The Hanged Man

by T. J. MacGregor

  “Look at me,” he said.

  Fuck you.

  “Look. At. Me.”

  And he reached into her, seized her, and forced her to turn her head. Forced her like an abusive parent grabbing a child’s chin, except that he didn’t touch her physically. Her head turned until she stared into the face of Tom’s killer. His fathomless blue eyes held hers, then she wrenched her gaze away and looked down at his shoes.

  Green shoelaces.

  Sweet Christ.

  Tears brimmed in her eyes. She blinked them back and met his gaze. “You’ve already taken everything you can take from me, Mr. Bennet. It’s Lenora Fletcher you want, not me.”

  He leaned back, his eyes unnaturally bright despite the dark circles under them. “You’re right. Absolutely right. And you’re going to bring her to me. Her and Evans.”

  Within the sealed room inside herself, Mira’s thoughts raced. She knew if she made a break for it, he would run her down physically or psychically, either way would be fine with him. Her best stab at survival lay in going along with whatever he said and seizing the first opportunity that came her way. As long as he believed he needed her, he wouldn’t kill her.

  He got up and paced restlessly alongside the bed. The distance, small as it was, allowed her to see him clearly for the first time. His clothes looked slept in, his hair desperately needed shampoo and a comb, mud had caked around the edges of his shoes. He favored his right arm and kept rubbing at his right shoulder.

  When she opened just a little, she felt a hot, throbbing pain around her own right shoulder. She sensed the injury involved a knife and knew that with very little effort, she could pick up other information about what had happened. But she hesitated opening herself more fully. She felt that if she did, he would swallow her completely.

  “Fletcher wants to find me as badly as I want to find her. Did she give you her cell phone number?”

  Her impulse screamed for her to say no. But she knew that if she did, he would either find the truth himself or kill her now. “Yes.”

  “So you’re going to call her and tell her you’ve picked up some information about my location. You’ll…”

  “She’s not going to listen to me, Mr. Bennet.”

  He stopped pacing. A sly, terrible smile touched the corners of his mouth and he leaned toward her, palms pressed against his thighs. He brought his eyes level with hers, then locked onto them. In a very soft voice, he said: “You’d better make sure that she listens to you, babe. Because your life depends on it.”

  She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his, couldn’t even blink to break the connection between them. He’d seized her again, gripped her brain with nonphysical hands, and now he held her immobilized, suspended between one moment and the next like a fly caught in honey.

  The air turned tight, hot, electric. Suddenly, the blue leaped out of his eyes and sprang into her pupils and plunged through them, down into the darkness five years in the past. Images poured through her, but each unrolled separately, in a horrifying slow motion.

  Bennet in a mask. Bennet walking into a convenience store. That convenience store. His green shoelaces. The pretty little clerk behind the counter. The expression on her face as Bennet seized her mind. Now Mira saw the clerk walking away from the register, leaving the cash drawer open. She went into the freezer, sat down on a bench, and clutched her arms to her waist, her teeth chattering from the cold. She saw Bennet scoop money out of the register drawer and then, behind him, the glass door swung inward and Tom walked in.

  Her Tom.

  Five years dead but here he stood in front of her, real enough to touch. She could even smell his cologne.

  A scream clawed at the back of her throat, a scream Bennet tried to kill but couldn’t. The horror of that night propelled her scream and it exploded out of her.

  His hand slapped down over her mouth with such force it snapped her back against the bed and impaled her. Her eyes flew open and his head swung in close to hers. He straddled her, a rider on a horse. Her right arm got trapped under her own body and he pinned her left arm with his other hand. Then he leaned in so close to her face she could smell the madness in his breath.

  “Don’t make me pull an Eddie Manacas,” he hissed, and shoved an image at her of a woman with a stocking tied around her neck. A woman naked from the waist down. The woman Mr. Ed had raped and strangled. “Just do what I tell you and you’ll live to see your kid grow up.”

