A Welcome Grave

by Michael Koryta

  “Is he in the trailer?”

  “No. There are five or six cabins where the lake used to be. He’s in one of them.”

  A knuckle rapped on my window. Thor. I opened the door and got out to join him, and Joe and Doran followed as I told Thor the situation. He didn’t say a word.

  “You were right about him expecting the car,” Joe said. “The question is how to use it best. We can have Doran drive us inside the camp. Use him to get Gaglionci out somehow.”

  Thor shook his head. “We should not all be in the car. Something goes wrong, we are all trapped in one spot.”

  “Okay. What’s your suggestion, then?”

  Thor leaned away from the car and studied the pine trees waving above.

  “Is there a way into this camp from the rear? Through the woods maybe, or around the lake?”

  We all looked at Doran, and he nodded. “Some old train tracks run up against it. There’s a fence between the tracks and the edge of the camp, but it’s been torn down in places. If you find the tracks somewhere else, you can probably use them to walk up there.”

  This pleased Thor. He gave one short nod. “I will drive the car. We will find these tracks, and you and he will walk up to the camp together.”

  I frowned. “I should probably be the one to drive in. The driver’s going to be the most likely to have to deal with Gaglionci and—”

  “And I am better at that than you,” Thor said. His pale eyes looked dark, but they were fastened on mine. It was not his battle to fight, but he’d come here to help me, and he was right—he was better than me. I thought about objecting, but that flat gaze of his quelled it. We were here to get Amy. If this gave us the best chance, then this was how we would approach it.

  “All right,” I said.

  “I go with them, or with you?” Joe asked.

  “Neither,” Thor answered.

  Joe looked angry. He’d been left in the garage when we’d gone to see Reed, and now Thor was ordering him to stay behind again. He didn’t like being told to sit it out.

  “There is one way to drive out of that camp,” Thor said. “Supposing things do not go well, and Gaglionci leaves, perhaps with the woman, who will be here to stop them? Take your car and block the exit onto the road after I drive in. Nobody leaves without going through you. That is necessary.”

  “Fine.” Joe’s expression changed, and he nodded. Thor was right, of course. In this sort of discussion, Thor would always be right.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take Doran and go up the tracks. How do we time it, though? You shouldn’t drive in until we’re up there, and we don’t know how long the walk will take.”

  Thor pointed at Doran, who shrugged. “Depends where you find the tracks,” he said. “Only place I know is where they crossed the road a little ways back. Probably take, what, fifteen minutes to walk in from there.”

  “I will wait twenty,” Thor said. “Once I am inside the camp, where is he?”

  “There are some cabins around the lake. He’s in the third one, right side. So is Perry’s girl.”

  We drove back to the spot where the tracks crossed the road, maybe a quarter mile behind us. Thor put the RX-8 off on the shoulder, resting in a cluster of dead weeds, and I pulled in behind him. Doran and I got out of the Taurus, and I turned to Joe and passed him the keys.

  “We’ll see you soon.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You watch your back with Doran, Lincoln.”

  “I will.”

  Thor looked at me. “Twenty minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  Doran and I started to walk ahead down the tracks, a winding path of white gravel and old wooden ties that disappeared into blackness. It didn’t take long to round the first bend and leave Thor and Joe out of sight behind us.

  The tracks clearly hadn’t been in use for years, because they’d actually pulled the rails. All that was left behind was the gravel bed and the wooden ties. An occasional rusted spike rolled underfoot, but other than that it was easy enough to move along at a good pace. Doran walked ahead of me, moving effortlessly, without even looking at the ground. The rain was gone, but it had left the air chill. My breath fogged in front of me for the first few minutes, and then either it cooled enough to stop reacting with the air or it grew too dark to notice.

  The air smelled of wet earth and leaves and water, the scent reminding me of the winery where Joe and I sat on the deck with Paul Brooks, listening as he lied smoothly and successfully. We’d swallowed his story and moved on, wasting days that had culminated in this: Amy trapped with a professional killer who had his eye on the clock. Now the cost of that delay . . . I shook my head and quickened my pace. I couldn’t let myself think of the potential cost.

