Blood of Angels

by Marshall, Michael

  I watched as he unslung the bag from his shoulder and pulled the long zip which ran along its side.

  'So what's your theory?'

  He put his hand in the bag and pulled out a shovel.

  'John, if we screw up this crime scene they'll throw us in jail.'

  He started digging.

  •••

  The ground was very soft and within fifteen minutes he'd made a complete mess.

  'Cool,' I said. 'So, underneath the mud you've found a bunch more mud. I'm out of here. This is a waste of time and…'

  'And Nina's out there somewhere.' He kept digging, like a machine. 'I really do get it, okay? I came a long way this morning and not because of you.'

  'If this is such a good idea, why didn't the cops do it?'

  'Because they had no reason to.'

  'So why do we? If the ground looked like it had been disturbed recently, they would have dug it up. They didn't, so it can't have looked that way.'

  He straightened, and perhaps saw that I was a beat from walking away from him. He spoke patiently.

  'This is how investigations work. You do what you can and hope that eventually it takes you where you want to be. If you're going to go, just go. Otherwise you can either stand there going insane over a problem you cannot solve right now or you can grab another shovel and help.'

  This derailed me. 'You've got another shovel in there?'

  He started digging again. 'Of course.'

  'Why would you have two shovels?'

  'I've got two of everything, Ward. I've got two shovels and two cameras and two of most types of gun. I've got two maps and two laptops and a lot more than two sets of ID.'

  'I asked why, not for a stock list.'

  'Because if you're out by yourself the one thing you cannot afford is not having the thing you need. You have two of everything to make up for there only being one of you.'

  The set of his shoulders spoke of too much time spent in an empty car, of evenings in chairs outside silent rooms in cheap motels, of dark hours lost in contemplation. I didn't know him well but it was obvious he had changed: as if he had been through his soul and thrown out everything that didn't help lead him where he needed to go. He looked like a one-man patrol unit, the lone mercenary of his own lost cause.

  'You didn't have to be out there on your own.'

  'How have you spent the last six months?'

  'Hiding. In a borrowed cabin up near where we saw you last.'

  'I guessed it would be something like that. Did you need me as a neighbour, someone guilty of three homicides?'

  'I thought it was two.'

  'You remember Dravecky, the real estate developer?'

  'The one you sold out to, for information on where Paul might be?'

  'I didn't sell out. I made him think I had. I went back for him later.'

  'And killed him.'

  'He was a very bad man.'

  'I wonder whether you're in a position to make that kind of call any more.'

  'I believe I am.' He stopped, looked up at me. 'Three is a lie too. There have been another four since.'

  'Jesus, John. Why don't you just apply to join the Straw Men? You must about qualify by now, right? Seven murders? These are decent numbers.'

  'These people were Straw Men. When I took out Dravecky I left with a stack of his computer records. Each of those four guys was in the organization, and also someone very evil. And yes, I do mean "evil"—murderous and deranged but too rich or powerful for the law to ever touch. So I did it. I'll likely do it some more.'

  'They probably want to kill you pretty bad by now.'

  'My point exactly. You didn't need me around.'

  'We tried to call you, regardless.'

  'Yeah. The woman I used to live with called me. The man who didn't kill my daughter's murderer called me. Some days you're just not in the mood to take those kind of calls.'

  He turned away and kept on digging. I took some deep, even breaths, then went and got the second shovel.

  Another twenty minutes turned the scene into even more of a mess without revealing anything useful. The mud was wet and sticky and heavy and shovelling it got increasingly hard.

  I looked up from my section of the landscaping carnage to see John had stopped digging. 'There's nothing here,' he said.

  I was reminded of the time the two of us had walked out onto a high, desolate plain south of Yakima and found a cabin which had been used as a storehouse for the dead, and used that way for many years. It was John who'd taken us out there looking, on a tip I wouldn't even have listened to. But it was me who'd kept us going. I have a certain lazy doggedness: sticking to the task in hand saves you the work of deciding what else to do instead. Right now I was warm despite the cold, and the rhythmic movements of the shovel had helped blank my mind of other things.

