“Your mother read to you during storms?”
“Matter of fact, yes. Now do it.”
“Will you quit with the tone.”
“What tone?”
“The boss tone. You’d get more cooperation if you’d ask…nicely.”
“Sorry but my nerves are pretty well shot. Not a time for niceties.”
Paco left the children and Nora to join them at the foot of the stairs, where he cowered at each thunderclap, coiling around Marcus’s leg as if he’d chosen his hero. “Don’t even think about it, dog,” muttered Marcus. Then to Kat he added, “Would you please read the story to the kids?”
“Kind of a warped story, really,” said the girl, Jenny, coming toward them, having seen the book.
“Whataya mean warped?” replied Marcus. “It’s a classic.”
“Warped?” Kat repeated.
“It’s about an obsession!” she began, her arms and hands waving. “Think about it. A spider has a flat out, full-blown fixation on a pig, watching and worrying over him all the time like he was her child or something, kinda stalking Wilbur. Willing to die for him.”
“Yeah, it’s about sacrifice and love,” countered Marcus. “A rare thing in the real world, unconditional love.”
Little Jenny smirked. “In the real world, the pig’d get an injunction against the spider.”
Marcus laughed loudly in reply.
“They’re just friends, Jenny,” Kat answered. “It’s about pure friendship. Platonic ahhh….”
Danny piped in, asking from the arms of his mother, “Is Play Tonic like a drink? I’m thirsty.”
Jenny frowned and shook her head. “The entire story is just weird. The spider does all of it knowing they’re way too far apart—species wise, I mean—to ever have like a normal life together.” Jenny hesitated. “Sorry, but that…that’s sick.”
“You’re Stan’s kid all right,” said Marcus, flashing a look at Nora, whose eyes returned a look of pride in her precocious girl. Marcus recalled many lost arguments with Stan on topics ranging from the terror threat to the Lincoln assassination plot.
“All right, make it War of the Worlds then,” said Marcus, capitulating.
“Now that’s believable,” replied the girl, her tone dripping with sarcasm. Make it Jekyll & Hyde. Now there’s a story about real human nature and the science sure beats alien invasion. I’ll read it to Danny.”
“Jekyll & Hyde in a storm,” muttered Marcus.
“Why not? Frankenstein was written during a storm. Mary Shelley?”
Marcus gave up any chance of besting this girl on literature. He instead caught Nora’s reaction again, a broad smile. “How’re you holding up, Nora?”
“Where’s Carl?” she asked.
Marcus exchanged a look with Kat before saying, “He’s chosen to remain upstairs.”
“On that easy chair near the window?” Nora set her jaw firm. “I’m going to drag his skinny behind down here.” She started up but Marcus stopped her.
“Go easy on the guy,” suggested Kat.
“You stay out of this!”
“He’s been thrown into a difficult situation, Nora,” persisted Kat.
“You just stay away from him. I’m not blind!”
“Whaaat?”
She laughed a hollow laugh. “Difficult. The weasel doesn’t have a clue what difficult means, not yet.”
“Nora! Nora!” Marcus uselessly pursued her back up the stairs. Together, they stared at the empty sofa chair, and the door standing open in the wind, blasting back and forth like an angry live thing—the arm of Thor in control. Wind-driven rainwater had made a slick of the wood flooring at the entryway. On the surface, it looked as if Carl had bolted out the front door.
“Where…where is he?” Nora rushed the door.
“No, get back, Nora!” Marcus grabbed her, holding her from racing out into the storm.
“He-He-He’s run aw-aw-off; left us,” she muttered amid tears.
“We don’t know that for a fact.”
“It’s obvious, Marcus. It’s all he’s wanted since we arrived.”
“I knew he was worried but this?” he asked.
Katrina had come up behind them. “Where’s Carl?”
Paco followed, the dog bolting for the open door and tearing out into the storm.
“Paco!” shouted Kat. “Come back!”
