The Fever Kill

by Tom Piccirilli

  "Sometimes."

  Crease was going to tell her about Tucco and his whores, some of the things the guy did to the women that got on his nerves or didn't bring in enough cash. Where his business rivals wound up deep-sixed and knife-juked and glass-choked.

  Except he knew that's what she wanted to hear. That it was all part of her dream, the hope that she might be able to grab a piece of that action, no matter the cost. She was more like Crease than he'd given her credit for. She'd been working her own edge. Maybe that's why he stayed with her, maybe he'd picked up on it that first night back when he saw her blood on the women's room door.

  Call it what you will, she had her own style and was making her own fun.

  He'd botched it. He'd thought he was helping her, but really, he was just keeping himself locked and loaded. He'd never be able to warn her off now. Anything he said would just pique her even more.

  "A Rolls Royce," she said. "How much have you got put away, Crease?"

  "Not much."

  It was the wrong thing to say, he was losing his cool again. Even though it was the truth, she wouldn't buy it. Her eyes were whirling like numbers on a slot machine. He'd been pushing the wrong buttons on her. Yeah, the big money came in, but it went out just as fast. The life cost. The more you made the more it took.

  She was falling back to type. He was worse for her than Jimmy Devlin or anybody else. He'd put the fear and the need back into her, and saw in the eagerness of her eyes that the coiled energy tamped down within her was going to break soon.

  He should get out. He never should've come here in the first place, and now he had to go.

  Before he could move she slid in close, the red hair burning in front of his eyes, and said, "I'll do right by you, Crease. Better than your wife. I'll be good to you." She licked her plump lips and raised her chin, turning her head, coming in for a kiss.

  "You wouldn't know how, Reb," he told her.

  She snapped her head back as if he'd backhanded her. "That's a damn crude thing to say!"

  She was right, it was. He said, "I'm sorry," and was surprised that he actually meant it. "I really am. I've got to go."

  "What? Go where?"

  "I'm leaving, Reb. Thanks for everything."

  "Did you just tell me thanks? Thanks, that's all? Is that what you fucking said to me?"

  "Goodbye, Reb."

  He stood and got his jacket on, reached for the pack and realized he was finally out of those menthols, thank Christ. He turned to ask her if she had a cigarette and caught a dark blur of motion in his peripheral vision.

  Shit, he wasn't on his toes.

  He started to wheel about faster. His hands were already moving before he fully realized what he was seeing, but it was already too late. Goddamn, you couldn't relax in the game for a minute. Reb was coming around with the candlestick. He would've laughed if he'd had the time, but he didn't. A candlestick. He'd seen people get their heads cracked a lot of ways, but this would be a first. It was a movie moment, something out of a drive-in. She connected and he felt a wide arc of his blood leaving him. He whirled and hit the wall. He let out a chuckle because he knew this was about the fifteen grand. He couldn't blame her. She was too small-minded to realize how short a stash that was, how few bills it paid, how it could hardly get your ass out of debt. He was mad he'd put the time into fixing the screen door, chopping up the tree. He felt a brief, sudden wash of pity for Reb, who in another life might've been his girl. He staggered two steps and didn't get anywhere near her. Then she hit him again and he didn't feel sorry for her at all anymore.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The hands were taken care of, felt like cuffs.

  His arms were behind him, around a chair. A thin spike of agony rammed through the top of his skull down through the top of his jaw. The spike was made of voices and colors jacked up beyond understanding. Lightning blitzkrieged him with every beat of his pulse.

  He'd been here before in this position. It wasn't something you expected to go through more than once in your life, but he figured this was around number three or four. You really had to be looking for it to have it happen so often.

  There was somebody close to him but he couldn't focus his eyes. Dried blood on the side of his face pulled his skin taut. That strange sense of duality filled him again. The two versions of himself were drifting side by side. The cop and the crook. It filled him with a wave of joy and loathing.

