“Always comes the moment when they want out,” he said. “Juice, daughter of Adrienne. Mother of Grace.”
Sly intent, having momentarily been on holiday, blossomed again in the car. “You make a mistake,” I said, “in presuming you can play me.”
“But, Theodore,” he said, “my friend despite your desire not to be, I have already played you. What you sense in me are maybe second thoughts. Strange. I am not used to such things. No matter, they, too, have now vanished. Onward.”
“The game isn’t over,” I said.
“It will end here,” said Stefan Reznikov. There was finality in the way he had said it.
“I need to know,” I said, “what happened to Adrienne’s mother.”
“Mrs. Davenport,” he said.
There was an awkward moment that played as if he were unsure about divulging anything further. “I presume she’s dead,” I said.
“Is unlikely she will ever be found,” said Reznikov. “But if so, it will be apparent she was buried without benefit of first having died.”
I was glad I had been facing front. I forced myself to offer no affect, though I’d begun to assume I was better at that than I truly was. Still, I was grateful that I had not had to turn away. “Without a trace?” I said.
Reznikov said, “Different kind of message, no?”
“As messages go,” I said,” it’s harder to absorb than a lacerated corpse.”
“Just so,” he said. “That was the point.”
“You are evil,” he said.
“Your gift is luck,” he said. “Mine is finding new ways to send messages.”
“The word monster mean anything to you?” I said.
“Again,” he said, “you are naïve. Two men. Sitting in car. Out in magnificent countryside. Each knowing himself well. Perhaps the other even a little bit. What is evil in such a landscape? Monster, he says. Very well. But which one?”
“I don’t give up,” I said.
“I believe it,” he said.
While I cared little for Constance Davenport, I had trouble getting past the report of how she had been killed. “You are thinking of the mother still?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Organs too old,” he said. “Inferior goods. No use to us. Was matter of honor.”
“Honor,” I said.
“Even evil has honor,” said Reznikov.
“Stunning,” I said.
“No,” he said, “it is Chekhov again.” I had been rendered speechless. “She put up vigorous defense,” he continued. “Her grave was dug deeply. She tried to claw her way out of it.” I stopped listening. “Eventually weight of earth was too much. She gave up. Shrubbery was transplanted to obscure disturbed soil.”
I tried to stop listening some more. “You wouldn’t be the first to under estimate me,” I said.
Again, Reznikov turned to look at me. “But I have not under estimated you, Theodore.”
I said, “It’s looking very much like I am going to have to kill you.”
He patted me on the shoulder. “You are not evil, Teddy,” he said. “Do not try to behave as if you were.”
“No,” I said, “but I am lucky.”
“Not anymore,” he said. “It has been a long night, no?”
“Endless,” I said.
“You understand manner of man I am,” said Reznikov. “I like that. Have never before encountered individual like you. But I wonder if you can know how lonely is my life? Truly.”
I said, “I have constructed for myself an understanding of it.”
“Yes,” he said, “you would like to see me as the shark that needs to keep moving in order to breathe. He knows no rest.”
“All wing,” I said, “no leg.”
His face blossomed on the image. “Again,” he said, “with ready words. Excellent. But like you, I do get tired.”
“So,” I said, “looks like I’ll have to forget about sleep in order to stay behind the van.”
“More rapid return language,” he said. “A pleasure to listen.” Something in the car changed. “I wish to thank you for asking about my life,” Reznikov offered, sincerely. “And for allowing me to tell you about it. Had no idea I was so hungry to say it out loud.” I spotted a Dodge Challenger in the rearview mirror. It came on fast and pulled in close behind the Chrysler. I was boxed in. “Was a starving man,” he went on, also noting the arrival via the mirror on his side. Two men got out and took positions just outside each of our doors. “The day waits,” he said in closing. “We are done.”
“What’s this?” I said.
