Vengeance Is Mine (An Owen Day Thriller)

by Rachel Ford

  Owen didn’t answer. He’d already decided Tanney and beer wasn’t a good combination, about the time he’d asked the waitress about guns. Every subsequent interaction had only further convinced him.

  His lack of response didn’t stop the old man from offering, “Makes an ass out of you and me. That’s what. You’re assuming they don’t know who killed this judge. They probably already got a suspect lined up.”

  “Now look who is assuming,” Owen said.

  “I’m speculating. You’re assuming. There’s a difference.”

  “All I’m saying is, it fits the pattern.”

  “And if they arrest someone tomorrow? What happens to your pattern then?”

  “Depends on whether they arrest the right guy.”

  “Gal,” Tanney said, nodding briskly. “I’m telling you, if you’re not entirely off your rocker, this is a woman’s crime. No two ways about it.”

  Dave Rasmussen hurried back to his party. He’d left for a call of nature, but Ted hadn’t really noticed his absence. Dave wasn’t usually the kind of guy to offer too much to any given conversation.

  But this time, he had something interesting to share. This time, he had real news. His eyes were practically popping out of his head as he spit it out. “Ted,” he said. “Ted, you were right.”

  “Course I was,” Ted said. “’Bout what?”

  “That guy? That Owen guy? I heard him talking to the old guy. They’re talking about Rick’s murder. Saying Halverson ain’t going to find the bullet.”

  A few of the guys demanded confirmation. Was Dave certain? Had he heard them mention Rick’s name specifically? What did they say, exactly?

  Ted listened, his anger growing. He’d called it, hadn’t he? He was right, again. And yet Rick’s killer was walking free, boasting about what he’d done. Laughing about outwitting the sheriff.

  And where was Halverson during it all? Nowhere to be seen, that’s where. How in God’s name the sheriff kept getting elected baffled him. Did everyone in Yellow River Falls County have their heads up their asses?

  Well, not him. He drank down the last of his beer, a plan slowly forming in his head.

  The guys were talking about calling Halverson and getting him involved. But he couldn’t be trusted. Ted knew that. No, this had to be taken care of, and taken care of fast. Who knew? Day and the old guy might try to slip away overnight. Then it’d be too late. Tonight. It’s got to be tonight.

  “Come on,” he said, interrupting the conversation around him. “We need to go.”

  “What?”

  “Where?”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Shut your damned mouths before you attract you-know-who’s attention.”

  “Who?”

  Ted grimaced. He was dealing with dumbasses. He tried again. “Pay your tabs and follow me. I’ve got an idea.”

  “What idea?”

  “What’re you thinking, Ted?”

  “Meet me outside,” he said. “If you’re not out in five minutes, you’re out of the plan.”

  This seemed to do the trick. A few of the guys had been paying as they went along. They followed immediately. A few of the others settled up or drained the last of their drinks. They were hustling for the door as Ted stepped outside.

  The evening air was cold. Brutally cold. But he felt warm enough thanks to the beer and a good winter coat. He headed to his truck and unlocked the door. Moses hopped up to see him.

  Technically, he wasn’t supposed to keep Moses in the truck. That’s what Halverson had told him, after someone had phoned it in last winter. But the weather hadn’t hit zero yet. It was barely below freezing. And he had plenty of blankets for the dog.

  The way he figured it, Moses was just fine. Just fine except for a full bladder, anyway. So he let Moses run through the lot, marking the snowbanks and truck tires as he saw fit.

  Meanwhile, his posse assembled behind him.

  “What the hell are we doing out here?” Dave wanted to know.

  “We going to the sheriff?” Dennis asked.

  Ted shook his head. “We’re going to do what the sheriff won’t.”

  “What’s that?” Kevin said.

  “We’re going to take care of Rick’s killer.”

  “Like a citizen’s arrest?”

  “Something like that,” Ted said.

  “I don’t know,” Dennis said. “Maybe we should just call the sheriff.”

