Poison Flower
Page 20
"Is that it, Harry You've finally come to tell me this is my time"
"Maybe one of the twins knows when you're going to die, and maybe both do. I don't. I exist only in your head. I'm a synapse in your brain that fires when you're anxious."
"Come on, Harry. Am I doing the right thing"
"You're stopping on the path, turning your face toward the enemy, and preparing to fight alone. The old ones, the warriors and clan mothers from that time, would recognize it, and see you as one of them. I don't know if that makes you right."
"You're hedging, Harry. Are you saying I should do this, or go back to the others and run"
"You've decided to be Hawenneyu's warrior, fighting death for lives. You'll die this time or another, at this turn in the trail or another." He lifted his head as though he were listening to something only he could hear. Then he said, "Rest tonight. It's too early for them. But tomorrow night, be ready."
Jane slept soundly, then woke at dawn. She rose and walked from one window to the next on the upper floor of the house, looking out. It was cooler this morning, the reminder in the air that it was not going to be summer for much longer. Above the mirror surface of the lake she could see the wispy white fog that she had dreamed of, deep as a man's waist and stretching out past the reedy shore. She saw the first few waterbirds. There was a great blue heron that stepped out from the reeds in the fog, striding in the shallows, then standing still again.
She felt strong. She still had a day, a whole day that would go on until dark. She had realized in the night that time was something she needed, and now she had it. Even if the men were off their flight by now and driving this way, they would not come close enough to be seen until nightfall. They would be searching for the address she had given Stewart, not for a place that could be known and explored. Jane ate breakfast, then took the knife, the hatchet, the spade, and the rolled-up plastic camouflage tarp she'd bought into the weedy fields between the house and the dirt road.
She walked toward the first bend in the road that was also its halfway point, the tall pine. She stayed on the game trail, only a narrow line where the deer had stamped down the weeds on their way to and from the lake. When she found the right spot, she knew it. There was a slight depression in the level field that put it below the surrounding weeds. She moved carefully to the right of the path, and began to dig. The ground here was damp, black with centuries of rotted humus, so it was soft and heavy. She first removed the layer of weeds in clumps, set them away from the hole, and then dug. She used her uninjured left leg to push the spade into the earth, and stood on the right. She dug for four hours, beginning in the cool morning. After a while she discarded her sweatshirt and dug in her T-shirt, feeling the sweat cooling her. The hole was about ten or twelve feet long, and six or seven feet wide. At the end of four hours it was over six feet deep.
She went to work on the long mound of dirt she had shoveled out. She would cause a small avalanche to get a pile of it onto her tarp, and then drag it to a spot at the edge of the woods near the lake. Then she would repeat the process. It took her two more hours to move it all.
Near the pile of dirt she found a stand of hardwood saplings, mostly oak and maple, and used her hatchet to cut ten of them, then cut them into about a hundred inch-thick stakes. With her K-Bar knife she whittled sharp points on both ends of each. She used the foliage to cover the mounds of dirt, then took her stakes to the hole in the field.
She sank each of the stakes into the ground at the bottom of the pit in a pattern that left nowhere for her to stand, then dug her way out. She went back to the stand of saplings and cut two dozen lengths of thin, five-foot saplings, leaving the network of spreading branches on. In the field she laid some of them across the width of the pit, then placed others at angles, weaving some of the smallest branches with others so she had almost a net covering the pit. She placed the camouflage plastic tarp over it.
The clumps of weeds she had removed to dig her pit she placed upright on the tarp. Then she filled in the spaces with new pieces of turf, some fallen leaves, and loose grass, until it was extremely difficult for her to see the difference between her pit and the rest of the field.
By the time she was finished, it was late afternoon. She went back to the house, cooked eggs and bacon for lunch, and ate on the front porch, studying the land in the direction they would come from. In the afternoon she examined all of her preparations in the house again, then walked from the main road along the dirt road to the house, so she would see it exactly as the men would see it. Be ready tonight, Harry had said. And Harry knew what Jane knew.
17.
Jane showered, added the bottles from the iced tea she'd had during the hot afternoon to her string of bottles in the hallway, rested, and watched afternoon turn into evening. As darkness came, she reviewed in her mind all of her preparations, and fell asleep. She left the window open in her room. In the night it was easier to separate noises that were natural from sounds like car engines and the jangling of metal, so she was sure she would hear them.
Six hours later, she did. She stood and looked out her window. Her ears had been correct. They were walking in pairs up the dirt road toward the house, and she could hear their boots crunching bits of dirt and stone as they came. There were eight of them, and the number momentarily shocked her. How could there be so many Maloney and Gorman were dead. It didn't matter-there they were. She hoped one of the men coming toward the house was Daniel Martel.
She closed the window and the shutter so there would be no moonlight behind her, went to lie on the mattress at the doorway, raised her shotgun to her shoulder, and made it snug. She pushed the door closed as far as she could to hide any silhouette she made. Only her shotgun barrel protruded through the open space.
