A Need To Kill (DI Matt Barnes) (55 page)

“G…Georgetown Park Mall.”

“Terrific,” he said.  He’d fucked up, knew it, and wasn’t sure what to do next.  He was tempted to stay at the house and wait, but couldn’t take the risk.  “Which is her bedroom?”  Sal asked Claudia.

“Second on the left,” Claudia said.

He forced the end of the long suppressor into Claudia’s mouth, up against the top palate, and then withdrew it.  There would be blowback, and he didn’t want to risk any blood spatter on him.  He straightened up, stepped back three paces, turned and shot her in the right eye: Watched her collapse and her legs twitch a couple of times before she became still.  Searching the bedroom gave up nothing.  It was time to get the hell out and regroup.

Logan
walked the half mile into town to the Crippled Horse Bar and Grill on Duke Street.  It was the only place to get a meal after dark in Old Creek, West Virginia.  Over two thirds of the once prosperous mining town was now abandoned; left for the weather and passage of time to blow it away like tumbleweed.  The few businesses that remained were frequented by the remaining two hundred residents and outlying ranchers and farmers.  Old Creek was off the beaten track, twenty miles south of Morgantown and not on a main route to anywhere that would bring tourists through a town that had started to die in the nineteen-forties when the gold ran out.

Logan
shuck off his small rucksack.  Sat at a corner table in the dining area and ordered a medium rare steak with two eggs over easy and a pot of coffee from the twenty-something waitress who looked like he imagined a young Dolly Parton would without the wig and makeup.

“You got English mustard,” he asked her.

“Just good old American French’s, honey.”

“Horseradish?”

“‘Fraid not.  This isn’t Charleston.  We do cheap, plain and simple.”

“Fine, I’ll make do with what’s on the table.”

Maybe he was getting old.  He didn’t take any real notice of the two guys playing pool in the adjoining bar, which was separated from the dining room by an arch.  Had he given them his full attention he would have recognised the one with the gray buzz cut and a deep scar running diagonally from just under his right eye to the bottom of his lobe less ear.

Logan
had only started in on his second cup of coffee when his meal arrived.  He sawed a piece off the steak and dipped it in the pool of bright yellow mustard he’d squeezed out on the side of his plate, and got on with fuelling his body.

Thinking of nothing in particular and everything in general,
Logan ate his meal, drained the coffee pot and left a twenty on the table to cover the bill and a tip for ‘Dolly’.

He’d walked maybe thirty yards out of the glow from the flickering neon outside the Crippled Horse and into the gloom of the unlit street when a blow to his right temple sent him spinning sideways and down onto his knees.  As he made to stand up another impact to his ribcage made him grunt.

“Remember me, Joe?” the guy with the buzz cut said as Logan looked up to see his attacker.

“Yeah,”
Logan replied.  “You’re still ugly, still stupid, and a lot older.”

“We’re all a lot older, Joe,” Troy Atkins said.  “I’ve dreamed of bumping into you again.  I’m gonna leave you so near dead that you’ll wish you were.”

It was like yesterday, but was almost twenty years ago that Atkins had raped a girl in New York City.  Logan and two other cops had gone to arrest him, but he wanted to do it the hard way and had wound up with a broken jaw, courtesy of Logan.

Some guys didn’t forgive, forget, or appreciate that the problems they had were more often than not self made.  Atkins was one of them.

Logan didn’t say another word, just shot his right leg up, straightened it out and drove his timberland-booted foot into Atkins’ left knee.

Troy
grunted loud and started to fall.  Logan’s massive fist met his face, breaking his nose.  The sound it made was satisfying; sharp like a dry twig being snapped.  It was over as quickly as it had begun.  But Logan knew that Atkins’ pal would be with him.  He heard an intake of breath behind him as he got to his feet, and turned to see the blur of a hand holding a knife arcing towards his chest.  His move was pure reaction.  He blocked the guy’s arm with his left forearm, put his right arm behind it and wrenched backwards.  As the knife was dropped there was a feeling of give as the elbow joint popped and broke.  The guy howled and dropped to the sidewalk to flop around like a speared fish.

