He stopped talking. Cocked his head, listening. Evan thought he’d heard something too, the sound of an approaching vehicle. But there was nothing more. He felt Chico relax on top of him.
‘Have you heard of Ed Gein?’
He waited for Evan to respond. Increased the pressure on the knife when he didn’t.
‘Uh-uh.’
‘He was a murderer. And a body snatcher. Liked to dig up recently buried women.’
Evan tensed. Chico tightened his grip again.
‘He was the role model for a number of movie characters. Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Did you see those movies?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Then you’ll know where this is going.’
He was right. Evan knew exactly where it was going.
‘Gein peeled the skin off the faces of the women he dug up. Made them into masks.’
In the distance there was the unmistakeable sound of a car approaching. They both heard it. Chico’s breath quickened.
‘Unless you tell me where Diego is, I’m going to peel the skin off your face and make it into a mask. You thought the pepper spray stung, you just wait. Then I’ll mail it to your friend Kate.’
Chico watched the road as he talked. He pushed the knife harder. Evan felt another sharp stab of pain, a trickle of blood running down his neck.
The car they’d heard approaching suddenly appeared looking like it was going to shoot straight past without a second glance. At the last moment the driver braked hard, pulled off the road, showering them both with gravel as it skidded to a halt. The door flew open. Jackson climbed out.
Chico and Jackson stared at each other for a couple of beats like a cheetah on its kill watching a hungry lion approach.
‘What are you doing with him?’
‘Why? You want to finish what you started?’
Jackson grinned. ‘You heard about that, huh?’
‘He wants to know where Diego is,’ Evan called. ‘He thinks I’m in some kind of conspiracy with him.’
‘Don’t worry. He’s not going anywhere for now.’
‘You know where he is?’ Chico loosened his grip on Evan’s hair. Evan tried to squirm away from under him. Chico held him down harder.
‘Let him go, Chico.’
Chico did as he was told. Sort of.
None of them would have expected a man of his age to be so agile.
He let go of Evan’s hair. Jumped off his chest. Landed behind his head. Spun around. Grabbed his hair again and jerked him into a sitting position. Within the space of a couple seconds, he was crouched behind Evan’s upper body, his knife pushed into the flesh under Evan’s jaw once more.
‘Not until I find out where Diego is.’
Jackson shrugged. He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out his gun.
Evan The Human Shield groaned.
‘You think I’m worried about hitting him?’ Jackson said.
He moved to the side.
Chico pushed the knife harder.
Evan hissed through his teeth.
‘He doesn’t know,’ Jackson said.
He took another sideways step, his gun arm tracking from side to side. Evan was a lot wider than Chico. It wasn’t an easy shot.
‘I think he does.’
‘I really don’t.’
That was Evan. It got him another sharp jab. It also gave his brain the poke it needed. He could feel Chico’s knees pushing into his back on either side. A foot apart.
He thrust his bound wrists sharply upwards. Caught Chico in the cojones.
Chico yelped, a mixture of surprise and pain. His grip loosened in Evan’s hair, the pressure on the knife relaxing.
Evan threw himself sideways.
Jackson shot Chico in the arm. The knife flew out of his hand as he was thrown backwards. He scrambled to his feet, backed away from Jackson advancing towards him.
‘He’s got a gun in his pocket,’ Evan yelled.
Jackson walked past Evan to where Chico was standing, his hand clamped over the wound on his arm, blood oozing out from between his fingers. He reached into Chico’s pocket. Took out the gun, then stepped away again. He looked down at Evan still lying in the dirt.
‘Nice of you to lend a hand, Evan. Get up.’
He put a hand under Evan’s armpit, hauled him to his feet. Evan looked around for the knife.
‘Where’s Diego?’ Chico said, squeezing his arm tighter.
‘Where’s his partner?’ Jackson said.
‘He says he doesn’t know,’ Evan said. ‘Says she escaped the first day.’
‘So where is she now?’
