Revenant (26 page)

He shoved Parker in the back and the two men stumbled forward. “So here’s what we’re going to do.”

He shoved Parker again and again the pair lurched forward a few feet. “You’re going to drop
your
gun . . .”

Shove, stumble. “. . . and we’re going to take a little ride together . . .”

Shove, stumble. “. . . and then you and me are going to relive the good old days. Whaddaya say about that, baby girl?”

40

The thing that had once been Earl Manning stood swaying like he was drunk, gun barrel placed against the head of a clearly terrified Brett Parker, and Sharon knew she had just seconds to respond. Manning had pushed his hostage forward until he was now positioned no more than a few feet away, but he was using Parker quite effectively as a shield, giving her very little to aim at.

Still, she had been a crack shot at the FBI Academy, and she thought there was at least a decent chance she could hit Earl if he would just stop moving for half a second. He looked like he had just stepped off the Tilt-A-Whirl ride at the Fryeburg Fair, his head bobbing and weaving, now completely shielded by Parker, now hovering over his left shoulder, now gone again.

If she timed it just right, she could take him down. But then she thought about Mike’s words.
He’s basically unstoppable because you can’t kill him . . . a mindless killing machine . . .

What if she hit him and he didn’t go down? Or what if she missed him entirely? It was a definite possibility, she was good with a gun but it was still a handgun, and he was still several feet away, and she
was
shaking like a leaf from the adrenaline coursing through her body. If she missed him or if he survived the shot, he would undoubtedly put a bullet into Brett Parker’s head, and
he
wasn’t a reanimated corpse,
he
would drop like a stone, and not a sacred stone, either, and an innocent man would be dead.

And it wouldn’t just be any innocent man, it would be one of the richest men in America, a world-renowned software entrepreneur, and the fallout would be instantaneous and devastating. Moreover, he would have been killed with Mike McMahon’s gun, and Sharon knew that after Mike’s accidental shooting of seven year old Sarah Melendez two years ago, he would never recover. He still blamed himself for the little girl’s death. If another innocent person were to die by Mike’s gun, Sharon knew he would be lost forever.

So the decision was really no decision. Sharon tossed her weapon onto the shoulder of the road and stepped clear of the cruiser’s open door. Brett Parker moaned in terror and disbelief. He had obviously been expecting her to take some kind of action, but what could she do?

She stepped forward reluctantly. “What now, Earl?” The stench was rancid and overwhelming, like spoiled meat. Sharon pictured maggots crawling all over Manning’s skin and gagged.

He leered. It was horrifying. “Now we see what this baby can do,” he said, nodding at the Paskagankee Police cruiser, idling patiently on the side of the road.

Sharon moved toward the driver’s seat and Earl shouted, “Hey!” and she froze. Earl chuckled, the sound like breaking glass. “Come on babe, how stupid do you think I am? You’re not going to drive. Get into the back seat.”

Sharon opened the rear passenger door and slid into the seat, her fear mounting rapidly. She had been thinking hard, hoping for an opportunity to use the cruiser as a weapon, to drive it into a tree or something, then grab Parker and run in the aftermath of the accident. Mike had said Earl’s brain was deteriorating rapidly, what were the odds he would remain clear-headed enough to stop them?

But from the back seat she would be helpless. A thick wire mesh screen separated the front seat of the cruiser from the back, a precaution to ensure the safety of the officer after putting a suspect into the vehicle. There would be no way to get at Manning.

Sharon looked up and saw the horrifying skeletal body looming just outside. He maintained a firm grasp on Parker, who was now wide-eyed and pale-faced and appeared seconds away from a stroke or a heart attack. The stench intensified and she wondered how Parker had been able to stand being held against that corpse-like frame.

“Slide over,” Manning ordered, shoving Parker into the back of the cruiser without waiting for her to comply. Then he slammed the door and they were trapped. There were no interior handles on the rear cruiser doors; they could only be opened from the outside, another vehicle modification made in the interest of officer safety that now spelled doom for Sharon and Parker.

“You’ve got to do something,” Parker whispered fiercely, as if maybe Sharon could magically overcome the fact they were trapped inside a police car with no weapon and no way out. “What are you going to do?”

