Wolf Who Walks Alone: A Raymond Wolf Mystery Novel

by Steve R. Yeager

  The phone dinged, and she turned to him after reading the message on the screen. “Morgan has promised me that she’ll assist you and keep you updated on that other cell number we found so you’ll know where the phone ends up. I’ll hold onto the burner. I’ve already programmed the number in it so you can call me when you get there. That okay? You will call, right? I also want to know all that you know. That’s important. If it goes bad, Morgan knows some people she can bring in to help us out.”

  She hesitated. “Or, we could call the FBI…?”

  “No, I will do better on my own.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror. Tammy was watching the road roll past through her side window, not really paying attention. It seemed almost too easy to get her to leave everything behind and start anew, which made him not so sure they could entirely trust her.

  Not yet, anyway.

  The miles rolled by in silence. Pearson was in obvious pain, but it came and went in waves, and she hid it well. He liked that about her. She was tough and didn’t complain. So many people were not tough and always complained. When he found the missing girl, he might even consider breaking one of his own rules and return to Pearson, wherever she ended up. Or maybe not. There was still a lot of road left to travel.

  Right to the minute of Pearson’s estimation, they arrived in Abilene, and by that time she had already demonstrated how to use her smartphone to find a specific location on a map. Even driving, Wolf made a quick study of it, soon understanding just how to scroll, zoom, and all sorts of other functions she deemed necessary to operate the device, figuring again that he might just have to get one of his own someday.

  He followed the directions on the tiny screen until he pulled the Chevy to a stop under the canopy in front of the Abilene Medical Center. Two women sitting in wheelchairs out front stared back at him, ever assessing, ever judging. They both reminded him of his grandmother. Or of two aging crows.

  “This is it,” Pearson said. “You are on your own from here on out. Honestly, do you think you can handle it without me there telling you what to do?” She attempted to smile and halfway through she failed to do so, wincing in pain instead.

  “I will find her. And you will recover. Women are often tougher than men.”

  “They are,” she breathed. “Don’t you damn well ever forget that.”

  Tammy got out from the backseat and helped a very weak Pearson climb out of the front seat. Wolf watched them disappear as they were both swallowed up by the medical center. The two old ladies turned and said something to one another, and then resumed their mutually judgmental gazes at him. It was almost as if the full weight of his grandmother’s spirit was looking down upon him, watching his every move.

  After a single, respectful nod back at the ladies, he pulled out of the parking lot and followed the directions on the smartphone until he was headed back to the highway that would take him southward, toward Oklahoma. And as he accelerated onto the two-lane highway, the lights behind him faded into the far distance, and a billion cold stars began to paint the night sky as he drove deeper into the heart of darkness.

  - 40 -

  WHICH DOOR?

  MONTEZ WISHED HE’D saved that single cigarette, really wished he’d saved it. His hands were shaking, bad, and he had to keep them hidden in his pockets to not show anyone just how terrified he felt.

  They’d think he was the finocchio.

  He was resting against the front fender of the big, black Crown Victoria, sweating bullets, pretending he wasn’t. Even the nearby cowboy with a black combat rifle slung low would not say a word to him. No idle chit-chat. The guy just kept looking over at him, stern-faced, watching carefully, making him feel like a piece of still living meat headed to slaughter.

  Just give it time. Any minute now. Why didn’t they just get it over with…? If it came down to it, he still had the .357, which he’d used to replace the smaller 9mm Sig with earlier. It was in the new shoulder holster he’d picked up for it on the way south. While it barely fit under his suit jacket, the thing gave him a sense of size, of importance. Like he was some kind of badass from the movies, a Dirty Harry, or a Paul Kersey type. Now it was like some damned dead albatross hung around his neck.

  But if things went sideways, he could draw the big gun, shoot his way out. If he did, though, that would require him to be fully committed to his cause, which he wasn’t just yet. Not while there was still a slim chance for redemption. His employer, Mr. Krieg, remained inside the ranch house. It had been almost thirty minutes so far—twenty-six minutes and thirty-two seconds to be precise. His stolen watch had told him so.

