‘We’re trying to see if there were any witnesses.’
Her forehead creased into a frown.
‘Why? What happened?’
‘Hit and run. Seems she was using her phone and wandered into the road without looking.’ His tone of voice didn’t exactly say, so she deserved what she got but it certainly said young people wandering around in a daze with their phone in their hand and their head up their ass was a pain in the neck they could well do without. ‘That doesn’t excuse the driver for not stopping, of course.’
‘Is she okay?’
He gave a soft shrug.
‘She’s still unconscious which means there’ll probably be some brain damage.’
She looked at the ground and shook her head.
‘I don’t think your friend’s at home,’ he said, leaving her and moving on to the next house.
She walked up to the door. Studied the red marks, trying not to be too obvious about it. It looked like blood to her, but that’s what she was expecting to see. The patrolman had broken bones on his mind. She knocked, despite what he’d said. When there was no answer, she walked down the side passage to the back. She tried the door but it was also locked. The window blind was down. She couldn’t see inside.
Back on the sidewalk, she was so engrossed in her thoughts, the patrolman almost knocked her over as he ran back down the street to where his partner was waving frantically at him farther down the road. She watched as they popped the trunk on a car, then helped a man climb out. The guy put his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun but she had no problem recognizing Chico’s man, Victor.
Her stomach lurched violently, her mouth suddenly filled with bile, hot and sharp in the back of her throat. She swallowed it down, headed back towards her car at a fast clip. Victor’s presence meant it was definitely blood on the door. She didn’t know or care how he’d ended up in the trunk of his car, or where his murderous little compadre was.
Her only thought was what was behind the closed blinds in the kitchen.
Chapter 25
DIXIE DROVE AROUND AIMLESSLY for an hour, enjoying the cool breeze washing over him. Trying to empty his mind. He didn’t pay much attention to where he was going. Country music played softly on the radio. Songs about small towns and simpler times. When life was easier and things were done the ‘right’ way with a good dose of alcohol, trucks and Jesus’s love thrown in. It soothed his jangled nerves, helped calm him down. He sang along a couple times. But, unlike Jesus’s love, it was only temporary. The minute he saw José’s face he’d be right back in the kitchen.
More by chance than design he ended up at an old abandoned factory near the railroad tracks. He drove in and around to the parking lot at the back. Nobody was likely to disturb them here. It was as good a spot as any for what he had in mind. He parked. Sat there. After a while he got out and paced restlessly. Breathing deeply, letting it out slowly. Told himself he was still a professional after all. He’d rise above these low-life scum. He was better than they were.
Or so he hoped.
He opened the back doors. Stared at the loathsome piece of humanity cowering inside. Leaning in, he grabbed hold of José by the collar. Dragged him to the edge of the cargo area. He manhandled him into a sitting position, swung his legs out so that he was sitting on the edge with his feet on the ground.
He stepped back. Took a good look at him. His nose had swollen to twice its normal size. Blood crusted his nostrils, his watery eyes turning black. His breath whistled erratically through the slit in the tape over his mouth. From the way he hunched over it was clear his stomach was still giving him a lot of pain, would be for days. Fresh blood glistened wetly on his upper arm. He looked pathetic. That didn’t mean Dixie felt an ounce of compassion.
Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you plan, he reflected to himself.
You can shove your self-control and professionalism up your ass.
***
DIXIE SAT ON THE ground, his back against the van, legs drawn up to his chest. His forearms rested on his knees, head hanging down between them. Not from his exertions. From shame.
His breathing had settled. Sweat dripped from his hair onto the battered copy of the Serenity Prayer which lay on the ground between his feet. His lips moved soundlessly, his eyes closed, their assistance not required.
He was in possession of a number of things he didn’t have a half hour ago.
He had an address on a bloodied scrap of paper.
He had a key to go with it.
Those two things came courtesy of José.
And he had knowledge about himself. It wasn’t anything that made his jaw slack with surprise. But it wasn’t anything that made him proud of himself either.
He didn’t want to know where that came from. Or whether there was more to come, how deep the well of self-awareness was.
Because it didn’t matter how many times he tried to tell himself he’d done it for the woman he’d known as Rachel, he couldn’t deny the satisfaction he’d got for himself. Catharsis by violence.
The frenzy that had consumed him disappeared as quickly as it had come. Left him feeling empty. Drained. What he wanted to do more than anything else was climb in the back of the van, crawl into the comforting warmth of his sleeping bag, sleep for a week.
But he didn’t have that luxury.
He pushed himself wearily to his feet. Looked all around. Saw what he was after. He got a grip on José’s collar, hauled him up. Dragged him towards the dumpster he’d seen, José stumbling along next to him, slipping and tripping as he tried to get his feet under him. There was an old padlock hooked over the hasp. He unhooked it, lifted the lid. Peered in. Empty.
He got a better grip on José’s collar. Grabbed hold of his belt with the other hand. Heaved. Tipped him in. With his hands still tied behind his back José landed in a tangled heap in the bottom. Dixie swung the lid shut, hooked the padlock through the hasp again. He tried closing it but it was rusted solid. It would have to do. He couldn’t believe the guy’s luck. It probably wouldn’t be more than a day or two before some old wino scavenging for scraps found him and let him out.
