Wolf Moon (13 page)

    And I was hurting him, hurting him bad, and I couldn't stop. If anything, I was piling more and more punches into his body. The crowd was with me now, frenzied, caught up in my rhythms as I slammed punches first to the head then to the chest then to the belly, the same pattern again and again. He was bleeding so badly, his blood was flying across my own face.

    "That's enough, Chase!"

    At first the voice seemed far away and not quite recognizable. Familiar, yet…

    And so I kept on swinging and slugging and-

    And then, too late, I recognized the voice and I saw him, peripherally, step up next to me and raise his own nightstick and bring it down and-

    And then there was just the eternal cosmic night, cold and dark, not life yet not quite death, either. Just pain and-blankness.

    The crowd noise grew distant-and then faded entirely…

    

    

    I didn't get my eyes open right away. Couldn't. The pain across the back of my head was too considerable.

    I became aware that my arms were stretched out behind me and my wrists were bound together. I became aware that my ankles were also bound. I became aware of some other presence near me. I had to open my eyes. Had to.

    I almost smiled. He was treating me as a respected guest and he didn't even know it. None of his men ever got to see the inside of the room where Ev Hollister worked over his prisoners. But now Ev Hollister was letting me see it for myself.

    "You were out a long time," he said.

    He sat in a straight-backed chair directly across from the one I was sitting in.

    "Afraid I tapped you a little harder than I meant to," he said.

    There were dark brown splatters all over the wall, the dried blood of the prisoners he'd worked over in his time. There were also dents and nicks and small holes in the wall. When he got done punching the prisoners, he sometimes liked to throw them around the room. Everybody likes a little variety in his life.

    I brought my eyes back to Hollister.

    "You look pissed, Chase. Real pissed."

    "Why'd you bring me into this room? I'm not a prisoner."

    He smiled. It was a drunken smile, pleasing but crooked and not quite coordinated properly. "You're not a prisoner yet, you mean, Chase. This whole town's just like that miner who swung on you. They hate you, Chase, and they hold you responsible for the clerk's death and they're putting a lot of pressure on me to arrest you whether I've got evidence or not. These are simple folks, Chase, they're not like you and me with our fine respect for the written law." He tried to smile about empty, high-minded words, but what came out was a smirk.

    I decided I might as well tell him. Maybe it was what he'd been wanting all along, anyway. "I'm planning to clear out in the next few days. Gillian and Annie and me. Gone for good."

    "Well," he said, "now that's a damned sensible idea."

    "So all your troubles will be over."

    "The next few days?"

    "So how about untying me?"

    "You and your wife and daughter?"

    "Right."

    "As far away as you can get with no plans to ever come back?"

    "That's the plan."

    He stood up. The crooked smile was back. So was the drunken glaze of the eyes. He walked the four steps between my chair and his, and then he backhanded me so hard I went over backward, cracking my head on the floor.

    I tried to struggle back up but it was no use. Lying on my back and tied up made me vulnerable to anything he wanted to do. But the fall had loosened the rope on my wrists.

    He kicked me hard in the ribs.

    The pain hadn't even had time to register properly before he walked around the chair and kicked me hard in the other rib, the one that I'd bruised a while back.

    I closed my eyes and coasted on the blackness and the physical grief spreading across my rib cage and up into my chest and arms. Every few minutes, I'd become aware of my sore throat again…

    "Where are those two peckers?" he said.

    I didn't want to give him another excuse to kick me. I answered right away. "I don't know."

    "Like hell you don't, Chase. You stick up a bank with two men and you don't know where they are?"

    "I don't. I'm telling you the truth."

    "Then you've got the money, don't you?"

    "No."

    "Bullshit."

    "Honest, Chief, I-"

    He kicked me again. This was enough to shrivel my scrotum into the size of a walnut and to send tears streaming down my cheeks. The toe of his boot had found the exact spot where the doc had bandaged my rib.

    "Where's the money?"

    "Don't… know."

    "You sonofabitch."

    And I could sense it, the frenzy, the way I was sure all his other prisoners had been able to sense it. When he was sober, he was a decent, humane man who ran an honest police department and had a genuine regard for the people he served.

    But when he drank…

    This time he walked around in front of me and looked straight down.

    "You know where I'm going to kick you this time?"

    "Please don't. Please." I didn't care how I sounded. I just didn't want any more pain.

    "Then you tell me, Chase. You tell me where those men are and where that money is or I swear you won't get out of this room alive."

    "I don't know. I really don't."

    My groin wasn't all that easy a target, what with my ankles bound and all, but his boot toe was unerring and he found the spot with very little trouble.

    I screamed. I tried praying, but all that came out was curses, and I tried biting my lip, but I bit down so hard I filled my mouth with blood.

    And he kicked me again.

    Almost instinctively, I kept working my hands free from the ropes behind me. But even if my hands were free, he had a gun and a nightstick and-

    "You tell me, Chase, you tell me where those men are and that money is."

    My body was cold with sweat. My face was swollen from the punches of the miner. My ribs and groin hurt so much I was starting to drift into unconsciousness…

    "I'm giving you five seconds, Chase." He was raising his boot. He was picking his spot. "Five seconds, Chase."

    "Please, Chief," I said again, and it wasn't even me speaking now, it was the scared little boy I'd been all the time I was growing up. "Please don't, Chief."

    "Three seconds."

    His foot came up even higher.

    "Two seconds, Chase."

    Oh and he was enjoying it, seeing me writhe on the floor, hearing me whimper.

    "You sonofabitch," he said.

    And was just starting to lift his leg when- Somebody banged on the door.

