by Jon McGoran
“Yeah? Well, maybe I do have issues with authority, and maybe it is cliché, but I don’t think it’s normal to have some asshole like Suarez barking at you all day.”
“It’s called having a boss, Doyle. No one loves it, but most grown-ups learn how to deal with it.”
“You know what? I think maybe you’re the one who’s got issues with authority, like maybe you like it too goddamned much.” I laughed bitterly. “Maybe that’s why you’re so happily married.”
Danny said, “Fuck you.” Then he hung up.
I immediately regretted having brought his marriage into it, but I knew I would have kept going if he hadn’t hung up.
I still couldn’t tell if I was getting reintoxicated from the Narcan wearing off, but I figured if there was any doubt after a buzzkill conversation like that, I’d better play it safe. I took out the little envelope Janie had given me and swallowed two of the pills.
A couple of minutes later, I pulled up in front of Bricker’s office. I immediately picked up a bad vibe. The exchange with Danny had brought me down, but it was more than that. The streets were strangely deserted, and so quiet I could have been the last man alive. I felt a slight chill. A dark layer of low clouds had developed out of nothing, pushing down on the world.
I knocked on the outer office door and waited, then knocked again and walked in.
The small reception area was empty, and the door to the office was open.
Sydney Bricker was at her desk, or rather across it. Her legs dangled in front of it, her short skirt riding up her thighs as her back arched over the blotter, her arms by her sides. Her head hung over the far side with her mouth wide open.
I took out my gun before moving around to the back of the desk, as if I could protect myself from what I was going to find.
Her left eye was open, staring blindly at the back of her deep leather chair. Her right eye was a bloody ruin, two inches of one of her personalized pens protruding from it, just enough so I could see the gold script S in Sydney. A thin red line led from her eye into her hairline, the blood wicking down her hair, which hung down onto the padded seat, curling into the blood that had pooled there.
I’d had a nagging feeling that something else was going on even before Stan Bowers told me most of the heroin from the bust wasn’t heroin. But while Sydney Bricker’s murder confirmed my vague suspicions, it didn’t clarify them. I still didn’t know what the hell was going on.
One thing I did know was that I had to get out of there. Pruitt could show up at any moment. Bricker had called me less than a half hour earlier. Careful not to touch anything, I pushed open the door and looked up and down the street. It was empty.
The sky looked even more ominous, but there was something else as well, an atmosphere of dread so thick I could feel it on my skin. Just like Crooked Creek Farm, where the bust went down, this place was haunted now.
58
I walked quickly to my car, keeping my head down in case the streets weren’t as deserted as they seemed.
As I opened my car door, I sensed movement behind me and simultaneously felt a sharp pain in the center of my back. For an instant I thought I’d been stabbed, but then I recognized the pain as the barrel of a gun applied with gusto.
“Don’t fucking breathe,” said a thick Russian accent, right next to my ear. “Or I’ll shoot through your spine.”
His gun stayed where it was, solid as a rock as his other hand swept over me in a quick but thorough frisk that included my ankles. When he was done, he was holding my gun as well as his.
“Move a muscle and I will kill you,” he whispered in my ear. Then the pressure disappeared from my back. He stepped away from me, backing around the car and coming into sight on the other side of it.
It was Fabio, the guy with the long blond hair. A shampoo commercial, Spetzer had said, and he nailed it. I smiled at the thought.
“It’s good you can smile,” he said with a smirk. He had both guns leveled at me, keeping them close to his body. “Unlock the doors.”
I flicked the power lock.
He opened the passenger door, keeping one gun pointed at me over the roof of the car and the other one pointed at me through the interior. “Nice car. You should take better care of it. Now get in.”
We both got in, and I fastened my seat belt. He thought for a moment; then he did, too.
“Drive,” he said.
I started up the car and pulled out. “Where?”
“Home.”
It tripped me up that I didn’t know where he meant. “You mean the place on Bayberry?”
He smiled and nodded. “Da,” he said, easing himself around so his back was against the door. He seemed relaxed, except for his hands, which both pointed at me—my gun at my head, his gun at my belly. I couldn’t decide if I would rather be killed by my own gun or his. Kind of embarrassing to be killed with your own gun. But then again, better it come from someone you know, right?
“So, who are you?” I asked.
He laughed a little to himself, like that didn’t deserve even a badass answer. “You can call me Mikhail.”
“So what is it you want, Mikhail?”
“I want you to shut up and drive.”
I drove slowly, partly because I needed time to think. Also, with two guns pointed at me, I didn’t want to hit a pothole and get the festivities started ahead of schedule.
“So were you in business with Cooney, is that it? Some kind of cartel?”
He laughed again. “Cooney? You fuck with me? Cooney is a joke.”
“Well, if this is about the drugs, I’d say just leave it alone. The case is closed. No one knows who killed Cooney, but they’re thinking it was one of the guys at Crooked Creek Farm.”
He snorted. “Drugs are a joke, too. Chump change. Now shut the fuck up and drive.”
It was a ten-minute drive, and we were five minutes into it when Mikhail let out a laugh. “It’s a shame about your lady friend,” he said. “But you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”
I gave him a look, letting him know I knew more was coming but I didn’t really care.