“You need to stay away from me,
Troy,” Logan said, looking back to were the ex-con was now sitting in a world of pain.  “You ever jump me again, I’ll kill you.”

Back at the trailer he’d rented at the
Golden Valley Mobile Home Park for a couple of weeks, Logan decided that he wasn’t concussed, but maybe had a cracked rib.  It would heal.

He took a tepid shower, dry-swallowed three Tylenol and went to bed.  Sleep was an ally.  It was what he enjoyed doing a lot of.  Being a cop had taught him to sleep when you could, because you never knew when you’d next be able to.

Logan had been in Old Creek for four days.  He’d moved west from D.C., courtesy of a gleaming fire engine-red Kenworth stopping for him, and the trucker offering to take him as far as Morgantown on I-68.  He’d stayed in a cheap motel the night, and then had donuts and coffee and started walking south on Highway 119, sticking his thumb out whenever he heard engine noise approaching.  A good ol’ boy in a battered Ford pickup had stopped and asked where he needed to be.

“Anywhere,”
Logan had replied, and was now in what had seemed to be a sleepy backwater, till Atkins had briefly re-entered his life.

A dirt track led into woodland off the blacktop.  And a weathered cedar sign was hung by two lengths of rusted chain across it about twelve feet from the ground.  The name ‘
Golden Valley’ was carved on the wood in foot-high letters, with Mobile Home Park beneath that in almost illegible six inch letters.

Logan
had made his way up the track on a whim, to be confronted after a while by a small trailer park in a clearing that looked as if nature was absorbing it back into the landscape.  The first trailer on the left was the newest and had a faded plastic sign in a window that said Office –Open, hand printed on it with a black marker pen.

He’d knocked at the door and a skinny old guy opened it and looked him up and down through round John Lennon-style spectacles that were covered in grime.  He wore blue bib overalls over a plaid shirt, and looked pale and cool like a day old corpse.

“Yeah?”  Tom Ellerson said.  “You buyin’ or sellin’?”

Logan
smiled.  “Neither.  I want someplace to stay for a week or so.”

“I sell mobile homes, son, I ain’t a motel,” Tom came back.

Logan did a slow turn and counted nine trailers on the left and eleven on the right of the dead end strip.  Half looked to be unoccupied.  Two of them were crying out to be broken up and burned, to give the weeds that grew up their sides more room to flourish.

“Looks as though you’ve got one or two begging for a little company.  Why let me give my money to the next motel I come to?”

Tom grinned and showed off the three teeth left in his mouth.  They were black after chewin on baccy for more than sixty years.  “I got a classic 1960 thirty footer Airstream Sovereign travel trailer over there, son, that I could sell you for as little as seven thousand bucks.  And the ground rent is just two-seventy-five a month.  Whaddya say to that?”

Logan
turned again and studied the cigar-shaped aluminum trailer.  He’d always liked them.  They seemed to have been a part of American life forever.  From a time when
I Love Lucy
ruled on TV and the hula-hoop and yoyo were new fads.

“What’s your name,”
Logan asked the old man.

“Tom.  Yours?”

“Logan.  I like the Airstream, Tom.  But I don’t take root.  I need to keep moving, so give me a weekly rate.  It’s too damn hot to be standing out here all day.”

Tom thought it over for the best part of two seconds and said, “Two-forty a week.”

“Two hundred,” Logan said.  “That’s what I can afford.”

“You drive a hard bargain,
Logan,” Tom said.  “I’ll need the week up front.”

Logan
took bills from his pocket and paid.

As Tom took the money he hesitated.  “No luggage?” he asked.

“I travel light,” Logan answered, half turning to let Tom see his undersized rucksack.

The mattress on the Airstream’s bed was a little thin and soft, but it didn’t matter.  He’d slept on hard ground when it had been the only place to lay his head.  A few years in the military before he’d become a cop had hardened him.  He’d learned to take the rough with the smooth, and had, so far, been able to deal with any problems that came his way, which had been many.