“And you!” Nora said in condemnation of Kat. “More concerned for that mutt than for my Carl, but all the time sashaying about!”
Meanwhile, Marcus had examined the door. “Neither jimmied nor blown open,” he informed them. “Carl unlocked it from the inside for some reason or some one.”
“Either that or he simply bolted, leaving us.” Nora looked from Marcus to Katrina. “He was angry and he…he intended to leave. Took the first chance that he got, didn’t he?” From the look on Nora’s face, Marcus could tell she’d rather this be true than that Carl had opened the door for Iden Cantu.
“Stay away from the windows. For all we know, Cantu’s tracked us down, thanks to Carl.”
“Thanks to Carl? This is in no way Carl’s fault!” A Georgia wife all her life, Nora still defended her man.
“He shouldn’t’ve made that call to Marietta, Nora. It still worries me.”
“But Carl would know not to open the door to Cantu. He’s seen his pictures.”
“If Cantu came knocking at the door, you can bet he did so in sort of disguise.”
“Cantu…disguise? You really…” she halted to gasp for air… “think Cantu has hold of my-my Carl?” Nora’s managed to squeak out the last words before her knees buckled.
They helped her to the sofa. Around them the howling winds continued when a gnarled, bloody forearm and attached hand, looking as if grasping for life, slammed through one window.
The horror of it caused Nora to faint outright and for Kat to scream. Marcus wanted to scream. The ring on the left-hand appendage was Carl’s wedding band.
Katrina’s delayed response was to rip out her Glock from her shoulder holster beneath her jacket, while Marcus had a closer look at the arm. Nora, coming to, dizzy and gasping like a fish out of water, covered her eyes and openly cried for Carl, repeating his name until Marcus heard it replaced with the name Stan.
Marcus ushered them from the room, saying, “No doubt left now. Cantu’s found us; he’s out there.” Schramick’s left arm and hand were still warm—the skin, hair follicles, cellular tissue and veins still on the clock awaiting further orders from on high.
In the midst of the howling winds, a new sound filtered into the house: the terrible cries coming from out in the storm, coming from what was left of Carl Schramick. The sound meant that Carl would not die soon, not until after much suffering; suffering they too would be made to endure. Iden Cantu had arrived.
T W E N T Y
Nora had somehow crawled to where Carl’s arm lay and she began a keening, wailing, blathering over the body part. “I…I want his ring, Marcus,” she pleaded. “Will you…will you—”
Marcus grabbed hold of the wrist and yanked the diamond-studded gold band off it, and cupping her hand, folded the blood-speckled ring into her possession. “Now I want you and Kat downstairs, Nora. Nothing we can do here, and it’s too dangerous.”
“And you need to be with your children,” added Kat.
Nora allowed them to guide her back to her children. Danny and Jennifer alternately called for Paco and Carl.
“I don’t like this, Marcus,” Kat told him on the stairwell, stopping his lone retreat from the basement. “There’s no way out from down here.”
“Actually there is.”
“I’ve been over every inch, and I tell you—”
“Below my bed.”
“What?”
“A trapdoor.”
“To what, a sub-basement?”
“Crawl space that’ll take you out below the deck. I want you and the others to take it to the end of the deck to the pier. Quietly return t
he boat to the water, and take it across the lake. Kat, get them all to safety.”
“When we’re you planning to tell me all this?”
“Ahhh…now. Kat this changes everything. Cantu’s having found us, having abducted Carl. We’ve got to adapt to this and now!”
“I’ll get Nora and her kids to the boat, but I’m not leaving you here alone.”
“Your to go!”
“We had a deal, remember? You took my money.”
“I know full well—”
“I hired you! You’re not the boss here. I’m your boss. We had a deal.”
“All right, Jesus. Wouldn’t wanna be reported to the Georgia Private Eye Guild,” he joked. “Look, you can’t take the boat out in this weather anyway. You’d be scuttled. So…so just for now use the crawl space as a hideaway for Nora and the kids, but if something should happen to me—”
She’d been staring into his eyes the entire time. “Nothing’s to happen to you, mister. You got that?”
