A professional does his job with calm detachment.
Gianni Lucas Santini taught a young Chester LaSalle more than calm detachment. The old guy showed LaSalle the best place in New York to get a suit tailored, and the best place to put an icepick to make sure a guy didn’t make any noise. He took LaSalle from a two-bit street enforcer to a topflight finder of men. And dispatcher of men, as well. LaSalle owed him a lifetime. Easy enough to take on the task of finding his granddaughter.
He hoped Garrett would somehow understand. After a while.
The barnyard stood empty, the gravel drive a pale ghostly snake in the darkness. Smiley’s Jeep was there, parked near the front of the house. LaSalle did nothing but watch the house for twenty minutes. His feet ached and his nose felt like it might fall off, but he stood and watched for any movement.
Satisfied, he moved on. Even in the darkness, the lock was open in less than a minute. He swung the quiet barn door open just enough to squeeze inside and pulled it closed after him.
***
Despite his burning hatred, Smiley had to admire the man’s discipline. He’d watched him cross the open field in the dark, probably feeling invisible in his black clothes, while in fact he glowed like a beacon in the Hunter’s night vision scope. The PI stood and watched, too, exactly as the Hunter would. The Hunter gazed back from behind the kitchen window, never moving until the PI was inside the barn.
Then the Hunter picked up Papa’s Winchester and went out into the cold.
***
LaSalle went straight to the trapdoor this time. When it shushed open, he caught a whiff of sickly sweet decay in the still air of the barn. He shivered and told himself it was because of the cold. He had the Browning nine millimeter in one hand and his LED flashlight in the other. He felt anything but calm detachment right now.
The stairs didn’t even creak under his linebacker frame. The old coot was one hell of a carpenter, for sure. The flashlight lit up a narrow stairwell with sheetrock covering the dirt walls. Wires ran through plastic loops and bare bulbs dangled every few feet. The sheer amount of time, effort, and willpower it would take to do all this... He moved forward, finger ready to twitch and spew death into the darkness.
At the end of the stairs, he found a locked door. Solid oak, no hollow-core shit for this guy. LaSalle held the flashlight under his arm and twirled the delicate picks with his thick clumsy fingers.
Click.
He put the kit away and turned off the flashlight. He felt for the doorknob and gently opened the door, trying to stay quiet. He pushed it open and took a deep breath.
Gun up, light on.
An antique dentist’s chair faced him straight away. A Victorian looking thing, with a heavy wrought-iron base, black padding, and wooden arms stained with something brown. He knew. The smell told him, but he didn’t want to say it.
His feet were rooted to the ground and his eardrums whooshed-whooshed with the rush of his heart. He’d expected to find a burial ground down here, a crafty dump for a crafty killer.
What the fuck was this crazy shit?
As he moved into the small room, LaSalle’s mind kept tripping over things and rebooting to the first image from the doorway.
Was that a tray full of brands? Start over.
Was that a bone saw? Start over.
Was that a collection of painted fingernails? Start over.
Was that—Oh, Lord. A corkboard full of pictures.
So many. So many. Faded Polaroids, so ravaged by time LaSalle could hardly see the frightened girls strapped into the dentist’s chair. He spotted the flier he gave Smiley tacked to the corkboard alongside a picture. He stopped and lowered his eyes. After all this time, he didn’t want to see, to know for sure.
But he had to. To confirm it for her family.
The last time LaSalle cried, he was fourteen years old and broke his pinky so bad it never did get right again. He didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral, didn’t cry when somebody shot his best friend over the name of a street. He cried bitter tears now for Britney Santini.
“Her favorite flavor of ice cream was bubblegum,” LaSalle said to the dark room.
Rage. Too light a word to put a name to the thing sharpening its teeth in his chest. He yanked down the flier and the picture of Britney strapped in the chair. He’d be able to go home after this and tell her family he found her. But not like this. No.
The snowmobile and ATV upstairs had gas in the tanks. He’d take care of the whole joint when he was done with Smiley.
