Randall made a keening sound, stretched out a hand to touch Josh’s cheek.
“I’m sorry, sir,” one of the EMTs said, easing Randall away from the body. With clinical efficiency, the second pulled the sheet back up and laid it over Josh’s face. “I’m very sorry.”
I knew they’d taken hundreds of gurneys from hundreds of houses, that to them there was nothing special about this day or this boy. All the same, they were gentle as they eased the stretcher across the graveled parking area and loaded it into the second ambulance. They didn’t bother with the siren this time. There was no need.
Blankenship’s voice cut through the fog in my brain. He was talking, not so much to fill us in as to bring us back. I knew, because I’d done the same thing often enough, when I was in his shoes. “The call came from a guy named Jay Renfield. Said there was a prowler, they were going upstairs, get his roommate’s gun.”
“My gun,” I said, dully. Saw the speculation in his eyes. Didn’t answer the unspoken question. None of his fucking business.
“There was a dog barking on the tape. Some little yappy thing.”
“Only dog in the house is Luca,” I said. It was just something to say, to keep from thinking about the things I didn’t want to think about. “He doesn’t bark.”
He gave me a brief smile. “Tell it to the dispatcher. She could hardly hear Mr. Renfield for the yapping.”
“That’s how he knew to call,” I said, putting it together. “Jay wouldn’t have heard Elgin, but the dog tipped him off.”
“Yeah, that’s what he told the dispatcher. Then there was a crash and a couple of shots.”
Randall looked up. “That’s how it happened? He shot my boy?”
Blankenship looked like he wished he were somewhere else. “We don’t think so, sir,” he said. “We think the shots came from your son or Mr. Renfield. We think the suspect used a knife.”
A small sound came from the back of Randall’s throat. Then he said, “Was it quick? Did he—did my son suffer?”
“It was quick,” Blankenship said. It was the right thing to say, but that didn’t make it true. Josh had bled out, and that takes time. I hoped he’d gone into shock quickly. After that, he wouldn’t have felt much. I wondered if he’d been afraid.
“There was a struggle,” Blankenship said. “Then the cell phone signal got cut off.”
I said, “Cut off how?”
“Phone got crushed. We figure one of them stepped on it, probably the suspect.”
“Son of a bitch,” Randall said. “Son of a fucking—” He stopped. “You’ll catch him, right? You’ll catch him?”
“We’ll catch him,” Blankenship said. A raindrop landed on his forehead, and he wiped it away with one hand. “We did a sweep of the area, and we’ve set up roadblocks on all the surrounding streets.”
“Check the driveways and garages too,” Frank said. “He’s probably in a stolen BMW.”
He ran down the case for Blankenship. I tried to focus. Couldn’t. I looked toward the pasture, where the horses were milling anxiously in the corner of the field farthest from the barn. Dakota snorted and danced, swinging his head in a broad arc so that his good eye took in both the woods and the driveway. Crockett pawed at the ground. Tex flared his nostrils and tossed his head. He spooked at something and wheeled into Crockett’s shoulder. All three of them shied in different directions, then trotted back into an uneasy cluster. Even from this distance, I could see the whites of their eyes.
Frank said to Blankenship, “You just about finished here?”
“Not for awhile. We’re still processing the scene.”
“You need these guys?”
“Not just now.”
Frank turned to me. “Come on, Cowboy. I’ll drive you and Randall to the hospital.”
It was where I needed to be, but something was buzzing around in my head. I just needed time to think it out.
“You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll bring Jay’s car.”
He gave me a look.
I said, “Who knows when I’ll get back home? I have some things to take care of here before I go.”
Randall stared up at the glowering sky. “I have to tell Wendy. Dear God, how am I going to tell her?”
I opened my mouth to say I’d go with him. Glanced back out at the horses. Then at the barn, which stood, door ajar, at the opposite corner of the pasture. Clamped my teeth together while I thought it through.