  I moved six feet away and started digging a new hole.

  After a moment, he went back to work.

  •••

  'Ward,' he said, suddenly. 'Come here.'

  We were fifteen feet apart by then, and had been digging for over an hour. I walked over to where he was standing.

  He was maybe nine feet from the point at which he'd started. At his feet was a hole about two feet deep. The bottom had an inch of water in it already. But you could see there was something in there.

  I bent over and looked more closely. Looked up at him. 'What the hell is that?'

  We both started digging, much more quickly. Water seeped in through the sides of the hole almost as fast as you could slush it out, but after only a few more minutes it was obvious we'd found something sizable. John went to his bag and got out a pair of trowels and we both went down on our knees and spent another ten minutes clearing material away. The nature of our discovery became hard to deny. We stopped and stared down at it.

  'Is that what I think it is?'

  'Yes,' he said. 'That would be a ribcage.'

  'Christ. Human?'

  'Looks like.'

  I oriented myself in relation to the body by the direction of curve in the revealed sections of seven ribs. I started digging with the trowel again, moving to an area two feet to the left.

  'What are you doing?'

  I didn't answer but kept going until I found the upper arm. I moved further left and found the bones of the lower arm. These ended in a pair of jagged lines.

  Then nothing.

  'Okay,' I said. 'No hand.'

  He got the connection. We stood up.

  'Christ, John—what's going on here?'

  'I don't know,' he said. 'But check this—there's no smell. At all. And you see the colour of the bones, their texture?'

  'Stained brown. Porous-looking. Which means this has been here a while, right?'

  'At least ten or twelve years, maybe a few more. How old is this suspect they got for the other two bodies? The red-haired woman?'

  'Twenty-five.'

  We both stood there quietly, and did the math.

  Chapter 23

  Lee was sitting in his kitchen. It was as clean as it was going to get. The reason his house always looked spruce—and he knew that this mildly freaked Brad out—was simple. He spent a lot of time cleaning it. First week he moved into his own house, Lee realized it was going to have to be that way. All his life there had been a maid or two around: he had never seen his mother do anything more strenuous than rinse out a martini glass, and that had been desultory and in extremis. But he didn't want a maid. He was twenty years old. It would be ridiculous—not to mention there were sometimes things in his house you wouldn't want a nosy Mexican to lay her hands on, maybe start thinking she could parley the information into a favour with the immigration services.

  So he cleaned it himself. He soon found he was good at it. Liked it, even. Kind of a gay thing to get into, maybe, but if you did it yourself, you knew it was done. Nowadays, whenever he needed to think properly about something, he cleaned. It was his guilty secret. He guessed everybody had one.

  Th
e house was absolutely quiet. He liked it that way too. A lot of his friends—their parents too, and younger sisters especially—seemed incapable of spending time without aural wallpaper. Had to have the TV on, or the radio. Failing all that, conversation. Something. Anything. Lee was not that way, just as he was not someone who had to take drugs to go out and party. He took a line of coke every now and then, to show willing. Otherwise, he stayed away and stayed clean. You needed to be sharp in this life. You needed to be together. You needed to have your ducks in a row.

  Boy, but he was going to be happier when he heard the Pete thing was dusted away. Then everything would be in profit, that stupid evening nothing more than an event which had brought him a lot closer to the guys that mattered, and which had—by happy accident—also got rid of Hernandez. This evening should be a time for celebration. He wondered what he'd do. Maybe give Brad a call, though the guy had been unusually flaky that morning. Problem with getting close to people, chicks in particular, is it gave them the power to rock your boat. First your boat, then your world.

