Collision Course

by Matt Hilton

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  There was no escaping lawful process for any of them now. Blake Ambrose’s instruction to Dom to torture and murder their hostage was a step too far to come back from. Handled differently they might have gotten away with Villere’s disappearance, but there was no possible way of covering up the crime when his partner, and those around her, all knew who’d snatched him. Even if Blake sent his minions on a rampage of death and cover up, targeting anyone with a connection to Villere, Tess Grey, the Toner family and friend, or to Jacob Doyle, there was no possible way to shut everyone up in time. This had begun as a simple ploy to bully compliance – and their profits – out of a couple of small-time scammers, and it had devolved into chaos. Who could have guessed that a private investigator’s search for a rebellious girl would throw them all together on a collision course of violence and death?

  Arlen Sampson believed in karma, and that when it came around to bite you on the ass it was with the ferocity of a junkyard dog. Never had he intended to hurt his sister-in-law. Why hadn’t he agreed to go with her to Caroline, to admit their infidelity and beg his wife’s forgiveness? It would have been difficult, no doubt, and also for Caroline but he believed now she’d have understood why they’d succumbed to base lust, and that it didn’t diminish either of their love for her. He could have won her trust again, and their lives would have been so much fuller with Mary Rhodes still in it. Instead he’d allowed his fear, and self-pity, to direct him down a path to hell. When Blake and Kelly helped him conceal his involvement in the accident, he should have known what he was letting himself in for. He knew they were despicable human beings, and that their wealth had been built on other people’s misfortune. How could he have ever trusted he’d be treated any different?

  At first, Sampson’s role in their protection racket had been minimal, but sadly he’d proven too good at his job, and from then on had been pushed into acts that were destined to shrivel his soul. He’d forced compliance from victims, by threats and by deeds, and if it wasn’t with the same level of sadistic pleasure as Dom, or with the seething hatred of humanity displayed by Temperance, it was in a form of self-harm, and at the penance he thought he owed.

  If it weren’t for the simple fact he’d be convicted alongside them, Sampson would admit he was relieved that Blake and Kelly were about to get their overdue comeuppance. For him there was no escaping what was coming and if not for Caroline he’d welcome the punishment. His wife shouldn’t be made to suffer for his wrongdoing. Her future shouldn’t be blighted by his lies, his sins, his actions. She should be allowed to go on in blissful ignorance, not be tormented by the knowledge that the man that supposedly loved her had cheated and killed, and gone on cheating afterwards. It wouldn’t make a difference that he’d been pressurized into his couplings with Kelly Ambrose either, for they were as a direct result of his previous unfaithfulness towards his wife, and couldn’t be excused. There was no hiding the depths to which he’d wronged Caroline, not once the police arrested them and they were taken in for questioning; each would throw the other under a bus if they thought it’d win them some leniency. He wouldn’t put it past Blake to hand him over in a bargain plea, Sampson’s killing of Mary Rhodes trumping the conspiracy charges leveled at him, or for Kelly to swear her husband was so controlling that she’d feared to go against his will; as proof of her loveless life she’d admit to seeking intimacy from another man: Sampson. He wouldn’t put it past her to make out she was a victim of his, a monster whose morals were so low he’d slept with his wife’s sister then killed her to keep his secret. Sampson’s character would be synonymous with shit. By the time they were finished, he’d be the major evil behind all this, practically the devil incarnate.

  No, Sampson thought, as he stared at his reflection in the car’s rearview mirror, I’m not going to allow it. I’m not your scapegoat in this; I’m no longer your slave.

  The decision had come to him before he’d even arrived with Villere and delivered him to Dom for torture. At first he’d still been torn by indecision on how he’d proceed. However, on discovering that Blake had handed over Villere’s fate to Dom, superseding any hope Sampson had for making peace between them and the private investigators, he’d concluded enough was enough. For a few bare seconds he’d considered freeing Villere, but to do so he’d have had to fight Dom, and perhaps Temperance, and though he’d no love for either it would be regretful to have to kill them. They had their own ways of exhibiting their displeasure, but they were as much victims of circumstance, and of the poisonous Ambrose couple, as he was. Karma would catch up with them; it needn’t directly be by his hand. He’d offered the task to another.

