COLT (A Nicholas Colt Thriller)

by Jude Hardin

  Everett looked at the revolver, and then he looked at me. He swallowed hard. His hands were trembling, as was his upper lip. He wasn’t a killer. He was in this thing deep, but he hadn’t murdered anyone yet. Maybe he thought there was still hope for him to salvage some kind of life, even if he and Patterson ended up getting caught.

  “I can’t do this,” he said. “I have a better idea. Instead of killing him, we can just tie him up and gag him and leave him here. It’ll serve the same purpose. Nobody will find him until we’re long gone.”

  “We can’t take that chance,” Patterson said. “If someone does come in here before we’re off the continent, we need them to find a corpse. Not a private investigator who can tell them every detail about what we’ve done. Just aim and pull the trigger, Ev. It’s really easy. Then we can be on our way.”

  “If it’s so easy, then you do it.”

  “No. You said we were going to be equal partners in this thing. The only fair way is to split the risks along with the rewards. If we get caught, I’m not going to be the only one facing a murder charge.”

  Everett stared at the gun. He was still shaking, still thinking it over. He didn’t want to kill me, but he knew now that he had to. There was no other way. Either I died and the two of them made a clean getaway with twenty million dollars, or I lived and they risked serious prison time. Maybe even the death penalty. It wasn’t much of a dilemma, when you got down to it. He knew I had to die, and he knew Patterson wasn’t going to do the dirty work this time.

  Everett chewed on his bottom lip. He was breathing hard, practically panting. He wrapped the pillow around the .38 and aimed it at my face. I heard the bullet whistle past my left ear as I ducked and rammed him in the gut with my head. As all the air left his lungs and he doubled over in excruciating pain, I grabbed the gun and twisted it out of his hand, nearly taking his trigger finger along with it. I kneed him in the groin and then hammered his forehead with the butt of the revolver, opening a cut over his left eye. Bright red blood gushed from the wound, and he fell to the floor moaning and writhing. His eyes rolled back in his head as his body convulsed and then went limp. He was out cold. Or dead, maybe. I couldn’t tell for sure.

  While all that was happening, John Patterson should have gone for the shotgun. But he didn’t. He came after me instead, which told me that the shotgun probably wasn’t even loaded. I aimed my .38 downward at a forty-five degree angle, intending to shoot him in the leg, but before I could get a round off he slammed into me and pinned me against the top of one of the desks. It was the one on the left, the one I’d sat at the first time I’d come to the room. The one with the nice leather blotter and the antique letter opener.

  Patterson had a good grip on both of my wrists. He lifted my right arm and slammed it against the edge of the desk. A searing avalanche of white-hot agony coursed through me as my hand sprung open and the gun fell to the floor. If my arm wasn’t broken, it might as well have been. I couldn’t move my fingers, not even a little bit.

  Everett still hadn’t stirred. It was just the two of us, Patterson and me, engaged in hand-to-hand combat, and he was on top. He had the advantage, and he was physically stronger. And my right arm wasn’t working anymore. The only thing I had going for me was experience, but that wasn’t going to be enough. Not this time.

  The only way for me to win was to fight dirty.

  And that’s exactly what I planned to do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “How does it feel to know you’re going to die?” Patterson said.

  I ignored the question. “Everett needs a doctor. He’s hurt bad.”

  “Do I look concerned? Everett’s a wimp. I hope he’s dead. More money for me. I don’t need Everett anymore. Everything’s set. I’m going to be a millionaire, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to stop that from happening.”

  “You’re insane,” I said. “You’re the one who’s going to die tonight.”

  He laughed. “You know why I like that Jack Nicholson poster so much, the one from The Shining on the wall over my bed? It’s because of the famous line from that scene. It’s something I’ve said many times through the years, and it’s something I’m going to say to you now.” He paused, grinned maniacally, and said, “Heeeeeere’s Johnny!”

