American Crow

by Jack Lacey

  I stared through the grill into the gloom, trying to imagine Nancy still lying on the trolley alive, looking over at my cell with her warm chestnut eyes as I tried to reassure her. For a while I pretended that was exactly how it was...

  ‘Nancy,’ I said softly after a while, my words echoing out, as if searching for her departed soul. ‘I’m so sorry...’

  I sank to my knees my body shaking, my head lowered in defeat, then cried like I hadn’t done since Laura’s funeral. Then I stared into the darkness like a madman until I saw Nancy’s face shape-shift before me, her beautiful brown eyes just beaming forgiveness...

  ‘Nancy...’

  I clamped my own shut, counted to ten then opened them slowly. The image was gone...Now it was just the bitumen blackness of the vile cell again, the vacuous darkness that was eating into me...

  I hauled myself up and placed my hands against the wall, head still lowered, trying to comprehend Corrigan’s actions, trying to analyse my choices that had led to Nancy getting killed. Then I froze suddenly. I could feel something on the wall, gouged into its surface...

  I dragged one hand over the wall in a tentative arc, distracted for a second. My fingertips brushed over what appeared to be broken lines scraped into the paintwork…I stopped and felt again, this time in larger circles. The lines felt like letters. I checked them again methodically, following the curve and direction of each new line until I could make out discernible words. Words...

  ‘Olivia...’ I murmured. ‘You were in here too...’

  Then a sickening realization hit home, that Olivia probably had succumbed to a similar fate…

  ‘No!’

  I slammed my hands against the wall, knowing that it had all been for nothing, that Nancy’s death had been avoidable, and that I had willingly led her into danger when I should have just left her at home.

  ‘Fuck it!’

  Then I felt another gouge in the wall, another letter. Then another word... Quickly, I ran my hands over the letters to decode it.

  ‘Fly…’

  I found another below then traced the letters with my fingertips several times until I was certain of its meaning.

  ‘Lodge?’

  Finally there was just three letters left. An ‘M’, an ‘O’ and a ‘U’. Olivia had obviously run out of time...

  ‘They were taking you to the mountains weren’t they honey...’

  I chewed over the significance in my mind, sensing a glimmer of hope. Maybe Corrigan hadn’t killed her yet, he’d taken her elsewhere for some other use?

  ‘Good girl…’

  I took a step back and wondered if the she was still alive, then if I actually cared anymore anyway. Corrigan had no qualms about murdering Nancy after all. He’d probably killed Olivia already, unless he planned to extend his sadistic fun for a little longer...

  I walked over to the bed feeling exhausted, feeling as if every ounce of my marrow had been sucked out of my bones, then I kicked it lamely in frustration and sent the metal bar skidding across the floor. The metal bar. I’d forgotten all about it...

  I went down on my knees and searched the tiled floor in the dark until I felt its cold, metallic surface, then I sat cross-legged, the make-shift weapon clenched in my hand, thinking how I had to get the hell out of there and find Olivia Deacon alive or not, if for no other reason than to make Nancy’s death worth something. Surely, it all had to be worth something…

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ‘an old friend called death’

  The sound of a door opening jolted me awake instantly. They were coming for me now it seemed…This was where it was going to all end, or hopefully resurrect itself…

  Footsteps and low voices worked their way down the stairs one tread at a time, just like they’d done before. This time, it sounded as if it was just the two of them...

  I stood up, stretched myself then picked up the bar. Somehow I had to catch them unawares and gain the upper hand while I still had the element of surprise, or it would soon all be over like it had been for Nancy.

  Hurriedly, I wedged the tip of the bar between the crack in the wall and the frame, hinge side, so that it jutted out at right angles towards me, remaining partially hidden if they opened the door.

  Slowly the basement lights came on one by one, partially illuminating the cell. After hours of impenetrable darkness, it seemed as bright as the sun.

  ‘Okay, take a step back, Limey,’ the wild-eyes ordered walking towards me.

