A Welcome Grave (40 page)

For a few brief seconds everything was quiet and still. There was more smoke rising out of the engine compartment of the car, the radiator probably leaking steam from one of the shotgun blasts, and the headlights cut a crooked swath through the trees, one of them pointed up now, into the sky. Nobody moved near the car. I could see the airbag filling the driver’s window. I stepped around the tree and moved cautiously into the open, looking for Gaglionci and wondering if Thor was dead. Almost at that moment, they both reappeared.

Gaglionci had hit the ground and rolled when he saw the car accelerating toward him. Now he rose again and stepped toward the RX-8 with his shotgun leveled. I lifted my own gun and tried to draw an accurate line on him while he pumped the shotgun, and as he did that Thor rose up in the wrecked car and fired out of the back window, the only one that didn’t have a pine tree in the way.

He took two shots but missed with both, and Gaglionci swung the shotgun back around toward the car and got off another blast that hit the trunk and
back window. Then he was stumbling back, sliding down the ditch behind him and into the grass.

I put three rounds into the weeds where he’d disappeared, and then it was quiet again. There had been no sound from Doran, who was probably hiding in the woods somewhere or moving away from the camp. He’d chosen escape at the first possible opportunity. I started up the road at a jog, watching the tall grass and trees where I’d last seen Gaglionci. He didn’t fire at me, but I could hear the rustling and breaking branches as he moved through the woods. I fired blind into the trees again, two shots that had no hope of hitting him. Then the sounds of his retreat were farther away, and he was out of range and lost to the darkness.

I pulled up alongside the RX-8 just as the passenger door popped open and Thor fell out onto the grass. There was blood on his face and on his arms, but he was alive and moving. I knelt to help him up, but he waved me off and used the car as a support while he got back on his feet. He never let his Glock out of his hand. The blood appeared to be from a collection of shallow cuts, not from a gunshot.

“Are you hit?”

He shook his head and wiped at his face with the back of one gloved hand. “Not badly. He was firing buckshot. I took a few pellets, maybe.”

Looking closer, I could see where his jacket was tattered on his left side, blood saturating the fabric along his ribs. He glanced at it, too, but didn’t seem concerned; he was ready to speak when he was cut off by a scream from up the gravel road.

“
I’m gonna kill her!
”

Gaglionci had reemerged from the trees, now fifty or sixty yards up the road, beside the trailer. We could see his silhouette against the shape of the building. I started to run as Thor turned and laid his wrist over the roof of the RX-8, and I’d made it only a few steps when I heard the report of his Glock three times, shots that came closer than they should have, firing at that distance in the dark. None of them connected, though, and Gaglionci turned for the trailer, the shotgun rising again. I didn’t even bother to lift my own gun, just kept running, knowing the only chance I had was to make it there before he got inside, knowing also that it wasn’t a real chance, that he was too far ahead, that I would be too late.

Gaglionci opened the door and stepped inside the trailer and fired. I heard the gunshot and shouted as if it had struck me, still running, stumbling now, my feet going too fast for the rest of me. In the same instant as I realized the
sound of the shot had been wrong—a harsh crack instead of the throaty roar of the shotgun—Gaglionci tumbled back through the door and hit the ground. The shotgun fell free, and I got my balance back on the loose gravel and ran harder until I was standing above him, my gun pointed at his forehead as he twisted in pain.

“It’s probably a good thing,” Andy Doran said from inside the trailer, “that I was here.”

He was leaning against the door, a revolver in his hand that was aimed at my chest.

C
ome see your girl,” Doran said.

I stepped inside the trailer. There was a dim light on, but I saw immediately why it hadn’t been visible from outside: The windows were covered with a thick black cloth. Doran had probably purchased a few bolts at some fabric store for ten dollars, but it did the job. The light died on the cloth, leaving the trailer looking empty at night to anyone who had happened by.