Evan shook his head. Jackson suddenly grinned.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘She’s alive and well. About two miles back. She ran off the road.’
‘You sure?’
Jackson nodded, grinned wider.
‘I still don’t see what’s so funny.’
‘It didn’t click at the time because I thought he still had her.’ He waved the gun at Chico. ‘Some woman tried to run me off the road, but it didn’t work out. It was your partner. I knew there was something familiar about her. She looked like she’d tried to stop the car before me with her face. But it was definitely her.’
Everybody looked at everybody else, all of them wondering what the hell was going on.
‘Lucky it didn’t work out, eh? Lucky for you. Lucky for me, seeing as you decided to do your own little private deal and give my money away. That wasn’t in the plan. Why’d you do it, Evan?’
‘Because I didn’t think you were interested in getting her back. All you wanted was the money.’
‘Ironic isn’t it. She wasn’t even in danger. Not from him anyway. From bad driving, maybe.’
Evan saw the knife on the ground, kicked it over to Jackson. He turned around, extended his arms. Jackson picked the knife up. He grabbed hold of Evan’s hands, lifting them up, bending him double. He jabbed the point of the knife into Evan’s butt. Evan bit his tongue, didn’t make a sound.
‘I ought to kill you for trying to double-cross me.’
He lifted Evan’s hands higher still, bending him lower. Eased the pressure so he came back up. Did it three or four times more. Up. Down. Up. Down. Evan looked like a giant chicken pecking for food. Then Jackson sliced through the plastic cuffs, set him free.
‘You were wrong, by the way. About me only wanting the money. I want him too.’ He raised his gun. Pointed it at Chico. ‘Because he was the one who told Carly to kill Dixie.’
Chico stared back at him, his face impassive.
Jackson walked towards him. Gun arm outstretched. Level with Chico’s face.
‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blow your brains all the way back to Mexico.’
Chico smiled then. His eyes seemed to say:
Just the one? Sure.
‘Jude. That good enough?’
Chapter 86
IF CHICO HAD WANTED to gently take the gun out of Jackson’s fingers, turn it around and blow his head off, he could have done so easily.
‘What do you mean Jude?’
‘I think you know.’
Jackson couldn’t put his thoughts into words. He shook his head. His gun arm trembled.
Chico eased his hand off the wound on his arm, rolled up his sleeve. Rivulets of blood ran down the sinewy muscle. It didn’t mean you couldn’t see the tattoo on his arm, couldn’t see that it was identical to the one on the hand holding the gun inches from his face.
‘Not everybody wants the whole world to see what they choose to write on their bodies. That’s a modern thing. In your face. The need to impress other people.’
Jackson was speechless. He dropped his arm. Stared into Chico’s eyes.
‘You know what I’m talking about now?’
Jackson shook his head.
Chico nodded his.
‘Oh, but you do. I can see it in your eyes.’
�
�Jude . . .’ Jackson said, his voice a whisper.
‘Was my son.’
Jackson wouldn’t stop shaking his head. Like if he did for just one second, it would make it true.
‘How?’
‘Have you seen my wife? No? Keep it that way. But you’ve met Diego. When that boy popped out I swore I’d cut off my dick before I went near her again.’
His voice grew louder as he spoke, his face redder. He took a deep breath. Let it out slowly.
‘Then I met your mother. Maybe you remember, maybe you were too young, but your father liked to drink with both hands back in those days. I don’t think he even noticed if she was there or not.’
Jackson tried to say something. No real words came out.
‘When Jude was born your father never even knew he wasn’t his. How he thought he ever got it up long enough given the amount he drank is anybody’s guess.’
Chico rolled his sleeve down, clamped his hand on the wound. Evan watched, fascinated, hardly daring to breathe.
‘That’s when your mother took you all away.’ He smiled sourly. ‘You couldn’t really blame her. I wasn’t what you’d call a good role model for a young boy.’
‘But he found you?’
