by Craig Smith
‘Is he going to make it?’
Roby shook his head. ‘The EMTs didn’t look real happy. They said something about gangrene.’
‘How about Tammy Merriweather?’ Max asked.
‘Her shoes and clothes appear to be over there in one of these piles.’ Roby pointed at the five stacks of clothes.
Max shook his head and swore a bit more mildly. ‘Son of a bitch!’
‘We better get upstairs,’ Roby offered. ‘He can’t have much of a lead on us.’
Before any of us moved, Max looked into Penny Lyons’s would-be-execution chamber.
‘Captain McCreary,’ he said after a moment of silence, ‘if Chief Cottrell doesn’t know what kind of officer he’s got, you come over to the sheriff’s department and name your terms. You hear me?’
‘Sheriff,’ Cass McCreary answered, ‘to tell you the truth... I don’t even remember pulling the trigger.’
Chapter 91
Sunday 1:13 p.m., March 28.
I CALLED GARRAT with Roby’s cell phone. After that I called Merriweather’s church. I told the lady who answered to get the Merriweathers down to Regional South. I said I would meet them at the emergency entrance.
‘Are they okay? Are the kids alive?’
‘Make sure some good people come with them,’ I answered.
‘Oh, God...’
I switched off before I had to explain myself. Outside, I found Max and Joe Roby. ‘You get hold of the Merriweathers, did you?’ Max asked.
‘I’m going down to the hospital to meet them,’ I said.
‘Tell the Merriweathers if they have any questions about what we’re doing to find Tammy, I’ll be up to the hospital as soon as I can get away from here.’
‘What are we doing to find her, Max?’
‘I tell you what, buddy,’ Max told me with a wry grin, ‘I only feel like lying about it once, so why don’t you just wait for me to spoon it out to the Merriweathers?’
‘You’ve got a lot to do here. How long are you going to be?’
‘We’ve got Rolly on the way. Once he’s here, I’ll drive up to the hospital. We’re going to need a news conference – as soon as we contact the Lyons’s next-of-kin.’
‘The hospital will have facilities,’ I said.
‘I know. I just wish we had better news. Looking for two girls and we come up with two dead, two critically wounded and one still missing… what a nightmare!’
‘We saved one, Max.’
Max looked at the bare spot where Benny Lyons’s Toyota had sat, the two sets of footprints leading to the spot and then to the tire tracks leading out to the road. ‘Where is he, Rick? Where is my Sweet William?’
I GOT TO MY CAR and rolled back to the highway in no hurry to get to the hospital. I knew that in a matter of minutes every cop in the bi-state would be alerted to keep an eye-out for Benny Lyons’s Toyota. With a long afternoon before us and a cold bright winter day, chances were good we had come to the final hours of the hunt, but that didn’t mean Tammy Merriweather was going to get through. She had apparently left the house under her own power, but once in the car Booker might have finished it. One child left dying, the other a question mark to torture Connie Merriweather to the end of his days, just in case he hadn’t cursed his God yet.
I had my turn signal on at the hospital entrance and was waiting for the oncoming traffic to clear so I could pull in, when I started thinking about Booker and Merriweather and the friendship that had ignited this whole thing. Booker’s test of faith for the preacher – the preacher losing everything but God…
Just like Job. In the middle of it all, I happened to remember Frank Cottrell taking the stolen Gideon from DeWitt and reading it to us with such intense thoughtfulness: ‘ …and I only am escaped alone to tell. ’ The way he looked up then and pronounced the name of Missy Worth. I started to laugh at the windbagen Ae w idiocy of the man, something to break the heaviness of the mood that had overtaken me, but the words themselves caught me like a sucker punch. Missy Worth.
Booker’s survivor. It was Sunday, a little over an hour past noon. Sunday at noon, they were letting Missy Worth out of lock up.
Chapter 92
Sunday 12:41 p.m., March 28.
THEY LET MISSY OUT AT forty-one minutes past noon, forty- frigging-one minutes after she was supposed to be released.
Because they wanted money and she didn’t have any. ‘Your idea to keep me here! I’m damned if I’m going to pay you for it! I don’t have no money, anyway!’
What they needed was a signature.
‘I’m not signing nothing!’
Doo was there raising hell when Missy took a breath and had to stop cussing them herself. They finally gave up. They would go after the parents. The minute she was done with the bastards, Doo pulled a beer out of a brown paper sack he’d brought along and handed it to her, right there so the doctors and all of them could see it!
Missy laughed and threw her arms around him, slopping beer on his t-shirt and kissing his face with a wet smack. ‘I spend another day in here, I will be crazy, Doo! A girl can die without a beer, now that’s a fact!’
She had her beer down before they were in the parking lot and was working on a secondwhen he kicked his Harley to life.
‘Caesar eat all the dope?’
