness on his face and arm. “May have caught a couple of stray pellets,” he said. He sounded remarkably detached.

  “We need to get you to a doctor,” Marie insisted.

  “Yeah,” he said. “In a little bit.” He walked up the steps to the doorway.

  “What are you doing?” Marie said.

  “There may be something inside that tells me if Laurel’s here,” he said. “Or maybe where they’ve gone. I won’t know ‘til I take a look.”

  “Jack,” she said, “you can’t go in there.”

  He looked at her. “Why not?”

  “What do you mean, why not?” she said. “Jesus, Keller, I am a cop. Or did you forget? You think I’m going to stand by and watch you break and enter?”

  “I already did,” he said. “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “Damn it, Jack,” she snapped. “Don’t put me in this position.”

  He shrugged. “Do what you have to do,” he said. His eyes were flat and expressionless, but his voice was hard with rage. “I’m going to catch these people. I’m going to bring Laurel Marks in, and I’m going to find the fucker that set that trap-gun and I’m going to kick his ass.” He turned on his heel and walked toward the trailer without looking back.

  Marie stood and watched him go. His sudden brutal coldness had shaken her like the aftermath of an electric shock. All of the time she had spent with Keller had still left her unprepared for the times when the core of fury that burned in him was revealed. This was a mistake, she realized. I shouldn’t have come.

  She saw a light come on inside the trailer, saw Keller’s shadow on the curtains. She knew she should go in and try to stop him. But she honestly didn’t know what he would do if she did. It frightened her that she didn’t know. So she stood outside and watched.

  Keller gave the trailer a quick once-over. There were two bedrooms at opposite ends, with a kitchen/dining room/living room area in the center. Both bedrooms had been recently occupied, the beds rumpled and unmade. Keller noted that there were men’s clothes in the closet in one bedroom, women’s in the other. A shelf in the closet with the women’s clothes held a variety of wigs displayed on plastic head-shaped forms. One of the forms was empty. Keller rummaged briefly in the wastebaskets, turning up an empty box of hair coloring. He looked at it for a moment, sucking air through his teeth as he thought. A wig and hair color? He put the box down.

  Keller walked back out to the living room. There was still a lingering smell of burned gunpowder from the trap-gun set in one comer. Bullet holes from Marie’s gun pocked the wall. He looked at it for a moment, the pain in his ribs becoming more prominent and demanding of his attention as his adrenaline high wore off. He kicked the chair over. He still felt the burn of anger at the person who had set the deadly device, mixed with the familiar undercurrent of excitement he always felt when on the trail of a jumper. Then he thought of Marie.

  Jesus, he thought. What the fuck did I just do? He had been so focused on his hunt that he had…Oh, shit.

  As he came down the steps of the trailer, he saw Marie looking at him with an expression he couldn’t interpret at first. Then he realized it was uncertainty, even fear. The realization almost broke his heart.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I, ah, was
kind of an asshole.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “You were. How’re the ribs?”

  “They’ll heal,” he said. “Look, Marie…”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” she said. “You done here?”

  “Yeah,” he said. She didn’t speak, but turned and began walking toward the car. He followed.

  In the car, they sat for a moment without speaking. Then Marie spoke quietly. “I’m not sure I can take this, Jack.”

  “Look,” Keller said, “I know I was out of line…”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said. “At least that’s not the main thing.” She looked at him and he could see tears in her eyes. “I saw you get shot, Jack. I thought you were dead. And I started realizing, when you were inside there, that it’s never going to stop. You’re going to keep doing this, and nothing’s going to stand in your way. Not me, not anything. Until somebody does kill you.” She shook her head. “I love you, Jack. But I don’t think I can stick around waiting to bury you.”

  “How about you?” Keller said. “You’re a cop. And you of all people know what can happen to cops.”

  “Yeah. The difference is, Jack, that I don’t take stupid risks. Sometimes I think it’s almost like you’re trying to die. Like you still feel guilty that all your men got killed and you lived.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Keller said.

  She leaned over and kissed him. “I’m not making any decisions right now, Jack,” she said. “But this is just… it’s really hard.”

  “I know,” he said. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Then don’t,” she said. “You want me to drive?”

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “Well, let’s get to the ER.”

  “I, ah, don’t think that’s a good idea,” Keller said. “People might start asking questions. About what happened, and why I’m wearing a bulletproof vest.”

  She threw up her hands. “Of course. So now we go home and I get to tend your wounds.”

  “You don’t have to…”

  “Oh, just shut up, Keller.” She sighed. “And give me the damn keys.”

  They rolled through the darkness along the untraveled back roads. Stan was still at the wheel. Roy sat in the passenger seat, giving directions. They had doubled back and taken so many side roads that Stan had no idea where they were. Roy, however, seemed to have the route memorized.

  “Tell me again what you did back there,” Roy said. “With the phone.”

  “It was one of those new kind of phones,” Stan said. “It’s got a camera in it. And you can send the pictures by e-mail.” He had his eyes on the road, but in his mind’s eye he was still seeing the scenes inside the church: the bodies tumbled in the aisles, crumpled on the steps of the altar…the sight had started him trembling, turned him weak at the knees, until he had raised the camera’s tiny LCD screen to his eye to frame the shot. Painted by the glow of electronic pixels, the bodies seemed tiny and far away. It had taken him a few minutes to figure out which buttons to push, but he had kept the screen between him and the human wreckage sprawled on the thick carpet of the sanctuary. He couldn’t distance himself from the smell, though; the sharp tang of cordite and blood still hung in his sinuses, leaving a taste in the back of his throat. He shivered.

  “So who’d you send them to?” Roy said.

  “Channel Ten,” Stan answered. “That reporter. Grace Tranh.”