Doran led me around the corner and through a tiny kitchen as Thor entered the trailer behind us. The place reeked of sour garbage and mold. Dirt covered the floor, and there were puddles where rain had leaked through the roof. Doran had lived here for nearly a month, waiting for his windfall. I passed through the kitchen, and then a bedroom opened up on the right and I saw Amy.

She was on the floor, lying on an old blanket. Her hands and feet were handcuffed, and there was duct tape over her mouth, but her eyes were wide and bright even in a room dark with shadows. I dropped my gun and fell on my knees and reached for her, and Andy Doran leaned down and laid his revolver to her forehead.

“She’s alive, Perry. As promised. Pay attention to me and she may stay that way.”

My own gun was on the floor beside my hand, where I’d dropped it when I reached for Amy. Thor was in the doorway now, and without looking at him
I knew he had his gun out and drawn on Doran, who was smiling up at him over my shoulder.

“Easy, man. Easy. No need for a lot of excitement here. You start pulling triggers, and I will, too. You know that drill. Way I’m holding this gun, and where it’s pointed? She’s likely to die if you go for it. Can’t guarantee she will, but you can’t guarantee she won’t, either.”

Thor didn’t say a word. I was only a few feet from Doran, separated from him by Amy’s body, but I didn’t even consider a move. Not with the way he held that gun against her skull, finger tight on the trigger. My eyes were fastened on Amy’s. She looked unharmed. Scared, yes, but unharmed.

“Tell your buddy to put that gun on the floor,” Doran said.

Thor didn’t move. I looked at him and then shook my head at Doran.

“He’s not going to put his gun on the floor.”

“Well, he better. You tell him—”

“No,” I said. “Nobody can tell him to give up his gun. He won’t do it.”

“Holster it, then,” Doran told Thor. “You as damn fast as I think you are, that shouldn’t be so much of a problem.”

Thor lowered the Glock, slowly, and slipped it back into its holster. His body seemed to hum with readiness.

“Okay.” Doran slid around Amy, keeping the gun against her head but moving closer to me. Then, in one quick motion, he raised the gun and pointed it at my head instead of hers. Thor tensed when he did it but didn’t reach for his weapon.

Doran collected my gun, then showed me where the keys to the handcuffs were. He let me undo the cuffs at Amy’s feet but not her hands. He also refused to let me take the tape off her mouth. Once her feet were free, I helped her upright. She stood on wavering legs, and I held her, feeling a crush of relief move through my body at the warmth of hers, and then Doran banged his gun off my skull, not gently, and told me to step back.

“I promised you her, and there she is,” he said. “Now you’ve got your end of the bargain to live up to, Perry. You come with me. Bring her along.”

Doran pushed me forward, into the hall, then shoved Amy. Her legs started to buckle, but he caught her and kept her upright and guided her through the trailer and out into the yard with that gun pressed into her side.

Gaglionci had crawled maybe thirty feet since we’d entered the trailer, leaving a swath of blood behind him. Doran had thrown the shotgun into the trailer, leaving Gaglionci unarmed. Now Doran shoved Amy back to the ground and knelt between her and Gaglionci.

“Stand back a bit, Perry. Get too close and more people might get shot. That doesn’t need to happen.”

He rolled Gaglionci over, onto his back, and I looked down, seeing him clearly for the first time, a man of medium build and height with a dark complexion, dark hair combed straight back off his forehead, opaque eyes staring at a starless sky. There was blood around him, soaking the grass and forming little pools and rivulets as it ran away from his body and melted into the wet earth. I could see a ragged hole punched through the top of his chest, near the collarbone.

“How you doing, buddy?” Doran said. “Looking a little rough.”

Thor was standing in the doorway of the trailer but coming no closer. His gun was still holstered. Amy lay on the grass behind Doran. I tried not to look at her. Each time I did, I wanted to move for her, and that would only invite Doran into a dangerous reaction.

Gaglionci used his elbows to slide backward across the dirt.

“You know how many times I thought about killing you?” he said to Doran. His voice was a graveyard whisper, but it took a lot of effort just to manage that.

