Please, prayed Todd as he slowly opened his door and got out. Please let that be the killer's signature, his modus operandi. Please let Janice still be alive.
The sky rumbled and flashed, and the rain began to increase, the drops growing to large pellets that slapped down on Todd. Surveying the scene, he took in the farmhouse, the small outbuildings, and the barn. He couldn't see Rawlins, but Todd, who'd dropped him off just before turning down the farmhouse lane, knew he was out there somewhere in the cornfields. But would their plan work? If only Todd could find them, Janice and her would-be killer, and then keep them talking long enough for Rawlins to effect all this. What other choice was there? How else could they be doing this?
Okay, he told himself, so get on with it.
He put his hands to his mouth and hollered, “Janice!”
Feeling as if he were going fishing with himself as the bait, he left the side of his Cherokee. He walked past the van, stopped when he saw a hole in the door. Running his fingers over the small but very distinct hollow, he was sure a bullet was lodged in there. He then glanced at the finely shattered windshield, which hung in place like modern art; no, that hadn't been destroyed by hail. Continuing down the rutted lane, he descended into a pool of dread. Janice was here somewhere. The question was where.
The rain started splattering down in enormous drops, and Todd wound his way through an assortment of farm machinery that looked like tanks and battle equipment abandoned after a wartime defeat. The house? Perhaps, he thought, shielding his eyes and looking up to the right. Just as easily they could be in the barn up ahead. Or one of the outbuildings? Wherever they were, though, Todd had to stay out here. Pull them out. Make them come into the open. Or so ordered Rawlins.
“I just need,” Rawlins had said, “one clean shot. That's all it'll take.”
A white-hot bolt shot down from the sky, spearing a nearby tree. Todd's heart seized and he leapt aside, spun around to see a towering old elm topple in front of the house. Smoking as it fell, it crashed down in near slow motion. And then the rain started gushing, falling down as hard as if some great heavenly bucket were being dumped.
Totally drenched, Todd trotted forward in the downpour, held his arms up to shield his eyes, and shouted, “Janice!”
He glanced up at the house, kept going, tromping through puddles, slopping through mud. Half jogging, he neared the barn, a medium-size structure that was no longer barn red but driftwood gray. His eyes scanned the building, ran past the silo. Could he be heading right toward some trap? Would it be better if he simply turned around and dashed back for his car?
“Janice!”
And then, quite oddly, the rain all but stopped. The wind died. A few of the clouds parted. The grayish-green light became not brighter, but greener, horribly so. Todd stopped in the farmyard, turned around. Past the barn and the silo he saw the most full and brilliant rainbow he'd ever seen, a complete arc of queerly bright and distinct colors—yellow, orange, red, blue, purple—that for just a few moments refused to be invisible. Was the storm, so fierce in threat, already over? Or was this the proverbial lull?
In one quick second Todd had his answer: the sun—and with it the rainbow—was obliterated by a black cloud. In the distance he sensed something deep and rumbling, a sound like the most enormous locomotive in the world. Shit, he thought. That wasn't any wimpy straight-line winds. Hell, no. Turning around, he stared toward the heavens and saw the anvil of a great tornadic supercell reaching out in his direction. Although he couldn't yet see the rope of any vortex probing the ground, he was fully aware of what was coming. As if to confirm it all, the wind kicked back in, not a mere gust or two, but this time a hard, definitive wind blasting from the southwest.
And then there he was.
“Don't move, asshole!” shouted the hooded man, who stood only some ten feet off to Todd's right.
Todd lowered his eyes from the heavens and was completely still. He was the bait. And the little expedition had worked perhaps a little too well, for Todd had been gobbled up quite whole.
Todd stared over, saw the gun trained on him. Think, he told himself.
“Where's Janice?” Todd shouted over the wind.
“Good fucking question,” called the deep voice as the distant noise grew closer and louder.
“Is … is she alive?”
“Unfortunately, the lesbian lives.”
Todd's mind tracked along. Of course it was him. Todd could see that now. Upon the heels of that realization came another—yes, it had been right there in one of the articles he'd read on Lexis-Nexis—and Todd clenched his eyes. Why the hell hadn't it occurred to him before? Sure, with his job he could do this, get around the country with ease.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw someone else dash behind the barn. Todd's heart jumped: Rawlins?
Concentrating on the guy in front of him, Todd asked, “You've been using me all along, haven't you?”
“Of course. Only a gay reporter would bite hold of a story like this.” As the wind beat on them he ordered, “Now, do it again, call her, tell her to get her butt out of that cornfield.”
“You can't prove that your brother didn't kill himself, can you, Ron?”
He hesitated in silence, then said, “I think you better shut up.”
