Lying on the floor near the left end was a man’s body. Even from this distance I could tell it was the hawkish man from Bobby Knight’s funeral. A pool of blood spread around his head, and his hair looked matted with it, stuck to his head. Beyond him, a girl—she was Hispanic, looked to be in her late teens—was holding clothes in front of herself, trying to hide her nakedness. She looked terrified. And standing there beside her, pointing a gun in our direction, was Ricky Ballard. My girls and my father were not here.
“Put the gun down, Docker,” the sheriff said.
I looked back at Docker. He had been caught totally off guard. His gun was still pointed vaguely at me, which meant Ballard had the advantage. Docker dropped the .45, and it hit the wood floor with a thud. Ballard motioned with his gun for us to move to the center of the room. We complied.
Ballard walked toward us. When he was ten feet away, he raised the gun and shot Docker. A small bloody spot appeared in the middle of Docker’s chest. He looked down at it, a confused look on his face, then fell face forward onto the floor. He didn’t move. Ballard kept coming. I raised my hands.
“Look, Ballard,” I said, “I don’t—”
“Shut—the—fuck—up.” His voice was quiet, calm. I shut up.
Keeping the gun on me, he walked over to Docker, nudged him with his foot, then delivered a vicious kick to the big man’s ribs. Docker didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. Now Ballard turned his full attention to me. He started circling, and I kept turning in place so I would be facing him.
“You shoulda kept your nose out of my business, pawnbroker.”
I drew a breath to respond, to tell him that I never intended to be in his or anybody else’s business, but the shot rang out first. I looked down at my chest, but saw nothing. Had he shot me in the head? Then Ballard’s knees buckled. He sank slowly to the floor in a kneeling position, looked up at me, and slumped backward. A thin stream of blood trickled from the back of his head and down to the floor. I raised my eyes. Standing in the doorway, long-barreled revolver still extended, was Teddy Abraham.
Chapter 135
He had come through. My last hope, my best friend, had come through. I ran to Teddy and wrapped him in a tight hug, then backed away, kept my hands on his shoulders. Looked him in the eye. “Thanks, Teddy.”
He just nodded, no doubt in shock over having just shot a man. It was a feeling I remembered with stark clarity. I heard the girl whimpering, released Teddy, and hurried over to her. I knelt and tried to get her to look at me. She was shivering, mumbling something over and over in Spanish. Hombre mal? My Spanish was rudimentary, but I had made it a point to learn the basics when we started getting more Hispanic customers. Bad man? Evil man? Who knows what the dead guy had done to her? I looked around for something to put around her, but saw nothing, so I kept my head turned as much as possible and helped her back into her clothes.
Still kneeling, I turned my attention to the hawkish man on the floor. The back of his head had been bludgeoned and I was pretty sure he was dead, but I still checked for a pulse, checked for breathing. I found neither. I stared at his face and again the phrase “like a hawk” popped into my head, just like it had at the funeral when I first saw him. There was something, right there on the tip of my subconscious, but I couldn’t coax it out. I sensed something behind me and turned to look. Teddy was standing behind me, watching.
As I turned back toward the man, I glanced at Teddy’s shoes. Now something else sparked in my mind, also deep, refusing to come into the light of conscious thought. And then it started leaking out, a little at a time, then faster: like a hawk. As kids, Teddy and I spent a lot of time at each other’s house. It wasn’t unusual for him to spend the whole weekend with us, nor for me to stay at his house for two or three nights in a row. On one of those occasions—we were maybe seven or eight years old—they had family visiting from England. Relatives of Teddy’s mother, I think.
One of those relatives was a teenager, a cousin to Teddy, I think. He was sixteen or seventeen, which seemed way old to us at the time. He was an odd-looking guy, and after they had left, Teddy’s father had said, “I swear, that boy’s got a face just like a hawk. Never seen anything like it.”
Teddy’s mother had chastised her husband, talked about how the boy was going to be a doctor someday. But Mr. Abe—that’s what all the kids called him—was a clown, and the scolding just caused him to pick up the pace. “Just like a hawk, I tell you!” Then he started squawking like, well, I’m sure it was supposed to be like a hawk.
I looked back at the dead man’s face, replaying that obscure forgotten memory from thirty years ago. Ian was his name. And there was no doubt in my mind that it was Ian who lay before me with his head bashed in. But that was impossible. How could Teddy’s cousin from England happen to be mixed up in this? I put my hands on the floor to push myself up from the kneeling position.
As I got up, my gaze was again drawn to Teddy’s shoes. That mental spark was picking up power, too. I froze, fingertips on the wood floor, half-crouched, and looked more closely at the shoes. Blue and white New Balance runners, old and worn. And then, in one instant, that spark flashed brilliantly, and exploded into understanding. Sweet God in heaven, please, no.
But I knew. Those sneakers, a beat up old pair of New Balance running shoes, were the shoes I saw in the motel video. The feet of the cameraman that had come into view as he moved around the room, recording my wife. Teddy was the cameraman.
I remain frozen in the same crouched position, wondering what to do, but knowing it was too late. Teddy knew I had figured it out. I felt it, a tension in the air, a feeling as palpable as hot or cold. I straightened up slowly. He was pointing a gun at me, the same one he shot Ballard with, shaking his head slowly.