His flashlight swung to another open doorway. It led to a short, dark passage ending in a T intersection. Gun up again, he eased along until he had to decide to go left or right. The cloying odor of decay definitely got stronger to the left, so he went there.
After about twenty feet of narrow hallway, he found a round metal lid about three feet across. It sat on a sheet metal tube with a rubber gasket creating a seal. If LaSalle could smell it with the lid closed, he didn’t really want to open it.
He went back the other way, passing his entry point and following the passage to the right. His flashlight made the camo netting on the walls cast spider web shadows. Gooseflesh rose on his arms when he saw the hand-carved wood sign over the doorway.
Trophy Room.
And then he looked inside.
“Oh Jesus, help us. Lord, no. No.” LaSalle backed out. He’d seen and done some hard things in his life, but this motherfucker was beyond crazy. Beyond human understanding. And his life would end this very night.
LaSalle strode back through the nightmare rooms, burning to be out of here, feeling them behind him in the darkness. He hoped they knew he was here to avenge them.
He rushed past the dentist’s chair, fighting to keep his dinner down. At the entry passage, he shut off his flashlight and mounted the stairs. Cold air dropping from above made it feel like he was climbing into a frigid waterfall, but each freezing breath made him feel better and better.
He stood over the open trapdoor, rethinking his idea of burning everything. He didn’t think there would be enough gas to do it proper. Maybe after he took care of Smiley, he’d siphon the fuel from the Jeep. He’d try to save a few families the misery of seeing the horror of the charnel pit. Some asshole would eventually leak crime scene photos.
Killing Smiley would never bring Britney Santini back. Or Danielle Ortega, or Florida girl. No, it wouldn’t bring anyone back, but it would douse the fire roaring in his brain. LaSalle had his special barrel on the Browning tonight. He retrieved the suppressor from his pocket.
The BOOM of the Winchester inside the barn sounded like the end of the world. Hot fire hit him high between his shoulder blades. LaSalle collapsed to the cold wooden planks, feeling nothing but a million volts of pain in his upper spine.
***
Smiley levered another round into the chamber. But he wouldn’t need it. He knew a clean kill when he saw one. The big fella dropped like a bull elk shot through the spine.
He turned off the night vision scope on his rifle and climbed down to his trophy. Smart guy, for sure, otherwise he wouldn’t have found the trapdoor.
The Hunter had been smarter, lying silent above him in the hayloft.
Smiley hit the light switch and the industrial globes overhead came on. He shook the pins and needles out of his legs. Dang circulation wasn’t what it used to be. He stood over the downed man and saw he was still alive.
His eyes rolled toward Smiley, but he couldn’t move anything else.
“Did you find what you were lookin’ for?” Smiley said.
He took the mean blade from his coveralls.
22
He was a big man, the PI from New York. Smiley had been on more than one hunting trip to Colorado where he broke down an entire elk with Lamar Evans and old Whit Abercrombie, so he knew the work well enough. It took a while, but he got the job done. Into the pit with half of a fifty pound bag of lime. Smiley sat on his haunches and stared into the pit.
Some of t
he lime had puffed over onto Nadine’s blue face, giving her a pristine white mask. He saw something a few years back on a science show about a tribe of African warriors who used white masks in certain ceremonies to represent female ancestors come back to guard them. He’d been so taken with the thought, he found an importer on the Internet and ordered one. He kept it in his bedroom closet. On hard nights, when the Hunter wanted to go out again too soon after taking one, when he lay twisted in the sheets, awash in his own sweat, he’d take the mask from the closet and think of Ma watching over him.
The beautiful version of Ma, before she slipped and—Papa cracked her across the skull with a two-by-four—hit her head on the front steps.
Smiley closed the pit. He had a job to do, and if nothing else, he’d always been known as a hard worker. He tore a small, bloody strip from Nadine’s dress. He retrieved his own shirt covered with Bradley’s blood from a cardboard box of incidental trophies. Nadine’s pie tin was in there, as was a trucker’s stolen wallet the green-haired girl had, and precisely forty-two ID cards from all across the country.