  But when he said it, his face got a little too close to mine, and I craned my neck forward and latched onto his nose with my teeth. His eyes bulged and he started grunting and screaming like a little kid. Instinctively, he let go of my wrists and tried to force my jaw open with his fingers. As he was doing that, I felt around on the desk with my left hand, the only one that was working at the time.

  I was hoping to wrap my fingers around the ivory handle of the letter opener. I visualized grabbing the tool and jamming it into the side of Patterson’s neck. In that scenario, a fountain of blood squirted from his carotid artery, pulsing out in arcs and showering the walls and the desk and the ceiling with dripping dots of liquid crimson. In my fantasy, Patterson backed away from me, gurgling and clutching his throat, the pressurized leak in his neck slowing to a trickle now, the color draining from his face. He staggered in a circle for a few seconds, and then collapsed to the floor beside his fallen comrade.

  That was the climactic scene playing in my head as Patterson frantically tried to pry my teeth from the ripping, crunching clump of cartilage they were clamped down on. That was the action movie version, but that’s not what really happened.

  I never got my hand on the letter opener. Instead, I found something cold and hard and heavy, something that almost seemed custom made to the contours of my hand. It wasn’t big, and it wasn’t small. You could have housed it in a peanut butter jar. I picked it up, saw its blurred shape with my peripheral vision. I’d noticed the piece before. It was a cast iron elephant with an antique copper finish, a coin bank being used for a paperweight. At least that’s what it was to most people. To me, at that moment, it was a first-rate skull buster.

  I slammed the elephant’s rear legs into the back of Patterson’s head, just behind his right ear. I couldn’t really see his eyes or the expression on his face, but I felt his fingers go slack, followed by the rest of him. He went limp on top of me, dead weight, his traumatized brain no longer controlling his body movements or—based on the warm wetness suddenly spreading over my right thigh—his bladder.

  I unclenched my teeth, turned my head to the side and spat out a thick salty wad of blood and skin and snot. I retched and hiccupped and dry heaved a few times, and then I shifted my weight and rolled Patterson off of me. He tumbled to the floor in a heap.

  My first thought was to call 911. All three of us needed medical attention. There wasn’t a landline in the room, but I figured Patterson had a cell phone. Mine, unfortunately, was back in the car with a dead battery.

  I slowly rose from my position on the desk, my lower spine wrenched from bending backwards and my right arm still practically useless from the pounding it had taken. I knelt on one knee, but before I could reach over and check Patterson’s pockets for a phone, a voice from behind me said, “Don’t move.”

  It was Everett. He had my gun.

  “Be careful with that,” I said. “It has a hair trigger.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Colt. I’m calling the shots now.”

  We were both talking loudly, practically shouting in order to be heard over the band, which was currently grinding out a slightly out-of-tune rendition of “Honky Tonk Woman” by The Rolling Stones.

  Everett’s face was covered with blood, as was the front of his shirt. He looked like something out of a horror movie.

  But he had the gun, so he was indeed calling the shots.

  “I have a question,” I said. “The other day when you came to my place, how did you know—”

  “That you were going to be drunk? That you would pass out on the table?”

  “Yeah. How did you know that?”

  “I didn’t. My mother has a prescription for a tranquilizer. I
dropped one in your drink while you weren’t looking. It makes you really sleepy, especially when you mix it with alcohol.”

  “You poisoned me,” I said. “You could have killed me.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  I gestured toward the young man on the floor.

  “Your friend needs an ambulance,” I said.

  John Patterson looked even worse than Everett Harbaugh. Way worse. His nose was dangling loosely to one side, and there was a dark red puddle under his head. He was pale, and I couldn’t tell for sure if he was breathing or not.

  If I had been forced to guess, I would have said that he wasn’t.

  “He’s dead,” Everett said. “Any fool can see that. You and I are going to walk out of here together. We’re going to drive to the airstrip, and you’re going to fly to Mexico with me. Then I’ll let you go.”