“How?” he said.
“Your shoes. They’re on the tape.”
He nodded, then motioned toward the door with the gun. “Outside.”
Chapter 136
I walked toward the door. As we passed Ballard’s body, I said, “Why’d you shoot your boss?”
“My boss?” he said, a confused look on his face. Then he chuckled, a low sinister sound I’d never heard from Teddy in all our years.
“I’m the boss, Gray. Me. He worked for me. I control the entire Southeast, and before long, I’ll control the nation, old buddy.”
“Why?”
“I’m a businessman, Gray. Any idea how much money we’re talking about here?”
“Obviously enough to sell out a friend.”
“Friend? You, a friend?”
I was genuinely perplexed. The look on his face was one of utter astonishment that I had just framed us as friends. Given that we had been—I thought—close friends for decades, I had no idea how to respond.
“Let’s see.” He looked up, scratched his chin with his free hand. “Where do we begin?” He stroked his chin now, a professorial look of deep pondering. “Oh, I know. How about we start with the quarterback position? I was the quarterback, Gray. Not you. Me. I made you my number one receiver, but that wasn’t good enough for you. Oh hell no, you had to move in and take my position. Friend?”
I was stunned, shaking my head. “You can’t be serious,” I said. “Football? You’re trying to tell me a high school football position warrants this?”
“It’s not the game. It’s the principle. You betrayed me.”
“You need help, Teddy.”
He drew his lips into a narrow line, the way he’s always done when he’s angry, and drew a deep breath.
“Say it again and I’ll kill you right here, right now. So go ahead, say it again, sport.”
How could this be? I’d felt naive where Abby was concerned, but that wasn’t on the same planet with this. Here was a guy I thought I knew, who was really a top-grade psychopath and I hadn’t had a clue.
“Didn’t think so,” he said. “Let’s continue, shall we?”
“By all means, Teddy. What else did I do?”
He snorted. “
As if you don’t know. Wasn’t enough for you to make a fool out of me on the team, in front of the whole school. Nope, not enough, old buddy. You had to break my heart, too. My heart.”
“Abby?” I said, trying hard to keep the incredulity out of my voice, lest I push him further into his insanity.
He nodded. “Abby, Abby, Abby. Had to have her too, didn’t you?”
At this point, all I knew to do was try to appease him and look for an opening. “I didn’t know. Honestly, I didn’t.”
“Riiiight,” he said. “You take the love of my life, and you don’t know. You’re a real piece of work, sport.”
My response popped out before I even thought about it. “Teddy, you and Abby never even dated.”
“Oh, I see. You and I were best friends, and just because I didn’t spell it out for you, you didn’t know? Just because I didn’t ask her out soon enough, you had to step in, is that what I’m hearing here?”
I didn’t answer.
“You weren’t as sharp as you thought, though,” he continued. “There was one thing in high school you couldn’t cheat me out of.”
Teddy Abraham got everything in high school. Most popular, most handsome, Mr. This, Mr. That, most likely to succeed. If there was an award, he got it. So, despite the gravity of the situation, I found myself curious as to what that one thing was in his twisted mind.
“Who got the Thespian Award, huh, sport?”
“You did, Teddy.”
“Damned right I did. I was the best actor, and I put my talent to good use. Kept hanging around you, because it kept me close to Abby. I bided my time. Figured I’d get my chance when you went to Ole Miss and she went to State. Those split-college relationships almost never work out, you know. Even after I changed my own college plans, though—”
I couldn’t help myself. I said, “Are you telling me you went to State because Abby was going there?”
“Of course. She was the love of my life. Is the love of my life. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interrupt me again, Gray.”
I said nothing.
“Even though I hate that little piss-ant town, when she followed you back to it, I followed her. Stayed close. Waited patiently as long as I could, and then I told her how I felt. You know what she did?”
I shook my head.
“She laughed at me. Thought I was testing her fidelity for you. Can you believe that?”
“You got married twice,” I said. “What about them?”
He shrugged. “Celibacy’s not my style. Got to have a piece of ass on a regular basis, you know? But I didn’t give a damn about them. I waited for her. Waited for years. Finally, I saw my chance. And I took it.”
Chapter 137
ARLINGTON RESIDENCE
WEST MEMPHIS, ARKANSAS
Jimmy was going nuts. He had lost contact with Gray first, then Penny, and too much time had passed for it to be something minor. Even if they lost their radios, they should have called him via cell phone by now. He knew their phones were still working, because he was tracking them. Penny’s had been in the same place for a long time. Too long. Gray’s moved around a little more, but then it went stationary as well. He zoomed in and checked the grid; they were no more than a hundred yards apart.
He switched the display back to the Lady’s starboard camera, which still showed a broadside view of about three-quarters of the other yacht. For what felt like the gazillionth time since Gray left the Lady, he scanned the monitor for any sign of activity. Cripes a’mighty! He fired off a series of keystrokes, enlarging the area on the left edge of his monitor, which was toward the rear of the boat. He saw shadows moving!
