DINING WITH DEVILS -- A Tasmanian Thriller

by GORDON AALBORG

  He watched as Ian turned, took two quick steps, then slipped on some forest floor debris and stumbled to his knees. Watched Ian abandon flight as an option, saw him turn, saw the wavering muzzle of the .22 as Ian struggled to regain his footing and his bearing on Charlie at the same time.

  Please, God.

  A silent prayer to one known to act in mysterious ways. Charlie caught the flicker of motion off to his right, half turned to it, afraid old Viv might be launching another assault.

  But there was no time to do anything but watch as a small, scruffy-coated Jack Russell terrier rollicked across the clear ground between Charlie and Ian. His little feet merged in a blur of motion as Bluey caught proper sight of Ian. The dog’s panting changed to a harsh, guttural spasm of sound as he charged.

  Charlie could only watch. And wonder.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  All Kendall could do was flatten some relatively dry bracken fern and lay Kirsten down on it while he did what had to be done and hoped he could finish the grisly chore before she came out of her stupor.

  The keys were there in Rose’s SUV, and it fired up, thankfully, to exhibit a quiet, modern engine that didn’t rouse Kirsten as he eased the vehicle ahead far enough that he could get out and deal with the rope by hand.

  Which meant lowering his ex-wife’s mutilated body enough so he could free the rope from the SUV, then hoist her back up into the damned tree. Because what else could he do? They needed the vehicle, and better this one – marginally better, anyway – than the one Stafford had used for his obscene tailgate party. But Kendall could not and would not simply abandon Rose’s mutilated body to face further mutilation from scavengers, so hoisting her back into the tree was the quickest, most logical option.

  It took all his strength, not least because he’d been two days now without eating and the exertion made his head swim. And the situation itself made his empty stomach churn and seemed to shut down his mind to everything but essentials.

  You’re a big boy now. Don’t look at her. Don’t think about it. Just do it. You have to. Do it . . . do it . . . do it.

  The words were a chant inside his head as he forced slack into the rope, freed the end from the vehicle’s tow hook, then dragged Rose back up into her macabre roost. Despite his shaking hands and bursting lungs, he managed it somehow, although he was forced to tie the rope off to a sapling smaller than he would have liked.

  He straightened, stretched, dared not even look to see the effect of his efforts, couldn’t look, didn’t need to. He would, Kendall realized, forever hold that initial picture of his ex-wife hung up like a butchered doe.

  He did have to watch his footing, did have to be careful not to tread in the thrashed-up underbrush directly beneath Rose, where he knew instinctively the devils had already been, had already cleaned up after the master devil.

  Kirsten’s right. I should go back and kill the bastard. Now. God would understand. God would probably thank me. Rosie sure as hell would. And Emma. And the others.

  The thoughts rolled around in his mind as he leaned on the SUV to catch his breath, to try and think sanely, try to plan, try to understand. He didn’t know where they were, didn’t know what other threats lurked out there in the now-full darkness of the Tasmanian night. He needed to keep safe the woman he loved, a woman already half-destroyed by what had happened, never mind what might happen yet. But all he could do was think about how easy it would be, how right it would be, how satisfying it would be, to go back and kill Stafford. In cold blood.

  Here. Now.

  “And you can’t do it and you can’t let her do it either,” he said half aloud, trying to use words, his favorite tools, the chosen tools of his trade, his life, to protect him from inner demons he hadn’t known he possessed. But he knew it now, and feared the knowledge even more than he feared this night and its uncertainties.

  Could he go back there and kill Dr. Ralph Stafford? Deliberately? In cold blood? Teague Kendall wasn’t entirely sure, and didn’t really want to know the answer, but he couldn’t help asking himself the question. He knew without any doubt that he couldn’t allow Kirsten to do it, didn’t dare allow himself even to think that she could . . . or would.

  If it was Rose, I wouldn’t be all that surprised, I guess. But Kirsten? No. She couldn’t and she wouldn’t and even if she wanted to I couldn’t let her. Didn’t let her!

  It was the first conscious comparison he’d found himself making between his now-dead ex-wife and the woman he couldn’t help loving, but Kendall found the circumstances of it too bizarre for comfort.

