by Chuck Logan
So this is what it’s like to be a patient. This was street surgery. He was on their level, which was the level of desperation and anger and drunken decision-making. He had lost control of the situation and was smack at the bottom of the behavioral ladder with the two classic caveman options: he could try to run or he could fight. Not fight conceptually, like with the Fentanyl. This time it was fight with his hands.
“Earl, honey,” Jolene blurted. “I was so worried when you went off with him that you wouldn’t come back.” Her voice teetered on an alcohol crutch and was beautifully nuanced with fear, need, and tiny tugs of long-dormant affection.
“You and me,” Earl said.
“There it is,” Jolene said.
“For Christ’s sake, you two,” Allen’s voice cracked with distress.
The hammer on the big Colt clicked back. “Hands on your head. Now slowly turn around.” As Allen turned, the pistol left his forehead and returned as an insistent prod at the base of his neck. “Outside, Allen. Move,” Earl ordered.
This numbing awkwardness must be shock, thought Allen. In disbelief, he raised his hands carefully, so as not to dislodge the scalpel. “I don’t get it; I came all this way to show you a way out of this mess.”
“Shut up. Now, real easy, get out your car keys.”
“My car keys?” Allen gulped, uncertain.
They were into the main room now, heading for the door. Then they were outside where the cold clamped down, solid, crushing.
“Get out your keys and open the trunk of your car,” Earl said.
Allen’s teeth chattered as hysterical laughter almost took him, because he couldn’t tell if his shaking jaw was the stammers or the temperature. He flashed on the image of his car in long-term parking at the St. Paul Minneapolis International Airport. A ripe smell would seep from the trunk around spring thaw.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Allen said.
Earl’s reasonable tone was at odds with the impossible temperature, with his misshaped posture and attire, bare-chested in the heavy coat, the humped sling.
“Allen, listen carefully. She’s got a gun and she’s boozed up. And she’s got Hank in there. She won’t come out as long as you’re walking around free. So I’m going to tuck you away for a while, disarm her, talk her down, and get us all back on the same page. We still need you to fix his eyes, right?”
“Why do I have to get in the trunk?” Allen protested.
“What would you prefer? More fresh air? How about I nail you to a fucking tree. C’mon—get in the trunk.”
Allen stared at his car. He was certain that if he climbed into that trunk he would never get out alive. His eyes darted left and right. There was enough moonlight to make out a lattice of birch trees against the star-blistered sky. A dull glare of ice glimmered on the lake. A few feet away were bristles of frost-coated, weathered white planks. A sturdy boat dock extended twenty yards into the lake.
But the boat dock led nowhere. There was no place to run. Earl had the gun.
Carefully he lowered his right hand to his right jacket pocket and began to work out his key ring. As he did he let the handle of the scalpel slide down into his palm.
Allen had only a second to decide. He pulled out the keys, letting them jingle; then as he thumbed through the keys, searching for the right one, he fumbled, then dropped the key ring.
For a beat Earl’s eyes followed the keys. Then he said, “How come you don’t have your gloves on?”
In that fraction of a second, Allen let the scalpel drop from his sleeve. His fingers caught the familiar curved handle, twirled the knife, and, in one smooth decisive movement, he wheeled and struck upward at the notch where Earl’s ribs joined over his diaphragm.
* * *
The moment that Earl marched Allen away from the door, Jolene slipped out of the room and shadowed them down the hall. As they went out the front door she tore through the main room, going through drawers, checking shelves, looking for a box of shotgun shells.
Nothing.
So this was making amends to people we have harmed.
With an empty shotgun. Right.
And all she had was part of the truth to go with. Even if it damned her. She grabbed at the phone on the desk, which was hard-wired so the emergency dispatcher could trace the call. Strangely, as she punched in the numbers, she was not thinking of Amy, or Hank, or Broker out there in the dark; she was thinking of that poor, dumbass NoDak store clerk.
“Nine one one,” the operator said. “Is this a life-and-death situation?”
“They’re going to kill us next,” Jolene shouted.
“Who’s trying to kill you?”