  He wasn’t stupid. In no version of reality would Tess Grey wait idly by for his instructions, she’d be hot on the trail of her abducted lover. When he’d telephoned, she’d tried to lie about her location, but he could hear the crashing sea, and suspected that she was nearby, poised to launch a do-or-die attempt at saving Villere from Dom’s clutches.

  She could be karma’s agent of retribution.

  He’d hastened her along as he’d abandoned Dom and Temperance to their fates, even leaving a door unlocked for her. ‘I’m leaving. Don’t try stopping me, it will be time better served saving Nicolas’s life.’

  His warning about not trying to stop him had twofold reason. Tess’s time would be best served freeing her partner, rather than getting in his way. He’d something equally important he must do if he was going to save Caroline from excessive heartbreak. Finding that Dom had left the keys in the saloon car’s ignition, he’d driven away, and had no idea what the outcome at the abandoned restaurant would be. It didn’t matter; if everyone involved killed each other then it was out of his hands, and control; the thing he wanted most was to hear his wife’s voice. He hadn’t seen Caroline in two full days, and though it wasn’t unusual in his role of a BK-Rose employee, every long minute they’d been apart ate at him. Yesterday evening they’d spoken briefly when he’d been forced to ring her, to explain Blake had ordered he stay over for the duration of the storm, and he was certain she’d been suspicious. Earlier today, before his first visit to Maddie Toner’s apartment, prior to Jacob Doyle’s death, he’d made excuses again to his wife about having to work. Her answers had been curt, angry, but mostly she’d been hurt and he couldn’t blame her one bit.

  Once he’d gotten clear of Rockland and was well on his way down the coast towards Bath, he pulled over at the roadside and dug out his cellphone. He wanted to speak to Caroline, to tell her how much he loved her, and reassure her that from here on things would be different. He wished he could promise her things would be better, but he couldn’t.

  He’d brought up her number, but before hitting the call button he’d glanced at his reflection in the mirror and become overwhelmed by the tsunami of emotions he’d been holding in. He’d dropped the phone between his knees, grasped the steering wheel in both fists, and screamed at the Mirror Man until he was breathless and too weak to support his weight. His head tipped forward, forehead on the horn, and he’d been unaware of its blaring until he again lifted his face and stared through the rain-blistered windshield towards Bath.

  He delved between his knees for his phone. The screen had gone dark. He didn’t bring up Caroline’s number again. Instead he started the engine and drove on.

  THIRTY-NINE

  ‘The cops will be here any second,’ Po cautioned, ‘we should get outta here.’

  ‘We can’t go,’ Tess replied, waving a hand at the partly collapsed building. They were standing at the base of the slope at the entrance to the shipyard, Po resting his backside on the fender of Pinky’s Volvo. Other people milled around in the distance, having emerged from the workshops at the sounds of destruction. One or more of them must have called the police by now. ‘We have to explain ourselves, Po, not run away like criminals.’

  ‘So what about the Ambrose couple, not to mention this other dude, Sampson?’

  ‘They won’t escape.’<
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  ‘We can’t be certain. We should go after them now, hold them till the cops can get there.’

  ‘Po, you should be in hospital, not thinking about chasing more bad guys.’

  He flexed his injured knee, hiding the pain that shot through him. ‘I’m good to go.’

  ‘You’re good for the junkyard, you,’ Pinky piped in.

  ‘I’ve been in worse shape than this,’ said Po, and he was correct. One time that he’d assisted Tess in defeating an enemy he’d ended up stabbed in the gut by a knife, a wound that’d almost proved critical. On another occasion, due to a feud between Po and the Chatards, the disgruntled family had set upon him with pickaxe handles and baseball bats to his body. ‘Just let me find my other boot and we’ll hit the road.’

  ‘I grabbed your boot.’ Pinky tossed it down. ‘Don’t know how you’re going to keep it on with the laces cut through.’

  ‘Nothin’ a little duct tape won’t solve,’ said Po.

  ‘You’ll be needing this too.’ Tess offered him his knife. ‘Mike took it off Temperance after she tried to gut me with it.’

  ‘If I’ll be needin’ it …’

  ‘You might want to throw it in the sea before the cops arrive,’ she suggested.

  He shook his head. A fresh trickle of blood erupted from the largest cut on his face. Tess closed her eyes slowly, taking deep breaths.

