by Alaric Hunt
“Can you hit his knees?” the little detective asked with a frown. “Can you shoot low?”
“I’m a fair shot,” Olsen replied.
The little detective pulled some short, square Garand magazines from his jacket pockets. The bullets inside were tipped with brass, not blue. He pressed two into Olsen’s hand, and a third into Vasquez’s. He watched them reload their rifles. The gray limestone made the hollow as cold as a graveyard, even on a warm summer morning. Guthrie pointed out the quickest way along to the saddle, then turned to follow the killer’s trail before Olsen passed from sight.
Gagneau’s trail up the mountainside was short and hard, clinging to defiles and washes that gave purchase even when they were steep. The coolness of the morning disappeared in a few hours of hard hiking. The detectives ended up in a wash gully leading sharply upward to the notch. Even Vasquez could see the fresh scuffs marring the bare earth, and caked pebbles loose atop dry leaves. At the top, Gagneau’s trail continued across a wide, shallow bowl that drained into the gully. Tall pines filled the bowl, lifting a dark green umbrella above a smooth cinnamon carpet. The mountain fell away from the bowl’s western side; an oak tree stood guard on a circle of ground, with pines threatening. The trail ended at a parachute cord tied to the oak’s trunk.
Along the ridge, the western side fell away repeatedly in cliffs and draws cut into the mountaintop with a giant’s pick and shovel. Trees danced up to the edge, before the ground fell away into nothingness. Morning’s shadow remained like an unshaved beard even late in the morning. Some open country lay below, old gardens and lawns for the abandoned great lodge visible in breaks between the treetops on the broad terrace below them.
The parachute cord dropped into a rounded hollow. The slope was steep and smooth for a few hundred feet. Mature trees nestled on the slope in several places, but mostly it was bare except for slick curtains of stone, ferns, and lines of leaf litter trapped in creases like gutters. A thick tangle of oak and maple trees crowded their shaggy heads together in whispered conversations. Guthrie and Vasquez lost their view of what lay below, becoming like ants on the mountainside again. Twin Oaks waited at the end of a quarter-hour downhill plunge, for anyone in a hurry, but it was invisible in the folds of stone and crowds of trees. Guthrie sprang along like a hungry goat, his attention split between Gagneau’s tracks and the way ahead. Then two rifle shots slashed the quiet mountainside; all the birds abandoned their gossip.
“Missed him,” Olsen reported, his voice broken with movement and punctuated by the thud of his boots. “A guy could’ve hit a belly shot something easier.”
Guthrie and Vasquez ran. The little detective needed no more caution. The killer was somewhere ahead, running from Olsen, and they were behind the chase. Guthrie picked a sure path, but the rough, pitching ground gave wild slides down leafy slopes and hard pounding on sudden upturns. The wide emptiness of the mountainside ignored their haste, staying stubbornly in their path.
“Think I can get another shot,” Olsen added, measuring his breath. “Need to pass that fence line.” More pounding boots were followed by an afterthought. “Didn’t see a weapon.”
Guthrie and Vasquez raced. She didn’t quit, even though she couldn’t catch the little man. Steady running earned grudging passage from the trees, but the waist of the mountain was a long, jumbled cloth, where each bend revealed only one more space to rush across.
Another pair of rifle shots cracked, followed by a curse from Olsen. The big man was breathing hard. “He made it into the big building.” His footfalls were heavier, slower.
“East side?” Guthrie asked.
“Yeah. I’ll enter south side. Must be more doors.”
“Wait on us. We’re getting close.”
Olsen’s breath whistled. “Negative.” The sound of his footfalls vanished.
Guthrie and Vasquez ran, and the sky opened above them as if the sun had lifted the lid of their leafy green box. Breaks and bends marred the open ground, but in sometime past, gardeners had carefully smoothed out lawns and fields. The Twin Oaks great lodge wore a facade of massive joined timbers under high-pitched roofs cut to display windows, like a circle of Victorian gentlemen gathered around a card table without removing their top hats and frock coats. A string of muffled semiautomatic shots encouraged them to go faster. On the smoother ground, they were swift. They found a small doorway on the eastern side in time to hear another fusillade of semiautomatic fire. None sounded with the sharp, authoritative crack of a Garand.
