Her eyes fluttered, then went wide. Her body jerked into a rigid spasm. Then her eyes closed and the rigidity melted from her body. He sniffed the air, “Dear girl, I do believe you shat your—”
The heart monitor squealed and he looked toward it, seeing a flat green line tracing across the screen. “Damnation!” He pulled a tissue from a box on the bedside table and quickly wiped the bed rails, the IV stopcock, and finally the doorknob as he stepped into the hallway. He made his way down the hallway with his head down, pretending to read something on the clipboard in his hand.
“Code blue, isolation three. Code blue, isolation three,” the intercom said, punctuated by whoop-whoop alarm tones. As he turned the corner at the nurses’ station, he stepped out of the way of a pair of nurses pushing a crash cart at a run. No one even looked his way.
In the parking lot, he pulled a cell phone from the pocket of the scrub shirt and keyed in a number. May as well deliver the bad news and be done with it. His employer wouldn’t be happy, but Ian could always come back and finish the job. Provided the poor thing lived.
Chapter 61
Once we were off the premises and winding our way through the back streets of Tupelo, I asked Penny who had been on the phone.
“Jimmy.”
“The geek? Who did the hacking for us?”
“One and the same.”
“How’d he—”
“I learned not to ask Jimmy how he does things,” she said, constantly shifting her eyes between the road and the rearview mirror. “He’ll babble for ten minutes and I still won’t understand.”
“What’d he say?”
“That we had visitors on the way, a couple miles from the hotel.”
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know, but Jimmy’s always been right.”
It was early evening and the rain still fell. I stared out my window as the wipers slapped back and forth. Something in my peripheral vision caught my attention and I looked back. A big black SUV was a couple hundred yards back and getting closer. Internal alarm bells sounded.
“Take a right,” I said.
Penny glanced at the mirror again and turned. Blackie turned too. “Not good,” she said, just before she hit the brakes and spun the little Lexus around, heading right back toward Big Black.
As we shot back by the SUV—a big Suburban—I looked and saw Jack Docker at the wheel. It took him more space and time to get the big SUV turned around, which gave us a decent lead. The chase went on for a couple of miles, but with me directing and Penny piloting, we finally lost him by turning into a driveway that circled behind a house and hiding back there while he flew by.
Penny looked at me. I looked at her. “Nice driving,” I said.
“Nice navigating.”
“We make a good team, you know?”
“Yeah, we really do.”
We sat there as twilight turned to night, saying nothing.
“There’s no way Docker just happened to find us on a residential street,” Penny said.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yup.”
There were no other cars in the driveway and no lights were on inside the house we were hiding behind. We rang the doorbell several times to be sure no one was home, then got down on our knees in the driveway and started looking underneath the car. Ten minutes and four very wet knees later, I found the bug inside the gas cap. Not just in the filler compartment, but actually inside the cap. It was in a cylindrical enclosure that was black plastic, just like the cap. Penny looked it over.
“Looks expensive,” I said.
“It is. It’s also a lead.” She pulled out her cell phone and dialed. “Jimmy? Listen carefully...”
Chapter 62
I sat there in the dim light of the instrument panel, and the fainter glow of illuminated buttons and dials, and looked outside at the rain. I was wet and cold, so I cranked up the thermostat a bit. Slap slap...slap slap...slap slap went the wipers. Penny jabbered on the phone to Jimmy the Geek, rattling off instructions. I held the remains of the tracking device in my hand, nothing more than shards after I ground the thing into the pavement with my foot.
My life had gone from a typical middle-class existence to surreal nightmare in the space of a few days. I thought about the video, and I was glad I had killed Homestead. Wished I could shoot the piece of shit again. Maybe I would. I could always go back out to Doc’s place, pull his stinking corpse out of the freezer, and fill him full of lead. Shoot the sonofabitch’s dick off. Blast it right off and hang it from my rearview mirror like fuzzy dice. Yessir. That would be nice. Sure, it would stink for a few days, maybe even weeks, but eventually it would dry out and look like beef jerky.