  “Marsha did that,” Ted reminded him. “And Halverson didn’t do a damned thing.”

  “Maybe if we try again…”

  “What? Maybe what, Kevin?”

  “Well…maybe he’ll arrest him.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Russ said. “Ain’t it?”

  “Is it?” Ted stared around the group fiercely, anger and too much beer fueling him. “How long has Halverson been on the case? And he’s got exactly nothing to show for it.

  “A few hours we’re on it, and we already got the killer. He’s right here, right now. Laughing about blowing Rick’s head off. Maybe planning to kill someone else. Maybe one of us. Maybe me or you, or Maxine.

  “So you want to talk to Halverson, Russ? You go right ahead. But the rest of you – if there’s any of you with balls – you stick with me. This guy’s going to show his face sooner or later, and we’ll be ready for him.”

  They said nothing for a long moment. Then Kevin ventured, “What about the old guy?”

  Ted shrugged. “Gramps? What about him? He’s part of it, right? So he gets what he gets.”

  The men shifted in place, uncertainty and discomfort playing through them.

  “It’s awful cold,” Russ said after a space.

  “Then go home. Get out of here. Go talk to Maxine about crime psychology. The men’ll handle it.”

  Russ didn’t move. No one moved, except Moses. The dog had apparently exhausted its bladder. It came running back, tail wagging.

  Ted turned his scowl over everyone assembled. “They’re going to be out in ten, maybe fifteen minutes. You can wait that long, can’t you?”

  A few heads nodded. A few voices offered half-hearted murmurs of assent.

  “That’s what I thought. Now, listen up. Here’s the plan.”

  They listened, and they took up their positions – inside their vehicles, heaters blowing full blast. Ted retreated to his own truck, with Moses hopping in ahead of him.

  He switched on the headlights. He was facing the door, which worked out alright: it looked like some kind of spotlight, waiting for the suspect to emerge.

  And he waited. Five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. Russ got out at the fifteen-minute mark to confirm the plan. Ted sent him back with an earful.

  Twenty minutes ticked by, and nearly twenty-five. Then his suspect stepped out of Tiny’s, straight into the headlights, lit up like the dirtbag he was.

  Ted scrambled out of the truck. A second later, his friends started to get out. Then Russ’s truck jolted forward, sliding on the snow and ice as it raced out of the parking lot.

  “Goddamned coward,” he muttered, his temper raising. He glanced at the crew he had left: four guys. For Yellow River Falls guys, born and bred. Five, counting himself. Versus a stone cold killer, and an accomplice with one foot in the grave.

  Easy as pie.

  Chapter Nine

  He pulled into the back drive and came up behind the big house. He drove slowly in the dusk, with his lights switched off. The black SUV would be almost invisible in the gloom, nothing more than a boxy shadow in front of the snow.

  There were no lights on. The wife was gone. Not at work, probably; not so soon after the judge’s death. Maybe she was at the airport, picking up one of the kids. They were all flying in for the big funeral.

  No surprise there. They didn’t all get on with the judge, but there were assets on the line. And now mommy dearest would be the sole distributor of those assets. No one wanted to find themselves on her bad side. They’d probably be scrambling to one-up each ot
her, to prove that they were the most deeply grieved of all.

  Maybe the judge had made some provision for the kids from the first marriage. Maybe he didn’t trust Marsha to do right by them, once he was gone.

  And it was always a given that he would go before she did, even without outside intervention. He was two decades her senior. And the judge didn’t leave his business to chance.

  He knew that only too well.

  He pulled down his ski mask. He didn’t know if Wynder had put up security cameras. It would have been the smart thing to do, especially for a man in his position. A smart thing for any blackmailer to do.

  And Wynder was smart. Not smart enough, obviously, since he was the one missing half his skull. But smart.

  He didn’t want to commit the perfect crime just to wind up with his face plastered all over the place. So he adjusted the mask until it was comfortable, or as comfortable as the scratchy yarn was ever going to get, and headed to the back door.