Guthrie and Vasquez rushed through a doorway without a door into the middle of a long kitchen. The dark slate floor wore a doormat of dirt and windblown leaves, and it betrayed their boots with a clatter. A large double door stood ajar on the interior wall, opening about midway into a long corridor.
“Tricked him,” Olsen said softly on the radio, then coughed.
“Where are you?” Guthrie hissed.
“Courtyard inside,” Olsen answered. “Building’s wrapped around it.”
Wide swing doors faced the kitchen from across the hall, spilling light through porthole windows to match the kitchen doors. One door clung to the frame like a leaning drunk, failed by a broken hinge. Dusty boxes and stacks of lumber, buckets, and sacks lined the corridor, with unstirred dust as opaque as paint hiding peeling labels on supplies meant for a long-abandoned remodel. The undamaged door squealed like a jilted lover before revealing a formal dining room. Vasquez brushed past Guthrie as he paused to listen. Tall windows filled the dining room with light. She hurried around the end of the long table to reach a broken door.
The door to the courtyard slapped back into place after Vasquez pushed through. Two tiers of wraparound balconies surrounded the long, narrow courtyard, propped up by ornate wooden pillars; doorways and windows yawned like a tired audience, revealing dark shadows but no teeth. The young Puerto Rican rushed along the back wall, watching the far side of the courtyard. Olsen waited, reclining against the wall on the left end. Guthrie slipped from the dining room as Vasquez reached Olsen. The big man smiled when she bent over him; blood crept silently from his body. His Colt was locked open in his left hand, and a spent magazine lay in his lap. Blood welled from holes in his right arm and leg, wetting his clothes like a man snatched from water.
“Tricked him,” he said again. “Pretty sure I hit him, once maybe.”
Guthrie stopped by Vasquez, and Olsen gestured weakly at the far end of the courtyard with his empty pistol. The little detective nodded and turned away. He moved quickly, scanning the balconies without lifting the muzzle of his rifle.
“You ain’t tricked him, chico,” Vasquez muttered. “He fucked you up.” She pulled at the lapel of his jacket. “What do I do?”
“Stuff the holes, wrap them, then tie them,” the big man said. Vasquez laid her rifle beside him. While she worked, he continued: “I did trick him. He didn’t expect the pistol.”
Guthrie found a blood trail at the far end of the courtyard, glowing like a neon arrow. The splatters spread like silver dollars where Gagneau had paused to open doors, but they narrowed and scattered where he’d moved along. Scuffs along the floors of two large, bare rooms underlined the blood, before leading through a wide doorway onto a flagstone terrace. Olsen’s voice on the radio followed the little detective as he stalked, twisting with indrawn breaths or emerging through clenched teeth as Vasquez dressed his wounds.
“Caught him in the entry out front. Almost had him then. Too quick.” Scuffling sounds and breathing interrupted his soft voice. “Has a Beretta.”
A juniper hedge wearing a thick wig of honeysuckle lined the far side of the flagstone terrace. Guthrie rushed along the blood trail with his rifle clamped to his shoulder, then turned the corner of the hedge.
“Figured him for my rifle butt,” Olsen muttered. “There, when we took an AQT all alone, he would wait until the butt of the man’s rifle lined with him. That’s a long, slow swing—too late to come around.” He coughed. “So I drew my pistol and c
radled the rifle on my left elbow—pistol pointed down the butt.”
“That’s you tricking him?” Vasquez asked softly. “Your leg, your hip, your arm—”
Olsen cursed. “But not my heart or my head.”
“Yeah, you would miss those.”
“You bet. I got him, though. Didn’t I get him? Guthrie?”
More curtains of shrubbery waited beyond the juniper, with shadows speckled beneath. Wet blood glowed on the dry leaf litter. A row of boxwood draped with morning glory hid a small, rough circle of bloodstained leaves and some scraps of rag. The trail continued along the boxwood without blood; Gagneau had paused to dress his wound.