  During minute twenty-seven, the front door opened and Krieg stepped onto the porch. Eddie was with him, one step behind, one step to the left, subservient. The kid was almost a foot taller than the stooped-over man and was showing nothing on his face that Montez could work with. The little rat just fixed his cheap suit collar, brushed it off casually, glanced left, right, then left again.

  Montez knew then that he now meant absolutely nothing to the kid any longer. Real shitty, kid. Real shitty. He pulled his hands from his pockets and smoothed down his suit jacket as best he could and, through a sheer act of will, forced his hands to stop shaking. Then he walked over to meet Mr. Krieg as unthreateningly as he could, which wasn’t easy given what was foremost on his mind.

  “Sir,” Montez said, sticking a hand out.

  Krieg ignored the offer and pressed his cane in the gravel, grinding the tip. “You’ve disappointed me, Mr. Montez. You had such promise.”

  Montez glanced at Eddie. In an instant, he knew. The kid had sold him out. That last cigarette was coming back to haunt him yet again. He now had two choices as he saw it. He could beg like a pussy, thereby giving him a chance to live—or he could play the badass to the end and die with a bit of dignity.

  The lady? Or the tiger…? But it really wasn’t a choice as simple as that kind of fairy tale. He realized then and there that there was, in fact, only one practical choice he could make.

  “I did what you asked me to do, sir,” Montez said. “I got her here alive. I cleaned up Vaughn’s mess. And I took care of all the loose ends.”

  “All except for one, it seems.”

  Montez turned slightly and began to move a hand up toward the big Colt. It would be even slower than drawing the 9mm, but he could do it. He’d already been rehearsing it in his mind. But Eddie had apparently read his mind, and the kid was just about to re-earn his moniker, because, before Montez could even get his hand inside his jacket, Eddie drew his own piece and aimed it at Montez.

  Montez sighed and lowered his hand. “I guess you made your choice, kid.”

  Eddie nodded.

  Buy. Time. “What can I do to make this right?”

  Krieg took another step forward. He looked at Montez, sizing him up. “It is not just the girl who was injured. Oh, no. I’ve had other reports of the mess you have been leaving behind. Much of it I’ve been able to clean up, but the work you have done to date has been sloppy. Very sloppy indeed, Mr. Montez. Too many deaths, far too many.”

  “I understand that, sir. And I can fix this.”

  “How, Mr. Montez?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t me who was responsible for all those stiffs. Look—” Montez swept his hands up and down against his suit. “—not a single drop of blood on me. Nothing. It wasn’t me who shot those guys. Just take a look at him, sir. Look at that kid. See the blood on him?”

  Krieg turned to Eddie. “Is this true?”

  “Yes, sir,” Eddie said. “He had me shoot them all because he was afraid to do it himself.”

  Montez’s heart sank, and his anger at the kid grew.

  A grin broke out on Krieg’s face as he reached out and touched the fabric of Eddie’s cheap suit. He ran his fingers over the material and nodded. Montez tried on a smile of his own. It didn’t feel right. And he was correct because Krieg’s smile vanished in an instant.

  “You really shot them all?” Krie
g asked Eddie.

  The kid nodded. “Except for one. He wanted to prove something.”

  Krieg turned to Eddie and rested his full weight on his cane. “And what was that?”

  “He wanted to show how that big-ass revolver of his would blow clean through a guy’s skull.”

  “He did, did he?” Krieg gazed at Montez, nothing but an absent coldness in his eyes. “I see.” He absorbed this new information for a bit. “Would it upset you if I were to ask you to shoot one more?”

  Eddie smiled. “It’d be just fine with me, sir. Say when.”

  “Kid,” Montez pleaded, “we’ve been through a lot together. Don’t do this.”

  “Sir?” Eddie asked permissively of Krieg.