  It was locked, as he expected it would be. He searched around the rear landscaping, in the flower beds and under the decorative rocks. He tried to avoid leaving footprints, but that was easier said than done. The paths and walkways had all been cleared, but there was snow everywhere else. He found nothing.

  It’d be easy enough to break a window. But there’d be an alarm for sure.

  He considered. There was a lock and a keypad for a PIN: four or maybe six digits. Ten thousand possibilities for a four-digit code, and a million for six. Even if the security company had programmed in rules preventing leading zeroes or repeating digits, there’d still be thousands of possibilities.

  Nine thousand permutations, if the PIN couldn’t start with a zero. Three thousand and twenty-four if it couldn’t start with a zero and no number could be repeated. Either way, he’d still be there entering codes when the wife got back.

  But no, that wasn’t true. An alarm would sound long before he got that far. Better to smash a window, if sounding the alarm was the route he was going to go. Get in, get the device and the pictures, get out.

  He didn’t smash the window, though. Not yet. He didn’t know where the device was, and he didn’t know where the pictures were. Maybe they were in a safe. Maybe they were hidden somewhere. He’d need time to search.

  Maybe a lot of time. So window smashing had to be a last resort.

  He circled around to the front of the house, past the gardens where the judge had been shot. He smiled as he passed the spot. It was clean, now. No blood, no brain matter. Still, he knew what those rose bushes signified. Knew, and appreciated.

  He checked landscaping features as he passed – any paving stone that looked like it might be loose, like maybe someone would have stashed a key under it, any little statue. He lifted them all. Nothing.

  He came around to the front, to the imposing face of the great home. He wasn’t worried about anyone spotting him from the road. It was almost five, and the dusk was deep and settled. From the road, no one would be able to make him out at all.

  There was no code entry pad on the front door. That was promising. That might mean the PIN was for the staff’s use, not the family’s. Maybe even something the family enabled on days the housecleaner was expected, and disabled the rest of the week, so they didn’t have to let her in, and they didn’t have to give her a key.

  He searched the flower beds as before, and as before found nothing. He was frustrated, now. The cold seeped in through his thin gloves. The cheap face mask scratched his skin. And time kept on ticking away. Time he didn’t have.

  He’d have to break a window after all, he decided. Not here. Not in the front of the yard, where anyone pulling into the drive would see the broken glass. No, he’d go through the back door: break the glass, flip the lock, let himself in.

  He tried to plan how long he’d have. Maybe five minutes from start to finish. He figured it would take the cops ten minutes to get here from town. Five would give him time to be well on his way, well out of the area before they showed up.

  He’d take back roads, too. He’d cut a long, circuitous route back to the interstate. He wouldn’t have to worry about passing the cops on the way, or his plate numbers showing up in their dash cam footage of their race toward the big house later.

  He reached the side of the house, the fateful garden path. He turned down it. Then he paused. He’d been checking bits of garden décor – a stone angel, a chunk of some kind of shimmering rock, and so on. All of them made of stone.

  But there was an outlier: a frog, some kind of scrap metal art thing. He’d run a finger along the underside, just to make sure no one had stuck a key underneath. Now, he took a second look at it.

  He brought out his phone and turned on the flashlight application. He crouched down, so the light wouldn’t draw attention from the road. Not that there were that many people going by at this hour. But better safe than sorry.

  He ran a gloved finger across the surfaces of the frog. It was rust colored, made with welded pieces of everything and anything. Some of it looked like it had come from old cars. The eyes were spoon bowls, welded to strips of old metal.

  His fingers paused at the back of the head. The gloves diminished his sense of touch, but in combination with sight, he got a generally sound idea of what he was dealing with. And he was quite sure he felt hinges now.

  He pivoted the frog. For being less than a foot tall, it was heavy. But he saw the hinges, sure enough.

  He toyed with the head now, pressing and prodding and pulling. Then his fingers found purchase on a little lever. The frog’s lower jaw sprang open. And there inside was a shiny silver key.