  “You’re taking me hostage?” I said. “That’s not what you want to do at this point. Really, it’s not. There’s still a chance for you, Everett. You might have to spend a few years behind bars, but you’re young enough to rebound and make a life for yourself when you get out.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I heard what John Patterson said. He was the one who killed Stephanie Vowels. I’ll testify to that in court. You might even get off with probation. On the other hand, if you—”

  “Just shut up, man. If it wasn’t for you, John and I would have been out of here by now. Just shut up and let me think for a minute.”

  He scooted over to the armoire on the left, the one he’d been hiding in. He opened the door, pulled out a backpack, unzipped it and extracted a laptop computer. He plugged it in and turned it on and waited for it to boot up. Once it was ready, he typed something, waited, typed some more and waited some more. The revolver was on the floor beside him.

  “Well?” I said.

  “It’s there. The money’s there. Let’s go. We’re going to take John’s car. Reach into his right front pants pocket and get his keys.”

  I reached into Patterson’s right front pants pocket and got his keys. I could feel the warmth of his flesh through the lining. He was still warm, but I couldn’t tell if he had a pulse or not. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

  I was hoping to find his cell phone, although I’m not sure what I would have done with it if I had. Maybe I could have palmed it without Everett noticing. Then, at some point, I could have secretly called for help. Maybe. Anyway, it wasn’t there.

  I turned back to Everett. “Everyone knows you’ve been missing for a while,” I said. “How are you planning on getting out of this house without anyone seeing you? Have you thought about that?”

  “Everyone’s in the party room. They’re all drunk.” He paused. “But you’re right. I shouldn’t take any chances.”

  Everett stood. He was a little wobbly, and his eyes weren’t tracking properly. He seemed confused for a few seconds, but then he snapped out of it. He reached into the armoire on the right and pulled out a werewolf mask, the kind you can buy at any costume shop. It was a scary thing, a fierce snarling monster with coarse black hair and yellow eyes and fangs dripping with blood. I was pretty sure it had shown up in my nightmares a few times when I was a kid.

  “Nobody’s going to notice that,” I said, sarcastically.

  “It’s John’s mask, from last Halloween. Everyone knows it’s his. He puts it on at parties sometimes, just goofing around. He and I are about the same size, so if anyone sees me walking out, they’ll think it’s him.”

  “Clever. But you’re still never going to get away with it. You should give yourself up now, before it’s too late.”

  Once again ignoring my advice, Everett grabbed some things from the armoire. He tossed me a clean shirt and a clean towel and a bottle of antibacterial hand sanitizer.

  “Wipe that shit off your face,” he said.

  We both wiped ourselves off and put on fresh shirts. Everett put on a lightweight jacket as well, and then the werewolf mask. I pulled a blanket from the bed and draped it over Patterson’s arms and legs and chest. I could see now that he was breathing, but he didn’t look good. I figured he might be in shock, and that he would die soon if he didn’t get some medical attention.

  Everett was leaning against the armoire, not looking very spry himself.

  “Take a look at your future,” I said, nodding toward Patterson. “That’s going to be you if you don’t surrender to the police.”

  Everett shook his head. “Let’s go.”

  He was holding the revolver inside his jacket pocket. I opened the door and stepped into the hallway, and he followed. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that he was using the wall to steady himself. He looked like a punch drunk Lon Chaney, Jr. I told him so, but he didn’t laugh.

  Instead, he let me know, in no uncertain terms, that he would shoot me in the back if I tried anything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I had no intention of getting on an airplane and flying to Mexico with Everett Harbaugh. He’d said that he would let me go once we got down there, but I doubted it. I figured there were more accomplices in this scheme. The pilot, for one. Maybe he was a freelancer, just in it for a one-time payment. A hired hand. Maybe he didn’t know anything about anything. But, whatever the case, he was doing something illegal, and he knew he was doing something illegal, and he wouldn’t want me around to potentially identify him. So there was the pilot, for sure, and Everett probably had a helper—maybe more than one—on the ground in Mexico, a person or two to get him off the continent and on the way to the Philippines. People like that aren’t keen on letting hostages just walk away. They might let me go—out in the middle of the desert, or five thousand feet over the gulf. No thanks.