  She wanted to nod, but couldn’t. Anything, I’ll do anything, she thought at him.

  He took his hand away from her month, then went into her closet, swept hangers off the bar, dropped everything on the bed. “Find something to wear. Something casual. Jeans, a T-shirt. And wipe your nose.”

  He tossed her a wadded-up handkerchief. She touched it it her nose and it came away bloody.

  “C’mon, get up, get the fuck up. It’ll be light soon.”

  Mira pushed up on her elbows, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and ran the back of her hand under her nose. Less blood now.

  “You’re going to tell her that I called you, attacked you psychically. And when I did, you picked up information about my location.”

  “She’ll wonder why I didn’t go to Sheppard.”

  “You can’t get in touch with him. You’re also going to tell her the information concerns someone whose name is Evans. You don’t know whether it’s a first or a last name.”

  The gun. If she could get into the closet where she’d hidden the gun… “She’ll want me to give her the information over the phone.”

  “You tell her you have to show her on a map.”

  Mira held her jeans and a T-shirt up against her. “Do you mind if I step into the closet to change?”

  “Don’t bother.” He turned so his back was to her.

  Mira quickly pulled on the clothes, then he turned around, his eyes sweeping from her head to toes and back to her face again. “Good, that’s good.” He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “Lenora is an early riser. You’ll call her at six-thirty. And while we wait, you’ll fix me breakfast.”

  Then he stepped to the side of the door and gestured grandly for her to precede him to the kitchen.

  By six-thirty, fatigue had settled like lead in Hal’s bones, weighting him, pulling him down. He didn’t trust his psychic reflexes enough to rely solely on reaching to control her. So he brought out the gun and gestured toward the phone.

  “Time to do your thing, babe. And make it good.” He set the kitchen phone in front of him and punched out the cell phone number on the business card Fletcher had given Mira. He handed her the receiver and quickly turned on the remote phone so he could listen in without leaving the room. Then he aimed the gun at her chest.

  She picked up on the second ring. “Lenora Fletcher.”

  At the sound of her voice, his blood began to boil. He reached ever so slightly, just enough to find the white noise, then quickly withdrew.

  “Ms. Fletcher, this is Mira Morales.”

  “Oh. Ms. Morales. Well, this is a surprise. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve got some information on Hal Bennet’s whereabouts. I can’t seem to get ahold of Detective Sheppard, so I thought I’d better pass it on to you. It also involves someone named Evans. I don’t know whether that’s a first or last name or a nickname. Maybe you know.”

  “So this is psychic information.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “I need to show you on a map.”

  “I’ll be right over. Are you at the bookstore?”

  “No. I’m at home. And frankly, I don’t want you here. My store hasn’t been the same since the day you walked in there and offered your opinion on the cards I’d drawn. So no, I’ll come to you.”

  Fletcher chuckled. “Suit yourself. Take down this address.” As she gave Mira the address, Hal scrawled it on a nearby wall calendar.

  “I’ll meet
you in an hour,” Fletcher said.

  Mira glanced at Hal, who nodded. “That’s fine,” she replied. “See you then.”

  Mira hung up. “Now what?”

  “When did she come to your store?”

  “The day she decided the feds were going to take over the investigation. She left bad vibes all over the place.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like Fletcher. You know where this address is?”

  “South of here, over on the beach somewhere.”

  “You have a map of Lauderdale?”

  “In my glove compartment.”

  “Let’s get it.” As he gestured toward the garage, a cat poked its head out from behind the couch. Hal bared his teeth and hissed at it; the cat ducked behind the couch again.

  Mira opened the utility room door and they stepped out into the dark garage. He hit the wall switch and a dim overhead light came on. “Hold it right there,” he said, and she stopped. “I’ll get the door.”

  Hal opened the passenger door and gestured for her to get in. He considered shooting her now. But the address Fletcher had given included an apartment number and he didn’t intend to knock on the door himself. “Sit in the seat,” he told her. She sat and he reached across her knees to open the glove compartment. No gun, no weapon of any kind that he could see. Just a stack of maps. “Okay, find the right map.”

