Dying Breath - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 2)

by J. A. Konrath

  I fired a shot directly into the trees in front of me, hoping to flush him out. It worked, and again I heard the crashing and stomping through the foliage, as easy to track as footprints. But right after the noise began, it stopped again, leaving me without direction.

  Another shot failed to get him to run again. He was staying put.

  I walked as silently as I could, squinting through the shadows, pausing every few steps.

  Nothing.

  I dug into my duffle bag. The thrift store purchase had popped a seam, and I’d lost a lot of things during the pursuit. One of my Nikes. My sweat suit pants. My switchblade. My flashlight. And both 9mm magazines.

  I’d given Harry my rifle, and he’d dropped the shotgun into the lake. So the only weapons I had left were my Smith & Wesson, with six bullets left, the AMT .380 in my boot heel, and that back alley grenade I’d bought for thirty bucks. I grabbed the grenade, dropped the bag, and fired twice more into the woods, trying to flush him out.

  It worked. I heard him running again, nearby.

  Nearby, and very close.

  When I figured out what had happened, it was too late. I’d been in my bag, taking inventory, and Shears had circled back around and flanked me, and was only a few steps away and sprinting at full speed. I brought up the gun, fired three times, all of my shots too high, and instead of going for the tackle he latched onto my arm—

  —and bit me.

  The pain was supernatural, like a vice grip pliers grinding on every nerve in my wrist, and I dropped the gun and brought a knee up, bouncing it off his chin.

  He released me, staggered back, and I was on him, swinging the grenade, hitting him in the cheek and sending him sprawling into a thorn bush.

  Shirtless.

  Tucker howled, trying to escape the thorns tearing into him, and I crouched down, felt around for my gun, and picked it up.

  I fired, shooting over his head to get his attention.

  It worked. He stopped struggling, and glared at me.

  “Amy Scadder,” I said. “Remember her?”

  “You got out of the box and burned my house down, you asshole.”

  I leveled the gun. “The next time I shoot, you lose your balls. Answer the question.”

  Tucker made a face like he was a toddler being forced to eat his brussels sprouts. “I remember her.”

  “You killed her?”

  “You haven’t figured it out yet? I’ve killed lots of people.”

  “How many?”

  “Two dozen. Maybe thirty. Me and the boys. Eddie, he’s the one you should talk to. He’s the one that started The Club.”

  “What’s The Club?”

  “Here. Us. We bring up girls, have our fun, and get rid of them.”

  “Under the pine trees,” I said.

  “Yeah. Smart, huh? My idea. No one is gonna dig up a tree to find a body.”

  “Amy Scadder,” I repeated.

  “She’s under one of them. Sweet little bit of sugar, too. That bitch could scream.”

  He wasn’t helping his cause. “Who else was involved?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who paid you to do it?”

  He squinted at me. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Before I burned your house down, I listened to some of your greatest hits.”

  Tucker laughed. “My tapes. Then you already know. I didn’t pick Amy. It was a job. You do jobs, right? Same thing. We’re a lot alike. I can tell.”

  “Stick to the question.”

  “Amy’s old lady hired me. I bet she’d pay you a lot more than I got. Ten grams of coke and a blowjob. That’s all she gave me.”

  “Phyllis Scadder is a dealer?”

  “Both of her goddamn parents are dealers. Her asshole father had some mob connection.”

  I knew I should have looked closer at Scadder’s financial situation. “So why did Phyllis want her daughter dead?”

  Tucker told me. The truth was ugly, but this one was tragic as well.

  “So how were the Scadders lucky enough to run into you?” I asked.

  “The old lady made some calls to the right people, got my name. I do specialty work sometimes. Like you do. In fact, I’m an important guy. Connected. You really don’t want to mess with me.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  I walked into the thorn bush and hit Tucker in the face with the grenade. Once. Twice. A few more times, until he was unconscious and missing so many teeth I could ram the whole thing in his mouth.