“Okay, okay, get it as quick as you can,” Penny was saying on the phone, wrapping up the conversation. She was wet, her shirt stuck to her, her hair plastered to her head. Some combination of rage and lust coursed through me like fire. I reached over and tugged on her hair just as she punched the cell phone off.
She turned toward me. “What are—” Then she said nothing. She knew. Somehow we moved from the front into the back seat. I don’t remember how, but there we were like two teenagers at a drive-in, me on top of her, grinding into her, kissing her feverishly, tearing at her clothes in a mad fit of animal heat while she fought my belt, button, zipper.
Suddenly a bright light flashed through the interior, lighting up her face as I looked down at her. Then a noise. A car. The owners of the house were pulling in the driveway. “Oh, crap,” I said, raising up off her. She pulled at her clothes and scrambled back into the driver’s seat. I leaned over the back seat into the little cargo area, wiped the fog off the window, and looked out just as the car stopped behind us and the whole family started pouring out. The man looked at the vehicle in his driveway and started toward us.
“Go!” I said, and Penny hit the gas.
Chapter 63
We were on US Highway 78, headed west toward Memphis. In addition to it being Penny’s backyard, it was a large city and should, theoretically at least, offer more hiding places. Other than discussing the decision to go to Memphis, we hadn’t said a word to each other.
Ten miles passed. Twenty. Fifty. “I’m sorry, Penny.”
She didn’t answer.
“I just saw you and—”
“It’s not like I fought you off, Gray. In fact, I’m the one who should be apologizing, not you.”
“How you figure that?”
“You’re vulnerable. You’ve had more heaped on you than someone should have to bear.”
“It’s still no excuse.” I was suddenly mortified to realize that right then, while I was trying to beat back the guilt, trying to atone, the lust monster was rearing its beastly head again, flushing my face with fire, quickening my pulse and stiffening other things. What the hell was wrong with me?
Despite my anger, I was still worried about Abby. I picked up the cell phone and dialed information. Got the number for the behavioral health center and dialed it.
“Checking on Abby Bolton,” I said to the girl who answered the phone.
“Hold, please.”
“Isolation, hold please,” a new voice said. A minute or two later: “Help you?”
“I’m checking on Abby Bolton.”
“And you are?”
I chewed on that one. There shouldn’t be any way to locate us from a prepaid cell phone call, but a lot of things had happened over the past days that shouldn’t have. “I’m her father. Now put someone on this line who can tell me what’s going on with my daughter. Right now.”
Curtly: “Hold.”
“This is Dr. Belenchia. With whom am I speaking?”
“Horace Traylor, Abby Bolton’s father. What is my daughter’s condition, doctor?”
“Mr. Traylor, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Mrs. Bolton’s condition has worsened. She’s in intensive care, in critical condition. You might want to make your way to the hospital as soon as poss
ible.”
I said nothing.
“Mr. Traylor?”
I pressed END and laid the phone down.
“What is it, Gray?” Penny said.
“Turn around.”
“Why?”
“Just turn around!”
She did. A sudden wave of panic about my kids flooded my mind. I dialed LungFao’s home number, and he answered in a sleepy voice, “Hello?”
“Fao, it’s me. You heard from my dad?”
“He called, said tell you he’s okay.”
I closed my eyes, exhaled slowly. “Anything unusual happen at the shop today?”
“Yeah, the police showed up again.”
“For what?”
“To arrest you.”
Chapter 64
Ray Earl Higgins lay in bed, hands behind his head, eyes wide, just like they’d been for the better part of the night, every night, for the past two weeks. He was miserably tired, but sleeping meant dreaming. And he only dreamed about one thing these days: dead people. Sometimes they chased him. Sometimes they just stared at him. One time they surrounded him and pointed at him with bony fingers. Really bony, as in the skin and meat were gone. Sometimes they looked like the ones in that building. Sometimes they had his face, or his mama’s! No matter what they did or what they looked like, when he woke up he was scared silly and his bedsheets were wet with sweat.
