Absolution (9 page)

“Thanks Arnie, I owe you one,” Logan said.

“You owe me an explanation, once you’ve dealt with whatever it is,” Arnie said.  “Call me, or send me a post card you unsociable son of a bitch.”

“I’ll keep in touch, Arnie.  I might even make it back to the Apple soon.  I sometimes get a little homesick for the city that never sleeps.”

“You know that we’ve got a spare room,” Arnie said, and ended the call.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

They
got back to the cabin, unloaded the paper sacks of groceries and filled up the cupboards and units.

“We need electricity,” Fran said, “if we’re going to be living here for any length of time.”

“Get an oil-fired generator and some car batteries from The Home Depot,” Logan said, “and then you can have all mod-cons; refrigerator, Satellite TV, the works.”

“You watch TV?” Fran said.

“I can live without it.  “I find that most of what they put on is puerile, and the ads are a pain in the ass.  I sometimes catch the new and watch old movies.”

“So basically you’re a loner, wandering from sea to shining sea without a care in the world?”

“That about covers it, Fran.  After a life with my nose to the grindstone, I’m now on my own time and permanent vacation. A retiree who’s out of the loop and happy not to have to be part of the rat race.”

“You don’t look or act like a regular senior citizen, Logan.”

“Good, because at fifty years old I still feel a long way off being one.”

Logan went to his bedroom, took off his boots and lay back, not to sleep but to mull over the best way to get to Zack Slater.  A full frontal assault on the ranch was not a consideration, it would be suicidal, so he decided to lay low for a couple of days, and then brace Cahill, whom he was convinced was on the take from Slater.  With the right amount of pressure the rogue border patrol agent would be an asset to his taking the Indian gangster down.  Militarily speaking, to cut the head off a snake was a tried and tested method to cause disarray.  With Slater out of the picture, Fran and Andy would be safe.

It took forever for the girls to cook enough Jimmy Dean beef patties and beans for supper on the propane stove.  Logan went for a walk while they labored.  He climbed up a bluff, sat on a flat outcrop of rock and looked up at the night sky.  Being in the back of beyond had its advantages; one being that he could see the beauty of the heavens in a way that city dwellers were never able to.  Artificial light blinded people to the awesome vista above them, which to his mind put existence into perspective.  It was both wondrous and poignant to consider that all life on earth was born of stardust, to exist for no more than a fleeting moment in cosmic time.  Heavy shit!  Maybe he
was
getting old, to have reached a point in life when he took time to ponder the unfathomable.  Whatever mankind did in its own backyard were small potatoes when looked at on such a vast scale.

He sighed, climbed to his feet and ambled back down to the cabin.  He felt that he had experienced some sort of epiphany; a realization that was a little disheartening. It seemed like only yesterday that he had been a teenager embarking on an adventure.  And yet now the greater part of his life was behind him, and whatever aspirations he had harbored were of no consequence, overwritten by years that had sped by, robbing him of youth and innocence.

He opened the door and immediately forgot about the stars.  The smell of hot food and coffee, and the smiling faces of Fran and Andy dispelled his maudlin reverie.  This moment in time was what mattered.  Nostalgia was a mostly negative occupation, and tomorrow would duly arrive and no doubt surprise him with trials he could not anticipate.  Plans were fine, but didn’t always pan out the way you wanted them to.  The art was being able to adapt at short notice as events unfolded.

“You hungry, Logan?” Fran said, putting a loaded plate down on the kitchen table.

“Starving,” Logan said.  “That night air has given me an appetite.”

They sat and talked about nothing in particular as they ate.  Logan said that he would rig up a BBQ in the morning, using boulders and a large piece of rusting wire grid that he had seen among a pile of junk out back near the privy.

“This feels like being a kid again, going camping with mom and dad,” Andy said when they had eaten and were just sat around drinking coffee.  “It seems surreal to think that we’re on the run, and that our lives are in danger.”

Fran sipped her coffee and closed her eyes.  Andy had brought their parents to mind; the good times and bad.  She was transported back to one of the best memories of her life to date, to when she was a teenager in the early nineties and they were up at Yellowstone, spending each and every day hiking and deriving enormous pleasure from the amazing surroundings and the plentiful and varied wildlife that she never tired of watching and photographing.

