Authors: Jon Land
Dead Simple (8 page)
L
em Trumble hoisted the gravestone from the ground and placed it gently across the front of the forklift. The night sky bled a little rain, but Lem didn’t feel it as he shifted his massive shoulders and squeezed back into the forklift’s cab. It was far too small to accommodate his vast bulk, and he had to sit sideways and shimmy himself around a little before driving off with one leg hanging outside.
em Trumble hoisted the gravestone from the ground and placed it gently across the front of the forklift. The night sky bled a little rain, but Lem didn’t feel it as he shifted his massive shoulders and squeezed back into the forklift’s cab. It was far too small to accommodate his vast bulk, and he had to sit sideways and shimmy himself around a little before driving off with one leg hanging outside.
Lem never complained about the size of the forklift cab, because he otherwise loved his work. This shift belonged to him and him alone. People didn’t like him very much and never had. Ever since he was a kid, they considered him big and dumb. Well, they were half right. Lem stood closer to seven feet than six and was blessed with an incredibly muscular frame even though he had never lifted a weight in his life.
He pulled the forklift to a halt in front of the caretaker’s workshop and carried the gravestone inside, laying it adroitly atop his table, ready with all the tools and supplies he would need to repair it. This Vermont cemetery was on the National Historic Register, which meant the stones had to be brought in for repair at the first sign of damage. The other workers could do the spot stuff themselves right at the grave site. But the larger, more complicated jobs were left for Lem. He would come in every night, check his board for the log of plot and grave numbers, then head the forklift out to the first one on the list.
He loved working with the marble and granite, took exquisite pride in
making his patchwork meld perfectly with the structure as a whole. When finished, he would draw a line through that item on the log, return it to its place, and drive out to fetch another. There was an easy, simple rhythm to it all that Lem embraced, mostly because he could handle everything alone and at night. He didn’t like the way people looked at him during the day, when he couldn’t go out without applying thick makeup to cover the burn scars that corroded his face. There wasn’t much the doctors had been able to do to put his face back together, but the important parts worked well enough. Only good thing was the face had kept everyone away from him in his twenty years hard time in a federal penitentiary. Bad thing was after the twenty were over he had to look at himself again.
making his patchwork meld perfectly with the structure as a whole. When finished, he would draw a line through that item on the log, return it to its place, and drive out to fetch another. There was an easy, simple rhythm to it all that Lem embraced, mostly because he could handle everything alone and at night. He didn’t like the way people looked at him during the day, when he couldn’t go out without applying thick makeup to cover the burn scars that corroded his face. There wasn’t much the doctors had been able to do to put his face back together, but the important parts worked well enough. Only good thing was the face had kept everyone away from him in his twenty years hard time in a federal penitentiary. Bad thing was after the twenty were over he had to look at himself again.
In prison there weren’t a lot of mirrors or glass. It was easy to forget what the heat of the blast had done to his flesh and hair. Once he got out, the mirrors and glass were everywhere he looked. On the night shift, though, he never saw anyone and nobody saw him. Work his magic with the decaying tombstones and take the check out of his box every other Friday. His hands looked like swollen slabs of meat, yet were delicate and adroit all the same. He could work them into any groove or crack in the granite, smooth in a patch so perfect nobody could notice once it dried.
His secret was making believe he was working on his own face, doing for the stones what the doctors couldn’t do for him. Lost himself in the work, as now, smoothing out the inside of a chip so the patch would take better.
“Anybody I know?” a voice asked from the door.
Lem stiffened as he turned. A dark shape stood before him in the doorway, silhouetted against a shroud of light shed by the outdoor floods.
Lem squinted, couldn’t believe what he thought he was seeing. “Jack?” His eyes bulged. “Is that you?”
“Hello, Tremble,” Jack Tyrell greeted, using the pet name he always called Lem, since that’s what people who saw him always did, and he closed the door behind him.
Lem was across the floor in an instant too fast to record, incredible for a man his size. He captured Tyrell in a bear hug and hoisted him happily off the ground.
“I knew I’d see you again someday, Jack! I just knew it!”
Tyrell waited for Lem to set him back down. “That day has come.” He looked the giant over, not bothered by his ruined face.
