That’s what I wanted. What of that I would actually be able to achieve I didn’t know, but if I wasn’t mindful about it, if I wasn’t prayerful and careful, I’d have little chance at all at having a good death.
“Have you seen anyone?” I asked. “Inmates or officers going into and out of buildings? Anything you can tell us?”
“Inmate went into Laundry a little while ago.”
I turned and looked toward the laundry building. Through the fog and darkness I could see a faint light coming from a few of the small widows.
“Looked like the one they call the Gainesville Grim Reaper. What’s his name? Cantor? He had a weapon too. Looked like the biggest fuckin’ carvin’ knife you ever seen.”
“There’s no way you could’ve seen all that from out here,” I said.
“I was closer earlier. Saw him when I was. He went in the chapel for a while. That’s when I moved out here. Saw him go in Laundry just a little while ago.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks. You wanna go with us? Fare better if we work together.”
“Think I’ll stay here. If you figure something out for us or need me, this is where I’ll be.”
45
Where’re we headed?” Anna asked.
“Laundry.”
“Seriously? Like some run-toward-the-roar face-your-fears shit?”
I laughed. “Not exactly, no. Well, maybe a little. But more to be unexpected. Switch things up some. Go on the offensive instead of staying on the defensive. How’re you feeling?”
“Not so good. But it has less to do with the cuts in my feet and the bleeding coming from my belly than the fact that we’re running toward a psychotic serial killer.”
She had not seen what Cantor had done to Emmitt, nor had I told her in any detail. If I had or if she had seen it, the fear and dread and nausea she felt now would pale to the point of nonexistence.
“I’m sure it’d be easy to talk me out of,” I said.
“I doubt that.”
“It may be the worst idea I’ve ever had,” I said, “but it just seemed like Cardigan is lying over there waiting to die. I don’t want to do that. I can’t.”
“I’m glad. I just––”
Just then we were tackled from the side, taken to the ground with force, Anna letting out a painful shriek.
I dropped the bat and it rolled too far away to reach.
I grabbed for Anna, but was on the ground with someone on top of me before I could make any contact at all.
I struggled with the figure on top of me, but only for a moment––only until his partner, who was still straddling Anna, reached over and pressed the barrel of his small handgun to my head.
“See this,” he said, tapping me with it, “this will now be pointed at her head. Resist some more if you want to be single for a little while before you die.”
I went perfectly still.
They were the two officers from the chapel.
The one on me pushed himself off and told me to stand slowly as the other helped Anna to her feet.
The two men looked vaguely familiar. I had seen them at the prison before, but didn’t know their names and probably had never shared more than a passing greeting with them. Certainly not an entire conversation.
The one who had been on top of me was smaller and younger, but both men looked to be in their thirties.
“You okay?” I asked Anna.
“I landed on the baby. It was hard. I don’t feel right.”
“Real soon all three of you won’t feel a thing,” the one with the gun said.
He held the gun close to Anna’s head, and he was standing too far away for me to reach. I tried to think of our options, but couldn’t come up with any.
“We takin’ them to the ripper or callin’ for someone to bring him to us?” the smaller guy asked.
“Whatever way the boss wants, but Butler wanted a word with that one before we turn the ripper loose on ’em. Maybe all we have to do is turn them over to him and Pine and let them deal with him.”
“You don’t want to watch him do it?”
“No I sure as shit do not. Was bad enough seeing what he did to that poor prick in the chapel after the fact. That shit’s bad enough to not be able to unsee, but actually seein’ him do it . . . Might give me ideas for my old lady.”
The smaller guy laughed at that. He did it in such a way as to convey his understanding of why, given his old lady, it would be a temptation.
“Get ’em cuffed,” the one with the gun said, “and let’s ge–”
Ronnie Cardigan jabbed his shank in the left side of the bigger officer’s neck and pulled it out, blood spurting as he did, then did it again.
I lunged for the gun, grabbing it from him as he reached for the gush of blood at his neck.
The smaller officer began to run, but Cardigan kicked at his boot and he tripped and fell.
Before I could say or do anything, Ronnie had jumped on him and was stabbing him in the back, then sides and throat.
I hugged and held Anna, watching Cardigan as I did.
She rubbed her stomach, groaning softly, breathing erratically.
In less than two minutes of jumping on the officer, Cardigan was climbing off.
“You saved our lives,” I said. “Thank you.”
“This is all so fucked up,” he said. “All of it. This whole place. All of this. The whole fucking world.”
“I know.”
He started wandering away, back the way he had come, both of the men he had attacked bleeding out.
“Stay with us,” I said. “We can––”
“I can’t. I can’t handle any more of this shit.”
“We have a gun now,” I said. “That changes things, changes everything.”