The paddock gate was open. From there, the horses could walk right into their stalls. There was hay and water inside, and it was as far as they could get from the chaos in the driveway. It should have been the first place they headed when all hell broke loose.
So why were they gathered in the corner farthest from it?
In the pit of my stomach, something dark grew. But there was no time to think about it. My brother needed me. I tried to think of a good way to keep from asking and couldn’t. “Do you want me to go with you?” I said.
Yes, his eyes said. I don’t want to do this alone. Aloud, he said, “No. It’s mine to do. And Wendy will—” His voice broke. “She’ll . . . need some time.”
“You go on then,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the hospital. Or at your place. Wherever you want.”
“You won’t be long?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
Frank gave me a hard look. A calculator in his eyes. “What’s going on, Cowboy?”
“I just need a minute here, Frank.”
Again, the look. “Sure, buddy,” he said at last. “You take what you need. Just don’t be too long.”
I glanced up sharply. Was that a dig? Didn’t matter. I didn’t need Frank to tell me that my brother needed me now. And I’d be there for him. Just as soon as I dealt with whatever—whoever—had spooked the horses away from the barn.
Randall gave a resigned shrug and said to Frank, “My car’s at the end of the driveway. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
“Sure you’re okay to drive?” Frank said.
“I’ll be okay,” Randall said. “See you in a few.”
When they had gone, I turned to Blankenship. “Any reason I can’t go in the barn?”
He thought about it. “Barn’s clear,” he said. “Guess it would be okay.”
“You’re sure?” I asked. “That it’s clear?”
“We know our jobs,” he said, a little sharpness in his tone. “That was the first place we looked, after the house, and we were thorough.”
“Don’t guess I could go inside a minute?” I nodded toward the house.
“The house is off limits. If you need something—toothbrush, wallet, whatever—let me know and we’ll see what we can do.”
I thanked him and started toward the pasture, remembered to ask about the papillon pup, and was relieved when he said the little guy was safely stashed in the laundry room. It was a small consolation, considering all that had happened, but, given the circumstances, I’d take it.
The barn was empty, like he said. Nothing but the smells of earth, sweet hay, and horses. In here, the buzz of activity from outside was almost imperceptible. I stood there in the quiet, tears leaking from my eyes, and listened to my heartbeat. It sounded loud in my ears. Strange, that it could go on calmly pounding when my chest was about to crack.
I thought of Medea. Her curse. The Rule of Three.
Think of this when your world falls all to hell.
I didn’t believe in curses. I believed in actions and consequences, but what difference did it make when the ends were the same?
I kicked aside a clod of dirt and let myself into Crockett’s stall. Closed the sliding door behind me and crossed the stall to the open pasture door. Across the field, the horses raised their heads. They shifted, snorted, started toward me. Then fear got the better of them, and they retreated back into the corner. Tex gave an anxious whicker.
Something about the barn frightened them. Or maybe something near it. I glanced toward the house. Saw Blankenship watch
ing. I gave him a curt nod and stepped back into the barn and pitched out three flakes of hay and whistled for the boys.
The combination of food and the familiar whistle reassured them, and they plodded toward me, casting anxious glances around the pasture. By the time Tex nosed the first flake of hay, Blankenship had gone inside.
I left the horses munching and inched along the fence line, starting at the back wall of the barn and moving up and away from the house. I didn’t know what I was looking for, so I scanned the grass inside the fence, the fence itself, and the woods beyond. Even so, in the fading light, I almost missed it.
On the underside of one of the fence slats was a smear of blood.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
The dark thing in my belly uncoiled. It was a thing of grief and rage and guilt—guilt that I had not killed Elgin when I had the chance. The rage boiled into hatred, and I was glad, because the hatred filled me up and left no room for grief.
I glanced around to make sure no one was watching and vaulted the fence. The horses snorted and raised their heads but settled quickly, ears pricked in my direction. I drew the Glock as I stepped into the deepening shadows. Elgin may or may not have a firearm, but he was plenty deadly with a blade.
