Born Rebel and The Guns of Livingston Frost - Two Short Novels

by Ardath Mayhar

  “You idiots! I don’t know why I waste my talents working with the likes of you! I’ll have to get Simpson’s bunch to fill the order, I suppose. And who else has such a lovely stock, just what the client wants?” He sighed and stalked from the bright garage.

  The light went off and the door went up.

  Myron cleared his throat. “Get the Wesson back in the van. We’ll dump this lot in the first likely spot we see. Then we’re goin’ back and get rid of that woman. She’s the only one can put us in Dutch, and we’ve got to get rid of her, permanent.”

  * * * * * * *

  The night was still dark and wet, but there was little traffic, and they made good time as they picked up Highway 171 again. “We’ll go down past De Ridder and turn back east on 196,” David said, studying the shining ribbon of road ahead of them.

  “That will put us back close, without having to travel far through Texas. Nobody will expect us to be heading back toward Templeton, anyway. We can get there in time to hide out until it’s dark again. Then we can slip up and see what goes on at that house. I’ll bet that woman is there by herself again.” His eyes gleamed, and he glanced down at the bite-mark on Duson’s arm.

  Myron growled deep in his throat and picked up speed. He had good reason to want to put that woman down.

  They went through Many very early in the morning. Few cars were on the streets, and Myron took care to drive exactly at the speed limit, yet a cop-car turned a corner behind them and hit its lights. The siren wailed them to a stop.

  The policeman looked sleepy and out of sorts. When Myron handed out his driver’s license, the officer shone a flashlight back into the body of the van. That woke him completely.

  Duson saw the hand go for the gun, and he rolled over the engine housing, over Crowley’s lap, and out the far door before the officer could fire. They were alongside a closed service station, whose apron disappeared behind it into darkness broken by the shapes of trees. Myron dashed for that cover, hearing a single set of footsteps following him. He pushed through a screen of bushes, and the footing went out from under him, letting him drop into dark space. He hit with a splash in knee-deep water, cold as a witch’s tit, and another splash told him that one of his men had made it with him.

  “Who?” he breathed.

  “Septien,” came the reply. “We move fas’, my frien’. That cop, he call for backup. They be here any minute, an’ we better be gone. I don’ know thees place. They do. We cross, you theenk?”

  Myron pushed up the muddy bank on the far side of the creek. There was a thick stand of pines there, and he went deep into it before it began to thin again, letting onto a quiet residential street. Cars were parked in the semidarkness between the light standards, and nothing moved except a prowling cat, which whisked across the street and into the shelter of an old fashioned veranda.

  “You give me one minute,” came Septien’s quiet voice, “an’ I have one of these theeng go.”

  He was as good as his word. Without a sound, the Cajun opened the door of a pale gray Mazda and slid under the steering wheel. A few deft motions of his fingers brought a cough, and the engine fired, quietly enough not to wake the sleepers in the nearby houses.

  Myron piled into the other side, and they crept away from the curb without turning on the lights. At the corner, Septien pulled the switch, and twin beams glared into the early morning dimness. They stopped at the stop-sign.

  Three police cars were pulled up alongside the main street-cum-highway, and the van was surrounded by a swarm of uniformed men. Myron cursed softly, as the twins were dragged out of the rear doors and bundled unceremoniously into a vehicle.

  That didn’t do a thing to make him any happier. He had done a job that turned sour. He had lost the van and half his force. He had a grudge, and when Myron Duson was angry, it was time to go home and lock all the doors.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lily Frost

  Lily lay flat on her back in the four-poster in which her grandmother had given birth to eight stillborn children, one daughter, and her father. She had died there, too, at the age of seventy-one, but that didn’t trouble her granddaughter. Dying was the only thing in her existence that she had never felt frightened about.

  Many other things terrified her, however, the worst being Martin. Sometimes she had nightmares in which he came bursting into the house, struck down Stony, and dragged her away again into the abusive, drug-ridden life she had escaped.

  When those men had broken the door and confronted her, she had been certain that they were led by her former lover and worst enemy. It had been desperation, she was sure, that gave her the courage to bite the man who grabbed her, setting her teeth into his hairy arm until she tasted blood. She hoped he got tetanus from that bite—or hydrophobia!

  She turned restlessly, twisting the blanket and the hand made quilt so that she had to straighten them out again. Then she stared at the dim glimmer of light from the yard lamp outside, which was reflected in the mirror.

  It looked as wet as the stormy night. The flap of drenched branches against the wooden siding kept making her jump, her nerves jolting every time.

  There was a light tap at the door, and she smiled faintly. That would be Stony, worried about her.

  “Yes,” she murmured, and the door opened to admit his slight shape.

  He was carrying a teacup, which he balanced with great care, for his limp tended to slosh liquids. “Here, I thought you might need this. I’ve got some sleeping stuff, too, that the doctor gave me. Do you want that, too?”

  She sat and pushed back the covers, swinging her long legs over the edge of the bed and reaching for her robe. “No. Thanks, Stony. Just the tea. That should relax me and let me sleep. You know I don’t take anything, now. Not anything at all. Something might react with the LSD and set things off again, here when I’m just now getting on top of the flashbacks.”

