by Wes Markin
He saw Brady’s broken body on the hood of the pickup, but there was no sign of Peter in the driver’s seat. Liam smiled. “How many lives do you have, little kitty?” He turned quickly with his gun at the high ready in case Peter had decided to creep up on him.
Nothing.
He laughed and called out over the farmyard, “Come on now, Peter! There can’t be a great deal left of you. Step out from wherever you are and let me put you out of your misery.” He scanned the chicken coops and the surrounding wrecked cars.
Nothing.
“Fuck it. You bleed out somewhere. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
Liam eyed the pickup; it would be handy in getting him to his own vehicle by the forest. There he would disable this vehicle so Peter would have to go on foot. If, by some miracle, he hadn’t already bled to death and could make it all the way to the creek! Stalling Peter would give him enough time to finish his plans.
He entered through the passenger side, brushing glass off the seat, and was happy to see the keys in the ignition. He was also happy to see Peter’s cellphone on the seat. The dying man wouldn’t be able to call for assistance. The opening in the windshield was big enough for Liam to see out of. He lifted Brady’s arm out of the vehicle and tucked it around the remains of the windshield. “Sorry, son, but I’ve got enough blood on me.”
And he really did; he was covered, but he kind of liked it. He really did feel as if he was in the heart of battle. And one that was still beating!
He moved the pickup forward, working it gradually from the porch, and then turned left. He accelerated before he reached Carson’s car and smiled as he relived the moment he had opened a hole in that imbecile’s chest.
The passenger seat window exploded. Liam swerved. The boy on his hood hit the ground with a thump. Liam blinked and smiled. “You missed!” He heard a thunk as the next bullet hit the side of the pickup. Liam punched the accelerator and kept his head low.
He heard the continuous popping of the rifle as he put distance between himself and that stubborn old bastard.
Part of Liam wanted to go back and teach him a lesson, use up the last of kitty’s nine lives. But he’d spent more than enough time already, and he still had others to kill. Starting with the final Davis.
But that shouldn’t take too long. All it needed was a phone call.
19
“LISTEN,” JAKE SAID as he parked several doors back from the Rogers general store. “Lillian’s been here already, but I want to double check he’s not returned. This is to be gentle, Gabriel. If Mason is here, we shut him down and drop him at the station. They can take it from there.”
Gabriel was chewing hard on gum. “I don’t understand what’s going on between you and Lillian. Never really have.”
“It’s a friendship. I know you’re short on them, but they do exist.”
“Still, why get yourself mixed up in all of this if you’re supposed to be laying low?” Gabriel stared at Jake. “You know you’re going to bring the wolves to your door, don’t you?”
Jake sighed. “I respect her. She’s good police, and she doesn’t get a great deal of support from her own colleagues. I’m just helping her along. She reminds me of someone back home, someone who would never give up.”
“You’re bored. That’s all this is. But know that your boredom will get you killed. I’m assuming you ran with money in your pocket? I never understand why men such as yourself don’t quit while the going’s good.”
The going hasn’t been good for a very long time, Jake thought.
“Anyway, let’s go,” Gabriel said.
“No. That’s not how it works. If he’s there, I don’t want him aware anything is going on. I’ll talk to him about guns, like last time I was here, and then cuff him when he’s unaware. You’re only here in case something goes wrong.”
Gabriel laughed. “So, I only go in if you don’t come out?”
Jake nodded.
“With my rifle at home?”
Jake nodded again.
“Sounds like a suicide mission.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“Everyone this soft back in England?”
Jake smirked. You wouldn’t cope with the things I’ve seen, Gabriel. “Anyway, I can handle it. I won’t spook him.”
“And if I do come in and have to save your ass? What then? You want me to throw rotten tomatoes at him?”
“You’ll think of something,” Jake said, opening the door. Men like you always do.
“You think you’re better than me, but we’re no different.”
“The only thing we share,” Jake said, stepping from the car, “is the air.”