A small voice told me I should leave Elgin to Blankenship and the Wilson County Sheriff’s Department. But I did not want to sit in a plastic chair in a hospital waiting room while someone else brought in the man who had murdered Josh. I imagined marching Elgin through the trees at gunpoint. I imagined other things too. Snapping bones, bleeding flesh. Elgin’s craggy features battered beyond recognition. I told myself I didn’t mean them.
There was little wind, but as the light drained away, so did the warmth. The scattered droplets became an icy drizzle that soaked through my jeans and numbed my skin. Fingers stiff with cold, I turned up the collar of my jacket and squinted into the shadows.
For almost two years, I had hiked and ridden through these woods. In the growing darkness, I moved among familiar trees. Bare branches made crisscross shadows on the dead leaves below. Wind rustled in the branches, and muffled voices drifted from the house. The rain on wet leaves made a hissing patter.
A patch of moonlight showed a broken branch, a sheen of black blood. A few minutes later, a heavy footprint marred the earth beside a frozen puddle.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me. I froze. Listened. A deer? One of Blankenship’s men? Elgin was in front of me, I was pretty sure. I wiped the water from my eyes with a soggy sleeve and edged forward, more cautiously. Then a shadow moved ahead of me, and I swung the Glock toward it.
“I know you’re there,” I said. “Might as well come out.”
With a burst of ragged laughter, Elgin stepped from behind a stand of cedars. One hand held a hunting knife like the one Doug Eddington had used on Razor. Moonlight and rainwater glinted on the blade. The other hand hung limp at his side. He’d zipped a folded towel into the shoulder of his jacket, but it hadn’t been enough to keep a dark stain from seeping through.
“You again,” he said. “Come to take me up on my offer? Mano a mano? Me one-handed and all shot full of holes, you might actually take me.”
“You must be too stubborn to die,” I said.
“Not with unfinished business.”
“The kids?”
“Not such kids,” he said.
I said, “Josh didn’t rape your sister.”
He laughed without humor. “You know what they say. ‘All it takes for evil to prevail—”
“—is for good men to do nothing,’” I finished for him. “You murdered a bunch of fucked-up teenagers. You don’t get to be self-righteous.”
“Twelve is the age of accountability,” he said. “In all the major religions. Besides, they weren’t all teenagers.”
While we talked, we circled each other like a couple of alpha wolves.
Searching for weaknesses.
“You’re just pissed because you didn’t get to kill Razor,” I said.
The muscles around his eyes tightened. “Who says I didn’t?”
“You’re a real dumbass, you know that?” I said. He took a step forward. My finger twitched toward the trigger. “You killed Medea and the Knights the way you did so we’d look at you and not Hewitt. Only Hewitt didn’t do it.”
A vein in his forehead pulsed. “I’d’ve done it, if I was him.”
“He didn’t know about the rape.”
“Parker died, I thought Judith must’ve told him.” He took another step toward me.
“That’s far enough.” I raised the Glock, pointed it at the center of his forehead. A vest wouldn’t help him this time. “Drop the knife.”
He tilted his head as if weighing his options. He must have seen something in my face because he grimaced and dropped his weapon. It landed in the wet leaves with a heavy splat. “What now?”
“What would you have done if Razor hadn’t been killed?”
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “They were all dead the minute they laid a hand on Judith. Starting with that asshole, Razor. But I’d’ve taken my time. Done it up right. Like the fella says, a series of unfortunate accidents.” He gave a bark of bitter laughter. “You never would have caught me. Hell, you never would have known.”
I was afraid he might be right.
“World’s a better place without him in it,” Elgin said. “I woulda liked a piece of that. Guess I had to settle for his playmates.” He grinned and added, “You gonna take me in, or kill me?”
Then he ducked, feinted, and charged. I got off a single shot. Heard him cry out just before his head plowed into my midsection. It was like being hit in the belly with a bowling ball.