He was so caught up in his thoughts, the final loose end to be dealt with, he didn’t even see Earl and his pickup as he blew past it in the van.
Chapter 26
THE MINUTE EVAN WALKED into the Jerusalem Tavern and heard Nathaniel Rateliff’s Wasting Time on the jukebox he knew what to expect.
Guillory was already seated at the bar with two beers in front of her. She pushed one of them along the counter towards him.
‘How many times have you put this on?’ he said.
‘Three or four. You still want to know why I was suspended?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
She looked down at her right hand. The knuckles were still swollen but now her hand looked more like a human hand than an air-filled rubber glove. The deep cut was still angry and inflamed. Maybe she was leaving it to fester as a silent protest. She wouldn’t clean it until she was exonerated.
‘You told me you hit a suspect,’ he said when she hadn’t said anything after a couple minutes.
Her hand tensed as he said it, almost making a fist. He thought again that he wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of it.
‘Yeah. I was getting kind of disillusioned anyway.’
He nodded sympathetically. There wasn’t much he didn’t know about disillusioned.
‘So why’d you hit the guy?’
Instead of answering she cocked her head, listening to the music on the jukebox. The same song had just started up again—Wasting Time.
‘Dance with me,’ she said.
She didn’t give him the chance to think about it. Just grabbed his hand and yanked him off his stool. He curled his right arm around her waist, his left hand up between her shoulder blades, holding her tightly as she flung her arms around his neck. She closed her eyes, laid her head on his shoulder. Pressed tightly together from knee to hip, they danced.<
br />
A few of the other drinkers looked at them strangely at first, the curious glances turning to soft smiles, then went back to their conversations.
Guillory sang quietly into his chest as they danced, the smell of her fresh and clean in his nose. He held his lips against her hair as around them the room receded into the background. At one point her voice caught in her throat. If he didn’t know it already, he knew then that something bad was on its way. He couldn’t have told you if the song played once or three times but suddenly it was over.
‘Not too embarrassed?’ she said as they took their seats again.
‘Just so long as nobody claps.’
He looked along the bar. A guy he knew on nodding terms did just that, applauding silently. The guy with him gave a thumbs-up and a cheesy grin. Evan raised his beer bottle to them, turned back to Guillory.
Then a couple of fresh beers landed on the bar in front of them. At least the bartender didn’t wink at him as he put them down.
‘You’d think everyone’s been waiting for that to happen,’ he said.
She gave a soft shrug and a softer smile.
And the longer she didn’t answer the why’d you hit him? question, the worse he knew it was going to be.
She picked up one of the free beers. Took a long swallow. It must have caught in her throat or gone down the wrong way because her eyes were suddenly moist.
‘I told you about my brother Ray’s daughter. Sofia.’
He nodded, wishing she’d put the song on another couple dozen times.
‘She’s got leukemia.’
‘I thought it was in remission.’
‘It was.’
Two little words.
So much hope extinguished.
He put his hand on her arm, squeezed gently. It was as if he’d accidentally squeezed the wooden bar. He knew she didn’t want any words of comfort from him so he didn’t offer any.
‘So, we had this guy in an interview room. Robert Garfield. We thought we’d make him sweat, leave him there for an hour. That’s when I took the call from Ray.’
She swallowed thickly. Cleared her throat.
‘He told me the cancer’s back.’
She stretched her arms above her head, fingers interlaced. Her eyes were shut now.
‘The prognosis isn’t good.’
Just as when they’d danced together–which felt as if it was a hundred years ago—it was as if they were the only ones in the room. Nothing intruded, nothing else mattered.
‘So I’ve got Ray crying down the phone line at me and any minute I have to go back in that room to interview the sick deviant.’
Only then did Evan get an inkling of the enormity of what was coming, of the games that fate likes to play. The pleasure it gets from twisting the knife, from kicking a man when he’s down.
‘You could have asked someone else—’
‘I didn’t say, did I?’ she said as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘This guy Garfield’s a pedophile. And I’ve got to interview him with the sound of Ray’s voice still ringing in my ears.’
Evan couldn’t stop himself wondering if she’d welcomed the opportunity to step back into the interview room, knowing there wasn’t a chance in hell of it ending in any way other than the way it did, a release for the pain and anger that lived and grew inside her.
‘Think you could’ve kept your hands off him, Buckley?’
He shook his head. It was the correct response. Got a satisfied nod of the head back.
‘The guy’s been convicted before. But you know how it is with these perverts, they don’t ever give it up. It doesn’t matter how many times they get put away, they come out and get right back to it. The only thing that happens is they learn from their mistakes, they get more careful.
‘This particular sicko’s a lawyer—or at least he was until he got caught the first time. That’s what makes him the go-to guy for illegally re-homing kids over the internet. All you gotta do is find a nice young one you like the look of and this guy knows exactly how to draft the paperwork. The sick perverts get their very own kiddie to take away and abuse in the comfort of their own homes.’
She held up a finger like a car salesman proudly announcing the deal-clinching bonus.
