Atonement

by Michael Kerr

  Ray’s feet were on the raised floor of the closet, but his legs were bent at the knees. He had allowed his full weight and gravity to do the job.

  Clifton ran across the room, gripped his son around the thighs with both arms and hoisted him up. Somehow wrenched-ripped-tore the bar free and lowered Ray onto the carpet. He scrabbled at the noose with both hands, unmindful of the pain to his fingers as he worked it loose from where it had embedded into flesh.

  Using CPR and breathing into Ray’s mouth, Clifton was in a state of panic. He needed help. Would have to leave his son and use the phone to call 911. After working on Ray for a minute he looked around and saw his son’s cell on the dresser. Made the call and left the phone on the floor on speaker as he continued compressions and spoke to the operator.

  The ambulance arrived within ten minutes. The paramedics took over from Clifton and used a defibrillator to shock Ray’s heart into starting up again.

  “He’s alive,” one of the paramedics said.

  Clifton got shakily up from his knees, staggered over to the bed and sat on the edge of it, trembling and crying. “Will he be okay?” he asked.

  “If you found him in time and kept enough oxygen flowing to his brain and heart, then he has a good chance of making a full recovery, sir.” Jerry Corbin said as he worked on Ray. “But we won’t know exactly how he is till we get him to the hospital for treatment and tests.”

  Clifton contemplated what had taken place. Ray had survived attempted suicide, but could be brain dead or in a condition that would leave him with no quality of life worth spit.

  Five minutes later Clifton was on board the ambulance, holding his son’s limp hand as the vehicle headed at speed for the Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs.

  Henry sat next to Kate on the sofa. “Here’s what’s goin’ to happen,” he said. “You tell us where Logan is, and we tie you up and leave. How does that sound?”

  Kate blinked away tears and made eye contact with the man. “I think that you plan on killing me, whatever I tell you,” she said. “Who are you?”

  Henry smiled again. “I’m Henry, and my associate is Benjamin, but his friends call him Bunny, due to the size of his ears. And now that we all know each other, I suggest you start talkin’, before I lose my temper.”

  “I have no idea where Logan is,” Kate said. “He got a ride out of town this morning. I don’t even know if he plans on coming back.”

  Bunny made a performance out of drawing his gun from the shoulder holster. He then retrieved a suppressor from a pocket of his Duster and screwed it on to the Glock’s muzzle and aimed the weapon at Kate’s stomach.

  “Bunny is low on patience,” Henry said. “He’ll gut shoot you if you play dumb.”

  “Please, don’t. If I knew where he was I’d tell you,” Kate said, a little ashamed to be pleading with the two thugs.

  Henry reached out and grasped her right breast. Dug his fingers in deep and twisted hard. Kate moaned against the pain and tried to pull away from him, but his hand was like a vise.

  “Last chance, bitch,” Henry said as he held the short blade of the box cutter up to within an inch of Kate’s left eye. “Give me his phone number or I’ll blind you.”

  “She doesn’t have my cell number,” a voice said from the open living room door behind them.

  As Bunny spun round, his right wrist was gripped and twisted back, forcing him to drop the gun, as simultaneously he was head butted in the face with enough force to break his nose and knock him back to land on Henry. Twin loops of blood from Bunny’s nostrils seemed to hang in the air like bright red rainbows that glistened under the overhead light.

  Logan dropped to one knee, picked up the Glock and aimed it at Henry’s head.

  “Logan?” Henry said.

  “You got it. I’ll tell you once, lose the knife.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Logan was through talking. He put a slug through Henry’s forehead and watched him jerk back and then rebound and slump to the floor to become as still as ditchwater.

  “Are you okay?” Logan asked Kate.

  Kate nodded. She was finding it difficult to believe that in the space of just a few scant seconds Logan had appeared from nowhere and saved her.

  Bunny pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, only to be clubbed back down with his own gun.