The men were fiddling with the doors downstairs. She heard a faint, battery-operated buzz and knew that one of them had brought a lock-pick gun. A hand turned the doorknob. She half-felt, half-heard the door opening. One by one they entered and stepped away from the door, and she heard the same board creak over and over.
She heard whispering, or maybe it was only the nervous breathing of so many men in a dark, empty house. It occurred to her that they were probably just in from Los Angeles, so their lungs would not be used to the altitude of the mountains yet. There were quiet footsteps on the stairs, climbing up, closer and closer. The men were feeling good now. They had gotten in with little noise and no resistance. They were all together, and taking possession of the house. Jane kept her eyes trained on the hallway.
The first one appeared at the top of the stairs carrying a rifle. She decided to wait. He moved to the side of the master bedroom door, pointed down at the dim light coming from the crack beneath it, then beckoned, and a second man came from the staircase to stand on the other side of the bedroom door. The third man was just visible at the top of the staircase, still half protected by the wall.
She barely moved as she aimed her shotgun at the third man. He stepped up onto the floor of the hallway and raised his foot to kick in the master bedroom door. He kicked, the door swung inward, he fired at the dummy on the bed, and the other two pivoted to fire through the doorway, too. Jane pulled the trigger, and her shotgun blast killed the third man. The other two looked at him and each other, confused, half deafened by the firing in the narrow space, and their confusion gave Jane a second to pump the shotgun and fire a blast into the chest of the second man. The first man, now aware that the fire was coming from behind him, must have heard her pumping the shotgun again. He tried to spin around, but made it in time to see the muzzle flash coming from Jane's shotgun. Her shot caught him in the head, and he fell across the others.
Jane began to reload, but then there was a fourth man running up the hall toward her, firing a semiautomatic rifle. Holes appeared in the wood above her head. She fired at him, but she seemed to miss. She pumped again, but then he had disappeared into the doorway of one of the rooms. If she waited, the other four would be up here in seconds.
She drew her pistol and rested her arm on the lower part of the railing between the spokes, and took deep breaths while she waited. Two men rushed out the front door heading for the steps. She was so close to them she fired upward into them, not at them. She pulled the trigger five times.
She turned and ran back along the side of the house past her rope, toward the back door of the house. She reached the corner as she heard two more of them coming out. It was too late to ambush them, so she went low, then brought her arm around the corner of the house and fired wildly six times. She knew she hit one, because she heard him yell and fall against the house, and a rifle scraped it, then fell on the ground.
There was no way to be sure of the other, so she ran again, this time away from the house into the brush and weeds. She ran fifty or sixty feet to a thicket, dropped to the ground, replaced the magazine in her pistol, and cycled the slide to put a round in the chamber. She waited for the other man to come around, but he didn't come. He was probably trying to get a better angle to fire the rifle at her.
She had to move before he got a view of her. She would move to where he had been, because that was the one place she could be sure was clear. She would pick up the rifle of the man who had never fired, slip inside, and lie on the floor of the kitchen, where she would be able to hit anyone who came down the stairs or went to the front door. She came around the corner and stopped. There were two men with rifles, both standing up. They quickly swung around to face her, and she dashed back around the corner. She sprinted into the field, trying to dash into the deep darkness. She made it to another thicket, dropped into the weeds beyond it, and aimed at the corner of the house.
It was taking too long. At least one of them was moving to a new firing position. But what was the best firing position The upstairs window where she had climbed out and rappelled to the ground. From that elevation he would be able to see her perfectly and put a rifle bullet through her.
Jane ran toward the house until she was twenty feet below it. She imagined the man going in the door, through the kitchen, down the long hallway to the foot of the stairs, then up the stairs. He would run along the upstairs hall to the room where she had left the rope. He would kneel on the bed, prop an elbow on the windowsill, and look down the barrel.
Jane stood below the window, her pistol gripped in both hands, and aimed at the center of the small, dark square of the upstairs window. She saw the rifle barrel come out the window, and fired. She fired twice more, but there was no return shot. The rifle rested on the sill, the barrel now pointing out and upward at nothing. She turned and ran.
Behind her she heard more shots. They were rapid, but there was no overlap between them. There was only one man firing. She heard rounds crack as they passed over her faster than the sound barrier, heard thumps as they pounded into the ground. She didn't have the speed that she'd had all her life. It was frustrating and frightening, and she hated it, but she kept sprinting, trying to move as quickly as she could right now, because now was the only time that mattered, that was even real. She couldn't increase her speed, but she could strain to keep moving at the same rate in spite of the fatigue.
She stayed low, running in a particular direction, gauging her position by the tall pine tree jutting upward from the canopy of hardwoods. She crossed the game trail, veered to the right to follow it, and heard a shot hit behind her. She could hear the man now, his loud, heavy footsteps as he ran across the field to get a better shot at her, his heavy breaths coming closer in the silent night air.