  Mira brought out the maps, went through them, handed him one. He reached out and stroked her cheek with the muzzle of the gun. She didn’t flinch, didn’t react at all. She just stared at him, venom in her eyes. “You think I wanted to kill your husband?”

  “Whether you meant to or not, he’s dead.”

  “And you’d kill me in a heartbeat for it.”

  “Kill you?” Her mask cracked. “I’m not the killer, Mr. Bennet. You are.”

  “They made me into a killer.” He gestured for her to get out of the Explorer. “That’s what everyone overlooks. Steele and Fletcher trained me to kill and when I didn’t want to do it anymore, my name went on the shitlist.” He motioned her into the house and followed closely behind her. “Steele deserved to die. And so does Fletcher.”

  “What a waste,” she said softly. “Your talent could be used to make a difference and instead, you sold out.”

  Bennet slammed the utility room door, grabbed her arm and spun her around. She winced and drew back, arms clutched against her. “Let’s get something straight. I never had the advantages you were born into. When I was Reverend Hal, I changed lives, I diverted some personal tragedies. Yeah, I overcharged for what I did. But people could’ve gone elsewhere. And they didn’t because I gave them answers. I gave them something to believe in. I wasn’t born a killer.”

  Her gaze disturbed him. Then, in his head, he heard her words as clearly as if she’d spoken them aloud. But you’re a killer now.

  His anger leaped away from him. “What the fuck do you know,” he shouted, and shoved her away from him.

  She stumbled back into the table, her eyes bright and liquid with emotion. Finally, in a strangely calm voice, she said, “If we’re going to make it to that address in time, we’d better leave.”

  “What makes you think you’re going anywhere?”

  “You need me to ring the doorbell, Mr. Bennet.”

  “Very good,” he mocked her. “And then what?”

  “Then I guess we’ll find out if I’m right.”

  The phone rang before Hal could say anything. “Who would be calling you this early?”

  “My grandmother.”

  “Let it ring. She’ll think you’re still asleep.” Hal reached into the basket on the counter, and grabbed her keys. He tossed them to her. “We’re going to take your Explorer and put my truck in your garage. You can wear those boots in the garage. Let’s get going.”

  Chapter 29

  Four hours after they putted away from the plane in the rubber dinghy, after they took innumerable wrong turns and battled mosquitos and insects that looked like remnants of the Jurassic era, they followed a pair of dolphins from the dripping mangroves into a deeply shaded lagoon. The sounds of wildlife broke up the eerie stillness—clicks and hums, buzzes and splashes. Otherwise the place seemed untouched by time, outside of time.

  Sheppard ducked as they passed under a drooping copse of trees, Spanish moss hanging from the branches. The dolphins circled the Zodiac once more, then shot away, headed in the direction from which they had just come. Sheppard, at the rear of the boat, stared after them.

  “Something spooked them, Gerry.”

  “Yeah. That.”

  Sheppard turned to face the front of the raft again and saw what Young meant. The chickee rose out of the lagoon on eight-foot stilts, a solitary structure with walls, windows, shutters, and a small satellite dish perched on its tin and thatch roof. Through the space under it, Sheppard could see part of an extended platform and a ladder. No boat was in sight, there didn’t appear to be anyone within a hundred miles, but they both drew their weapons.

  Young motioned to the right, indicating they should approach from that direction, the farthest distance between the chickee and the mangroves. Sheppard set his gun beside him and started paddling. Young dropped to his knees, sighted down the barrel of his gun, and swung it slowly from the far left to the far right, scanning the lagoon.

  Frenzied splashing erupted to their left, but it happened too quickly for either of them to see what had caused it. They came up behind the chickee and tracked alongside it. Branches braided together overhead and cast such deep shadows he couldn’t distinguish the shapes of the trees to his right. They just melted together, a looming emerald mass that seemed to lean in toward the water as if to embrace it.

