My best chance.
I picked up a large piece of glass. I opened the door and ran on bloody stump and bloody foot, through the wet snow, and leapt on his back.
My left hand struck out in the silence and curled around Jackie’s mouth. My right stabbed the glass into his gun-holding arm.
I pulled hard with my left hand, turning his head sharply to one side, trying to break his neck. A schism of emotions as his face met mine. A terrified look. He was unable to speak. Snow blur and he hit the ground with a thud.
I couldn’t break his neck now but at least he’d dropped the pistol.
We rolled in the snow, his eyes wide, his limbs fluid, and the piece of glass now moving towards his throat with such speed that he probably wondered if there wasn’t some sorcery in it. And Jackie in such a state of petrification he didn’t even have the wit to bite the hand covering his mouth. The piece of glass jerking fast and with it a swishing noise. It moved almost by itself like a cobra as it cut and recut his throat.
“Jesu—” he tried to say but the smoking pain and the satanic look on the man killing him froze the word. A deep puncture below his Adam’s apple. A slash at his jugular vein.
And finally, attempting at last to save his life, he punched me with a left jab.
I was so beyond the pain that it didn’t even register that he was hitting me until he did it again.
I remembered the gun, saw that it was only a few feet from us, and cracked my elbow into his bleeding throat, knocking the wind out of him. He made a grab at me but I head-butted his face so violently that it must have driven the cartilage in his nose a half inch into his brain.
In a last desperate play he thrashed out, knocking away the piece of glass and almost shoving me off him.
But it only upset me for a moment.
I reached for the gun, got it, held the revolver by the stock, and with the butt hit him on the side of the head, three quick times.
“Bluhhh,” he said and slipped into unconsciousness. I couldn’t shoot him, but I had to kill him right this second.
I couldn’t be exposed like this for much longer in plain view of the house.
I turned him over, slid beside him, rolled him, and wrapped my arm around his throat.With his neck in the crook of my elbow and my left hand pulling hard on my right wrist, I squeezed the remaining fight out of him. He woke for a moment before the end, thrashing, gasping. I drove my knee into his back and finally something suddenly snapped. His body went limp. But to be sure he hadn’t just passed out I picked up the glass again and cut deep into his throat, the rough blade breaking the skin apart and scooping out flesh like a bad piece of fruit.
When I was finished, it was much worse than Sonia.
The personal must have slipped in because Jackie’s neck had been severed in a huge gash that left him partially decapitated, his head hanging to his body only by the tissue around the spine.
Not so good.
A waste of effort.
I wasn’t going on a rampage like a PCP freak. I had to do the minimum effort to stay alive.
I lifted Jackie’s gun, spun the chamber, and checked the mechanism. A .22 Smith & Wesson revolver, a lovely little gun, just like the piece I’d had once in New York City.
Sweet.
I stood and limped back to the smokehouse. Peter was standing there, aghast.
“Now’s your chance, fucking run for it and raise the alarm,”I said.
“Are you hurt?”
“Are you still here? Get moving. Follow the old railway line. It’s bound to go somewhere.”
“I don’t—”
I slapped him on the side of the head.
“Go, you fucker,” I ordered.
He ran out of the smokehouse in the direction of the woods, kicking up snow, shambling, limping, but moving. I watched him disappear between the trees. I sat down and took a breather, found the other bit of toast, ate it. I reached outside, grabbed a handful of snow, and swallowed it. It was cold in my mouth. Welcome.
Now what?
There was only one course of action. They had shotguns and were professionals. Touched, at least, was strong and fit and probably a competent tracker. I couldn’t delay. A frontal assault on the house while I still had surprise.
Kill Touched, get his gun, and maneuver Gerry and Kit into a position where they had to surrender.
Simple.
I grabbed another handful of snow, bit into it.
