Lamentation (25 page)

I slammed on my brakes, flipped a bitch and made for Christy Lane, pushing seventy on the slick, icy street. I took the turn going so fast, my headlights barely provided any lead time to react to the hairpins and hazards. But this was my town; I could drive these roads blindfolded.

Ice and stone kicked up, dirtying high beams, hands shaking in a fit, though whether from the cold or chest-pounding anxiety, I couldn’t be sure. I grabbed my cell to call Charlie. No bars. No surprise. I was on my own.

The moon tucked behind dense banks of storm clouds as I down-shifted my Chevy into second and began to climb the snaking, bumpy terrain toward the watershed. Coming upon Lamentation Bridge and Echo Lake, still not seeing their vehicle, I realized the foolish mistake I’d made following my gut on a whim. I pounded my steering wheel. Of course McGreevy, or whatever his name was, would make for the Turnpike.
Get the fuck out of Dodge as fast as possible. I must’ve just missed them. They probably left earlier than Turley had said, which meant it was over. Even if I turned around now and hit one hundred, they’d have already made the Turnpike. Once there, they’d blend into the chaos of traffic and truckers, hit the Interstate and be long gone. I didn’t even know what kind of vehicle they were driving. The only reason to come this way was if McGreevy’s impersonator planned on killing my brother, sawing a hole in the ice, and sending him to a cold, watery grave, which seemed too surreal to grasp.

Besides my brother’s potential murder, losing Chris now would mean no more time to right any ships, no more opportunities to reach an understanding. All the distance between my brother and me, never broached, all that water under the bridge, swept out to sea, with no chance for reconciliation. And just as I thought this, I caught the dim red glow of tail lights ascending Ragged Pass.

I punched the Chevy into gear, kicking cylinders into overdrive. Floored it, V-8 torqueing with a rush and a push; I took serious air over ramps of bedrock. Tires gaining traction, I gave that machine all she could handle, big block thrumming under the hood, 367 horsepower wailing. An ordinary car, in these conditions, didn’t stand a chance. My headlights soon fanned the rear window. I could see Chris cuffed in the backseat.

The Pass had no guardrails. When people did venture up here, usually teenagers looking to party, it was during the daylight and warmer months when they could navigate slowly. We were in a high-speed car chase in the dead of night and the middle of winter.

My big truck could easily ram the fake McGreevy’s puny car off the road, sending him careening down the mountainside. Except that my brother was in that car too.

I saw a flash of light first and then I heard the blast of gunshot. Both hands gripped firmly on the wheel, I ducked down and swerved, grinding gravel and gears, not surrendering an inch.

Having lived here my whole life, I knew about the turnaround coming up, less than a third of the way to the summit, a tortuous turn nicknamed Dead Man’s Curve. I had less than half a mile, but if I could
wedge around them, get out in front, I could broadside the Chevy and force them to stop. It wasn’t the best plan. I didn’t have a gun, which this guy clearly did, and I’d be putting myself right in the line of fire, in more ways than one. What choice did I have? I wasn’t letting this sonofa-bitch take my brother. There was nothing stopping this guy from turning around at any minute and putting a bullet in Chris’ brain. The second I gave him any relief, he’d realize that. I strapped on my seatbelt.

Fifty yards from the turnabout, I punched it hard, tires spinning on the steep incline, until my machine dug down deep, took root in the earth, and with a thunderous surge rocketed me past, wrenching loose both side-view mirrors in a shower of sparks. I slammed on the brakes, spinning 360º on the snow and ice, squared up in time to see a pair of headlights gunning straight for me. I braced for the collision. The impact was fast, fierce, furious, whipping me around and crumpling my driver’s side door, snapping my head into the glass and leaving an instant spider web crack. But my truck was too big to get pushed around much, its sturdy steel frame and body absorbing the brunt of impact. The car that struck me—not so lucky. It sprung back into itself like a dejected Slinky, windshield exploding and splashing down diamonds, then stopped dead in its tracks. Smoke billowed from beneath its hood, and the car began slowly slipping on the ice, rotating around, gaining enough speed until the nose pointed downhill. It hopped the ledge where a guardrail should have been, balanced momentarily, like a teeter-totter on a parapet, before dropping twenty feet, headfirst into a boulder.