  And this wasn’t the time for it.

  As carefully as he could, hoping to manage it without waking Kirsten, he gathered her up and deposited her in the SUV’s passenger seat. Managed to reach around and get the seatbelt closed. She muttered, stirred, but slid back into unconsciousness as soon as he moved away from her.

  “Right. Time to go.”

  He walked around to the driver’s seat, got in, and eased the vehicle ahead, turning sharply into the rutted track as he avoided Rose’s gibbet and the devil-thrashed ground below it. After that, things got easier, except that he still wasn’t entirely certain where they were, or which direction to turn – if and when he got the chance. It didn’t matter, Kendall decided. What mattered was getting Kirsten away from this place of death and blood and madness.

  ~~~

  Kirsten almost sent him into the ditch when she finally did awaken and freaked out at finding herself confined by the seatbelt. One flailing fist caught Kendall squarely across the eyes before he could skid to a halt and reach out to try and control Kirsten.

  “It’s all right,” he said. Over and over and over, keeping his voice low, soft, nonthreatening despite the fact he was holding both her wrists to keep her from smacking him again. Her eyes were open, but strangely vacant, and he thought that wherever she was in her mind, it wasn’t here with him. Nor was it anywhere even remotely pleasant, he thought.

  “Emma?”

  Her first recognizable word confirmed that. It was a plaintive plea, a whimper more than a question. But he tried to answer it anyway, hoping it might somehow calm her.

  “It wasn’t Emma,” he said. “It was . . . Rose.” And he felt himself choke on the name, the reality of what he was saying.

  “Yes.” Kirsten replied in a whisper. “Rose.”

  “We have to keep going, Kirsten,” he said. “I don’t want to be caught out here by . . . by . . .” He didn’t have a name to put to the threat he feared, but Kirsten didn’t appear to notice. Nor did she object, so Kendall sent the SUV moving again down the track.

  “I warned her,” Kirsten said.

  He couldn’t tell if she meant that she’d warned Rose, or her sister Emma, one of Stafford’s earlier victims. Or maybe someone else entirely – she didn’t seem to be tracking all that well.

  “I did. I told her he’d have her for breakfast. She didn’t listen. She was happy enough that he was going to eat me, though.”

  “Rose?” It was out even as he thought it. “But why?”

  “She hated me. She hated you even more, I guess. She tried to have you shot.” And suddenly Kirsten reached out to put her hand on his knee. “You’re all right? You didn’t get shot, did you?”

  “No. I’m fine. But how could Rose . . . ?”

  “She thought I’d been kidnapped for ransom, until she saw who’d done it.” Kirsten’s bark of laughter was bitter. “Then I think she was even happier, thinking of what he was planning.”

  Kirsten sighed, seemed to relax slightly. “He told me about the shooting. Stafford, I mean. Rose was there and she didn’t deny it. It was that other man who shot at you, I think.”

  “Tell me about this other man,” Kendall said. “I’m a bit confused about it all. I mean, I know why Stafford kidnapped you, or at least I can guess, but the rest is very weird stuff. Nobody tried to shoot me.”

  “He’s a local, I think. Whatever you’d call a redneck here in Tasmania. H
e’s tall, pretty old, I think his name is Ian . . . something. He looks like one of those evil hillbillies in the movie Deliverance. It was Ian that shot at you, I think, but it was Rose who got him to do it.”

  Kirsten sighed again, and looked across at him with a wistful, ethereal expression Kendall couldn’t quite interpret.

  “I’m glad he missed,” she whispered.

  Suddenly it all came together in Kendall’s brain, facts and theories and pure speculation colliding in a realization so mind-blowing that he nearly lost control of the vehicle.

  “My God!”

  He let it all percolate for a moment, then told her about the shooting of the gundog judge on Saturday, which seemed like a month ago, given all they’d been through since then.

  “The bullet burned Rex Henderson’s ear on the way by. Went right between the two of us and into the judge. He never knew what hit him, poor bugger. Rex thought it was a bee, or a hornet. And this joker was shooting at me? Because Rosie convinced him to do it? It’s too insane not to be true, I guess, but it makes no sense at all.”

  “She was jealous of your success,” Kirsten said. “She ranted and raved at me a lot, but it was you she had the hate on for. She didn’t make a lot of sense half the time, but I gather she feels . . . felt that she should be sharing in your wealth. That she’d earned it.”