Papa had a lot of knives. It didn’t take long to find a filet knife with the same profile as the mean blade. Beat up over the years, duct tape held the handle together, and he could see corrosion along the cutting edge. It hadn’t been out of Papa’s toolbox for forty years. With a loving hand, Smiley cleaned the rust from the antique blade. The knife had been stone sharpened so many times, its edge felt thin as a razor.
Careful, so careful now. He wet the piece of Nadine’s dress enough to freshen the dried blood. Then he poked the tip of the blade through the fabric and pushed through to the haft. From this angle, he imagined being inside Nadine’s chest when his own blade came through like this. The whump-whumping piece of muscle pierced by his sharp tip, spewing warmth and Nadine’s life into his hands. He had to steady his trembling fingers in order to repeat the process with his own shirt, marking the knife with Bradley’s blood as well.
Smiley took the strip of Nadine’s dress and the tainted knife upstairs with him. He set the motion detectors with his remote and headed for his Jeep.
It took an hour to get out to the Lazy Eight Motel. He drove down back roads so remote even he got worried a time or two. The trusty old Jeep plowed right through the snow and frozen mud and soon enough he put his field glasses on the back side of the rundown place some folks called the Artemis Hilton.
He knew the owners, Bill and Laverne Stubbs, lived in the front. All their windows were dark, save one. He saw the white-blue glare of a TV against their bedroom glass. There were three cars in the parking lot, and it looked like the guests were spread out among the rooms for a little privacy. Perfect.
The Hunter donned a camouflage mask and got out of the Jeep. LaSalle’s room key rested in his pocket, like a talisman Smiley claimed to open his enemy’s kingdom.
He went on foot, treading slow and quiet, the hunting mask covering his face. Normally, he didn’t wear a mask, save the one he showed the girls when they first laid eyes on him. Just the Hunter, glaring into their hearts.
Tonight he wanted to make sure nobody could say they saw an old white man sneaking into this room. He got inside quick and eased the deadbolt into place and made sure the thick curtains were drawn. Then he turned on the lights.
He’d never done this before. Been this personal with one of his kills. He stood and took in the curious thrumming silence only a motel room can present. LaSalle left his heater on, so the space felt warm and friendly.
Smiley removed his thick gloves and tugged on a pair of surgical gloves for the next part. First, he examined the things in LaSalle’s room, in case he wanted another piece for his collection. The rainbow of shirts in the closet made him shake his head. New York people.
The Hunter’s glittering eyes drank in pictures, maps, leftover fliers on the room’s narrow desk. He took a new flier without a fold down the middle, the girl’s face unmarred by an annoying line. He still had one of her broken finger bones in a cigar box under his bed.
The painting over the bed made his breath catch. He’d been to after-church gatherings at Tracy’s before and remembered it hanging in her living room. He stepped up close and pulled the mask up high enough to uncover his nose, pressing it right against the painted canvas. He imagined her perfume on this piece, the oils staining her long red hair, which was bunched in his fist when the mean blade came around.
Smiley pulled the mask back down and berated himself for being distracted. The Hunter needed his discipline now more than ever. Moving fast, he took the bloody knife and opened LaSalle’s suitcase. He found a pair of maroon oxford style shoes and stuffed the knife into one of them. From his inside pocket, he retrieved the suppressor off the killer’s gun. He put it in the other shoe and zipped the suitcase closed again. Even Whit should be able to piece things together from there.
Next, he went to the closet and found a pair of heavy walking boots. He wet the small strip of Nadine’s dress with a bit of water from the sink and used his gloved fingers to press it between the treads of a boot sole.
He put the boot back and surveyed the room again. The map. He went to it and read the pattern of dots like musical notes. Idiots. They had half of them on there at best.