‘Thoroughly road tests all the merchandise himself to make sure it’s fit for purpose—free of charge, of course. What a guy! It also meant he knew damn well we didn’t have enough on him.’
Evan held his breath, watching the emotions crawl across her face—anger, disgust, grim satisfaction. She was back in the interview room, re-living every moment.
‘He was mocking me. Taunting me because he knew I couldn’t touch him.’
She let out a short bark of a laugh, looked down at her hand.
‘From a law enforcement point of view. But there was something else as well. It was as if this monster had a sixth sense, as if he’d been listening in on my phone conversation. Maybe I’m just no good at my job, but he knew it was getting to me on a personal level, not just the everyday disgust of a normal human being.’
‘What did he say?’
She paused before answering as if she didn’t even want to repeat what had been said, as if repeating it would taint her as well. She swallowed a couple times, preparing her mouth for the distasteful duty it had to perform.
‘He had this sick, mocking smile on his lips, asked me if I’d ever heard the expression—’
‘You don’t have to repeat it.’ He rested his hand on her arm, felt her whole body stiff as a board. ‘I can imagine.’
‘Actually, I don’t think you can.’
He let her have that one. She closed her eyes, her nostrils flaring, gently massaging her right hand as if she needed to get it back into shape for the next encounter.
‘Did he say anything else?’
She smiled the smile of a woman with God on her side.
‘Actually, no. He was having trouble talking by then seeing as my fist was halfway down his throat along with most of his front teeth. He made a lot of nngh, nngh, nngh noises though until they pulled me off him.’
She picked up her beer and drained it in one.
‘Funny thing is, I don’t remember anybody pulling real hard.’
Her cell phone suddenly pinged as a text message arrived, the sound jerking her firmly back into the present.
‘Gotta go,’ she said, slipping off her seat. ‘It’s Ray. He’s outside waiting. I’m staying with them for a couple days.’
He did his best to hide his disappointment, made a really bad job of it. He didn’t know how he thought the evening might pan out but this wasn’t it.
‘Thanks for the dance, Buckley.’
She was right at the door and he’d just got his ass back on the stool as the first bars of Wasting Time started up again. She turned and raised a hand, gave him a smile that almost broke his heart.
Her parting words stayed with him as the door banged shut after her.
Don’t do anything stupid if you run into this guy Dixie.
Chapter 27
DIXIE LIKED EVERYTHING SQUARED away. He hated loose ends. After picking up the money he’d driven across town to another branch of the same self-storage company and parked the bag there. And because he was a cautious man he’d taken a few precautions, stashed a couple things in the bag with the money. Not another tracker or anything like that. More like insurance. He’d leave it a couple days to see how everything panned out, then come back with Jackson to divvy it up.
In the meantime, there was one loose end he wanted to tie up. It was more of an itch he needed to scratch than a loose end. Evan Buckley. He needed to find out why the guy was looking for him, make sure that there wasn’t anything that might come back to bite him on the ass.
That’s why he was sitting in the dark in Evan’s executive swivel chair when Evan got back to his office that night after his drinks and dance with Guillory. The sight of Dixie sitting in his chair—not to mention the gun sitting on the desk next to his hand—sober
ed him up fast. Dixie picked up the gun, motioned with it for Evan to come in and shut the door.
‘Have a seat,’ Dixie said, indicating the visitor’s chair.
Evan studied his visitor, Guillory’s words in his ears.
Don’t do anything stupid.
A picture of Carly in the diner as she showed him the cut under her breast crossed his mind. This guy didn’t look like somebody who’d do that sort of thing. He looked like a regular guy. But then that’s what all the monsters looked like. They were very good at blending in. Looking normal.
‘You’ve been looking for me. Well, here I am.’
Evan nodded.
Don’t do anything stupid.
‘Why?’
Evan looked at the guy’s hands. He had large, powerful hands with a strange tattoo on one of them. He couldn’t take his eyes off the right one. It looked as if he’d punched a brick wall. Repeatedly. Was that the hand that had recently beaten information out of Sarah? Or worse?
‘Carly asked me to find you.’
‘I worked that out already. Why?’
Evan shrugged. He needed to buy some time.
‘No idea. She refused to tell me.’
Don’t do anything stupid.
The answer appeared to satisfy Dixie. He sat back in Evan’s chair, leg out at a funny angle, studied him. Stroked his porn star mustache. Then Evan realized he wasn’t studying him. It was more like he was looking right through him.
But whatever was going through his mind, he was distracted.
Depends on your definition of stupid.
Those were his words. He remembered saying them to Guillory. And there’s a world of difference between stupid and a calculated risk.
He was glad now he hadn’t splashed out, bought himself a big, heavy, expensive desk. No, he’d bought a lightweight piece of junk. At least it had metal legs which gave it a bit of heft.
Dixie still had the gun in his hand resting flat on the desk.
He was still distracted.
Depends on your definition of stupid.
Evan grabbed the edge of the desk as he came out of his chair. Pushing upwards, lunging forward in one movement. The desk tipped onto its legs, the far side chopping Dixie’s thighs, trapping him in the chair.
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