Mortal Fear

by Greg Iles

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “What?” Drewe asks. “No, you don’t! Why do you have to go?”

  “I just do.” Because this way it’s over one way or the other. If I kill Brahma—or even if he kills me—I’ll have done the only thing that could possibly expiate my guilt. I start to hand her the .25, then switch and give her the .357. Whatever else I do, I will not walk out of here leaving my wife no more protection than a crappy Saturday night special.

  Drewe takes the huge pistol with a kind of narcotized equanimity. I drop the extra shells on the bed. “I want you to get down behind the bed and aim the pistol at the door.”

  She rolls over without a word and kneels behind the bed.

  “If anyone comes through but me, you start shooting and don’t stop until the gun is empty. You understand?”

  She nods soberly. She knows I mean to go, and though she doesn’t want me to, she won’t waste time trying to talk me out of it. The barrel of the .357 comes level with the bed, then rises until its line of fire intersects my chest.

  “I’m okay,” she says. “Go.”

  Two words echo in my head as I stare through the open pantry at the black hole of the bomb shelter’s open trapdoor. Tunnel rat. Echoing down from years ago, when a one-armed tractor driver told me about his job in Vietnam. First man down every hole. Darkness, damp, stink. Crawling on your belly with a Colt .45 held in front of your face like a crucifix and a prayer on your lips.

  The lights in the tunnel should be on, but they’re not. Too late I realize I should have switched off the kitchen lights before opening the trapdoor. I creep close enough to peer over the edge. A pool of light on the concrete floor six feet below tells me there’s a dim column shining down from the kitchen. I want to call out to Billy, but that would be idiocy. Instead, I snatch a flashlight from the top pantry shelf and cut the kitchen lights. That’s almost as obvious as yelling, but climbing down a ladder through a column of light would be suicide.

  To get to the floor of the tunnel, I must descend six ladder steps with my left side facing the open tunnel. That’s the normal method, anyhow. Not tonight. Like a kid edging toward the lip of a high roof, I slide my legs through the dark, toward the place where I know the hole is. A tin can of something falls over the edge, caroms off the ladder, and thuds on the cement below.

  I stop, waiting.

  When the next howl of pain reverberates up the tunnel, I drop down the hole like a sack, my legs crumpling against the cool concrete, the flashlight buckling under my weight.

  Forcing myself to breathe quietly, I lie prone on the tunnel floor and stare into the blackness. The .25 feels like a toy in my hand. It might stop a surprised mugger or rapist, but a psychotic killer could take five bullets from this thing and keep coming.

  Move, I tell myself. You’re asking for it.

  Brahma could be sitting ten feet up the tunnel right now. I have only one advantage. Home ground. This passage runs thirty feet away from the house, with shelves lining both walls, and ends in a heavy lead door. That door opens onto the main shelter room, which is about fifteen by fifteen. A second tunnel runs thirty feet out into the field, to the rear exit. It too is lined with storage shelves and also contains a chemical toilet room. That’s where my gold is stored. Sliding as far as I can under the metal shelving on the left side of the tunnel, I shout: “BILLY! IT’S HARPER! WHERE ARE YOU?”

  At first I hear nothing. Then a slow creak of hinges.

  “Harper?” A weak Southern drawl.

  “Yeah!”

  “I’m hit, man! Bad! I need help!”

  “Where’s Jimmy?”

  A long pause. “Gone for a flashlight!”

  Jesus. “Anybody else in here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What happened to the lights?”

  “Don’t know. I heard something and shot and they went out.” Another groan of pain. “I need help, man!”

  Damn damn damn. “Billy?”

  “What?”

  “What year did you graduate high school?”

  “Nineteen-fucking-seventy-eight! Come on, man!”

  I aim the .25 straight at the sound of the voice, where paramecia-like blobs of color swirl in a black sea. “Where are you hit?”

  “My leg! I’m bleeding bad!”

  “Are you in the main room? Square room?”

  “I think so.”

  “Close the door! So that it’s between you and me!”

