by Blake Banner
Carmichael was threatening prison.
For a moment, it struck me that two people were going down for Sarah’s death, both of them were black, and both, to some extent, had been Sarah’s lovers. My head throbbed. It was like trying to read letter soup through spaghetti Bolognese.
Images flashed in my mind: the light streaming from the windows and the doors out onto the veranda, among the mist, rain, and the howling gale. The door, open, slamming over and over. The empty house, the empty glass with the melting ice and the lime.
I swore under my breath, snatched up the will, and ran, clattering down the stairs three at a time. I slipped and fell at the bottom, scrambled to my feet, and hurtled across the room, wrenched open the front door, and clambered into my car.
Again the agonizingly slow crawl north up Route 61, along a road made invisible by the deluge, the mist, and the spray. The beams from my headlamps danced on the flow, and reflected back at me off the billion shining needles that fell and danced, hurled this way and that, like gossamer drapes in the wind.
Finally, the gates to Carmichael’s house loomed ahead on the left. They were open, and through them I could see lighted windows. I turned in, crunched to a halt in front of his gabled portico and sat staring.
Like a bizarre, resonant synchronicity, his door also was open, and creaked and banged in the wind to the slow, angry rhythm of a dirge. As though I were acting out a strange déjà vu, I climbed the steps, wiping rain from my eyes. The lock had been shot out. I stepped inside and wedged the door closed with a heavy umbrella stand. This stone house did not creak like Simone’s, but the gale coiled and whipped around it, howling and moaning like a host of mourning banshees, peering and reaching through the keyholes and trying to crawl down the chimneys.
I stood on the checkerboard floor in the vaulted entrance hall and called his name. My voice echoed and died unanswered. My footsteps were startling and loud as I crossed the floor to his study and pushed through the tall, walnut door. The flames were still dancing and quivering in the grate. His glass of bourbon was still on his small table by the chesterfield. But he was not there.
I went across the echoing hall and into the drawing room. Here, too, there was a fire in the grate. It was the only light in the room, save the gray, dying luminescence of the day, dwindling under the heavy blanket of unforgiving cloud overhead. The double glazing of the windows and the French doors muffled Sarah’s rage, but I could see the trees through the glass, twisting and writing, and the lash of the rain against the glass.
The dull light was enough to see his body. There was not much blood, because he had died almost instantly. It had not been a slow, cruel death, like Sarah’s, but a quick, efficient one. It had not been a murder of passion, but of expedience, appropriate to a man who had admired the army so much.
I approached and looked down at James’ wide eyes, staring up at the ceiling, as though it was the last thing he had ever expected to see. His right hand was extended, half-open, cupped around the butt of a Colt revolver. The shot had been a good one, right through his forehead. There was no exit wound, only a snake of dark blood across his brow that had pooled on the floor and now reflected the flames from the fire. But it had no fire of its own.
For a moment, I could see Sergeant Bradley, grinning wolfishly by the light of a camp fire, high in the mountains in Afghanistan with the flames dancing in his eyes. “Nobody gets out of here alive, mate. Nobody. Best you can hope for is to die well.”
He hadn’t been talking about Afghanistan. He’d been talking about life. I hoped James had died well. I had liked him.
I went upstairs and checked all the bedrooms. I noticed that the master bedroom had finally been cleaned. I checked the bathrooms, too. There was no sign of anybody, no sign of a struggle, no sign of anything at all.
I went back down to his study. The door to the gun cupboard was locked, so I blew the lock out with my Sig. The cabinets were intact and no guns were missing, either from them or from the drawers.
Where the hell was he? Him and Simone. It was not a coincidence.
I stepped back into the hall. There was a uniformed cop standing in the doorway looking at me with no expression on his face. Another cop standing outside the drawing room door glanced at me, then spoke through the door. A moment later, Jackson came out. His face was like stone, if stone could look mad.
“You killed James? Why the hell did you have to kill James?”
I didn’t know where to begin my answer, but he didn’t let me talk anyway.
Instead he asked me another question. “Where is Carmichael? What have you done with him?”
Twenty TWO
I studied Jackson a moment before answering, wondering if his concern was an act, or genuine. I pulled my cigarettes from my pocket and looked at them. They were soaked. I sighed and put them back.
“What the hell are you doing here, Jackson?”
His face flushed and his eyes were bright with anger.
“You? You gonna ask me questions?”
“I don’t know where Carmichael is. I just arrived. James was dead when I got here. You know, you don’t have to fuck up every homicide that lands on your desk, Jackson. You have the option of investigating and thinking for yourself sometimes.”
The cop by the door sniggered and hid it behind a cough. I glanced at him, then repeated to Jackson, “Why are you here?”
The muscle in his jaw kept bunching. “I don’t have to answer your damned questions.” He drew breath and I knew what he was going to say. He was going to tell the cop to cuff me. If he did, I was going to kill him and the two cops, and I didn’t want to do that. I spoke before he did.
“Did you look at the bullet wound?”
He frowned at me. “What?”
I shouted, “Goddamit Jackson! Did you examine the bullet wound? In James’ head? Did you examine it?”