“But you can make it look like Kris Kenney's a cop killer, right?” Praying his hypothesis was right, Todd pressed on, saying, “If you can do that, then the courts are sure to rule in your favor. What do they want now, to give you a partial settlement of your brother's life-insurance policy?”
“All I know is that he's dead because of her.”
“Did he have a large policy, Ron? What was it for, a million?”
“Two million, actually, and there's no way in hell I'm settling for a tenth of that.” With his left hand, Ron Ravell pulled off his ski mask and said, “But you know what? You're too smart for your own good, ‘cause now I'm going to have to kill you too.”
Standing there as the wind gushed over and around him, Todd watched Ron level his gun on Todd's head. Okay, thought Todd, glancing ever so slightly from side to side, where the hell are you, Rawlins?
“Just tell me one thing,” said Todd, desperate to stall. “Why Mark Forrest?”
“I needed a gay cop, and I read about him in some local paper.”
Like some kind of angel, Kris appeared next to the silo and shouted, “Let him go!”
Twisting toward her, Ron shouted, “I didn't think you'd wake up for another week!”
“Just a continual source of amazement, aren't I? You should've done a better job of tying me up.”
Looking past them both, Todd stared at the sky beyond and saw it—a towering funnel, a gray-black, twisting cone, stretching from the clouds down to earth. Less than a mile away, Todd knew one thing quite definitely: It was coming directly toward them.
Over the oncoming roar Kris said, “Ron, you've got to believe me, I didn't kill your brother! He took the gun from me and—”
With the gun trained on his chest, Kris could have killed him right then. In one single instant she could have blasted him from this world. But of course that was what she wanted least, to lose this wonderful man, and so she froze as Dave lunged at her.
“Give me that!” he shouted, ripping the weapon from her hands.
“I … I …”
He spun around, started back toward the couch, then just as quickly turned around again, now aiming the gun on Kris, and said, “I should kill you, that's what I should fucking do,just blow your head off!”
She didn't care what happened, what he did; she wanted him to understand only one thing, and she desperately said, “I love you, Dave!”
“Stop it!”
“I do, I really love—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Turning the gun on himself, he pressed the barrel to his temple and screamed, “Just shut the fuck up!”
“No!”
As she watched in terror, he clasped shut his eyes. Then his body went ri
gid. Dear God, she thought, he's really going to do it, he's really going to blow his brains out!
But then, just as quickly, the moment somehow miraculously passed. He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, began to lower the gun ever so slightly.
“I thought you were it, the answer, the one girl I could truly love, and—”
As he stepped backward his foot landed awkwardly on her shoes, the very ones she'd kicked off when they'd started to make love. His face flashed with surprise, he stumbled, started to fall, and then right in front of her, right as she watched, his hand tightened on the gun.
And the world exploded.
“Fuck off, you freak!” shouted Ron.
He turned the gun on Kris. Swung his arm around and pointed the pistol directly at her. But Kris, who dove back behind the silo, was quicker. And so was Rawlins, who appeared from behind a small white building, holding his pistol in both hands.
“Freeze!” shouted Rawlins. “Don't move a goddamn muscle! Just put down the gun! Do it—now!”
Ron wasn't going to be caught though, and this time he spun toward Rawlins. And fired. Frozen in horror, Todd watched Rawlins dive to the side, then roll on the muddy ground and come up on his stomach. Without hesitation, Rawlins fired twice, clipping
Ron Ravell first in the shoulder, then directly in the chest. As Ron collapsed, Rawlins leapt to his feet and charged forward.
“Rawlins!” screamed Todd over the wind.
The tornado was dancing its way through the field, swaying and sucking, a sexy, undulating tower. Todd glanced at the barn, saw shingles ripped off and blown away as easily as dry oak leaves. Something crashed beside him: corn. First one stalk, then another, a rainstorm of the Midwest's finest, sucked into the heavens and broadcast here. Rawlins and he had but one chance.
Todd rushed over and grabbed Rawlins by the arm. “Come on!”
It was right there, this enormous twisting black thing. Right there and churning directly toward them. The sound was deafening, and Todd and Rawlins grabbed onto each other and charged the other way. Todd glanced over and saw one of the small outbuildings start to disintegrate, first the shingles, then the roof, next the door and walls, all of it breaking apart and flying into the skies.
With the wind swirling all around, Todd and Rawlins practically flew to the silo. And there, leaning out of a small side steel door, were both Kris and Janice, who reached out, grabbed them. As he leapt into the base of the concrete tower, Todd looked back. The flying debris and dirt were so thick that he couldn't see the van, or his car for that matter. Instead, he stared as the old combine started to levitate, magically rising, rising, and then whirling away as easily as paper confetti. Someone shouted at him, dragged him in, and Rawlins heaved shut the door.