Rocky was dead set against telling anybody what they’d found. “You really are retarded, ain’t you? Whatever happened out there, they didn’t mean for us or nobody else to find it, Ray Earl. You wanna wind up dead?” That, or something like it, is what Rocky said every time Ray Earl brought it up. No matter what Rocky said, though, Ray Earl didn’t know how much more he could take. People weren’t supposed to lay around rotting in some old building in the woods, and Ray Earl was pretty sure they’d keep haunting him until he did something about it.
Chapter 65
It was almost midnight by the time we made it back to Tupelo and then to the hospital. “You know the police are looking for you and you can bet they have the ICU staked out. This could be a ruse to get you to surface. You thought about that?”
“Yeah, I did, but the doctor thinks it’s her father who called.”
“Maybe he believed you. Maybe not.”
“I have to know how she is, Penny.”
“I’ll go. Park where you can watch the ER door right there. When I come out, I’ll go to my left if it’s clear, and you can pick me up on the side street. If I go to my right, you get out of here and wait for me to call. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She left. I waited and watched. About a half-hour later, I saw her coming through the vestibule and then out through the exit doors. Without hesitating, she turned right and walked at a brisk clip. I watched a bit longer and saw a guy come out and hang a right also. Tall and thick, he moved like a hunter, and he was right on her trail.
I cranked the Lexus and headed her way, not dreaming of leaving her, no matter the plan. She walked faster. So did he. Then she cut into the parking lot at a dead run, and he followed. They were four aisles over and I punched it. Just before I turned onto the aisle, I saw two more guys leave the hospital in a run toward them. Even in the dim light of the parking lot, I could see that one of them looked like a giant: Docker.
I headed straight for Penny and her pursuer. She was no more than thirty yards ahead of him, sprinting right down the middle of the street. He was maybe two hundred yards in front of me, and he was definitely gaining on her. I glanced in the mirror and saw the other men giving it all they were worth, arms pumping, legs chugging, Docker’s hulking frame towering above the man beside him. Penny’s pursuer was a hundred yards in front of me now. Then fifty. Twenty.
I stomped the accelerator, and he never knew what hit him. I saw his back break, saw his torso fold back on itself like a rag doll as it knocked him into the air. He hit the windshield and a thousand cracks spidered through it; I cut the wheel hard left, then back right, slinging him off. The windshield looked like it had been stroked with a bloody paintbrush.
I blew the horn and Penny turned around as I pulled alongside her. She yanked the passenger door open and dove inside as the men behind us started shooting. The gunshots were dull thuds behind us, and I felt shards of glass on the back of my head as one of them took out the back glass. I stood on the throttle and the little engine screamed. The rearview mirror shattered. Two holes appeared in the windshield.
“You okay?” I said.
“Fine, just go!”
I slid through a right turn out of the parking lot and onto the street without easing up, then left on Gloster, the main drag, headed south. Within a block, I saw blue lights in front of us, closing fast.
Chapter 66
“What’d you find out?” I said.
“I’d rather you concentrate on driving right now!” There were four police cars ahead, and another pair bringing up the rear.
“I can’t concentrate on a damn thing without knowing how my wife is. Tell me!” I was still standing on the throttle; the speedometer eased through a hundred. That’s miles per hour, not kilometers. There was only one car in traffic between us and the four cruisers ahead.
“They’re telling the truth. She’s in ICU, unconscious.”
I pounded the steering wheel with my fist.
“Gray, please pay attention to the road. I’m begging you.” Tears ran down her face.
The car between us and the police got out of the way by turning into a supermarket parking lot. The four police cars facing us spread out across the width of the street, four traffic lanes plus a turn lane, and they angled the cars in a way that totally blocked the whole street. They were a half-mile away and our speedometer read 115.