The hall fell very silent. The wind groaned outside. He stared at me resentfully but he didn’t answer.
I said, “It’s a .22. The hole is small and neat. There is no exit wound. My weapon is a Sig Sauer p226 Tacops, 9mm. I use hollow tips, and the magazine is full. The gun has not been fired. If I had shot James, the entry wound would be bigger and the back of his head would be missing. Also…” I held up my hands. “There is no gunshot residue. Do yourself a favor. Get it right once.”
“You better stop riding me, Lacklan.”
“I’ll do that, just as soon as you start doing your job.” He had nothing to say, so I pushed on. “I’m here because I had an appointment with Carmichael. When I arrived, his door was open, the lock had been blown out, James was dead, as you found him, and Carmichael was missing. Even you must be able to see that it all adds up to an abduction. James was devoted to his boss. He tried to defend him and was shot in the head for his efforts. And that all brings me back, once again, Jackson, to my original question. What are you doing here?”
The two cops who had come with him were looking at him curiously. I played a bluff and it paid off. I raised an eyebrow and asked him, “Do I need to call Washington?”
He swallowed. “No. He called me about an hour ago. Said he wanted me to drop by.”
“How’d he sound?”
He shrugged. “Normal.”
“Did he say what it was about?”
He hesitated.
My mind started racing. “Did he say something about the Full Moon?”
He swallowed again, eyeing the uniforms sidelong. My mind was reaching, but it was reaching into the void. I had found a corner of the jigsaw, but I had found sky where there should be earth. I half-grinned. “Son of a gun. He wanted you to go with him to the Full Moon…”
“That’s all he said. He had to go there. He wouldn’t say why, but he wanted support… Is that where he is?”
I thought about it and shook my head. “I don’t know, Jackson. I don’t know where he is. But if he’s there, why the hell would he shoot out his own lock and kill James?” I gestured back at his st
udy. “And none of his weapons is missing…”
Jackson was looking worried. “He said something, it didn’t make a lot of sense. He sounded upset. It was about a meeting between…” He looked at the floor, like he was trying to remember.
I said, “Grumman and…”
He nodded. “Yeah, Grumman and Ive?”
“Did he say anything else?”
He looked distressed. “He just said he was arranging some kind of meeting. Is that where he is? Do you think that’s where he went?” He looked over at the door, then back at the drawing room. “Who the fuck did this? If you didn’t do it, who the fuck did?”
There were only two possibilities, and I had only one option.
“Get a grip, Jackson. Either he killed James, shot out his own lock and went to the Full Moon voluntarily, or they came and took him. Either way, it looks like that’s where he went. And if we don’t go and get him, there is going to be another death tonight.”
I stepped up close to him and looked him in the eye. “Listen to me, Jackson, if you fuck this up, people will die. These men are armed and very dangerous.”
“Save your advice for your regimental rookies, Walker. I know what I’m doing.”
“Then do your thing, but stay the hell out of my way.”
“I should arrest you and throw you in a cell.”
“Sure, and then you can all die out there tonight. You’re incompetent, Jackson. If you want to commit suicide, that’s fine by me. I won’t mourn you. But don’t kill your men in the process.”
“I don’t have time for this crap.” He turned to his men. “Come on. Let’s go.”
I stepped out after him and watched them clamber into a Dodge RAM, holding onto their hats with their coats flapping around them. Then they drove out to the road with the silver rain swirling around their headlamps. I counted thirty and got into the Zombie. I left my headlamps off and followed after them.
I stayed on their red taillights, leaving forty or fifty feet between us. They were practically invisible to me in the fading light. I must have been completely invisible to them. I took us fifteen minutes to get to the St. Francisville crossroads. There, they turned onto Route 10 and I dropped back till their rear lights were nothing more than a dim, red glow in the thickening mist of spray. To the south, vast areas of what should have been green pastureland glowed a dull silver where the flood reflected what little light there was from the sky.
As we moved in among the woodlands, the road became littered with branches that had been torn from the trees and scattered across the blacktop. Here and there, oaks and pines were visible on the fringes of the forest that had been uprooted and dumped in the mire.
Eventually, I came to the spot where I had left my car earlier. I pulled off the road and concealed the Zombie among the bushes on some higher ground that had not yet become a swamp. I retrieved my kit bag, extracted the take-down bow and six of the aluminum broad heads, then ran silently through the trees. I knew Bat was aware of me and probably had a bead on me already. I also knew he had probably recognized me. When I was within eight feet of where I guessed he was hidden, I dropped to the ground and spoke to the foliage.
“Unless you hear the precise words, ‘code red’, do nothing but record. Have you had anything yet?”
The foliage spoke back to me. “Yup.”
“Is Carmichael here?”
“Nope.”
“Have we got targets on the outside?”
“One at the back, AK47, hunkered down out of the wind by the shed at the back door. You have a clear line of fire from thirteen yards to my left, by the large oak. Another in the Dodge truck at the side of the building. Fifteen yards to my right. Guard at the front is being fuckin’ useless indoors, nobody on the far side.”
