Authors: Jon Land
Dead Simple (10 page)
Q
ueen Mary concentrated on the card the woman was holding tight against her chest.
ueen Mary concentrated on the card the woman was holding tight against her chest.
“Okay, what is it?”
“A heart,” Mary answered.
The woman with whom she was sharing the lockup shook her head as she flung another dollar toward her. “That’s eight in a row right. How you do that?”
“What card is it?” another woman in the cell, with bad teeth and a rank smell, yelled out, grabbing Mary’s wrist before she could snatch the bill from the floor.
“I said I could tell the suit, not the card.”
The woman wasn’t letting up. “Come on, bitch, show us what you really got. What card she holding?”
“Eight of hearts,” Mary answered.
The inmate holding the card dropped it faceup on the floor: ten of hearts.
“Pay up,” the one with bad teeth ordered.
“You don’t want to do this.”
“I don’t?”
“You’ve got enough problems.”
“I do?”
“Killed your own kid, didn’t you?”
The woman with bad teeth froze up. “What the fu—”
“He OD’d on your drugs. Little ten-year-old going into the bathroom to shoot up like his mama.”
The woman let go of Mary’s wrist and started to move away, but Mary followed her across the floor.
“You found him, the needle was still in his arm. Was he already dead or did he die later? That’s the one thing I can’t see.”
The woman screamed.
J
ack Tyrell walked into the Akron, Ohio, police department looking fresh and neat in his newly pressed clothes, his hair combed and clubbed back with a rubber band.
ack Tyrell walked into the Akron, Ohio, police department looking fresh and neat in his newly pressed clothes, his hair combed and clubbed back with a rubber band.
“Excuse me,” he said to the clerk inside the thick glass directly before him.
Another man was in there with the clerk, manning the radio. Four more cops were milling about within; two of them had just sat down at their desks after refilling their coffee mugs.
“What can I do for you, sir?”
“I understand you’re holding a prisoner here for transfer …” Jack checked the man’s name tag. “Sergeant. Friend of mine named Mary Raffa.”
“Transfer?”
“To county jail tomorrow. Thirty-day stretch for petty larceny, I think it was. She was sentenced yesterday.”
“That all?”
“Well, like I said, she’s a friend of mine, and I’d like to see if I can pay the fine on her behalf, set things right.”
“Now? It’s almost midnight.”
“No better time than the present.”
The sergeant didn’t know whether to take him seriously or not. “Look, this is something you need to take up in court with a judge.”
“Tomorrow?” asked a disappointed Jack Tyrell.
“Best I can do.”
“You sure?”
“Sorry.”
Tyrell turned and walked back through the door dejectedly. The sergeant had gone back to his paperwork when the roar of an engine made him look up.
The Winnebago’s lights were off, so he didn’t actually see anything until Lem Trumble crashed the vehicle through the entrance and slammed into the glass security wall, collapsing it. Earl Yost was the first one out, quickly followed by Weeb, both of them wielding submachine guns they fired nonstop until none of the six cops inside was moving.
“
Y
ou’ve lost your mind, Jackie! This time you’ve really gone and done it!” Mary yelled at him as he led her down the hall just beyond the lockup.
Y
ou’ve lost your mind, Jackie! This time you’ve really gone and done it!” Mary yelled at him as he led her down the hall just beyond the lockup.
They had met during the Second Battle of Chicago, in the fall of 1969, a Weatherman action that had deeply disappointed Tyrell when the twenty thousand expected to show up turned out to be less than a tenth of that. Then, even worse, the leadership had distributed clubs instead of guns. Mary was with the movement’s women’s militia, and at one point during the second night of rioting she and Jack found themselves fighting, quite literally, back-to-back against the Chicago police. The first time Tyrell looked into her eyes, he could tell she was enjoying it as much as he was. They slept out together that night in a park, nursing their wounds and dreaming about the way things could be.
The first time he saw her gift in action, what she called a “quickening,” was a few days later when they prepared to board a bus out of the city. Mary had clamped a hand onto his arm the instant he was starting up the steps.
“Don’t get on,” she ordered in a voice that left no room for argument.
Jack looked into her eyes, which had suddenly glassed over, and figured there was something wrong with her. It was only later, after a pair of Illinois State Police cruisers had run the bus off the road, killing two and injuring thirty, that he realized what Mary’s gift was all about.