Folding the map back and forth on a line to make the cleanest tear he could, he removed the piece with his property and the Heideman’s on it. He put the rest in his pocket and grabbed an ink pen from LaSalle’s leather satchel. Pressing hard, he circled the Heideman farm on the map over and over and left it on the desk. The Hunter paused at the door to admire his handiwork. He killed the lights and slipped out. He had a phone call to make.
As always, the fools would see what the Hunter wanted them to see, and nothing else.
***
The morning sun cleared the fence enough to put feeble light on Garrett’s work. He chipped at the frozen dirt in the backyard with his dad’s shovel. It looked like he did more damage to the shovel than the earth. This wasn’t the way. Besides, it did seem a little macabre to bury The Box after burying Michelle.
He decided on a Viking burial and ran to the garage for some charcoal starter fluid. He got as far as spraying the stuff on the cardboard when the weight of it started pushing down on him. He wound up sitting in the snow, staring at a stupid box dripping with lighter fluid, wondering why the hell things went the way they did, why the universe didn’t leave him the fuck alone and let him and Michelle retire to Havasu like a couple of sad old cops who had nothing left to do but drink and take their ski boat on the river.
After a few high-risk warrant services, you learn to recognize the sound of several carburetors opening up, the squealing and sliding as units pull up to the location and officers jump out. He heard those sounds on the street out front.
Garrett sprinted through the house and got to the front door just in time to hear the pounding start.
“Police Department, open the door, we have a search warrant.”
He yanked open the door to find Whit Abercrombie pointing a shotgun at him. Lyle and Dougie were behind him, but they held their guns low. Several Sheriff’s deputies accompanied them, and they didn’t have any personal ties to Garrett. They had assault rifles up and ready.
“Whoa, whoa. What the hell, Whit?” Garrett said.
“Unlock the screen and get your hands up, Garrett, or I’ll rip it off the hinges,” Whit said. He had the strangest look on his face. Fear and elation warred for control over his spooky grin.
Garrett opened the door and they all rushed in. The Deputies cleared the house and Whit had Garrett sit in a dining room chair. He kept his shotgun pointed at Garrett’s chest.
“What is this? What have I done?” Garrett said.
“Where’s your black ass-buddy?” Whit said.
“Excuse me?” Garrett felt dizzy with the red as it was, but Whit seemed intent on pushing it over the line.
“Where is he? The coon, LaSalle. He’s wanted for murder.”
“You’re
crazy. What murder?”
“An anonymous tipster called the Sheriff’s, said they saw a muscular black guy in a Volvo dump a woman’s body in the Monongahela last night,” Whit said.
“I’d like to hear that recording. Who’s the caller?” Garrett said.
“Operator said it was a male, but he called on a private line. Unrecorded.”
Garrett looked around the room, wondering if there was a brain in the bunch of them. “So an anonymous tip just happened to come in on a private line so it wouldn’t be recorded?”
“What of it?” Whit said. “Guy didn’t want to be ID’d.”
“Exactly. So he could lay it off on LaSalle.”
Now came the grin. If snakes could smile, a rattler would probably look like this when it came across a baby rabbit. Whit relaxed and lowered the shotgun. A little.
“We found your friend’s Volvo at the rest stop. But he was nowhere around. We also searched his motel room. Know what we found there?” Whit said.
“I’m guessing a lot of nice clothes.”
“Guess that depends on your personal taste. I don’t much care for alligator shoes. But we also found a filet knife hidden in a shoe, along with a silencer in the matching shoe. You know, like a pro in town to hit somebody might use? The Sheriff’s lab is rushing the blood test on the knife for us. We’re testing all his shoes, boots, whatever else, of course,” Whit said.
Garrett knew then. LaSalle couldn’t wait and Smiley somehow got the upper hand. His chest tingled and he felt short of breath. He put his head in his hands and tried to breathe deep.
“Feel stupid now, don’t ya? Looks like this guy you’ve been helpin’ out is a damn professional assassin. I’m willing to bet we find Bradley Wentz’s blood on the knife, too.”
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