  “That’d be right, for Rosie. Never mind that we were already divorced about two years before I struck it lucky with that first book. The first one that actually made any money, I mean. And I wrote that after we were divorced too, although she wouldn’t . . . didn’t . . .”

  Kendall had to slow down, then halt the vehicle entirely as tears welled up to blur his vision. He could only sit there, gripping the steering wheel with fists that trembled from the emotions raging inside him. The two of them waited it out in silence.

  “I’m sorry, Teague,” Kirsten said once Kendall returned to being in at least some semblance of control. “Whatever Rose did, she certainly didn’t deserve what happened.”

  “No, but dammit, anyway . . . getting herself involved with that monster . . .” Then he glanced at her and forced what he hoped would emerge as a grin.

  “Charlie is going to absolutely freak when he hears, though. He was standing right there when the guy was shot, you know? In fact, he lost his entire Saturday having to be The Man in charge of the situation. And he’ll freak even worse when he finds out Stafford is still alive. My God!”

  They lapsed into a contemplative silence as he rolled up to a T-intersection with what appeared to be a somewhat better class of bush road, and Kendall didn’t hesitate before turning left and increasing his speed to match the improved conditions.

  “This other guy you mentioned . . . Ian? Are we likely to run into him out here somewhere, I wonder? Where the hell did he go? Or do you know?”

  “Stafford sent him somewhere. Something to do with that old man with the dog, I think. The old guy whose dog found the bones that led them to Stafford and what he’d done here.”

  “Old Viv? That’s a worry. The old guy’s eighty if he’s a day, I think. He’d be no match for somebody like this hillbilly bloke. We have got to get to a phone and alert Charlie about this. Or at least alert somebody.”

  “Get to a phone?” Kirsten leaned forward, peering out into the cone of the headlights. There wasn’t a sign that even suggested approaching civilization. No fence, no power poles, no . . . anything. Only the rough gravel of the narrow track ahead of them and the stark loneliness of the surrounding bush. “Are we actually getting anywhere?” she asked.

  “I sure as hell hope so. But there isn’t much out here until you get right close to the coast and I don’t know how far away that might be. All we can do is keep on driving and hope for the best. At least we’re away from there – that’s the important thing.” He didn’t have to explain what he meant by there. “I don’t know how long it’ll take us to get to somewhere there’s people, and a phone,” he said. “But we’re not stopping until we do. Not for anything or anybody unless it’s a police car.”

  Whereupon the engine began to falter, coughed consumptively a few times, then died entirely. No warning lights had come on, but the inference was obvious.

  “Or unless we run out of goddamn petrol, which I think we just did,” Kendall said, peering at a fuel gauge that confirmed his worst suspicions. If there was a low fuel warning light, and there surely would be one, it wasn’t working, that much was clear. Kendall killed the lights and made a cursory attempt to start the SUV, but the problem was frighteningly obvious.

  He didn’t even know why he was surprised . . . his ex-wife was the worst person he’d ever met for ignoring routine vehicle service until something actually broke down and died. He’d once changed a tire for her, then found out almost a year later – when she had another flat – that she’d never bothered to get the first flat fixed. He told Kirsten as much, then banged out his frustration on the steering wheel.

  “God damn you, Rose!” He regretted the outburst immediately, but faced with having to spend the remainder of the night in the middle of nowhere, with the possibility that the first person to show up might be a man who’d already tried to shoot him, Kendall kept his regrets to a minimum.

  “It’s all right,” Kirsten said, then rattled on, her voice brittle with fatigue and, he thought, approaching hysteria.

  “Poor Teague. You haven’t had much luck with the women in your life, have you? I nearly got you killed when you came to rescue me in my cave, your ex-wife tried to have you shot, and now . . . this.”

