Smiley

by Ezell, Michael

  The Hunter was getting old.

  The thought made Smiley’s heart ache. He could hardly control the Hunter’s urges anymore. And he knew when predators get old and weak, they hunt the sick and the young, the only prey they can still take. He closed his eyes and listened to the idling machine. The steady duh-duh-duh-duh-duh of the engine reminded him of hammering rabbit hearts cupped in his hands. The thready little beats before Smiley twisted the head. Same as the quick pulsing veins in Angela’s skinny neck.

  He curled a fist and punched the fading yellow and green bruise on his cheek, Bradley Wentz’s last visible mark on the world. The pain burst bright in his mind and scattered the nasty thoughts. Zipping up his snowsuit, he opened the barn door. He pulled the snowmobile and sled forward, then shut everything up again.

  His cold blue eyes took in his family homestead. The tidy little house where his Ma died, the sturdy barn where Papa took his last high dive. So many years, so much pain. So much blood, so many thrills.

  A senior citizen. That’s what he’d become. An old coot to be looked at with pity, his opinions meeting with rolled eyes from the new breed of gum-snapping, face-pierced kids the County hired now.

  You could be famous. Feared.

  “They like me,” Smiley said.

  Bullshit. That’s your mask, it ain’t what you want.

  No, it wasn’t. All these years of smiling in people’s faces, hiding the glorious Hunter because they wouldn’t understand him. They did like Smiley. Maybe some loved him. But he wanted them to know. How dumb they were and how smart he was.

  You’re old. Ain’t got much time left anyway.

  All they could do was lock him away with his memories of the Hunt, the mental images of his kneeling trophies below. Lock him away from Angela and his urges.

  Smiley tilted his face up to the sky and watched the new snowflakes drift out of the starry blackness above him. After this business with Garrett was done, he’d start anew with a vengeance. He’d kill and kill and kill until they brought in one of them FBI task forces and ran the Hunter to ground. At the end, the Hunter would become more glorious than ever. People all over the world would shiver at night to think of him.

  “Why not?” Smiley said.

  He rode then, crossing open fields and negotiating miles of narrow tracks through the woods. He came around the backside of the Ellsworth farm and parked the machine in a stand of poplar trees. Now came the tedious part. He hooked the sled to a canvas strap system he’d made for himself. Leaning into it, Smiley towed the sled across the snow toward Tracy’s house.

  In the distance, he heard two horned owls hooting territorial calls to each other.

  ***

  The owls outside had her in a wildlife mood. Tracy glanced at her reference, a barn owl Garrett photographed for her about six months ago. A little guy, peeking from a busted board in a barn on the edge of collapse. She added more gray to the weathered boards in her rendering.

  She painted in the living room tonight, because the oils wouldn’t like the freezing barn studio. Yeah, that was why.

  She tried not to think of Garrett and instead concentrated on the huh’hoo-hoo, huh’hoo-hoo of the horned owls outside. One called from the woods east of the house and one from somewhere behind the barn. They were singing a territorial duet just for Tracy’s entertainment. Or maybe a hot female horned owl’s entertainment.

  Huh’hoo-hoo.

  Huh-hoo-hoo.

  Huh—

  Tracy’s skin crawled at the silence. She put down her brush and turned out the lights in the front room. Her dad’s old Mossberg twelve-gauge leaned against the wall and she picked it up. A careful peek out the window, into the darkness.

  Nothing moved out there, except snow drifting down, covering the world like God’s own eraser for whatever happened yesterday. She waited and waited for the owls to resume, each quiet second tightening the muscles in her back, creeping up her neck.

  She took her phone from her pocket and dialed Garrett.

  ***

  Garrett’s flashlight lit up the game trail behind the rest stop, showing him where to place his feet so he wouldn’t break his neck. Hopefully.

  The .38 banged against his ribs in the jury-rigged holster. Annoying, but it would have to do. Halfway down the trail, his phone buzzed in his pocket and he nearly fell on his ass. At least he’d been smart enough to put it on silent. Only one person could be calling.

