by Michael Kerr
The slug hit Connie in the throat, splitting an artery as it passed through her neck, to imbed in the wall at the far side of the hallway.
Connie attempted to pull the trigger, but couldn’t, and even had she been able to, the muzzle of the pistol was pointing at least a foot to the right of where Jimmy was standing.
Falling to her knees, Connie didn’t feel any pain, but knew that she had been hit, due to the blood that was pulsing out of her neck in spurts that matched the beating of her heart. She felt lightheaded, and then nothing at all as she fell and her forehead slammed into the unyielding tiling of the kitchen floor.
Debbie crawled over to where her mother lay, to be jerked to her feet by a powerful hand clamped around her right biceps.
“Get the stroller, now,” Jimmy said as he kicked the revolver out of the dead woman’s limp hands. “Is the kid on any meds?”
Debbie shook her head. Shock was setting in, and yet a part of her knew that she had to somehow keep it together for Kelly’s sake.
A couple of minutes later Jimmy was pushing Debbie into the rear of the SUV. He put a strip of wide duct tape over her mouth and bound her wrists and ankles with it, before pulling a blanket over her and telling her to keep still or he would cut one of Kelly’s fingers off.
Jade sat on the rear seat, holding Kelly. Jimmy got in front and told Wolf to drive away.
“What the fuck happened in there?” Wolf asked. “I heard a shot. The baffles in that silencer are shit.”
“The bitch’s mother appeared out of nowhere with a gun. I had to waste her,” Jimmy said.
Wolf sighed as he headed away from the string of small, windswept detached houses with faded clapboard sidings and shingle roofs.
Jade was rocking the little girl in her arms, although she was devoid of maternal instinct. She just wanted the brat to stop crying.
CHAPTER TWO
LOGAN had taken almost three months to make it down to Florida from New York City. He had been in no hurry. Life just unwound a day at a time, and that was how he lived it and liked it; taking it slow and easy, mile by mile and minute by minute. The tightest plan he allowed was what direction to travel in, and being winter he had headed south like some snowbird on the wing, seeking the comfort of warmer weather.
He had journeyed south, down to the Carolinas’ and stayed for several weeks before hitching a ride to Atlanta, Georgia, where he took a job in a lumber yard, not for the pay, but for the strenuous work that he needed to keep himself in good physical shape. Now that he was over fifty it was a little harder to maintain peak condition. He didn’t feel old. Guys like the actors Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise were a tad older than him. But he wanted to keep fit, and that took more sweat and toil with every year that passed. Being naturally strong helped. He was six-foot four inches tall, had a fifty-inch chest, and couldn’t pinch more than an inch of fat around his waist.
Since leaving the Big Apple he had avoided trouble, or it had avoided him. And that was how he liked it. His life had been blighted by periodic violence, because he found it impossible to turn his back on people under threat, or back down from intimidation. Back when he’d been a homicide detective had been different. The victims were beyond his help, and his mission was to hunt down whoever had taken their lives. It had been important to him to take killers off the streets and also give grieving loved ones some measure of closure. But being a cop had eventually burned him out to a degree. Crime at all levels was a part of life, and just kept relentlessly coming without pause, like a runaway train. It was a little depressing to know that, like rats or mosquitoes, it could not be eradicated. He had put his papers in and walked, and hadn’t stopped, yet. He was best in his own company, just flowing along like a lazy, meandering river with no rush to reach a destination.
Tossing his hardhat onto a stack of timber, Logan wiped the sweat from his brow and walked over to the mobile site trailer that was the yard’s office. The T-shirt he wore had patches of sweat at the armpits, chest and back, and was sticking to his skin.
“Coffee?” Harvey West said as Logan entered and looked over to where the boss was sitting in a swivel chair and working an old Dell computer.
“That would hit the spot,” Logan said. “And I’ll be quitting on Friday.”
“Why?” Harvey asked. “Is it the pay? Maybe I could—”
“No, Harve, it’s because I don’t like to stay anywhere long enough to get too settled. I’m one of the restless kind.”
