by Michael Kerr
“You got coffee?” Logan asked as he appraised the woman. She was Caucasian with dark, shoulder-length hair and gray eyes. Maybe five-three, and slim, not thin. Attractive in a homely way. He guessed that she was in her late forties, and she still looked good in jeans and a tight T-shirt.
She gave him a quick, nervous smile. “Yes, plenty”, she said.
He followed her back on board her trailer. There was a smell of orange and spices, and the interior was nicely furnished and immaculately clean. He eased onto a bench that fronted a small dinette table. Watched the woman start up a fresh pot of coffee, and waited.
They didn’t speak until she placed two steaming mugs on the maple patterned Formica tabletop and sat down opposite him.
“Uh, sorry, do you want creamer or sugar?” Rita asked.
“No, as it is,” Logan said. He picked the mug up and tentatively sipped the hot coffee. It was strong, just as he liked it.
“I don’t really know where to start,” Rita said with a tremor in her voice.
“From the beginning usually works,” Logan said, noticing the slight puffiness under her eyes, now that they were out of the sun’s glare. She had been crying a lot.
“My husband, Richard, was hit by a car two weeks ago. He died soon after from multiple injuries. The driver didn’t stop, and the police haven’t traced him yet.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. Where did the accident happen?”
“It wasn’t an accident, he was murdered. It happened outside our house at Elk Hills, Charleston. My Discovery was in the drive, so Richard parked at the curb. I watched him climb out from where I was standing at the living room window. The sedan came from nowhere, fast, and swerved to hit Richard. It took the car door off and knocked Richard up into the air. He hit the windshield and went back over the roof. I ran out to him, and shouted to a neighbor to call 911. Richard was lying on the road like a rag doll. There was blood coming out of his ears, nose, mouth…”
“Drink some coffee and take a few deep breaths,” Logan said. “No rush.”
Rita swallowed hard, fought back tears and drank some of her coffee. “I’m OK now,” she said.
“No, you’re not,” Logan stated. “You’re grieving, angry as hell, and scared. That’s a bad mix. What do the police say?”
“They’re treating it as a straight forward hit and run. They don’t accept that it was intentional. I couldn’t give them a description of the driver, or the make of car, so they think that I was mistaken over seeing it aim at Richard.”
“So if you have a house in Charleston, what are you doing in an old trailer balancing on top of cement blocks out in the boonies this far from home?”
“A day after the funeral I got a telephone call. I didn’t recognize the man’s voice, but he told me to destroy anything I shouldn’t have, and to stop making waves over Richard’s death. He said that if I didn’t want my daughter, Sharon, to join Richard in the family plot, then I should drop the matter and stay away from the police. And I came out here to get away from the problem and think what to do. Tom Ellerson, the owner of this place, is my uncle.”
“I need more coffee, Rita,” Logan said as he mulled over what she had told him. While she went for the pot and refilled his mug, he made a decision. She was telling the truth, so he needed to know why her husband had been murdered, what information he’d died for, and who the killer was. Then he would deal with it as necessary. The old familiar feeling of having a reason to get up in the morning hit him like a much stronger stimulant than the caffeine he was addicted to.
“So will you help me?” Rita asked him. Her voice was matter of fact, with no pleading in it. He admired that, because he knew that she was in a bad place and didn’t know how to get out of it.
“I’ll try,” he said. “But why pick on me?”
“You look like a man that can handle things: someone who has dealt with trouble in life and overcome it. And you’re not the police, so I won’t be risking Sharon’s safety by hiring you.”
I was the police. “Hiring me? I’m not a private investigator.”
“I have money, and nobody should work for nothing.”
“Whatever. Tell me what the guy who called you wanted destroying.”
“I don’t know.”
“What does…did your husband do for a living?”
“Richard was an accountant. He worked full-time for a car dealership with showrooms at several locations in the Charleston area.”
“Did he ever mention anything of an illegal nature going on at his place of work?”
“No. And Richard was an honest man. He wouldn’t be involved in any kind of criminal activity.”
“Do you know of any enemies he had.”
“No. He was well-liked. And he went out of his way to help friends and neighbors. We were just an average couple who’d lived on the same development for twenty years.”
“Not a lot to go on,” Logan said. “Let me think about it. Where’s your daughter, now?”
“In D.C. She’s studying economics at Georgetown University. Lives out at Oakton in a duplex with two other students.”
“Does she know about the call you got?”
“No. I didn’t want to worry her. As long as I keep quiet, I guess that she’s safe.”
“Guessing isn’t the way to go, Rita. Call her. Have her come out here and stay with you till this is dealt with.”
“What should I tell her?”
“Whatever you need to.”
“Do you really think that she’s in danger?”
“I think you both are. Let’s just hope that you weren’t followed here.”
CHAPTER TWO
It was still daylight when Sharon unlocked the door at a little past eight p.m. She closed it behind her and turned to see Claudia lying face up on the carpet. It took a couple of seconds for her to take in the scene, as the shopping bag she had been carrying dropped forgotten from her limp fingers. There was a dark stain around Claudia’s head, and the wall was spattered with what she knew was blood. Panic froze her brain, and an adrenaline rush hit her as she hesitated, not able to decide whether to run from the house or stay. She regularly watched some of the crime series on TV, and knew without any doubt that her friend had been shot.