  “Tracy?”

  “Garrett, I’m scared. I think I’m just freaking myself out, but the owls were hooting and now they’re not and it’s just snowing and snowing and so quiet out there.”

  “Easy, babe. Easy, okay?” The frightened sound in her voice twisted a dagger in his heart. He wanted to shred space and time and be there with her right now.

  “Garrett?” Her voice small, vulnerable.

  “I’m on the way,” he said.

  He ran.

  Back up the trail, slipping and sliding, followed the jittering flashlight halo through the woods, cursing the fact he let himself get soft in the last year. In LA, he’d worked out five days a week, training for the violent world he found himself in. He could’ve run this hill at a full sprint and fought a Jiu-Jitsu match when he hit the top. Now, he felt like he’d puke at any second and he still had a good two hundred yards to go.

  On rubbery legs, he made it to the Mustang. His throat burned with all the cold air his tortured lungs sucked down. Good thing he had a remote, he wasn’t sure his shaky fingers would have been able to put the key in the lock. He got into the car and fired up the big V-8. The Mustang wasn’t exactly a time machine, but it would have to do.

  26

  Smiley crouched behind the white hump in the ground that was a snow-covered scrub oak. One of the owls had been in the woods near Smiley’s ambush spot and it had shut up when he passed under it, as if it could feel the presence of a stronger predator.

  The Hunter sat in silence and watched the windows. He held the big Colt in his gloved hand and mentally measured the distance between his ambush spot and the front drive where Garrett would most likely pull up.

  The snowsuit muffled his cracking knees as he stood and strode toward the door. He had to take care of Tracy first.

  ***

  Tracy chewed her bottom lip and held her phone, ready to dial Garrett again. She’d had time to calm down and turn on a few lights in the house. Her courage accordingly bolstered, now she felt stupid for calling him away from the plan. He had a mission to do, something he was trained for, and she’d let her nerves screw it up. If they were going to catch Smiley dirty, she’d have to grow a set, so to speak. They couldn’t do the job huddled together in her living room.

  She touched the screen. Dialing Garrett Evans.

  He answered, and she heard the Mustang growling in the background.

  “Garrett, I’m sorry. I just freaked out,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll come check on you and then I’ll go out a little later,” he said.

  She loved him for that and so much more. He didn’t know the good man hiding under all the baggage, but she did. She’d known him since they were kids. “I’m just being a titty-baby. For heaven’s sake, I live in the country. Owls stop hooting, coyotes stop howling. Big deal,” she said. She propped the shotgun against the wall and opened the door to peek out at the snowy night.

  A masked man clad in white was about twenty yards from her door. He had one of those cowboy style revolvers in his hand.

  “Oh God, Smiley, no.”

  She tried to close the door— Thunderclap from the gun and the bullet blasted through the wood and slammed into her skull.

  ***

  Not fast enough. The fence posts flashed by like the blades of a fan, blurring into a loose boundary in the flying snow. Garrett’s throat tightened and his chest felt like someone had him in a bear hug, but he kept his right foot down and fought it. Not now, not now, not now, not now.

  Tracy needed him.


  His face started to feel numb and his heart stuttered like an engine with a bad spark plug. The panic wave rolled over his feeble mental seawall, dimming his vision. A half-mile to Bray Road, a left and another quarter mile to Tracy’s driveway. If he hadn’t been fighting off the panicky tunnel vision, he would have remembered to take his foot off the gas.

  A split-second into the left turn, he knew he’d pushed the Mustang too far. Even in summer, with the pavement hot and sticky, he probably wouldn’t have made it.

  In the snow? “Probably” didn’t even factor in.

  The tunnel vision snapped into a crystal clear image of road signs upside down through the rectangular frame of the Mustang’s windshield. And then there was tumbling. And blackness.

  ***

  His knees were on fire, but the Hunter crouched back behind his ambush spot and waited. Tracy had saved him having to clean up footprints on her front porch. She surprised him by opening the door, and he shot her from a good twenty yards out. The rough desire to run up and bunch Ma’s—Tracy’s—red hair in his fists and pound her head against the floorboards had him gritting his teeth. He wanted to touch hurt destroy her.