Tangled, overgrown parterres edged with flagstone sealed the end of the hedges. The lines of stone left thread-thin paths between overhanging trees, gloomy with shadow and choked by dust. The parterres flanked the overgrown lawns in front of Twin Oaks; once it left the dense thicket, Gagneau’s trail turned like an arrow for the front of the lodge. Guthrie cursed. The trick had been too easy, returning in a circle to finish wounded quarry. The little detective spit a warning into the radio as he ran for the front of Twin Oaks.
* * *
Vasquez saved Olsen by accident; watched by the crowd of dark windows and doorways in the courtyard while she dressed the big man’s wounds, she filled with paranoia. Guthrie was silent. Olsen’s bloody fatigues quietly stole her assurance. The young Puerto Rican detective opened the nearest door, then dragged the big man inside with strength born of fear.
Shutting the door darkened the room like a theater awaiting the final act of a play. A small dirty window glowed enough to show a rough worktable cobbled from unfinished lumber, a door in the far wall, and some wooden crates jammed into the corners. The air was silent and heavy with dust. Vasquez watched the courtyard from her window, crouching needlessly. From the courtyard, nothing in the room could be seen, but a wide highway of Olsen’s blood, like a smear of crimson icing, showed where he hid.
Gagneau came from the front of the lodge and looked out into the courtyard. He paused to study the blood trail and stare at the small window beside the door, but the panes of glass sucked light like tar paper. The killer’s instincts were deep—he balked at the risk of crossing the open space. He turned aside and circled through the halls of the great lodge to approach from the other side.
Gagneau arrived before Guthrie’s warning. Olsen was muttering softly when the killer crept to the door. The faint light wasn’t enough for him to study the room through the crease of the door, and it creaked when he moved it. Vasquez whirled to her feet, pulling her Garand with her by its forestock. The jumpy teenager caught Gagneau by surprise. She was partly hidden behind the opening door, with Olsen in sight on the floor on the other side, but the sound of her feet made him leap back.
Vasquez fired. The Garand lit the room and the hallway; the heavy bullets plumed geysers of plaster from the walls with each shot. Gagneau sprayed shots with his Beretta and fell onto his ass in the hallway, rolling among some old glass bottles. Vasquez shot the walls on both sides of the door, but the killer was too low.
The gunfire startled Olsen fom his daze. He fumbled a clip of blue bullets from the pocket of his fatigue pants. The Colt slid from his lap. Vasquez squeezed the Garand’s trigger twice more after it stopped firing, while Gagneau scrambled upright outside the door. Bottles skittered away from his feet like squeaking mice.
Vasquez dropped the rifle and drew her hard-loaded Chief’s Special as Gagneau sprang into the room. The strobing shots had revealed the worktable; he dived and rolled beneath it, firing as he came. Vasquez rushed her shots. Together they made a drumroll, announcing the killer to the detective, face-to-face, with pistols locked open on spent clips. Olsen patted at the floor, searching for his Colt. Vasquez dropped the empty Special and reached for her soft-loaded backup.
Olsen found his Colt, even without gunshots for light, then realized his damaged hand couldn’t seat the clip. Gagneau stepped forward and chopped Vasquez with his empty pistol; in the darkness, the bloody gash on her face looked black. He followed like a dancer as she stumbled back, sliding her pistol from the kidney holster.
Gagneau chopped her wrist as she whipped her hand forward to fire. The pistol discharged, caught on her finger for a moment before flying against the plaster wall. Olsen clamped the Colt between his nerveless right hand and his thigh and angled the clip into the butt. Vasquez threw a sloppy jab with her left hand that glanced from the killer’s shoulder.
Gagneau stepped forward again, fully visible in the weak light from the window, and seized Vasquez’s ponytail. She tried to step away, but he jerked her off balance and spun her into the wall. She bounced roughly. He chopped again with the pistol, catching her on the corner of the jaw. Vasquez sagged to her knees, dazed, suspended in Gagneau’s grip.
The killer dropped his pistol and drew a heavy knife from his belt. The steel had a gleaming curve like a tiger’s fang and seemed as large as a sword in the small man’s rising hand. The Colt’s action snapped shut on a blue bullet. Olsen’s left hand shook as he lifted the heavy pistol.