He didn’t slow or stop or say anything else, just kept walking away, as if any of this was something that could actually be walked away from.
46
We had a gun.
It changed things.
It changed everything.
We were still outmanned. We were still outgunned. We were still facing the enormous machinery of a maximum security prison, a handful of desperate men, and a particularly vicious psychopathic killer. They still had the power. Only now they didn’t have all of it.
The gun felt good in my hand.
A pocket pistol designed for self-defense, it was extremely small. A black DoubleTap that held just two .9mm rounds. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make a difference.
I thought about the role guns had played in my life, how many times they had saved me and others, how many times I had vowed never to use one again.
I loathed the way part of our population fetishized guns, the paranoid, mostly powerless people who worshiped at an altar of blued and stainless steel, an altar upon which was the blood of millions of martyrs to a religion they weren’t even aware existed.
I thought about the hardened, urban street thug and the easily manipulated rural loner, the intercity gang member and the backwoods militia member. Each turned to guns for the same reason––their actual or perceived powerlessness and the promise of immediate actual and perceived power a handgun held.
Having this small weapon and its two rounds didn’t tip the balance of power in our direction, but it did give us a measure of the immediate power those who perceive themselves to be powerless loved so much about guns. I would use the weapon to protect Anna, and I was grateful for it and the ability to do just that, but I couldn’t love guns, couldn’t worship them. But because of the work I did, the life I led, I also hadn’t been able to give them up completely either.
Since I had yet to be able to follow Jesus’s teachings regarding going out into the world unarmed, not resisting evil, and turning the other cheek when attacked, I did my best to follow Lao Tzu and remember that Weapons are the tools of fear; a decent man will avoid them except in the direst necessity and, if compelled, will use them only with the utmost restraint.
Of course, Jesus
’s instructions were for facing down an oppressive empire while Lao Tzu’s were for personal day-to-day application, but I took both seriously, both as sacred instruction and an ideal I aspired to.
I was in the direst of situations, but only wanted to use the utmost of restraint, and be nothing less than a decent man.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Anna.
We were easing our way over toward the laundry building, slowly, steadily.
“I must be in shock. That was so . . . I feel so conflicted. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but I was glad it happened to them.”
“Welcome to my world.”
“It is, isn’t it? I don’t see how you do it, how you handle it so well.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“You absolutely do. It’d be so easy to be at either extreme, but you . . . you’re the most gentle man I’ve ever known, yet you are capable of violence––but always with great restraint.”
“Yeah,” I said, “you’re in shock.”
“Does having the gun change our plans any?” she asked.
“It only holds two rounds. It won’t be much help. So . . . no. Not really.”
“Are you really going to attack Cantor?” she asked. “Will you just shoot him?”
“My goal is to subdue him,” I said. “I’d like to take him off the board if I can.”
“Promise me you’ll shoot him if you have to, that you won’t get yourself hurt or killed because you’re trying too hard not to kill anyone else.”
“Promise.”
“Holdin’ you to it.”
As we neared Laundry, Cantor, carrying his knife, walked out.
We froze.
I now had the bat in one hand, the small gun in the other, and I readied myself.
He headed left, toward Food Services, without ever even looking in our direction.
“You can go up behind him and shoot him in the head,” Anna whispered. “Won’t get a better opportunity than this.”
“I was going to try to knock him out with the bat,” I said. “Never intended to shoot him and certainly not in the back.”
She nodded without saying anything.
I was really hoping not to shoot anyone––especially in the back. It wasn’t something I thought I could do. Of course, I could do it to save Anna, but there was no way to know until it was too late that doing that would save her. If I could be sure it was the only way, I’d do it. I’d do it without hesitation and with no regret––like breaking Cardigan out to trade for her. But could I do it without knowing I had to? Could I do it just on the chance it would save her?
And it wasn’t just the issue of back-shooting a man, a psychopathic killer, but it was the consideration that it would alert the others to our whereabouts––particularly if I did it out in the open where he was now. It would use one or both of our only rounds and take away the surprise element of us having a weapon.
But it was mostly not wanting to back-shoot a man in cold blood.
“So what now?” she asked.
“Looks like he left the door open,” I said. “We go in, charge the phone, and use it.”
“Okay.”
“You think I should go shoot Cantor in the back of the head, don’t you?” I said.
“I just hope you don’t regret not doing it later.”
47
Confirming Cantor had left the door to Laundry open, we ducked inside and closed it.
To our left were enormous industrial, round, stainless steel washing machines, a complex series of large white PVC pipes running into and out of them from above and behind. On the back wall was a bank of huge battleship-gray industrial dryers. On the right side of the room were pressing machines and large folding tables. In front of, in between, and around everything were some fifty rolling canvas laundry carts on wood frames and casters filled with inmate uniforms, bedding, blankets, and towels.
