by Chuck Logan
“Hey, now, girl; you look cold in there,” Gator said in a reasonable voice.
“Leave me alone.”
Damn kid coiled tighter, like an obstinate snake. “Can’t do that-your mom and dad are on the way, with the sheriff. Heard you’ve had quite a night,” Gator said.
At the mention of her parents, the kid’s lower lip trembled. But the dark pockets of her eyes struck Gator as unyielding. He needed to get her in the light. See her eyes.
“Look, I’m not going to let you freeze. I’m taking you in the house.” He extended his hand; she wielded the screwdriver. Gator struck fast, snatched her arm, plucked the screwdriver from her hand, and tossed it away. Getting pissed, he lifted her bodily, roughly, from the trunk and tucked her, kicking and flailing, under his arm.
When he got her in the kitchen, he released her. Immediately, she tried to run. He caught her easily and shoved her back into the room. She banged up against the kitchen table, arching away when she saw Sheryl come into the room. Gator could see her eyes now; hot, green, hostile over the smeared dirt and blood on her face. And Sheryl wasn’t helping, walking to the corner by the stove, one arm folded across her chest, the other up, hand covering her face, fingers worrying at her forehead. Eyes downcast, Sheryl refused to look at the girl.
“C’mon, kid.” Gator gestured awkwardly. “You want something to eat, some milk or something?”
She gave him such a look of utter pugnacity that he saw, uh-uh, no way. This was going nowhere fast. So Gator tried to think it through, to solve it like a problem. Put her back in the trunk. Couple hours she’d be unconscious, then put her in back of the truck. That way Sheryl could get the Nissan out of here. Ditch it in the Cities. Then he’d sneak the kid back, say two miles from Broker’s house. Leave her in the woods. Be tricky, they’d be searching, but if the snow held, if he went on snowshoes…it just might…
“Gator!” Sheryl whipped around, alert.
He heard it too, a determined knock on the front door. “Quick,” he said, moving to the utensil drawer, yanking it open, pulling out the Luger. To Sheryl, “Get her out of sight. In the bathroom. Keep her quiet.” He glared at the kid. “Not a peep.”
The kid stared wide-eyed for a moment, fixed on the Luger, then on his face. The hot hostile eyes refocused. Very distinctly she said, “When my mom and dad catch you, they’re gonna shoot you right in the head.”
“Get her out of her, keep her quiet,” Gator muttered as Sheryl wrestled the kid down the hall into the bathroom, shut the door. He pulled his shirt out of his jeans, stuck the Luger in his back pocket, and flared the shirt around it. Then he walked to the door, moved the curtain aside, and groaned.
Cassie.
She stood in the porch light, wearing a white parka, bareheaded, hair whipping around, hugging herself, stamping her feet, face all bright and twitchy with craving of one kind or another. Gator opened the door. “What the hell?”
She stepped past him fast, shivering. “Cold out there. Crazy too. You hear…”
He stared at her. Un-fucking-believable.
“…somebody shot Harry Griffin, killed him, at his place he’s renting to that Broker guy. Except Griffin musta shot back, ’cause they found the guy they think did it. With a gun and everything. He bled to death, out in the woods. And you know what Madge Grolick heard from Ginny the dispatcher in the sheriff ’s office? She talked to Jeff Tindall who went out with Fire and Rescue and when they found the guy, he was all chewed up. Wolves, they think…”
“Cassie, you can’t be here,” Gator said. But he liked the part about Shank being off the board. Gave them some breathing room. Now if he could just get Cassie to shut up and go away.
“…and now Broker’s little girl is missing.” Cassie grimaced. “I met them, in town. The mother was…nice to me.”
Gator stared at her, mouth open. What the hell?
Cassie just continued talking, like she was gossiping over coffee. “There’s cops showing up from all over. Madge said, Ginny said, Broker was some king cop in the Cities or something. They’re bringing a helicopter, these special trained search dogs from Duluth…”
Gator gripped her arm, lowered his head, and marched her toward the door. “You gotta go.”
“Why? You been trying to get me out here ever since you got out of prison,” she said, her smile jerky.
“Where’s Jimmy?” Gator said in a dull voice.