He opened the door and started to get out. “Have selected a memorable location,” said Stefan Reznikov, “in which you will die. Do not be concerned about a lack of sleep. Momentarily, that deficiency will be gone. Sleep will become new estate for you.” He got out and turned back. “Goodbye, Theodore,” he said. “I do wish you had considered joining my organization. Could have made place for you. Am a little sad we will never see each other again.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” I said.
“Have important business,” he said, “at the home of Sergeant Dennis Mulcahy. Believe that is where the child, Grace, is, no?” He stopped to indicate the two men by the car. “For you I have called in the cowboys.” He left the door open and walked back to the van, having figured correctly that I would lose my cool.
In fact, I went berserk. The cowboys were braced to handle what came. I threw open the driver’s door, lunged out of the Chrysler, and was met with a right hook that rattled the contents of my skull and dropped me to my knees. It was several moments before the spin art that became my mind became the concrete surface of the highway on which my forehead rested. I was brought to my feet and held upright with a cowboy on each arm, as if I were the Scarecrow, and they were the Flying Monkeys, bigger than I would have thought, who held me fast with huge hands and the pneumatic strength of apes. “I am going to give you Neanderthals the chance to let go,” I said, “before the train leaves the station.”
The wall of muscle attached to my left arm let dope-slapped me upside the back of the head which sent me back into spin art again. I could feel that I was being maneuvered away from the car out into the road. I don’t recall that I had to use my feet. “Okay,” I said, “you guys are in for it now.” I am sure it was more slurred than actually said.
It invited another dope-slap. This time from the fellow on my right. Instead of going for the back of my head, his blow was a full frontal, landing squarely on my face. Not without something to gain, even from the bloody mess it made of my nose, it confirmed for me that both men were right handed.
When my vision cleared enough for me to observe that the van was no longer in sight, I saw something larger coming toward us from the direction in which they had me propped up and rigidly held. It was an eighteen-wheeler. And it was gathering speed. We were straddling the center line, or rather I was, which put cowboys left and right in separate lanes. Another moment and it closed that they would let go at a last possible moment, and it was intended that I end my days not unlike the remnant of a bug splattered against the chrome grill of the truck barreling down on top of us.
There was no hope of my getting loose from the gym-forged clutches of the cowboys. I wasted not more than a second or two on that. Instead, I grabbed each of the men by his shirt sleeve. I could never break free of these beasts, but my grasp, born of panic the way it was, was not without some cause for alarm on their parts.
The slight jolt of their reactions emboldened me, and I entwined my fingers into death grips such that what closed for them was perhaps that tables might be about to turn. They were each right handed, which meant they favored right in all things, even in the power of their legs. Thus, the piece of meat on my right could lean in that direction, gain some purchase with his feet, and pull all three of us enough so that he could clear the truck.
I quickly made it plain that I intended to take one or both men with me should it come to
that.
The surprised hunk of flex and strut on my left would not be able to obtain the same force of sustained pull by relying on his left side. However, he did have hold of me with his right hand, which meant that he could win the day with well-timed last-instant yanking and jerking back in the direction that would allow him to clear the truck.
And the truck was growing in our fields of vision such that terror had taken root in all three of us. It became a tug of war. They the tuggers, I the rope. I resolved that they could rip me limb from limb, but there was no way I was going to let go. In the few seconds remaining, I was confident and, strangely, not un-amused. I may have actually shown some teeth and a greasy, what-have-I-got-to-lose smile that conveyed to each of these men that I was perhaps now alpha to their beta, and it was they who were in trouble. Yes, so, I worked it, in what time I had, using calm as I dug in deeper for ever more fatal grasps.
They were combating each other now, through me. I was merely the conduit. Their sudden reversal in fortunes endowed me with a surge of strength I knew I was going to marvel at if I survived. The chrome bumper and grill of the truck replaced the previous magnitude of sky; there was simply nothing else to see. I thought the guy on my left was going to jerk and yank my left arm right off my torso. But the formidable force applied on my right, at the very last second, won the day.
