It was then I’d thought to head-butt him. But I didn’t.
Instead, I scowled. “I’m not getting in until you tell me what this is all about.”
I thought I detected amusement on his face. I hoped I’d successfully convinced him that I didn’t know who he was.
Coyote Cries jabbed the barrel into my gut. Hard. “Get in.”
“Ouch. Hey, calm down, buddy. I’m getting in.”
Before completing my thought, I’d jabbed Coyote Cries in the gut with my elbow and slammed my forehead into his nose. When he flinched momentarily, I took a step back and flung my foot high to the sky, cuffing the side of his head with my side kick, nearly toppling without my hands to balance my quick movement.
I’d underestimated his speed and agility. He snatched my foot and twisted it hard and drove me into the ground—head and shoulders first as if he were driving pylons.
I winced in pain from the blow to my skull and the sharp tearing ache I felt in my once-healing head.
Then I saw stars and nearly passed out. I’m not quite sure what happened next.
One thing was sure: He wanted me to know how strong he was. Once again, he effortlessly lifted me with one hand.
I thought he was going to pile drive me into the ground again and finish me off.
Instead, he hoisted me to my feet and shoved me into the car and disappeared.
My head throbbed so badly, I thought it would explode. I was dizzy and confused. I felt like throwing up.
Then I heard something.
A shout. A scuffle. A grunt. A punch.
A loud thud that I knew was a kick to someone’s ribs.
I cleared my head and steadied myself enough to find the side mirror of his car. I tried to see what was happening and who’d been fighting.
I saw Coyote Cries standing over whoever had tried to save me, and I watched as Coyote Cries pummeled the man on the ground.
I recognized the leather vest. The colors. It wasn’t Streeter.
“Get out! Run Princess!” I heard him yell.
Prince Calaf to the Princess of Turandot.
Mully.
I tried to do as he said. My mind was muddy. I tried to fumble with the door handle, to get out. But I collapsed just outside the open door. I couldn’t move.
I heard more beating.
But it wasn’t on me.
Then I heard nothing.
I felt someone lift me and stuff me into the car.
My mind cleared and raced to what I could do next. If Coyote Cries had meant to kill me, he’d have left me there with Mully on the roadside, dead.
So he must not have wanted to kill me—at least, not right away.
I decided the best chance I had of getting out of this was to continue to make Coyote Cries believe I had no idea who he was. My head and shoulders throbbed in a syncopated gait with stabs of pain in my forehead. My only hope was that someone had noticed the two men struggling on the roadside and that someone had found Mully.
And called 911 for help.
My abandoned Jeep along the road would have drawn more attention if I’d thought to bring my SIG or other work-related items that could be found to identify me as a federal agent—or if Coyote Cries hadn’t taken my personal Smith & Wesson revolver from the front seat before he left.
I’d tried everything I could to stay conscious. I engaged him in conversation as we drove.
He said nothing.
I’d asked several times where he was taking me. My words tumbled out like clumsy blocks.
I got no response.
We drove past the Bronco stadium in downtown Denver.
At one point, the only words that seemed to find coherency were in questions I asked, “Who are you? What do you want with me?”
He raised an eyebrow and stared straight ahead as he drove south on I-25.
I knew I was being taken captive to somehow torture Streeter. I had that much sense left in my muddled mind. But I couldn’t figure out his angle. I needed to find out what he was up to if I had a prayer to live.
I thought I’d try a different approach.
“Do you need money or something? Because if you’re kidnapping me for a ransom, you’ve got me mistaken for someone else. I’m not rich. My family isn’t rich. I’ve got nothing except that Jeep we left behind.”
He weaved his way expertly and slowly through the crowded lanes. At one point, just before the Yale exit, the traffic was at a standstill.
I accidentally spoke my thoughts aloud. “I mouthed ‘Help me!’ to the guy next to us. But he just blew me a kiss.”
Coyote Cries grinned slightly.
I was scared. Terrified, really. But I didn’t want to appear to be.
I wiped away the blood that dribbled into my left eye from the busted stitches on my forehead.
“Tell me the truth. Are you a movie actor or something? You look so familiar. Weren’t you in Dances with Wolves or something?” My words slurred. I knew I sounded drunk. “You are an Indian, aren’t you?”
For the first time since he’d pushed me into the car, he glanced over at me and scowled.
I shrugged and continued to work on the ropes tied securely around my wrists. “What’d I say? Did I offend you or something?”
I studied his facial tics, movements, and responses. “Should I have called you a Native American instead of an Indian? Or a Navajo or something?”
“Lakota,” he grunted.
“You’re Sioux?” I asked. I knew Lakotans. I grew up in South Dakota. I understood most of the tribes in our area. And I guessed what his response would be based on what I’d learned about him.
“That’s a white man’s term.”
“Sioux? I didn’t know that. Lakotan, then. Not Lakota Sioux.”
Coyote Cries shook his head in disgust.
“What’d I say this time?” My heart raced. He was slowing down, preparing to turn off the Interstate at the Yale exit.