Lem turned proudly to his worktable. “Got me a trade now. Wanna see?”
Jack followed him back to the gravestone. “And I prepared you well for it. Like your work, Lem?”
“Fuck, yeah.”
“What if I was to say I needed you, Tremble, that it was time we went back to finish what we started?”
Lem stripped off his grubby work apron and dropped it to the floor. He couldn’t smile anymore, since a good portion of his upper lip was burned away, but the look he gave Jack Tyrell was as close as he could come.
“I’d say I’m ready. I’d say I can’t wait.”
Jack reached out to touch the big man’s shoulder, pet him like the loyal dog he was. “Neither can I.”
“
A
ren’t you going to ask me in?”
A
ren’t you going to ask me in?”
Liz Halprin found herself staring at her father through the screen door.
“Nice shotgun, by the way,” Buck Torrey continued, gazing down at the Mossberg dangling from her left hand. “I guess you were expecting somebody else.”
“Five years go by, I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Heard you had some trouble.”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“With a shotgun?” Eyes on the Mossberg again.
“It’s cheaper to feed than a dog,” Liz said, as she finally eased open the screen door.
“Place looks pretty good,” Buck said, and he slid past her into the kitchen.
“It looks like shit. Old; you know.”
“The broken window in the living room’s new.”
“I see you’ve been looking around.”
Buck plopped the duffel bag he was carrying down to the floor. Its contents clanked noisily on impact with the tile. “Bullet holes are easy to spot. Why don’t we have a drink and you can tell me what’s going on.”
“If I wanted to tell you that, I’d have called.”
“A tough chore, considering you don’t have my phone number. Where are the glasses?” Buck asked, moving past his daughter to open a cupboard. “They used to be here.”
“Next one over. And how’d you know
anything
was going on?”
anything
was going on?”
He selected two rocks glasses and turned back toward her. “I got sources.”
“You mean spies.”
“Where’s the whiskey?” Buck asked, working on another cabinet.
T
hey talked for hours, bursts of conversation mixed with uneasy lapses of silence Buck Torrey filled with sips from the whiskey he had found on his own. Mostly, he wanted to know about the grandson he hadn’t seen in five years, letting Liz tell in her own time what had happened that day at William T. Harris Elementary School.
hey talked for hours, bursts of conversation mixed with uneasy lapses of silence Buck Torrey filled with sips from the whiskey he had found on his own. Mostly, he wanted to know about the grandson he hadn’t seen in five years, letting Liz tell in her own time what had happened that day at William T. Harris Elementary School.
“I’m proud of you,” he said after she had finished. “The way you handled things: by the book, everything covered.”
“An innocent man got killed. My bullet went straight through his skull.”
“The way you tell it, if the suits at the J. Edgar Hoover Building knew a lick about combat, if any of them had ever seen a firefight, never mind been in one, they might realize you start your loss assessment by working backwards.”
“This is the FBI, Dad, not the army.”
“This is common sense, girl. That shooter, he was carrying …”
“A Mac-10,” Liz completed.
“Stone age weapon. Absolute piece of shit. Three extra clips he had on him?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, we say he manages to fire off two before somebody gets the balls to jump him. Sixty rounds in those kind of surroundings will give you twenty kills and twenty casualties. Twenty lives over and twenty fucked up forever
minimum,
instead of one. Makes
your
score a plus thirty-nine, which puts you at the top of my class. That’s the way loss assessment works.”
minimum,
instead of one. Makes
your
score a plus thirty-nine, which puts you at the top of my class. That’s the way loss assessment works.”
“Disciplinary board didn’t see things that way. Said I should have waited for backup before moving in.”
“How far away?”
“I could hear the sirens.”
“A question of timing.”
“That’s what they said. They also said my presence precipitated the action.”
“Precipitated?”
“That’s how they phrased it in the final report.”
Buck Torrey sneered. “Man goes into a school with a piece of shit Mac-10, and it’s your fault he opens fire with it?”
“From their perspective, after Waco and Ruby Ridge, yes.”
“They’re full of crap.”
Liz helped herself to a glass of whiskey, dulled it with a little ice and water. “You’re telling me.”
