by Rawlin Cash
The man’s car was an old Dodge sedan. Hunter opened the trunk and the glove box. He found a first aid kit in the glovebox and bandaged the stab wound by his ribs.
Then he got back on the Interstate and headed for the airport.
Thirteen
At the airport, Hunter followed the signs for the long-stay lot. He was tense. He had to do exactly what the dead guy had said. A single wrong move and he could scare off whoever was coming to check the car. This was his one chance to come face to face with the killer. It was the closest he was going to get to revenge.
He missed the lot on his first pass and had to loop back around. Second time, he pulled in, grabbed a ticket, and drove through. He went up the ramps all the way to the roof and saw a car parked at the far corner. The roof could be observed from some nearby high-rise hotels and he figured someone was watching. He looked through the dead guy’s keys. There was a Mazda key there and the car was a Mazda. It was the only other car on the roof.
He rolled up next to the Mazda and parked. There was a wool hat on the back seat of the car and he grabbed it and pulled it onto his head. He stepped out of the car and took a deep breath. He was sure one of the men who’d murdered his family was watching him.
Would they realize he wasn’t the right driver?
He opened a back door and pulled out the rifle bag, slung it over his shoulder, and stepped up to the driver’s door of the Mazda. He tried the key. It worked. He threw the rifle bag in the back, got into the driver’s seat, turned the ignition, and drove off. He still had the ticket from when he’d entered the lot and used it to exit the parking lot. He didn’t have to pay anything. He drove the loop past the terminal and the other parking lots and came right back to the long-stay lot. The roof was on the fifth level. He drove to the fourth level and parked where he had a view of the ramp.
Taking a handgun, he walked to the ramp and slowly made his way up until he could see across to the far end of the lot. The car was still there. It would take a little while longer for anyone who’d been watching the roof to get there. He went back to the Mazda.
He waited in the driver’s seat. If anyone went to the roof, it would be his guy. The third and fourth floors of the lot were almost empty. No one would park on the roof in this weather by choice.
Fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty. Then an hour.
Hunter turned on the radio.
He found a pack of the dead guy’s cigarettes and lit one, inhaling deeply.
He looked through the glovebox and the pockets on the back of the seats. There was nothing interesting in the car.
He waited a second hour. A third. He began to worry he’d fall asleep and miss the whole thing. The day dragged on and by the time it started to get dark, he’d smoked the entire pack of cigarettes and still no one had shown up to check on the car. He began to wonder if anyone was coming? What if they decided to give it a few days? What if they’d noticed that he wasn’t the right guy when he’d parked it? What if the guy was supposed to make a phone call or something? Hunter hadn’t found his phone. It wasn’t on his body or in the car. The only reason he knew he was in the right place was because he had the right key for the Mazda.
He continued waiting. He had no where to be. If no one came today, he could use the washroom and buy food in the terminal and wait another day.
As it happened, a car drove by him and onto the ramp to the roof at about nine at night.
Hunter had been dozing and the lights roused him.
He grabbed the M4. He’d checked the gun earlier while he was waiting and had decided to use it. He took off his coat and draped it over the gun. He put a handgun in his belt. These boots wouldn’t accommodate one the way his Alaskan ones had.
He got out of the car and walked up the ramp.
He crouched around the wall and saw the car park in the spot the Mazda had occupied. It looked like there was only one person in the car. It was a Mercedes, a nice one. A man in a suit stepped out and made for the trunk of the Dodge.
Hunter let him open it. He let him realize his mistake. The man stood there for a second, staring into the empty trunk, then slammed it shut. He looked around the lot furtively.
Hunter revealed himself. He walked toward the man. When the man started to run for the Mercedes, Hunter dropped to one knee, took aim, and put a bullet in the man’s shin.
The bang rang out into the night air. If anyone from the overlooking hotels had seen the flash, he’d have a matter of minutes before police showed up.
Minutes would have to do.
The man fell to the ground with a whimper.
Hunter approached cautiously. He didn’t want to be surprised by a pistol shot to the gut.
The man in the suit was writhing on the ground, twisting and struggling to get to his car. He’d never get there.
“I’m going to give you one chance to save your sorry ass,” Hunter said.
“Who are you?” the man panted.
“Give me the names of whoever was at the mansion or I’ll take two of your fingers and start ripping them apart until your hand splits.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hunter didn’t have time for the usual back and forth.
He put the gun on the ground, out of reach, walked to the man, and grabbed his hand.
“Please, no,” the man said. “I’ll talk.”
Hunter grabbed a pinkie in one fist and a thumb in the other and pulled them away from each other. The fingers dislocated and the man’s screams were deafening. The pinkie began to tear loose from the rest of the hand like a chicken leg and Hunter yanked at it until it was clean off.