My anxiety mounted. I glanced at the clock. A quarter to nine. Streeter would probably have arrived at the correctional facility by now. Maybe he’d already discovered that Jeremiah Coyote Cries had long since been released from prison and had escaped.
Maybe he was looking for me.
Streeter would know by now all the details of Coyote Cries’s escape—that he’d been sent a fraudulent letter about the delayed parole hearing, that the board had granted parole, and he’d be piecing together his connection to the trail of murder victims he’d left behind.
He’d be terrified for me.
Even more so, if he knew Coyote Cries was sitting right next to me with a pistol lying across his lap.
I closed my eyes and rested my head against the seat. I wondered what Streeter planned at this moment. I hoped he wouldn’t step into any trap that had been laid for him.
With me as bait.
I PRAYED STREETER would not do something foolish just to spare me.
I offered a quick prayer for strength and wisdom. And for Streeter’s safety. When I opened my eyes, I could see Coyote Cries watching me.
“You scared?” he asked evenly.
“Yes,” I answered simply. “Isn’t that what you want?”
He stared out the window and drove through the narrow streets of the neighborhoods.
I watched and wondered where he was taking me. My heart pounded when we approached the street where I lived.
He knew where I live.
My heartbeat thrummed against my eardrums.
I was frightened.
What else did he know about me? How long had he been watching me?
Chavez, I remembered—of course he knew where I lived. He’d hired the guy who had followed me to my apartment.
A sigh of relief slipped quietly past my lips when he drove beyond my street and continued down the main arterial.
Coyote Cries pulled the car into the parking lot of an apartment complex five blocks east of my place. I wondered why he’d chosen this place. I cursed myself for not being
able to shake the fuzziness from my frontal lobe. I needed to think.
My concern began to grow when I realized we’d arrived at his destination. I didn’t understand what it meant, but I knew he was where he wanted to be.
He pulled into a parking spot near one of the buildings and turned off the car.
With the pistol clutched comfortably in his left hand, he turned to me. “Listen to me. I will let you go unharmed if you do exactly as I say.”
I knew he was lying.
He reached in the back seat and strapped the double shoulder holster around his back and chest. Into the ten-inch holster on his right side, he slipped an equally long Bowie knife with a five-inch handle.
In the smaller holster on his left side, he carefully placed the loaded pistol. The hint of a menacing grin played around the corner of his thin lips when he shoved the second pistol, my Smith & Wesson, into the front of his pants.
Reaching again into the back seat, Coyote Cries pulled on a long, thin jacket to conceal the holster. I watched him dress.
He pulled his purple cap low over his forehead and tucked his braids into his shirt. “I’m getting out now. I’m going to come around to your side and release you from your seat belt. You will not try to break free from me. You will not call out for help. You will not try to run away. You will go quietly with me, and you will not be hurt. Understand?”
“Where are you taking me?” I asked weakly.
I was genuinely afraid. The Bowie knife forcing the singular image into my muddled mind of Paula’s tiny body.
He didn’t answer. He got out of the car and walked around to my side. He stood by the door and looked around the parking lot.
I wondered if he was taking me into his apartment to use me as bait somehow for Streeter. I knew that being spotted by someone on our way into the building in broad daylight might be my best chance for help. I was hoping someone would see that my hands were bound behind my back.
Coyote Cries opened the door to the back seat and then to the front seat. He reached around me and released my seat belt. Grabbing me by my right arm, he pulled me out of the car and slipped a second oversized jacket over my shoulders.
So much for someone seeing my bound hands, I thought. Maybe someone will notice two people walking awkwardly through the apartment complex and wonder why we were both wearing jackets in eighty-degree weather.
I could only hope.
Coyote Cries draped his left arm over my shoulders and slid his right hand inside his jacket. As we began to walk toward the nearest building, I stiffened when I felt the barrel of the gun through his jacket poking against my right arm.
I painfully limped along obediently by his side. He wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me if I defied him. I knew that much.
We walked up the stairwell of the old apartment building and stopped on the fourth floor. I smelled the wafting stench of rotting garbage, stale cigarettes, and moldiness. It seemed like an appropriate place for a cockroach like Jeremiah Coyote Cries to live.
He stopped in front of one of the apartments and removed his gun from its holster. Just when I thought I’d figured him out, Coyote Cries surprised me by knocking on the door.
When the chain was released and the doorknob began to turn, he grabbed me and jammed the barrel of his gun against my right temple.
The older woman in a bathrobe who opened the door was as startled as I had been. The second of hesitation before she tried to slam the door on her unwelcome visitors was all Coyote Cries needed to kick the door wide open with his foot.
The elderly woman tumbled backward with her robe spilling open to reveal a ratty nightgown beneath. Three curlers flew from her mousy grey hair, and the package of cigarettes she’d been carrying spilled onto the ground. The remaining sticks scattered all over the stained carpet around her.
I broke free from his grasp just long enough to collapse by the woman’s side. “Are you okay?”
Coyote Cries closed the door and secured the chains.
The woman cried, “Who are you people?”
“Shut up, old woman. Who else is here?”
“What?” the elderly woman asked in confusion.
