Fever Dream (31 page)
I glanced past Roarke to look again at the hanged man.
“Slam dunk.” Roarke went on. “Guy’s in despair ’cause he’s gonna die a slow, painful death from cancer. Takes the easy way out. See the overturned stepladder nearby?”
“But why kill him now? After all this time? Unless…”
Roarke pointed the gun at me and winked. “You guessed it, Doc. We know about the recording.”
“Which means Stubbs’ mole was found out. And talked.”
“I couldn’t say. Not my department. The way chain of command works, everything’s on a ‘need to know’ basis. My job was just to get the damned thing and arrange the sheriff’s untimely demise.”
“No loose ends.”
“Clear mission parameters, Doc. That’s all.”
“Something else you picked up in Iraq?”
“I’m a quick study. Always have been. Hell, back in Chicago PD, I coulda made chief if I wanted.”
“Except for the fact that you’re a murdering psycho.” I managed a smile. “In my clinical opinion.”
“Well, there’s that, I guess. Plus the hours woulda sucked.”
He feigned a yawn, enjoying himself.
I risked turning my head. Faint slivers of light bled through the cracked barn walls. It was almost dusk.
And what about Sam? Was he being held somewhere else on the property? Was he okay? Unless he’d never shown up at all…
A sudden muffled ringing drew my eyes back to Roarke.
It was a cell phone, in his pocket. He took a long step toward me and put the muzzle of his gun hard against my right temple. Then, using his bad arm, gingerly pulled out the phone.
Listened intently. Grinned. Hung up.
Then he lowered the gun from my head, took a few steps back. I could almost feel the tension leaving his body. His palpable relief.
“Well, that’s that. We found the sucker. On a CD, in a box of other discs. Hidin’ in plain sight, like they say. Stubbs musta thought he was bein’ clever.”
“Not as clever as you, turns out. You and your old Blackwater buddy, Ronny Baxter.”
Roarke did his best to hide his surprise.
“That
was
Ronny on the phone, right?” I said sharply. “Your partner in crime.”
So the cops had been right. When Roarke escaped from the hospital, with those squad cars in pursuit, he must’ve contacted Baxter using that trucker’s stolen cell phone. Arranged for Baxter to be waiting to pick him up at the construction site.
It was Baxter who’d helped Roarke hide out. Get a change of clothes. And another gun.
It also explained how Stubbs ended up swinging from the rafters. Even when the victim’s unconscious, hoisting a body up into a noose is a two-man job. Especially when one of the men has a badly injured arm.
“You got it all wrong, Doc.” Roarke glared down at me, drawing himself up again to his full height. Trying to re-establish dominance. “Ronny and me ain’t partners.”
“You’re not bank robbers, either, that’s for damn sure.” Speaking with a bravado I didn’t feel. “That whole thing at the bank. The so-called robbery attempt. That was all bullshit, wasn’t it?”
“If you say so.”
“It’s connected with all this, isn’t it? The computer disc. Killing Stubbs. It’s all about protecting McCloskey. Keeping your boss safe. In the clear.”
“My boss?”
“Evan McCloskey. The prick you’re working for. The guy pulling the strings.”
Then I saw it. The blank, puzzled look on his face.
An involuntary reaction. He’d no time to bluff, to cover. Every instinct I had told me his response was genuine.
Wheeler Roarke had no idea who—or what—I was talking about.
Now it was my turn to be surprised.
But if it
wasn’t
McCloskey—then who was Roarke working for? And why?
Not that I had the luxury to puzzle things out at that moment. Not with Roarke’s gaze gleaming with malice. I’d seen that look in his eyes before, back at the hospital. Right before he’d calmly shot that police officer.
Time was definitely not on my side…
It was then that I registered it. Not ten feet to my left. The wall-length rack of farm tools I’d seen from the house. Those relics.
“Listen, Roarke,” I said. “Much as I enjoy shooting the breeze with you, I’m wondering why you’re still here. You got the CD. Stubbs isn’t going to get any deader.”
He spread his hands. “You said it yourself. Who needs loose ends? Once all the files in Stubbs’ computer back at the house get down-loaded—just in case—we’re outta here.”
I stirred, shifting against my bonds, which made Roarke peer hard at me again.
“You ain’t thinkin’ about
tryin’
anything, are ya, Doc?” He rubbed his jaw. “Ya know, I had the feelin’ you were sizin’ me up back at the hospital. Man, if so, you got ’way too high an opinion of yourself.”
“Maybe. But I’d get in a few good shots before I went down. I don’t give a fuck how tough you think you are. You’d be in a world of hurt. Guaranteed.”
Roarke laughed.
“What is this, some kind of psych-out crap? Tryin’ to bait me?” He pointed a thick finger. “Shit, you think you can outwit a guy like me?”
“No, usually I prefer a challenge.”
He laughed again, before aiming a vicious kick into my ribs. “You fuck,” he said evenly, as I doubled over, jack-knifed, on the floor. I tasted my blood.
“Know why you ain’t dead, asshole?” Roarke was pacing in front of me, livid. “Huh, genius? You know why you still got a pulse?”
I found my voice. “’Cause killing me isn’t within mission parameters. You can’t make the big decisions.”
He strode over and drove his size twelve foot into my ribs again. I stifled a cry, as my body shuddered from the pain. And I rolled a few more feet to my left.
Roarke wiped his mouth with his sleeve, face burning with rage. He stepped back again, raising his gun to point at me—when the back of his head bumped against Stubbs’ dangling legs.
“Fuck!” Roarke batted his gun-hand at the swinging body, which sent it revolving, and then swaying again in a zigzag arc.