  Lee thought maybe he'd get a piece of paper and make notes about stuff to talk to Paul about next time. Get the Plan moving into higher gear, now things were getting back to normal. He stood up to go fetch some from the right side of the second drawer under the silverware—everything had a place—and realized a car was driving fast along the road towards the house.

  He recognized the car.

  It skidded to a ragged halt. The door opened and Brad climbed out. He was all over the place. He looked like he couldn't even walk properly. He was shouting something. And he was headed straight for the front door.

  Hudek walked quickly out into the hall and had the door open before Brad had a chance to bang on it. Brad's face was red and wet and his hair was sticking out all over the place.

  'You fucking,' he shouted. 'You fucking…'

  Then he burst into the house and was on top of him. He just went postal. It was like being attacked by a tiger on meth. You didn't always remember it but Brad was two inches taller than Lee and had maybe an extra five to ten per cent of strength at his disposal. He was screaming, his voice rasping out so much it was impossible to hear what he was saying.

  Lee tumbled backward into the hallway and was battered quickly down onto his back. However out of control Brad was, it wasn't stopping him piling blows into Lee's face and neck and chest. He punched back as best he could, all the while trying to push out with his knees and roll out from under the bigger boy, trying to get out so he could restart this whole thing at less of a disadvantage: and also before Brad grabbed his head and smashed it on the floor, which he showed every sign of being willing to do.

  He managed to gasp out a single sentence, panted out word by word: 'Brad—what the fuck is your problem?'

  Brad wasn't saying. Brad was all about causing damage right now.

  Finally Lee managed to connect a fist hard enough to get him to rear back, just for a second, and Lee shoved him hard to the side and kicked him again and then struck out hard with his arm. Brad's head connected with the wall and that was enough for Lee to pull himself out and up onto his feet.

  He'd hoped maybe that would be enough to earn a time-out, but Brad just lunged straight after him.

  Whatever this was it was serious. Lee turned and ran back through the house. He made it into the living room and saw he'd left the doors to the yard open. He'd never tried climbing the fence down the end and it would freak the hell out of neighbours he'd trained to think of him as a very nice young man, but it could be they were just going to have to deal with it…

  Then from nowhere Brad tackled hard from the side and brought him down in the middle of the living room. Started whaling into him again, punches less and less accurate but still very, very hard.

  Lee managed to roll him off again and reconsidered—on a straight run Brad could always catch him.

  He turned and ran back towards the kitchen, still shouting at Brad and trying to get him to tell him what the hell was going on in his head.

  And that was when he got a glimpse of Brad's eyes again and heard the growling sound coming out of his throat, and knew this was non-negotiable. He wasn't screwing around: Brad really was trying to fuck him up, and trying to fuck him up for good.

  He turned around the corner and headed down the corridor. Yanked open the door at the end and stepped quickly into the double garage. He could hear Brad coming on fast behind him but knew if he just kept his head and got to the storage unit…

  He got there. Grabbed the drawer open and pulled out the gun.

  Turned around and pointed it straight at Brad's head.

  •••

  Brad hesitated. For just a moment it looked like he was going to come on anyway, as if he was just going to run straight at the gun.

  Lee was now panting heavily. 'Brad, what the fuck?'

  Brad was a mess. He was crying and snot was running out of his nose down over his mouth. He didn't seem to realize or care.

  'You killed her,' he said. His voice was a croak.

  'What are you talking about?'

  'Don't fucking lie to me. You killed her. You got her killed.'

  Lee kept the gun trained firmly on Brad's face. There was only about six feet between them. If Brad lunged, he was going to have to shoot very fast. 'Brad, I have no idea what you are talking about. Got who killed? Who's dead?'

  'You know who. Kar…'

  Brad's face crumpled and his speech was lost to comprehension for a moment, stretching into a long, moaning sound that finally resolved into a recognizable name.

  Lee stared at him. 'Karen? Karen's dead?'

  Brad screamed at him. 'Of course she's dead, you prick! You think she was going to survive that? Or didn't they tell you how they were going to do it?'