“Sergeant Gagneau!” he barked.
The killer turned his head to see the big man, but his hand kept moving.
* * *
Guthrie dropped the rifle and drew his revolver as he rushed up the front steps of Twin Oaks. The heavy door was ajar. A sweeping staircase overlooked the rough-timbered entry. Gloomy oak arches led past flanking pairs of doors, ending in a wide double that opened into a salon. Fireplaces at each side faced silent judgment from ghostly courts of furniture wrapped in dusty shrouds. High, narrow windows admitted light from the courtyard. A thunder of muffled shots greeted the little detective when he looked out.
Olsen’s blood marked his hiding place. The little detective rushed past a couch, rammed the courtyard door, and stumbled outside. More gunshots boomed as he sprinted across the courtyard but fell silent before he threw his shoulder into the door. The door banged open, slamming into Olsen’s feet as he aimed his Colt.
Vasquez reached for the hand gripping her hair. From the corner of her eye, she could see Gagneau behind her, swinging his heavy knife. Guthrie was so close behind the killer that the swinging muzzle of his revolver brushed Gagneau’s hair. Guthrie fired once. The bullet smashed Gagneau’s elbow, and the knife embedded point-first in the worktable. Then Guthrie took a quick step and kicked Gagneau in the face with his dusty walking boot.
“Fuck,” Vasquez said.
The rattle of handcuffs seemed quiet after the gunshots. “He shot you?” the little detective asked.
“No.”
“We got lucky,” Guthrie said softly. “He could’ve killed us all, with the breaks the other way.” Gagneau groaned, coming to as Guthrie wrapped his shattered elbow.
“So I got him, then?” Olsen asked.
“Sure, you got him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The city cooled quickly in September. The Atlantic whisked a steady supply of clouds and rain across Long Island to erase the summer; the waning days were gloomy. Trinity Cemetery in Washington Heights felt like the flat bottom of a shallow bowl, with the hardscape surrounding it snapped shut by a gray sky. A slow rain drizzled from tired clouds. Two people stood at a graveside in the empty, chilly cemetery. Guthrie wore a long black overcoat. Wietz stood beside him, holding an umbrella. She watched him uneasily. She wore running boots beneath a long green skirt, along with a vest and button-down shirt. The little detective arranged some flowers on a neat column headstone, shifting them a few times before deciding where they suited best. He stepped back to stand beside her, carefully avoiding the cover of her umbrella, and worried the brim of his old brown fedora while the slow rain speckled his grizzled hair.
“I appreciate you coming along for this,” Guthrie said, looking at the gray headstone with a frown. The slender bouquets were tilted at different angles. “I didn’t want to do this by myself.”
“It’s all right,” she said
. She studied the headstone. “She died young—1993.”
“An accident. Maybe you expect someone with a guardian angel will live forever, but it ain’t the case.”
The sky was quiet except for rushing wind. The traffic seemed far away. “This’s why he wouldn’t leave,” she said, making the words a statement instead of a question.
“As far as I can gather,” Guthrie said. “He fell off the map then, too. I suppose his daughter was all he had left. After that, Eddy was the ghost.”
The rain thickened. Guthrie clapped his hat onto his head. Wietz glanced around the graveyard, like she was looking for someone trying to overhear. For a detective, suspicion was a habit. She was older than Vasquez, her features more rounded than angular, but equally striking.
“How’s the new girl?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Her jaw was bad. She’s out of the hospital, at least. Olsen’s still mending his bullet holes.”
“It worked out, right?”
“They got Gagneau in jail, squeezing him for answers. It’ll come out.”
“So what’s the new girl gonna do?”
Guthrie shrugged again.
“I got something else I need a little help with,” he said. “A college boy needs some toys taken away from him, and taught some manners.”
She slid a glance at him, her green eyes lighting up. “Since when have you ever needed help with anything, Guthrie?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alaric Hunt was born in Kentucky. He received a life sentence in 1988, which he is currently serving out in South Carolina. Cuts Through Bone was written in two longhand drafts and then typed on a typewriter. It is his first novel.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.