“Mac-10’s a killing weapon—that’s all it’s good for. Spray it around and see what drops.”
“It must have been a ricochet. I can account for all the bullets, while the perp was still holding the victim.”
That set Buck thinking. “What were you carrying?”
“Smith and Wesson .380.”
“Load?”
“Round-nosed hardball.”
Buck shook his head. “No way that bullet exits the skull on a ricochet. Nine-millimeter’s basically piss poor when it comes to stopping power.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. Round-nosed hardball nines are standard ammo for the Mac-10.”
“You think the FBI crime lab doesn’t know that?”
“I’d like to take a look at the ballistics report. See how it was that crime lab was able to make a positive ID on your bullet based on what was left after a ricochet and a skull penetration.”
Liz’s superiors had shrugged that question off when she asked it, claiming the evidence was conclusive.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Buck took a hearty sip from his whiskey. “Army sent me some of the new 4.5 millis to check out.”
“The Beretta or the Heckler and Koch?”
Buck looked at his daughter with considerable surprise.
“I test-fired both of them last time I was down at Quantico,” she told him.
“What’d you think?”
“Those thirty-shot clips have something to be said for them.”
“My feeling is you accomplish the same thing by just training people to shoot twice as good with fifteen, know what I mean?”
“Where does it stop?”
“With people who score a plus thirty-nine.” Buck Torrey raised his glass in the semblance of a toast. “My daughter … who can serve in my outfit anytime.”
He took a sip. Liz joined him.
“Now tell me about this other problem we got before us.”
L
iz saw the truck pull onto the farm from an upstairs window first thing the next morning, three men squeezed into the cab.
iz saw the truck pull onto the farm from an upstairs window first thing the next morning, three men squeezed into the cab.
“Dad,” she said tensely, entering the kitchen to find Buck Torrey’s coffee cooling and a huge plate of scrambled eggs only half eaten.
Of all the times to take a walk …
Of all the times to take a walk …
One of the men knocked on the screen door’s frame. Liz opened it casually.
“You must be Liz Halprin,” greeted the first man to come through the door, a used car salesman’s smile stitched from ear to ear. “I’m John Redding, head of the local Cattleman’s Association.” He extended his hand and Liz took it, squeezing only as hard as he did, then assessing the fat man and the short, barrel-chested one who had followed him inside. “Me and my fellow officers wanted to welcome you to the county. I knew your grandparents. Worked for them, in fact, for a couple summers.”
“I hope they treated you well.”
“That’s why I’m here; to repay the favor.” He looked to his two associates. “We heard you’ve been having some trouble, thought we might be able to help.”
“Very kind of you.”
“It’s the least we can do. Been a long time since you been back, hasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Lots of changes. Different times than the ones you remember. The land’s still the land, but what it’s good for has changed.”
Liz took a step back from him. “What exactly does a Cattleman’s Association do, Mr. Redding?”
“Looks out for the best interests of its members, Miss Halprin.”
“And what would those interests be?”
He tried to smile. “Why don’t you tell us?”
“My only interest is in keeping my farm,” Liz said, and moved to pour herself a cup of coffee.
“That’s the problem,” Redding said, approaching her once again.
Liz stopped before she got to the pot. “Whose problem? Since I have no intention of leaving, it’s not mine. And since you’re here to help me, it couldn’t be yours. Who does that leave?”
“We wanted you to hear the town’s perspective on things,” Redding told her. “This county’s running out of chances, Ms. Halprin. In fact, I’d say Maxwell Rentz’s resort might be our last one. Now, we understand you got your reasons for holding out. If it’s more money you want—”
“It’s not.”
“—the association will go to Mr. Rentz on your behalf. He needs the direct access your land allows to the main highway, and if he doesn’t break ground on this soon, between you and me, he might throw in the towel and take his business elsewhere.”
“You’re worried about all those lost jobs, then.”
“Yes, ma’am, I am.”
“And you’ve got good reason to be … whether I sell or not. I’ve been reading up on the various holdings of Rentz Enterprises. This isn’t the first time they’ve taken on a massive project; the only first would be if they hired locals to work on it.”
Redding tugged at his collar.