Then she was at the pit, much closer than she had imagined it was, and she nearly stepped into it, her right foot dislodging a little dirt from the edge. She straightened her path, then veered to the right again beyond the covered pit. The man fired once more, but the shot went high. He was already trying to cut across her path to make the next shot easier and closer. He was not zigzagging as she was, not slowing at all.
She suddenly realized what he was doing. He had begun to think he could run her down and take her alive. As soon as they had realized she was armed and killing their comrades, the men must have assumed the best they could accomplish was to kill her. But now she was in the open and not running too fast to overtake. She wasn't shooting back, so maybe she was out of ammunition. The man was alone, but if he could catch her, he wouldn't have to split any money with partners. She was worth very little to him dead, but alive, she was priceless. He could sell her to her enemies or torture her, just as Wylie had wanted to do.
She heard it behind her, hardly daring to think it was that, and yet knowing it had to be, and then heard the voice-"Aah! Aah!" again and again, pitched higher than a man's speaking voice but still his voice. She thought she recognized the voice.
Jane slid to put her feet ahead of her, rolled over on her belly, and aimed her pistol in the direction she had come from. There was nothing to shoot at. She could see the whole marshy field all the way back to the house, but there was nothing in it taller than the weeds. She waited, stared down the sights of the pistol, but saw nothing. She stood and cautiously walked back toward the pit. She circled and approached it from the end so she could look the long way into the twelve-foot pit.
The tarp she had used to cover the pit was pushed aside off half the length of it, and the man lay on top of it. She could hear labored, raspy breathing. She could see the man's rifle had fallen about five feet from him. It seemed to be out of his reach, but that could be intentional.
She stepped closer. "I hear you up there," he shouted. "Help me." She had been right. It was Wylie's voice.
"Wylie. How bad are you"
"Bad. I've got a stake sticking in me."
"Toss your pistol out."
He didn't move. "I can't reach it. I can't hurt you now. Get a stick, something I can hold on to. Maybe I can get up."
She moved to the edge of the pit farthest from him and took the thickest and longest of the branches she had used to hide the pit. She held it out and he grasped it. She pulled.
"Uh," he grunted. "Let me do it."
Jane looked down and she could see that a pool of blood was collecting in the tarp below him. "How many stakes are in you"
He moved his free hand to explore. "Two. No, three. God, it hurts." He breathed hard a couple of times, then reached for the stick Jane held.
She said, "Tell me about Daniel Martel."
"A rich guy. He does what he wants. Sometimes he needs protection from what he does. He wanted Shelby's wife, he got her, kept her for a while, and then he killed her. He hired us to make sure Shelby got convicted, and then died, so nobody would ever reopen the case or come after Martel. When Shelby got away, Martel hired some more to help us hunt him down."
"Where is Martel now"
"I don't know. Probably LA."
"Not good enough. I can leave you here just like this, so you can tell the cops who you and all these armed dead men are."
"I'll help you get Martel if you'll help me get through this. I'll call him and bring him to you."
"All right. Can you lift yourself The stakes aren't in the ground deep. You can probably move them."
"I'll have to. I know that." He pushed up with one arm and dislodged two of the stakes from the ground. "Oh, Jesus," he muttered. "Oh, Jesus." Then he moved the third, and lay on his side, regaining his strength.
"Okay," Jane said. "Here. Hold on to the stick and I'll pull while you try to stand. Then we can get you up to the surface."
She saw him grasp the stick with both hands and brace himself. She pulled, and she saw in the moonlight a peculiar look appearing on his face. Then he did what she had expected. He made an incredibly fa
st tug on the stick, trying to pull her in onto the stakes that remained upright.
She let the stick go, and he fell backward. He was reaching into his jacket pocket when she backed away from the pit. As she turned and ran, she heard him moving. She ran a few more steps and dived into the weeds, just as he raised his hand above the edge and fired in her direction.
A moment later he called, "Come back."
She called, "You're on your own now. Look at your belly. You're bleeding out. I can wait."
"No. Stop. I'll do what I said, and bring Martel."
"Your chances got used up, Wylie."
She crawled a distance away, got up, and went to look at each of the other men to be sure none of them had survived. There were two on the front porch, one in the back. There were three she had caught shooting the dummy in the master bedroom. There was a man lying on the mattress where her rope was tied, his rifle still resting on the windowsill.
She took the rope and began the hard work of moving bodies. She dragged each of the four men lying on the second floor to the edge of the stairs and pushed him so he slid down to the first floor. Each of them stopped at some point, snagged on the railing or jammed against the wall, so she went down and pushed the body with both feet to get it moving. Then she dragged it to join the two who were already splayed on the front porch.
As she stepped off the porch, she heard the report of a pistol come from inside the pit she had dug. She paused for a second, then walked to the side of the house and out to the field, approaching the pit from a new angle so she could look down the long side.
When she was close, she pulled out her gun and stepped close to the pit. She looked inside, then away again. Wylie had put the barrel in his mouth and ended his pain.
Jane walked back into the house, found her cell phone, and called Stewart Shattuck's number. When he answered, she said, "I knew you'd be awake. Do you recognize my voice"