Red Man

by catt dahman

  They had lost a few cases recently, more than a few. Okay, a lot. It was hard to prepare for court when Vegas was hopping. “True.”

  “People will find out. We’ve done illegal things and the truth…it’s even worse.”

  “People can’t find out.”

  “Exactly. She has to be stopped. Soon.”

  “You’ve thought of this a lot, haven’t you?”

  “In depth. I still have…oh, details to adjust. Variables, you know. It sounds brutal, but look at all we stand to lose.”

  “Everything,” Sam agreed.

  “We could both end up in prison, or you could be locked in a lab, or we could be in padded cells, and I’d lose Micki. You would lose Ginger.”

  “No,” he realized he had spoken aloud, “everything, but not Ginger. Sweet, dumb, simple Ginger who could suck a golf ball through a garden hose could not be lost. Not little leather-loving Ginger.

  “I’ll take care of Stephanie and her detective. I don’t mind handling it, but if I knew it would go okay, I would feel a little better about things. It would help,” Mark said cunningly. “I’d like to know it goes off okay. It would be a lot off my mind anyway.”

  “I know what you want me to do,” Sam said.

  “I knew you would get it. After all, how hard would it be to hop there and check that we’re free and that we did it right? I want to know the detective doesn’t share anything he finds.”

  Sam quickly ran the idea through his mind. “I have to have a focus. I have to have something to think about like…what if I went to when the detective dies? You plan to handle him? I can do that.” Sam sounded as calm as if he were talking about the weather.

  “You wouldn’t want to see Stephanie…like that. You’re too soft. But some unnamed detective? You wouldn’t care. Can you do that?”

  Sam finished his drink. “I can do it, but I want you to know I feel weird about this. Keep in mind I feel nervous about this one.” But the thought of losing Ginger was the biggest thing in his mind. “I don’t like the idea of people being…well…dying, but I don’t know him.”

  Mark watched Sam, hardly blinking, seeing the blue fire come.

  Blue-fire-halo-cocoon.

  Usually Sam was gone a few seconds or as long as a full minute with no obvious reason for the time differences in trips. In a few seconds, Sam began to reappear as a photograph slowly developing. This time, the fire was the blue fire- halo-cocoon but a sickly, brownish-smoke cocoon. It was laced with streaks of black. Sam seemed to groan as he looked at Mark. Then he vanished and reappeared.

  Mark didn’t put that together since Sam had gone to the place and time he would die when he was hit by lightning. He would have to appear in that time and place as the rest of the world caught up. Sam had blinked in and blinked out while his other self was also returning; in both times, apart from this one, Sam was injured to the point of death.

  “Sam?” Mark was quickly on his feet.

  Sam looked at his friend, face drawn in tight lines, and eyes in pain; he was trying to hold what Mark could see were his guts. Mark recoiled from the smell and sight of coppery blood that gushed and the foul scent of leaking intestines. “Oh, shit. No. What happened? Didn’t you make it there? What went wrong?”

  “I saw it. In two weeks, it happens.” Sam said softly.

  Mark needed to call an ambulance, and he knew that questioning Sam was making it worse, but he had to know. “This can’t happen, Sam. It’s one of those paradoxes they’re called. We’ve spoken of them. You can’t die there and come back here. I mean you can’t die here, either. You can’t bring back an injury.”

  “No?”

  “This can’t happen. It hasn’t happened yet. You can’t bring the future with you.”

  “Charlie,” Sam said, moving his hand in a way that implied shooting. He was wet, and his feet were muddy. It made no sense.

  “You want Charlie? Seriously?”

  “No. She did….” Sam’s attention wavered.

  “She shot you? Charlie did?”

  “Someone else. I saw Charlie there.

  “What else?” Mark asked.

  “I saw you.”

  Mark blinked, “I was there?” Mark was confused. Was he real now? Was he real in the future that Sam saw? How could Sam see him in both places? It was a deep thought to ponder, and Mark didn’t have the time. His head spun, trying to decide what was real. There had to be a paradox, which made this impossible, but it was happening anyway.