All I needed. I scrambled to my feet and started running toward the tool rack. Roarke ducked away from Stubbs’ corpse, gun jumping in his hand like a live thing as he fired.
I drove myself into the ground, chin-first, as the bullet whizzed over my head. I kept going, aching arms bent behind me as I crawled as fast as I could toward the saw-horse. And the lights fixed to it.
Roarke fired again. Gasping, I threw myself headlong into the inverted V of its legs, knocking the saw-horse over. The flood-lights plumed up toward the ceiling, plunging the barn floor into darkness.
“Goddam it!” Roarke bellowed. I could hear the dry rasp of his feet on the sawdust floor as he turned this way and that, looking for me. “God-fucking-dammit!”
I knew he’d find me soon enough. I rolled on my back, exhaling hard and tucking in as I brought my knees up. Within seconds, I’d wriggled my bound hands past my calves, then over my shoes.
Then I leapt to my feet, hands now tied in front of me. Better, but not by much.
Roarke’s gun flared in the darkness. Another shot whistled nearby. His breathing grew louder as he made slow circles, expanding his search radius.
I tried to hold on to my mental picture of the barn layout as I moved in a crouch along the side wall. Only the faintest light came through cracks in the rough-hewn wood, but I got lucky and saw the outline of the rack. Maybe five or six yards away.
There were more tools there than I’d thought. A heavy shovel, pitted with rust. A block-and-tackle, its thick ropes coiled around a set of pulleys.
Then I heard a loud scraping noise behind me, and suddenly I was caught in the streaming light of the floods. Roarke had found the saw-horse and righted it, turning it in my direction.
I froze where I stood, bound hands still in front of me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his massive silhouette just beyond the circle of bright light.
“Nice move, Doc.” His voice boomed out of the darkness. “Now just stand there, where I can see you. Remember back at the hospital? I’m still thinkin’ belly shot. Takes forever to bleed out, and hurts like hell the whole time.”
He laughed easily, and then calmly marched into the light. We weren’t more than three feet apart.
With my back to him.
“Now, for this to work, you’re gonna have to turn around,” Roarke said reasonably.
I readied myself. It would have to be done in one smooth motion. Pivot. Grab the shovel.
I’d have one chance.
The shovel handle in its hook was about eighteen inches away. At about eye level.
“I
mean
it, Doc,” Roarke growled. “Turn your ass around. Unless you wanna get it in the b—”
I turned on one foot and reached with bound hands for the shovel and kept turning. Raising my arms as somewhere beyond my field of vision Roarke was raising his, shouting and lining up a shot.
I swung around with the shovel and clipped him right at the shoulder, hard, knocking his gun away as it fired. Sending him spinning. He stumbled backwards, arms flailing, struggling to keep his feet.
As I came out of my swing, still clutching the shovel, I saw him fall backwards. Out of the light.
Then I heard a crash from the darkness, and his choked cry of surprise.
I took a step, then braced myself, shovel upraised. I saw Roarke stagger out of the shadows. His face screwed up in agony, his outstretched hands clutching the empty air. His voice was a strangled gasp.
The bloodied tip of a scythe’s blade protruded from his chest.
His gaze found mine. Something unreadable burned in his eyes, and then the life went out of them.
Roarke pitched forward into the sawdust, and I saw that the scythe was buried to the hilt in his back. He must have fallen against it when I—
I threw down the shovel and crouched next to his body. Felt for his pulse, just to be sure. Nothing.
I sat back, breathing hard. Using my teeth, I pulled at the rope around my wrists until I got enough slack. Then I twisted my fingers down and started untying the knots, as the adrenaline shakes subsided.
Suddenly, I heard a voice calling out. High, panicked. From the house. Footsteps, pounding off the porch.
Ronny Baxter. He must have heard the shots and come running…
And he’d be armed.
I took off, pulling the rope free.
By the time I got back to my rental car, I was out of breath from the hard run across the fields.
Luckily, I’d managed to get out of the barn before Baxter reached it, and had bolted for the tree-shrouded barbed wire that bordered the property.
But I’d risked a last look back. Saw the smallish figure, swathed in deep shadow, crouching as it approached the opened barn doors. Even from this distance, I could also see the glint of a gun in an upraised hand.
Then I’d turned and started off, using the barbed-wire fence as a kind of guide line. Feeling my way along its taut length, gasping from the pain in my side, it took me ten long minutes to find the dirt access road, where I’d parked the rental.
I squinted in the gloom. The light was almost gone, and the darkness seemed to sprout now from behind every tree, shrub, scalloped hill.
I gave myself a moment to catch my breath, then got behind the wheel and started the engine. At the same time fumbling in my pants pocket for my cell phone. As I drove with one hand back the way I’d come on the unlit, treacherous road, I punched in Sam’s number.
Nothing. Battery was dead.
Cursing, I tossed it on the passenger seat and focused on finding my way back to the on-ramp for Interstate 76.
At least I’d cleared up one thing that had been troubling me: why Sam hadn’t called.
I hadn’t driven a quarter mile when I spotted a gray Range Rover parked under an elm at the side of the road. Roarke’s car. Or, more likely, Baxter’s. Had to be.
I floored it. Barreled down the dark, unpaved road.
I tried to calm myself, but I was in some kind of primal state—half in shock, half pumped with adrenaline.
Two men, dead. A third one, armed, perhaps climbing into the Range Rover right now, soon to be on my tail.
Every instinct told me to just get out of there. Keep driving on into the night, and never stop.
But I knew I had to find a phone, call the police.
A real man don’t lose his shit,
my old man used to say. So I’d spent my life trying to figure out exactly what a real man
did
do. And how. And when.
Is that what all this was? The violence and death of the past week. Just another life lesson, like the ones my father used to deliver with the back of his hand?…