  'Brad, you have to calm down and tell me what you're saying because right now I have no fucking clue what this is about.'

  Brad pulled his hand viciously across his eyes, sniffed hard. Blood had started to run out of one nostril.

  'You told them.'

  'Told them what?'

  'You told them Karen was asking questions. That she thought we knew something about what happened to Pete.'

  Hudek opened his mouth, shut it again. Guilty as charged.

  Brad nodded tightly. 'I knew it,' he said. 'You turned her in. You thought she was going to blow it for us, and you turned her in.'

  Lee licked his lips, spoke carefully. 'I'll be honest with you, man. Yes, I mentioned it to Paul. I did mention the situation. While you were getting his coffee. I thought he should know, that's all. I told him it wasn't a problem, that she wouldn't do anything to hurt you, and he said it was fine, everything would be cool by the end of the day anyway and nothing would matter.'

  'But that's bullshit,' Brad said. 'It didn't matter if the cops had been spun some other story. If Karen told them we'd lied to them, they'd have come for us anyway. They'd have come for us and the other story would have fallen apart in seconds. You knew that, and he knew that, and so you got her killed to stop her talking.'

  'Brad—I didn't.'

  'You know how they did it? Right in public. Right in the fucking street. Some guy in a Humvee just rams her car in broad daylight and then drives off. Her face got squashed flat. Her fucking arm came off, Lee. Her fucking arm'

  'Look, Brad, for Christ's sake, I'm nothing to do with this. I told the guy but it was just information. You don't know it's them anyway. It could just be an accident. Did you even think of that?'

  'Yeah, right. Don't treat me like an asshole, Lee.'

  'I didn't mean for them to do anything to her.'

  'I don't believe you,' Brad said. 'And it doesn't matter anyway. You told him. You got her killed. You killed her whether you meant to or not.'

  'It's not my fault.'

  'Nothing ever is, right? What's the fucking problem, Lee? You couldn't stand the fact she was with me instead of you, or what?'

  Lee laughed. 'What? Man, I didn't care
.'

  'Yeah you did. Yeah you fucking did. Ever since I've been seeing her you've been an asshole about it. Telling me you screwed her. Dropping hints all over the place. Yeah, you thought she might talk and you wanted her gone because of that but it was personal too, wasn't it? Just fucking admit it.'

  Lee went light-headed. 'You were welcome to her, you asshole. Fucking ice queen. She couldn't blow for shit anyway.'

  Suddenly Brad went quiet.

  Ominously quiet. He was no longer crying either.

  'You're dead,' he said, matter of fact.

  Hudek could see Brad's body gathering to explode. The tendons in his neck stood out like wire. He knew if Brad came at him now, he really was going to die.

  'Brad, don't make me do this,' he said, keeping the gun steady. He wished he could remember how many shots he'd fired that night in the parking lot. 'Don't you fucking make me do this.'

  'I loved her,' Brad said, with eerie calm. 'That's something you're never going to understand because you're screwed up in the head. I loved Karen. And you got her killed.'

  'Brad, we have to…'

  And then Brad hurled himself at him.

  Lee pulled the trigger like they did on television. Two quick pulls, bang bang.

  The reports were deafening in the confined space and the gun was pointed direct at Brad's face and not wavering more than a degree.

  Brad smacked into him like a train and threw him into the back wall. Both heads hit it hard and then fell to the ground and Lee started to struggle immediately, feeling nightmarish with the other man's body on top of him.

  Then he realized there wasn't any blood.

  And that Brad was still moving, not twitching but shoving just as hard as he was.

  They pushed each other away, wound up sitting a couple of yards from each other on the concrete floor.

  They looked at each other. There was a spray of something that looked like soot across one side of Brad's face. Lee's eyes were open wide and he still had the gun in his hand.

  Then Brad started to laugh.

  It was a quiet, horrible sound, the noise a mind might make if it came unhinged and started flapping in the wind.