by Matt Hilton
“What kept you?” I asked.
Walter came to stand beside me. He even gave me a fatherly pat on the shoulder. But his eyes were on Cain. We had left him where he’d come to rest, slouched on his knees, hands folded in his lap, head tilted forward on his chest. Apart from the blood dripping on his breast, he looked like a supplicant at prayer.
“I didn’t want to step on your toes,” Walter said. “This was your gig, Hunter.”
I spat phlegm and dust and God knows what else on the floor.
“You could’ve come sooner. You were monitoring us all along. Why didn’t you send in your team before now?”
“And would you have thanked me if I had?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. “I suppose not.”
“Then all’s well that ends well.”
I gripped the dressing a paramedic had placed on my chest wound. Thought about how close Cain had come to finishing me. All’s well that ends well? “Yeah.”
Walter walked away from me then. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for my well-being, only that Cain held a more immediate fascination for him. He went and stood over Cain, stared down at him for a long time.
“He’s dead.”
“As disco,” I said.
“You know,” Walter said, “there’s many a profiler up at Quantico would’ve given their eyeteeth to speak to him before he died.”
“My heart bleeds for them,” I muttered. In hindsight, considering how close Cain’s knife had come to finishing me, they weren’t the most appropriate words. Even Walter glanced at me to see if I was serious. I slowly blinked.
Returning his attention to Cain, Walter went on, “Don’t know how he managed to elude us all this time.”
“Maybe you didn’t look hard enough.”
Walter nodded. Then, totally out of character for a man who’d ordered plenty of wet work but never gotten his own hands dirty, he gripped Cain’s hair and pulled back his head. A shadow crossed Walter’s face. He looked to the medics.
“See to this man,” he ordered.
I jerked. Walter stepped in front of me, pressing me down as Cain was loaded onto a gurney. “Don’t worry, Hunter. I’m going to bury him.”
“He is dead?” My words were more question than fact.
“We don’t bury the living,” he pointed out.
That wasn’t necessarily true, but I wasn’t of a mind to argue. Walter never talked straight.
As Cain was rushed away, Walter and I watched him go. Walter sighed, and I should have guessed what was coming. “We were looking in the wrong place.”
I squinted at him.
“It’s not him.”
“What?”
“It’s not him,” Walter repeated.
I experienced a moment’s panic. “What do you mean it’s not him? It’s definitely Cain.” To emphasize the point, I threw out a hand, inviting Walter to take in the sheer horror of his surroundings. Walter lifted a palm, a calming gesture, but I struggled up from the floor to stand beside him. My nose was inches from his. “Can’t you see what the son of a bitch did here?”
“Easy now, son,” Walter said. “It’s Cain all right. No doubt about it.”
“So what the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s not Martin Maxwell.”
“What?” I stared into Walter’s face. Searching for the lie. Not that it helped. I didn’t know Martin Maxwell from Mickey Mouse. Only thing I was sure of was that I’d stopped the Harvestman.
“It’s the brother,” Walter explained.
“The brother? You mean…?”
“Uh-huh. Robert Swan. The musician.”
I got it then.
“You need a name to give to the press, Walter?” I said. “And you want Swan to take the blame for this. To protect the good name of the Secret Service.”
“Yes.”
Thing is, at the end of the day, it didn’t much matter to me. Whoever Tubal Cain ended up being, it didn’t matter in the large scale of things. He was a demented killer regardless. One that I’d put down like a rabid dog. And for that I was thankful. If Walter needed to spin the world a line of bullshit, then so be it.
I grunted, looked Walter dead in the eye. He stood there expressionless. Then I nodded. “The musician? If you say so, Walter.”
Walter winked. “I say so.”
I turned my back on him and clutching my chest I limped toward the exit door. The bullet graze on my calf hurt worse than the chest wound. It was still night out, but the sky was ablaze with searchlights from the helicopters coming and going. As I reached the stairs, Rink joined me. He placed a hand on my shoulder. I couldn’t determine whether it was to support his weight or mine. It didn’t matter. As always, we’d support each other.
“You going to be all right, Rink?”
