“No father?”
“My father went to prison when I was about three. He was killed there. A shiv stuck in his back. That kinda makes a kid more vulnerable when you not only don’t have a dad at home, but he was a criminal. Never a day went by I didn’t think of those bastards and what I’d like to do to them. I kept tabs with people from my old high school, and when I’d learn one of those assholes was dead, I made sure to get wherever they were buried. I missed one funeral, but I went to the grave later and had my own private ceremony.”
“That’s crazy stuff even for your normal, run-of-the-mill bullies,” Evan said. “It amazes me how nasty people can be when given a chance.”
“Yeah, they were creative.” Corbin laughed. “You bought the ‘dad in prison’ bit all the way, didn’t you?”
Evan nodded. “I did. Very good. I assume the rest was somewhat accurate?”
“It was. My father just left. Never wanted kids and then didn’t like my mother when she had them.”
“Good. You’re a fast learner. So when are you gonna reveal the target? It’s driving me crazy.”
“When we get there,” Corbin said. “Let it be a surprise. We get picked up on the way for something, find weapons, you don’t know anything. It’s like the military—the less you know, the less the enemy can interrogate out of you.”
They drove out of Denver north on I-25. “Got to get a steak at this place in Casper, Wyoming. I went through there maybe ten years ago. Best damn steak on the planet.”
And it turned out to be pretty great. Nothing had changed at the small cowboy restaurant. They both got filets and bakers, then got roaring drunk and spent the night in a nearby campground. In the morning, they took I-90 east into South Dakota. They were so blasted from the previous night’s booze-fest, neither spoke nearly all the way to the famous Wall Drug, past at least a hundred miles of billboards advertising the place.
Evan, driving, said, “You won’t even tell me what state the guy is from?”
“No. Be too easy to guess.”
“How do you know he’ll be where you hope he is? I saw you make a couple calls back a ways when I was getting gas. That have something to do with it?”
“Yes. Girl I told you about. She keeps tabs on him. Hates him for different reasons almost as much as I do. She’s how I know who dies and what from. She’s also the editor of the reunion books that come out every five years. Girls are more networked than guys are. Lot of locals worked on his campaigns. She gets the inside dope. Kinda my local NSA. He’s got a little rendezvous on this small lake well out of the tourist spots. Rich guys have cabins there. He flies in on a private pontoon plane. Spends a few days relaxing before going home to his family and all the hangers on.”
“His wife isn’t suspicious?”
“Apparently doesn’t care. She’s got her own ambitions and works for the some big agency.”
“Kids?”
“Yeah. Three, I think. All grown now. Probably nasty little bastards like their parents.”
They stopped at Wall Drug to get some food. It was one big mall with all kinds of shops and restaurants and entertainment. They downed coffee and burgers with fries, then walked around.
The place was like this bizarre tourist oasis out in the middle of nowhere. Even had a dinosaur statue that looked to be fifteen feet high, green, sitting out there. Had to be like a thousand people.
“Ice water,” Evan said. “That’s what started it all. Guy was a genius. People coming across here in covered wagons were thirsty. The outlaw Badlands are near here.”
After leaving Wall they decided to take a run through the Badlands. See where all the outlaws had hid out. It was a desolate, scorched-earth bunch of hills, ravines, rocks, and desert.
“How the hell can you survive out here?” Evan asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe they sent somebody to Wall Drug to get water and food every so often.”
They laughed. They’d spent so much time at Wall and now here it was getting dark.
“Let’s find a place. Spend the night. Tomorrow I want to do some practice, then we’ll make our destination. Where we’re going isn’t where he’s a senator from, so don’t get all excited.”
“I’m excited about getting somewhere and getting a drink,” Evan said.
“Makes two.”
“A shrink told me once,” Corbin said, as he eased past a very slow eighteen-wheeler, “that having a mission, a passion, is the single best therapy there is.” He left the freeway and headed into another, less visited part of South Dakota’s no man’s land.
“That is exactly right,” Evan said. “I haven’t felt this miserably good in like a couple decades. I gotta thank you for that.”
Half an hour later, dark now, Evan stopped at a desolate railroad crossing. There was no train coming, or cars, or anything.
“Why you stopping?” Corbin asked.
“See how dark it is. One of the great lines in one of the best novels ever written was from James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity.”
“Which was?”
“Hold on. I’m thinking. Damn, sometimes I can’t remember. Wait, wait, wait—I got it. There’s nothing so dark as a railroad track in the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“That’s sounds a little stagy,” Corbin said.
“Maybe, but it’s consistent with the characters’ situation. It’s noir and they liked those kinds of lines. And it has meaning in the story, given they’re putting a body there. A guy they killed.”
“Okay, fine. Let’s go.”
Evan crossed the tracks. A few miles down the highway, he pulled down a feeder road into a remote, desolate area. After parking, they sat out on the lawn chairs and drank into the night. It was a glorious sky full of meteor showers, millions of stars, and the primitive silence broken occasionally by distant coyotes or wolves.
Beneath the stars, getting seriously stoned, they waxed philosophically on profound subjects: history, murder, the fall of everything. And they got riotously, seriously drunk. And fired the guns.