“Too bad you passed on the chance. Perry tells me you collected a nice check for killing Jefferson. Half a million, was it?” Doran made a displeased sound with his mouth, like a scolding mother. “A cut of that could have made me long gone. It’s a shame that didn’t work out. I’m going to need to know who paid you.”

Gaglionci’s jaw muscles were working even though he wasn’t speaking, and his right hand opened and closed around a small mound of dirt he’d gathered in his fist.

“Who was it?” Doran laid the gun against Gaglionci’s skull. “You’re not dead yet, man. That little hole in your chest? Shit ain’t gonna kill you, trust me. Seen a lot worse than that in guys who were running miles a few months later. But where the gun is now?
That
is going to kill you. And I will pull the trigger if you do not tell me the truth.”

“Paul Brooks.”

He said it without hesitation, as I knew he would. Gaglionci no sort of stand-up guy, just a killer and a hustler whose decisions were motivated only by guns and cash. Brooks had used the latter to motivate him, and now Doran trumped with the former. In Gaglionci’s world, that’s the way it would always play out.

Doran looked over his shoulder at me.

“You said you had a guess. You said you weren’t sure, but you could make a guess. Is Brooks it?”

“Yeah. He’s it.”

“Paul Brooks.” Doran said the name slowly. “Son of the guy who owned the winery where Monica was killed, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“If he paid you . . . if he killed Monica, then what the hell was Jefferson doing in it to begin with?” This to Gaglionci, not me.

Gaglionci drew another breath and pushed it out slow, each one taking concentration. His eyes kept sliding down, trying to see his chest. He didn’t answer, and after a few seconds Doran reached forward and shoved the barrel of his gun into the wound.

Gaglionci howled. He pulled his lips back and screamed and tried to push away, but Doran held him. I’d felt no pity for him until then—he’d kidnapped Amy, had been on his way to kill her when Doran shot him—but the sound and the look on his face made my stomach recoil, and I turned my head.

“We were waiting on an answer,” Doran said. His voice was soft.

Gaglionci breathed for a long time, fighting the pain back, waiting until he could talk.

“I didn’t know he killed her. Not at first. Night Jefferson sent me to kill you, I asked what you had on him. You told me about his son. That you thought he’d killed the girl, because there was no reason to frame you if that wasn’t the case. That was a surprise to me.”

“But you were in Monica Heath’s house with them,” I said. “Brooks and Jefferson both. You had to know who you were protecting.”

“No. Jefferson said . . . well, he made it sound like it had been someone at the party that night. A friend or someone who worked with Brooks, along those lines. Told me I didn’t need to know the details and gave me enough money to make me agree.”

That much explanation took a lot from him, and he bit down on his tongue and squeezed his eyes shut as the pain rode at him harder and faster.

“You aren’t done,” Doran said. “Keep talking.”

After a moment, Gaglionci spoke again, but he kept his eyes shut.

“I went back to Jefferson and said I knew about his son, and now he’d be paying a lot more than the fifty. He went crazy. Said his son hadn’t killed the girl. He thought you were coming after him because he framed you, and going after his kid because he helped. But when he found out what you really thought . . . that you believed his son murdered the girl, it changed things. He
told me he was going to the police, explain what had happened, give himself up for what he did. He wanted me to go back to you one more time, give you the fifty you wanted and tell you he was going in, that you’d be cleared. I said I didn’t like that idea . . . he went to the cops, cops would come for me.”

Gaglionci coughed, and although his eyes went wide with pain I didn’t see any blood in his mouth, no sign of critical internal injury. Doran gave him a few seconds, then lifted the gun and moved it back toward Gaglionci’s chest. That got him talking again.

“I told him I thought he was lying, that his son killed her, and he wouldn’t have spent so much money otherwise. He laughed, said it was never his money and that anything he gave me was pennies to the guy who killed her. I’d gone to see that girl’s family with Jefferson and Brooks’s father. I knew how rich he was. So I went to Paul Brooks.”