  “You die,” Sam gasped.

  “I die? No.” The idea hit Mark like a blast. “Charlie? The detective was there? And me?”

  When Sam nodded, Mark asked, “What happens to me?”

  “You’re shot.” Sam was almost finished. The chair was soaked with his blood.

  “By who? Who shoots me?” Mark almost screamed. “Who shot me? I mean shoots me?”

  “Charlie.”

  “Why would Charlie shoot me?” Mark demanded. Sam had never been wrong before; Stephanie might shoot him but not Charlie. Charlie had no motive.

  Sam tried in desperation to say something else, his eyes pleading with Mark to understand. There was something important for him to tell Mark. It was critical. There were two words. He said them, willing Mark to comprehend their meaning.

  Then Sam was gone. He was dead.

  Mark stared at his partner, mulling over the words, knowing they were the two most important words on earth to him, but he was at a loss as to what they meant, those final words.

  Red Man.

  It didn’t make sense to Mark. He opened the French doors to the evening air and then went running out of the room, screaming for Charlie. He called an ambulance. Trying to keep the details simple, he said they were enjoying a drink, a masked man came to the open doors, Sam confronted him, and the man shot him before fleeing. No, he didn’t know what the man had on because it happened too fast.

  The police didn’t like the story particularly, but Mark Banner had money to grease the wheels. It was listed as a former client with a grudge probably shot and killed the other lawyer. Charlie was the only thorn in the story, saying she hadn’t heard a gunshot, but no one really cared.

  Every time Mark looked at Charlie, he felt chilled. Who was going to kill him in a few weeks and could he prevent it?

  Of course, he could. He could alter the future as if it hadn’t happened unless it had since Sam had been there. That thinking almost made him crazy with circular logic, but Mark was determined to stop Charlie from whatever it was she would do.

  He had to figure out what Sam had meant by his last two words. Red Man.

  Part 1

  Chapter 6

  Charlie was tired of going through Sam’s personal things. She had boxes that would go to charity and a few that would go to his mistress whom Charlie hadn’t found an address for yet. She didn’t care if the woman had Sam’s belongings. Charlie had stopped caring about things like that about the first time Sam slapped her and yelled.

  Charlie glanced at the clock, surprised to find it was after lunch. She wanted to call Frannie in to eat, which would be a quick bite and back to the wilds of the yard where deadly crickets and goldfish ruled the land. She had dismissed the help today so she could finish this task alone but now wished she had company; she should have let her college friends help her.

  She patiently called the cat, but Frannie didn’t appear. Concerned, Charlie scanned the road but didn’t see anything that could be her cat. That was a relief.

  A man was in the street, pulled over and changing a flat tire. “You lost your daughter?” he called, mopping sweat off his forehead.

  “My cat, Frannie.”

  “She a black one?”

  “Yes.”

  “She ran into the woods chasing a rabbit or squirrel. Over there.” He pointed.

  Charlie laughed with relief. “That sounds like her. When was that?”

  “A few minutes ago.” He finished the tire and stowed the jack in the trunk.


  “Thanks.” She went back into the house and got a bottle of Coke to take with her while she searched the woods. Of course, the cat would return when she was ready, but Charlie was uneasy. Maybe she was being over-protective.

  The scratching of the undergrowth made her wish she had put on jeans instead of shorts. Charlie plunged ahead to the trail that wound through the woods; there was a thick canopy of trees and vines cut that off the light and wouldn’t die until winter. Everything looked surrealistically green and cool, and a bit watery. Charlie knew exactly why Frannie wanted to roam the woods and stay in there.

  Along the trail, she called for the cat, looking both ways. Past some fallen branches and a rotting tree trunk was a dry stream bed with mud on the bottom; the canopy was so thick it was like being in a cave. A clearing opened and then turned back into thick woods broken only by the narrow trail.