Corbin showed Evan how to handle the rifle, use the night scope. They took a couple shots at some rocks. It was a bit awkward but not all that bad. Then Corbin set up some empty beer cans and showed his reporter buddy how to use the pistol at close range. Evan hadn’t shown much ability much with the rifle, but he caught on to the pistol and wasn’t a bad shot at ten feet or whatever the hell it was.
“Not bad,” Corbin said. Things were spinning a bit. They gave it up, pissed, and went to bed.
They slept long into the morning. In spite of how much he’d had the night before, a coffee and a whiskey was good enough to straighten Corbin out and get him moving. He drove.
There were times when he was astonished at the amount of alcohol he could imbibe and still get functional. He was getting close to his destiny, and he felt strong and ready. They left I-90 and headed north on I-29 to Fargo and then Grand Forks before leaving the freeway and heading east on Highway 2 into northern Minnesota.
“Where the hell are we going?” Evan asked, coming back up to the passenger seat after a long nap. He hadn’t recovered from the previous night.
“We’re close now,” Corbin said.
“What state are we in?”
“Mina-snowda.”
Evan sipped coffee heavily laced with whiskey, smoked a cigarette, and complained that the electrolytes in some drink he bought at the gas station mini-mart hadn’t done shit. He couldn’t drive anymore. Said he was too wiped out. “Last night killed me.”
“We’ll be there well before dark. This is the land of ten thousand lakes.”
“Who the hell counted them?” Evan said.
“That’s a good question. Actually, it has more than that. Over eleven thousand.”
Corbin hadn’t felt this good in years. Maybe decades. He felt it was finally over. That thing that had ruined his life, that he’d obsessed over, was coming to a close. He didn’t tell Evan all the rea
lity of his humiliation, but enough. The reporter was into the whole thing.
Evan said, “You’re going to be a very high-profile act. Your cause will create, after you kill this guy, a major stir. It’ll be big, really big. Now’s the time if there ever was one. Finally, somebody’s going out and killing the right guy. Here’s the thing: you have to have a serious message, and I’m going to make you a big star. The victim-of-bullies finally getting his revenge.”
Corbin nodded. “Yes, and it’ll make you a star as well. You’ll be interviewed by everybody. CNN. NBC. Fox. You’ll be everywhere, my friend. You’ll be back.”
Corbin couldn’t remember any time in the last half of his life, maybe in his whole life, when things felt so right. It was fate, the stars, the universe finally getting it right.
5
They headed north through some neat little resort towns advertising great fishing.
A couple hours into the drive, Corbin left the main road and headed into the hills. It was late in the afternoon when Corbin turned down a rough, dirt road through the woods. He pulled the camper off the road near a mountain stream.
“We there?” Evan asked as he poured another stiff drink.
“We’re close,” Corbin said. “I gotta check it out. You get some rest. I think tonight might be the night I’ve been waiting a long, long time for. Stay within shouting distance of sober. I want to see if the target has arrived.”
“You must know this area good.”
“Good enough. The lake’s up ahead through those woods, down in the valley. I’ll be back in an hour or so. ‘Less you want to come along for the recon?”
“I’m tired and wiped out. I need a nap,” Evan said.
Corbin took the binoculars and set off on what turned out to be a half mile or so hike through the woods to where a meadow opened. There, a few hundred yards below, lay the small lake. This was an exclusive place with just a few cabins well secluded in the trees, plenty of woods between them for privacy and no easy access except by four-wheel drive or a plane with pontoons. This was no tourist spot. This was a getaway for the wealthy and powerful.
Corbin found a comfortable place where a tree had a low-hanging branch that allowed him to rest his arms on it and study the cabin in the distance using powerful 220x280 binoculars. He was there about twenty, maybe thirty minutes studying the cabin. There was a boat on the lake in front and a pontoon plane. One vehicle parked nearby looked like a Mercedes SUV, though he wasn’t exactly sure, as it was hidden.
He was about to leave as twilight slipped over the lake when he saw a young woman come out of the side door of the cabin. From his angle, as he followed her, he could just make out the wood-framed Jacuzzi in the trees thirty feet from the house. She was wrapped in a towel. The towel came off, fell on a bench, and the well-stacked naked young woman, maybe girl, stepped into the Jacuzzi.
The senator followed out the side door, saying something that got a laugh from his chick. He wore only shorts and carried a bottle and two glasses. The bottle and glasses went by the side of the Jacuzzi; the shorts came off and he joined his lady.
The bastard, enjoying himself, his wife back home, kids off to private schools. It’s your last day on this earth, hotshot, so enjoy it, Corbin thought. I’m gonna turn the lights out on your party.
As twilight deepened, Corbin moved around through the trees and glassed as much of the far side of the house as he could looking for any signs of security, or the plane’s pilot. He saw no one, but there was a small outbuilding in the trees north of the cabin. There was a light on, so he assumed it was the pilot.
Perfect. Now’s the time, Corbin thought. He had to get his reporter sobered up quick and get back here.
He hustled back to the camper at a fast pace, the adrenalin pumping. Doesn’t get any better than this, he thought.