  He heard rain against the windows. Reb's voice came from somewhere across the room. "He's awake." She sounded slightly worried, knowing she was heading into new territory she'd never be able to return from, but excited about it. He'd made this happen.

  He blinked but still couldn't distinguish who was right in front of him, the face right there, two inches away. The breath stank of beer, but everybody's in this town did, you couldn't narrow down the list that way. He tried to shake his head and the pain rushed through him again and he had to clench his teeth against it.

  Then somebody rapped his head. The jolt rang bells but got his blood humming. He waited for another smack and when it came he started to feel a little better. The copper taste flooded his mouth. It got him thinking straight again.

  Reb said, "Don't hurt him anymore."

  "Shut up, let me handle this."

  "You can handle it, I just don't want you—"

  "I said to shut up."

  "Don't talk to me that way."

  It was Edwards so up close, sitting in another dining room chair. Staring into Crease's face like he was trying to figure out the best way to break a nose in as many pieces as it would go. Ten years later, Crease was beginning to have some second thoughts about punching Edwards out back then.

  But the sheriff didn't do anything else. Just sat there studying Crease, really looking at him hard. Hoping to find some answers of his own. Crease realized the guy was thinking about his own duality. Where he'd be if not for that shot in the nose ruining his looks. If only the old man hadn't disheartened him so badly. If only he'd busted the 'nappers all those years ago and bought his way into heroism.

  Edwards' features were rigid and he was smiling just a touch and his eyes were eddying with the force of his own fantasies.

  You've got a guy here climbing over the hill of middle age, too wide in the belt, a house filled with photos of women who didn't love him. Crease knew the expression well. It was pure, distilled disappointment.

  Good, Crease could work with that. The ones who just wanted to chop you to pieces you couldn't out-talk, couldn't really wrangle with. But the ones who wanted the stash, the goods, the talk, those you could keep on the hook at least for a while.

  Still, Crease wasn't thinking too clearly. He might have it all jumbled up.

  The women around Edwards' house, he thought he remembered that Reb was one of them. Maybe they still had a thing going. That would explain the current situation.

  "Where's the money?" Reb said. "Ask about the money. Get him to tell you—"

  "If I have to tell you to shut up one more time I'm gonna knock your front teeth out."

  "They're already fake," she said.

  Edwards turned back to Crease and once more examined him closely. He would see Crease's father in there, see some of the same weaknesses and a few similar strengths.

  But the bigtime bend, Edwards wouldn't have any way to recognize that. It would keep him puzzled, a little off-balance.

  "I ran your plates," the sheriff said. "You've got a whole new identity. There's a rap sheet on you. You're a pretty bad boy."

  "Undercover," he said.

  "That's what he told me," Reb said. "Like I was saying to you."

  Edwards ignored her, talking to Crease like they were the only two people in the world right now, which they were.

  "Undercover narc? You guys are the dirtiest ones on the job."

  "Yeah," Crease admitted.

  "You were seen in a Bentley owned by a known felon yesterday."

  A known felon. Edwards was about forty
years out of date with his rap. Tucco had never even been arrested, had never had a felony charge hung on him. Never spent a night in lock-up. Crease had done spurts from a weekend to four months. A known felon, oh yeah.

  "You going to ask me a question?" Crease asked.

  Edwards couldn't quite make the decision to get tough. He'd been shamed in his own home. Not just getting punched out, but not using the gun when he could've. Crease had seen him too scared to even make a move. That threw you off your stride. It was the kind of thing that blew your gasket after a couple of hours, made you question every action. Crease owned his heart.

  "You smuggling drugs into my county?" Edwards asked. He didn't wait for an answer. "Over the Canadian border? What are you bringing down? Untaxed cigarettes? Whiskey?"

  "Would you want me to?"

  "Depends on my cut."

  Crease let out a laugh.

  "I want to know what you've got stewing. I want to know why you're here."

  "I already told you."

  "You didn't tell me anything."

  "You weren't listening."

  "The hell I wasn't."

  You could go around like this all day long. "Okay, you got me. We're not bringing drugs in but we are thinking of knocking over some llama farms. They go for top dollar in Jersey."