“Showing Teddy how to wash his favorite Canadian Labrie garbage truck at the garage. Where I was, and you never showed up like you said you would. To give me something. So here I am. Drove through a lot of crap to get here, too. Now what do I have to do, sing for my supper or what?” She ran her index finger down from his throat to his sternum.
Gator swatted the hand away. “I mean it, Cassie.”
“So do I,” she said, undeterred.
That’s when the kid screeched in the bathroom: “Get your hands off me.” Stuff banging around, a struggle.
Gator sagged. Seeing Cassie react to the voice, obviously a child’s voice, he sagged more. Wasn’t falling apart. It was completely apart. Didn’t matter now. None of it. Just let it happen…
“What the hell you got going on here?” Cassie said, suddenly frantically alert. “Christ, Gator, you can’t have a kid around this shit you got out here.” Her eyes flared. “Remember Marci…” He didn’t answer, made no attempt to stop her. She pushed past him, strode down the hall, and yanked open the bathroom door.
She saw a woman standing in front of the sink with her hands cupped on a little girl’s mouth, trying to hold her steady. Seeing Cassie enter, the woman reacted in a dazed spasm. Releasing her hold, stepping back. The girl had wild red hair, matted with burrs. Her green parka was filthy, snow pants ripped, and her face all red with scratches, bruises, and dried blood. The little Broker girl she’d met last Saturday morning in town, at Big Lake Threads, with her mother.
“It’s all right, I’m Teddy’s mom,” Cassie said to Kit. Then she turned her eyes on the woman. Epiphany was not exactly in her vocabulary, but she was seized with a revelatory fury. There were things more powerful than the need to peddle her ass for a hit of meth. Than playing sick old games with her brother. “Who the fuck are you?” Cassie screamed at the woman, her voice exploding in the small dingy room.
Kit’s mouth fell open, imprisoned in the close charged air, looked back and forth at their angry faces, their hair, their physiques. Then she looked up, away from the berserk tension in their eyes, and saw a corpulent gray leopard spider in a web in the corner next to the door. The spider uncoiled and flexed its legs.
Like a disturbed ghost.
Sheryl, having her own freaky prescient moment, yelled, “Gator, what’s going on?”
Gator heard the incensed voices echo down the hall, through the kitchen to where he sagged against the peeling wallpaper next to the front door. Almost dreamy with the profound simplicity of it, seeing how they were all connected, this continuous piece of yarn. One loose end, and it all came unraveled.
“What’s going on is, he’s a control weirdo, that’s what,” Cassie shouted at Sheryl Mott. “And who’s subbing in for who, I got no idea.” Then she shoved Sheryl with both hands, hard, knocking her back so her calves caught on the rim of the bathtub and she fell backward, flailing her arms, pulling the shower curtain with her. Cassie gripped Kit firmly by the arm and walked her from the room. “Honey. You’re coming with me. We’re getting out of here.”
Gator slowly shook his head. His rage was total, and his voice was so small. “No, you ain’t,” he almost whispered as, from the corner of his eye, he saw her striding down the hall, through the kitchen, escorting-that was exactly the word-escorting the kid, arm draped protectively over her shoulder like a mother hen.
“No, you ain’t,” he repeated softly, pushing though the terrible inertia, off the wall, placing one arm out, planting his hand on the far wall, blocking their path.
Kit watched it and listened to it, trembling. C
onfused at how the air kept getting thicker with all the scary, invisible adult bad stuff. She heard cursing in back of her, where the other woman was climbing out of the bathtub.
“You’re in the way,” Cassie said to Gator.
“Can’t let you go. Just can’t,” Gator said in an almost helpless voice.
“Watch me,” Cassie said, eyes flashing with disgust. “You stay here with your standin whore.” They scurried past, out the door.
Gator shook his head. Years of work. Perfect plan. Perfect location. Belize. Boat engines. Never gonna see the fucking ocean. With tremendous effort, he pushed off the wall, started after them, Sheryl coming up now, grimacing, rubbing a bruised knot on her temple. Eyes like jelly. Shock maybe. Yapping, “What’s going on? Who is she?”
“C’mon,” he said, going out the door, onto the porch. Cassie and the kid were about ten yards out, ghostly in the blowing snow, starting to run toward the Jeep Cherokee Jimmy the moron bought her when he won the Moose lottery. Jeep was running, lights on. Why not. Everything else was in plain goddamn sight.