  Laurel leaned over the seat, her head practically on Stan’s shoulder. “So how’d you know her e-mail address?”

  “They put it on the screen,” Stan said. “Whenever she’s on.”

  Laurel began rubbing her lips against his ear. “A picture’s worth a thousand words, hmmmm?” she whispered. “That was pretty smart, Stan.” She snaked her arm over the other side of the seat to caress Stan’s shoulder. She turned to Roy. “You mind taking the wheel for a while?” she asked. “I think Stan here deserves a reward for being so smart.”

  Roy’s grin was a flash of white in the dim greenish illumination of the dashboard lights. “Sure,” he said. “Pull over.” Stan slowed, then steered onto the shoulder, the van shuddering to a stop as he braked on the rough surface. He barely had time to put the van in park before Laurel was pulling him out of the seat into the back of the van. There was a pair of sleeping bags spread out on the floor. Laurel dragged Stan down with her onto the bags as Roy started up again and headed into the darkness.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “You sure I can’t talk you into going to a doctor?” Marie said. She eyed the mottled flesh of Keller’s chest and stomach, angry and dark purple where the shotgun rounds had slammed the Kevlar vest against the vulnerable tissue beneath.

  “Nothing they can do but wrap me up,” Keller said. “And I can do that for free.”

  “Or get me to do it,” Marie said sourly. They were sitting on the couch in the living room. Marie had checked him over thoroughly and determined that there were no pellets lodged beneath the skin. The cuts and abrasions on Keller’s bicep and face were either the grazing wounds of a passing hunk of buckshot or the result of being knocked to the dirt.

  “You mind?” Keller said. “I’ve got Ace bandages and stuff. Bottom drawer in the bedroom.”

  She sighed. “I don’t mind doing it. I mind seeing you hurt.”

  It reminded him of their earlier conversation. “Marie…” he began.

  She put a finger on his lips. “Hush,” she said. “I’m not bailing on you.”

  He felt tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with the bruises. “Thanks,” was all he could think to say.

  She grimaced. “Don’t get cocky, Jack,” she said. “I meant what I said. I really have to think about this. But I’m not leaving you while you’re hurt.” She got up and went into the bedroom. He got up and poured himself a glass of water from the tap. He heard her rummaging in the chest of drawers. “Jesus,” she said. “You’ve got enough stuff in here to stock an ER. Do you have a prescription for this? Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t think I want to know.” He could tell from the timbre of her voice and the way she was rambling that the stress of the evening had her wired. She came back out with a roll of Ace bandages. “Turn around,” she said. She was wrapping him gently in a protective cocoon of the flesh-colored gauze when her cell phone went off. “Shit,” he heard her mutter from behind him. “Sorry, Jack, I have to take this.” He felt the pressure on his chest relax and stopped gritting his teeth long enough to take another sip of water. “Hello?” she said. “Yeah, it’s me. What? Right now? What’s up? No. No, I…I’ve been out.” There was a pause. “Okay.” She put the phone down for a second. “Jack, where’s the TV remote?”

  “On the side table,” he said. She picked it up and flicked on the TV across the room. She turned it to a local station. The screen showed the last few seconds of a commercial for a used-car dealer before cutting to an Asian woman with an expression of professional concern on her beautiful delicate face. Marie turned the sound up.

  “This is Grace Tranh, coming to you from the News Ten newsroom,” the woman said in a perfectly modulated voice without a hint of accent. “We have an exclusive update on the massacre in a Duplin County church earlier this evening.” She put down the paper she was holding and gazed earnestly into the camera. “We must warn you, what you are about to see is very graphic.” The picture cut to a blurry photograph of the interior of a building. The anchorwoman continued in voice-over. “These photographs, believed to be made by the killer or killers, were e-mailed to the News Ten studios this evening.” It took Keller a moment to resolve and sort out the jumble of objects on the screen. They were bodies, tumbled and mixed together.

  “Oh, my God,” Marie said. She sounded far away to Keller, as if she had suddenly receded down a long tunnel.

  They had found him at dawn, wandering down the empty desert highway, disoriented and dehydrated. His first warning had been the growling whine of a big turbine engine. He stopped and stared d
umbly at the unfamiliar lines of the armored vehicle that roared to a stop a hundred yards from him. It was smaller than his own Bradley, and wheeled instead of tracked, but the long snout of the automatic cannon that tracked toward him looked familiar. Slowly, he raised his hands above his head. There was a long pause. He heard the engine rev once, twice, as if the driver were nervously tapping his feet on the gas pedal. Then a hatch popped open on the turret. A helmeted and goggled head poked out and screamed something unintelligible at him. “I’m an American,” Keller tried to yell back, but his throat felt as dry and cracked as old leather, and all that came out was a strangled whisper. The man in the turret crawled out and advanced on him, his sidearm held in front of him. As he got closer, he stopped and holstered it. “Holy shit,” he saw rather than heard the man say. Suddenly, the desert was alive with other vehicles like the one in front of Keller, screaming across the desert like a pack of predatory dinosaurs. Keller swayed slightly in the wind and noise of their passing. The helmeted man walked up to him. “Who the hell are you?” he hollered through the noise of the maelstrom.

  “Keller, Jackson L.,” Keller croaked automatically. “Sergeant, serial number—”

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” the man shouted. A Humvee painted like the desert squealed to a stop beside the armored car. Another man leaped out, dressed in desert camo. He wore the bar of a first lieutenant on his shoulder. He immediately began screaming at the helmeted man. “Dawkins,” he shouted, “What the fuck is wrong with you? You stop to take a piss or something? God damn it, you get your ass back on that LAV and fucking—” He stopped as he really noticed Keller for the first time. “Who the fuck are you?” he yelled.

  Dawkins answered for him. “He was standin’ here in the middle of the road,” he said.