  Fifteen minutes after we’d started down the tracks, Doran said, “We’re close.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Fence up ahead. On the left.”

  I squinted and stared ahead and saw nothing. The last time I’d had my vision tested they’d told me it was actually better than twenty-twenty, and still I had no idea what Doran was seeing up there. We were a good thirty paces farther along before I could finally make it out: a sagging wire fence, knocked down in many places, strung along the edge of the tracks, separating them from the trees on the other side.

  We stepped off the tracks and through the tall, dead grass. Despite the dampness, it crackled and rustled underfoot, the woods seeming too silent, our steps too loud. I imagined Gaglionci sitting inside one of those cabins, tilting his head at the sound of our approach and reaching for his gun.

  The chain-link fence had been beaten down, breaking and sagging until it was only two feet off the ground. Doran stepped over it, and I followed. I could see the lake basin to our right, tall reeds and grasses growing where the water belonged. The dark shapes of the cabins began to show themselves on the opposite bank. We were moving around the lake basin toward the cabins, and the gravel road inside the camp was visible now, a light band in the dark grass.

  We made it around the edge of the lake and behind the cabins. Doran had said Gaglionci was in the third cabin, and there were six of them that I could see, with small docks protruding into the lake basin behind them, the wood probably rotten by now, unused in many years. I turned once, walking backward for a few steps, and looked back up the gravel road. I could see the shape of the trailer Doran had spoken of up near the entrance, but then everything faded in shadows. No sign of Thor yet.

  The first cabin was beside us, dark and empty, old trash and debris scattered behind it. I stepped over a discarded propane tank as I made my way along the narrow strip of grass between the cabin and the dock. I was ahead of Doran by a few steps and couldn’t even hear him. It seemed each breath I took was impossibly loud, but he didn’t make a sound. A cluster of pines separated the first and second cabins. I pushed the branches aside to step through them; Doran simply ducked his head and bobbed through. The needles left a sticky sap residue on my hands. We were behind the second cabin when the light inside the next building became visible.

  “Is that it?”

  Doran didn’t respond. He’d stopped where he was, staring at the cabin as if he didn’t trust it.

  “What?” I said, my voice a harsh whisper.

  “He knows.”

  “Gaglionci?”

  Doran nodded and ducked, got low to the ground and stared back up the road at the trailer, then swiveled his head to look at the rest of the cabins. I knelt beside him.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The lights. He wouldn’t have left lights on in the cabin. We had the windows blacked out with cloth. He wouldn’t have taken it down unless he wanted someone to think he was there. He’s setting a trap in case I didn’t come back alone.”

  Light showed on the road behind us. It was Thor. I could tell that from the look of the headlights and how low they were, trademarks of the small car. Doran had underestimated the time it would take to walk up here along the tracks. We’d g
one at a good pace and barely arrived ahead of Thor.

  “Shit,” I whispered. “This is too fast.”

  Doran said nothing. Staying low to the ground, I moved along the wall of the second cabin after the RX-8’s headlights passed over it. Thor was driving slowly. I came around the edge of the building and knelt beside it. A few shingles, blown off the old roof, lay around my feet. I swept them out of the way and planted my left foot, brought the gun up with both hands, and rested my forearms on my knee. Thor had stopped the RX-8 at the third cabin but hadn’t gotten out yet, leaving the engine idling. The headlights lit up the outside of the cabin, and I leaned forward and stared at it. Nothing changed. The door stayed closed, the light stayed on. If Doran was right, and Gaglionci wasn’t inside, then we were in trouble. Any hope of a surprise was gone now—Gaglionci wouldn’t have missed that car.

  “Where would he go?” I said and spun in time to see that Doran was twenty feet away, moving toward the tall reeds that filled the lake basin. I stood to go after him, but in that moment I heard the engine of the RX-8 roar and gravel spin under the tires as Thor hammered the accelerator, and I turned back to see what was happening.