“What are you smiling at?” Andy said.

“The fun we had up at Yellowstone with mom and dad.  Remember?”

Andy nodded.  “Maybe something like that is as good as it gets in life, Sis.”

Fran felt tears welling up.  James and Susan Corby were both dead. They had been passengers in a friend’s old Cessna 185 light aircraft, and the single-engine plane had caught fire on landing at an airfield near Tucson.  Only the pilot had survived, though he had suffered permanent scarring and lost an arm due to the severity of third degree burns.

Fran got up, retrieved her fleece jacket from a rack near the door and went outside to smoke a cigarette and compose her cheerless state of mind.  Sitting on a weather-beaten rocking chair that Uncle Walt had made, she reviewed her past; it was a balanced pair of scales with equal parts of good in one pan and bad in the other.  For every moment of joy, wonder and happiness, there was the same amount of sorrow to offset it.  Her youthful expectation of what the future might hold had not come to fruition.  She felt that for the last decade she had been walking barefoot on a crooked, rocky road that was leading nowhere good.  And now to cap it all her home had been razed to the ground.

“Go talk to her, Logan,” Andy said.  “She’s really down.”

“I don’t think so,” Logan said.  “I’m not a shoulder to cry on type of guy.”

“I think you are, even if you don’t know it.  You have a way of cutting to the chase and saying what needs to be said with a great deal of assurance.”

Logan shook his head, but pulled his windbreaker on and went outside.  Saw Fran sitting on the rocker, her features hidden in shadow until she took a deep pull on the cigarette she held to her lips and the glow lit up her eyes like hot coals.  He went over to her, to lean up against the log wall of the cabin with his hands stuffed in his pants’ pockets.

“I’m fine, Logan,” Fran said.  “And even if I wasn’t, you don’t have the words.”

“I know,” Logan said.  “I just thought you might have the need to offload on a stranger.”

“You some kind of shrink?”

“Hell no, but I’ve been in a lot of dark places, done stuff you couldn’t imagine, and would have a stack of T-shirts to show you if I’d ever bought any.”

“And do you suppose you have something eloquent to say that would make me feel better about the shitty decisions I’ve made in life, or the hurt I feel because of people that I loved and lost?”

“I don’t give advice or lectures.  And not many people would listen if I did. They need to learn everything the hard way.  It’s human nature.  The majority of folk like the status quo.  Change unsettles them, because they haven’t come to terms with the fact that nothing stays the same.  It’s as if they live in cocoons.  They see other people grow old and die, and all sorts of transformation around them, but try to hang on to a way of life they feel comfortable with.”

“You sure you’re not a shrink?”

“Positive.  But I’ve seen the look of fear and disbelief in someone’s eyes when they realize that they’re dying, and also the shock and heart-ripping grief that hits home when I’ve knocked at a door to tell a mother and father that their son or daughter will not be coming home.  A great many people go into denial when bad shit hits the fan and gets blown in their direction.”

“I’m not in denial over anything, Logan.  I just don’t have a game plan anymore.  I’m thirty-four, hiding out in a cabin from people I don’t know; people that have burned my house down and want me dead.  I have no plans for an uncertain future, and so I’m feeling a little pissed and sorry for myself.  Okay?”

Logan reached out and squeezed her shoulder gently.  “Was your house insured?” he said.

Fran nodded.

“So you don’t have a problem.  Once Slater has been taken care of you can claim for your loss; maybe get a rebuild.  Or you can find a new direction to go in.”

“What will you do when and if this is resolved?” Fran said.

“Same as I always do; hitch a ride or climb on a bus and see where it leads.”

“I envy the way you lead a life of total freedom, with nothing to pin you down,” Fran said as she reached up and put her hand over his.

“Just horses for courses,” Logan said, enjoying the soft touch of Fran’s hand on his.

“Do you ever look back and wish that you’d stayed someplace, or with someone?”

“Not really,” Logan said.  “I’ve evolved into the kind of guy that couldn’t be domesticated.  Mowing the lawn, washing the car and doing a weekly shop would send me crazy.”

Fran shivered.  The temperature was dropping, and the thin fleece was inadequate protection against the cold of the desert night.

“Let’s go in and have a nightcap,” Logan said.