Harvey saw the resolution in Logan’s eyes. He got up and poured the big man a cup of coffee. “Shame,” he said. “You do the work of two men.”
Logan grinned and then sipped the hot, black coffee, and thanked Harvey and went back out to finish his shift.
At five p.m. on Friday, Logan collected his pay and left the lumber yard for the last time. Walked the fifteen minute route back to the room he’d rented near Fulton Industrial Boulevard southwest of the city center, showered and put clean clothes on. The urge to move on had just hit him like a truck. It always did. Whenever he began to feel settled, the instinct to hit the open road cut in and demanded that he head for pastures new. This was to be his last night in Atlanta, and so he decided to celebrate by having a steak and a couple of beers at Riley’s Bar & Grill, which was less than a five minute walk away, standing like a squat dinosaur of a building in a gravel lot next to a recycling plant. It was a survivor of the early fifties, and looked as if it had not been threatened by any renovation since it first opened its doors for business, back before anyone had heard of a youngster by the name of Elvis Presley. Being short on history in America, places like Riley’s were looked upon by some with the same awe that a tourist might gaze at the Tower of London or a medieval cathedral over the pond in England.
Logan sipped beer as he tucked in to a hearty meal of rib-eye steak with a couple of eggs over easy. He had just finished up eating, drained his glass and ordered a pot of coffee when three of the workers from the lumberyard walked in.
“Hey, Logan,” Earl Hewitt said, angling across to the table as his buddies parked their asses on stools at the original oak counter.
“Hi, Earl,” Logan said.
Earl grinned, displaying more gaps than teeth behind his thick, cracked lips. “How come you quit? Too old to cut it, or do you think you’re too good to work alongside us guys?”
“Just moving on,” Logan said. “I plan on spending some time down the road in Florida.”
“Bullshit,” Earl said. “You gave us the impression that you thought we were all rednecks with the IQ’s of possums.”
Logan checked out the guy’s eyes and hands, and his body language. Earl had already had a few drinks and seemed to want trouble. His arms were hung loosely at his sides, but his big, scarred hands kept clenching into fists. And his eyes were glaring, unblinking.
Logan gave it some thought. Decided that Earl was not about to let him just walk out. Sometimes you had to go with the flow and deal with fools aggressively. He gave the guy one more chance. “Sorry you see it that way, Earl. No harm meant. I’ll just pay my check and be on my way.”
“I don’t like your fuckin’ attitude,” Earl said, moving forward to put his hands on the top of the table and lean in so that his face was only a foot from Logan’s.
“Back off,” Logan said. “You’re in my personal space.”
Earl grinned again. “If it bothers you, get on your feet and do somethin’ about it.”
Logan said nothing, but noticed that the other two halfwits were approaching, obviously to see what Earl was getting into.
“What’s his problem?” Cletus Atkins asked Earl.
“His stuck-up attitude,” Earl said.
“He badmouth you?” Billy Bob Roberts asked.
“Didn’t need to. I can tell what he’s thinkin’.”
Billy frowned. He had taken notice of how strong Logan was at the yard. He had a few lines on his weathered face, and there was a touch of gray at the temples of his short but thick hair,
but that meant nothing. Billy knew that he was as hard as nails. The man had an aura of capability about him that Earl had not cottoned on to.
“Leave it,” Billy said to Earl. “He isn’t worth pounding on.”
Earl shrugged. Stared at Logan and said: “Apologize for bein’ a fuckwit.”
“That isn’t going to happen,” Logan said as the waitress appeared at his side, set down a pot of coffee and left.
Logan poured steaming coffee into a cup and placed the pot next to it. Took a sip from the cup and smacked his lips. It was as he liked it, strong and piping hot.
“Last chance,” Earl said. “Apologize or you’ll be wearin’ that coffee.”
“Tell me two things first, Earl,” Logan said. “Are you one of those dumb redneck’s that have flowers planted in a bathroom appliance in your front yard? And do you go Christmas shopping for your mom, sister and girlfriend, and only need to buy one gift?”