He drove me backward into the rough bark of a black walnut tree, which dislodged a shower of water so cold it felt like ice. My elbow bounced off the tree, and the Glock fell from my hand.
Shit.
He ground his head into my gut as if he wanted to climb inside it. Pain blazed through my lower back, and for a panicked second, I thought he’d snapped my spine.
I cupped my hands, clapped them hard against his ears. He screamed and fell away, clutching an ear with each hand. Blood streamed from beneath his palms and dripped off his jaw.
I slumped against the tree and gasped for breath. A warm wetness trickled down my back. It felt like someone had scraped a cheese grater down my spine. I tried to move, and a wave of pain strong enough to make me retch shot from my shoulder blades to my tailbone.
“You fuck,” Elgin said.
Behind us, something large—from the sound of it, something about the size of a small rhinoceros—crashed through the undergrowth. Blankenship, I thought. Here comes the cavalry. I should have been relieved. Instead, it pissed me off.
Elgin was mine.
I braced myself for another wave of pain and pushed away from the tree. Fumbled for my gun. Elgin unfolded himself and scrabbled for his knife. Came up empty and lashed out with a kick that drove the heel of his boot into my injured calf.
My leg buckled. I clamped my teeth on a scream, grabbed the front of Elgin’s shirt with one hand, and drove the fingers of my other hand into his left eye. Felt the eyeball give and a rush of hot wetness stream down my hand. Bore him to the ground with the weight of my body. Elgin howled and clawed at my wrist, my face, my eyes.
Another figure burst into the clearing, calling my name. Randall’s voice. Randall’s bulk, charging through the branches. He’d followed Frank out, hadn’t he?
He must have turned back. Made the same connections I’d made. Or read it on my face. Farther behind him, flashlight beams cut the night.
Elgin bucked and writhed beneath me. With one hand twisted in his shirt front and the other plunged into his eye, all I could do was watch his groping fingers find the knife and close around the hilt. The blade jerked up.
“No,” Randall said. His boot slammed down on Elgin’s wrist and held until the fingers opened.
I dug my fingers into Elgin’s bloody so
cket. He moaned and gagged, then went limp. I rolled off him and curled over my injured leg, retching and sucking for air, shivering with cold and half-blinded by pain.
Randall knelt beside me and asked, “Are you all right?”
I figured he meant, was I going to live. I would have made some wiseass comment, but I seemed to have lost the power of speech. I nodded, tears streaming from my eyes.
Through a haze of pain, I heard him stand. Heard footsteps, followed by the rustle of dry leaves. “Son of a bitch,” he said, very quietly.
A single gunshot echoed through the woods.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
I opened my eyes. Elgin lay at Randall’s feet, one eye hanging from the socket by a few bloody tendrils, a seeping bullet hole in the center of his forehead. The blood was a pinkish color, already mixing with the rain. Everywhere I looked was blood, mingling with water and washing away. My gun dangled from the end of Randall’s fingers.
I staggered to my feet and touched my brother’s shoulder. Felt him shivering.
“He had his hand on his knife,” I said. “He was about to throw it at me.”
Randall stared at Elgin’s corpse and shuddered. His lips were blue, and his teeth chattered. “No,” he said. “I—”
“Yes.”With the flashlights bobbing toward us, I took his face in my hands and made him look into my eyes. We had two or three minutes before they got there. Max. “Listen to me. He was about to kill me. He had the knife in his hand. Say it.”
“I—”
“Say it.”
“He had the knife in his hand.”
We told it the way it happened, except for the end. Blood spatter evidence might have proven us liars, if not for the rain. The beautiful, blessed rain.
It was after midnight when we finished at the Sheriff’s office. The thought of going home made me want to crawl into a bottle of Jack Daniels and drink myself into a stupor. Bad idea. I knew that. Instead, I headed down to Elliston again. There was no sign of Absinthe, but I left cards in all the usual places, tacked to doors and stuffed in people’s pockets. This time the message read, “Absinthe—it’s safe to come home.”
A Cup Full of Midnight Page 26