  He nodded, as he backed to sit in her small rocker. The fitful light, finding its way through swaying branches to her window, danced on his face, which seemed thinner and paler than ever after the evening’s events. He looked entirely too frail, she realized, and the thought frightened her.

  For once, her concern was greater than her internal terrors. “Stony,” she said, reaching for the cup he had set on the dressing table, “you need to take something yourself. You look like a ghost. I will be all right—I always am.” She shivered as she sipped the hot tea, into which he had put a dollop of Grandfather’s brandy.

  “Lily, we’ve got to talk. I wasn’t able, before, but you ought to know what’s going to happen. If they put you on the witness stand, when they catch those men, whoever defends them is going to tear you apart, trying to make it seem you aren’t a reliable witness. Have you thought about that?” He leaned forward, his hands tight on the curved arms of the rocker.

  She sank onto the edge of the bed, warming her hands around the cup. She could see herself in the mirror, a dim ghost of a reflection with huge eyes that were wells of shadow. More like me than I am in the daylight, she thought. She turned back to her brother. “I know. I’ve...been on a witness stand before. I never told you, because I hate to remember it. That one did it, too. He made me look like a crazy, dope-ridden woman who couldn’t understand what was going on, no matter what she thought she saw. And the jury believed it.

  “That’s why...”—she took a long draught of the tea, warming herself to the pit of her stomach against the memory—“...that’s why I ran away and came home.

  “They let Martin out, you see, and he knew I’d testified against him. He killed...but you don’t want to know about that. I don’t want to remember it. He came after me, and I ran. I’ve been expecting him ever since.” She gave a long shuddering sigh.

  “When I thought those men were Martin, I knew there was no reason for being afraid any more. They were going to kill me, and if I could make them sorry I was going to do it. I wish—I wish I had done the same thing to Martin, a long time before he killed that kid. T
hings might have been different, if I had.”

  Stony was staring at her, his eyes wide and his face tense. “I didn’t know, dear. It isn’t going to be easy, but we’ll be in it together. You are dead certain you can identify—but of course you are. I’ll go away and let you sleep, now.” He rose stiffly and limped away down the hall, leaving her staring, once again, at the ceiling.

  This time, she was relaxed. The hot tea and the brandy had loosed her muscles and her mind, and she knew she could sleep now.

  But instead she chose to relive that old trial, which she had thought forever lost in the fogs of the past....

  * * * * * * *

  “You saw this man, Martin Fewell, attack Samuel Barrett? With your own eyes? You were present at the struggle?” The defense counsel’s hard gray eyes bored into hers, making her throat constrict.

  “I was there, yes. And I saw Martin hit him with his fists. Then, when the boy got up again, he picked up a two-by-four and hit him over the head with it. He beat his head until the board sounded squashy when it hit.” There, it was out, and she hadn’t faltered.

  “But had you not taken drugs during the evening? Mind-altering drugs, which often produce delusions in the minds of those who take them? Lysergic acid diethylamide, to be exact, or LSD?” His gaze was intent, intimidating.

  “Martin gave me things, yes, but not that day. I had nothing that day, and I know what I saw. I saw Martin kill Sammy.” She felt tears starting in her eyes, and she felt, also, Martin’s glare from his seat at the defense table.

  The lawyer leaned forward like a wolf about to kill. “But is it not true that you sometimes have what is known as flashbacks, sudden episodes of disorientation caused by the drug, even when you have had none for some time?”

  It was true. She nodded, wordless, and bent her head to stare into her lap. But that wasn’t what happened! She cried inside herself. She knew it was hopeless...Martin was about to get away with murder.

  * * * * * * *

  Lily sighed softly. She had lived through that and through Martin’s search for her afterward. She would survive this, too. She closed her eyes and slept.

  But among her restless dreams, a dim shape prowled, sometimes as Martin, sometimes as that other man who resembled him so closely. She sat again in that courtroom, but this time it was Stony whose death she remembered, and it was that other Martin who had killed him.

  She forced herself out of the depths of her dream and sat, her eyes wide, staring at the shadow of the branches on the wall. Fury built inside her, burning away at the residue of timidity that had troubled her for so long.

  “Nobody is going to hurt my brother!” she whispered, clenching her long fingers into fists. “I will not let anyone hurt Stony!”

  Somehow, that resolve eased her inner tensions. When she slept again, it was dreamlessly and well.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Livingston Frost

  The next morning was a difficult one for Livingston. He had been so sick with worry about his sister, the night before, that he had given no thought to what had happened to his home. But now, in the newly washed sunlight, he could see the traces where those men had passed. He felt as if dirty hands had touched him.

  The furniture, while some was scratched, was undamaged, testifying to the staying power of solid Philippine mahogany. The ruby glass was unrepairable, and Lily vacuumed the spot where it had smashed, after they picked up the curving shards with careful fingers.

  It took some time to get the house into order again, but even then it felt as if a secure stronghold had been breached. It would never be the same again. The places on the walls where his showpieces had hung reminded him, when he looked up, that he had lost pieces that he was fond of, though they were not really valuable.