  Kate couldn’t move. Didn’t think that her legs would support her. Said to Logan, “Why are you here?”

  “Would you rather I hadn’t dropped by?” he said.

  Kate just swallowed hard and stared at him.

  “I phoned Clifton earlier. He said that you’d asked for me, so I thought I’d call in before I went back to the motel. Timing is everything. I saw an SUV cruise up and down the street with these two unsavory types in the front, so waited and watched. They parked at the back behind the trees and made their way to your house.”

  “Who are they?” Kate said.

  Logan shrugged. “I think they work for a hoodlum in Denver that I ran into today.”

  “But why would they come here?”

  “It’s a long story that you don’t need to know the details of. Tanya’s killer must have seen us together; maybe followed me to your place. You were leverage to get to me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was digging deep enough to worry the perp. He contacted a guy in Denver and arranged for me to be capped. It didn’t work out, and I got a name.”

  “Do you know who murdered Tanya?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No can do. There’s no proof yet. Probably won’t ever be. I need to take care of it.”

  “What now?” Kate said.

  “I have a word with this piece of garbage on the carpet while you make coffee. Then you call the sheriff and report the attack on you, and that I turned up and defended you against armed intruders. Okay?”

  Kate nodded. Tested her feet and went to the bathroom to throw up, then take a quick shower and put fresh clothes on before returning to the kitchen to switch on the coffeemaker.

  Logan searched the corpse and the semi-unconscious man that he planned on interrogating. Came up with two cell phones that both had Wade McCall’s number in them. He then manhandled the fat little hoodlum upstairs.

  Bunny’s next unclear thoughts were of how much his face hurt, and why he was out in the rain. He felt like he sometimes did when he woke up in a hotel room after a late night drinking session, to find himself totally disoriented with no idea of where he was. Maybe the drilling jets of water helped to clear his head. He opened his eyes and found himself sitting in a bathtub. The rain was just cold water from the showerhead above him. He was still fully clothed, with his arms secured behind him and his ankles bound together with duct tape.

  Kate couldn’t pick up her cup up to drink the coffee she had poured. Her hands were shaking too much. “There was a body found in the trunk of a burned-out car,” she said to Logan as he came back downstairs. “Were you responsible?”

  Logan nodded.

  “Did you have to…do that to him?”

  “I do what’s necessary to get the job done, Kate. He was a professional hitman. He had murdered a great many people, and tried to kill me.”

  “So you played judge, jury and executioner?”

  Logan said nothing.

  “That’s wrong, Logan,” Kate said. “The law is―”

  “The law is pathetic,” Logan said. “It’s a lumbering machine that turns up after the event and is basically inadequate. While crime rates spiral out of control, cutbacks and do-gooders that worry about scumbags’ rights make the streets less safe for law-abiding citizens.”

  “So you set your own laws?”

  “Yeah. Like I just did here. Should I have phoned the police and waited while you were tortured and probably killed? Or are you happy that I intervened on your behalf?”

  Kate went to him, put her arms around his waist and rested her head on his chest.
“Thank you, Logan. I thought I was going die.”

  Logan held her for a minute. “Turn up the volume on the TV and stay here,” Logan said. “I need information from this guy before we call for the cavalry.”

  Logan went up and sat down on the toilet lid with Bunny’s box cutter in one hand. He had dumped his own knife down a storm drain in Denver, not wanting to risk the chance of it ever being matched to the mortal wound he had inflicted on Morgan. Next to him on the tiled floor was an electric toaster, plugged in and switched on.

  “You ready to talk?” Logan asked Bunny.

  Bunny stared at him with small, porcine eyes that were full of malice, but kept his mouth shut.

  “Here’s the only offer on the table,” Logan said. “You answer my questions or I throw the toaster in the tub with you.”

  Bunny’s eyelids stretched open to their fullest extent as he looked down and saw the appliance.

  “I’ll start with a real easy one, fella. What’s your name?”