  Discipline. He had a plan to follow.

  So he watched her from a distance. She lay on the floor, her feet just inside the front door. A marvelous red-black pool grew steadily from her head. He needed Garrett to see what he’d done. He needed to hear his mourning wails before he did the rest. Smiley shook off a glove and pulled out his phone.

  ***

  Snow blew in the driver’s window, but Garrett didn’t remember rolling it down. He reached for the button to roll it back up and his left arm punished his lapse of memory with a lightning bolt of pain. He came to and worked very hard to understand the upside-down scenery.

  Using his right arm, he unbuckled his seat beat and fell to the roof of the car. He cried out when his left shoulder hit. Most likely dislocated. He knew what it felt like. He fell out of a tree stand when he was thirteen, hunting with Dad and Smiley.

  Smiley.

  Garrett forced himself to crawl, squeezing out the slightly collapsed passenger window. He found himself facedown in deep snow, across a wide field from Tracy’s place.

  His legs felt more rubbery than after his run up the hill, but he locked his knees and stood. Blood ran down his face from something on his scalp. The drips told him it wasn’t too bad. If it had been gushing, he’d be in trouble.

  He actually giggled at the absurdity of that. He was nothing but in trouble. Ever. He felt the .38, miraculously still in his jury-rigged holster.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket and when he pulled it out, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “Are you kidding me?” he said into the phone.

  Smiley’s soft drawl taunted him. “I bet Tracy would dearly love to see you about now. But I don’t suspect she’ll see much of anything again.”

  The phone went silent.

  “Hello? Smiley?” Garrett said. Nothing. He threw his phone back at the Mustang and waded through the snow, his left shoulder a constant spike of pain keeping time with his heartbeat. Drawing the old .38, he approached the side of Tracy’s house and peeked through a gap in her living room curtains. When he saw her, he nearly collapsed against the wall. He stumbled around to the front door, any knowledge of tactics and training gone, only her blood in his mind, so much of it, so much of it.

  He knelt in the doorway and a sob wracked his body so hard it doubled him over.

  But did he see that? Was he really crazy, did her chest move, did it fucking move, did it did it—

  The dart hit Garrett high between the shoulder blades where he couldn’t get at it. He didn’t know what it was, but then again, he did. He barely felt the prick of the needle. The vest. Sharp things would pierce it, but it stopped the dart enough. He spun immediately and scraped his back across the doorframe. The dart clattered to the porch. An insane second of clarity, as Garrett thought it looked just like the one in the bear’s ass in the picture.

  His body swiveled, gun hand up, practiced eyes sweeping the ambush zone.

  There he stood. Smiley. Admiring his handiwork with the rifle across his forearm. He had his mask up and Garrett saw the almost comic look of surprise. The front sight post of Dad’s .38 was shiny and black against the white outline Smiley made in his snowsuit.

  Boom-boom. A double tap.

  Smiley’s right leg flew back and he dropped like a penny arcade duck hit by a cork gun.

  Damn it. Too low. Garrett brought his sights up... and toppled to one side, the doorframe barely catching him. The dart obviously gave him a dose before he scraped it out. He had no idea how much.

  White fire bloomed in the dark out there and the wall next to Garrett exploded. Smiley had his .357 out now, no doubt about what made the booming roar.

  Garrett hunched low and took cover behind Tracy’s pickup. Three solid booms in the dark and her windshield starred, one-two-three. Garrett didn’t need to pop the .38’s cylinder to check. He knew his life and maybe Tracy’s—did she move, did she move—depended on four antique rounds from the piss-ant predecessor to the cannon Smiley had. And he’d be out there reloading.

  Smiley’s voice drifted in on the razor wind. “It ain’t legal for a criminal like you to have a gun, boy.”

  Moving around out there. Changing positions.

  “Problem is,” Garrett yelled, “I’m all out of give-a-fuck when it comes to the law.”

