Authors: E.E. Knight
Valentine's Exile (48 page)
What's given up to the world is returned hundredfold,
read the New Universal Church bible.
read the New Universal Church bible.
For the past two years Valentine had been in the karma business. After tonight he'd close up shop.
He tightened his grip on the hatchet pick.
Valentine dropped out of the tree when he saw James yank on the pill container, popping the balloon not quite as his feet hit the ground. Valentine softened the landing with a roll, came lightly to his feet, and took two quick steps to the ATV's saddle.
The shotgun was locked to its bracket so he sprang up on the saddle and used it to vault toward James, who'd finally reacted to the noise behind, and turned to be struck across the head with the blunt side of Valentine's climbing pick.
Valentine cuffed his prey and gagged him with a bit of his hat, so that this quiet corner of Iowa might remain so.
He checked the stout laces on F. A. James' tall combat boots and wondered how best to secure his captive in the cargo basket of the ATV.
Nature abhors a vacuum, especially when that vacuum cuts the wind and keeps out the snow, so the silo Valentine had chosen a week ago contained a good many creepers, spiders that ate the creepers, mice that ate the spiders, and barn owls that ate the mice.
And bats. Their guano added a fragrant découpage atop the rusting chute gear and old feed sacks at the base of the silo.
F. A. James hung upside down by a single line of nylon blind cord, dangling from rigging far above in the black top of the silo. His slightest movement caused him to swing extravagantly, like the pendulum in a grandfather clock.
Valentine squatted atop the rusty mechanical rubbish, sharpening a short, thick, curved blade with a sturdy handle.
The security man's features were hidden under a white pillowcase, tightened about his head with a bit of the same nylon cord. Inked-in eyes and mouth made him look as though he were wearing an abbreviated Halloween costume. The effect was more for those who would find the body than for the benefit of the pair in the silo.
“Gate codes,” F. A. James said, his voice stressed and cracking. “Is that what you want?”
Valentine kept sharpening the knife.
“There's a spare backdoor keyâ”
“I don't want access to Weathercut,” Valentine said, deciding the knife was sharp enough. “I wanted you out of it, Franklin.”
“But I'm nobody important,” F. A. James squeaked. “I don't even have my own room.”
“That's the problem with being a Nobody Important. Someone might decide you're disposable. Kind of like that teenage girl back in Arkansas. The one you, Bernardo Guittierez, Tom Cray, and Sergeant Heath Hopkins raped and then killed.”
Valentine smelled urine leaking.
“No! I mean, you've got the wrong guy.”
Valentine was a little relieved that F. A. James kept talking. He hated the ones who just blubbered at the end. Cray had spent the last five minutes screaming for his mother.
“Her name was Mary Carlson. Ever catch her name? Bother to remember it? You must remember her face. What did it look like at the end? Now I figure four guys, maybe ten minutes eachâthat was a long forty minutes at the end of her life. About as long as the next forty minutes are going to be for you.”
James was panting now, and the pillowcase went in and out of his mouth like a flutter valve.
“Mary was into horses. Loved them to deathâgood at taking care of them too, once she learned what was expected. ”
Valentine drew the blade across the whetstone. The sound echoed off the cobweb-strung walls of the silo like a cat spitting. “This is a hoof knife,” Valentine explained. “Horse hooves are tough to cut, and you need a short, strong blade to get through them. Hoof is way tougher than, say . . . the cartilage in your nose and ears, Franklin.”
James spoke again from beneath the ghost-mask. “Captain Coltrane over in Yaseda, he's got a whole jar full of ring fingers off of girls he collected for the Reapers. You should be going after him.”
“I never knew the owners of those fingers.”
“I didn't even come. I just did it 'cause the others did, and Hop killed her before I knew he'd drawn his pistol.”
F. A. James's story didn't quite jibe with what the others had said. According to Guittierez, the corporal had demanded that the girl be “flipped over” to escape the indignity of “sloppy seconds,” then made herâ
But Valentine didn't care about the details any more. The investigation and hunt were over. Now there was just duty to Mary Carlson.
“You see a white collar? The time to confess passed with the investigation. I read the documents. Consul Solon, for all his faults, didn't like civilians mistreated. You could have admitted it. You would have gone to prison, probably, but you wouldn't be hanging here now.”
Valentine selected a spot for the first knife cut.
“This is just to scare, me, right? You're done, I'm scared. What do you want? What do you
want
?”
want
?”
Valentine never remembered much else that F. A. James said during his final moments, cut short, as they always were, because the screaming got to him. Part of him was distracted, puzzled by that last question.
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