The poor fellow on the left had compromised his footing with all the jerking and yanking, and in the end the lucky guy on my right eased us just enough in his direction, to where when the truck met us, the one on the left simply disappeared, and we two remaining whipped around in the direction of the applied force, in the manner of an object of some heft having been flung by means of a catapult. We dis-attached from one another and I went airborne for a moment which lofted me clear of the road out into the tall grass down off the gravel shoulder.
The eighteen wheeler, having made its contact at its appointed coordinates, did not stop to assess the flesh that had become a part of its grill work. It disappeared in the direction in which it had been heading all along. I rolled to a stop and caught sight of it diminish on the horizon as it disappeared from view. A quick inventory told me that I was bloody-faced, arm-bruised, stretched to the limit, but was otherwise uninjured.
The gun holstered at the base of my back had been removed and forfeited to one of the two cowboys. For all I knew it could now be part of what was fused to the grill of the death-truck. Too, it might well be in the hands of he who had been pulled clear, as I had been. I crouched and listened and was somewhat obscured by the grass for which scant cover I was grateful. I unholstered the Smith and Wesson that had been strapped to my ankle. Silence ruled the moment above the slight rush of breeze moving through the tall grass. I began to hear muffled groaning and a scraping of feet against gravel that telegraphed trouble with a footing being gained. I crouched lower and waited.
The cowboy previously on my right slowly and painfully obtained semi-upright status and hobbled toward our two vehicles while clutching his right arm which, left to gravity, looked like it might have dangled. He tripped and caught himself, and shuffled the rest of the way to the Charger. He did not appear to be at all concerned with where I was.
I moved with stealth toward the road and listened as he started the engine. I stood up, then, and moved into clear view out in the road. I saw that he’d had to reach across his torso with his left arm, to engage the gear selector that must have been on the console between the seats. He backed away from my car and then had to awkwardly use his left arm to manipulate the gear selector again. He swung out and around my Chrysler and made directly for me. I stood my ground and raised the gun and took my time getting him sighted through the oncoming windshield. I called upon calm and took a breath and fired the weapon repeatedly until I had to leap out of the way or be mowed down.
The Dodge Charger sped down the highway in the direction from which the truck had come. Disappointment descended upon concluding that I had missed the mark. But a moment later the car lost acceleration and veered off the road, down the shoulder into the grass, where it rolled to an awkward and bumpy stop. Its horn sounded, and continued to broadcast itself as I vaulted toward my car, started the engine, executed a tight U-turn, and used every bit of speed the Chrysler could muster to head back along 288 into town. Though I may have evaded physical earshot, the sound of the Charger’s horn stayed with me as I devoted myself to getting to Mulcahy’s house, about which, at that moment, I could only characterize my state of mind as mania.
Eighteen
All looked calm when I pulled up to the Mulcahy house. It was not yet noon and the neighborhood projected the easy stillness of that stretch of day when half or more of its residents were gone to endeavors professional. Those who remained tended toward quiet leisure before students were released from school and bread-winners returned from trenches. I was buoyed by the apparent calm, while, at the same time, alarm simmered at the lack of a presence I had hoped would be on display from the moment it had become a safe-house for Grace. I had not anticipated uniformed sentries, but I would have liked to have seen, what, readiness? Activity? A vehicle or two?
I parked in the empty driveway and surveyed the street as I headed for the front door. I looked for something odd, something that didn’t belong. Nothing. Again, I was struck by the quiet and the calm. More, actually, it was a banal stillness the worm turning in my gut wanted me to acknowledge as prelude to an unwelcomed reveal. I was on notice that all rules were off.
The plantation shutters on the front windows were closed. I could justify that. Morning sun. Or, of darker intent, to obscure the aim for drive-bys and snipers. The front door looked unmolested. I rang the doorbell which sounded a deep two-note chime that resolved more like a bong. No response. I tried the latch. The door was unlocked. My alarm advanced as the universe once again announced that evil traveled in the same conveyance with the banal. I slowly pushed the door open and went inside.