  Suddenly, something crashed into the raft on the left, rocking it so violently that Young got thrown off balance. He struck the side, his gun slipped out of his hand, and a wild thrashing erupted beneath the raft. It heaved in the middle like a mound of earth surrendering to extreme internal pressure; Sheppard was hurled back.

  “Gator!” Young shouted and grabbed his paddle off the floor of the raft and swung it over his head.

  Sheppard scrambled for his gun, scooped it out of three inches of water, rolled onto his knees. He clutched it in both hands, sighted on the froth, prayed the gun would fire.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing, Christ, nothing.

  Young yelled at him to shoot the fucker, shoot, shoot, and Sheppard squeezed the trigger again. The blast sounded like the end of the world, echoing across the sheltered cove and springing into the surrounding mangroves like a living thing. The gator’ s wild thrashing caused the raft to pitch furiously in the frothing water and Sheppard fell back, bounced against the slowly deflating side of the raft, and rocked onto his knees again.

  He had somehow managed to hold onto his gun this time. The skin on his palms had grown into it, into the handle, into the heart of the gun itself. It would fire again. It had to. The gator, still alive and enraged, closed in on them. Young beat the paddle against the water; Sheppard sighted on the gator again, pulled back on the trigger.

  Click.

  Again.

  Click.

  Again.

  The explosion resounded inside his skull, slamming around between his ears like some giant beach ball. A vague awareness crept into him that the thrashing had stopped and the raft no longer pitched. Air hissed out of it so fast that he could feel the side he leaned against getting lower, softer. Water seeped over the side.

  “Where’s the gator?” Sheppard shouted.

  “It sank.”

  “Is it dead? Did I hit it?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know.”

  Sheppard tossed his gun to Young. “Cover me.” He shucked his windbreaker, tore off his shoes, and eased over the side. He grabbed onto the rope and swam toward the chickee’s ladder.

  “I didn’t need saving,” Young muttered, scanning the water for some sign of the gator.


  “I’m saving the raft, Gerry, not you. Unless we can patch the hole, we won’t be getting back to the plane before dark. And I really don’t want to spent a night out here.”

  “Good point. Swim faster.”

  Before Sheppard reached the ladder, the gator’s corpse floated to the surface. Sheppard went around it and swam faster to the ladder. The side of the raft that continued to lose air now resembled a huge cellulite dimple in a very large and fleshy thigh. Sheppard grabbed onto the ladder first, climbed halfway up, then Young got out, clinging to the ladder like a giant spider, and together they hauled it out of the water to an open platform.

  They sank to their knees, stupefied, taking in everything. The kitchen, the table, a door with an open padlock dangling from it, and a door farther back in the shadows that stood all the way open. “Rae?” Young called, stumbling to his feet. “Rae, you here?”

  The tight, uneasy silence caught his voice and tossed it back as an empty echo. “Jesus, we’re too late,” Young said softly, his face the color of old bread. “She’s dead.”

  Something about the way Young said it bothered Sheppard, but he didn’t have time to think about it. He reached the open doorway and stopped, balking at the dozens of sketches that papered the far wall. They featured Rae Steele in multiple poses, multiple moods.

  Some of the sketches had gaping tears in the center, as if Bennet had slammed his fist through them; one had a penknife impaled in the center of it.

  “Jesus God,” Young breathed, stopping next to him.

  They went into the room, neither of them speaking. Young made a beeline for the closest shutter, threw it open, and leaned out into the fresh air. Sheppard heard him suck the air in through clenched teeth, struggling not to puke.

  It puzzled Sheppard because there wasn’t any corpse, any blood, nothing so blatant that would make a man feel like puking. Unless he had a personal stake in whatever had happened here. Unless his imagination churned, filling in the blanks.

  A man with graying hair who isn’t Steele: that was what Mira had said. A man who smoked an occasional cigar. A man who rarely talked about his personal life. A man, Sheppard thought, whose significant relationship had ended last spring.