It wasn’t hard to be quiet with the wind whistling and screaming among the branches. I made the fifteen yards and took up my position by the old oak tree. The light was failing fast, but I could see his waterproof coat glistening by the side of the door, in the lee of the shed. I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing and counted to one hundred and twenty. When I opened them again, I could see him clearly. He was sitting on a couple of coke crates he’d pulled out and set against the shed.
I put the weapon together, strung it, and nocked an arrow. The hickory bow had a sixty-five pound draw weight, which was enough to skewer him to the wall of the building, and the broad, razor-sharp heads were designed to cause maximum bleeding and minimum pain. Death was fast and silent. The way I liked it.
The wind was coming from the front of the club, so the back was sheltered to some extent from the air turbulence. I drew back to my ear, adjusted for what wind there was, and loosed.
You do not fire a bow, because there is no gunpowder involved. You shoot a bow or you loose an arrow. I loosed the arrow and there was a soft scrape and a whisper. After a moment, I heard a grunt and a sigh, and I knew he was dead. I didn’t even know who he was, but I knew I’d killed him.
His pal in the truck was going to be more complicated. The wind channeling down the side of the club would be gusting at fifty miles an hour. The bow was not an option. I ran back the way I had come, left the bow beside Bat, and moved on till I was five or six yards behind the truck. Then, I crawled to the rear wheel, pulled my knife from my boot, stood, and knocked on the glass with my left hand.
He pushed open the door and shouted, “What?”
The blade went in through his throat and severed his brain stem. He didn’t even know he was dead. His nerves jumped and he quivered for a couple of seconds. I pushed him back in the truck and closed the door.
Then, I staggered to the front of the building and up the stairs to the entrance. I hammered for about thirty seconds and saw a light come on inside, which I knew was the private room at the back. A few moments later, the door opened and Jackson was peering out at me.
He said, “He’s here. In the back.”
I pushed in past him and the door slammed behind me. I said, “What happened to James?”
“He doesn’t know. He says he was OK when he left.”
“How come he didn’t wait for me?”
“Ask him yourself.”
He turned and walked across the darkened bar toward where a sliver of yellow light leaned out across the wooden floor. I followed him. We pushed through the door and he closed it behind me.
I was not surprised to see Ivory sitting at the table, smiling. There was no silver-haired businessman sitting with him, no Grumman, and that didn’t surprise me either. There were half a dozen big, brawny gorillas sitting around the room, and on the floor, the two uniformed cops were lying with their eyes open and big, gaping holes in their chests. They’d had a bad feeling about their boss back at Carmichael’s house. I’d seen it in their eyes. It was a shame for them that they didn’t act on it.
I glanced at them for a moment and then at Jackson. “What were their names? Did they have families? They didn’t deserve to die.”
There was nothing but contempt in his face. “Stop, you’re breaking my heart. You want to know why they died? They died because you couldn’t keep your damned nose out of our business. If you’d listened to me and got the hell out Burgundy, Joe and Phil would be going home to their wives and kids tonight. Satisfied?”
I smiled and shook my head. “So it’s my fault you murdered two police officers? My fault because I wanted to save an innocent man from being framed for murder?”
Ivory started his high-pitched wheezing laugh. “What is this, a cheap B movie? Will somebody please tell me what the hell I am doing here tonight? Where is Carmichael?”
Jackson broke in, “More to the point, where is Hays? I went to pick him up and he wasn’t at home and he wasn’t at the hotel. What have you done with him?”
I shrugged. “He’s probably in Canada by now. See, when I saw that this was a frame up, I got him out of here until I can get a federal investigation going.”
Ivory was giggling.
Jackson said,
“Bullshit. Bull-shit!”
Ivory said again, “Where is Carmichael?”
I studied his face a moment. His expression was hard to read. I said, “I thought you might know. He was scared you and Grumman were going to kill him.”
His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Grumman?” He grinned. “Carmichael thought Grumman was going to kill him, huh?”
“You and Grumman, Ivory. And I think he suspected Jackson here, too. You did kill Sarah, didn’t you?”
He shook his head several times, then slammed his palm down on the tabletop. “Man!” He pointed at me and spoke to nobody in particular. “Take his weapons and check him for a wire.”
I let them take my gun and my knife, watching Ivory all the while. When they had checked me for a wire, I said, “Why’d you kill her, Ivory? Were you jealous?”
He stared at me a long time. “I should kill you right now, you know that? Because you are a very dangerous man. But you know why I ain’t killed you yet?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned to Jackson. “You know why I ain’t killed him yet, Mr. Pig?”
Jackson shook his head. “No, but I wish you would. This guy gives me the creeps. Kill him and dump him in the swamps.”
“No…” He wagged his long finger in the negative. “No, because he is so dangerous and because he gives me the creeps. Why is he here? Why has he, with total disregard for his own safety, set up this phony meeting with Carmichael, and waltzed in here, with no wire, no back up, and just handed over his weapons? Why?” He pointed at me and craned his neck toward Jackson. “This son of a bitch came in here the other night, killed Eustace, Chave, Paul, and Miles, cut off their goddamn thumbs, and put them right here on the table in front of me!” He got up from his chair and came around the table. “Now you tell me, Jackson, why does a man like that come in here, in this way, knowing we could kill him at any moment?”