  "Still being wise."

  The chair wasn't that sturdy. Without the spike in his brain Crease could've busted free of it pretty easily, but his hands just weren't doing what they were supposed to be right now. Edwards drew his fist back and slugged Crease squarely in the mouth. It was a pretty nice shot. Crease spit blood on the floor and Reb went, "Ugh, disgusting!"

  Edwards said, "You'd better start telling me what I want to know."

  Crease knew he could ride it out in the chair for a while longer, long enough to get his hands back, but he really wanted to know why the sheriff's department, including his father, had botched the Burke investigation.

  Edwards got him by his front hair and tugged his chin back, ready to take another poke. Crease asked, "Didn't you check into the sister?"

  "What?"

  "The sister."

  "What sister?"

  "Burke's sister. Sarah. The girl's aunt. Living with the family at the time."

  "Who's going to clean up my floor?" Reb wailed. "He stained my grandmother's throw rug. Goddamn it!"

  Edwards let Crease go and turned to glare at Reb, like he might sock her too. His mind was taking him back. It took him a minute to remember. "The spinster? We ran a check on her."

  "And didn't turn up anything?"

  "No."

  "Nothing suspicious at all?" Crease swallowed a mouthful of blood. He didn't want to lose Edwards' attention. The hot splash down his throat got his heart rate stepped up a notch. "No boyfriend with a gambling problem?"

  "No."

  "How about later, after they put Sarah Burke away? That tell you anything?"

  "She broke down. If you're really a cop then you've seen it before. They were a close family."

  "You ever listen to yourself talk or do you just hear a loud hum?"

  Edwards slapped him with an open hand. It didn't even make Crease's head move. You slap a guy cuffed to a chair like that in front of your boys and you'd never live it down.

  "She's in an outpatient home in Langdaff," he said. "The Sinclair Mayridge Home for the Needful. I visited her last night. She's crazy, but not as crazy as she wants to be. She's just got nothing to live for."

  "You're lying," Edwards said. It was almost a question. "Her gambler boyfriend, guy named Daniel Purvis. He's got to be dead, but check on him anyway." Crease's gaze locked with the sheriffs. They were down to it now. "You had so much on your plate at the time, with my father and the department investigation, and you being pissed off at him, that you let the case slip."

  "No, that's not how it happened."

  "You're an idiot. You should come to New York, you'd be running my department in no time."

  Edwards slapped him again, harder. That was better. Crease started to feel the heat working through him. He let out another laugh. His scalp tightened and began to crawl. His upper lip began to bead. The dried blood on his face loosened.

  "Stop hitting him!" Reb shouted.

  Funny since she was the one who nearly caved in his head, but you took sympathy wherever you could find it. "Where's the money? Crease, tell him!"

  "He doesn't have it," Edwards shouted. "His old man stole it years ago."

  "That's not what he said! He said his father tried to take it and—"

  "Shut up, Rebecca!"

  "Well, get him to talk!"

  "A minute ago you didn't want me to hit him, and now—"

  "I want that money. Do what you have to do! Or I will!"

  "So help me I'll break your head, Reb!"

  Edwards was getting twitchy, but really it was Reb you had to worry about. She was the one who wanted it more, and thought Crease was the way to get it.

  Crease watched them arguing like a couple that's been married twenty years. They seemed made for each other. The two of them going back and forth about the measly cash. Reb started complaining that she could use the money to fix the place up and Edwards began yelling about Jimmy Devlin and her other dalliances. He actually used the word dalliances. It wasn't a word you ever expected to hear when you were cuffed to a chair, but there it was.

  Crease picked up another sound too.

  It was the subtle clack of the tilted screen door hitting the jamb. But the front door was locked. Crease strained to listen. He wasn't sure if he heard plodding footsteps going around to the back or was only imagining them. The whiff of rain strengthened. The pain in his skull lingered.