“Before we do anything else, I’d like you to lie down on some of these blankets,” I said. “We could hide you in the back behind the dryers or even inside one of the carts beneath some laundry. So no matter what happens next, you’ll be able keep your feet up and take pressure off the baby.”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
“As in you don’t want me to leave the building or don’t even want me across the room?”
“Don’t want you leaving the building.”
“Okay.”
“Had you planned to?” she asked.
“I thought I might look around a little while you rested.”
“’Cause you can move quicker and be more stealthy without a pregnant woman in tow?”
“You’re very stealthy,” I said. “I just––doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere. Let’s plug in the phone and get you situated.”
Which was what we did next, piling blankets in the back corner behind a row of carts and beneath a folding table and easing her onto them. Her feet up and phone plugged in beside her, I left her there to rest while I began to look around the building.
I had only taken a few steps when the power went off.
A couple of dim emergency backup lights flickered on.
“Shit,” Anna said.
“They must be cutting it off building by building after they’ve been searched.”
“That or they know we’re in here,” she said.
I was already making my way toward the door to take a look outside, but her comment made me wonder if instead I should go help her up and get her out of here.
I hesitated for a moment, trying to decide what to do, then continued to the door and looked out.
Pine Tree was rounding the backside of the medical building and heading this way.
Think. Get out or prepare to fight. Back door. Get Anna. Get out.
There was a back door in the building. I’d grab Anna and we’d leave through it.
“Come on, baby,” I said. “We’ve got to go. Don’t bump your head getting up. Ease up and we’ll sneak out the back door. Pine Tree Peavey is heading over here.”
She didn’t respond.
Surely she hadn’t fallen asleep that quickly. She could have, as exhausted as she was.
“Anna?”
Still no response.
Had she passed out from all the blood she had lost?
When I reached the spot where I had left her, she wasn’t there.
“Anna?”
The phone was there. The blankets were. She was not.
I looked around the dim room, searching for her in every direction.
“Anna?” I said, starting to panic. “Anna?”
She wasn’t there.
If she could answer, she would. Did someone have her? Were they still in the building or had they dragged her out the back door? Would they kill her instantly or keep her alive long enough to use her for leverage? If Cantor had her it would be the former. If the officers, perhaps the latter.
I began moving through the building, looking behind and beneath and around its many objects and obstacles, knowing that at any moment, Pine would be coming through the front door.
“Anna?”
I ran over to the back door and looked out into the dark, crimson-tinged night.
There was no sign of her. No sign of anyone.
Not sure what I should do next, but knowing I had to deal with the immediate threat of Pine, I raced back across the building with the bat.
Standing on the side the door opened into, I pulled the bat back and waited.
When he opened the door, he just stood there in the doorway, scanning the room, the door between us blocking him from me and the bat.
But when he stepped in and let the door close, I swung as hard as I could.
Because he was so tall, the blow got him mostly on the back and only a little on his head.
If it did anything but get his attention I couldn’t tell.
As he turned toward me, I tried to swing again, but he caught the bat with both hands and jerked it away from me.
>
Quickly flipping it around to get a better grip, he handled it like someone familiar, comfortable, a former high school baseball star.
The bat looked small in his hands, as if a child’s instead of the full-size it was.
I began backing away, trying to figure out what to do, backing into and around one of the folding tables and knocking off a pile of blankets as I did.
He came after me.
Lumbering steadily but unhurriedly toward me like a predator knowing its prey is trapped, he slowly, confidently kept coming.
“Pine,” Randy Wayne said on the radio on Pine’s belt. “You got him?”
“Got him,” Pine said into the mic clipped to his shoulder.
“Scott, you got the girl?”
“Got ’er.”
“Where?” I asked Pine. “Where does he have her? How’d he––”
“Butler, get Cantor over there and let’s finish this.”
Circling the folding table, I kept it between us. Pine, frustrated and out of breath, continued laboring around after me.
“Why’re you doin’ this?” I asked. “How can you be okay with killin’ us in cold blood?”
He didn’t respond.
“Where does Branson have Anna?”
Without breaking his stride, he slammed into the table and drove it into me, both dropping me and knocking the breath out of me.
As I fell, I struck my head on the metal corner of one of the pressing machines.
Jarred. Dizzy. Head throbbing instantly. Gasping to get a breath.
Pine was making his way toward me, slinging the large table out of his way with one hand.
I tried to roll, to climb to my feet, but my body wouldn’t cooperate.
With all the strength I could muster, with all the effort I could give, I was only able to get to my hands and knees.
Shoving myself up so I was hunched back on my knees, I freed my hands up and plunged them into my pockets.
Innocent Blood; Blood Money; Blood Moon Page 56