    "Chief, Chief, you'd better get out here."

    He was angry, Ev Hollister was. It was as if somebody had interrupted him having sex at the crucial moment.

    "What the hell is it, Fenady?"

    "Those two men we been looking for? Lundgren and Mars?"

    Hollister's face changed. Anger gone, replaced with curiosity.

    "What about them?"

    "Somebody found them in a field the other side of Chase's cabin. And brought them in."

    "They're dead?"

    "Yeah. Back-shot."

    Hollister smiled down at me. "Didn't know where they were, eh, Chase?"

    This time he didn't give any warning. He just took two steps to the right, where he could get a better angle, and then brought his toe down swiftly and surely into my rib cage.

    Fenady probably winced when he heard me scream. Even the cops who hate prisoners hate to hear human beings worked over the way Hollister works them over.

    Hollister looked down at me. "I'm going out there and check those men over. When I come back, I want you to tell me what you did with the money after you killed those two men."

    "But I-"

    I'd started to say that I hadn't back-shot anybody, that Reeves had done it and made it look as if I had, the way he made it look as if my key had been used in the robbery.

    But what was the point of talking now? Hollister wouldn't believe me no matter how many times I told him the truth.

    He went over to the door, unlocked it and went out.

    

    

    The ropes slid off my wrists with no trouble. But bending down to uncinch my ankles, I felt nauseous and dizzy. Because of the beating, the sickness was getting worse.

    Through the door I could hear the commotion far down the hall, in the front office.

    As I started unwrapping the rope again, I thought of how long I'd suffered at Reeves' hands. Most of my adult life he'd ruled me in one way or another. I'd been a kid when I helped pull the robbery he set me up for. And now he'd convinced Hollister that I'd back-shot the two men who had allegedly been my partners.

    I reached the door, eased it open, peered down the hall and started on tiptoes down the stairs and toward the back door. I reached the ground floor and continued to tiptoe down the hall and-

    I got two steps away from the doorknob when somebody shouted, "Hey!"

    I turned and saw Krause, a big red-faced German cop, lunging for me with his nightstick.

    He swung but I ducked. His stick hit the door above my head so hard that it snapped in two.

    I knew I had no chance other than to grab the knob, throw the door open and dive into the night outside. Krause swore and lumbered toward me, but his jaw intersected with the edge of the door just as it was opening. He was knocked to his knees. I turned around, kicked him in the throat, and then pushed him over backward. As I hit the alley, he was swearing at me in German.

    All I could do was run. I had no idea where I was going.

    I came to the head of an alley and stopped, leaning out from the shadows to get a look at the street. Mrs. Hollister had pulled her fancy black surrey over by the general store and was watching all the men running in the street. Apparently all the shouting over the death of Lundgren and Mars had brought her out of the house. They lived near the downtown area.

    I ducked back into the alley, pausing to catch my breath, then I started running again.

    I went two blocks and then collapsed against a building, my breath coming in hot raw gasps.

    There was moonlight and the deep shadows of the alley and the sweet smell of newly sawn lumber from a nearby store that had recently gone up.

    And behind me I could hear the shouts. "He escaped! Chase escaped!"

    They would come looking for me now, the human equivalents of bloodhounds, and there wouldn't be just policemen, but eager private citizens, too, eager for some sport.

    I pushed away from the wall and started staggering down the alley. When I reached the last building, I pressed myself against it and peeked around the corner.

    They already had torches lit, and they were coming toward me three abreast. They hadn't seen me yet but it would be only moments before they did.

    I heard noise at the far end of the alley and turned to find three men with torches approaching. They would see me any time now.

    I looked frantically around the alley. All I could find was a large barrel in which the general store threw food that had spoiled. Even on a cold night like this one, the contents of the barrel reeked. In the summer it had been noisy with flies twenty-four hours a day.

    I had no choice. I jerked open the lid and crawled inside, hoping that the shadows would hide me sufficiently from the oncoming men.

    I sank deep into a fetid, swampy mixture of rotted produce. For a long time I had to hold my breath. I was afraid I'd vomit and the men would certainly hear me.

    Their voices and their footsteps came closer.

    The two groups met in the alley, near where I crouched in the barrel.

    "I never did like that bastard," one man said. "Just something about him."

    "Strange is what he is," another said. "You ever get a good look in sunlight at how scarred up his face is underneath that beard? Very strange how a man would come to get scars like that. Kind've gives me the willies."

    "Enough talk," a third man said, sounding important. "You three take the Fourth Street alleys and we'll take Third Street. No way he could've gotten out of town yet."

    "Oh, he's here somewhere all right," said another man.

    As one of them turned around, he nudged the barrel. I froze. I had the sense that they could all hear my heartbeat like an Indian drum deep in the forest late at night.

    "He could be hidin' right here," the man said. "In this alley. Maybe we should check it out before we go over to Third Street."

    "Hell, Hawkins, look around. Where the hell would he hide?"

    "Right over there in that privy, for one thing."

    Another man laughed. "Yep, he's sittin' in there talcin' a crap and readin' a Sears catalog."

    More laughter.

    "Well, it sure wouldn't hurt to check it out," Hawkins said, sounding petulant.

    "Be my guest."

    Hawkins walked away. Ten, maybe fifteen paces. The privy was right behind the back door of the restaurant halfway down the alley.

    "Stick your head down that hole in there and see if he's hidin' down there!" one of the men said, laughing.

    There was no response from Hawkins, none I could hear anyway.

    Bugs and mites were crawling on me, species that apparently didn't relent in November weather. I wanted to scratch myself but there was no room, and anyway doing so would probably make too much noise.