  The sound of movement caught her attention. Way too big to be Frannie, it was probably neighborhood kids building forts and playing games. A yellow retriever bounded from the trees to leap at her, making her laugh with relief as she recognized it was her neighbor’s dog, a two-year-old golden retriever named Bear. She stopped to pet the friendly dog, scratching his ears and patting him.

  “Have you seen Frannie?” she asked the dog. The two sometimes played together. Where he was, Frannie often was as well. He walked next to Charlie as she moved deeper into the woods. Sometimes Charlie would sit outside and watch the cat chase Bear across the yard, and then back they would run with Bear chasing her.

  Finally, she decided the sneaky cat had doubled back or was hiding and playing games; Frannie would come out only when she wanted to. “Fine, Bear, we’ll go back and chow on something good and let Frannie get hungry.”

  Bear showed her his big doggy grin.

  A strange whine made Charlie stop as she tried to identify the odd sound. The source eluded Charlie as she stared at the trees. “What on earth was that?”

  When she looked to Bear for his opinion, she saw that he was slumped on the ground, unmoving.

  Impromptu nap? No. A sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her something was very wrong, “What is it, Boy?”

  When he didn’t respond, she squatted. Bear was on his side, his eyes glassy. He was dead. A small circle of blood matted his fur.

  He had died all at once, quickly and without much of a sound, but what killed him? Rolling the dog over, she was horrified to see his other side was torn up, as if he had exploded.

  Or had been shot, right next to her.

  Charlie looked around, heart hammering. Her entire body went ice cold as adrenaline flooded her.

  Flight or fight. You bet.

  Splinters of wood accompanied the next whine of noise as a bullet sheared off the side of a tree. Acting on instinct, Charlie went low and darted to the left. Stopping beside a huge pine tree, she listened, hearing only her loud heartbeat. Birds had stopped singing.

  This wasn’t happening.

  But it was.

  Maybe it was only one lunatic, which wasn’t much of a relief, but one had to be better than a whole troop of them, or a gang, or whatever the hell a collection of killers was called. Crows were a murder. Murder of crows. Murder. Murder of murderers.

  She wondered why whoever it was had shot Bear? Just as easily, it could have been she who was shot. Was the man that bad of a shot, or was he playing games with her? Did he want to terrify her before he killed her; he was succeeding in that.

  She ordered herself to think.

  It was a something with a suppressor; she was only hearing the impact when the bullet hit something, so her goal was to keep far away from the gunman. She would try to get to the house. She would play his sick game and hope she caught a break.

  Running, she saw another tree splinter. Dodging, she barely missed a rock that would have caused her to fall and break an ankle. If she fell or got hurt, she would be dead.

  A limb slapped her legs as she fought through a dense patch of undergrowth behind a pair of pines, and then a sharp barb from a long-ago broken branch caught her shinbone and held on, reluctantly letting go and tearing her flesh.

  Breaking down a side path, she raced down the trail to get to the house, to Sam’s office, to Sam’s gun.

  She jumped across a creek, wondering if she should go the ground and try to hide, but if she did, it might become the place she lay in for weeks before they found her body if he killed her. He seemed closer to her, maybe tiring of his game. She ducked behind a tree and watched for him.

  It was the same man who had been changing his tire, the one who sent her out here. Obviously he had entered the woods from the other side because she inadvertently had given him time.

  Since she had talked about Frannie with him, she figured her cat must be dead. He could have killed Charlie in the open street. But he liked the game of terror and cat and mouse. Cat and Charlie. She was the mouse.

  She had to distract him.

  This was right out of a movie, but she thought about the coke bottle she was carrying. Drawing the bottle up and behind her, she pitched it, not a baseball pitch, but not too girly either. The man hesitated. There was no way he would fall for the trick, but he did, running away from her the other way.

  She ran again for the house.

  He would figure it out, hear her, and come running. She knew it, and as she ran, she glanced over her shoulder to see if he were coming for her.

  And ran right into a tree.