  The Baby Dragoon Revolver that had been his grandfather’s was one that he wished, now, he had put into the bank. It had had extensive repair, but the old man carried it for years, and it was one he wanted to keep. Now it was in the hands of thieves—he shook the thought away and turned to stare around the big parlor.

  “It feels as if somebody has ruined something important,” he mused.

  Lily straightened and stared into his face, her eyes wide. “Yes. That’s the way Martin made me feel, all the time. I thought I was through with that, and here it comes again.

  “Last night—Stony, I was scared out of my wits, last night. But somehow I came through it. Out the other side, you know? After you left, I got hold of myself. I think things will be all right now.”

  She was a bit pale, the bandage on her head making her look rather jaunty. She was polishing the big claw-footed table in the center of the room, rubbing with lemon oil as if to remove the taint of those who had violated their space. Something was troubling her, he could tell, but he waited until she was ready to talk to him.

  They moved the table back into the precise spot from which it had been pushed. They straightened the cut glass and porcelain and Majolica ware that had been displaced from the shelves in the corner of the room. She dusted everything carefully, wiping away all trace of the intruders and the fingerprint powder together.

  At last, she nodded to him. “You sit down for a while. You look tired. I’ll get us some coffee, and then I want to talk to you. I’m worried about something silly, and you can tell me I’m not as well as I pretend to be, and maybe I’ll stop worrying. Then again, maybe I’ll just keep right on but hold it in.”

  This was the time. He had learned to take advantage of every opportunity she gave him to help her with her long struggle. He sat in the stuffed plush armchair that still held the print of his grandfather’s ample bottom; he slipped down into the depression, as always, feeling himself ridiculously slight and frail, compared with the burly Scotsman who had put together the heritage of the Frosts. When Lily returned with the lacquered tray and two Haviland cups and saucers, the rose-sprigged pot, and the Irish linen napkins, he felt tears come to his eyes. That was the signal his mother had used, when she had something important to talk over with his father. They had known as children to go about their own affairs, leaving the adults to solve whatever strange problems haunted their distant world.

  When the cups were filled, the steam rising from the flared shapes, the napkins properly placed on their laps, Lily took a sip, as if for courage. Then she set her saucer carefully on the big table and leaned forward, setting her elbows on her knees in the old tomboyish way her mother had disliked so much.

  “Stony, I had a dream.”

  “I suspect we both had bad dreams, Lily. I tossed and turned, when I wasn’t having nightmares.” He knew this wasn’t enough, and he waited again.

  “It wasn’t that sort of dream. I’ve had them before—dreamed things that really happened, later. But sometimes, if I realized what it was, what might happen, I have done things differently, and it has meant things turned out in a different way. I don’t know—am I making it clear?”

  “You mean that you dreamed, changed what you were going to do because of the dream, and nothing bad came afterward,” he said. He didn’t mention it, but he had done something of the sort himself.

  “Yes. I dreamed that Martin killed me, the night before he killed that boy. So I went out early to the grocery store. When I came back, he was already after Sammy, and he killed him while I watched. The neighbors came before he could get me, too.” She looked rather defiant, as if she expected him to laugh at the notion.

  “So what was it you dreamed that frightened you?” he asked in his gentlest tone.

  “I dreamed that either Martin or that man who looked like him—killed you. And I had the strongest feeling that if we don’t understand that can happen...we may regret it terribly.

  “I want you to take this seriously, Stony. I want you to carry a weapon all the time. What have you got that you can carry without it seeming to be a weapon? It seems as if Grandfather had something sneaky, but I can’t quite remember what it was.”

  Livingston felt a strange sensation go
through him, half recognition, half comfort. She cared about him and worried about him. He’d wondered, as she worked through her long time of trauma, if she had time even to think of him at all. Now he knew.

  “The rifle cane,” he said, in a rather pedantic voice. “Grandfather bought it in 1910 from a bankrupt estate over in Louisiana. Single shot, rim fire, .32 caliber, grip shaped like the head of a dog. It looks like a walking stick, but it contains one round that can come as a very nasty surprise to anyone expecting to find a...helpless cripple who can’t defend himself.”

  “Yes!” she said, leaning even farther in her chair. “I remember now; Gramma found me playing with it in their closet once, and took me out right then, loaded it, and made me fire it at the ash barrel. I’ll never forget the cloud of ashes that flew in all directions when the slug hit it. Then she hid it away, and I barely remembered enough about it to bring it to mind. That’s what you need, Stony. It wasn’t displayed in the house—I’d remember if it had been.”

  “It’s in my closet. For some reason, I always liked the thing—it reminded me of Grandfather. It’s behind my garment bag, on the left side, if you want to go up and get it. We’ll load it right now, if that will make you happier.” He found himself strangely excited at the thought of carrying the cane, which would never be recognized for what it was except by another expert in antique firearms.

  She was gone at once, and he heard her impatient steps crossing the landing, going up the second flight of steps, pattering down the worn carpet of the second-floor hallway. He leaned back in the worn chair and looked at the ceiling, where two linked rings of discoloration, formed when the roof had leaked once when he was a child, still reminded him of the youngster he used to be.