It was on the day after the brawl in town that Logan met Rita Jennings.  She had stepped out of her trailer at five p.m. and stopped in mid-stride when he had looked up from where he was sitting on the step of the Airstream.

She was scared.  Why?  Her eyes were wide and filled with apprehension.  Who did she think he was, some serial killer she’d seen a mug shot of on TV?

He raised his hand in greeting, wincing as his ribs complained.  His head was sore, but he felt OK.  He’d suffered far more serious injuries.

“Who are you?” Rita asked him, tentatively approaching to about twenty feet.

“Nobody,” Logan said.  “Just a guy passing through and minding his own business.”

She stared into his eyes and seemed to see something that promoted trust.  “I’m Rita Jennings, and I need your help,” she said.

“I’m Logan.  I don’t have much cash, avoid odd jobs, and am obviously not a lawyer,” he replied.  “So I think you’d do better looking for help off someone else.”

“I don’t know anyone else that I can involve,” Rita said.  “Will you at least hear what I have to say?”

He sighed.  Trouble seemed to follow him around like a stray dog that he’d been stupid enough to throw scraps to.  He was six-three, still in good shape, and had been told that he gave off the aura of a guy that could be depended on.  And he’d always been a sucker for someone that had a hole they couldn’t dig themselves out of.

“You got coffee?” 
Logan asked as he appraised the woman.  She was Caucasian with dark, shoulder-length hair and gray eyes.  Maybe five-three, and slim, not thin.  Attractive in a homely way.  He guessed that she was in her late forties, and she still looked good in jeans and a tight T-shirt.   

She gave him a quick, nervous smile.  “Yes, plenty”, she said.

He followed her back on board her trailer.  There was a smell of orange and spices, and the interior was nicely furnished and immaculately clean.  He eased onto a bench that fronted a small dinette table.  Watched the woman start up a fresh pot of coffee, and waited.

They didn’t speak until she placed two steaming mugs on the maple patterned Formica tabletop and sat down opposite him.

“Uh, sorry, do you want creamer or sugar?”  Rita asked.

“No, as it is,”
Logan said.  He picked the mug up and tentatively sipped the hot coffee.  It was strong, just as he liked it.

“I don’t really know where to start,” Rita said with a tremor in her voice.

“From the beginning usually works,” Logan said, noticing the slight puffiness under her eyes, now that they were out of the sun’s glare.  She had been crying a lot.

“My husband, Richard, was hit by a car two weeks ago.  He died soon after from multiple injuries.  The driver didn’t stop, and the police haven’t traced him yet.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.  Where did the accident happen?”

“It wasn’t an accident, he was murdered.  It happened outside our house at Elk Hills,
Charleston.  My Discovery was in the drive, so Richard parked at the curb.  I watched him climb out from where I was standing at the living room window.  The sedan came from nowhere, fast, and swerved to hit Richard.  It took the car door off and knocked Richard up into the air.  He hit the windshield and went back over the roof.  I ran out to him, and shouted to a neighbor to call 911.  Richard was lying on the road like a rag doll.  There was blood coming out of his ears, nose, mouth…”

“Drink some coffee and take a few deep breaths,”
Logan said.  “No rush.”

Rita swallowed hard, fought back tears and drank some of her coffee.  “I’m OK now,” she said.

“No, you’re not,” Logan stated.  “You’re grieving, angry as hell, and scared.  That’s a bad mix.  What do the police say?”

“They’re treating it as a straight forward hit and run.  They don’t accept that it was intentional.  I couldn’t give them a description of the driver, or the make of car, so they think that I was mistaken over seeing it aim at Richard.”

“So if you have a house in Charleston, what are you doing in an old trailer balancing on top of cement blocks out in the boonies this far from home?”

“A day after the funeral I got a telephone call.  I didn’t recognize the man’s voice, but he told me to destroy anything I shouldn’t have, and to stop making waves over Richard’s death.  He said that if I didn’t want my daughter, Sharon, to join Richard in the family plot, then I should drop the matter and stay away from the police.  And I came out here to get away from the problem and think what to do.  Tom Ellerson, the owner of this place, is my uncle.”