  “They call me Bunny.”

  “So far so good, Bunny. Bear in mind that I tortured and killed Mickey Morgan and then burned his corpse. I also hurt your boss and the dickhead with him at his office. And I just put a bullet in your sidekick’s head. So carving you up and then electrocuting you won’t be such a big deal.”

  “I just follow orders,” Bunny said. “Do what I’m told to.”

  “Makes you sound like a soldier,” Logan said. “Or maybe a mercenary, killing for money. Why did McCall send you down here?”

  “To stop you gettin’ to Larry Horton.”

  “So why are you here instead of at Horton’s place waiting for me to turn up.”

  “We were told that you and the broad were an item, and―”

  Logan flicked his arm out and the blade of the knife lengthened Bunny’s mouth by an extra two inches. Bunny recoiled and smashed the back of his head against the wall tiles. The streams of blood from his mouth and previously damaged nose were diluted to candy-pink as they amalgamated with the cascade of water.

  “The lady, not broad,” Logan said.

  “Jesus! Okay, the lady,” Bunny said with difficulty. “We were goin’ to get her to contact you and draw you in, then take you both back to Denver.”

  “For Wade to deal with personally?”

  Bunny nodded.

  “And what about Larry Horton?”

  “He’s an old buddy of Wade’s. The boss was doin’ him a favor.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t fuckin’ know. Like I said, I just follow orders.”

  “So Horton knew that you were going to take care of business tonight?”

  “Yeah, he’s at home, waitin’ for us to contact him.”

  Logan thought it through. He wanted to make a play for Horton. Force Bunny to phone him and tell him that the problem had been taken care of, then head out to Horton’s place and finish it. But the sheriff would have to be contacted over what had gone down at Kate’s. He would have to give a statement and be in the clear before he took any further action. Horton would have to wait, but hopefully not for much longer.

  “We didn’t have this conversation,” Logan said to Bunny. “Tell the cops that you and your dead buddy were burglars for all I care. But be sure to admit that your partner in crime was all set to kill the lady when I happened by and took him out. I think that I should kill you now, but will save that for if I ever see you again. Understand?”

  Bunny nodded. Knew that Logan was not making an idle threat.

  “Good decision,” Logan said, standing up and leaving the bathroom.

  “Phone Lyle,” Logan said to Kate as he entered the kitchen and headed for the coffeemaker. “I suggest you keep it simple. Tell him that two lowlifes broke in and hurt you. That you were convinced they were going to kill you, and that I turned up and dealt with them.”

  “And the other facts of why they were here?”

  “Just clouds the issue, with no proof, because I’ll say I called round to see you and took what action was necessary to save you.”

  Kate didn’t give it a lot of thought. Whatever Logan said was fine by her. She picked up the phone on the counter and called the sheriff’s department. Held for a few seconds and was put through to Lyle.

  “Yeah, Kate” Lyle said in his usual drawl.

  “Two men broke into my house, Lyle,” Kate said. “They were both armed and hurt me. I think they would have killed me if Logan hadn’t shown up.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll live. But one of the intruders is dead.”

  “Is Logan still with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him to stay there. I’m on my way.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Clifton was sitting on a chair in the small visitors’ waiting room situated forty feet along the corridor that led to the intensive care unit that Ray was in.

  Nursing a cup of now lukewarm coffee, Clifton had nothing to keep him company but his thoughts, and they were all bad ones. He was in a position that he had absolutely no control over. His son was in a critical condition, and all he could do was sit and wait and pray to a god that had already taken his wife from him for no good reason that he could imagine. Janice had been forty, slim, athletic, and loved life. And back on a fine April morning six years ago, had dropped dead as she stepped out of the shower. The only grain of solace was that the massive cerebral hemorrhage she had suffered cut out the probability that she had even realized that it had happened. So if you’re listening, God, give me a break here, Clifton thought. I need for my son to come through this, and would appreciate a helping hand.