Chico nodded.
‘And he was okay with it?’
Chico smiled properly at the memory. ‘Yeah. At first he thought it was cool.’ He did a one-handed air quote with his fingers. ‘He even copied the tattoo.’
‘That was yours?’
‘I got it done when I left the seminary. They’d been good to me. Saved my life. I studied hard, learned a lot. I was good at math.’ His eyes had glazed over, thinking back to how things might have been, should have been. ‘I thought it was funny. A failed priest with the number of the beast tattooed on his arm. I liked the idea of it being almost coded—only decipherable by anyone with half a brain or more. That cuts out most people.’
‘Jude told us he thought it up.’
‘Did you ever see that boy have a mathematical thought in his head? Really?’
Jackson couldn’t remember. Didn’t want to try to remember. It made no difference.
‘Can you imagine what I felt when I first met Dixie and saw that tattoo on his hand?’
Jackson shook his head.
Chico snorted.
‘Is it any wonder I thought of him as more of a son to me than Diego?’ He smiled at the irony of it all, the way life always had the last laugh, the way fate was never satisfied.
‘You said at first . . .’
That wiped the smile off Chico’s face and Jackson would come to regret saying it.
‘It gave him a problem once he thought about it. After the initial excitement wore off. The son of a drug-dealing Mexican peasant. I think . . .’
‘What?’
‘I think you know.’
Jackson shook his head.
‘I think you’ve just realized but you don’t want to admit it.’
‘No.’
‘I think that’s what he wanted to talk to Dixie about the night he died.’
The words hung in the air so palpably you could have sliced them into little pieces with a knife.
‘He wanted to ask him how to come to terms with having me for a father.’
Then Jackson took a leaf out of Evan’s book, demonstrated that he’d never heard of quitting while he was ahead.
‘Did you—’
The change in Chico was as dramatic as it was fast. His eyes, dark to begin with, turned so black Evan was glad he wasn’t the one staring into the unholy abyss that lay behind them.
Chico jabbed a bloody finger into Jackson’s chest, his voice like a cold wind.
‘If you say what I think you were going to say, I will put my hand into your foul mouth and down your throat and rip your unloving heart out.’
Jackson stood his ground, not moving a muscle.
‘They found the body of the man who sold Jude the drugs that killed him in a filthy alley where the syphilitic whores go to piss. He’d been eviscerated’—he drew his fist violently across his stomach, twisted it in the air—‘and it took him a very long time to die. I should know, because it was me who kept him alive when he begged to die, savored every drop of his pain.’
He shook his head violently. Their faces were inches apart, the air between them thick with raw emotion. Chico pushed his closer still until they could have kissed.
‘Now ask me if I gave my son the drugs that killed him.’
He jabbed Jackson in the chest again.
‘Ask me.’
Jackson didn’t ask him.
Another jab. Much harder this time.
‘Ask me,’ he screamed. ‘Ask me.’
It didn’t matter how many times he spat the words into Jackson’s face, he wouldn’t do it. Even when Chico slapped him full across the mouth with his bloodied hand, he stood stock still, barely breathing. Head up, he let the torrent of anguish wash over him, let the waves of his anger break over him until at last it was spent and Chico’s shoulders slumped.
Nobody said a word for a long time. Chico broke the silence which seemed only right. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.
‘Wipe your face.’
Jackson took it, wiped the blood and spittle from his mouth and chin.
‘I’m going to turn around and walk back to my car,’ Chico said. ‘I’m going to get in and drive away. You take the money. I don’t want it. And if you’re not happy with that you go right ahead and shoot me in the back.’
He turned on his heel and walked away. Jackson stood and watched him, his gun hanging limply in his hand at his side.
‘Hey, Chico,’ he called and Chico turned to face him again. ‘You want Diego?’
Chico nodded as if he’d been offered nothing more than a cup of coffee. Jackson gave him the address, threw the key to him.