The man couldn’t believe what had happened. He looked at Hunter uncomprehendingly.
“Next, I’m going to rip at your mouth until I have two cheeks in my fists,” Hunter said.
The man’s blood was all over Hunter’s hands.
The man was terrified.
“I wasn’t there.”
“I really don’t mind ripping your face open. It’ll make it harder to talk but I’ll give you a pencil.”
“Okay,” the man said, raising his damaged hand in front of his face.
“There were three men there,” the man said.
“Start rattling.”
The man began naming names. They were names Hunter recognized. A congressman from Virginia. A high-up at the Treasury Department. A federal judge.
“That’s everyone?”
“Everyone who was there that night, I swear it.”
“And what about this Society of True Blood? Who’s in that?”
“Too many to name.”
“Start giving me what you can remember.”
The man kept talking, and Hunter listened carefully, committing each name to memory using a mnemonic method he’d been taught by the CIA station chief in Kabul while playing poker.
“How many’s that,” the man said after going through twelve names.
“Twelve,” Hunter said. “You give me eight more or I’ll rip your face open, I swear to God.”
It was a struggle but the man managed to come up with a few more names. Hunter made a mental note that they were less reliable than the first twelve.
The list of names included senators, congressmen, federal judges, a general. Hunter had met some of the men when he worked for the government. He’d reported to two of them, indirectly.
“Are there other members?”
The man was shaking. He was beginning to go into shock.
“There are twenty-seven members. If one dies, he’s replaced.”
“Always by a man?”
“Always by a man of influence. It’s been that way forever.”
“Fifty years?”
“Two hundred years,” the man said.
“And you’re one of the twenty-seven?”
The man looked at Hunter then down at his four-fingered hand.
“What’s your influence?” Hunter said.
“State senate.”
“How’d you get to be in the club?”
“My grandfather was in it. They came to me.”
Hunter nodded. He had enough to go on.
The police sirens were getting closer.
“Guess we’re out of time,” he said.
The man shook his head.
“No, please,” he gasped.
Hunter reached down for him, shoving both hands into the man’s mouth and ripped his face wide open. The screams were blood-curdling.
The flesh came apart at his cupid’s bow, beneath the nose, and under both eyes. It was hideous. Something straight out of the zombie apocalypse.
Before the man could loose consciousness, Hunter lifted him up, brought him to the edge of the building, and dropped him over the side.
The keys to the Mercedes were in the ignition and he got into it and sped to the ramp. He was on the fourth floor just in time to park before two police cars passed on their way to the roof. He waited for them to pass completely, then pulled out of his spot and drove to the ground floor, where he saw a number of squad cars waiting at the lot exit. He left the Mercedes double parked at the far end of the lot. He took off the hat and threw on a navy blazer that belonged to the congressman, complete with the flag on the lapel.
A moment later he was in the terminal. He bought a blue Seattle hoodie from a gift shop and went into a public washroom in the arrivals area. He washed his face and hands, took off his shirt, and put on the hoodie. He put the blazer back on over it and threw the shirt in the trash.
He looked okay. He walked back out of the terminal through the arrivals concourse and got in a cab.
Fourteen
Hunter didn’t make contact with Forks police until he was back in the town. He spent a night in Seattle in a cheap hotel that accepted cash and caught a bus from the Greyhound station next morning.
He walked to the police station and found the place surrounded by ambulances, police cars, lights flashing.
He recognized the Deputy Chief, Chuck Goad, who’d thrown him in jail a few days earlier.
“Where’s the chief?” Hunter said to him.
Goad looked at him and remembered who he was.
“I’m the chief now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Double homicide.”
“Here?”
Goad nodded. “Last night. Chief McCloud was gunned down.”
Hunter felt a tingle in his back. He’d been thinking about the man’s words yesterday, the man at the nature reserve. He’d mentioned cleaning up. No loose ends. This must have been what he’d meant.
“Who was the other homicide?” Hunter said.
There was a lump in his chest while he waited for the answer.
Goad was directing an investigator and didn’t say anything to Hunter. Hunter had to walk over to him and grab his arm.
“Hey. Who’s the other homicide?” he said.
“Officer Lawson.”
There it was. The pang of the inevitable.
“I see,” Hunter said, trying to sound less affected than he was.
He’d just lost his wife and daughter. He’d only known Lawson a few days. But that didn’t make it any less of a shock. The deaths all mixed up and formed a common goo.
Hunter went closer to the police station. He didn’t see any bodies. They must have been at the morgue already, the same morgue where Hunter’s family still lay. He saw the markings of the crime scene. Looked like someone with a machine gun had gone in and sprayed everything.
A cop came over to move Hunter back from the scene, he was inside the police barrier, but Goad stopped them.
He had something else to tell Hunter.