He didn’t make a single move without consulting Mary from that point on. And to this day Tyrell believed that if she had been around for the Mercantile Bank action, it would have gone off altogether differently. He often played it out, pretending she’d been there. Wondered how his life would have been.
Tyrell stopped when they came to the main floor of the building, where the Yost brothers stood guard over a half-dozen dead cops, and smiled at her. “I rescue you out of jail and that’s what you say to me? After twenty-five years you can’t come up with a nicer greeting?”
Mary looked around and shuddered. “Oh God, Jackie, what have you gone and done?”
“Nothing, compared to what I’m going to do.”
“You went through all this to get me out? You did this for me?”
“Thing is, babe,” Jack told her, “I need you to find something for me.”
W
ill Thatch poured himself another scotch, hand trembling so much he spilled some on the newspaper that lay atop his table, open to page five. A headline halfway down the page, next to an underwear ad, jumped out at him again:
ill Thatch poured himself another scotch, hand trembling so much he spilled some on the newspaper that lay atop his table, open to page five. A headline halfway down the page, next to an underwear ad, jumped out at him again:
SIX DIE IN JAIL BREAK
The article had an Akron, Ohio, log line. According to the account, last night four men had driven a stolen Winnebago into a police station and killed all officers present, to free a single female prisoner slated to be transferred to the county jail today. On his first read, Will hadn’t gotten any further than the grainy still shot salvaged from a damaged security camera that pictured a pair of shapes moving toward a wall pockmarked with bullet holes. The blurriness didn’t prevent Will from recognizing who they were; he’d know them anywhere, could almost smell them through the newsprint.
The Yost brothers.
Thatch had their pictures hanging right here on his memory wall, among two dozen others who formed the nucleus of Midnight Run. He lifted his eyes to that wall now, past his eight-by-tens of Jack Tyrell and Lem Trumble and the Yost brothers, to those of Othell Vance and Mary Raffa, better known as “Queen Mary,” or “Mary Mary Quite Contrary,” since she was
responsible for planting six men in their graves, half of them cops. That’s how her garden grew.
responsible for planting six men in their graves, half of them cops. That’s how her garden grew.
Will had started on the scotch right about then, dipped into an alcohol-induced fog, hoping things would settle in his mind. Kept drinking but couldn’t stop shaking, even after putting on his thick bathrobe, with the threads hanging down from the bottom.
For twenty-five years he’d known this day would come. A piece of the past reaching out to drag him from the present. He sat now with his scotch, gazing at the article until his vision blurred, trying to remember where he had left his glasses.
As well as pictures, his memory wall was lined with newspaper articles, some of them of the FBI agents assigned to track down Jack Tyrell and Midnight Run. One of these agents was a handsome young man identified as Special Agent William Thatch. The last article in the row included pictures shot in the aftermath of Midnight Run’s final act of terrorism, one of which showed William Thatch administering CPR to a wounded man on a smoky New York City street.
That was the day an FBI plant in Midnight Run had finally provided the opportunity to nail the entire gang at the Mercantile Bank building. The task force showed up along with a heavy complement of New York police and shot it out with gang members in the minutes before the bomb exploded.
Despite killing a number of the gang, the FBI task force had let Jack Tyrell and several of his soldiers, including the Yost brothers and Othell Vance, slip from their clutches that day. But Will bore the dubious distinction of having had Tyrell himself dead in his sights, only to look away.
A father covered in blood, grieving over his dying son
…
…
Will had actually comforted the man, given him a towel, and brought him to a priest, who was found dead in his underwear twenty minutes later.
Jack Tyrell had disappeared after that, avoiding all attempts by Will and others to track him down. The difference between Will and those others was that he never gave up, not even after it cost him his job and his family. By the time it was clear Tyrell was gone for good, each day began and ended for Will the same way, the middle not much different. After being fired, he spent another three years squandering his pension on his own personal pursuit of his quarry.
When that failed he fell into the bottle, and he hadn’t come up much since, except to study newspapers. At the New York Public Library mostly, as many out-of-town papers as he could scrutinize page by page until his eyes got blurry. If Jackie Terror ever came back, Will knew that’s where he would find him. He kept his now ancient .38-caliber Smith & Wesson snub-nosed hidden under the mattress in case that day should come, tempted on numerous occasions to use it on himself in the meantime.