Outside the window, Manning bent down and snatched Sharon’s gun off the side of the road, sliding it into the waistband of his filthy jeans at the small of his back.

“We stay calm,” she answered quietly, “and wait for a break we can take advantage of.”

“Why didn’t you shoot him when you had the chance?” Anger seemed to be taking the place of fear now that he had been released from Manning’s grip.

“Shoot him? When? While he was using you as a human shield? This isn’t a movie set, Mr. Parker, the odds of hitting him were slim at best. I probably would have shot you instead, and then where would we be?” She didn’t bother to continue, to explain that even if she
had
popped Earl Manning, even if she nailed him right between the eyes, there was still no chance of actually stopping him. He would simply get up, dust himself off, and then probably kill both of them on the spot. The situation seemed hopeless enough without adding that little informational gem into the mix.

“The guy’s a raving lunatic,” Parker continued as if she hadn’t even spoken. His voice was laced with fear and maybe just a touch of wonder. “He says he’s dead and that he needs me to figure out a way to reverse the damage that’s been done to him. He’s out of his mind, he’s completely crazy, he—“

The driver’s side door opened and Manning fell into the seat, banging his head hard against the door frame, the force of the blow rocking the car. He didn’t even react. “Now, now,” he said, speaking in a sing-song voice. “I know you two are conspiring against me and I won’t have it, do you understand?”

He placed the box he had been holding—Sharon assumed it must be the box containing his heart and the sacred Navajo stone—onto the dashboard between it and the windshield, shoving hard until he had wedged it tightly into the space. Then he shifted the cruiser into drive and stomped on the accelerator and the car leapt forward, rear tires squealing on the pavement, the cruiser zigzagging down the road as Manning tried, largely unsuccessfully, to control it.

Sharon’s cell phone rang. It was still sitting on the front passenger’s seat where she had tossed it after talking to Mike a few minutes ago.

Earl moved his foot clumsily from the accelerator to the brake and the tires screeched again, this time screaming in protest from the rapid deceleration. Sharon and Parker were thrown forward and they smashed their faces on the wire screen at the same time, neither one able to stop their momentum with their outstretched hands.

Manning slammed the transmission into Park. He bent down, reaching with his long arms into the passenger-side foot well, snatching the cell phone off the floor where it had fallen as it continued to ring. He glanced at the caller ID and turned and glared into the back seat. “Well, well,” he said. “Looks like someone has a call from her boyfriend.” He seemed to be having trouble focusing his eyes and his tone had changed, losing its sing-song quality and becoming hard-edged and cruel.

Sharon had no idea what to say. She knew Mike would be on the other end of the line and that things were about to go from bad to much, much worse.

She was right.

Manning punched at the “Send” button, his finger missing three times before finally connecting, probably by accident. Before he had a chance to say anything, Mike’s voice came from the earpiece, sounding high-pitched and far away, but still understandable in the silence of the police car. “Well, I did it,” he said. “I just got off the line with the Maine State Police. They now think I’m either drunk or a raving lunatic, but they agreed to put out a BOLO for our friend Earl Manning.”

“Isn’t that nice,” Manning said into the phone, and Mike fell silent. “I never realized how many people cared about me. Where were you when I REALLY FUCKING NEEDED YOU?” Earl was screaming now and the somehow smell of corruption seemed to increase with it.

“Manning?” Mike said cautiously, and the cursed man punched another button, putting the call on speaker before beginning to laugh.

“In the flesh,” he said. “Although maybe not for much longer, as it seems to be sliding off my bones even as we speak.” He grinned at Sharon as though sharing a private joke and she felt her stomach begin to turn over. She clenched her jaw and willed herself not to throw up. Beside her, Parker rubbed his cheek vigorously where he had scraped it against the wire mesh and chanted to himself softly. It sounded like he might be praying.

“Where’s Officer Dupont?” came the voice from the cell phone.

“Officer Dupont? Who’s Officer—“

“—Where is she, Manning?”