“You really fucked up, coming down here. I knew you’d be trouble the second I set eyes on you.”
Hunter didn’t respond. He couldn’t argue. His poking around had led to this. He knew it was true.
“This isn’t where Lawson’s body was found,” Goad said.
Hunter looked at Goad and tried to get a read on him.
“She was taken from here. There was a shooting here. The chief’s body was here.”
“But Lawson’s?”
“The brothel.”
“The brothel?”
“You know where I mean. You had your hands all over that place too, didn’t you?”
Hunter nodded. “I was trying to stop them,” he said.
“Well you woke a hornet’s nest, you son of a bitch. And now more innocent people are paying for what you did.”
Hunter nodded.
He didn’t know what to do now. He felt defeated. He’d killed the men at the brothel who’d taken his wife and child off the road. He’d killed the state senator in Seattle who’d arranged it. Killing the three names still on his list would take time, but he’d do it.
He’d thought about killing every one of the names he’d gotten from the state senator, all twenty of them, but what good was it if everything he did just got more people killed?
Hunter looked at Goad.
“Why did they take her to the brothel?”
“Why do you think?”
“They were making a statement.”
“They surely were. They gang raped her.”
“Jesus.”
Goad nodded. He grimaced. Hunter could tell he was shaken up. The fact he wasn’t arresting Hunter said a lot.
“What about the ritual stuff?” Hunter said.
“No. None of that. Different MO.”
“Plus she wasn’t native,” Hunter said.
Goad spat on the ground.
“They locked her in one of them cages,” he said. “We found her down there with the bodies of the pimps.”
Goad knew Hunter was behind those deaths but he didn’t care about that. He only cared about Dana. There was a catch in his voice as he continued.
“Coroner said she was alive when they left her down there.”
“How long did she survive?”
“A few hours, bleeding out.”
Hunter shook his head. The thought of Dana down there, raped, with the corpses of the men he’d killed, it made it hard to breathe.
“And there’s more,” Goad said.
Hunter didn’t say anything but Goad was waiting for a response. Finally Hunter broke.
“You might as well give me everything,” he said.
“The women who worked at the brothel. There were ten of them. Native girls. Some underage.”
“What about them?”
“Dead,” Goad said. “All of them. Killed at their house near the brothel. Everyone of them had her throat slit.”
Hunter’s stomach clenched. He needed to sit down. He reached out for Goad to steady himself. Then he turned and started walking away. He couldn’t think. His mind was a blur.
“You leaving town?” Goad said.
Hunter didn’t know what Goad wanted to hear but he shook his head.
“Got my wife and child’s funeral to arrange,” he said.
“What about the men that did this?” Goad said.
He was looking to Hunter for help.
“I’ll find them, Goad. If there’s one thing I’m used to, it’s wars you can never win.”
Fifteen
One month later.
Hunter sat back in the leather chair and exhaled the rich smoke. Police sirens were everywhere outside and some of the other customers in the cigar bar went outside to see what was going on. Hunter remained seated. He played with the label of the Cohiba and took a sip from the single malt scotch he’d just been brought.
This was it.
This was the taste of revenge.
A congressman from Virginia. A high-up at the Treasury Department. A federal judge.
Those were the three on his list, the three he’d been given by the state senator on the roof of the parking lot in Seattle a month earlier. He’d lived a lifetime since then.
Two funerals. A week with his wife’s sister, making sure she was stable enough to look afte
r herself. Two more funerals. One for the chief. One for Dana. He’d wanted to attend the funerals of the women from the brothel but someone told him he wasn’t welcome and he didn’t push it.
And besides, he had work to do. Three high-profile assassinations in Washington DC wasn’t the type of thing you just walked into. You needed to plan. You needed to acquire your weapons. Quietly. You needed to stake out your targets. You needed to coordinate so that you could take out all three on the same night. So that they wouldn’t figure out you were after them and go underground.
As far as he knew, everyone who had been directly involved in the abduction and murder of his wife and child was dead. There were more people who were guilty by association, who were on the periphery of his desire for revenge, the rest of the members of the Society of True Blood, but his thirst was assuaged for now.
He took a sip from his glass and another long drag from the Cohiba. He had time before he needed to be at the Greyhound station. There were departures for New York every thirty minutes. No ID required if you paid cash.
There was a TV on in the corner and he saw the breaking news flash across the bottom of the screen. Another customer picked up the remote and turned up the volume.
“DC was rocked to the core today as three high-profile politicians were killed in assassination style shootings. Authorities are saying the attacks are likely linked and that the President and Vice President have been evacuated. Measures are also being taken to bring in other high-ranking members of the cabinet, as well as the nine members of the Supreme Court. The White House spokesperson has said the measures are unprecedented, and that the work of government will likely grind to a halt until they can get to the bottom of the assassinations.”