How ironic that when he saw Jack Tyrell again for the first time in twenty-five years, it wasn’t in the library but at a newsstand, on the back page of the
New York Post
a month before. A black-and-white composite sketch of a man wanted for questioning in the murders of four unidentified men at Crest Haven Memorial Park, a cemetery in Clifton, New Jersey. Will bought the paper and stood there on the sidewalk studying the sketch for a very long time, the Post trembling in his liver-spotted hands.
New York Post
a month before. A black-and-white composite sketch of a man wanted for questioning in the murders of four unidentified men at Crest Haven Memorial Park, a cemetery in Clifton, New Jersey. Will bought the paper and stood there on the sidewalk studying the sketch for a very long time, the Post trembling in his liver-spotted hands.
The more he looked at the face, though, the less convinced he became it belonged to Jackie Tyrell. He brought it back to his room and studied it until his head throbbed. Before long the face could have been anyone’s.
He’d been reading all the New York papers every day ever since. But strangely, that one edition of the
Post
contained the only mention of the cemetery murders. There wasn’t a single follow-up story anywhere to be found, and if he hadn’t tacked the article to his memory wall, Will might have doubted they ever happened.
Post
contained the only mention of the cemetery murders. There wasn’t a single follow-up story anywhere to be found, and if he hadn’t tacked the article to his memory wall, Will might have doubted they ever happened.
Then the article about the Akron killings had run in the late edition of today’s
New York Times
, along with the shot of the Yost brothers lifted off the surveillance camera and picturing a third figure in dim view from the side. The dim view was enough for Will.
New York Times
, along with the shot of the Yost brothers lifted off the surveillance camera and picturing a third figure in dim view from the side. The dim view was enough for Will.
He could recognize Jack Tyrell from any angle, and as it turned out, the composite sketch reproduced in the
Post
a month earlier wasn’t such a bad likeness, after all.
Post
a month earlier wasn’t such a bad likeness, after all.
Will poured the last of his scotch into the glass and guzzled it down. His throat burned and his stomach felt as if somebody was stoking logs inside it. He ran his eyes along the various pictures tacked to his memory wall, wondering how many other Midnight Run members old Jack had managed to contact. Tyrell never did anything without a firm purpose behind it, and now something had triggered him into rallying the troops again. What exactly that was Will didn’t yet know, but there were a few things he was sure of:
Jackie Terror was back in business.
And, this time, Will was going to stop him.
“
W
hen was the last time you saw your father, Ms. Halprin?” Chief Lanning asked Liz.
W
hen was the last time you saw your father, Ms. Halprin?” Chief Lanning asked Liz.
“Day before yesterday.”
Lanning noted that on the report form in front of him. “And you have no idea where he was going?”
“He had some business with Maxwell Rentz.”
Lanning glanced up at that. “What kind of business?”
“He wanted to discuss Mr. Rentz’s last offer for the family farm.”
“What does your father do for a living?”
“He’s retired.”
“Retired from what?”
“Is that important?”
“Routine.”
“Does the routine include questioning Mr. Rentz?”
“What was your father retired from, ma’am?”
“The army.”
Lanning’s eyebrows flickered. “And he went to see Mr. Rentz to discuss an offer for your farm.”
“Why don’t you ask Mr. Rentz, Chief?”
“I’d like to know first why your father came here to Virginia.”
Liz felt her frustration begin to simmer over. “And I’d like to know what
two of your officers were doing in the company of Maxwell Rentz last week.”
two of your officers were doing in the company of Maxwell Rentz last week.”
“I thought we’d been over this before. On the phone.”
“Not to my satisfaction.”
“They were off duty at the time. Mr. Rentz retained them on a perhire basis to secure a work area.”
“What’s there to secure around a lake, Chief? Was Mr. Rentz expecting them to direct traffic a half mile from the nearest road?”
“I don’t know, Ms. Halprin. What I do know is if I’d’ve been the one at the lake that night, I would have arrested you for unlawful discharge of a weapon and maybe felonious assault.” Lanning dropped his pen and leaned forward. “The thing is, you come in here asking me to do something about Mr. Rentz, when he has a hell of a lot more call to come in and ask me to do something about you.”