He smiled. “Understood, boss!”
“Good.”
“Perhaps…be on the safe side, you ought to get everyone into position under the floor. Just in case you do need to make a dash for the boat, storm or no storm.”
“I don’t intend to huddle in a hole in the ground like a cowering—”
“Think of the kids, Kat. For all we know, Cantu could have a cannon out there.”
“Will you stop exaggerating this creep’s prowess and firepower, please!”
He took hold of her arm more roughly than he’d meant to, but it made her listen to what he had to say. “The guy is a professional hunter, Kat.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Professional hunter?” She remained as stubborn as ever, snatching her arm free.
“It means he could well be equipped with a g’damn .50 caliber Colt AR-15 out there. A round three times the size of anything we have.”
“OK, I give you that, but you don’t know he has a .50 caliber weapon out there.”
He’d already gone to a bookcase, opened the glass case, and grabbed a book on firearms. He opened it on a photograph of several bullets standing on end and placed beside a ruler. She looked over his shoulder. “Notice, if you will.” He pointed to the shiny giant bullet on the right that towered over the .30 ought-six standard hunting round, and the .223 round used in the AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle.
Kat stammered, “That’s ahhh…a monster bullet.”
“King Kong of bullets, an overkill meant to pierce body armor.”
“I’ve heard of it in connection with Homeland Security reports on CNN, but wow.”
“Seeing is believing.” He nodded appreciatively. “Homeland security officials should be concerned about all anti-armor sniper rifles, especially this mother. Sadly, it’s all readily available and easily obtained, even over the internet.”
Even a remote possibility that Cantu had such a weapon out there now made Kat shiver. Such a round hitting a boat the size of the one they had didn’t sit well with her nerves. She imagined herself going down in the middle of the big lake with Nora clawing at her for help as the two children flailed about, drowning by degrees. “We’ll have to drain the gas tank on the boat before thinking of getting out there in it.”
“Good thinking, Kat. I’ll see to it. Even with a .223 round, he could blow the tank and turn the boat into an inferno.”
Marcus knew that .50 caliber and anti-armor sniper rifles were designed for battlefield conditions, to shoot down aircraft during takeoff or landing, to attack chemical plants, fuel depots, to puncture armored personnel carriers, and for outright assassination plots. He also knew that such weapons could destroy a target from over a mile or more away, some 2,000 yards. It represented the most lethal weapon available on the civilian market.
To further impress upon Kat the nature of the danger, he next searched for and found a Time Magazine he’d been reading, tore open the pages and showed her a photograph of Iraqi civilians armed with such weapons. The terrorist threat posed by .50-caliber anti-armor sniper rifles had prompted the media to use pictures to explain the risk to US national security. The Time article dated a year ago June ran a shocking photograph.
“Read the caption.”
She did so in grim silence. The caption read: The first hint of trouble would probably be no more than shadows flitting through the darkness outside one of the nation’s nuclear power reactors. Beyond the fencing, black-clad snipers would take aim at sentries atop guard towers ringing the site. The guards tend to doubt they would be safe in their bullet-resistant enclosures. They call such perches iron coffins, which is what they could become if the terrorists used deadly but easily obtainable .50-cal. sniper rifles.
“That’s some purple writing,” she said to lighten the moment.
“This place we’re standing in, Kat, may not be an iron coffin, but it’s getting’ to be a pretty likeness of a pine wood box.”
“All right, Marcus. I get your point. Calm down.”
The outside gale force winds had diminished somewhat. They had no lights now, having lost the electricity. Candles were lit downstairs, but here in the upstairs, Marcus ordered no lights be used. “And stay away from any windows, and stay low, but make me a drink—bourbon—and maybe I can regain some calm.”