  The gun in Eddie’s hand was rock steady. No longer did the kid shake as he had before killing the other men. Montez realized then that he had made a killer out of the guy.

  But, before the kid could act, Krieg held a hand up to stop him. “Not just yet, Edward. It would not be sporting of us to do it here. Like this.”

  Montez took a step backward, keeping his hands raised. He’d have to be quick, very quick, but he could do it. His life now depended on just how fast he was.

  Be quick or be dead.

  But, before he could get his suit jacket out of the way and his hand high enough to go for the .357 in his jacket, he felt the presence of someone else standing behind him. It was the goddamned cowboy with the hat and the shiny belt buckle—and the black combat rifle, slung low.

  - 41 -

  LIGHTS OUT

  THAT CIGARETTE THAT Montez had wanted? He no longer wanted it anymore. He wished to God now that he wasn’t a smoker, that he’d never been a smoker, and that he’d never even seen a cigarette in his entire life. He also wished to God that he had gone to the gym once in a while, too, instead of spending so much time with the booze and the broads.

  He was thinking all this because, right now, he was running for his life. And he wasn’t doing so well at it.

  The cowboy with the shiny belt buckle had dropped him off in the middle of fucking nowhere. But it was somewhere that stank like farm animals, only worse, and he had found himself surrounded by the awful things. There were creatures there too that he’d never seen before. What the hell looks like a deer, but with long straight horns? He saw one of those. He even saw a zebra—it had to be—when he emerged from the trees and ran through a clearing. There was even one of those big gray creatures that looked like a giant pig with a single horn jutting up from its nose. It had parked itself next to an old bathtub, water dripping from its mouth as it stared at him in surprise. He steered his way clear of that ugly thing. The horn alone on it scared him half to death, maybe more. He knew in the back of his mind what it was called, but the name escaped him at the moment. Plus, there was really no time to stop and ponder. Whatever it was, though, getting hit by that thing would be like being run down by a truck with a big spike attached to the grill.

  No thanks.

  But Montez drove himself to push all that aside. He was a survivor when it came right down to it. Mostly he had relied on his wits all his life. Today, he’d have to rely on his athletic abilities. And that was terrifying. All that smoking and drinking and carousing had made him tough on the inside—where he had thought it counted—but he’d been wrong. Still, he knew that he would make it out alive if he could just find a way out of the goddamned place. And he could do that only if he could get his bearings. But he was having trouble doing so. His skin was crawling. Almost literally. He could feel them chasing him. He could feel them getting ever closer. The tiny hairs on the nape of his neck were all standing on end, tingling, telling him it could be any minute, any second.

  They’re getting closer. Keep running.

  He’d spotted them from a distance once, but that had only been a reason to move faster to keep them from gaining on him. So far no one had taken a shot, and he’d been using the trees effectively for cover. But how long would that last?

  Maybe they are just toying with me? Letting me get tired? Yeah. Yeah. Keep running. Keep going. Have to…keep…going.

  He didn’t know for certain what they had in mind, or exactly when they would strike. But he figured that he’d better use all the time he had left to find the boundary of the damn place and get past it, over it, under it, or whatever was required.

  But the land just seemed to go on forever.

  His suit was already in tatters. He’d stripped down to a thin T-shirt and slacks. And his quality Italian lace-ups were not meant to be used as running shoes, so he had shed them long ago, which he realized now might have been a huge mistake.

  At this very moment, he was hunkered down low by an overhanging tree, checking his socked feet. Under his fine silk stockings, he could feel that his soles were raw and bloody. A real mess. But he was too afraid to take his socks off for fear of what he might actually find underneath. Fortunately, he was feeling very little pain. All he felt right now was fear. A mind-numbing fear. And that same fear drove him ever onward when he heard the sounds of a vehicle in the distance, and the indistinct chatter of approaching voices.

  Panting, he was ever panting and sucking in air in great quantities. At one point, he had to stop and listen again, and when he did, the note of the vehicle changed. It waned, grew more and more distant, and soon all he could hear was the labored sounds of his own breathing.