Earl let the insults sink in. It took him a few seconds to work them out before his face became bright red and his eyes bulged.
Anger doesn’t help in a fight. It breaks up your concentration and scrambles any plan of attack you’d had in mind. Keeping cool under pressure was not something that Earl could do. He made a keening sound and took a swing at Logan’s head, only to fall back as the still three-quarter full ceramic coffeepot was hammered into his forehead, to shatter and cut his face in several places as the hot liquid blistered his skin.
Billy backed away two paces as Earl fell across the table top, semiconscious from the blow.
Logan was on his feet, looking relaxed, waiting for whatever might happen next to play out.
Cletus walked around the table and raised his hands, fisted. His bottom lip was stuck out, and he was standing with his feet apart, rock solid, ready for a fistfight.
Logan held his hands up, palms facing front in a submissive gesture, then brought his right Timberland boot up with the speed of a striking rattler. The blow compressed Cletus’s balls, and as excruciating pain blossomed up into the pit of his stomach, he sagged to his knees.
“Are we done here?” Logan said to Billy, who was a little in awe of how calmly and efficiently the older man had dealt with his friends.
Billy nodded and moved to the side as the staff and a handful of customers looked on but said nothing. Everyone knew that Earl and the other two hicks were trouble, always looking for somewhere to cause it, and today they had come unstuck. There was no way they could have known that from Logan’s point of view, three against one was very good odds, for him.
It was eight a.m. the following morning when Logan left the rooming house with his rucksack over his shoulder. He caught a bus into the city center and made his way in the direction of the Greyhound depot on Forsyth Street. An hour later he was in a window seat and riding a ‘hound south. He slept on and off for the almost four hours it took to reach Valdosta, with his head leaning against the rucksack that was up against the window. A sad-looking woman ‒ with premature gray hair that matched her dowdy clothing ‒ got on the bus and sat next to him. She pushed a large carpet bag as far under the seat as she could and gave him a thin-lipped smile. He nodded and closed his eyes again. Last thing he wanted was conversation. Everything about her was melancholy. Life was treating her badly, he decided during five seconds he studied her for. He estimated that she was in her in her mid-forties. She was a little underweight, had the demeanor of a loser and was alone, but probably not by choice. The fickle finger of fate had just singled her out and was putting her through hell, but it wasn’t his problem.
As the bus crossed the State Line into Florida, Logan opened his eyes and saw that the woman was silently crying. The tears ran down her cheeks, and she reached into a pocket and withdrew several crumpled tissues with shaking fingers and wiped her face, then sneezed into the damp wad.
Shit! Against his better judgment Logan said, “Are you okay?” which he knew was a stupid question, because it was obvious that she was anything but okay.
A little pride surfaced as Rhonda Haynes turned her head to look the man in the eye, to say, “I’m fine, but thank you for asking.”
“I’d hate to see when you weren’t fine,” Logan said.
Rhonda shrugged, got up and made her way to the rear of the bus to use the small, evil-smelling bathroom.
“God, that was horrendous,” she said when she returned.
“That’s what you get with Greyhound, cheap and dirty,” Logan said.
“My name is Rhonda Haynes,” Rhonda said, holding her hand out, amazed at the size of the big man’s hand that shook it, and could have undoubtedly squeezed it till it broke and burst open like a piece of fruit if he had chosen to.
“Logan,” he said. “Pleased to meet you, Rhonda. Where are you headed?”
“To Gainesville. My sister has an apartment there. I’ve reached one of those life-changing times that come along to knock you sideways and send you off in a direction you never imagined having to go in.”
“What happened?”
“Doesn’t matter. We all have bad times to face and cross to bear that we get through the best way we can.”
“I’m a good listener,” Logan said.
Rhonda hesitated and then said, “My husband lost his job. That was the beginning of a downward spiral. The house was eventually repossessed and we ended up living in a damp, depressing fourth-floor apartment on the wrong side of town. I got a job stacking shelves at Publix, but we didn’t have enough coming in to make ends meet.