  While Billy mulls over this instruction, I slither to the center of the tunnel floor and rise into a crouch, the .25 in my right hand. The ceiling has exactly six feet of clearance—my grandfather was five-eleven—so if I stay down I’ll have plenty of room. And I mean to stay down.

  “I got you!” Billy yells finally. “Bring it on!”

  The metallic screech comes and fades so fast it barely registers before the lead door slams shut. I explode forward like a nose tackle coming out of his stance, my thighs pumping, charging toward the main room and firing as I run. In the closed tunnel the little .25 booms and flashes like a howitzer, deafening me to everything but the high zing of ricochets. I sweep my arm across the tunnel as I fire, trying to maximize the odds of hitting anything between me and the lead door. With my eighth step, I dive forward, scraping my elbows in a second-base slide and jamming my wrist as the empty pistol impacts the lead door.

  “OPEN UP!” I yell, hammering the butt of the .25 against the door. If Brahma’s inside, Billy is dead by now, but somehow I don’t think so. Billy’s enough of a redneck that he would die trying to save his honor—and me—before he’d let himself be used to lure me to my death.

  When the heavy door finally swings inward, I heave myself over the frame onto some part of Billy Jackson, who screams at the top of his lungs. I shut the door and roll off, still in darkness.

  “You okay, Billy?”

  “I don’t know.” His groans sound like manly attempts to cover whimpering. “This leg was pumping blood. I tied my belt just above the hole . . . tight as shit. Where’s that fuckin’ Jimmy?”

  I feel Billy’s thigh with my right hand, and what I feel is blood. Lots of it. “We’ve got to get you out.”

  “Need a stretcher,” he says, grunting against the pain. “Aaaagh, that fuckin’ Jimmy. He shot me!”

  “What? You sure?”

  “Hell no, I ain’t sure. Hey . . . that was pretty smart what you did with the gun. Think you hit anything?”

  “No.”

  “Haaaaay!”

  I jump so badly that Billy feels compelled to steady me with one hand.

  “Don’t shoot, okay?” yells the new voice. “It’s Jimmy!”

  “About fuckin’ time, you asshole!” Billy bellows back.

  “Sheriff’s on his way!” says Jimmy, coming through the opposite door with a hooded flashlight. “Saw his lights. Must be ten cruisers coming up the highway!”

  “Great,” Billy says. “Shine that thing on my leg.”

  “Judas Priest,” Jimmy gasps as his light illuminates a ragged red hole in Billy’s blood-soaked trousers. “Jeez, I’m sorry, Bill.”

  “I think he’s okay,” I say. “If the bullet hit an artery, his thigh would be as big as a propane bottle. Just keep putting pressure on it.”

  Billy doesn’t look relieved, but as soon as I realize he’s out of danger, the real threat hits me. If Brahma’s not in the tunnels, where is he?

  “I’ve got to get back upstairs! Any more rounds in that shotgun?”

  “Ain’t no plug in this baby,” says Billy, handing me the Remington. “Three more rounds ready to go.”

  I pump in a round, kick open the lead door, and fire the moment the barrel is clear. Before the echo fades I am over the lip and charging back up the tunnel, homing on a barely visible column of light that must mark the opening of the trapdoor above. With every step I feel a knife blade whooshing out of the darkness to plunge into my groin or rip open my back. I fire again for intimidation, then dive for the l
adder, saving the final round for the house.

  I come up out of the hole like a coal miner from a collapsed shaft, pushing the gun in front and yelling for Drewe as I enter the hall. When she answers through the bedroom door, I pause.

  “It’s all right!” she shouts again. “Come in!”

  I stand to the side and turn the knob slowly, then kick open the door and jump back in case she’s being forced to speak. She is just where I left her, kneeling behind the bed with the big-barreled Magnum propped in front of her like a mortar.

  “What happened?” she asks.

  “Billy’s hit. He’ll make it, though. No sign of Brahma.”

  The Magnum drops hard onto the bedcovers. “Harper,” she says in an exhausted voice, “does Mama know about Erin?”