I unhooked my seatbelt. My door was jammed. I slid out the passenger side, rushing, limping, to the edge of the Pass. Down below, steam continued to stream from the engine, rear-end sticking straight in the air like a diver who’d misjudged the depth and dove straight into the mud.

I clasped onto frozen berry branches, using stumps for footholds, whatever could give me some traction to navigate the slippery, rocky, terrain.

“Chris!” I called out.

Nothing came back but country stillness.

Then I heard a faint cry.

Pressing forward, I slipped and fell on my ass, sliding a few feet and thwacking the back of my head before popping up, right beside the driver’s side door, where, for all I knew, I could be greeted by a gun in my face.

Except, I wasn’t. And the guy in the driver’s seat wasn’t going to be sticking a gun in anyone’s face, ever again.

The fake McGreevy’s head lay on the dash, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, eyes locked in a death gaze. I checked for a pulse, just in case. He was already stiffening up. I could see my brother stirring in the back. I rifled through the dead man’s pockets, searching until I found his wallet. I flipped it open. There was the badge. And right beside it a driver’s license. Roger Paul, New York City. Ashton’s finest had handed my brother off to this guy to be killed.

“Chris! Chris?”

My brother groaned.

“Hold on,” I said, “I’m getting you out of here.”

I felt in the hitman’s jacket and retrieved the keys for the handcuffs. Then I saw the 9mm on the seat beside him. The last time I’d fired a gun was at beer cans up at Coal Creek. I stuck the pistol in the back of my pants.

I moved to the rear, opening the door. “Can you move? Anything broken?”

Chris flopped around, arms still cuffed behind him, pencil-thin neck cocked at an odd angle. Between the straggled strands of bleached blond hair, he had a giant gash on his forehead, and that goofy grin on his face.

“Hey, little brother,” he said wearily, pushing through a smile. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. My apartment was obviously out. So too Charlie’s. We were already on the mountain and not far from the foothills. Thank God the truck still turned over when I tried starting it.

The only person who knew about Ben Saunders’ place was my boss, Tom, and he was out of town for the next couple weeks. Sure, they’d eventually reach out to him, probably sooner than later, but it bought us some time. And I had the 9mm. I was convincing myself by the minute I’d use it if I had to. I wasn’t thinking so great, honestly. In the thin mountain air, oxygen doesn’t flow to your brain, synapses misfire, connections don’t get made. Smacking your skull against glass in a high-speed car crash doesn’t help, either. It’s not the best time to be trying to solve math equations. All I knew was that, until I figured this mess out, we were holing up at the old farmhouse.

I steered the battered Chevy up the driveway. The U-Haul had been removed, carted off by Tom. I killed the lights, opened the garage, and gazed over the barren countryside. No neighbors for miles, the homestead ghostly. The snow came down steadily now and was starting to accumulate at my feet.

I latched the overhead doors and sealed us in, then helped my brother out of the truck. He winced as I let him lean the full weight of his body on me. The burden wasn’t great. He felt as wasted away as a cancer patient in the late stages. I let us into the vestibule with the key I’d never given back to Tom.

The only creature comforts that remained: a folding patio chair and a fire-damaged carpet in the living room. I’d thrown my jacket over
Chris’ bum overcoat at the accident site, but he still shivered violently; it was every bit as cold inside the house as it was out. With the hit to his head and a bleeding gash, I worried he’d go into shock. I sat him by the fireplace while I went scouring for blankets or towels, old sheets, anything Tom might’ve left behind to help keep us from freezing to death. All I found was the stack of newspapers I’d been using to wrap valuables.

Then I remembered the cord of wood I’d tripped over in the pantry, when I cut myself on that exposed nail. Hard to believe it had been only four days ago.

I considered the smoke coming from the chimney, but quickly dismissed any concern. The only way someone might see the smoke through this storm was if they were coming here anyway. And if they were coming here anyway, what difference did it make? It wasn’t a tough call. I could hear Chris’ teeth chattering all the way in the kitchen. What was left of them, at least.

Stacking the wood in a pyramid, I crinkled the old, dry newspaper, stuffing wadded sheets evenly, making sure they were perfectly spaced out, and got a flashback of my father doing the same. Down on a knee, arms thick as railroad ties, sweat stains pooled under pits, focused intently on the task at hand. Funny, when I pictured my father, didn’t matter the memory, he was never looking at me. Anytime I thought of him, he was watching someone else, doing something else, engaged in a random chore, but never meeting my eyes. Flames licked the parched newsprint, sparking the wood, and soon a fire raged.