Opening the door again, feeling marginally safer without the barrier between her and the outside world, she shouted, “Pam, Pam.”
No reply. Sharon pulled her cell from a pocket of her thin blouson and hit 911 for the first time in her life. Reported what she had found and gave her name and address before disconnecting and walking farther into the house, stepping around Claudia and entering the kitchen to find Pam sitting on the tiled floor with her back against a unit. There was a dime-sized hole between her glazed eyes, and a swathe of blood on the door of the unit.
Sharon rushed back out onto the small lawn, dropped to her knees and threw up as her phone started ringing. She was unmindful that her rucksack had jerked up and that the top of it was now resting on the back of her head.
She spat out the last of the sour-tasting vomit and opened her phone. It was her mum.
“Oh, God, Mum,” Sharon said as tears ran down her cheeks. “Someone has murdered Claudia and Pam. I just got home and found them.”
“Listen to me, Sharon,” Rita said. “Do not stay there. Get the hell away, now.”
“But I’ve phoned the police. I―”
“Believe me, the police can’t help. You’re in danger. Whoever killed your friends was after you. I want you to come to Uncle Tom’s, now. Don’t use your car. Just lose yourself in the city, and then get a Greyhound or train to Morgantown. I’ll meet you. Call me when you arrive. Now do it.”
“OK, Mum,” Sharon said. “I love you.”
“Love you, too. Get moving.”
Sharon got up, readjusted her rucksack and walked away from what was now a house of horror that she knew she would never return to.
Roy Naylor got the call from Sal. His partner in crime had made a m
onumental error in not killing the Jennings girl. Instead, he’d wasted two of her friends, and had no idea where the mark was. Maybe it was time to offload Sal and work exclusively on his own. It was something to think about, but not now. He had his end of the job to get done.
The sun had gone down and the light was fading rapidly as Roy parked the stolen Pontiac in undergrowth off-road a hundred yards from the entrance to the trailer park.
He’d known exactly where Rita Jennings was: had followed her all the way up from Charleston when she did a runner. The idea had been to hit both mother and daughter on the same evening. But the girl was in the wind now, thanks to Sal.
He made his way through the woods on a deer trail that angled to the rear of the line of trailers he was interested in.
There was a light on in the unit outside which the woman’s midnight-blue Discovery was parked. It was getting late. He wondered whether to wait till she was asleep, but decided against it. He had an urgent need to rape the woman, before collecting what he’d come for and killing her. He wanted to get back to civilization as quickly as possible. Being away from the lights and the noise of the city made him feel vulnerable.
Roy drew his Glock pistol, screwed the tube-shaped suppressor onto the end of the barrel and chambered a round.
Logan had stayed with Rita till quite late, talking about the problem and letting her offload on him. Maybe being a loner made him a target for people with a predicament they needed help to resolve. Maddie, his lost love, had once said that he was like a lump of granite that could shrug off any assault that was made against it. She had never really come to terms with his mindset; couldn’t understand how he could be scared of nothing, or that he was capable of using extreme violence so proficiently when he decided it was called for. Maybe most women wanted the type of guy he would never be. And maybe he wanted the kind of woman that would be happy to live a gypsy-style life and keep moving, without accumulating stuff or hankering for a place to build a nest and grow old together. It didn’t matter. He knew who he was, answered to no one, and didn’t give a fuck about tomorrow as a general rule.
He sat on the floor behind the narrow door in the bedroom and listened to the night through a partway open window and the thin walls of the trailer. He could hear a couple of owls hooting, myriad leaves brushing up against each other as tree branches soughed in a breeze that brought the temperature down a few degrees, and the insistent non-stop whine, click and buzz of insects.
After twenty minutes he got up and turned the light off. Sat back down again in the same place and waited. It was another ten minutes before he heard a single twig snap as someone or some animal stepped on it at the other side of the trailer’s wall.
Roy used a thin, flexible six-inch long strip of metal to force open the cheap lock on the door. There was no need to be quiet any longer. Once inside, the mark was going to be looking at the business end of his gun, with no time to use a cell phone or start screaming for help.
He took the time to pull the door closed behind him, and then walked through the kitchen area and under an arch, to cross the living room in three strides and slide back the door to the room where the light had been on.
In the gray moonlight shining through the window, he could see that the bed was empty. Roy was no slouch. He was turning and searching for a target when something latched onto the wrist of his gun hand like a sprung steel trap. His hand and fingers were immediately so numb with the pressure that he couldn’t pull the trigger.
Logan forced the hand up so that the barrel of the pistol was pointing at the ceiling, and without rising from his sitting position, brought his left fist up full force into the intruder’s solar plexus; a blow that caused the diaphragm to spasm, resulting in difficulty in breathing.
Roy stopped thinking. The pain was extreme. He dropped to his knees, trying to take a breath as the scrambled nerve cluster in his abdomen seemed to shut down his lung function.
Logan picked up the 9mm pistol from where it had been dropped on the carpet next to his crossed legs and clipped the groaning man on the left temple with the extension on the barrel, hard enough to knock him out.