“Fine and dandy,” he said, yet involuntarily his hand went to the dressings on his face and chin. “He got me good, Hunter. Slashed my gut, but luckily for me he only got the muscle. He came close to getting my throat, too. If I hadn’t been knocked cold when I banged my head, the son of a bitch might have really finished me off.”
“It was a close one,” I said. The cut on his chin wasn’t life-threatening, but if it had been an inch lower, my friend wouldn’t be beside me now. Most likely I wouldn’t have been alive, either.
“Too close,” Rink said.
With no sense of volition, I’d made it up the stairs and found myself standing ankle deep in the white sand. The cul-de-sac wasn’t large enough to accommodate all the choppers and personnel brought in by Walter, but there were a fair number of men and women in jumpsuits and body armor. They stood around with their weapons cocked, as though Cain were still a threat.
Leaning on each other, Rink and I made our way to the cleft in the rocks. It was awkward walking through the gap shoulder to shoulder, but we made it.
Outside was as Rink had earlier described it—a three-ring circus. Helicopters dominated the sky. Hummers and SUVs prowled along the lip of the escarpment in the distance. Undoubtedly FBI and Secret Service, but this was now Walter’s gig, and he was calling all the shots. Everyone else had to make do with prowling on the periphery. The only thing that concerned me was the presence of the air ambulance Walter had had the foresight to call in. And even as I confirmed its presence, paramedics rushed past us with John strapped to the gurney.
“Think he’ll make it?” Rink asked.
I remembered the awful wounds on his back and couldn’t see how.
“It’s amazing what the doctors can do these days,” Rink said, his words sounding hollow. Even he doubted them.
“He’ll pull through,” I said softly. “He has to. Otherwise all of this will have been for nothing.”
“Not for nothing, my friend.” Rink slipped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into an embrace. “We’ve just stopped a monster. Me an’ you, Hunter. Just like the old days.”
49
IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, WALTER ATTEMPTED TO explain the thinking behind it all. In his take on the Harvestman, Martin Maxwell hadn’t gone off the rails. All right, he’d messed up his life when he’d gone playing with the governor’s wife’s lingerie, but that, it turned out, was his only transgression. Other than a sleazy penchant for women’s underwear, he wasn’t the fiend he was suspected of being.
Some would even argue that Maxwell was a decent enough fellow. After all, he’d sought out his less privileged brother. Taken him into the fold of his home. Given him the kind of life he’d been missing. But it appears that the man who would become Cain wasn’t one for gratitude. His was a soul festering with jealousy, and with dark fantasies and desires he couldn’t achieve as a no-name musician in a nation of musicians whose talents far outshone his. So Cain instead coveted something that could never be his. He stole the skills of his brother. Maybe Martin gave the knowledge willingly. He had to have taken the brother under his wing, for Cain’s skill with weapons, particularly the knife, didn’t come without many hours of practi
ce. Or his understanding of tracking and surveillance. Or—and this was the most troubling aspect of Walter’s take on Cain—how he could have known my name. But that was easy enough for Walter to explain: he simply left me out of the equation. As far as anyone would ever know, it was federal agents who’d taken Cain out.
In the end, I didn’t bother thinking about it. Let Walter play his games. It was what he did, after all. What better way to cover up the depraved actions of a government employee than to deny that he was one? Plausible denial. That was what Walter thrived on. If he wanted the world to believe that Martin Maxwell wasn’t their man, then so be it. He could feed them the bullshit about Robert Swan, but I knew the truth.
I had other, more important things on my mind.
John for one.
He was currently recuperating in a military hospital beyond the prying eyes of the media. As far as anyone was concerned, Cain had left no living victims. I was happy enough with the arrangement. It got Hendrickson’s men off his back. Walter promised me that on his recovery John would be placed in the witness protection program. In effect, he would disappear. New name, new identity, the works. The only time he’d be drawn back into the limelight would be if charges were brought against Hendrickson and Sigmund Petoskey for their part in the counterfeiting ring. Then John would be returned to obscurity.
It meant never going home for him. But given that he’d been gone so long, that his time with Louise Blake was now behind him as well, maybe it was for the best that John start over.