“Get down!” hollered Janice at the top of her lungs.
All four of them fell in a single pile against one side of the silo. With one hand Todd grabbed onto a piece of metal, some sort of winch anchored at the base, and with the other he grabbed onto someone's arm, just whose he couldn't tell. The roar of the twister dove down on them, one long deafening explosion. Todd heard wood shattering and crashing—the barn. He looked up, saw the old cap of the silo whisked away like a pop top. Rain dumped in, and there in the sky effortlessly flew beams and boards, shingles, an elm tree, the combine, and endless stalks of corn. Something long and dark whisked by—his car? Yes, that was exactly it. And as the heart of the storm barreled right down on the silo, it, too, began to break up, huge chunks of concrete breaking and flying away.
“Ah!” shrieked Kris.
Todd clutched the metal bar and clutched Kris, who clutched Rawlins, who clutched Janice, who clutched Todd. The silo went in larger and larger bits, first the top, then more and more, huge sections of the curved walls gobbled away by the hungry storm. Todd opened his mouth and screamed, hollered as loud as he could.
And then it was over.
The roar faded. The rain stopped. And they lay there, sprawled in a sloppy mess, huffing and puffing. Todd lifted his head, looked at them. Yes. Four. All four of them were there, all four of them were breathing.
“Anyone hurt?” asked Todd, pushing himself to his feet.
“I'm okay.”
“Me too.”
Kris nodded.
Todd clambered over to the small steel door, pushed it open, and climbed out. He could see it in the distance, the tornado plowing through field after field, dancing along. From here it appeared a thing of beauty and awe, majestic and even graceful, but Todd knew better, knew it was destined to flatten some small prairie town and squash countless lives.
Behind him he heard steps, turned and saw Janice.
“Oh, my God,” he said, opening his arms. “I was so worried about you. I was so scared.”
“Me too.”
They embraced, clinging to each other for a long moment, and then Todd said, “If anything had happened to you … well, I wouldn't have been able to handle it.”
“Thanks,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “But that still doesn't get you totally out of hot water. I'm still upset about you videotaping Kris in front of City Hall, you know.”
“Yeah, that was dumb of me. I'm sorry.”
The sun burst out, and Todd looked up. The clouds were breaking, cracking open, revealing cottony white interiors that rose and rose into canyons of brilliant blue sky. He turned, saw that only about twenty-five feet of the silo was left. The barn was completely gone, everything picked clean save for the foundation. There was debris everywhere, boards and shingles, walls and machinery. Chunks of green stalks. The roof of the old house had been sliced off, while the rest of the structure somehow still stood. And the few trees that were left standing had been denuded, picked clean of every leaf.
“Guess we're going car shopping,” said Rawlins.
Todd turned. “Where is it?”
“Over there.”
Rawlins pointed to the left, and there it was, Todd's Jeep Grand Cherokee. Now only two or three feet tall, it lay on the edge of the field, having been picked up and tumbled about, then dropped some hundred feet from where Todd had parked it.
“Janice, I think we can consider that videotape destroyed,” he said, smiling, because, after all, he'd left it in the backseat of his car. “Anyone see the van?”
No one did, and stepping and climbing over the debris, Todd and Rawlins walked into the farmyard. Todd walked through a soupy puddle, looked down the empty drive. He scanned the area, saw the path the tornado had cut through the corn, a broad, muddy swath sucked clean of everything and anything. So, wondered Todd, scanning the area, where was the body of Ron Ravell?
As his foot came down, he saw it—blue wool. Todd leaned over, picked up the ski mask. For a brief, awful moment, Todd stirred the mud with his foot. Could there be more of him down there? No, fortunately not. He glanced toward the house. His eyes then turned to a large tree, which had been pulled up by the roots and pushed on its side. Next he turned his attention to a heavy old disc plow that looked as if it, too, had been picked up and rearranged.
When he saw the bent limbs against the plow, Todd said, “Over there.”
Rawlins and he started jogging. They ran through the slop, over the heavy old barn door. And there, rolled and tumbled against the side of the plow, lay the broken body of Ron Ravell, his face turned to the side and washed clean.
Kris walked through the deep grass, then stood quite still as she stared at the dead man. “I wish Ron could have believed me. I wish he could have believed how much I cared for his brother and that I didn't hurt him.”
“There's never been anything more unfair,” ventured Todd, “than the judgment of others.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
R.D. Zimmerman is the Lambda Award-winning and Edgar-nominated author of numerous mysteries. Under the pen name of Robert Alexander, he is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Kitchen Boy, and other historical novels. For more info: www.robertalexanderbooks.com
Other Books
Title Page Copyright Page
Acknowledgments
Preface
Outburst Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
About the Author
Outburst Page 28