  Kendall had slouched back in his seat, left arm stretched across the back of the seat beside him. Not touching Kirsten, but there, right where it should have been when she suddenly snuggled in against him.

  When he looked down, her eyes glimmered in what light there was, and she reached up to touch her fingers to his cheek, then draw his head down to meet her kiss.

  “I really thought you were too grown up for this old Gee whiz . . . we’re out of gas ploy,” she said. And then snorted out a nonhysterical chuckle. “Ten thousand miles from home, with a perfectly good hotel suite, and you want to make out like teenagers in a car that’s run out of gas?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Bluey regained consciousness slowly, painfully, and cranky as only a Jack Russell can be cranky. He shambled to his feet, stumbled, fell, reeled up again, his vision obscured by the blood from his wound. His flicking tongue could taste the blood, but couldn’t reach far enough to clear his half-blinded eyes, no matter how hard he tried.

  He was thoroughly disoriented, barely able to keep himself upright as he shook himself, half fell, then deliberately lay down and tried to wipe away the blood with his paws. It didn’t help much, except to exacerbate his crankiness. He shrugged out from beneath the arm of his semi-conscious master, eventually reached his feet, where he reeled unsteadily, then plodded forward. Following his nose, following his rage.

  He trundled through the darkening scrub, his nose lifted to any useful scent, his ears flicking as he listened. Being half deafened by the wound didn’t help; there was a ringing inside his head that made hearing of any sort difficult. Which was why he smelled Ian Boyd’s presence before he saw him.

  Bluey knew that scent, could have selected the rancid, stale odor from a hundred others, a thousand. Knew it, didn’t like it, knew he didn’t like it. Hated it!

  Boyd was just getting to his feet, his attention focused on Charlie, the Ruger at the ready, when Bluey rollicked into the small clearing. Boyd wasn’t in much better shape than the dog, but his disorientation came from the chemicals inside him. Not that there was time to evaluate the difference.

  Not time for Bluey to heed Boyd’s squeal of angry terror as his peripheral vision caught sight of his nemesis charging out of the scrub. Not time for Charlie, only paces away from the dog but off to one side, to either warn Boyd or try to call off the dog. Not time, as Charlie’s report would say later, for him to do one damned
thing – merely watch and wonder.

  Time only for the shrill yodel of Bluey’s battle-cry as the animal flung himself out of the scrub, all four legs pumping in a blur of motion as he flew toward Boyd, then leapt.

  High. For the throat. Charlie later said the dog’s fangs flashed like swords, knives, mirrors, as he flew toward his target, mouth agape, yodels of outrage pouring out between those teeth. Outrage, anger, hatred!

  Bluey had been struck by this man. Shot by this man. Kicked by this man. But – worse than that – this man had dared to harm his beloved master, had struck old Viv down with a casual violence and then actually dared to laugh. It was all there in the dog’s mind; Charlie said later he could literally hear it in the yapping, yammering yodels as Bluey darted across the clearing and launched himself like a missile.

  An old missile. Lame and hurting and incapable of the youth and strength and accuracy he needed to match his fury. He aimed for the throat, possibly envisaged the joy of sinking his blunted fangs into Boyd’s jugular.

  But he couldn’t manage the altitude, the trajectory. He only got half the height he’d intended. Still, it was enough. The tissue that his bloodlust found was equally soft, if marginally sheltered by moleskin trousers and a zipper.

  Bluey’s yodeling muted as his jaws clenched in a fierceness that would have put the nastiest pit bull terrier to shame, would have made the hardiest Queensland pig dog step back in awe. Ian Boyd screamed, the rifle flew from his hands, and he fell backward beneath the dog’s assault.

  “It was terrible,” Charlie said later in his report. “I didn’t dare shoot the dog lest I hit the man, and when I grabbed the dog by his hind legs and tried to drag him off . . . well . . .”

  What actually happened at that point was that Bluey growled at Charlie and – if anything – tightened his grip, either oblivious to Ian’s shrieks or reveling in them. Charlie, who’d put away his gun, didn’t even think to draw it again. He merely listened to Bluey, released the dog’s hind legs, and politely backed away.