  He bellied down and peered under the truck. His Field Training Officer, a salty bastard named Frank Holder, had taught him peripheral vision worked better at night than looking for something directly. Garrett scanned the lighter horizon, letting his eyes drift over the snow and scrub below.

  A white form moved in the darkness and Garrett knelt by the truck’s rear fender. In the dark, he elevated the sights until he could pick them up against the moon and then lowered them onto his target. He squeezed the trigger.

  At the .38’s bark, the white hump limped to the left. The magnum roared again, and metal sprayed the house behind Garrett as jacketed rounds tore through the pickup’s fender.

  One-two-three-four-five-six.

  Smiley had been in the Army, but he was a medic. He’d never been trained not to shoot his gun dry in an active firefight. Garrett leaped up and ran at him, trying to close the gap before Smiley reloaded, wanting to be sure of his shot.

  He got there in time to see Smiley snap the cylinder shut and bring his gun up.

  The snowsuit made a trembling white light at the end of Garrett’s tunnel vision. The way Smiley’s body jerked seemed completely out of proportion to the two pops of the .38.

  Blowing snow, cold against his cheeks, freezing blood on his face made a crackling sound as he opened his mouth to breathe. Garrett stood over Smiley, weaving back and forth from the drug. He saw roses of blood blooming across the belly of the white snowsuit.

  The butt of the .357 stuck out of the snow and Smiley’s blue-veined hand tried to pry it out, but the punishment had been too much for his old body. His arms were too weak.

  He struggled to sit up in the snow and smiled at Garrett.

  “Got me good, officer. You sure did. But you shot a little low. I figure those government doctors, they’ll fix me up right as rain,” Smiley said.

  “And you’ll spend the rest of your miserable life in prison, old man. You’re done.”

  Smiley clutched his belly and Garrett could see the medic in him applying pressure to his wounds. “Think of all the people that’ll visit me, though. The reporters, the stars of them news shows on cable. I’m gonna be the biggest damn thing that ever come out of this town. And stupid rednecks like Tuffy Baylor and your daddy will never be remembered for nothin’.”

  The smile absolutely blazed now. The pale blue eyes twinkled and Garrett knew Smiley was right. The killers always became celebrities in their own twisted way.

  A snowflake caught in Garrett’s eyelashes and he remembered his first ride with L
aSalle, snow pattering against the windshield, unexpectedly opening up to the big man’s soothing nature, telling him about Michelle. The story of her death and how her partner never cleared leather.

  Garrett looked down at Smiley Carmichael, his father’s best friend, the man who taught him how to tie a fly, and told self-deprecating stories to make a little boy feel good.

  Smiley. That good old hard worker who destroyed so many lives over the years. Dozens of girls, LaSalle, Nadine, her friend Mrs. Shotwell who would sit in her empty house and think about this for what was left of her lonely life.

  “As my friend Chester LaSalle once put it, the report will say you had your gun in your hand,” Garrett said. This whole insane part of Garrett’s life had started with three gunshots echoing over a snowy yard out at the Withers place.

  Tonight, it ended with one.

  27

  Garrett eased Tracy’s pickup into a spot in front of May’s Diner. He still hadn’t gotten used to parking the damn thing after driving the low-slung Mustang for so long, and it hurt his left shoulder to turn the big wheel too far.

  He saw a news truck down the street, the reporter pacing along the sidewalk, wearing his serious face for the camera. Garrett couldn’t imagine what there could possibly be left to cover at this point.

  He and Tracy had laid low at her place in the intervening weeks. The case of the “Hillbilly Butcher,” as they’d called him—and wouldn’t Smiley have hated that—spawned a frenzy of media attention after the State Police cadaver team found the lair under the barn. Between the Polaroid pictures and newer digital printouts, they’d found pictures of twenty young women down there. From the bones in his decomposition pit, they estimated he’d killed at least a dozen more over four decades.

  Garrett made sure LaSalle’s remains were sent back alongside what little remains could be identified from dental records as Britney Santini. Somehow, he felt the big man would want to see her home.