She gave him a dirty look here in the dark, but she went to the kitchen to ‘fill the order’ all the same. She shouted out to him, “Marc, I want you to tell me more about Cantu. Everything. I want to know this enemy.”
“What more? You’ve obviously researched him, same as you did with me.”
“It’s not the same. I have no notion of who he really is. He’s just a monster on a rampage now but how’d he get that way? Tell me how, for instance, he got this Rambo reputation that’s got you all buggy about him?”
Marcus didn’t answer this.
“And what’s all this crap about his being a professional hunter? What the hell is a professional hunter, really? I’d like to know.”
“Why? You wanna be one when you grow up?” he called out just as she returned with two Jack Daniels high balls.
“So far as I can see, he’s just a man with nothing to offer other than venom.”
“After his stint in the military, after Desert Storm, after Iraq—”
“Where he was involved in what some termed civilian murder,” she interrupted, “and-and they failed to lock him up then, and had they…maybe…”
“Maybe Terry and Stan’d be alive today. I know.” Marcus went on, saying, “Cantu actually got backing from a TV producer to create a hunting show.”
“While awaiting a military tribunal.”
“At a time when nothing was proven against him, ostensibly a release to visit family. By this time, however, the wife had already filed divorce papers and had a standing injunction against his seeing her or the kids. Then he learned the TV show was no more.”
“Are you saying that in peacetime professional soldiers don’t always fit in or know what to do with their skills?”
“There’s that, too, yes.”
“So a lotta you guys become cops?”
“Yeah, some.”
“So in peacetime, he was actually a failed professional hunter.”
“And Hitler was a failed artists.”
“And Charlie Manson a failed musician.” She gave it some thought.
“But Cantu continued to make a living in the hunting industry with a radio show."
“How do you hunt on radio?”
“Talk radio, you talk.”
“Turkey talk, huh? Couldn’t’ve fulfilled his need to truly hunt, now could it?”
“Rare as turkey teeth to be sure—anyone making a living just talking about hunting. Rare in fact to find someone making a good dollar off any hunting talents. Most of his income at the last, before he flipped out that is, came by way of ads.”
“Ads?”
“Residuals from ads done earlier. He was financially strapped to be sure.”
<
br /> “Pro hunter, heh? Anything else?”
“Was about to become a producer.”
“TV producer? Film?”
“Self-promotion video, I think. Something for the video store shelf. Financed it himself.”
“But no one wanted it, huh?”
“Iden Cantu gained a reputation as a whitetail hunter, and from that beginning he gained endorsements, speaking and writing opportunities. Of course, ahhh since he began killing and hunting people, his endorsements kinda fell off.”
“I can imagine.” She shook her hair out at this.
“Cantu started by sending success stories and field photos of himself with dead game animals to hunting mags and equipment manufacturers. Given his size and military record, his resemblance to Oliver North.”
“This all before the scandal over his time in Iraq broke in the press?”
“Yeah…that began with some guy with a cell phone who put it out on the net, but well before then, Iden Cantu attracted attention from a producer who got financial backers up. Pretty soon, Cantu was giving seminars at local and regional outdoor events, and the TV show was—at that time—in the works. Meanwhile, he got hippy-dippy on steroids the entire time.”
“Figures.”
“Explains why he killed his kids and the wife.”
“And Terry.”
“And Stan, and Joely Blankenship.”
She breathed deeply and nodded thoughtfully. “And now Milton and the Deacon.”
“Sounds like a bad version of Paradise Lost.”
“Sold his soul to the Devil, hasn’t he?”
“Cantu is the Devil—the Devil on steroids.”
*
Again in the distance, they heard the unmistakable howl of a male voice telegraphing horrible pain. This over the sound of the storm; piercing the storm, in fact, punctuating nature’s scream with that of Carl’s.
“Maybe we’ve bitten off more than we can chew, here Kat,” he told her. “Maybe we should call Tim and his Pa-trooper friends—now!”
Dead On Page 18