“You see,” Liz continued, “Rentz Enterprises is known for bringing in cheap, nonunion labor from wherever they can get it, usually after the local authorities grant them all kinds of tax breaks. You think it’ll be any different here? You think the day Maxwell Rentz breaks ground on Disney World North, there will be a single local resident holding a shovel?”
Redding tried to look calm. “Well, Ms. Halprin, there’s a lot of people in these parts who’d like the chance to find out. We’ve been holding them off as best we can, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to much longer.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Just relaying information. Now, we’re aware there have been a few incidents already, and we’re worried even we won’t be able to prevent more.” Redding paused, letting his eyes fall on a recent Polaroid of Liz and Justin held by a magnet to the refrigerator. The last one taken since he’d gone back to live with his father. “You planning on having your son join you here?”
The look in Redding’s eyes got Liz’s heart hammering. She felt pressure building in her head, and her mouth went dry. Before she could respond, the screen door rattled and Buck Torrey strode in. He had eased the door open with his foot, both his hands occupied behind his broad back.
“Morning, fellas,” he greeted innocently. “Hey, that must be your truck parked outside. She’s a beauty, lemme tell you.”
Redding was trying very hard to see what Buck was holding. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Aw, I’m just the young lady’s father. Retired now. Dividing my time amongst my children. You’ll know what it’s like soon enough.”
Buck smiled broadly and Redding responded with a smile of his own.
“Hey, that truck parked outside—I was thinking about getting me one just like it. With all the traveling I do, I need a lot of space in the bed. So—I hope you don’t mind—I checked yours out.”
Something in Buck Torrey’s expression changed at that point. Everyone in the kitchen noticed it, but only Liz sensed what was coming next.
He brought one of his hands from behind his back to reveal the pair of wire cutters he was holding. “Found this amongst the tools back there. I got to figure that one just like it was what cut my daughter’s phone line last week.” Buck laid the wire cutters on the counter and brought a shotgun with an elegant wooden stock from behind his back next. “Now, this is a beautiful piece of work. Twelve-gauge pump. Takes eight shells instead of your customary six. Accurate up to thirty yards, maybe.” His eyes narrowed intently. “Funny thing. That’s the distance from which I figure somebody shot up the bay window in my daughter’s living room.”
Buck Torrey was feeding on the air now, seeming to get larger as he
stood there. He retraced his steps to the screen door and grabbed a 30.06 rifle he had leaned up against the frame just outside.
stood there. He retraced his steps to the screen door and grabbed a 30.06 rifle he had leaned up against the frame just outside.
“And this piece of shit carries the same shell and load that killed one of the cows my daughter bought when she came back home.” Buck’s eyes bored into Redding’s, daring him, daring all three of them, to make a move. “It takes a helluva man to shoot a dumb animal, let me tell you. Stand out in the open and take your time fixing your aim on something that’s not about to shoot back.”
In a blur of motion, Buck snapped the 30.06 up into his arms in a relaxed shooting position. Neither Redding nor his men moved an inch. Buck looked almost disappointed.
“An amateur might call this a marksman’s rifle. A pro uses something with a lot more velocity and a lot less kick. Something he can control enough to paint a target up to a mile or more away. Think about that. You’re driving in that nice blue truck of yours, minding your own business, and all of a sudden there’s lead flying through the windshield, coming from so far away you never even hear the gunshots. You know any man like that?”
Redding didn’t say a word. His two subordinates exchanged glances, warning each other off.
“Well,” Buck Torrey said, “I do. I know plenty. Some pretty good friends of mine. Flushed the M-21 sniper system down the toilet in Nam for a modified M-16 with an infrared scope. Yup, they’re good friends, all right.”
Other books
Midsummer at Eyre Hall: Book Three Eyre Hall Trilogy by Luccia Gray
Lynna Banning by Wildwood
Winter Passing by Cindy Martinusen Coloma
Where the Deer and the Antelope Play (Code of the West) by Bly, Stephen
Feather by Susan Page Davis
Geronimo (A Songbird Novel) by Melissa Pearl
Healer by Peter Dickinson
Dreamsnake by Vonda D. McIntyre
Prowl the Night by Crystal Jordan