  I did as I was told, then placed my hands behind my head so as to appear passive, trying to contain the rage that was now pulsing through me.

  ‘Stay where you are, boy,’ he said again as the key rattled in the lock.

  The large metal door swung slowly open, allowing more of the harsh light to flood in. I stooped down with one hand raised, as if trying to shield my eyes, then seizing my chance, grabbed the bar with the other and in one slick move pulled it towards me.

  In the time that it took for the big guy to pull the Colt from his belt, I’d raised the bar up and smashed it hard down onto his wrist fracturing it, then swung it up underneath his chin, breaking that too.

  Quickly, I went down on one knee, grabbed the gun from the floor, fired a couple of slugs into his legs then did the same to the creep behind as he turned to run.

  I righted myself and ran into the main room, and eyed the moaning mass of the big guy as the stairs creaked next door. The creep was making a break for it just like the coward he was...Perhaps he even wasn’t carrying a weapon? I stepped over the big guy, then inched my way along the returning wall and peered in. Bingo. The guy was trying to haul himself up the stairs on his belly, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

  I stepped out confidently then walked up the stairs one tread at a time, closing in on my prey. Then I waited until he’d turned around and pointed the gun in his rat-like face. He looked up at me with his terror-filled eyes. I racked the slide. He winced. I smiled the smile of the executioner and placed the gun slowly against his forehead.

  He shrieked like a girl. I laughed. Then he grabbed the hand rail and tried desperately to drag himself up as if that would save him. I followed him up, finding it amusing, feeling like a vigilante who’d been let out to play for the afternoon, then waited again until he’d turned again, until he was looking deep into my eyes, searching for some sort of goodness.

  ‘Please...I just do what I’m told. I didn’t realize that he was actually going to kill the girl...’

  He forced a pathetic smile. I stared at him blankly. Then I pressed the gun harder into his rodent face and saw Nancy’s as she was expelling her last breath.

  ‘Oh my god, no…’ he garbled, as my finger went to the trigger.

  ‘You’re sorry, is that it?’

  He nodded frantically and started to piss himself.

  ‘Sorry, that someone I cared about has just been strangled before my very eyes, and that you let some maniac do it?’

  He nodded again and started to cry.

  ‘Okay…’ I said.

  I lowered the gun and saw the fear subside in his pupils.

  ‘I didn’t know that…’

  I slammed the gun across his face with all my rage then watched his limp body tumble down the stairs and lay in a contorted pile at the bottom. I walked slowly down and eyed him for a second, wondering if I should have just pulled the trigger, then went back up and pulled the cord by the door, hoping that it would summon Corrigan so perhaps I finally could...

  I heard the summoning bell ring upstairs faintly then turned off the lights, stepped back behind the door and waited, gun at the ready. Several painful minutes later I heard the handle turn and the door scrape slowly open.

  I kept my breathing steady, trying to keep my anger in check, trying to keep focused so I could finish the job. Someone had stepped onto the landing area and was fumbling for the light switch now...

  The stairwell lights flickered slowly on revealing the back of the stranger. Gradually I real
ised it wasn’t the tycoon who’d answered the call. It was the damned doctor...

  He gasped audibly seeing the carnage then tried to turn.

  ‘Move...’ I said, stepping out of the shadows.

  ‘Ww..where?’

  ‘Downstairs...’

  I prodded him in the guts with the automatic urging him to descend. Then I forced him over to the gurney much to his alarm.

  ‘Get on…’

  ‘What are you going to do with me?’ he said, with an air of indignation.

  I ignored his questioning and strapped him down tightly, one belt at a time, then placed the gun down and recovered the bag he’d dropped on the stairs.

  It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for, then half as much time again to screw the old fashioned syringe back together and return to his side. Then I held it in the air above him and watched him squirm...

  ‘What are you going to do? You don’t know how to use something like that,’ he said wrestling against his binding.

  ‘Oh, I’m not so sure,’ I said, thrusting it down into the nearest eye.