It had worked out almost exactly as he thought it would. He’d believed what Rita had told him. There was no reason not to. And after the phone call to her daughter he went to Red Alert. It was always healthier to expect the worst and hope for the best. He had scouted the perimeter of the trailer park, and then told Rita to go into his Airstream and stay there till he came for her.
Like so many times before, it was a waiting game, and he was very good at waiting. Most of his police career had been long bouts of waiting interspaced with brief and often explosive action. He had the ability to go within himself and just tick over like some electrical appliance on standby.
Logan had quite a few facts to work with. Rita had seen her husband run down by an unknown driver. Following that, she had been warned: told to destroy something or her daughter would be killed. Logic decreed that this was all about Charleston and something that Richard Jennings had found out that put someone at risk. And if it was criminal activity, it was odds on that it had to do with money. Richard was an accountant, so whoever his boss was had to be the bad guy. But why the attempted hits on the women? Maybe after thinking it over, the guy had got nervous and thought that if Jennings had told his wife or daughter anything, then he wouldn’t get to sleep at night. And there were two hitters. One was unconscious on the floor next to him, and the other was out there, maybe on his way to meet his partner at some prearranged location.
There was plenty of time. He could work on the bird in the hand he’d got and find out enough to give him an edge.
* * *
Roy came round sitting naked in the bottom of a shower stall. The jets of water from the large copper head above him were freezing, like needles of ice. He could breathe OK now, but his stomach was sore, his head ached, and he thought that his right wrist was broken. He couldn’t really remember what had happened. It had been so quick; just a lot of pain and then nothing. He must still be on board the trailer. The bathroom was too small for a regular one in a house or motel. And he could only move his head freely. His left wrist was taped to his right ankle, and his right wrist to his left ankle.
“Hey!” Roy shouted. He yelled the same word four times before the low doorway was filled by a big guy who had to stoop to enter the bathroom. He was holding Roy’s pistol loosely at his side, and had no expression on his craggy face. He just stared at Roy and said nothing.
Logan looked down at the man. He looked more like an overweight siding salesman than a hitman. He was in his early thirties with his thinning sandy hair cut short. His skin was white, like prison pallor, and he had clean, manicured fingernails. He was shivering, and there was fear in his porcine, hazel eyes.
Five minutes went by, and Logan didn’t blink or say a word to the tub of lard that was asking him who he was, and then warning him that he didn’t know who he was dealing with, and that he would do well to release him.
Eight minutes now. The would-be killer seemed all talked out. He was shaking and his teeth were chattering.
“Do you like Superman?” Logan asked Roy.
“W…What?”
“You heard me. Answer the question.”
“Well, yeah. Why the fuck you askin’ me that?”
“Which actor do you prefer as the Man of Steel?”
“Uh! Er, Reeves. Christopher Reeves, but―”
“Whoa, son. I forgot to lay down the ground rule. There’s only one. I ask you questions, and you answer them. If I think that you’re lying to me, I blow one of your toes off. OK?”
“I’m not gonna tell you shit. You’re a fuckin’ dead man walkin’,” Roy said, a second before Logan casually raised the gun and shot the big toe off his right foot.
The suppressor was top of the range. There was just a sound like a muffled cough. Roy made a high-pitched shriek like a stuck pig as the round travelled on through the plastic of the sho
wer base and the floor beneath, to no doubt plug in the ground under Rita’s trailer.
“Let’s try again,” Logan said to him, the way a schoolteacher would talk to a boy with learning difficulties. “You know what happened to Chris Reeve, don’t you?”
Roy nodded as he moaned.
“He fell off his horse and wound up a quadriplegic for the last ten year of his life,” Logan continued. “One bullet in your spine and you get to be like Superman wound up. Understand?”
Roy nodded again.
“Good. I checked your pockets while you were snoozing. You’re obviously stupid or arrogant, Roy, because you carry a wallet. That’s very unprofessional. I also checked your cell, to see who your contacts are. Which is it?”
“Which is what?” Roy asked in a trembling whisper.
“Stupid, arrogant, or both,” Logan said as he leaned forward and turned off the shower.
Roy looked as if he might start crying.
“So who’s the other idiot that missed Sharon in D.C.?” Logan asked, aiming the gun at Roy’s remaining big toe.
“Sal Mendez.” Roy said. He had lost what little resilience he’d had. Knew that the big guy would do whatever it took to get his questions answered.
“OK. So far, so good. Who paid you both to hit the women?”
“I don’t know, and that’s the truth,” Roy said, squeezing his eyes shut as he expected to lose another toe. “I got a call from a third party, a regular go-between.”
“His name and details?”
“Sammy Lester. He drives a limo for a company in Charleston.”
“Who owns the company?”
“Jerry Brandon. He has a Toyota dealership. Also owns the limo service.”
“Did Brandon put out the contract?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know for sure. We were told to get a disk or memory stick from whichever of the broads had it. No details.”
“Which one of you two princes ran Richard Jennings down in the street like a dog?” Logan asked Roy.
“It was Sal,” Roy said too quickly, trying to lay off the blame.