Fran poured what was left of the bourbon into three cloudy shot glasses that had originally been a set of six belonging to Walt’s grandfather, back at the end of the nineteenth century.  Clinking their glasses together, the three of them smiled at each other for no conceivable reason, and drank the corn-based liquor down in one long swallow.

“That’s it for me,” Logan said.  “I’m ready to hit the road to dreamland.”

“Me too,” Andy said.

Fran stayed put.  Wanted to sit in front of the log fire and just look at the flames and think about everything that had gone down.

Logan got undressed in the dark and climbed into bed.  He let the starry sky he had sat and watched earlier form a backdrop in his mind and fell asleep.

The pressure on his arm brought him to instant wakefulness.  He lashed out in a response to the touch, to hear a gasp as his forearm fleetingly made contact with something solid.

Shit!  It was Fran.  “Are you okay?” Logan said as he sat up and reached out to her.

“Yes, you just caught my elbow a glancing blow.”

“I tend to react to the unexpected,” he said.  “What’s the matter?”

“I want to sleep with you, Logan.”

He hesitated and then said, “So climb in.”

Fran took off her T-shirt, jeans and panties and slipped between the covers next to him.  Snuggled in close and rested her cheek against his broad chest.

Logan waited for awhile and then pulled back a little to give him the room to cup her right breast with his hand.  The softness was offset by the hardness of the nipple pressing against his palm.  He caressed it with his thumb, to feel a shudder run through Fran as her hand moved down over his stomach to grasp and hold his erection.

They did not speak, just explored each other and became too stimulated to wait.  Fran eased herself onto her back and parted her thighs as Logan moved over her.

Lost in the moment, Fran experienced a mass of intense sensations, biting her bottom lip to stop from crying out, not wanting to advertise the fact to Andy that she was in the next room making love to Logan.

They rested in each other’s arms, just catching their breath.  Logan kissed her tenderly on the lips and she parted them to invite his tongue into her mouth, before shifting position, to straddle him as if swinging her leg up and over the back of a horse, to lower herself onto his once more firm member.  She moved slowly at first, before closing her eyes and quickening her thrusts, moaning softly as he held her breasts.  She came with him, and her body became rigid for a few seconds, as though she had suffered cramp in every muscle, before feeling suddenly weak and just sitting on him feeling both spent and content.  Lovemaking temporarily dispelled all ills in the world, negating them as physical pleasure inflamed the mind and body.

Fran climbed off the bed, pulled her panties on and picked up the rest of her clothing, before leaning over and kissing Logan hard and long on the mouth.  She then quietly left the room without saying a word.

Logan saw the insubstantial face of Fran form in the dark shadows near the ceiling in the corner of the room, before it morphed into that of his beloved Maddie, whom he supposed he still loved, but had lost because she knew he could never be what she needed. He then saw several other visages, including that of Kate Donner’s, and of Sharon Jennings, who’d been young enough to be his daughter.  His liaisons with women were not frequent, but were all special and never forgotten.

He yawned, turned over and went back to sleep, relaxed and in fine mood.  There was no way he could know that Zack Slater would find out where they were hiding and send more men to mount an attack against them.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The
area immediately around the cabin was rocky ground with just a few stunted trees, some cacti and almost leafless bushes.  It was a large clearing of shallow soil over rock that stood within the mainly wooded area of the Coronado National forest.

Logan decided to wait another couple of days before returning to Ajo.  He wanted Slater to sweat, and for him to then begin thinking that he had probably moved on, not stupid enough to continue a conflict that could not benefit him in any way.

It was midmorning and already red hot.  Logan left Fran and Andy cleaning the cabin and followed the stream for a half mile.  It widened and became deeper as he entered the forest proper.  Shortly thereafter he heard the sound of rushing water from up ahead and soon came across a small waterfall with a crystal clear rock pool beneath it.  Stripping off, he piled his clothes and the Glock pistol he had brought with him onto a moss-covered boulder and climbed down the bank and stepped into the pool, to swim out in the ice-cold water until he was directly under the cascade.  He wished that he had known it was here, so that he could have come to it armed with a bar of soap and a towel.  This forest was a little piece of heaven; an oasis in the mainly arid land of southern Arizona.  He could understand why Fran and Andy’s uncle had moved out to the cabin to end his days.  Upending and diving beneath the surface, he swum back to the side of the pool underwater, to climb out and sit in a spot where the sunlight broke through the canopy of the trees and quickly dried him.