“One of them’s a doctor. He gave the nurse an overdose of narcotics to make it look like suicide, and the guy who lives here—he drugged him and put him out in the cold to die. He’s in a red Jeep. An old one. Please send me some help.”
“Calm down, where are you now? What kind of narcotics?”
“Uncle Billie’s on Lake One outside of Ely.” Jolene held up the empty glass ampule. She wasn’t sure how to pronounce it, so she sounded it out: “Fentanel, I think it says. Goddammit, hurry; we need cops and an ambulance.”
The gunshot rearranged the flimsy architecture of her resolve and she screamed, “They’re shooting.”
Jolene dropped the phone, seized the shotgun like a club, and yanked open the door. There were witnesses and there were witnesses and, goddammit, it was time to pick and choose.
The problem was that when Allen spun to strike, so did Earl.
“Hey,” Earl shouted, irritated. Swatting at Allen’s face with the big pistol. He did not see the tiny wafer of the world’s sharpest steel streak up.
But Allen was not used to sticking scalpels into moving targets. He attempted to adjust the angle of his thrust to compensate for Earl’s sidestep. Earl grunted when the blade went in.
Shit.
Allen could tell by the tension on the tip that he’d missed the heart and hit the sternum and tangled into muscle.
Then the Colt exploded right in front of his face. Not aimed; reflex on the trigger.
Blam! And the cold shattered with the explosion because Allen’s ears stung and needles of cordite pincushioned his nose and cheeks.
Blood was all over, slippery black, coursing over his hand, steaming and freezing on his face. He must have nicked an artery. Reassured, he withdrew the knife. Earl staggered back, his knees wobbling, but he swung the gun.
Allen ducked, dodged, and sprinted to the dock, the only way open to him. His hope was that Earl couldn’t manage to turn, aim, and stay on his feet. And he was right, because Earl toppled over, falling heavily on his broken arm.
As Earl bellowed in pain, Allen’s shoes pounded a creaky tattoo down the frosted decking. Left and right, moonlight reflected on glassy planes of ice. Would it hold him? Skim across that ice, double back to shore, hide in the trees until Earl lost consciousness.
Blam!
Ha. Missed.
The second time, Allen didn’t hear the shot; he felt it rip into the back hollow of his left knee and tear out the side of the kneecap. In an air pocket of shock, he could clearly visualize the shattered bone, tendon, and torn muscle. Then the icy planks rushed up and smashed his face. He rolled over and saw Earl trying to get up. But Earl was so far away and Allen lost the sound. Time and space elongated. He didn’t know how long he coiled there, watching Earl rise in slow stages like a drunken elephant.
But finally, Earl did stagger to his feet and lumber forward, waving the pistol uncertainly in front of him.
Then a glare of headlights blinded Earl and threw his shadow huge against the trees. Somewhere in that glaring light, Allen heard Earl shout, “Fucker, you cut me.”
Allen giggled. Shock and now hysteria. Earl had fallen down again. Bleed out, bleed out. He marveled at the anesthetic virtues of physical shock; he felt no pain yet. So he scrambled crablike on two arms and one leg down the icy dock.
The lights went out. People were yelling. The dock planks shook under oncoming, trudging footsteps that were overtaking him.
“Okay, you,” Earl suddenly loomed over Allen, blocking out the stars. Somewhere in that black mass Earl was pointing the pistol.
Allen kicked frantically with his good leg, hooking one of Earl’s unsteady feet, and the gunshot jerked away. As Earl lost his balance, Allen kicked wildly again and slashed up with the scalpel, drove it into Earl’s inner thigh and butchered through denim and muscle for the femoral artery.
Thick arterial blood sprayed his face and as he lurched back he saw another shape racing toward him. A familiar lily scent came through the bloody taste of sticky copper pennies.
“Jolene?”
But she raised the clubbed stock of a shotgun and smashed it at Allen’s bloody face and knocked him into a whole new universe of suffering. Even as he reeled in pain, an airtight, rational pocket of his mind protested: Jolene, I-I lov-ve you, this-s isn’t fair. Look at all I-va-va da-done. I saved you. I set you up for life.