“Think this might be the time to surrender?” Penny said.
“What, so I can turn up dead, too? No, thanks.”
“Then what are—”
I grabbed the emergency brake handle between the seats and yanked it full up as I stood hard on the brakes. The little SUV pitched violently forward and even though the pavement was wet, the smell of scalded rubber filled the cabin. As soon as we slowed enough, I spun the wheel hard right, resulting in a bawling turn into the supermarket’s parking lot. I released all brakes and punched the gas again, flying by the guy who had moved out of the way moments before.
The police cars were coming now, but I had a big head start on momentum. I took the right side of the grocery store, and then hung a left onto the delivery lane that ran behind it. Two cruisers were behind me, which meant the other two had taken the other end of the building. I had gone about a fourth of the length of the store when they slung around the corner on the far end and headed straight for us. Two behind. Two in front. And the lane was barely wide enough for two vehicles side by side. We were trapped.
Chapter 67
WITCH DANCE CAMPGROUND
NATCHEZ TRACE PARKWAY
BETWEEN TUPELO AND MONTELLO
The sparse late-night traffic on the federal parkway made its many scenic and historical stops ideal for clandestine meetings. Ballard didn’t like getting this involved with the details, but the rate of attrition of his workforce had been a real bitch over the past few days. He worked quickly, moving the cardboard cartons from the cargo area of the van into the back of his Escalade. Each box was twelve inches square.
The driver of the van, a dealer named Bowser who had recently moved from Chicago to Memphis, was a dark-skinned Caucasian with a pocked face and tiny deep-sunk eyes beneath a crude tattoo of a dagger that ran diagonally across his forehead. He stood nearer the roadway, his muscular arms crossed, watching for any traffic that might decide to pull into the small rest area.
When Ballard put the last carton inside and closed the door, Bowser walked by and said, “Better get your shit together if you want to keep your territory.”
Ballard froze, but said nothing.
“I don’t like incompetent hicks,” Bowser cont
inued. “They screw things up for everybody.”
Ballard cocked his head to the side and studied Bowser. The chirping sounds of night stopped, as if even the crickets and cicadae were shocked into silence. “What did you say?”
Bowser froze, his hand on the van door, then turned his head back toward Ballard, who was now walking toward Bowser. “I said, you fat pig, that I don—”
Ballard caught him just below the left cheekbone with a lead-filled leather sap. The jawbone gave way with a sickening crack that filled the night air and Bowser wailed and fell to his knees. He was trying to say something, but his mouth wouldn’t work. Ballard circled him, holding the sap in his right hand, slapping it into his left palm. Bowser was holding his shattered jaw with his left hand, moaning. On Ballard’s third trip around him, he swung the sap in a vicious backhand that broke the hand Bowser was holding to his face.
In a perfectly calm tone, Ballard said, “What were you saying?”
Bowser tried amid a series of moans and grunts to speak. “Thawy—thawy.” Blood poured from his mouth.
“Sorry? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Bowser nodded emphatically. Ballard suddenly smiled a big smile. “Apology accepted.” The smile disappeared and he said, “You so much as look at me with disrespect again, and I’ll kill you. Now get out of my sight.”
As Bowser made his way into the van, Ballard pulled out a cell phone and dialed. “Got the extra units—no, no problems.” He listened for a moment. “Don’t worry, Docker is taking care of them right about now.”
Chapter 68
Police in front. Police behind. The narrow lane was sandwiched between the rear of the grocery store on my left, and a steep embankment on the right that the Lexus would never climb. I hit the brakes and hung a hard left into an open delivery bay and into the building. Straight ahead, I could see the wide swinging doors that led into the store proper. To the left, shelves loaded with cases of inventory. To the right, open space and another bay that led back outside.
Pawnbroker: A Thriller Page 13