He’d worried for the last year that the chance wouldn’t come. That the bastard would end up coming to his funeral.
6
He found Evan fast asleep on the fold-up lawn chair, a wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes, snort-snoring and snorting away.
“Hey, Evan, wake up. It’s time to get your journalism hat on, my friend.” He shook Evan’s right foot, then pulled his floppy hat up.
Evan looked startled. “What! What’s going on?” He sat forward and took his hat, putting it back on his head.
“Wake up. It’s time to rock and roll. Target’s waiting.”
“Jesus …”
“Come on, it’s getting dark. We have about an hour of daylight left. It’s your big moment, but it has to happen now.”
“You got a night scope.”
“Yeah, but a target that moves around can be tough. Let’s go.”
“How far?”
“They’re just over the hill, down by the lake. He’s in a Jacuzzi having a good time with his squeeze. Get whatever you’re bringing and let’s go.”
“You still didn’t tell me who this guy is?”
“You’ll know when we’re there. It’s more dramatic, and you told me about the necessity of the narrative being dramatic.”
“Yeah, but I can lie about that.”
Corbin laughed. “He’s got his girl in a Jacuzzi right now. Hot chick. Naked. That’ll get you awake.”
“Take more’n that to wake me up,” Evan complained.
Corbin brought out the rifle case. “Grab the handgun from the glove box and let’s get moving,” Corbin said. “Bring whatever you need to record this with.”
“What I need is a drink to get the shakes off me,” Evan said and proceeded to take a strong pull on the whiskey.
Corbin took the bottle from him after the second pull. “Let’s go. You’ll have plenty of time to get drunk later.”
He led Evan through the darkening woods. It was a really fine night, not all that different than that night when they cornered Corbin all those years ago. The air clean, sweet with a heavy pine smell, the sky without any reflection of city light. A near full moon rising above the tree tops. A night for wolves, for the hunt.
Corbin was ebullient. “It’s great. Finally, I’m going to get the ringleader. And you get to do the interview that’ll resurrect your career.”
When they reached where the tree line opened to the clearing below, Corbin stopped. “Perfect place for a clean shot,” he whispered. “Look down to the right. That bastard is having his going away party.”
He handed the binoculars to Evan and proceeded to get the rifle locked and loaded, the scope adjusted. Then he said, “That miserable bastard treated me like I was a toy. Something to kick around and laugh at. Well, what comes around goes around, as they say.”
Evan played around with the binoculars trying to get them focused. He went to sleep drunk, woke drunk, and still looked wasted.
“You see them?” Corbin asked. “Just to the right of the cabin.”
Evan said, in a low whisper, as he tried to find them, “Once you take the shot, I’m supposed to just stay here and you … I got confused. What’s this endgame again?”
Corbin shook his head. “You’re just observing, and when it’s done, you’ll do what you do as a reporter. You won’t know what I’m doing after I take out the target. I gotta go down, make sure he’s dead. Maybe I’ll take the plane, or car, or just sit on the porch and wait. If there’s a pilot or security guy, I’ll probably have to shoot them. Look, it doesn’t matter. Just make sure you get it all and make something out of it. Hell, you might be the main witness on my trial. If it goes in that direction.”
“What about the girl?”
“I expect the girl will scream and run like hell. I don’t care about her.”
“I see him,” Evan said. “But it’s the back of his damn head. I can’t make him out. I think you need to tell me now who the hell it is you’re going to assassinate.”
“I’ll give you some clues. He’s from the great state east of the Great Lakes.”
Corbin found a perfect low-hanging limb on the pine tree where
he could rest the stock and get a really good shot.
“East of which Great Lake? Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania?”
“One of those. He’s turned enough you should be able to make him out, you weren’t shaking so bad. Rest on the tree.” Corbin smiled. He liked playing with Evan’s mind.
“You can hit him from here? What if you miss?”
“I won’t miss. Unlike you, I don’t shake. I can hit a cantaloupe at a quarter mile with this baby. It’s downhill, no wind. I’ll take that bastard’s head off. I won’t need a second shot. It’s not like he’s in a motorcade. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. You ever hunt?”
“No,” Evan said. “My ancestors were city people. Okay, you said he’s famous. Not a state senator—.”
Corbin chambered the kill round, adjusted the scope. A really easy shot.
“I regret he won’t know where it came from,” Corbin said. “But I can’t risk failure. Okay, it’s not fair he won’t turn around so you can see him so I’ll tell you who it is before I pull the trigger.”
He leveled the rifle gently into firing position. “That big, fat head I’m going blow off is Senator Ryan Alexander Grey’s. A man who, his opponents say, respects nothing, including the Constitution of this great country. And, as we see, his wife and family. All of which I forgive him for. What I don’t forgive the bastard for is what he did to me. A man can lose a leg, lose an eye, suffer all kinds of physical damage and plow on through it. But destroy his self-esteem and you wound him for life.”
“You aren’t serious?” Evan said, moving close, his whisper tight. “That’s not Ohio Senator Grey?”
“Not for long.”
“Hey, wait a second. You’re telling me the man you want to assassinate—”
The Murder Option 2 Page 6