“I’m telling you, Cassie, you better stop,” Gator shouted coming down the steps, bringing the Luger out, flicking off the safety.
“Run,” Cassie shouted urgently to Kit, pushing her forward, shielding her with her body. “Around to the driver’s side, I’ll let you in.”
The Luger drifted up. Gator, dreamy-eyed in the blowing snow, found Cassie’s back, below her blowing black hair. Another Bodine. And then there was one. He squeezed the trigger. Kit screamed when Teddy Klumpe’s mom pitched forward without making a sound, arms twisted, clutching behind at her back, bounced off the grill of the Jeep, twirled once in the headlight beams and fell face forward into the snow.
Gator shifted to the smaller target, but she was darting through the headlights, and with the snow, he briefly lost her. She reappeared, racing toward the barn. He fired again, but it was too far now, the light uncertain. Saw her duck into the narrow black vertical shadow of the ajar door to the left of the garage.
He turned and pounded Sheryl on the arm. Sheryl, practically useless now, had her hands up one on each side of her face. All freaked out and motor mouth, “Jesus, Gator, Jesus; when is this going to fuckin’ stop?”
“Soon’s we nail that little bitch. Now listen. You go in where she did, push her on through. I’ll be around back, by the pens. Catch her when she runs out. Go.” He shoved Sheryl toward the partially open sliding door. Took off running around the barn.
Kit wiggled through the door and ran on pure instinct, just a pounding heart and lungs wrapped around a bottle rocket of fright. Her boots skidded in the dark, collided with something hard, steel, some machine. She sprawled on the floor. Crawling, feeling with her right hand along a series of wooden panels. Ripe rotten grainy smells. She heard somebody take a sobbing breath as they squeezed through the door behind her. The bad woman who had put her in the trunk. Coming after her.
Kit scrambled to the end of the wooden thing and huddled, hiding behind it. She could hear the woman, feeling around in the dark, by the door. Kit swung her head. Eyes bulging, runaway heart; she saw that the back end of the enclosure was open to the storm. This empty floor dusted with white. And in the middle of it she saw a tiny familiar black silhouette arch up against the flickering snow.
Sheryl staggered forward-Jesus, what a bummer, talk about bad tripping on plain old real life-averting her eyes going past the prone figure under the Jeep high beams, the long black hair so like her own, rippling in the wind. She reached the barn, squirmed through the door, and tried to get her bearings. Their secret storehouse. Okay. Where’s the light switch? Up on the wall to the right. Her hand fumbled in the dark. There it is. She took a step into the long room, her arm stretched back, fingers on the switch. Poised to flush the kid. Aw right, ready or not, here I come. She snapped the switch.
Chapter Fifty-five
Knowing the road, doing a hundred over the Barrens’ flat, Nygard shouted adrenaline-spiked tactics to Barlow on the radio. “There’s the barn to the left, then a cement-block shop and the farmhouse to the right, you know it?”
“Been by it, don’t know it,” Barlow shouted back in a crackle of static.
“I’ll go in to the right of the house, you take the left. First one out of the car rushes the front door. We go straight in.”
“Straight in,” Barlow repeated in a throaty shiver. “No fucking around.”
Another transmission, broke the static. “Keith, Howie; maybe you should wait, we’re just ten, fifteen minutes behind you…got four cars on the road…more on the way…”
“Straight in,” Nygard shouted back. “If it’s for real, the last thing we want is Gator getting in the woods, figure he’s got a deer gun at least.” Nygard’s face was working, staring into the snow. Then he yelled into the mike. “County Z, three minutes out.”
“Three minutes,” Barlow yelled back.
Broker and Nina sat silent, listening to the cops go back and forth on the radio. No communication between them. Past getting ready. Past tactics.
Almost three minutes to the dot, Nygard yelled, “See it on the right!” He switched off the headlights, and they hurtled through a spun gray tunnel. Then Broker and Nina saw the blur of the display light, the red of the tractor. Other lights, car lights. The shadows of buildings.
“Here we go,” Nygard yelled, swerving off the road, sledding through a ditch, throwing up a cloud of snow as the cruiser stove through the drifts, skidding into the yard.