  I hesitated. This was cold-blooded murder.

  Was that the kind of man I was?

  Was that the man Pasha fell in love with?

  Was I the same as Tucker? A cancer, like McGlade said?

  What’s wrong with being a cancer? Earl said. Give this asshole the same mercy I give you.

  I pulled the pin.

  I moved away quick, expecting the grenade to be a dud.

  It wasn’t.

  Best thirty bucks I ever spent.

  HARRY

  Just when I was sure Eddie Cline was going to get away, his boat slowed.

  Had I hit him? Or hit something mechanical on the boat?

  Nope. He turned around and gunned it, coming right at me.

  There’s a game known as chicken, where two cars speed at each other on a collision course, and the first one to turn away is the loser.

  His boat was three times the size of mine. So this was like a truck playing chicken with a tricycle.

  I tried to turn port side.

  He adjusted to keep coming at me.

  I tried starboard.

  Eddie adjusted.

  This wasn’t a game of chicken. He wanted to run me over.

  And he could. The duel propellers on his gas-guzzling monstrosity would chew my boat up, with me in it.

  I pulled out the Arminius, but Eddie was bearing down on me ridiculously fast. I only had a few seconds before I was hamburger.

  I aimed.

  I fired.

  I missed.

  I fired.

  I missed.

  I fired twice.

  I missed twice.

  He got so close that there was no way I could miss him, even left-handed.

  I squeezed off my last two rounds—

  —and missed both times.

  The last thing I was ever going to see was the smile on that asshole’s face as he plowed over me. I didn’t even have time to jump out of the way.

  In a nanosecond, my entire life flashed before my eyes; never knowing my parents, never getting adopted, growing up in foster homes, being bullied in grade school, getting high with the bullies in high school, joining the Force, going private, getting a hit TV show, coming to Lake Violet. In that blink of an eye, I remembered every single time I got laid, every time I’d been sick, every terrific meal I’d ever eaten, all the stupid things I’d ever done, every cool place I’d ever visited, every failure, every triumph, all the times I laughed and all the times I cried, and most of all; the big, brown, loving eyes of my dwarf miniature pony, Rover.

  And as I took all of that in, I realized, with startling clarity, that in this whole big, messed-up, insane, ridiculous world, I was fucking awesome.

  Then, right before Eddie ran me down, there was a booming THUMP! sound, the boat veered away, and he was tossed a good five meters into the air, and then skipped across the top of the water like a rag doll without any bones. Probably because he broke them. All of them.

  His boat, now without a driver, began to circle. There was always a kill switch on big boats, to prevent that very thing from happening. You were supposed to pin it to your shirt, so if you fell overboard, the motor turned off.

  Eddie, apparently, hadn’t attached it to his shirt.

  I watched, half-fascinated, half-horrified, as his monster speedboat made a complete circle, and ran directly over his floating body.

  Then it stalled. I think because Eddie got caught in the dual props.

  “And that’s why it
’s a called a kill switch,” I said.

  There was no one there to laugh, or give me a high-five. It made me feel kind of awkward.

  That’s when I noticed blood in the water. Not around Eddie, though I’m sure there was plenty of blood by him. But around my own boat.

  I couldn’t make any sense of it.

  Then it all made sense, once I saw the head floating in the water.

  Bambi.

  Eddie had ran into the deer that Phin and I dumped overboard. Cline’s boat had ripped Bambi open, spreading his insides across the water like a massive red flower with a long looping intestinal stem.

  It was the perfect fairytale ending.

  A hoof broke the surface and bobbed, as if waving at me.

  I waved back.

  JACK

  It all happened so fast, I could only get off a single shot, hitting center mass.

  Then the hallway was shredded, exploding in thousands of bits of wood paneling, carpet, and drywall.

  I crab-walked backward, turning onto all fours, getting my feet under me, running toward the kitchen, then sliding, like a baseball player, as I almost bumped into that fourth guy with the glasses whose name I didn’t know, immediately making an educated guess why he’d gone into the garage.