I ignored the sharp stabbing pain in my head, struggled to stand since my wrists were still bound, and clumsily helped the woman to her feet by letting her hug my neck as I lifted us both to our feet.
Coyote Cries leaned toward the old lady, clutched the robe up under her chin, and lifted her feet from the ground. “Who else is here in this apartment with you?”
The elderly woman let out a screech. Coyote Cries leveled the gun against her forehead. “Shut up. Just answer my question. Or I’ll blow your head off.”
I heard a trickling noise beneath the sobbing woman’s robe and saw a pool on the floor beneath her. “Nobody. Nobody’s here. I live alone.”
Coyote Cries put her down and pushed her away from him.
The woman stumbled backward. I steadied her by offering her my shoulder to grab.
I spun around to face Coyote Cries. “Leave her alone. Can’t you see she’s frightened?”
“I kind of figured that. She just pissed all over the floor,” he answered brutally.
The elderly woman sobbed. “What do you want? I don’t have much, but you can have it. Anything. If you’ll just leave.”
He flashed me a menacing grin. “I have no intention of leaving. I just need to use your apartment for little while. I’m expecting company.”
I suddenly realized where we were.
Coyote Cries had returned to the apartment where Streeter and Paula had lived.
Twenty years ago.
COYOTE CRIES HAD BROUGHT me here knowing that Streeter would eventually come.
The elderly woman was simply a victim of living in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was overwhelmed with pity for her as she stood sobbing beside me.
Coyote Cries leveled his gun once again on her. “I said shut up.”
The old woman continued to sob. And she’d begun to quake, uncontrollably.
I wanted to hold her and keep her from trembling. But my hands were still bound behind me.
Sensing Coyote Cries was losing patience, I tried consoling the old woman by talking gently to her. “It’ll be all right. Just do exactly as he says. And everything will be all right. Try not to cry. Everything will be okay.”
But I knew everything would not be okay.
Coyote Cries had grown increasingly more irritated by the woman’s sobbing.
Within a few short minutes, he grabbed the woman’s arm and dragged her down the hall toward the back bedroom. The woman’s cries became louder, more hysterical.
I couldn’t just sit there. I had to do something to stop him. I ran after him. Pleading, “Please, don’t. She doesn’t know any better. She’s just frightened. Let me try to talk with her, please. I can get her to quiet down. Just give me a chance.”
There were no chances for the woman.
Coyote Cries pushed her onto the bed, covered her face with a pillow, and fired one quick round.
The pillow muffled the sound.
I’d lunged at Coyote Cries and rammed my shoulder against the small of his back. But I’d been too late.
The elderly woman stopped struggling and stopped sobbing.
She was completely still, the smoldering pillow covering her face.
Coyote Cries barely flinched from the blow I had delivered, and I glanced off him like a penny skipping across a sidewalk.
I had tried to save the woman’s life, but all I’d managed to do was enrage him further.
He swung his hand that still gripped the loaded pistol—my bureau-issued pistol—against my face.
My world went instantly black.
I AWOKE WITH my face pressed against the smelly, stained carpet in the woman’s living room.
I could hear the excited crowd blaring their cheers for the winning contestant on the daytime game show.
I could see the familiar cowboy boots inches from my face
by the couch.
I could feel the pounding against the inside of my skull and believed at any moment my head would explode. The burning stinging in my cheek from where he’d hit me, coupled with the injury to my forehead, caused so much confusion and pain that I wanted someone to just put me out of my misery.
I wondered if the hot, dripping sensation across my cheek was sweat or blood.
I lay still on the carpet, wondering how long I’d been here. Then I saw the cigarettes and curlers on the floor nearby, which made me remember the woman. That poor dear.
Coyote Cries had obviously dragged me out of the bedroom and placed me here at his feet. He was sitting on the couch, watching a game show on television, waiting for Streeter to arrive.
What can I do to help? How can I warn Streeter? I needed a plan. I had to think. But I was so confused. The throbbing in my head was deafening.
Before I could even decide whether to sit up or not, there was a knock on the door.
I glanced up and saw that it’d been unlocked and unchained.
I heard Coyote Cries scramble to his feet and felt his knee jab hard against my back. I let out a loud grunt. I felt him grab a fistful of my hair and yank my head back so swiftly, I thought my swollen cheek might burst.
The blade of his Bowie knife slid expertly under my chin against my skin.
I whimpered.
Coyote Cries whispered, “Shut up, Forty-Seven, or I’ll finish you now.”
I had no clue why he called me forty-seven. I couldn’t think straight. But I thought I’d remembered him saying “forty-six” right after he shot the old woman.
Then it hit me. It was the number of people he’d killed. I was as good as dead.
I felt the cold, sharp blade against my throat, and I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to use it.
I no longer had to imagine how Paula felt twenty years earlier. I knew. I was absolutely terrified. And I knew I was going to die.
My only hope was that Streeter wouldn’t die along with me.
I’d been trained in many different ways to deal with people like Jeremiah Coyote Cries, yet I felt completely helpless and paralyzed in this moment.
Jeremiah’s Revenge: A Liv Bergen Mystery Page 30