“Oh, you mean
Sharon
Dupont? The sweet little piece of ass we have in common? I spent time with her too, you know, although she’s probably never mentioned that little tidbit to you. Of course, our time together came before she got all high and mighty, before she started toting a badge and a gun to work. Still, I find it interesting to note that all the places you’ve been, I’ve been, too, and long before you. If you get my drift. Isn’t that something, Chief? You and me, we’re practically one and the same, carnally speaking.” He winked at Sharon and she stared back, horrified.

“I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is she, Manning?”

“As it so happens, she’s right here with me. Care to have a word?”

“You’re damn right I want to speak with her. Now.”

“Well, that’s just too goddamn bad, Chief; sometimes we don’t get what we want in this world. Didn’t your mama teach you anything?”

“I’m warning you, Manning, you harm one hair on Officer Dupont’s head and I’ll—“

“—you’ll what, smart-guy? Hunt me down and kill me? Too late for that, wouldn’t you say? Now, I’d like nothing better than to continue this delightful discussion, but time’s a-wastin’, as my dear departed granny used to say, and I’m not getting any younger. Or any older, for that matter. Because I’m DEAD. See ya on the other side, Mikey-boy.”

Manning punched clumsily at the END button to disconnect the call and tossed the phone back down on the seat.

He swiveled his head and glared into the back seat. “Now, where were we?”

41

Except the call wasn’t disconnected. Manning must have missed the button on the touchscreen when he tried to terminate the connection, and now Mike listened, frantic with fear, as the rapidly dissembling revenant taunted Sharon. “Honestly, sweetheart, that fucking loser’s dumb as a stump. Why the hell’d you even bother leaving Paskagankee in the first place if you were just going to come right back and get tangled up with an idiot like him when you could have stayed with me and saved yourself all that trouble?”

His voice seemed to be thickening and he had begun slurring his words as if drunk. That frightened Mike more than the threats and taunting. Sharon didn’t respond, or if she did, Mike didn’t hear her answer. He tried to control his escalating panic and confusion. Was Manning at the hospital, and if so, how had he managed to snatch Sharon without anyone else in the building sounding an alarm? It was simply impossible to conceive of any scenario in which the foul-smelling, skeletal bag of bones Mike had tangled with in the basement of this house just a few hours ago could have gotten into Mercy Hospital without a dozen separate 911 calls being placed within seconds.

Then through the earpiece of his phone came the unmistakable sound of a police cruiser’s engine revving. The sound was deep and throaty and powerful, and Mike heard Manning exclaim, “Yeah, baby,” and the picture began to come into focus. Sharon wasn’t at Mercy Hospital at all; she likely wasn’t even in Orono. Mike knew she would never have walked away and left their prisoner/witness unguarded, so she must have convinced another Paskagankee cop to make the drive to Orono, and then hopped into her cruiser and headed north, anxious to get back to where the action was. Somewhere along the way, she had crossed paths with Manning.

Mike cursed, angry at himself. He, of all people, should have expected this. It simply was not in Sharon Dupont’s nature to sit on the sidelines with an investigation beckoning. It was that need to be involved which had made her simultaneously such a good cop and such a frustrating girlfriend.

When she had been a girlfriend.

He tamped down on his fear—it wasn’t easy to do—and ran a quick timeline through his head. Undoubtedly Sharon had placed the call to whoever she badgered into taking her place almost immediately upon arriving at the hospital. Given a few minutes to convince someone to come, and then the time it would take that officer to drive there, Mike determined Sharon was likely either already back in Paskagankee or close to it.

He clamped his hand over the mouthpiece of his cell phone. He certainly didn’t want to alert Manning to the fact his every word was being monitored, although as quickly as the revenant seemed to be coming apart, Mike wondered if it would even matter to him if he knew he could be heard.

Mike thought hard. Interrogating Raven Tahoma would have to wait. With the information he had gotten from Don Running Bear’s widow, there didn’t seem to be a pressing need to speak with her, anyway, at least not right away. Finding Sharon and Earl Manning was now the clear priority.

Pete Kendall walked out the front door of the house and broke into a trot when he spotted Mike. “Hey, boss, I’ve got a question for ya.”

Mike shook his head and raised a finger to his lips in the universal “Be quiet” gesture, and Kendall stopped in his tracks. “What is it?” he said softly, obviously puzzled.