  He kept the car in reverse—screamed it backward about ten feet and then cut the wheel, spinning it around to face the trailer. As the car spun he hit the brights, and the beams caught Tommy Gaglionci full in the face as he stepped out of the trees just up the gravel road and lifted a shotgun.

  The brights had been a good idea, a last-ditch attempt to disorient Gaglionci, but he still pumped a shell into the chamber and got off a shot that blew a cloud of fiberglass and metal off the front end of the RX-8.

  I lifted my Glock and fired, but it was a long distance for a handgun, and I missed wide and low. He heard the shot, saw it kick into the gravel by his feet, and spun and fired the shotgun in my direction, showering wood chips from the cabin wall around me.

  I stumbled to the nearest tree, just a few feet away, fell against it, and looked out on the dark road. The RX-8 was motionless, smoke rising off the engine compartment. Maybe the last shot had damaged something critical and frozen the car. I watched and waited for a door to open and Thor to step out, or at least return fire. Instead there was nothing but the thin stream of smoke. The car’s windshield was shattered, Thor nowhere to be found.

  I rolled onto my shoulder and looked up the road, searching for Gaglionci. A shadow moved in the trees, but then it was gone. He was working his way down to me through the trees, and I couldn’t see a damn thing. It was a bad position, backed up against the cabin wall with just the one tree offering shelter. I could either move forward, deeper into the trees and toward Gaglionci, or try to get behind the cabin, where Doran had gone.

  I’d just made the decision to retreat and move behind the cabin when the RX-8’s engine howled. I looked back in time to see the tires find purchase on the loose gravel road and send the car roaring toward the trees where Gaglionci had been moving. No driver was visible behind the wheel. Thor must be lying beneath the dash, using the car for protection, and driving blind.

  Gaglionci spun around a tree no more than thirty feet in front of me and fired the shotgun once more, blowing the remaining shards of the windshield away, but the car didn’t slow. He hesitated for one second before diving back into the trees, and then Thor cut the wheel again and the car hit the pines broadside.

  For a few brief seconds everything was quiet and still. There was more smoke rising out of the engine compartment of the car, the radiator probably leaking steam from one of the shotgun blasts, and the headlights cut a crooked swath through the trees, one of them pointed up now, into the sky. Nobody moved near the car. I could see the airbag filling the driver’s window. I stepped around the tree and moved cautiously into the open, looking for Gaglionci and wondering if Thor was dead. Almost at that moment, they both reappeared.

  Gaglionci had hit the ground and rolled when he saw the car accelerating toward him. Now he rose again and stepped toward the RX-8 with his shotgun leveled. I lifted my own gun and tried to draw an accurate line on him while he pumped the shotgun, and as he did that Thor rose up in the wrecked car and fired out of the back window, the only one that didn’t have a pine tree in the way.

  He took two shots but missed with both, and Gaglionci swung the shotgun back around toward the car and got off another blast that hit the trunk and back window. Then he was stumbling back, sliding down the ditch behind him and into the grass.

  I put three rounds into the weeds where he’d disappeared, and then it was quiet again. There had been no sound from Doran, who was probably hiding in the woods somewhere or moving away from the camp. He’d chosen escape at the first possible opportunity. I started up the road at a jog, watching the tall grass and trees where I’d last seen Gaglionci. He didn’t fire at me, but I could hear the rustling and breaking branches as he moved through the woods. I fired blind into the trees again, two shots that had no hope of hitting him. Then the sounds of his retreat were farther away, and he was out of range and lost to the darkness.

  I pulled up alongside the RX-8 just as the passenger door popped open and Thor fell out onto the grass. There was blood on his face and on his arms, but he was alive and moving. I knelt to help him up, but he waved me off and used the car as a support while he got back on his feet. He never let his Glock out of his hand. The blood appeared to be from a collection of shallow cuts, not from a gunshot.

  “Are you hit?”