“Is understandable, I guess,” he went on. “Suspended from your job, about to lose it completely. Now you are using drugs. Especially after the death of your parents, the ugliness with Miss Bricker. It is not surprising is all too much for you.”
When I looked at him again, I wasn’t trying to convey anything. I was just trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about.
“Is not uncommon among cops like you.” He smiled. “Tragic, yes, but not rare.”
He wiggled my gun at me, and that’s when I understood. My gun, my car, my house. He was going to make it look like suicide, probably set it up to look like I killed Bricker.
It annoyed me that my life needed so little embellishment to justify suicide. I’d have to give that some thought later. Meanwhile, I had about a minute to come up with a plan. Mikhail was armed and I wasn’t, and even in a fair fight he probably could have taken me. I was looking for an advantage, and I couldn’t seem to find one. Maybe I could insult his hair, get him angry enough to slip up.
I was so intent on finding a way out, I almost missed the turn onto Valley Road.
“Ah-ah!” Mikhail barked, reminding me to turn.
I took the turn a little wide and a little fast, but I made it onto Valley, bracing myself as we scraped bottom on that damned dip in the road.
Mikhail lurched in his seat, his head almost hitting the roof of the car. “Careful, asshole,” he said.
Given the state of the rest of the car, I wasn’t too concerned about damaging the undercarriage but I was a little worried about an accidental discharge. Still, Mikhail suddenly seemed a little off balance, and it occurred to me that while this place was new to me, it was still somehow my home turf. There had to be some advantage in that.
Mikhail’s eyes narrowed, like he had somehow read my mind. He inched farther away from me, angling his back against the door and widenin
g the space between us. He was taking no chances, his eyes glued on me and both guns held up with great deliberation. He was expecting a move to come from me soon, and I knew it. That was my second advantage.
It didn’t amount to much.
Up ahead, I saw Pear Tree Lane, the little road where Squirrel had left his truck. On an impulse, I turned onto it. Mikhail looked out the window, then back at me.
“What the fuck you doing?”
“I’m driving home, like you said.” I let my foot sink down, just a bit, picking up a little speed.
“This is not the way to your house.”
“What are you talking about? This is the way I always go.”
Mikhail said, “Turn the car around.”
“What are you talking about? This is the way to the house.” We were approaching the bend in the road.
“Turn the fucking car around.”
“Look,” I said. “I’m not in any hurry to get home, but this is the fastest way, I just go up here and make a left.” I was making stuff up now, just trying to sound like I was making sense.
“Turn around now!” he shouted, flecking my face with spit. “Right fucking now!”
“Okay! Okay! I’ll turn around the car.” I cowered away from him and put up one hand defensively, partly to appear afraid, partly to give him something to look at, keep his eyes pinned on me.
We were doing about forty miles an hour. He seemed to relax just a bit, and God love him, he leaned further back against the window.
I almost wanted to thank him, but I never got the chance.
The next moment passed as a series of distinct images, a slow-motion slideshow flickering in silence: Mikhail turning to look out the windshield, like he’d seen something from the corner of his eye. The windshield exploding as Squirrel’s tailgate punched through it. The air filled with fragments of glass, catching the light, sparkling all around Mikhail, like he was in a snow globe. More glass as the tailgate chopped through the windshield’s metal frame and the side windows shattered. An almost pyrotechnic explosion of red as the metal connected with Mikhail’s head, obliterating everything in a wash of blood.
The moment ended abruptly when the airbags deployed, a slap in the face as the car spun out across the road. My foot found the brake and the car stopped. The impact left me stunned for a moment, but the sight that greeted me when the bags deflated left me stunned for quite a bit longer.
Mikhail’s arms were thrashing around in wild spasms, like he was having a tantrum. I guess I would have been upset, too. I grabbed at his hands, trying to point the guns away from me. It wasn’t until I had both hands pinned down and the muscle spasms stopped that I could assess the damage.
The tailgate had punched through the windshield, severed one of the pillars holding the roof onto the car, and smashed both passenger side windows and the rear windshield. But that was nothing compared to what it had done to Mikhail. His head was gone completely above the jaw. Chunks of it littered the back of the car—clumps of long hair covered with blood, shards of bloody bone. There didn’t seem to be enough solids to make up the rest of his head, but there was more than enough blood. It seemed to cover every inch of the car’s interior. My face was soaking wet with it, and even though my mouth had been closed, I spat anyway, just to be sure.
The headrest was in the way back, wedged under the remains of the rear window. When I saw an ear sitting next to it, my stomach lurched, and I scrambled to get out of the car. My fingers slipped on the bloody seat belt and the bloody door handle until I finally got the door open and fell out onto the road. My midsection heaved but nothing came out.
After a few seconds the spasms stopped. When I got to my feet, my head was ringing like a bell, but I paused to take in the situation.
The half of the windshield that remained was so badly shattered it was almost opaque. I yanked it the rest of the way out of its frame, so I’d be able to see. I didn’t know what to do with it, but the back window was missing too, so I dumped it inside, covering the ear.