“Then why hasn’t he?”
Lanning looked unmoved by her comment. “Maybe he’s trying to handle things in a gentlemanly fashion.”
“Rentz doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”
“Don’t ask me to take sides, Ms. Halprin.”
“I’m asking you to do what’s right.”
“Right now, in the eyes of the town, that would be to arrest you. Maxwell Rentz is a powerful man, and he’s planning to build a theme park that will bring this town to life again, put people back to work.”
“Like the ones from the Cattleman’s Association who paid me a visit, Chief?”
“This county hasn’t had a Cattleman’s Association in a long time, Ms. Halprin.”
“Man named John Redding?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Then he must have been one of those people who are looking for work.”
Liz hadn’t come to the police station expecting help so much as to put the town and county on notice that she wasn’t going to give in easily. If they wanted a fight, she intended to give it to them; in fact, that was what she wanted now too. She would never have called her father, would never have involved him in this after so many years of estrangement. He hadn’t even told her exactly how he had found out what was going on; Liz guessed it was his old army network, someone keeping an eye on her, with orders to call if there was a problem.
She didn’t believe for one second that Maxwell Rentz, and any number of goons he could muster, were any match for her father. Buck Torrey was like a wall of granite it had taken the first twenty-six years of her life to find a crack in. That had been five years ago, when Buck discharged
himself from the world and his family, along with the army. Moved to some godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere you couldn’t reach, if you could find it. Liz didn’t even have his address for almost a year, sent letters care of Fort Bragg and had no evidence he ever received them.
himself from the world and his family, along with the army. Moved to some godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere you couldn’t reach, if you could find it. Liz didn’t even have his address for almost a year, sent letters care of Fort Bragg and had no evidence he ever received them.
He finally wrote back, giving her a post office box address, to which she wrote frequently. She told him about the dissolution of her marriage, certain he took some pleasure in the fact that he had insisted from the beginning that her ex was a bastard. She kept him up-to-date on Justin’s progress in school and sports and on the travails of her own career, centering on her pursuit of a long-sought-after position on the Hostage and Rescue Team.
Liz didn’t stop writing, even if his infrequent replies were cursory at best. Every time she was ready to give up, memories flooded back: rich, warm, and uniquely Buck. Liz was his only child. She never once thought he would have been happier to have a son, because Buck was nothing if not totally fair about such things. Boy or girl—it mattered not at all to one of his upbringing. Buck wanted to raise a person, not a girl or a boy, the rituals for either not varying.
They did everything together, even after the divorce. Liz knew he had given up the farm in the money settlement because she loved it so much; her first thought upon returning to find it so run-down was of him. They played catch, went to movies, fished, and hunted. Well, not hunted exactly, because they never actually killed anything. Just slid through the woods tracking animals and seeing how close they could get before the animals scampered away.
Sometimes Buck would take her deep into the woods, where he would find and destroy traps laid by poachers. The only time he had ever killed anything was when they came upon a fox caught in one. Buck hadn’t let her watch.
He taught her to shoot, and Liz loved that best of all. Her twelfthbirthday present was a camping trip to the mountains, where Buck lay in wait for some hunters who were illegally killing bears, leaving a trail of orphaned cubs in their wake. They had come upon the hunters’ camp at night, and this time Buck did let Liz watch as he dealt with them. It had been the defining experience of their relationship, the moment in her life when Liz loved her father most, at the same time she found herself as terrified of him as were the men she was certain would never hurt an animal again.
Buck Torrey loved people in his own unique way, but he didn’t believe you could love someone you didn’t respect too. Liz could look back on those days now and see not only how important it was that she respect him, but also that he show how much he respected her. That was why he had let her watch him that night with the hunters. She was old enough at that
point to be initiated into his world, see her father for what he really was.
point to be initiated into his world, see her father for what he really was.
It was strange how she had chosen to marry a man who was the exact opposite of Buck. Liz wondered if she had been overreacting to the fear that she would never be able to find a man who could measure up to her father, so why bother trying? Instead she had settled, perhaps worried she would grow consumed by her career down the road and wake up one morning in her forties with the realization that there would be no kid to take on overnights to the mountains. Teach how to spring traps and what to do to hunters who orphaned bear cubs.