‘No,’ Evan shouted, as Chico continued walking to his car, ‘you can’t let him just walk away. He was going to kill me.’
Jackson looked at him. Grinned without a trace of humor. ‘He didn’t though, did he? What’s your problem? Besides,’—he raised his voice for Chico to hear—‘shooting him is the easy way out. Quick and painless. Then it’s all over. This way he’s got to live the rest of his life with a constant pain here.’ He grabbed his shirtfront in the middle of his chest, screwed the fabric up in his fingers. ‘Isn’t that right, Chico?’
Chico had stopped. One foot in his SUV, one still on the gravel.
‘This way he has to live with what he just told us about Jude. And come to terms with losing Dixie, the nearest thing he ever had to the kind of son he always wanted.’
He paused. Evan knew it was only to prolong the agony.
‘And on top of all that he’s got to deal with Diego. The other son, the idiot. The one he wishes had never been born or who should have died in Jude’s place. The one who just double-crossed him and tried to kill him.’
He let out a short bark of a laugh.
‘I was him, I’d have been praying for the merciful sound of a bullet every step back to that car. Sorry to disappoint you, Chico.’
Chico got all the way into the SUV and turned it around.
‘Hell’s something you carry around with you,’ Jackson shouted at him as he pulled away. ‘Not somewhere you go.’
Chapter 87
‘I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU let him walk away,’ Evan said.
Jackson shrugged.
‘You’ll get over it.’
Evan let out a strangled laugh, more like a cough, still raw in his throat.
‘Right. That’s okay, then.’
‘Besides, what are you gonna do? Nobody can prove he told Carly to kill Dixie. That’s what she’ll say, but who’s gonna believe a word that comes out of her mouth? And you can’t prove who killed Rachel. Everybody’s dead. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about him living to a ripe old age. I reckon Ortega’s got some ideas about that. Live by the sword, die by the sword. It’s good enough for me.’
The gospel according to Jackson over, he looked across at the van.
‘The money’s in there is it?’
Evan nodded.
‘I might as well take it seeing as we don’t need it to get your partner back.’
‘You were going to take it anyway. And to hell with her.’
Jackson stopped walking towards the van. Turned to face him.
‘Actually, no. A long time ago, I was a cop too. We look after our own. The plan was to get her back and then take the money off Chico.’
A passing car slowed as if it was going to pull off the road. They both turned. Something about the look of them made the driver put his foot back on the gas, decide to find somewhere else to eat his lunch.
‘I thought that might be your partner. I better get going.’
He took the two duffel bags out of the van, carried them over to his car. His continued freedom was in Evan’s hands although Jackson didn’t know it. If he drove away, out of range of the GPS jammer hidden in the van, the police would be able to track the signal again. He popped the trunk and lifted the bags in, then turned around, leaned against the open trunk.
‘What happened to Carly?’
Evan took him through it. Jackson nodded along, his face impassive. As if there was nothing Evan could say about her that would surprise him.
‘She’s got the luck of the devil,’ Jackson said. ‘She got off lightly.’
‘Would you really have strung her up?’
Jackson cocked his head, regarded him carefully.
‘The truth?’
Evan nodded.
‘No. I wanted to scare the ever-loving shit out of them, put them through hell for what they did to me and . . .’ His voice trailed off, came back a little thicker. ‘Maybe I got carried away. But I wouldn’t have killed her.’ He gave Evan a searching look. ‘I can’t believe you give a damn after all she did to you. She tried to kill you today.’
‘I know. You should have told me the truth.’
Jackson shook his head.
‘No. You wouldn’t have gone along with it.’
Evan knew he was right but Jackson hadn’t finished.
‘Anyway, thanks to you, I haven’t killed anybody. You think I’m crazy. Everybody does. Maybe I am. I’m sure as hell an Old Testament, eye for an eye sort of guy. But I sleep easy at night knowing everything I did was out of love for my brother and Rachel.’
Hunting Dixie Page 33