  It was probably to get that crossbow he was holding.

  I raised my gun, fired twice, both times hitting his crossbow as he raised it to shoot me, and then there was another BRATATATATATA! eruption of spitting lead from behind me, and the crossbow guy did the shot-by-a-machinegun dance and flopped onto the kitchen table.

  I turned over, onto my belly, extending my arms in front of me, watching as Garrett McConnroy fell to his knees, dropping the MAC-10, both hands holding the gushing wound in his chest.

  I pushed up off the floor, ran to him, picking up his gun, then checked on the crossbow guy, who had more holes in him than a mini-golf course, dead as dead got.

  The front door opened, and I spun, raising my .38.

  “Whoa,” Phin said, raising both hands, one of them wrapped around a 9mm. “It’s me.”

  Then noise, from behind, and Phin and I both aimed at the guy coming in through the patio.

  “What’d I miss?” said Harry McGlade.

  I did some quick math. “There were four guys. I got two.”

  “I got mine,” Harry said. “Well, technically, Bambi did. How ’bout you, hat bro?”

  “Tucker Shears ate something that disagreed with him.”

  I holstered my Colt, grabbed a kitchen towel, and went to Garrett, easing him onto his back, pressing the towel to the bullet wound.

  “You’re the Motel Mauler,” I stated.

  He blinked at me, wide-eyed, like I’d suddenly materialized there.

  “We all are. We’re all in The Club.” He coughed, blood speckling his lips. “It’s… The Club.”

  “Well, pinhead,” Harry told him, “consider your club membership… revoked!”

  McGlade raised his palm, wanting a high-five from me. “C’mon! Give it up!”

  I didn’t give it up. Neither did Phin.

  “You guys suck,” Harry said.

  “Where’s Eddie Cline?” I asked him.

  “His boat hit a deer. He fell out, and it ran him over. Cut him to pieces. And that’s why they call it a kill switch.”

  Harry raised his palm again. “C’mon.”

  “Quit begging for high-fives,” I told him. “How about Shears?”

  “I chased Shears into the woods,” Phin said. For some reason, he and Harry had on identical hats. “Shears pulled out a grenade. It blew up right in his hands.”

  “A grenade?”

  “And you’re both sticking to these stories?”

  “Mine was true,” Harry said.

  “Phin?”

  “True enough. Anyone call the police?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t do cops. I’ll catch you guys back in Chicago.”

  Phin turned and left.

  “Why is he even here?” I asked.

  “Funny story.”

  “And why didn’t you answer your radio?”

  “Also a funny story.”

  “And the identical hats?”

  “Phin is my hat bro. Are the two ladies here?”

  “Drugged, in the bedroom.”

  “So we did it. We got the bad guys and saved the day.”

  “Apparently.”

  Harry looked at me, a stupid grin on his face, hope in his eyes. Then he raised his palm up.

  What the hell. I gave him the damn high-five.

  PHIN

  I’d driven well into the night, ending up in Shorington, to see Vincent Scadder. It was just past 1am when I pulled into the circular driveway and parked in front of the ornate double doors. In my pocket was Amy’s Driver’s License, taken from the pile I found in Tucker’s safe. I rang the doorbell.

  Phyllis answered. She was wearing a house dress similar to the one I’d seen her in last time. It might have been the same one. Her blue eyes again stared at me through pools of bloodshot, and the liquor smell wafted off her body.

  “Oh. It’s the tough guy.”

  “Is your husband here?”

  “He’s upstairs, dying in the bedroom.”

  I walked in past her and climbed the spiral staircase to the second level.

  “What did you find out?” She called after me.

  I walked past Amy’s room, down to the end of the hall. The door was open and Vincent Scadder was lying in bed, watching me approach.

  He looked awful. Jaundice had given his eyes and complexion a yellow cast. His cheeks were sunken. In his pajamas, he seemed half the size of the man I met a few days ago.