Nina and Broker leaped out before the car even came to a halt, were already bounding forward when the barn erupted in a sheet of fire. The confusion of snow disappeared in the roaring yellow orange plume of light. Instinctively they looked away, protecting their eyesight.
A few seconds later, Nina screamed in a voice loud enough to carry over the roar of the fire: “Two o’clock!”
Gator hugged the mudguard of an old rusty Deere at the edge of the tractor graveyard, where he had a good view of the open loafing shed in back of the barn. Caught movement, swung the Luger. Okay…
Huh? He held off, seeing the rabbit-ass cat running out from the shed. Cutting in back of the shop. He giggled nervously. No shit. Black cat crossing my path…
Then, just like hunting; let the doe go by, wait for the buck. He saw the kid dart from the shed, running like hell, chasing the cat. Saw her dive into the snow, wrap the cat in her arms. Get up, running clumsy now, arms out of play, clutching the cat. Goddamn, he thought, leveling the pistol. Why didn’t I think of that?
No more than ten yards. Almost reach out and touch. Moving with her. All right, you little runt…
Just as he squeezed the trigger, the back end of the barn shuddered with a whoosh of flame, knocking him back, sending the shot wild, like he pulled the trigger and blew the fucker up or something. Scorched his face. Blinding him. What the…
Blinking, he saw the kid, sprawled in the snow, not fifteen yards away. His eyes blooming with spots, Gator couldn’t aim the pistol. He stepped out from cover. She saw him, pushed up on her feet, and started running again.
Gator’s breath came in a helpless giggle as he sprinted after her. Gaining on her going past the shop-clinging to the damn cat cut her speed. Rounding the house, reaching out now, feeling the tips of her hair whipping in the wind, grazing his fingertips.
“Got you,” he yelled, grabbing a handful of her hair, yanking her roughly back as he skidded to a halt, grasping her hair at arm’s length while she swung one arm, kicked at him. Her breath coming in fierce little sobs. Damn cat squirming in the crook of her elbow.
Heard someone yell over the rushing flames. Sheryl?
Stunned, he focused his eyes on the yard in front of the house, at the vision of two figures running in the hellfire blaze. Running straight at him. A man on the left with a shotgun and a woman on the right, in pajamas it looked like, with her arms outstretched, hands empty. Behind them he saw the county cruiser at the end of a trough of snow, somebod
y who could have been Keith, one hand shielding his eyes from the fire, the other raising a pistol.
Immediately Gator wrapped the girl in his left arm, pulling her in close, and jammed the muzzle of the Luger against her head.
“Everybody stop where you are,” he shouted.
They didn’t stop.
They were all in. Broker keyed on Nina. “Call it!” he screamed, running at the guy who was holding a pistol to Kit’s head fifty yards away.
“Break left, draw fire,” Nina yelled back.
Without slowing his stride, Broker swerved to the left, danced briefly, giving her time to close the distance. Then he raised the shotgun and ran straight at the guy, screaming, out-of-his-mind crazy: “Let her go, or I’ll blow your fucking head off. Let her go. LET HER GO!”
Nina continued forward, plodding now, arms outstretched, pleading, hysterical. “Don’t hurt her. PLEASE. Don’t hurt her.” Slowed her pace to a deliberate walk, out of sync with the frantic screaming all around, the rolling fire light, the crunch of a secondary explosion, flaming debris arcing up. Thirty yards…
Nygard’s shaking voice calling out, “Wait, wait.” Barlow behind him, yelling too. Kit’s screams topping off the bedlam. “Mom, Dad!”
Twenty-five yards…
Gator’s heart was about to come right out of his chest like the tiny monster in Alien. He clicked his eyes on the bedraggled imploring woman for half a second, then quickly fixed his attention on the guy. It was him. Broker. His gaunt wolf face gone to mindless rage, running in from the right. Screaming. Loony. With a leveled shotgun. Keith back there, gun out in a two-handed grip. This black woman in a state trooper’s suit, all tucked and neat like a painted toy soldier.
“I’LL DO IT!” Gator screamed, pressing the pistol against the squirming kid’s head. Fucking cat clawing, going nuts. “I SWEAR…”
Broker coming on with the shotgun, irrational. Barely twenty yards away now. He’d lost it. Eyes pure psycho in the firelight. Gonna shoot no matter what. “It’s your kid?” Gator screamed, astounded.