  “Your father does. I told him. He chartered a plane in Memphis. He’s home by now, and I’m sure he’s told your mother.”

  Drewe is crying again. “I’ve got to be there,” she chokes out. “They need me.”

  “Throw some clothes in a bag. You’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  While she wipes away the tears and goes to her closet, I stand watch with the shotgun.

  “Have you packed already?” she asks.

  I don’t meet her eyes. “Do you really think I’d be welcome there tonight?”

  When I look up, she is staring at me with her mouth open. “You know it was Brahma that was here tonight, don’t you?”

  I nod. “It had to be.”

  “And it wasn’t an accident, was it? It wasn’t random.”

  “No. Drewe—”

  “Don’t tell me,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t think about that now. Oh God.”

  She looks a moment longer, then turns back to the closet and continues packing. As she does, I realize that Erin’s death may have driven something between us that can never be removed.

  Trying to focus on anything but that thought, I decide I might be able to save a lot of trouble—and possibly our lives—by calling the sheriff’s department and telling them to inform Buckner by radio that Drewe and I will be leaving the house armed. I make the call, and the dispatcher agrees to do it while I wait. A moment later, she tells me we should come out unarmed. I tell her to forget it. Brahma could still be in the house, waiting for just such an opportunity.

  When Drewe is packed, I give her the shotgun, shoulder her bag, and grip the Magnum in my right hand. “Ready?” I ask.

  She nods.

  We burst out of the bedroom door at a near run, careening up the hall and crashing through the front door into a supernova of white light.

  “THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS!” roars a bullhorn voice. “RIGHT NOW!”

  I toss the Magnum onto the porch. Drewe does the same with the shotgun. Just to be safe, I put up both hands, and Drewe follows my example. It’s raining again. As my pupils contract, I make out a ring of cars and men behind the spotlights.

  “COME DOWN FROM THE PORCH AND LIE DOWN ON THE GROUND!”

  “It’s too goddamned muddy!” I shout back.

  After a tense silence, the cookie-cutter silhouette of a cowboy blots out some of the light in front of us.

  “What in the name of creation happened out here?” bellows Sheriff Buckner, beckoning us toward the shelter of the cars. “Anybody else in that house?”

  “I don’t know.” I lead Drewe down the steps into the rain and start explaining the situation. Buckner’s face remains impassive. He already knows about Billy Jackson. “You realize what you did by not telling us about that basement?” he yells. “I’ve got a critically injured man!”

  “I told Billy to wait for you. He wouldn’t listen.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s about the first thing you ever told me I believe.”

  “Sheriff, I need to get my wife to her parents’ house. It’s pouring rain out here.”

  “You ain’t going nowhere, Cole. Not till we figure out what’s what around here.”

  “She hasn’t seen her mother or father yet. I know Dr. Anderson must be worried sick by now.”

  Buckner looks at Drewe’s washed-out face, then signals to a deputy. “Daniels, you take this lady to Bob Anderson’s house outside of Yazoo City. She’ll tell you the way.”

  “I know the way, Sheriff.”

  “Hallelujah. Go on, then.”

  “Does it have to be me?”

  “Go on, damn it!”

  The deputy turns and mopes toward his car, but Drewe doesn’t follow. “I’m not going without my husband,” she says flatly.

  “Now, Mrs. Cole,” says Buckner, “you don’t—”

  “I mean it.”

  “I’ll come straight back with your deputy,” I promise. “Just let me ride with her. You know what she’s been through. You can interrogate me all night long after I get back.”

  “I’m gonna do just that,” growls Buckner. “All right, get out of here. Daniels? Make sure you bring Cole back here with you!”

  As Drewe and I catch up to the chosen deputy, he mutters, “God, I hate to miss this.”

  Climbing into the cruiser, I hear Sheriff Buckner shouting at the house through his bullhorn. He’s not much of a negotiator. Just three sentences.

  “HEY IN THERE! IF YOU MAKE ME COME IN AFTER YOU, YOU WILL NOT COME OUT ALIVE! YOU HAVE EXACTLY SIXTY SECONDS TO SURRENDER!”