The house was dark. Nothing looked to be out of place. Living room. Dining room. Kitchen. Laundry room. Their bodies were in the den at the back of the house, a large expansive room with terra cotta tile on the floor and a large deep-pile area rug under the furniture that floated in the center of the room. Plantation shutters, again, covering nearly the entire back wall, save for a central monolith of brick that housed a dramatic fireplace. The shutters were closed and the house continued dark. There was a door to the outside, and two open entrance ways leading from and to other parts of the house on either end of the huge room. Four of Reznikov’s men were sprawled about on the floor, all dead, having received marksman-accurate fatal gunshot wounds; center forehead, throat, center upper torso, one directly into a left eye.
Mulcahy was dead from multiple wounds he received in limbs and back. His body cloaked that of his wife’s; he had used some of the furniture for a blockaded firing position. He died spread out like a blanket over Catherine in a last effort to shield her with his body. Underneath her lay Grace, remarkably calm and alert. She looked up at me in wonder of what further terror was in store for her.
I pulled her out from under Dennis and Catherine, and held her tight, which she did not like. There was no more trust in her for anyone. The shots that had killed and remained lodged inside the Mulcahys had reached Catherine only after having traveled through her husband, the ones he had taken in the back. Together, they had shielded, protected, and had saved Grace.
As the four dead comrades had to have died instantly and were obviously shot from the front. None of them could have survived their wounds long enough to put those bullets into Dennis Mulcahy’s back. There had to have been a fifth hit man who escaped Mulcahy’s formidable defense and had delivered the fatal shots before having fled the scene.
I did not see evidence of a wounded individual having struggled to vacate the property. I assumed whoever had survived left via the front door, without drawing attention to what had just occurred behind him inside the house. No doubt a vehicle had been involv
ed which carried the fifth, surviving assailant back to report to Reznikov. Had he made the mistake of assuming he had succeeded in killing Grace? The attack had been un-interrupted; he should have had plenty of opportunity to have discovered the unmolested child, as I had just done. Did the expert killing of his four evil compatriots so undo him as to make him panic and run?
I had a decision to make. By rights, having discovered the bloodbath, I should have immediately called the proper authorities. I hesitated on the conclusion that Grace had just been spared by the hand of something other than the authorities, who, in the circumstance, would insist upon Grace’s being taken into protective custody; thus, leading to a bureaucratic labyrinth my gut told me would drag us all to a horrible end. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I had to get Grace out of there before anyone showed up. I turned to go back out the way I had come in and came face to face with a morbidly stricken Adam Seldeen who stood in the open entryway with his weapon drawn, a weight pulling his dangling arm toward the floor. He very nearly received a bullet from the weapon I held in my right hand while holding Grace in my left. I lofted my weaponed arm toward the ceiling, distrusting my last-second-reflex not to fire. I said, “Jesus, man!”
“I knew it,” he said. “I knew.”
“They’re dead,” I said, though I’m not sure he heard me. He could not take his eyes off the Mulcahys, the one curled around the other, like nesting tables. He had not flinched when I had my weapon poised to shoot at him.
“I felt it,” he said. “Got here as fast as I could.”
“Dennis took four of them down,” I said. “There must have been a fifth shooter.”
“He had taken leave-time,” said Seldeen. “From the department. I could tell you the moment it happened. I felt it in my own back. Downtown. I raced over here when he did not respond to my calls.”
It had been a remarkably short time since Reznikov and I had parted company, when he announced that he planned to head here. Had he waited in the van out front? I did not recognize any of his dead shooters; he must have ordered the assault while remaining at a remote distance. I must have just missed them. I said, “You’re going to have to handle this.”
Spare Parts: A Ted Mitchell Detective Novel (Ted Mitchell Detective Novels Book 4) Page 13