‘Hey, that cat is the one that needs to go in there and dry out!’ Doo told her. Missyswore, and Doo shook his head. ‘Don’t worry, I saved your dope.’ Grinning, ‘Most of it anyway. Between Caesar and me... you’re just lucky you had so much!’
‘I’ve been living on cigarettes, Coca Cola, and horse tranquilizers for a week, Doo! I’m ready for something good and plenty of it!’
Doo nodded agreeably. That could be arranged, he said.
‘COME TO MAMMA!’ MISSY shouted, the moment she was in the house. She was talking to the dope, but Caesar came tripping out of the bedroom, yowling at her. Where the hell have you been! Missy was right back at him, chewing him out about eating her grass. Did he know how much that cost her? He didn’t pay any attention to it; he wanted his shotgun and nothing was going to shut him up until he got it.
Doo watched the ritual, the cat hanging upside down, Missy with a lit joint inside her mouth, the white stream of dope blowing over his yellow face. When the cat hit the floor, he seemed to wobble a little then catch his balance. Doo shook his head and went to get a couple of cold beers out of the refrigerator. The phone rang while he was coming back, and he picked it up. ‘Missy there?’
‘Yeah, who’s this?’ But then the guy hung up.
‘Who was it?’ Missy called from the front room.
‘Nobody!’
Missy turned up the music and started dancing while the joint burned off slowly between hehis Dr fingers. She handed it to him and Doo took a hit. The world slipped inside out and then he waited while Missy tucked the joint back into her mouth again and blew him a shotgun. As good as Caesar! He watched Missy bring the joint out of her mouth, dance away, and kick a chair over to clear the floor for some serious ass-shaking. ‘You got enough beer for Mamma, Doo?’
Doo grinned, the guy with everything under control. ‘We got plenty of beer, Missy!’
She hammered the one she had in her hand, swayed easily, and belched like a fog horn.
‘So what does a girl got to blow to get another one?’
Chapter 93
Palm Sunday 1:26 p.m., March 28.
WILL DRIVES BOY’S Toyota to Seventh and Elm and sits across the street staring at the house, thinking about the night Missy begged her life from him so many years ago. On her very soul how she would never tell.
Then listening to her lies in court. He shakes his head at the memory of it. Missy, who would do anything to live. But then forgot to keep her promise...
The blood of her kills still excited him. No disappointment in that one! Not like Penny.
How she hated them! How it grew in her each time the blood splashed over her face and covered her arms. Her sister no differ
ent from the rest at the end. Come right down to it, she wanted Mary more than the rest. Pretty Mary that never did anything wrong and sweet as springtime.
Long he contemplates the wickedness of this woman, the power he knows he still possesses over her. How she breaks apart at the news he is back in town. Will smiles in the mirror and wipes a trickle of blood seeping out from under the scalp of hair.
As Will walks toward the house he sees a man coming to the front door. He stares out at Will through a cracked pane of glass. It is the man who answered the phone. The same who caught him at the library. And ain’t God good!
Will does not hesitate but in his joy he nearly falls off his high heels and right into a drift of snow. The big man watches him, but he can’t see past the dress and scalp of Mother Lyons.
He opens the door and leans out. ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’ Yes, the very same. They closed?
Kicking. Hissing his threats. His dirty words.
Will whispers now. He reaches into the purse he carries. ‘I think I’m at the right place.’
He hesitates for effect. Wobbles a bit.
‘What are you looking for, lady?’
Behind him Missy shouts, ‘Who is it, Doo?’
Will pulls his Bernardelli out. ‘Here it is,’ he answers, smiling. He fires the gun into the giant’s face. The giant falls back with a screaming curse and hits the closet door behind him.
Now he swears with his filthy mouth. He grabs his bloodied jaw. He is neither down, nor dead.
Will feels a pulse of real fear kick up in him but slips inside the house. He takes aim on the forehead at six inches. Blood hiDoo Tts Will’s dress as the gun cracks, and the man sits down on the floor. A moment of wonder, then he falls over dead, the stink of his bowels letting go to prove it.
From the back room, ‘DOO!’ Will steps into the room, looking for Missy but not yet seeing her.
‘DOO? WHAT IS IT?’
He sees a mirror in the next room, his own painted features, Mamma Lyons’s long dark hair. And wouldn’t he have made a beautiful girl?
‘DOO, ANSWER ME!’ Missy stomps out of the bedroom cursing her dead friend and stops when she sees Will. She is naked to the waist. She has a marijuana cigarette in one hand, a beer in the other. They drop at once as she calls the name of the Lord’s son with her wicked tongue.
Whispering, Will steps toward her, ‘You didn’t think I forgot your promise to me, did you, Missy?’
Chapter 94
Palm Sunday 1:27 p.m., March 28.
I TRIED MY PHONE ONE more time as I came up Seventh Street from the south end at about seventy to eighty miles an hour. The phone was stone dead. I tossed it aside. If a cop saw me, he’d follow, maybe even call in for help.