Cam’s cellphone rang. He slipped it from his pocket and raised his eyebrows at his lawyer.
“Are we about to get stood up?” Bryce said.
“People, on the whole, don’t stand me up.” He answered his cell. “Yes?”
“A riddle. A place, once so alive, dead, awash with blood. Where am I?”
“Mason?”
“Close but no cigar. I’m Liam. So, the answer to my riddle?”
Cam stood from Mason’s sofa. “Liam? I’m at your brother’s shop. Where’s Mason? In fact, where the fuck are you?”
“At your place, well, at least I was. Dead people aren’t the best company, so I left.”
Cam narrowed his eyes. “What’re you talking about?”
“You’re all alone in the world now, Cam. All alone. I wanted to give you a taste of how Mason has felt for so long.”
Cam paced. “You’re a lying, cowardly little shit.”
“Cowardly?”
“You ran after what you did to my family. And you hid, like a rat in a sewer. And now you call me with this bullshit? When I see you, Liam, I’m going to pull your lying tongue from your head.”
Bryce reached to the coffee table for a cigarette, ripped off the filter, and tucked it between his grinning lips.
“Really?” Liam asked. “Listen carefully. I smashed in your mute grandson’s face with a hammer and shot your son in the chest. He died looking me in the eyes. It felt good. Before I shot your imbecile brother in the head, I did spare him the realization that it was over because your son’s wife had drugged him. Yes, I know! She had the bags packed and was going to run on you. Wow, you really know how to keep house, Cam.”
Cam swallowed. The story sounded elaborate. Too elaborate. In his experience, elaborate was often the hallmark of truth. His blood ran cold. “Where’s Felicity?”
“I slit her throat.”
“Bullshit.”
“Then I threw your grandson out a window. He did manage to shoot me in the corner of the eye with a fucking air pistol though.”
“No!” Cam kicked over the coffee table. “No!” Cam paced the room, rubbing his forehead. Maybe the bastard had just seen Brady shooting his air pistol in the woods?
Bryce was on his feet now, his hands in front of him.
Cam turned his back to him, ignoring his attempts to calm him.
“It sounds like you’re starting to believe me now. So, shall we try the riddle again? A place, once so alive—”
“I’m going to flay the flesh from your fucking bones!”
“Dead, awash with blood. Where am I?”
Cam kicked the overturned coffee table again and again. A leg came loose and crashed into the television set. “Where are you? Where the fuck are you?”
“I’ll give you a clue. Despite being dead and awash with blood, it’s not your farmhouse. It’s somewhere else entirely.”
“If you’ve hurt my family, I will torture you. Endlessly. I will take pieces from you.”
“The answer to my riddle is closer than you think. A cabinet sits above the television, Cam. Open it for the truth. Open it to discover the dead place awash with blood. I am close, and I will come closer if you do. This ends tonight, and you still have a part to play.”
The cellphone went dead. Cam looked at his phone with the intention of calli
ng back, but the prick had withheld his number. He looked at Bryce. “He says he’s killed my family.” His lips trembled.
“Yes, I could tell. You need to stay calm. It won’t be true.”
“It is. He knew about my grandson’s air pistol. He knew.”
“Still, that’s not enough. He could have picked up that information anywhere. Besides, why would he do what he’s saying?”
“Revenge. Revenge for the way we’ve treated his brother.”
“It’s too extreme. I don’t believe it.”
“That boy, Liam, he was insane. I wished him alive so I could kill him. Can you believe that? I wished him alive?” He noticed the cabinet above the television and stepped forward.
“What’re you doing?”
“He said the answer was in that cabinet.”
“Answer to what?”
“To his fucking riddle. Something about a dead place, awash with blood.”
“Leave it closed, then.”
“No. I have to know.”
“Know what? It sounds threatening. Let’s leave—”
Cam gripped the handle.