Chair and all, I dragged my brother as close to the heat as I could without burning him. He was nearly convulsive, he was so cold. I wrapped my arms tightly around him, rubbing his back, trying to warm him. I knelt down and checked the wound on his head. I couldn’t see much, the cut smeared and crusted over, mingling with the layers of homeless dirt.

I went to the kitchen. Water still worked. Wet my shirttail, then cleaned Chris’ cut. The bleeding had stopped. When I washed away the dried blood, I saw the gash wasn’t as deep as I’d originally feared. In fact, once cleaned off, it wasn’t much more than a scratch.

“It’s getting dark, Doc,” Chris rasped, shaking with exaggerated palsy. “Smoke? Can I get a last smoke?” He laughed. And instantly stopped the phony seizures. This was my brother’s fucked-up sense of humor, mocking my motherly concern.

“Sure. Laugh it up.” I plopped on my ass and watched the flames dance, bathing the musty old room in a brilliant amber-orange hue. Shadows stretched across the hardwood, up water-stained walls, rendering my brother and me distorted versions of ourselves.

I tossed him the cigarette pack. He bent far forward and lit one directly from the fire.

“How’d you know that guy wasn’t really a cop?” he asked me, hopping up, suddenly spry.

“Fisher. You remember him?”

“Sure. You went to second base with his girlfriend back in high school. Gina something. Said she had a terrific rack.”

“How the fuck do you remember that?”

“Because you told me.”

Guy couldn’t get it together long enough to visit a dentist, but he remembered me copping a feel in the tenth grade.

“Whatever. So Fisher works as an investigator for an insurance company down in Concord, and he recognized the name. Seems a couple weeks ago, this detective turns up dead. Anyways, doesn’t matter now. The important part is, we figured it out as they were handing you over.”

“You tell Turley?”

“I tried to. Wasn’t a lot of time. Anyone pretending to be a cop wasn’t taking you for ice cream.” I looked up at him from the floor. “When did you figure it out?”

He screwed up his face like he had to think about it. “Probably when he said he was going to shoot me in the head and bury me beneath the ice.”

“You could’ve told him I had the disc.”

“For what? So he could cut a hole big enough for two?” Chris turned. “Did you look at it?”

“Yeah. So did Fisher and Charlie.”

“And?”

“And … I can’t say for sure. Could be Mr. Lombardi. There’s not much to go on. Only a couple pics show a face. Grainy as hell.” I reached to get back my cigarettes.

“That’s what I figured. Pretty stupid of me, eh?”

“I don’t know, Chris. Guy has the same hunched posture, and the computer
did
come from Lombardi. If you’d gotten more evidence, maybe you could’ve—”

“What? Been a hero?” He winced a grin.

“Did that Roger Paul guy say who he worked for?”

“Didn’t have to,” Chris said, drawing deeply on his cigarette. “So what’s the plan, Wyatt Earp? We gonna smoke ’em outta their holes?” He laughed until he coughed a fit.

Despite his “What, me worry?” act, my brother looked more peaked, drained, emaciated than usual. I was hardly an expert on the drug lifestyle and its physical toll, but I knew once you’d been on them long enough, you started needing them to survive, like food. And, boy, did he look hungry.

“Haven’t really thought this through, little brother, have you?”

“Didn’t exactly have the option of planning.” I checked my phone. Again. No bars. No surprise.

“You know they can trace your cell? Tri-ang-u-late,” he said, pronouncing every syllable. “They’re gonna find us eventually, you know that, right?”

I tried to formulate an escape, conceive a plan. Nothing doing. I felt hopeless.

“It was an accident,” Chris said. “Guy wasn’t even a real cop. Maybe they’ll just give you a stern warning this time. Get off with community service. I’m not sure vehicular manslaughter is even a crime anymore.” He chuckled.

“There’s nothing funny about any of this.”

Chris arched his back, stretching until he yawned. “Good call on the fire.” He peeled off my jacket and tossed it to me, shaking off his overcoat, quaking till he busted out a jellied shimmy. “You should just drive back.”