I crawled to Jackie’s body and looked at his watch. Seven a.m. They were all early risers in this family, but yesterday— Christ, was it really only yesterday?—Gerry had slept late. And Touched was bound to be knackered after two days of torture. And they’d been wasted in the wee hours.
I reconsidered my options. If only Jackie and Sonia had been awake and the rest were sleeping, that might have changed things. Maybe I could make a run for it into the woods, after all. Or, better yet, maybe I could even steal one of the cars.
Yeah.
It wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to check it out.
I grabbed a pile of snow and threw it on Jackie’s body, shoveling it on top of him as best I could. If someone did have a quick peek out one of the bedroom windows, I wanted them to think all was normal. I stepped back. It wouldn’t do for a close inspection but it might fool them from a distance.
I limped to the snow-covered Mercedes-Benz, tried the door handle. Unlocked. I opened it and got inside. I looked for keys. I checked the glove compartment and the sunshade and the drinks holder.
Nothing.
But wait a minute. Holy shit. It was Sonia’s car, maybe the key was on that big bloody key chain she’d been carrying back at the smokehouse. It probably bloody was.
I got out of the car and closed the door.
“Where is everybody?” Touched suddenly shouted from inside the cabin. “I need me coffee.”
His voice somewhere on the ground floor.
Goddamn it.
By the time I ran to the smokehouse, got the keys, and limped back to the Mercedes, he’d be standing at the cabin door with his pistol ready to shoot me down. It would be a fair fight, but only until Gerry heard a couple of shots and appeared at one of those upper windows with his shotgun. And with me pinned in the broad, from up there he couldn’t miss.
No, forget the car.
It was either make a break for the woods right now, or the full-frontal attack while at least two of them were still sleeping.
“What’s it going to be, Michael?” I whispered to myself.But I already knew the answer and I didn’t need any more convincing to go after Touched.
Once before, long ago, I’d assaulted a big house filled with enemies and killed the occupants. Snowing then, too, come to think of it. Me, murder, and snow—fucking made for one another.
I held the gun tight and limped to the front door of the cabin.
A cigarette smell was coming from inside, limp and sweet from fresh-rolled tobacco. I listened for the sounds of conversation. But Touched was giving no one instructions. His coffee remark had been rhetorical.
Still, he was bound to be bloody suspicious.
I turned the handle and inched open the door. Touched was sitting at the kitchen table with his feet up on another chair. He was in his usual brown slacks and a mustard working jumper. His graying hair was crushed under a woolen hat and he had a tattered dressing gown draped over his shoulders.
I opened the door a little farther and pointed the gun through the gap.
He didn’t stir when I came in and he felt the outdoor breeze.
I sighted the .22.
He turned the page of a magazine called Wooden Boat and took a long draw on his cigarette.
“Pair of ya will catch your death out there,” he said without looking up.
I checked to look for the .38 but it wasn’t next to him. On the kitchen table: a newspaper, magazines, a coffeepot, but no gun. It might be in his pocket, but it might not. If I had to guess I’d say he was being care
less, had left it in his room, and was in fact unarmed. Just the way I liked them.
I stepped completely into the cabin and closed the door behind me.
He turned another page of Wooden Boat. I looked for Kit or Gerry or anyone else waiting on the stairs with artillery, but there was no one, this was no trap.
I limped closer, trailing blood and snow.
“I really need some coffee . . .” he began and then he looked up.
In a single breath his face changed from amazement to fright to a gruesome composedness in the face of death.
He put down his magazine.
Took another puff of the cigarette.
“How the fuck did you get out?” he asked.
“Magic.”
“What?”
“Magic. Now, Touched, me old china plate. Put your hands on your head and bloody keep them there,” I said.
Touched left his fag in the ashtray and did as he was bid, resting his hands on his wool beanie hat.
I surveyed the kitchen and the stairs.
“Where’s Gerry and Kit?” I asked.
“Sleeping,” he said with a little disgusted shake of the head. Here they were letting him down again. Everybody always letting him down. Typical. And of course it was always someone else’s fault. Never his.