“I don’t advise this,” Bryce said, putting his hand on his shoulder.
“My family. He says he killed my family. I have to know.” He opened the cabinet.
When Jake heard the explosion, he fell to his knees and relived that moment in Salisbury when he had seen fragments of metal and glass raining on the road beside an erupting car while a broken, innocent boy convulsed near the wreckage. And it’s my fault. I’ve been working for the bastards who did this, who took the life of a child.
Snapping back to the present, Jake watched the plume of smoke rising from behind the general store. The glass on the front of the store had smashed, but the explosion hadn’t completely decimated the shop. Ground zero had clearly been in the apartment bolted onto the rear.
Fortunately, Jake had only just exited his vehicle when the explosion occurred and was still a considerable distance from the shop. Apart from the ringing in his ears, he felt unscathed. He sprinted to the car from which Gabriel had already emerged and was staring wide-eyed at the growing smoke cloud.
“Is that it?” Gabriel asked. “After all this time, after everything he did to me and my family, he dies in a fucking gas explosion?”
“We don’t know if he was in there, and we don’t know if it was a gas explosion.”
Gabriel shut the door. “So, we take a look?”
“If you do, it may be the last thing you do as an officer of the law. We leave. And we leave now. Emergency services will be here any second. We have no business being here right now.”
“I’m the chief of fucking police!” He thumped his chest.
“You’ve been asked to step aside. Their next step will be suspension!”
“Is it not the same fucking thing?”
“Get in the car, Gabriel.”
Gabriel bashed his fist off the car roof, climbed into the vehicle, and slammed the door shut. The Ford shook.
Jake sighed. Since renting this car, it’d been everyone’s punching bag. He was dreading the day he had to return it.
Minutes after the explosion, Liam drove into the Blue Falls Motel parking lot. He stopped the car and spent some time examining himself in the rear-view mirror. The blood of his victims had dried in the creases in his forehead and around his eyes. He wasn’t about to wipe it off, for he had the look of someone who’d been in the heart of battle.
He reached to the passenger seat for his gun. Only two bullets left and still two birds were flying free—Jake and Gabriel. So he holstered the gun and reached for his bloody hammer. It would be best to try to conserve the bullets for Gabriel—a man who would be surely armed.
He stepped from the vehicle and moved quickly, unconcerned on this second visit about the camera mounted high on the motel walls; if it was in operation, what the hell did it matter? He was on the verge of ridding his brother of any worries, and there was no better swansong to aspire to. He would happily fall in the throes of victory. Nothing was more noble.
He pinned himself to the wall beside the motel door and spent a moment hypnotized by the smoke cloud rising over Main Street. He turned, knocked on the door, then turned back against the wall.
The door opened. “Hello?” Not Jake. A woman’s voice.
He flipped around the open door and watched Piper’s eyes widen, then he punched her hard in the mouth.
She stumbled backward, clutching her face, and fell onto the bed in the center of the room.
He entered, closed the door behind him, and locked it. He turned to see her scurrying backward on the bed with her hand still to her mouth. “Stop!” He pointed to the gun dangling from the holster on his belt.
She obeyed. She took her hands from her face. Blood ran from her lip. “Mr. Rogers? I don’t understand.”
“I’m not here for you, Ms. Goodwin. You yourself have never harmed my family. So, if you answer my question, I will leave you be. Some ice on that split lip will see you fine again in next to no time.” He stepped forward, twirling the bloody hammer in his hand. “So, just one question, and then you live, Ms. Goodwin. Is that to your satisfaction?”
She nodded.
He took another step so his legs pinned hers to where they hung over the side of the bed. He switched his bloody weapon to the other hand. “But if you lie to me, I’ll use this hammer to bash in your brains. Do you understand?”
She gagged and clutched her mouth again.
He transferred the hammer back to the other hand. “Do you understand, Ms. Goodwin?”
Clutching her mouth, she nodded hard. Tears streamed down the side of her face.