More keystrokes, and he studied the screen again. Blow a poxy monkey! The action was just beyond the camera’s field of view. He drew a deep slug of Mountain Dew and pounded the desk, then palm-slapped his forehead. Think, Geek, think! Oh what he wouldn’t give for a sweet little PTZ camera about now; he’d be a panning, tilting, zooming fool, he would.
Move the boat! He could move the camera by moving that mama-chicken of a boat! He entered another salvo of keystrokes, readied his joystick, and pressed ENTER. A half-second later, a message scrolled into view on the bottom of his left monitor.
I-Navigator Message: Host Ready. Transfer control to remote bridge? Y/N
Jimmy kissed the tip of his right index finger, reached to the keyboard, and tapped the Y key. Another message appeared.
Warning! You are about to give full control of this craft’s navigation system to an external system. Are you sure? Y/N
He entered another Y. The monitor went blank for a moment, then filled with a graphic rendition of the Lady’s control panel. He tapped in a J and a line of text scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
Joystick Mode Activated—Proceed With Caution
Jimmy nudged the joystick’s control shaft barely forward and the yacht eased forward, bringing the area of interest into the starboard camera’s field of view. He stared at the screen, unable to believe what he saw there, and unable to come up with one of his trademark creative responses. Instead, he said simply, “Oh God.”
Chapter 138
I suppose the appropriate thing to feel toward Teddy was pity. After all, he was obviously sicker than sick. But that’s not what I felt. I wanted to kill the crazy bastard. The thought of him pretending to be my friend while he stalked my wife for twenty years, pretended to love my children—he deserved to die. I had a hunch I understood the “chance” he mentioned, but I wanted to hear him say it.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“The device. Tommy Mitchell and I had done a lot of business through the years, so when he found out about it, he came to me.
“I was in the Grotto the first time he showed it to me. This dog had been coming on to me all night, and while I love a piece of extracurricular action as much as the next guy, she was so ugly I wouldn’ve done her with your dick, know what I’m saying?”
He roared in laughter, as if he’d just told a joke over the backyard barbeque grill. When I didn’t join in, he continued, “So I put these headphones on, and all at once that ugly bitch was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I took her to the bathroom, banged her in a stall. It was incredible. And I knew right then, without a doubt, that this would be the most profitable ‘drug’ in history.
“I also knew that all I had to do was get Abby to put the headphones on, and I could have her. After waiting twenty years, I’d finally tap that hot ass that you stole from me.”
“And did you?” I said.
His face suddenly flushed crimson and he jerked the gun up into my face. “I asked you,” he hissed, “not to interrupt me, Gray.” His hand was shaking, the barrel just inches away.
“Sorry, Teddy,” I said in a near whisper. “Please continue.”
“I knew she was screwing Bobby Knight, but I forgave her even for that. But get this: We had a meeting scheduled one night at the Courtyard—owning a hotel comes in handy. Supposed to be me, Homestead, Mitchell, and Bobby. Mitchell gets tied up, can’t come. Homestead and I are there waiting, and Bobby shows up, has Abby in the car with him. You believe that? Tells her it’s some kind of business meeting, that he’ll just be a minute.”
All the time Teddy’s talking, he still has his gun right in my face. It’s a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver with a 6” barrel. It’s cocked and ready, his finger on the trigger. I’m not scared anymore, though. My heart has slowed down to a quasi-normal rate. My breathing has leveled out. I’m just listening, hating him for what he’s done to my wife, to my life. And waiting for him to give me the slimmest crevice of opportunity.
“Bobby leaves his sample device in the car, Abby decides to listen to it. Next thing we know, she walks into the room, she’s fired, I’m talking eyes fully ringed. Homestead has his sample and puts it on, and next thing I know, they’re going at it like animals. Bobby, the kinky bastard, gets the police department’s video camera out of his car. I shoot the action, both of ’em doin
g her, then when it’s my turn, the battery thing in her unit’s all spent. She comes down and she’s bawling and screaming, wanting to know where the hell she is. She grabs her clothes and runs out.”
He finally stops talking, and stands there shaking his head as if the memory still hurts him oh so bad. His arm is tiring and he’s lowered the gun. It’s pointed at my chest now.
“So you see, sport, old Teddy got left out one more time. It’s addictive as all hell, so I could no doubt work out a way to get her on it again, but there’s also a problem.”
“It cooks brains,” I said.
He looked surprised. “Not sure how you figured that out, but yeah, that’s right. Use it too much and...” He wiggled his fingers and made a sound like eggs frying.
I wondered how much damage had been done to Abby’s brain.
“Here’s where it gets good,” he continued. “The people who’d been working on it couldn’t figure out the problem because, let’s face it, you don’t just set up clinical trials in the nearest research hospital with something like this, right?”
I assumed the question was rhetorical, but he was waiting, apparently wanting me to answer it anyway. “Right,” I said.
“As it turns out, my dear cousin Ian had a couple indiscretions with female patients and lost his license. Bastard was broke as shit, so I flew him over and put him to work. Had a hellacious facility right here. We brought in the original electronics guys who invented the thing. They tweaked and Ian monitored the medical results.”
Pawnbroker: A Thriller Page 24