  ‘Po, you need to go to an emergency room,’ she said.

  ‘This wasn’t my wisest plan ever, and I’ve paid for my stupidity. But my injuries are superficial. Once I get cleaned up, you’ll see.’

  ‘Po, you were shot!’ Tess cried.

  As if reminded of the fact he frowned down at the bloody mess on his shoulder. ‘Oh, this little scratch? The bullet took a chunk outta my hide, but didn’t hit anythin’ important.’ To prove the point he worked his shoulder in circles, and even managed to hide the pain this time. Then again, it was likely his sore shoulder was the least of his pains and easily concealed.

  ‘You killed a man,’ Tess went on, but could see he had a ready-made answer.

  ‘The fall killed him. He was running around and fell out of a window in a derelict building, nothin’ I could do to save him.’

  Tess pursed her mouth. She hadn’t witnessed Dom’s demise, but suspected there was more to it than Po or Pinky were prepared to admit for now.

  ‘You need to explain that to the cops,’ she repeated, ‘otherwise they might conclude differently.’

  ‘They can conclude whatever they want; I’ll put them straight once things are over with. C’mon, Tess, I know it goes against your grain, but so does the slightest possibility of those other punks making a run for it. That Dom guy, he was a grade-one asshole, and Temperance is a vindictive bitch, but they’re small fry compared to the Ambroses. They’re the ones you really want to put behind bars.’

  Mike Toner drove towards them, behind the wheel of Temperance’s panel van. He pulled to a stop alongside the Volvo. In the rear compartment, in an act of sweet irony, Temperance had been secured. For the moment she was silent and well behaved, more concerned with getting her broken arm fixed than the imminent jail time she faced. Dom’s corpse lay where it had fallen; though Tess had made the effort of protecting it from view by throwing a tarpaulin she’d found over it, pinned down at the corners by chunks of broken wood.

  ‘You guys still here?’ he asked through the open window. ‘Go on, get yourselves gone. Sampson’s still loose. What if he decides to make a try for the girls?’

  ‘I don’t think we need worry about him going after Maddie or Hayley,’ said Tess. ‘The sense I got from speaking with him, he isn’t fully committed to his job anymore, and wants nothing to do with hostages or torture.’

  Toner had more experience of Arlen Sampson than any of them, and when he nodded at Tess’s summation it was perhaps because he’d come to the same conclusion. Understandably, he was still worried for his daughter’s safety though. Nothing should be taken for granted. ‘If none of you are going, I want to return to Bangor to check on them.’

  Tess said, ‘You don’t need to. Once the cops get here, you can have them send over a patrol to collect them.’ She checked with Po and caught the slow blooming of a smile; he’d cottoned on that she was bending to his train of thought. ‘Mike, will you please stay here with Temperance and explain everything to the police? We’re going after Blake and Kelly, and I fully expect we’ll run into Sampson too.’

  ‘You want me to try to buy you some time?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s best that you show that you’re fully assisting them from the get-go. It’s important that they understand who the good guys are, and they don’t waste any time chasing us. By all means, tell the cops what we’re up to and that we’d appreciate some help to arrest them.’

  ‘Won’t that put the cops on your asses immediately?’

  ‘We are in Knox County here, Brunswick’s in Cumberland County. Knowing how cross-departmental bureaucracy works it’ll more than likely slow them down. On the drive down, I’ll contact my boss who works with the Portland District Attorney’s office and hopefully get her to vouch for us so there isn’t a roadblock waiting for us.’

  Po had wormed his bare foot into his boot. It waggled loosely when he took a test step. ‘Hey, Mike, you got any duct tape in there?’

  Toner rooted around in the front of the van. ‘Temperance has a veritable serial killer’s kit on hand here,’ he announced, and tossed a roll of fishing line to him. ‘Will that do for a lace, instead?’

  Po cut off a length with his knife, and was about to set to lacing his boot. The act of bending and trying to coordinate his hands showed his wounds were more troubling than he’d let on.

  ‘Gimme that and sit back down,’ Pinky commanded, and took over securing Po’s footwear.

  Their ragtag little bunch had begun to attract more attention. Some of those that’d emerged after Pinky attacked the building with the pickup were growing bolder, or nosier. Two men approached, one of them speaking into a walkie-talkie – probably relaying information to a colleague in contact with the police on a telephone.