“I always thought that things could only get better, but Dave, my husband, lost all his self-worth. He couldn’t find work and got depressed. I…I came home one evening and there was police cars and an ambulance outside the building. Dave had jumped out of the window and was still on the sidewalk. He’d left a note on a Post-it. Just two words, ‘Sorry, Rhonda’. That was six weeks ago. And now I’m on a bus, hoping to be able to pick up the pieces and start over. I still love Dave, but I hate him as well for not choosing to live and help me get through our troubles.”
“I think a regular guy has to feel in control to a degree.” Logan said. “Your husband will have most likely had a breakdown and done what he did while not fully able to control his actions. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t love you, just that he lost his way. Some folk find it impossible to adapt.”
“What makes you an expert on it?”
“I’m not. But I was a cop in New York City for a long time. I saw my share of suicides, and they all had a back-story. Lots of stressors can drive people to ending it all. It’s a lot more common than most people think. They usually only take an interest in hearing that celebrities like Robin Williams and that movie director Tony Scott did it. Sad fact is approximately forty thousand people in the States commit suicide every year, which works out at one every three minutes.”
“That’s shocking,” Rhonda said.
“It’s all part of life’s rich tapestry. Circumstances drive people to do things that are sometimes hard to get a handle on and understand.”
Rhonda licked her lips, they were bone dry. Logan took a plastic bottle half full of tepid water from a pocket of his rucksack and handed it to her.
After taking a couple of birdlike sips, Rhonda handed him the bottle back. “Thank you,” she said. “Where are you going?”
Logan shrugged. “Nowhere and everywhere,” he said. “I rarely have a fixed destination in mind.”
The bus stopped at the depot in Gainesville. Rhonda said goodbye to Logan and got off lugging her bag two-handed, to stand on the sidewalk and take a deep gulp of fresh air that had been in short supply on the crowded bus.
“You want to join me for a cup of coffee?” Logan asked, appearing from behind her.
Rhonda looked up into his face. She hadn’t realized just how tall he was. He was like a building, weather-beaten and solid, and she believed that he was dependable and a man that she could trust. “Are you stalking me, Logan?” she said with a faint smile that brigh
tened her weary face.
“No. I just thought I’d see you safely to your sister’s place, and I’ve spent too many hours’ on that damn bus.”
Logan took the heavy bag from her, and they went into a coffee shop a hundred yards up from the depot, had a sandwich with their drinks, and Rhonda told Logan that there was no need for him to stay; that she would phone her sister and ask her to pick her up when she left work.
“Okay,” Logan said. “I’ll stay with you till she arrives. And I have something for you that I’m sure you’ll find more use for than I would.”
“What would that be?” Rhonda said.
“Back in a minute,” Logan said and got up and headed for the restroom. On the way to it he picked up a discarded newspaper from a seat in a booth and took it with him. In a stall with the door locked, he took banded wedges of bills from the plastic bag at the bottom of his rucksack and folded the newspaper around them. There was now twenty-five thousand dollars nestled between the pages of the Gainesville Sun. He still had plenty left. He had given Benny some before leaving New York City, but had not needed to spend any of the remaining ninety thousand that he had taken from the house at Cape Cod, which had belonged to the now dead gangster, Patrick Fallon.
“Put this in your bag,” Logan said, holding out the now two-inch thick issue of the Sun as he sat back down at the table.
“What is it?” Rhonda said.
“A gift with no strings attached.”
Rhonda clasped her hands in her lap. “You don’t know me,” she said. “Why would you want to give me a gift?”
“Nobody ever really knows anybody,” Logan said. “I think you’ve had a tough break, and you deserve a boost; a helping hand, so please take it.”
Logan’s hand gripped the padded newspaper rock steady and kept it held out across the tabletop.
Rhonda slowly reached out and took it from him and carefully opened one side, gasped as she saw the thick chunks of currency and said, “Is this a joke?”