My next concern was for Rink. My best friend. Who’d given so much for me. Who had suffered as much as I had. We went off to the hospital together to be patched up. My chest wound turned out to be superficial, as did the wounds to Rink’s chin and arm, but the slash to the gut meant he had to undergo observation for a few days.
After Rink was cleared from any signs of complications, Walter extended his hospitality to the use of his Lear. A few hours later we were back in Florida. We spent two days at Rink’s condominium in Tampa. The rain had passed and we spent those forty-eight hours reclining in the sun and drinking. Of course, it wasn’t all partying. There was a lot of healing to do.
Plus, we still had work to do. A certain briefcase liberated from a boat at Marina del Rey required our attention. Not to mention the seven hundred grand that was inside it. I’d no qualms about putting the money to good use; John had paid in blood and agony for this reward. As far as anyone was concerned, the cash had burned along with Rhet Carson’s yacht. The problem being, blood money never brings happiness. It was handed over to Walter as evidence that would help bring down John’s enemies.
As a sweetener for my time in the U.S., Walter transferred a sizable sum of money into a fund set up for Jennifer and the kids. This was cash from his department’s budget, so did not reek of agony and blood. It was clean. So was my conscience.
I spoke to Harvey Lucas. He told me he was looking after Louise Blake. Something in his tone made me smile. He was looking after her? I bet he was.
Job done, Rink was as affable as ever. The scars would forever be a reminder of how close to death he’d come, but he wasn’t overly upset. The scars on his face gave his rugged good looks even more appeal to the ladies. Or so Rink said. There were tears in our eyes when we said good-bye at the airport.
My final concern. And the most pressing. Going home. Wherever that turned out to be.
Epilogue
JUBAL’S HOLLOW.
A sun-blasted landscape in the middle of nowhere. The G-men had come and gone. An army of anthropologists, medical examiners, and crime scene investigators had picked the barrens clean. The remnants of Cain’s depravity had been listed, labeled, sealed, and shipped off in packing crates to a secret location. And with them, the media hubbub had died down. The Harvestman story was old news now, other atrocities in the world taking center stage. The camera vans and anchors in starched suits and starched hair departed for more immediate bad news stories.
Now there was nothing but scrub, sand, and more sand.
As it should be.
But there were visitors. Hundreds of them. People came to stare and shake their heads. Twisted souvenir hunters came away with nothing but fragile bones from birds or lizards, but to the casual observer true remnants of the Harvestman’s ossuary. A number of entrepreneurial tour operators made a killing from the fascination of the ghoulish tourists who sought out more than the glitz of L.A. The Harvestman was big business. Big money. He was, after all, the most despicable of all murderers this side of the new millennium. He had achieved the notoriety and fame he’d desired.
However, under constant armed supervision, the patient known only as John Doe must have found it difficult to curse through his ruined throat. For though the Harvestman was the name on the lips of every person with a penchant for dark history, Maxwell meant nothing. To the world, Robert Swan, a mediocre guitar player with hopeless dreams of the big time, had at last achieved his fifteen minutes of fame.
Acknowledgments
A VERY BIG THANK-YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART TO ALL those people who have helped me along the way. To Denise, who is everything to me. To all my family, particularly my father, Jacky, and brother, Jim, who have helped me immensely in writing this book. To Luigi and to Alison, I owe you a massive debt of gratitude for having faith in me and championing me all the way. To David Highfill and Sue Fletcher, editors extraordinaire, for all your brilliant work and guidance. To Lee Child for your kind support. To Jeanette Slinger for making everyone take notice. And to everyone else in the background on both sides of the Atlantic for all your hard work.
About the Author
MATT HILTON is an expert in kempo jujitsu and holds the rank of fourth dan. He founded and taught at the respected Bushidokan Dojo, and he has worked in private security and for the Cumbria police department. Hilton is married and lives in England.
www.matthiltonbooks.com
www.matthiltonbooks.blogspot.com
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Credits
Jacket design by Mary Schuck
Jacket photograph collage: man running by Kamil Vojnar; car silhouette by Stockbyte/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEAD MEN’S DUST. Copyright © 2009 by Matt Hilton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition April 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-188615-7
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