His eyes narrowed.
He exhaled the cigarette smoke, a bubble of nervous spittle forming on his dry lips.
“So, Michael Forsythe, killer of Darkey White, informant, spy for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, what are you gonna do now? Arrest me?”
“I don’t think so.”
He looked puzzled and then smiled with recognition. That big friendly grin, that mix of hatred and bravado.
“Ah, I understand,” he said. “It’s personal. The woman in Newburyport. Right?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Well, you certainly had me fooled. I’ll admit that I was suspicious about you and her, but when you helped us put her in the ground and you didn’t make a big song and dance about it, fuck, I didn’t think she meant anything to you,” he muttered a little louder.
“Keep your voice down, Touched,” I said. “And keep those hands on your head.”
Touched smiled again, a labored wrinkling of the face that made him lose his youthful arrogance.
And as he meekly put his hands back up I saw him afresh. The mystique had gone. The aperture of time worked its way with his features and suddenly he was just a middle-aged white guy, getter older, getting stupider, getting fatter, perplexed by the vagaries of life and the representative of the younger generation who had bested him and was, unexpectedly, about to murder him.
“And another thing. Neither of you bloody talked. I don’t know what they teach you nowadays, but that was impressive.
Or it could be that I’m getting soft,” he said.
He reached to get his cigarette.
“Keep your hands where they are, Touched.”
“Sorry, Michael, I forgot,” he said and put his hands back on his hat, drumming them, pretending to be relaxed.
I limped closer until I was close enough.
It wasn’t my style to gloat over him; to exult, to lecture him with famous last words. There wasn’t time for that anyway. I just needed information and then I’d bloody get rid of him.
“Do you have a gun on ya?” I asked.
“No. No, I don’t. If you believe me,” he said.
“Stand up, shake out your pockets on the dressing gown.”
He turned out the pockets.
“It’s in the bog,” he offered.
“Sit down again.”
He sat and put his hands on his head unbidden.
“Ok. Where’s the big shotguns?” I asked. “Where do you keep that big shotgun Gerry had yesterday?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Tell me or I’ll fucking kill you, Touched.”
“It’s in my room upstairs. I cleaned it,” he said.
“Loaded?”
“Aye, think so.”
“You know so. Is it loaded or not?”
“It’s not loaded,” he said.
“Where’s the shells?”
“They’re on the dresser in my room.”
“Which one’s your room?”
“First left at the top of the stairs. Two down from yours.
What the fuck you want the shotgun for?”
I was going to kill Touched but I wanted the other two alive. The .22 wasn’t going to impress Gerry. And I wanted them unarmed and intimidated by overwhelming force. If I killed Touched down here, the noise would bring out Gerry, he’d get that shotgun from Touched’s room, and he’d blow my brains out. But if I took a little more effort, marched Touched upstairs, got the shotgun, killed him, and waited outside Gerry’s room with those big double barrels pointed at him, he’d have no choice whatsoever. He’d have to surrender. It would be suicide to come at me then. Pointless suicide. He gives up. March him and Kit downstairs, find the phone. . . .
Nice and neat.
“Take that cord off your robe.”
He unthreaded the dressing-gown tie and held it out to me.
“Turn around, put your hands behind your back,” I ordered.
“I thought you were going to kill me,” he said smugly.
“Plenty of time for that later, now spin around.”
He smiled, spat.
“Hurry up.”
He turned and put his hands behind him.
“Ok, Touched, one fidget, one move, and I blow your bloody brains out,” I said.
I made a slipknot with one end of the bathrobe cord and placed it over his wrist and pulled it tight. Waited for him to try something since this was the best chance he was going to get. But he stood there and didn’t move. I made another slipknot and put his other wrist into it. I tightened both loops and turned him to face me.
“This is how it’s going to be. We’re going to go upstairs and get the shotgun; if you behave yourself you just might live through this,” I lied.