Earl had collapsed on him, drenching him with blood, but something else. Allen’s last kick had glanced up off Earl’s chest and passed under his armpit and tangled in the sling, and now that Earl had toppled over double, the tightly knotted trench-coat belt had twisted with the sling and trapped Allen’s leg and—oh, shit—the big klutz was falling off the dock.
“Jolene, help,” he shouted.
Earl’s dead weight was slipping toward the ice like entrails sliding from a gutted carcass. And he was pulling Allen with him.
“Jolene?”
She hit him again with the gun stock. No. Not hit. She figured out what was going on. She was pushing him with the gun, shoving him over the side. Prying him. Her eyeballs were focused tight-white neon.
“Bitch,” Allen screamed.
It was a long way to the ice. Earl’s body was heaped, facedown, piling up accordion-like three feet below the level of the dock. Allen’s hips were hung on the edge. He seized a steel pipe that served as a piling with his left hand, and he raised the knife in his right hand to menace Jolene.
They both paused to gather their strength, eyes inches apart, the thick clouds of their breath mingling.
Then, Allen heard a crash and bubbly wallowing sound. Earl’s weight cracked the thin ice and began to sink. Jolene swung the gun butt at Allen’s hand on the piling. Unsteady, her first stroke missed. Allen’s slashed back at her with his knife.
And he missed, too.
As she moved in to strike again, Allen instinctively let go of the piling and grabbed at her, clamped his fingers into the waistband of her jeans, jerking her forward, down on her knees.
They teetered on the edge of the dock, Jolene flailing with the shotgun, but feebly, in too close to do any damage.
Allen still had the dexterity in his hand to reverse the direction of the slim knife, twirling it daggerlike. He made a fist and swung overhand, throwing all his remaining strength in a powerful haymaker. She shoved the gun at his face, blinding him momentarily. Amid a confusing lurch of movement, he felt the blade plunge deep, through muscle. He wrenched it free and struck again, overhand, and felt it sink past the muscle into bone.
Chapter Fifty-one
The closest phone was at the lodge.
Annie’s truck headlights streaked down the driveway and he barely heard the shot through the ringing in his ears as they turned into the parking lot. That’s when he saw Jolene bolt from the porch holding something in both hands. Trailing ragged jets of breath, she sprinted toward a hulking shape, and that was Earl staggering down the boat dock.
Broker couldn’t open the door handle with his frozen paws. All he felt was a numb jarring back up his arm.
“Help,” he yelled to Annie. “Open the open. OPEN THE DOOR!”
The truck was still moving as Annie leaned over and jerked the door handle. Broker rolled out and immediately collapsed as his numb feet failed. He yelled, “Get outa here. Somebody’s got a gun.”
He looked around. Where’s Amy?
Then—shit. He picked up motion at the end of the dock. Someone crawling. Earl was after her, had to be her. So that’s where Broker headed, following Jolene, but, Christ, his hands and feet were solid cubes and he toppled forward. He struggled up and tried to run on the wooden blocks. Fell again.
Get up. Save Amy.
BLAAM! Another gunshot whistled in the dark. He turned to Annie in the truck and shouted, “Annie, get out of here. Do it. Now.”
She didn’t need a second prodding. She floored it and reversed up the drive. And now he was alone and somebody had a gun.
Wonderful. He staggered on his square feet.
Voices now. But underwater voices. Slow, garbled.
Not just slow, frozen slow. Even more sluggish because ice cubes had replaced his brain. Each step required all his concentration.
Then he saw them outlined in silver moonlight, and the violent white smoke of their breath. Amy wasn’t there. Now Earl was down and Jolene and Allen Falken were fighting on the end of the dock.
Allen? What the fuck . . . ?
Earl was tangled up with Allen somehow. Make that Earl’s body, because it looked like Earl didn’t live there anymore. His body had slumped over and was dragging them both off the dock. Jolene was swinging a shotgun at Allen. Allen was swinging back.
Broker kept lurching down the dock, dragging his frozen feet like Boris Karloff.
Then Earl’s dead weight jerked Allen over the edge, which caused Allen to yank Jolene down in turn. Broker kept coming, slipping now in a lather of icy blood. When he saw the twinkle in Allen’s fist, reflex took over and he dived as the knife streaked overhand.