  I decided to make my move on the staircase. I thought it would be my best chance to make it out of this thing alive. There were a lot of young men and women in the house, and even though most of them were drinking and dancing and comfortably oblivious to everything but each other, I figured there was at least a chance that a few of them would come running if they heard a big boom. Especially one as big as my Smith and Wesson .38 caliber revolver would make for them now that we were closer to the party.

  Surely the noise from a gunshot would attract some attention. Plus, Everett’s balance wasn’t a hundred percent. He probably had a concussion from when I clouted him in the forehead with the butt of the gun. So I figured the staircase was going to be my best bet, the best location to attempt an escape. The trick, of course, was to not get shot and killed in the process.

  The band was jamming on an old Cream song called “White Room.” The guitar player was butchering the solo, but I had to remind myself that nobody could play it like Eric. I’d listened to that record about a thousand times when I was a teenager, and it was still one of my favorites. It was one of those songs that never got old.

  Everett and I made it to the landing. I gripped the banister with my left hand and started my descent, nice and slow. If Everett had been smart, he would have stayed a few steps behind me. But he wasn’t smart. He was careless and inattentive at a time when he should have been on high alert. He knew I didn’t have eyes in the back of my head, and he knew I couldn’t hear anything because of the band. So he probably didn’t think much about keeping a safe distance. But if he’d been paying better attention, he would have realized that I could see his distorted reflection in the blades of the stainless steel guillotine mobile dangling overhead. I could see that he was close behind me, well within reach.

  When we got to the middle of the stairwell, I did a quick one-eighty and grabbed his right wrist with my left hand. The gun discharged, blowing a fat hole through the pocket of his jacket and luckily not through me. He pulled the trigger again and again and again, but I had his hand pinned against the railing on that side and the bullets plowed through the drywall and into the nearest stud. At least I hoped that’s where they went. I hoped they didn’t ricochet off a nail or something and find flesh on the other side of the wall. Bu
t I didn’t think they would. The angle was wrong. If anything, they would bore through the front of the house and whiz on out to the yard at a harmlessly high trajectory. I hoped.

  Everett kept pulling the trigger until the bullets were gone, and then he tried to do to me what I had done to him. He tried to pistol whip me. He managed to wriggle out of my grip, and then he pulled the gun out of his pocket and raised it and came down hard, but I was able to duck to the left and avoid the full impact of the blow.

  I avoided getting my skull bashed in, but the gun’s hardwood handle nearly amputated my right ear. That’s the way it felt at the time, anyway. Blood trickled down my neck, and a constant ringing filled my head. Like an alarm at a firehouse. I tried to shake it off, but the bell kept clanging. I figured another hit like that would put me down. I couldn’t let that happen.

  I was dazed, and it took me a few seconds to realize that the band had stopped playing. I grabbed Everett’s wrist and slammed his hand against the wall, and the gun flew loose and wheeled end-over-end down the steps like a souped-up Slinky.

  I glanced downward. A crowd had gathered at the bottom of the staircase.

  Someone down there shouted, “Hey! That old guy’s trying to kill John Patterson.”

  The old guy being me, of course, and John Patterson being Everett Harbaugh. Everett’s trick with the mask was working.

  I got Everett in a headlock. He, in turn, started punching at me wildly, trying to add a few broken ribs to my list of injuries. Neither of us was very steady, and I thought for sure we were going to tumble down the stairs together and break our necks.

  But we didn’t.

  A stampede of footsteps galloped up the wooden risers, and I felt at least two sets of hands grab me and pull me away. They forced me back up to the landing and pinned me on the floor. A young man with a beard and a bunch of sharp things in his ears knelt down and got in my face.

  “Who are you?” he said.