  He took off again, moving over the rough ground as fast as his injured feet would take him, stumbling down a hill, and then pushing upward through yet another bramble of bushes, where he found—

  He was in the same goddamned clearing he had been in earlier. Somehow, he had been going in a circle. He saw a chain-link fence he had been aiming to get to just over his left shoulder.

  Sighing heavily, he slumped against another tree and watched for movement while he recovered his wind. When he peeked out again, all he saw in the clearing was more of those stupid, strange-looking animals. It was like he had been picked up and transplanted directly into Africa, which was a place he never, ever wanted to go—not in his entire life. He preferred his own concrete jungle back home in the Bronx to the real one of trees and bushes and dirt and shit. If he were back on his home turf, he could find a way out. He knew it deep down. But here, every tree and bush looked the same, even if they probably were all different.

  Back where he grew up, he knew every building and hiding place, and who lived in which brownstone house and where they were from. He knew where the newly rich lived, where the crackhouses were, and where those who had tastes for just about any of life’s perversions could get them sated. The dangerous animals there were easy to spot. They were all the drug fiends and the staggering hookers and the guys who controlled them—the politicians and the mob. You either joined one side or the other. There were no neutral parties. Here, it was all so different.

  He started running again and paid closer attention to where he was headed. He stopped and listened every twenty or so feet, using cover as much as he could. He heard nothing. Saw nothing. But he smelled a whole hell of a lot, but none of the odors carried the kind of information he could process and utilize. So he continued, stumbling forward, ever forward.

  Soon, he came out of the tree line and there it was—

  The fence!

  Razor wire ran wickedly along the top. Still, he smiled and let out a relieved breath. He had dealt with fences topped with that dangerous wire shit back in his city. There were ways to overcome it.

  When he checked both directions, he saw nothing new alerting him to danger. Just clear brown stretches of short grass as far as the eye could see. He scanned the length of fence, looking for obvious weaknesses, a hole, broken wire, a way to dig under.

  But there weren’t any.

  A two-track dirt road ran alongside the chain-link fence, but there were no signs of vehicles anywhere near it, and he could see pretty far. Still, he was almost there. He could taste it. Though, to get over the razor wire at the top, he would
need to sacrifice his six-hundred dollar slacks.

  It was a small tradeoff to make.

  He stripped to his underwear and folded his expensive trousers so he could hold down the coiled razor wire while he climbed over it. It was a trick his buddy had shown him how to do when they used to boost cars from the local impound yard as kids.

  He hit the fence with renewed vigor and began climbing, fingers intertwining with the metal wire, toes finding purchase in the gaps. He reached the razor wire at the top and tossed one leg of his slacks over it while clinging to the fencing with his fingertips and ravaged toes. The whole fence shook and rattled, but he dug his injured toes even further into the metal and held on as he reached through the gaps for the other leg of the trousers he had tossed over. He threaded the other side through and pulled downward to compress the coiled wire along the top.

  Then, without any kind of warning, he felt something hit him from behind. It was as if someone had blindsided him and slugged him hard with a baseball bat. The force threw him against the fence. He pushed away slightly and attempted to move his feet. But his legs were no longer responding to his conscious control, and his feet were suddenly useless.

  He glanced down to understand why and wished to God that he hadn’t.

  The gray metal fence was painted red now. Bits of him stuck out and intermingled with the wire. Torn flesh and bone was protruding from the new hole in his chest. Some of it had gone entirely through the links in the fence, leaving behind other various pieces of entangled skin and meat on the zinc-plated steel. His ribcage had fractured and some of his ribs were now bent and splintered outward at crazy angles.

  He marveled at the mess he’d made. It was all like that scene in the movie about the aliens that came bursting out of people. He’d seen it with a girl he went with back in high school.

  What was her name again?

  As he tumbled backward off the fence, waiting to hit the ground, he also marveled at just how surreal it was to see inside his own chest.