  He shook his head and wiped at his face with the back of one gloved hand. “Not badly. He was firing buckshot. I took a few pellets, maybe.”

  Looking closer, I could see where his jacket was tattered on his left side, blood saturating the fabric along his ribs. He glanced at it, too, but didn’t seem concerned; he was ready to speak when he was cut off by a scream from up the gravel road.

  “I’m gonna kill her!”

  Gaglionci had reemerged from the trees, now fifty or sixty yards up the road, beside the trailer. We could see his silhouette against the shape of the building. I started to run as Thor turned and laid his wrist over the roof of the RX-8, and I’d made it only a few steps when I heard the report of his Glock three times, shots that came closer than they should have, firing at that distance in the dark. None of them connected, though, and Gaglionci turned for the trailer, the shotgun rising again. I didn’t even bother to lift my own gun, just kept running, knowing the only chance I had was to make it there before he got inside, knowing also that it wasn’t a real chance, that he was too far ahead, that I would be too late.

  Gaglionci opened the door and stepped inside the trailer and fired. I heard the gunshot and shouted as if it had struck me, still running, stumbling now, my feet going too fast for the rest of me. In the same instant as I realized the sound of the shot had been wrong—a harsh crack instead of the throaty roar of the shotgun—Gaglionci tumbled back through the door and hit the ground. The shotgun fell free, and I got my balance back on the loose gravel and ran harder until I was standing above him, my gun pointed at his forehead as he twisted in pain.

  “It’s probably a good thing,” Andy Doran said from inside the trailer, “that I was here.”

  He was leaning against the door, a revolver in his hand that was aimed at my chest.

  41

  Come see your girl,” Doran said.

  I stepped inside the trailer. There was a dim light on, but I saw immediately why it hadn’t been visible from outside: The windows were covered with a thick black cloth. Doran had probably purchased a few bolts at some fabric store for ten dollars, but it did the job. The light died on the cloth, leaving the trailer looking empty at night to anyone who had happened by.

  Doran led me around the corner and through a tiny kitchen as Thor entered the trailer behind us. The place reeked of sour garbage and mold. Dirt covered the floor, and there were puddles where rain had leaked through the roof. Doran had lived here for nearly a month, waiting for his windfall. I passed through the kitchen, and then a bed
room opened up on the right and I saw Amy.

  She was on the floor, lying on an old blanket. Her hands and feet were handcuffed, and there was duct tape over her mouth, but her eyes were wide and bright even in a room dark with shadows. I dropped my gun and fell on my knees and reached for her, and Andy Doran leaned down and laid his revolver to her forehead.

  “She’s alive, Perry. As promised. Pay attention to me and she may stay that way.”

  My own gun was on the floor beside my hand, where I’d dropped it when I reached for Amy. Thor was in the doorway now, and without looking at him I knew he had his gun out and drawn on Doran, who was smiling up at him over my shoulder.

  “Easy, man. Easy. No need for a lot of excitement here. You start pulling triggers, and I will, too. You know that drill. Way I’m holding this gun, and where it’s pointed? She’s likely to die if you go for it. Can’t guarantee she will, but you can’t guarantee she won’t, either.”

  Thor didn’t say a word. I was only a few feet from Doran, separated from him by Amy’s body, but I didn’t even consider a move. Not with the way he held that gun against her skull, finger tight on the trigger. My eyes were fastened on Amy’s. She looked unharmed. Scared, yes, but unharmed.

  “Tell your buddy to put that gun on the floor,” Doran said.

  Thor didn’t move. I looked at him and then shook my head at Doran.

  “He’s not going to put his gun on the floor.”

  “Well, he better. You tell him—”

  “No,” I said. “Nobody can tell him to give up his gun. He won’t do it.”

  “Holster it, then,” Doran told Thor. “You as damn fast as I think you are, that shouldn’t be so much of a problem.”

  Thor lowered the Glock, slowly, and slipped it back into its holster. His body seemed to hum with readiness.