Justin was almost nine now, and they hadn’t done much of that. And if the return of Buck into her life was cause for any regret, it was how much her son had lost these last five years by his grandfather’s withdrawal. Maybe she hadn’t felt unequivocally happy to see her father because she feared that once this problem was resolved, he’d be gone again. More years sliding by as she checked the mail eagerly every day, only to be disappointed.
The Jeep coasted along at sixty, the road black and empty before her. A river blossomed on her right, making her think of the lake that kept the secrets of her property. The old law was vague but plain on this subject: if Maxwell Rentz could prove she had no claim to the lake, thus denying her water rights, his county contacts could order her land condemned and quit-deed it over to him.
She drove on, making out a wish list of what she would need if the county decided to condemn her land. Some claymore mines would be nice, a few fragmentation grenades, an M-16 with plenty of ammo. Maybe find them in the duffel her father had stowed in the front hall closet before he left. Hunker down and hold Rentz off long enough to make the press aware of his tactics, maybe take him out with her.
Liz didn’t see the truck until it loomed as a huge shape in her rearview mirror, drawing up so fast it seemed to swallow the Jeep. She braced for impact, then realized the truck had sliced across the center line at the last instant, speeding up alongside her. She recognized its royal-blue color from the visit paid her by John Redding’s nonexistent local Cattleman’s Association.
The blue truck swerved suddenly and sideswiped her Jeep. Liz felt the passenger side grating against the guardrail, powerless to do anything but hold tight to the wheel. Slam the brakes and she’d be sent into a wild spin across the road, causing a horrific accident almost certain to take more lives than her own.
Thump!
The truck smashed her Jeep again, Redding’s two cohorts from the other morning recognizable in the raised cab, sneering down at her. The barrel-chested one was driving, the fat one strapped into the passenger seat.
Liz shot them the finger, continued to battle the truck, the guardrail, and her own steering wheel. A trail of sparks flew in her wake. Cars whizzed by through the impossibly narrow gap left beyond the tandem width of her Jeep and the blue truck. It seemed to shoot out ahead of her, tiring of this game, she thought, then it slowed and swerved back, clipping her front fender on an angle that sent her up and over the guardrail toward the river below.
The Jeep struck the surface hard on an angle that turned it onto its side. The air bag did not deploy, and Liz’s skull cracked against the roof in spite of her shoulder harness.
The world darkened before her. Her eyes fluttered, then closed. Liz felt only an immense weariness. A few minutes’ rest and then she’d wake up, tend to her chores. She had never felt more relaxed.
The thud of the Jeep settling on the river bottom jarred her alert again. Around her, cold water was rushing in. The Jeep had landed on its passenger side, and she could see the surface shimmering thirty feet above through the window. Easy to reach it, but first she had to extricate herself from the vehicle. For the moment she had air, but the water would swallow it before much longer.
Fighting back panic, Liz pressed the emergency release button on her harness, freeing her to try to escape. But the Jeep had no sunroof and the closed windows were electric. That meant her only hope of escaping was to break one of them.
The water had reached her chest, leaving Liz still enough time to hammer at the glass of her window with an elbow. But her angle was all wrong and the water already covered too much of the glass. Before she could consider an alternative, the water swept over her face and left panic reaching for her as she tried the door latch, sucking in a final deep breath. Liz felt the latch give and pushed her shoulder against the door. But the water pressure outside refused to let it budge, and she had lost valuable seconds in the process. No, the window held her only hope for survival.
Feeling the breath beginning to burn in her lungs, Liz yanked off a boot and used its heel as a ram. Again, though, her angle and the water betrayed her, and she failed to even crack the glass. She didn’t actually feel herself weaken until the boot slipped from her grasp. She was left holding only water, knowing it was going to pour into her lungs any second and consume her just as it had consumed the Jeep. But she turned back to the window, determined to give escape one last try.
The devil looked down through the glass at her. With black eyes, hair whipped crazy by the swirling waters, and a short beard that made his flesh look black too, he had to be the devil. Liz looked hopelessly into those eyes in the instant before the glass shattered behind his thrust.
Why the devil? How did I go that wrong?
She felt something jabbing at her, grabbing hold, and then she was being dragged upward. The world brightened briefly before she slipped into an even deeper void, where she forgot how to breathe and everything turned as cold as the devil’s black eyes.
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