“Good. Now, where is Jake Pettman?”
Her knuckles glowed as she clutched tighter still to her mouth.
“I can’t hear, Ms. Goodwin. Take your hands away.”
She dropped her hands. Her words trembled and came out as little more than a whisper. “I don’t know.”
He took a sharp intake of breath, glanced to his side, and exhaled in a long sigh.
“I really don’t!”
He looked at her, shook his head, and rose the hammer above his head.
Her eyes widened. “Please, I don’t—”
He smashed her shoulder.
Lillian and Ewan were on their way to the remains of Mason’s store when her cellphone buzzed from an unknown number. “Officer Sanborn here.”
“Hello, it’s Wilbur here. I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“No bother, Dr. Hampshire. How can I help?”
Ewan mouthed, Who is it?
She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “The butterfly doctor.”
Ewan smiled.
“Something else came to mind after you left. It may be nothing, but I thought—”
“Go on.”
“Well, it’s something I shouldn’t really be divulging, because it was told to me in confidence, but I feel it’s the least I can do now. I feel I need to be making amends of some kind; besides, it probably won’t be of use to you.”
Lillian eyed Ewan, rolling her hand in the air to gesture how slow the man was in getting to the point.
“Well, it’s just … Mason Rogers had an affair. It was a long, long time ago now and so, like I said, probably isn’t relevant, but there it is. Back in eighty-nine. Lasted a year or two I believe—”
Lillian lost patience. “Who, Doctor? Who did he have an affair with?”
After he said the name, she looked at Ewan with wide eyes. If Lillian had made a list of all the women in Blue Falls that Mason could have had an affair with, this one would have featured very near the bottom.
Liam had expected Piper to scream. He’d not expected the fight back, however.
The bitch had got lucky, grabbed a plate resting on the bedside table, and struck him across the head.
He stumbled backward a step and freed her.
Seizing her opportunity, she yanked her legs backward and buried her feet in
to his stomach.
He slammed backward into the locked front door and doubled over. His vision blurred; she’d obviously opened the wound from the air pistol on his eye. He wiped his face with his sleeve; it stung to hell, but it helped clear his sight. “No way out for you now, Ms. Goodwin.” He rose to his feet.
Piper rolled free of the bed, found her feet, and, clutching her shoulder while her other arm hung limply at her side, disappeared into the bathroom.
Liam heard the door slam, followed by the clunk of the bolt. He moved quickly; there might be a window in the bathroom big enough for her to climb through. When he kicked the door, his black army boots gave him a fair bit of force. However, the lock didn’t burst, and the door remained firm, suggesting she was standing behind it, forcing it closed. “What now, Ms. Goodwin?”
“I call the police.”
He glanced at her cellphone on the bedside table and smiled. “I think they’ll be too busy for a while. I assume you heard the explosion? It’ll take them a fair old while to piece Cam Davis back together again! Shall we try this again? Tell me where your boyfriend is, and I’ll walk away.”
“Fuck you.”
“Ms. Goodwin.” He slammed his fist into the door. “Or, Ms. MacLeoid, perhaps?” He paused for a response. He didn’t get one. Bullseye. “A little birdie told me that you’re Jotham MacLeoid’s daughter, given away for adoption?”
Silence.
He smiled. “What Peter told my brother is true, then?”
“Police? Yes, there’s an intruder in my motel room—”
Liam laughed. “Cut the bullshit, Ms. MacLeoid. Your cellphone is out here.”
Silence again.
“You know I’m disappointed. I would have expected more from a MacLeoid. They had the whole town quaking in their fucking boots. Enough is enough. I’d move away from the door if I were you.” He buried the claw of the hammer into the door and yanked a chunk of wood from it. He hit it again and again. After he’d opened a sizeable hole, he peered through.
Clutching her shoulder, Piper was on the floor with her back pressed against the sink and her outstretched feet pinned to the bottom of the door.