  For a second, she thought she had run into him or been shot, but the pain convinced her otherwise. Her upper arm was skinned and would be bruised by morning. Stupid. She was like a dumb heroine on television who makes a fool of herself and gets killed because she is plumb stupid. All she needed for the full effect was a pair of high heels and a halter-top.

  Think about the pain and focus. She would be black and blue if she lived.

  Running into a tree was not a smooth move. She shut her eyes and tried to collect herself. The only cure for stupidity was death; she had to get herself together.

  On the move again, she kept her eyes on the terrain, sliding on pine needles but staying on her feet. She burst from the woods and into the open, feeling more vulnerable. She felt the need to zigzag but was forced to run on the last of her adrenaline.

  Fumbling, she tried to get the back door open, her hands shaking too badly to get a grip on the knob.

  Don’t

  Look

  Behind

  You.

  It was her silent chant. Don’t look behind you.

  But she did.

  She broke her own rule. Seeing the man cross the yard, she saw he was almost to the far side of the pool, and she stood like an animal caught in the headlights, as if she had gone tharn. He was coming to get her.

  A sound behind her barely registered as the door opened, but a hand roughly grabbed her around the waist and pulled her backwards so she half-fell on someone and half landed on the floor. The brick on the wall where she had been standing exploded into shards.

  Opening her eyes, she rolled and crab-walked until she was against the wall inside the house. A man, crouching with his back to her and gun in hand, watched the back door. He fired twice. After a long time, he got to his feet.

  Charlie was unable to help herself, only raising her eyes up past his boots, over his blue jeans, up his white tee shirt, and to his face. There was a bronzed arm and neck, tanned reddish skin. There was golden-red hair that was like a fire glowing in the sun. The red was broken only by the color of his eyes: sea green.

  So much red: a red sunset exploding. A red man!

  “Stay where you are; I missed the son of a bitch.”

  She was frozen to the spot anyway and couldn’t have moved if she had tried. “Are you here to kill me, too?”

  “That’s a pretty stupid question since I was shooting at the man who just tried to kill you,” replied the red man as he glared at her, “I think he’s gone. Go upstairs and draw every blind, an
d close the curtains. Be careful, and don’t show yourself. Go. Do not look out the windows.”

  Her legs were shaking, and she felt sick. As spots danced before her eyes, a wave of dizziness washed over her; the red man caught her arm. She shook like it was freezing cold. “I feel…something.”

  “Little nauseated?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Stay here,” he said and went to the kitchen, clinked some glasses, and brought back two glasses of orange juice, “very slowly, drink all of this.” He yanked a throw from one of the sofas and draped her in the aqua fabric. “Mild shock.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m the good guy, believe it or not. I’m not here to harm you. I was late, but I am here to keep him from harming you”

  “What if someone is upstairs waiting for me?”

  “I checked. The house is clean. I was looking for you, but you went in the woods.”

  “I was looking for my cat.” Charlie said with her throat tight, “and who are you?”

  “I’ll explain later, but first, I need you to do what I asked. I don’t want to hurt you. If I did, I would have let that man do it. Understand?” he implored her to help him.

  “I guess.”

  “Then, go. Please. I am trying really hard to save your life. Can you help me a little?”

  Charlie climbed the stairs, clinging to the railing. She had been shot at, Bear was dead, Frannie likely was dead, she was a new widow after an unexplainable occurrence right in her home that involved a gunshot wound, and she was in the house with a strange man who also had a gun. She almost started giggling but realized she was bordering on shock.

  Most of the windows were cloaked in darkness, so her task took just minutes. Her wounds hurt. She had to get to the Sam’s office. But no, the gun wasn’t there; she had moved it to her nightstand. She yanked open the drawer and pulled out the .38 revolver.

  It felt good in her hands.

  Now, she had a gun too, and whoever had a gun ruled the world today.

  “Feel better with a gun in your hands? Do you know how to use it?”

  She whirled. Red beard, reddish hair, bronze skin, such a red man and he stood in the doorway of her room. She warned him, “We’re even now. You raise that gun to me, and I’ll blow a hole in you the size of Dallas.”