Across the street, the tailgate on Squirrel’s Wagoneer was hanging off and smeared with bright red. As I walked over to it, I saw a clump of flesh snagged on the corner. I knew I couldn’t just leave it there like that. The tailgate came off with a little twist. I dragged it back across the street and slid it through the back window, with the remains of the windshield. A foot and a half of it protruded from the back, but I didn’t want to adjust Mikhail’s seat to give it more room.
When I got back into the car, I saw Mikhail’s hands still gripping the guns. I pried his fingers off them, trying to focus solely on the task despite the unsettling feeling that he was watching me. I left his gun on the floor between his feet and tucked mine into my waistband. The holster at my back was about the only thing not wet with blood, and the gun was going to need a good scrubbing before getting anywhere near it.
What was left of my car was already pointed in the right direction, so I put it in gear and headed toward home. I drove slowly at first, nervous about getting pulled over, but I quickly realized that between the semi-convertible roof, the headless passenger, the bright red interior, and the bloody tailgate sticking out the back window, it wasn’t going to take a traffic violation to get me in trouble. I put my foot down and drove, the wind in my face and the roof bouncing up and down over my head, determined to get where I was going before anyone saw me.
I turned up the driveway without slowing down and the roof tapped me on the head, but I pulled right up to the garage and stopped hard. I got out and opened the garage door, and when I got back into the car, the way what was left of Mikhail’s head was turned in my direction, I got the distinct and unnerving feeling that he wanted to say something to me.
I pulled into the garage and tried not to look at him as I gathered my phone charger and a few other things out of the glove compartment.
When I got out, I paused at the garage door and looked back. The front of the car was virtually untouched, but between the crumpled side and the demolished roof, I was pretty sure it was totaled. And even if it wasn’t, I doubted I’d ever be able to forget the image of Mikhail in the passenger seat. As I closed the garage door, I thought maybe I just wasn’t meant to have a nice car.
59
After ten minutes in a hot shower with a nail brush and a box of Boraxo, I was clean and so was my gun. I felt a certain attachment to my weapons, but showering with my gun felt like crossing a line.
Without a good dousing with gun oil, it would be a rusted mess in a few days. But at the rate I was going, I probably wouldn’t be around to worry about it. I reassembled the gun and put it on top of the toilet. When it hit the porcelain, it made a loud clack—the sound of contact between two surfaces that weren’t meant to touch.
My face was sore as hell from the airbag, and even more so after the scrubbing, but it didn’t look too bad, and my nose wasn’t broken. I closed my eyes as I was drying myself off, and saw a flash of Mikhail’s headless body. I was thinking maybe I would try not closing my eyes for a while when I heard movement downstairs and I froze. Holding my breath and listening, I heard the sound again. The steps creaking. Someone was coming upstairs.
I wrapped myself in the towel and quietly scooped up the gun and slid in the clip. My heart picked up the pace, but just enough to keep up with the adrenaline flowing through my veins.
I heard another creak, and a couple of seconds later another. Then a louder one. The fourth step.
I timed the steps in my mind, rocking on my feet, getting into the rhythm, waiting for that ninth step. I didn’t like it that the bathroom door opened inward, but I’d have surprise on my side and a superior position. When I heard the creak of the ninth step, I yanked open the door and sprang, leading with the gun.
“Freeze, motherfucker!” I yelled. I was looking for a gun, and if it was pointed anywhere near me, I was going to start shooting. But there was no gun, there was just Moose, holding a bag of cookies, wide-eyed and squealing in terror, stumbling b
ackward down the steps.
I hurtled down the steps after him, tackling him at the bottom and clamping a hand over his mouth until recognition dawned in his eyes. I put a finger across my lips, waiting for him to nod his understanding before I removed the hand from his mouth.
“Are you okay?” I asked quietly.
He nodded. “You got to stop doing that. What the fuck is going on?”
“It’s a long story. Short answer: I have no idea, but we need to get out of here, okay?”
“Why?”
“Trust me.”
He looked at me for a moment. “Okay.”
“You got your car?”
“I got Frank’s pickup truck, yeah.”
“Good. We’re leaving now.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you later. Here, take this.” I held out my gun to him, and his eyes went wide again. “I got to get some clothes on.”
He shook his head. “I don’t do guns.”
“I hear you. But sometimes you have to.”
“No. Not me. It’s not a good idea anyway.”
I took a breath and nodded. “Okay, but if you see anybody, you come get me.”
He nodded, and I ran upstairs. I stuffed my bloody clothes in a bag and shoved the bag under my bed. I had just pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and some socks when I heard Moose at the bottom of the stairs, calling me in a loud whisper. “Doyle!”
I grabbed a shirt and a pair of boots and went to the top of the stairs.
“It’s Pruitt,” he said.
“Great.” Whether he was there to ask me about my trip to the hospital for Narcan, or about Sydney Bricker, or about the headless Russian, his presence wasn’t going to make my life any easier. “Tell him I’m not here. Tell him you haven’t seen me.”
Moose stared up at me and made a face to let me know he was not comfortable lying to Pruitt.
I ducked back behind the banister to make sure there was no chance of being seen from the door. “Just tell him you haven’t seen me,” I repeated.