  Then he begins counting.

  Chapter 41

  “Damn, I hate to miss that,” Deputy Daniels whines for the third time, watching his rearview mirror as the cruiser rumbles up the slick highway. “You get something like that once in maybe ten years around here.”

  “There’s nobody in the house,” I tell him, holding Drewe tight against me.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Too many ways he could have gotten out. He had a good chance to kill both of us, and he didn’t. Same with Billy and Jimmy. If he was ever there at all.”

  “He shot Billy, didn’t he?”

  “Billy’s partner shot Billy.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what Billy said, and I think he’s right.”

  Daniels looks around in his seat, bug-eyed with excitement. “I’ll be goddamned. That sounds just like Jimmy. I don’t know how many illegal does he’s shot. Too damn quick on the trigger.”

  Drewe is tugging at my sleeve. I look down into her face, startled by the intensity in her eyes. “What was Erin doing at our house?” she asks quietly. “Did you bring her there?”

  I motion for her to wait, but she knows we’ll be separated in twenty minutes, and she means to have answers. I lean forward in the seat. “Deputy, you think you could hit the siren and the gas? My wife’s feeling sick. She really needs to get home.”

  “Hey, the sooner we get there, the sooner I get back.” He reaches up and switches on his red flashers, then gooses the gas pedal.

  “No siren?”

  “Hell, we don’t need it out here in the wide open, do we?”

  “We get a lot of loose cows out this way. Deer too.”

  He snorts at my cautiousness, but all the same he hits the siren and accelerates still faster.

  The car has already outrun the rain. I slide down in the seat with Drewe, as if to rest more comfortably, and begin speaking below the howl of the siren. “I don’t know why she was there. She told your mother she was coming to talk to you.”

  “I know. But why? You drove to Jackson and saw her like I asked you to?”

  “I told you I did.”

  “I hardly remember you coming in. I don’t remember what you said. What happened when you saw Erin?”

  I hesitate. “She told me she was fine.”

  “And you believed her?”

  “What could I do?”

  “You just left? After I’d told you what I was afraid of?”

  “She wasn’t going to hurt herself, Drewe. I could see that much. I was going to call you about it, but when I got home two detectives were waiting to arrest me. Erin obviously drove over sometime a
fter that.”

  She looks away with her lips drawn tight. “It doesn’t make sense. What are you keeping from me, Harper?”

  You never want to know.

  “First Erin didn’t want to see me, then she drives eighty miles to talk to me? I can’t make that work.”

  “Drewe . . .”

  She looks back at me with glittering eyes. “My sister is dead, Harper. Any promise you made to her about keeping secrets is meaningless now. You’ve got to help me understand this.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you this.”

  She pulls away far enough to give me a level gaze. She’s obviously been expecting some dark revelation for a while, and she braces against it like a defendant awaiting sentence.

  “Patrick isn’t Holly’s father.”

  She blinks three times fast, processing the information as she would some rare medical symptom, trying to fit it into her known information and compute a differential diagnosis. With a shiver I realize that if Erin were not dead, I would not be able to stop at this point. I would have to tell the whole tragic story and watch Drewe’s world blown apart.

  “No wonder Erin wouldn’t use me as her obstetrician,” she says finally. “All that BS about how doctors shouldn’t treat family members. That wasn’t Erin at all. I knew she was probably pregnant, with the unannounced wedding and everything, but I just assumed it was by Patrick. And she was doing so well . . . nobody wanted to question it.”

  “Well, now you know.”

  “She told you this this afternoon?”

  I nod.

  Drewe shakes her head in disbelief. “Does Patrick know?”

  “Yes. That’s the problem. Before they got married, Erin told him she was pregnant, but she made him swear never to ask who the father was. I guess Patrick was okay with it for a while. But then he became obsessed with finding out.”

  “Finally,” she says, letting out a long sigh. “Finally it all makes sense.” She looks away, out the window into the dark. “Why didn’t Erin just tell him who the father was? Surely that would have been better than what they were going through?”