  An intern entered the room, and Clifton felt a level of dread that was more debilitating than anything he had ever experienced in his life to date. The sensation of slime-coated live eels squirming in his stomach made him nauseous.

  “Your son is…”

  Clifton didn’t pass out, but his senses reeled. He saw the young man’s mouth moving, but the voice had faded away, as if his brain was denying the news by preventing him from physically hearing it.

  The intern’s hand on his shoulder brought him out of the near stupor he had slipped into. “Your son is stabilized, Mr. Marshall. And the test results look good. There is no apparent brain damage.”

  Clifton gripped the intern’s hand and began to cry with relief and joy, not the grief he had not thought he would be able to bear.

  Moments like this made Jared Colby forget the long shifts and bad shit that were all part of his day-to-day life as an intern at Memorial Hospital. Caring for sick people and saving lives was not a job of work to him, it was a vocation.

  “Can I get you anything,” Jared asked Clifton.

  Clifton smiled through his tears. “Maybe a container to put how I’m feeling at this second in to, to keep for use in emergency.”

  Jared laughed. “Will a fresh cup of coffee do for the time being?”

  “Please,” Clifton said. “When can I see Ray?”

  “He’s asleep now. It’ll be a few hours. If you need to get some shuteye there’s a room with a bed in it next door.”

  “Thanks, but I’m wide awake now,” Clifton said. “I think I’ll stretch my legs. Would you point me in the direction of the cafeteria?”

  It was late, but Clifton phoned Carol Taylor at home. She lived a couple of hundred yards up from the Pinetop and cleaned the motel rooms and sometimes ran the office if he needed to be away on business.

  “Kaz?”

  “Yeah, Clifton, what happened? I heard that there was an ambulance at your place.”

  “Ray had a…an accident, but he’s going to be fine. I’m phoning from Colorado Springs. Sorry it’s so late, but I won’t be back tonight and―”

  “I’ll see to the motel, Clifton. Take your time, and let me know what’s happening when you can.”

  “Thanks, Kaz.”

  “No problem. Bye for now.”

  Clifton closed his phone and realized that he was hungry. Picked
up a tray at the end of the counter and made his way along it in the wake of other visitors and hospital staff. He was soon settled at a corner table, tucking into meatloaf with baked potato and green beans. Ray’s survival had washed away the bulk of the despair and left him ravenous. And yet halfway through the meal he pushed the tray back as the realization of his son’s state of mind hit home. What if Ray still felt the same and attempted to end his life again?

  Lyle parked his Dodge Charger at the curb outside Kate’s house and walked up the path to the front door, followed by Denny Matthews who’d driven out in a battered Crown Victoria. They both had their hands on the butts of their handguns, not entirely sure what awaited them.

  Kate opened the door slowly and stood back to let them in.

  Logan was leant against the doorframe to the kitchen with a cup of coffee in his hand. He nodded at Lyle and his deputy.

  “Jesus!” Lyle said at the sight of the tall black man lying on the floor with a bloody dime-sized hole in his forehead.

  “Did you do this, Logan?” Lyle said.

  Logan nodded. “There’s another guy in the bathroom,” he said. “He’s still breathing.”

  Lyle went up to the bathroom and took a look at the guy in the tub. His nose and mouth were bleeding profusely but he seemed alert. He was bound up, so wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Give me the short version, Kate,” Lyle said as he came back into the kitchen.

  “Two guys broke in. They were going to kill me. Logan appeared and took care of them. He disarmed one guy and had to shoot the other to save me from having my throat cut.”

  “Who are they?” Lyle asked.

  “I’ve never seen them before in my life,” Kate said.

  Lyle looked at Logan.

  “Me neither,” Logan said.

  Lyle turned to Denny. “Phone the Staties,” he said. “They can use the resources they’ve got in town. Tell them we need a medical examiner and a forensic team out here.”