  “Come in,” he said. “I’m not dead yet.”

  I entered, closing the door behind me.

  “Did you find her?” he asked.

  “She’s dead. I’m sorry.”

  I handed him her license. He lowered his head and cried, briefly. When he finished he was obviously embarrassed.

  “Tell me how.”

  “Probably right after she ran away. Have you been watching the news, seen what’s happening in Minnesota?”

  “They’re digging up all those bodies.”

  I nodded.

  “Jesus. Were you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me.”

  I told him. All of it. From interviewing the chauffeur, to being locked in Tucker’s closet, to what happened in Minnesota. I only held out the part about his wife. When I finished, it was a while before he said anything.

  “So… it was just random that she got murdered? Just dumb luck?”

  “No.”

  “What was it?”

  “Your wife paid to have her murdered. She was worried Amy would blab about your drug dealing.”

  Scadder’s face went from yellow to white.

  “That was your coke in Amy’s car, wasn’t it? When she got pulled over.”

  “Yes.” His voice was small. “It was in my wall safe. Amy took it.”

  “Why?”

  “To punish us, I suppose. Years ago, I took a few chances in real estate. The chances didn’t pay off. I tried to cheat the IRS, but they found out. Fined me a ridiculous amount of money. I would have gone to prison if I didn’t pay it.”

  “So you started dealing.”

  “Not dealing directly. Not at first. I was a middle man. After years in the real estate business, I’d run across more than a few… shady characters. With a ten thousand dollar investment I could make fifty thousand. First, just selling to friends. Then, doing some distribution. Pretty soon I had dealers coming to me.”

  “Didn’t the IRS question where you got the money to pay them?”

  “Oddly enough, no. They didn’t care how I paid the fine, as long as I paid it. And after I paid them off, the money kept coming.”

  “That’s why you donated the auditorium to Amy’s school. A tax break.”

  He nodded, then began to cry.<
br />
  “Amy. My poor little Amy. I think I knew. I think I knew all along. Phyllis wouldn’t last in prison. She couldn’t live without the alcohol. So instead… to her own daughter… hiring some psycho…”

  Scadder blew his nose in some tissues next to the bed, and then appeared to calm himself. “Thank you, for taking care of Shears. I’d like to double your fee for that. But I need you to do one more thing for me.”

  He paused dramatically. I knew what was coming.

  “I want you to kill my wife.”

  It wasn’t the first time someone had asked me to murder his wife. I was once holding a gun on an important political figure. In exchange for his life, he gave me the option of murdering his wife and collecting on her considerable insurance policy.

  I declined. I also declined this time.

  “But you killed Shears.”

  “He needed killing.”

  “Phyllis killed my Amy.”

  I walked over to him and picked up the phone on his dresser, handing him the receiver.

  “Call the police and confess. I’m sure you could put her away for a while.”

  He frowned. “But I’d go to jail, too.”

  “We all have to make hard choices,” I said. “That’s life.”

  I walked out of the bedroom. Phyllis Scadder was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.

  “So?” she slurred. “What did you tell him?”

  I didn’t punch her.

  But I slapped her pretty goddamn hard.

  So much for my rule about not hurting women.

  She fell onto her ass and stared at me, more angry than hurt. Angry that the hired help raised a hand against her.

  I squatted down to her level. “Here’s what’s going to happen. Tucker told me everything. I’ve got the whole confession on tape. I’m taking it to the police. You’re going to get arrested. And then you’re going to go to prison for a very long time. Your life is about to be destroyed. Your family, your friends, they’re all going to know you’re a lousy drug dealer who had her own daughter killed. Your husband knows. He’s already on the phone with the lawyer, cutting you out of the Will. You’re going to die behind bars. Penniless. And despised. And sober.”

  I reached down, took the AMT from my boot heel.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Do it.”

  She wanted me to. I could see it.