Dressed and strolling back towards the cabin, Logan was at ease, not in the least mindful of the fact that in forty-eight hours he would set off back to Ajo to negate the threat against Fran and Andy.

Zack had arranged for Martin to be taken to a private clinic near Tucson for treatment, where he had undergone two surgical procedures; one on his jaw, and the other on his foot.  Martin would be limping around in a cast for several weeks and making do with liquids and very soft foods due to his jaw being wired.

Twenty-four hours after Martin sustained his injuries at the hands of Logan, Zack was driven to the clinic in his armor-plated Hummer – the civilian version of the military Humvee – to talk through what had happened at the house in Pisinimo.

“Hey, Martin, you look like shit, man,” Zack said as he walked into the private room, picked up the remote and muted the volume of the wall-mounted TV, to silence Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson as they sang
My Rifle, My Pony and Me
.  He’d seen Rio Bravo a dozen times, and thought it was a classic Western, due to the fact that it did not feature Indians in its tale of dumb whites against even dumber whites.

Martin was on strong pain killers, felt a little spaced-out, but was sat up in a bed fitted with side rails that was far too short for him.

“So explain to me how you and the other three dipshits fucked up and let Logan take you down,” Zack said.

Martin found it difficult to talk with his jaw wired-up and his face swollen up like a melon.

“Logan was there, waiting for us,” Martin managed to say in slow, stilted speech through his unnaturally clenched teeth.

Zack grinned.  “That’s pretty funny, Martin,” he said.  “You sound like a poor man’s Jeff Dunham; a third-rate ventriloquist.”

Martin’s now lumpy face reddened, and anger flashed in his dark eyes.  At that moment he realized that Zack was not a true friend, had never been one, and was only interested in his own welfare, no one else’s.  The loyalty that he had given freely over the years dissolved as he saw the heartless mirth that emanated from the man that until that instant he would have literally died for.

As clearly as possible, Martin asked for paper and a pen or pencil, and Zack went out into the corridor to the nurses’ station and asked for a ballpoint and a sheet from a notepad that he could see on the desk.  Back in the room, Martin wrote down a concise report of what had happened at the house in Pisinimo, and subsequently at the closed-down diner.

Zack sat on a chair next to the bed and read the close-spaced lines of small writing.  “Looks like we’ll have to take this fuckin’ guy seriously,” he said.  “Get well soon, because you’re no use to me lying on your ass in a hospital bed.”

Martin had no time to even answer.  Zack had got up, pocketed the sheet of paper and quickly exited the room.

Martin closed his eyes and thought about his longstanding criminal association with Zack, and decided that at the earliest opportunity, when he was fit enough to leave the clinic, he would plan to walk away from a life that was going nowhere.  He had amassed enough money over the years, and wanted to live to enjoy it.  And he had a strong premonition that Logan would be the end of Zack and anyone else that got in his way.

Logan felt totally relaxed.  He had formulated a loose plan, and was as sure as he could be that their location was safe for the time being.  There had been no obvious reason for him to lie to Slater and Keno, by telling them both that the women had left Arizona, and so they had most likely believed it and would be concentrating on anticipating him making an assault on the ranch.  And he had taken Fran’s and Andy’s cell phones from them and removed the SIM cards. He would leave one of the prepaid untraceable phones with them when he left, for emergency use only.

They took chairs outside and sat at a table that Logan had constructed by laying an old timber door across a couple of rusty oil drums.  They ate a simple lunch of chicken and salad that they washed down with Coors straight from the cans, that Logan had hung in the stream in a plastic bag to cool the beer.

“I’ll be going in a few hours,” Logan said as he pushed away the beer, which was still too warm, and got up to go inside the cabin to put the coffeepot on the stove.

“I’ll drive you to Ajo,” Fran said when he came back out into the sunlight.

Logan shook his head.  “Just to the highway will be fine,” he said.  “I’ll hitch from there.  I don’t want either of you anywhere near Ajo.”

They left at seven p.m.  Logan was wearing his dark clothing and had a Glock in his pocket, and his rucksack hanging by a strap from his right shoulder.  He had decided not to take the submachine gun.  He had no intention of making a direct assault on Slater’s ranch.  He would confront the man where and when he would least expect it.