“Changed your mind, huh? That’s what you get from hanging about with feds, it fucking weakens ya,” he said with contempt.
“Whatever. If you try to shout a warning, I’ll kill you.Understand?”
“Aye,” he said and then a look went across his face that I couldn’t interpret but it seemed to be concern.
“Tell me one thing, Michael, is the lad tied up out there too?” he asked. Of course, it wouldn’t be fear for himself, he was worried about his protégé.
“What lad?”
“Jackie. Did you tie him up too?” Touched asked.
“I killed him.”
He swallowed. Paled.
“And Sonia?” Touched asked, a trace of the composure disappearing from his dark eyes.
“Aye. Had to do it. Hated to do it. No choice.”
“Ye wee fucker, peeler agent bastard,” Touched said, anger making him slur his words.
“Keep your voice down. I won’t tell you again.”
Touched shook his head. His face tightened, his temple throbbed and then relaxed. He was no poker player. He was putting together a little plan.
It might have concerned me once. But I was transformed. I could see through him. He was obvious now. Old and obvious and tied. Let him plan.
I had the gun, I was ready.
“Ok, we’ll go up the stairs and we’ll get your gun and maybe you’ll live to do jail time,” I said.
I motioned for him to lead me up the stairs.
Yeah. Coming together. Up to his room, get that shotgun, kill that son of a bitch, arrest those other two, take them to the smokehouse, chain them up, then back to the cabin, untie Touched’s wrists so I could claim it was self-defense and not an execution.
Touched began walking up the stairs. His dressing gown wafting backwards, his legs unsteady. He turned his head to look at me.
“I’m not sure I want to go to prison, Michael,” he said.
“Don’t se
e that you have much say in the matter.”
He took another step.
“You know a comedy always ends in a marriage, a tragedy in a death,” he said, sly and sleekit.
“Which one’s this?” I asked cautiously.
“Oh, you know,” he said, suddenly throwing himself backwards off the stair and crashing into me with his full body weight. We tumbled down the stairs, Touched landing on top of me, knocking the wind out of me and sending the gun awkwardly under a chair.
He head-butted me on the top of my skull.
“Fucking show ya,” he muttered.
He struggled desperately to get out of the restraints, but I’d bound that bastard tight and good. I pushed him off me and he rolled to the side. He hooked the robe cord over his ass and down his legs, getting it over first his left leg and then the right. Fast for an old geezer. He tried to undo the knot but it was too tight. His hands still tied, but tied in front of him, which was more dangerous. He lunged at me, but I’d had a second to anticipate the attack and finally managed to get the gun round to face him.
Touched hadn’t survived a couple of assassination attempts for nothing.
Before I could pull the trigger he kicked my hand and sent the gun clattering across the wooden floor.
He tried to kick me again but I caught the foot and violently twisted his leg and ankle.
He squirmed out of his slipper, turned, and spitting like a demon, jumped on top of me.
I punched him, breaking his nose with a right hook that sprayed blood into his eyes. Partially blinded, he swung wildly with his fist, missed my head completely but, luckily for him, managed to bring the side of his hand down onto my cracked ribs.
A tidal wave of pain rocked through me, paralyzing me. “Fuuuuu . . .”
Touched took the opportunity to kneel on my arms, pinning me.
He pushed the robe cord down onto my throat and began to squeeze with all the controlled rage and seething elation of a professional killer. His eyes were wide apart, gray, emotionless.
This was what Samantha saw when he killed her.
“Have you now, Forsythe,” he whispered, intimately, like a lover. He pushed down with all his weight, the blackout beginning with a ringing in my head and my eyes rolling back in their sockets.
If he’d had garroting wire or rope instead of a robe tie, Touched would be telling this story, not me. But as it was, the cord was too thick and too padded to strangle me. He needed more leverage, he needed to wrap the cord completely round my neck and pull with two hands.
The Dead Yard Page 31