  * * *

  Owen Day stepped out of Tiny’s into a bright beam of light. He held up a hand to shield his eyes.

  “Some yahoo forgot to turn his brights off,” Tanney said behind him.

  Which seemed to be true. The light coming at him was bright. Not search light bright, but awfully bright, and directed right at the tavern door. It obscured the truck behind it.

  And for a few seconds, it completely obscured the figures heading toward him. Then, it didn’t. Then, he saw them. A dog and five guys, varying heights and weights. He couldn’t see their faces. He couldn’t make out their ages.

  But he could read their body language. The dog was wagging its tail: just a dark streak blasting back and forth, silhouetted against the truck’s high beams. Happy. Carefree.

  The men had their shoulders hunched and their fists balled. Not happy, and not carefree.

  “Looks like someone’s fixing for trouble,” Tanney said over his shoulder.

  Owen stepped aside, away from the door. He didn’t know who the hell these guys were, or what their problem might be. Nor did he know if they had backup inside. And he didn’t want to find out the hard way. Better a wall behind him than a sixth or seventh guy.

  The changing vantage shifted the light, and he could see some of the faces. He spotted two of the guys he’d seen at the bar. He wasn’t sure about the others, not yet. The guys moved too.

  So there was no mistaking their intentions, then. They weren’t after someone inside. They were coming for him.

  Tanney scuttled along after him. “You got some kind of beef with these boys?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Looks like they’re about to give you one.”

  Owen nodded slowly, trying to make out the rest of the faces. He saw some gray hair and a few beer bellies. Not young guys. Not fit guys.

  Then he saw the guy with the dog, the guy he’d seen that morning at Marsha Wynder’s place. “Ted?” he asked.

  Ted wasn’t what anyone would call a handsome guy, or a friendly-looking one. He was a little weather-beaten and grizzled, with pugnacious features and a solid midwestern frame…not quite tall and not quite short, but built like a brick.

  A fifty- or sixty-year-old brick, anyway. He looked a little flabby, and the rectangular shape had started to bulge in the midsection.

  But those pugnacious
features looked all the grimmer right now. He was scowling deeply and letting off big, angry plumes of breath that crystalized in the freezing night air.

  “You know this guy?” Tanney asked.

  At the same time, Ted said, “We know all about you, Owen Day. All about you. Halverson might be too stupid to figure it out, but we’re not.”

  “Damned right,” one of the other guys said.

  “We’re putting you under citizen’s arrest,” another said.

  “Arrest? Have you actually met this guy? What the hell do you want to arrest him for?” Tanney asked. “Being the most boring man on earth?”

  “We know what you did to Judge Wynder,” one of the guys answered.

  “We know you’re in on it, Gramps,” Ted said.

  “An accomplice,” someone else said.

  “Accomplice to what, you dumbasses?” Tanney asked.

  “To Rick’s murder,” one of the guys said.

  Owen glanced back at Tanney incredulously. “What?”

  The old man barked out a laugh. “You boys really are as soft as you look. Your mommas drop you on your head when you were little or something?”

  Which seemed counterproductive to Owen. He tried a more tactful approach. “Guys, I had nothing to do with that. I’m trying to find his killer.”

  “Bullshit,” Ted barked. “You done him, and then you came back to do Marsha this morning.”

  “What?”

  “No point denying it,” a guy with a red and silver beard said. “I heard you talking about it. I heard you say you did such a good job, the sheriff’d never find the bullet.”

  Tanney laughed again. “Lucky us, Owen. We found the dumbest boys in all of Yellow Falls.”

  By now, Owen had nearly reached his vehicle. The guys had closed most of the distance between them, though. “Listen,” he said, “you guys got the wrong idea. It was a serial killer.”

  “That’s the bullshit he tried to pull on Marsha, to get inside her house,” Ted said.

  “Gig’s up, Day,” the redhead said.

  “You’re under arrest,” another guy said. “You have the right to shut your mouth, or we’ll shut it for you.”