I pressed the horn and hammered the brakes when I pushed through the red lights. Not a cop in sight. All of them south or headed that way. I crossed Crawford, Poplar, and Ohio. At Cherry I was five blocks out and had a straight shot through. The roads had been cleared of snow, but I had to watch for ice patches. Two more intersections to cross. I saw the needle hit a hundred. I kept the horn pressed while I shot past the U, heads turning on a quiet Sunday morning.
Coming up to Elm maybe fifteen seconds later, I got it down to fifty pretty fast and hit the tracks still braking and skidding. The moment I was over them, I cut right and blew into the snowy lane that ran right into Missy Worth’s backyard.
I slid well past the house and then slammed the transmission to park. I jumped out of the car without shutting the engine off or closing the door. I lunged through a couple of heavy drifts and came up to the back door at run. Without breaking stride, I kicked the door to splinters and stepped into Missy Worth’s kitchen.
Will Booker was in the room just past the kitchen. He was wearing a dress and Judy Lyons’s scalp, his face covered in a pale mist of blood. There was a big Harley Davidson motorcycle between us. Missy Worth was on her knees in front of him, naked to the waist and weeping for mercy. Booker had a little gun pointed at her head, and he was talking. Just talking away.
He looked up at me when the door burst open, but he didn’t even blink. All he did was move in tight against the woman, slipping his little pistol into the hollow of her ear.
‘I’ll kill her!’ he hissed.
Missy wept louder. Booker, in his dress and stolen hair and high heels, studied my eyes to see how I was going to handle this. I opened my hands for him to see I had no weapon.
‘HE KILLED DOO, RICK!’
‘I want you to put your gun on the floor, Mr Law! You don’t do it quick it’s the same as killing her,’ he told me. ‘You wat=" dnt that on your soul?’
What I wanted was for him to point his gun at me. I figured Missy could just about break him in half if she had a chance.
‘Put it down now,’ he said, ‘or it’s all over for Missy.’
‘PLEASE, RICK! HE’LL KILL ME!’
‘We’ve got ten cops outside,’ I told him. ‘More coming.’
He smiled, a crooked, dirty grin. ‘They find Penny, did they?’
Missy sobbed, ‘Rick, please! Give him your gun. I don’t want to die!’
‘I’m not armed,’ I said, opening my sports jacket for him to see. ‘I can’t give you what I don’t have.’
I listened for sirens but there was nothing. We were alone. I saw Doo’s legs at the front door.
Will pulled the gun away from Missy’s ear. ‘That bat behind you, Mr Law,’ he said, pointing with his weapon. ‘Don’t pick it up. Just kick it over this way.’
I did as he said. I was maybe ten feet away from them. It was too far to have a chance, but Missy only needed to reach up and grab Booker’s wrist. Not that she noticed how easy it was. She was snuffling back tears, murmuring prayers to Will. I’d have given anything to see the snarling bad-ass who ran the Dog Daze. That Missy Worth would have taken the bastard out at his knees. Then she would have stomped on him for good measure. This girl, I didn’t even know. Maybe it was the Missy who dug her own grave. She was so docile Booker didn’t even bother looking at her.
‘Pick the bat up, Missy.’
‘Will...’ Missy’s voice was like that of an abused child. The pleading came without conviction or any real hope of mercy.
‘Take the bat, Missy!’
Still on her knees, she dropped down on her hands and took the bat. She was whimpering so much I thought she was acting. She had her bat now – her weapon of choice! She could sweep it back at his knees and finish things. I was ready, too, if she did it. I knew how fast she was and the only thing I worried about was saving Booker from getting his head crushed in.
I kept looking at him, damn near ready to smile I was so happy, and he kept looking at me, totally unaware of his vulnerability.
And Missy? She just kept sobbing.
‘On your knees,’ he told me. To get me down he pointed his gun at the back of Missy’s head. I looked at Missy directly now; she was still on her knees, holding the bat.
‘I don’t want to hurt her,’ Booker whispered, ‘but you are forcing me...’
‘RICK ... PLEASE!’
I got to my knees, and Missy’s suffering eased.
‘Stand up, Missy.’
Booker lowered his gun, and I saw him catch a glimpse of himself in the big mirror behind me – liking what he saw. If Missy took one step back, she could swat him with that bat.
Hardly more than a flip of the wrist! But she didnas seig qdidt see her chance. She was crying too hard to see anything.
‘Kill him, Missy,’ Booker whispered.
‘Will, please!’
‘Kill him now!’ he hissed.
I saw her face screw up, her head wagging in refusal.
‘Him or you, Missy!’ Will raised the gun and pointed it at her.
Missy came round the Harley, cocking the bat behind her waist as she cried, ‘I’M SORRY, RICK!’
Chapter 95
Sunday 1:34 p.m., March 28.
I HAD THOUGHT SHE MIGHT turn back, reachin
g over that Harley when Will Booker least expected it and cracking his pretty skull open. Instead, she hammered me.