  Whoever it was knocked over the stack of cordwood Crease had put out back. It wasn't loud enough for Reb and Edwards to quit snapping at each other. They had to burn out soon. They were just hissing like cats now, going on and on about past circumstances. Reb's bad cooking, the sheriff drinking too much to make it in bed. Crease shifted in the chair a bit and was able to see through the kitchen to the back door.

  Cruez had slipped his leash. He was trying to make it inside, acting like a sneaky second-story cat burglar. He could barely fit through the door. He let out a soft grunt as he bumped into the jutting metal cabinet with the flour and sugar jars on it.

  These people, jazzed up, jonesing, and jinxed to the max, but they didn't hear size sixteen feet come clomping in the kitchen. Crease swallowed down a groan of frustration. He wasn't sure how best to play this turn. Try to snap Edwards' attention back to the moment or look over at Cruez to see what he was after, maybe get him to help out here for a second. You could never tell with somebody like Cruez if the guy wanted bloodshed or just a pat on the head and a T-bone.

  From this angle, Cruez could only see Crease, couldn't look at the rest of the room where Edwards was now pouting and Reb was ramping herself up to do much nastier things to Crease than she'd done when they were teenagers. He shouldn't have put down her cooking.

  Cruez swept his eyes across Crease in the chair, not quite smart enough to put the whole scene together. All he saw was the target, didn't notice the blood on Crease's face, the way his arms were drawn back. Like this was how he might be relaxing on any weeknight. Jesus.

  So it was obvious Cruez hadn't even taken the time to peek in a window. He'd just marched around the house thinking he was slick, expecting to find Crease and Reb settled in for the night. Out on the couch or upstairs in a knotted tangle. A smile started to cross his rough, lumpy face and got lost in crazy ways among the scarred features.

  "I'm the right hand," he said and started to pull his Magnum.

  Okay, so that answered that question.

  Crease shouted, "Sheriff, this man wants to smuggle llamas over the Canadian border! Arrest him! I'll take the stand against him!"

  Edwards was still wrapped up inside his own head but when Cruez's shadow preceded him out into the dining room, and Edwards got a gander of the behem
oth extracting that long, way goddamn long-barreled .357, he got back in cop mode fast.

  He hopped up and ran forward as Cruez broke completely from the darkness of the kitchen. Edwards whispered, "Christ."

  Cruez's expression contorted and his facial muscles ground together into a frown. "We didn't see any llamas. We saw cows."

  The front sight of the Magnum had snagged on the bottom of his shoulder holster. That was another reason not to carry the damn things, no holster was long enough to hold them properly.

  Reb did the best thing she could've done under the circumstances. With Crease sitting there bleeding, the sheriff failing to come up with the fifteen g's, now some piece of a mountain climbing into her house, she just cut loose. It was weird, definitely proving she had some schizoid tendencies of her own. She let out a wickedly eerie laugh that sent the creeps up Crease's spine.

  It was a titter tinged with desperation, guilt, fear, and the underlying wish to take everything back from the last twenty years or so.

  Good thing Edwards was ready to shoot somebody this time. He pulled his gun and pressed the barrel of his .38 on Cruez's Adam's apple and shoved hard.

  It was a move that would've put a normal guy down, but Cruez was wired differently. His thoughts banged around inside that skull and became blunt and lost all their force. He didn't feel pain like other people. He was still yanking at the Magnum.

  Edwards said, "That what you planning to do, you llama thief? You go to hell, Canadian!"

  Rebecca's cackle had died down but was still sputtering at the back of her throat. She looked drunk, out of it. Crease said, "Reb, the keys, okay?"

  "I don't know where they are!"

  "They're right there on the table."

  Edwards had a little more steel and sand to him than Crease had thought. The sheriff didn't want to just blow Cruez away. He stood his ground. He thumped the monolith in the throat again, and then pistol-whipped him. Three, four, five times, the .38 coming down hard across Cruez's nose, his chin, his forehead. Spatters of blood whipped against the wall. Cruez was still reaching, and now the barrel was finally starting to come free.