  ‘Guys,’ Tess warned as she spotted more people approaching. There were houses across from the shipyard’s entrance, a nearby seafood shack and various business premises; people had spilled out of them to investigate the drama in their midst. ‘If we’re going I suggest we go now, before the locals get the wrong idea and try to stop us.’

  Po elected to ride in the back of the SUV, and when Tess offered to join him, he shook his head gently and said, ‘I could use a little more movin’ round space, y’don’t mind?’

  What he really meant was he didn’t want her fussing over him for the entire drive down to Brunswick.

  ‘Mike,’ Tess said as she went to get in the Volvo’s front passenger seat, ‘take care around her. She’s a dangerous woman.’

  Toner glanced in the back. ‘I’ve got this under control, Tess. Temperance isn’t going anywhere except to jail. If she gets too noisy, she can see what wearing a sack over her head feels like.’

  She was reasonably certain she could hear Temperance swearing at Toner before she closed the door fully. She hoped for his sake that the police would arrive soon and take the vile woman off his hands, but not before Pinky had gotten them clear of Rockland’s main street.

  Pinky drove through the small crowd gathering at the entrance to the shipyard. They looked bewildered, shocked and a little excitable. Some people craned to get a look at them, and Tess covered the side of her face nearest with an upheld hand. Pinky, by comparison, rolled his eyes and stuck out his tongue at them. Somebody in their wisdom thumped the car with their fist, for a reason unfathomable to Tess. Maybe they felt it their duty to show displeasure at those who’d brought violence to their small town. Hopefully their self-righteousness wouldn’t extend to the rest of the locals and Toner would be left in peace until the police showed up: it’d be bad if the crowd read the situation wrongly and descended on the van to b
reak free his prisoner. In defense of his daughter, Toner had proven his resilience and toughness; she trusted that his prisoner was in good hands.

  They took the harbor road through town and avoided any incoming law enforcement officers, although a firefighting crew shot past in the opposite direction, using their sirens to clear a path, even though there was little traffic about. Pinky took them onto Route 1, and soon they were passing Waldoboro, Damariscotta and approaching Wiscasset on the western bank of Back River. During the drive, Po tried cleaning his injuries with a packet of wipes handed to him out of the glove compartment but he still appeared rougher than Tess would’ve liked. She occasionally checked on him while talking animatedly on her cellphone with Emma Clancy.

  At one point Tess thought Emma would refuse them help, but her future sister-in-law was only exhibiting caution. Once Tess had narrated the events since coming across Jacob Doyle’s wrecked car and Po’s subsequent kidnapping and torture, Emma showed a similar determination in bringing Blake and Kelly Ambrose to justice; she even admitted that after their brief conversation about BK-Rose she’d done some digging of her own and thought there was much the couple had to answer for. She also told Tess where she was more likely to find the couple, not in Brunswick, but a few miles nearer her present location at their home north of Bath in Sagadahoc County. Emma promised she’d mobilize the police to meet Tess there, after a reasonable time had been allowed for Tess to arrive first, but without raising suspicion she’d been stalling.

  Pinky took his new directions without comment, and soon they passed through Woolwich and were astride the bridge over the Kennebec River. A minute after that and they were heading through Bath’s historic town center, only minutes from arriving at the Ambrose family home.

  The final approach to the Ambrose house was along a single-track road. Huge puddles had pooled at the grassy verges. The inclement weather was holding its breath, gearing up for another imminent squall. The waters of the river were choppy and reflected the bruised heavens. When it hove into view, the ostentatious house and outbuildings looked out of place on the riverbank. They also appeared empty. The stormy weather had brought an unnatural gloom to the afternoon, and not a single light burned behind any of the windows or even above the entrance door at the top of a grand set of steps. Next to the house the doors to a drive-in garage were wide open, one swaying on the breeze, and the interior was as deserted as the house appeared. Maybe Sampson had alerted Blake and Kelly Ambrose to expect trouble and the couple had flown the coop. Perhaps he’d delivered a warning in person, and then joined them in another car to whisk them away to safety, and that would explain why the saloon car Tess watched him leave Rockland in had been abandoned at the foot of the entrance steps.