“Here will do just fine,” Logan said as Fran reached the end of the dirt road that opened onto the paved two-way highway east of Ruby.

Fran turned left and kept driving.  “You’ll have more chance of hitching a ride from the 286,” she said. “And it’s only twenty minutes from here.”

“Okay,” Logan said.  She was right.  He was being a tad too paranoid, but that was only because he knew for a fact that Zack Slater wanted all three of them dead.

Seventeen minutes later Fran pulled the Mazda to a stop at the side of the narrow highway and cut the engine.  Logan climbed out, and so did Fran and Andy.

Andy hugged him and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.  “Be careful,” she said and stepped back.  Fran put her arms around his neck, forced his head down and kissed him softly on the lips.  “If you’re not back in twenty-four hours we’ll be coming to find out why,” she said when she stopped kissing him.

“No,” Logan said.  “Keep the hell away from Ajo.”

Fran gave him a ‘No way, Jose’ look.  He knew that she would not sit back and do nothing for too long.  “Forty-eight hours,” he said.  “And then phone Sheriff Clay Manders in Madison Bend and tell him everything.  Don’t go near Slater, because if you do he’ll kill you.”

“Okay,” Fran said.  “But I’ll try phoning you first.  Deal?”

“Deal,” Logan said, and turned his back on them and walked away.

A farmer heading up to Tucson in a pickup stopped for him after he’d walked less than a mile.  They talked about hogs and the weather until Logan asked to be dropped off at the 86.  Ten minutes later a siding salesman in a big Ford gave him a ride.  Told Logan that he was going through a messy divorce, and that his wife was a bitch out of hell.  Logan nodded a few times, but said nothing.  He didn’t care.

Back on his feet at the side of the highway, Logan gave the salesman a wave as he drove off into his own personal oblivion.  A few minutes later Logan was walking through the door of a small diner called the Coyote Café.  He squeezed into a booth well away from the front window, took a menu out of a plastic rack and quickly decided to have a fully-loaded burger and a pot of coffee.  He was less than four miles from Ajo, and was in no hurry.  After he had eaten it would be a perfect distance to walk off a few calories.

“What can I get you, hon?”

Logan looked up to cast his eyes over a good-looking but tired-faced woman of mature years.  He smiled and gave her his order.

“You got lucky,” Melanie Douglas said.  “I close in thirty minutes.”

“I eat quick,” Logan said.  “I’ll be long gone by then.”

“I’m Mel.  No need to give yourself indigestion…”

“Logan.” He said, knowing that for some reason she was waiting for a name.

She smiled and went out back to fill his order.  He reckoned that she was local, and divorced because she didn’t wear a ring, and that maybe she was a little younger than she looked, and that it was the desert sun and wind that had lined her face and bleached her hair.  And she owned the diner, because she’d said, ‘I close in thirty minutes’.  He imagined that she’d led an outdoor life, and wondered why she was running a diner, but didn’t care enough to ask when she returned with a coffeepot, set it down, poured a cup for him, and told him that the food would be along in few minutes.

Logan nodded.  He picked up the cup and sniffed at the strong brew before taking a sip.  It was exactly how he liked it.  “Perfect,” he said.

“Glad you think so,” Mel said, smiling as she moved away.  When she returned with his meal she asked, “You heading anywhere in particular?”

“West,” Logan said as he picked up the burger and started in on it.

Mel took the hint that he wasn’t a talker and left, to speak to the only other customer in the café; an old guy on a stool at the counter who was nursing a cup and what seemed to be a severe case of loneliness.  His palsied hands threatened to spill the cup’s contents.  That was why Mel had only half-filled it.

Logan listened to the conversation.  It seemed that Mel had known the guy for a long time.  The talk was of better days, when things made more sense and community spirit had been the glue that held things together.

Logan ate quickly, finished the coffee and got up.  Went to the counter, paid and left.  He’d walked over a mile in fifteen minutes, in no hurry, when headlights lit him up and the sound of an approaching vehicle with a blowing tailpipe drowned out the drone of night insects. He didn’t stop or turn round; just kept walking, content in the knowledge that no one knew his whereabouts.  He was wrong.  The car slowed down and then came to a stop next to him.