Broker flung out both his arms to block and cover Jolene, and collided with the squirming bodies. A hot wire stung deep into his left shoulder, withdrew and struck again, going deep into his left arm above the elbow joint. This time it stayed put.
Pain was abstract; there was so much going around that this new arrival had to stand in line. Amy had said cold sequesters sedation. It sequestered pain, too. Or, maybe, after the last hour or so, pain had just become his natural habitat.
Allen’s bloody hand slipped off the skinny haft and, desperate for purchase, he grabbed Jolene’s shotgun with both hands. Jolene immediately released the gun and Allen slipped farther down, let go of the gun, and clawed at her clothing. Her shirt tore and her stomach trembled slick, fish-belly white. Her knees pumped, churning ice water in Allen’s face.
“Please,” Allen screamed as his weight, anchored to Earl, pulled Jolene farther over the edge, which jerked Broker over, belly down on the planks. Broker’s right arm pawed for a grip, and, anchored around a piling, his left arm was extended across Jolene’s chest and hooked under her chin. Jolene thrashed, hip deep in the water, and grabbed the arm with both hands. Her hold broke the flex of his elbow and she slid deeper into the water, and Broker pitched over with her.
He knew the water at the end of the dock was deep, perhaps twelve feet, and the ice, while thin enough to break under a falling body, was strong enough to hold somebody down who became trapped beneath it. If she went into the hole after Earl and Allen, she’d be gone forever.
Glacier water stung Broker’s forearm and they all jabbered—wild—the North Atlantic protest-dialect of the drowning freezing. In the hoarse bedlam, Allen’s face contorted in a forest fire of white breath, level with Jolene’s squirming hips, splashing up to his neck in the black lake water and broken ice, trying to avoid Jolene’s fierce kicks.
“Please!”
Jolene writhed on Broker’s bad arm, going after Allen, kicking and kicking until his last scream ended in a thrashing garble of bubbles. Allen Falken’s eyes bulged in disbelief as the water blinded him, and the weight of Earl’s body slowly towed him down.
Utterly focused, Jolene kicked at the top of his head and deliberately held him under. It was dead, silent work punctuated only by the hysterical rasp of her breath and a stre
am of fading bubbles.
Then there was just Broker and Jolene and the vast silence that dwarfed simple words like help. And the burning stars. And then the urgent panic of their breathing resumed.
Allen’s last drowning spasm broke her grip on Broker’s arm. For a frantic beat Jolene turned and threw out her hands, trying to grab and climb Broker’s hooked arm, but her hands slid off his icy sleeves.
When the water reached her lips she shouted, “No, goddammit!” She surged up reaching, and the pain exploded full red and grinding in Broker’s left elbow, as Jolene’s right hand caught behind the haft of the scalpel. She anchored her left hand across her right wrist and held on.
Then Broker felt a buoyant lift to the pain. Nothing was pulling her down anymore. She’d floated free from Allen’s dead weight.
He tried to lift her, but his shoulder was stiffening and he couldn’t move. If he released his hold on the piling they would both go in and under the ice.
Teeth chattering, they stared at each other.
He was back where he began, at the mercy of the glacier water, and he had lost his strength and she was dying by inches and degrees. Within his grasp.
“Try to climb my arm,” he croaked.
She responded with a spasm of shaking. Then she gritted her teeth, let go with her left hand, and tried to reach past him for the dock, but it was too far and the effort almost cost her her grip on the knife imbedded in his elbow. She locked her left hand back on her right wrist. He saw she had no strength left.
“Hold on.” His voice rasped like a frigid ignition trying to turn over. Hers wasn’t much better.
She shuddered. “I’m good, I had a toddy.” But he could see she was losing it, slipping into the water.
The stars were their sequined shroud. And dancing among them, Broker saw the blue shimmer of the aurora. Now red. Then red and blue together slapping the dark trees, rippling on the ice.
He had wanted so much to save her and here she was dying in his arms, starting to sag lower in the water as the scalpel blade began to work free. He should say something. He should . . .