  He screamed and went silent, then for a while I watched his body shake until it too became still. I stared at him wondering if he was alive or not, then walked over to Nancy’s cell and looked tentatively inside. Her body was gone...They must have taken it away while I slept.

  I switched off the basement light, scaled the stairs, grabbed the door handle, and pulled. Nothing. The door had slammed shut of its own accord…

  ‘Damn it!’

  I killed the lights and pulled the cord again, desperate to get the hell out of the vile basement, to get back out into space and air and feel human again. A minute later my prayers were answered. The key turned in the lock. I held my breath as the door creaked open, then raised the gun again as the lights flickered on...

  One step, two. It wasn’t Corrigan...It was some scrawny old guy with thinning black hair. He looked around. I stepped out. Then I brought the gun down onto his greasy skull and watched him crash down the stairs and land on top of the creep.

  I grabbed the door before it could close then checked the cellar for back-up. The guy had come alone...Quickly I wedged it open with a broom, then jogged back down and pulled the old guy’s head back by his hair.

  ‘Where’s Corrigan?’

  ‘I…I’

  The guy was in a daze, whimpering like a dog. I shook him violently, making him open one of his swollen eyes.

  ‘Where-is-Corrigan?’ I repeated, impatient for an answer.

  ‘He’s…gone.’

  I slapped him hard around the face, trying to keep him conscious.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Prob-ably…’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘Mountains….’

  ‘And the girl?’ I said smacking him again as both eyes fluttered rapidly.

  ‘The girl?’

  ‘The British girl? Is she alive?’

  ‘I…’

  He passed out and I let his head drop.

  ‘Fuck it!’

  I ran back upstairs into the dark cellar above, secured the false door behind me and broke the key off in the lock. Then I pushed the false stand of Bourbon barrels back into position and checked the gun’s magazine. I had around five or six shots left in the clip. Hopefully it would see me through...

  I climbed the next staircase and carefully opened the door at the top. All seemed locked down for the night. I tentatively stepped out into the main hallway then re-entered the kitchen, gun outstretched…

  Inside, smelt of roast pork and something pungent and sweet. After all the carnage, the aroma was sickening. I stared at the large numeral clock illuminated in the silvery moonlight. It was ten minutes after midnight. I’d been down in the basement for over twenty-four hours. Jesus…I thought about just getting the hell out of the place, then changed my mind suddenly and headed back up the narrow staircase that I’d climbed earlier.

  At the first floor landing I cracked opened the door and peered down the corridor again. All seemed quiet too, just like the last time before it kicked off...I stepped out casually and returned to the open-plan staircase, then looked down at the grandiose lobby below, at its ornate chandeliers and grand piano, at its expensive vases and statues of horses. Everywhere seemed deathly quiet. That made me nervous…

  I headed up the sweeping staircase, eyeing each door intently as I climbed, and thinking about what I was going to do to Corrigan when I got my hands on him. The tycoon had a wife, Nancy had said. There was a good chance that she’d still be in the house even if he wasn’t. I couldn’t imagine Corrigan dumping some body off in the mountains with his wife sat by his side.

  I worked my way up the final few treads, hugging the wall closely until I reached the second landing area then looked down the main corridor at some guy with an earpiece walking away in the opposite direction.

  I took cover around the corner, grabbed a breath then checked again. The guard had now reached the far end...I pulled back and waited patiently until I could hear him return. One creaking floorboard, two…

  I stepped out and cracked him hard in the face with a short sharp punch, sending him staggering backwards into an ornate chair, allowing me to follow up with a hard right silencing him. I checked for back up then dragged him and the chair into the next room.

  Hurriedly, I bound his hands with his tie, shoved a sock into his mouth, then left him there unconscious and locked the door behind me. I crept back out, walked down the hallway, and found the fifth room from the end, just as Tony Lutz had described.

  Inside was shrouded in darkness, the curtains drawn. Before me was a huge four-poster bed, and some ghostly figure lying in it. I closed the door shut and walked slowly in, my gun scanning the shadows for trouble, until I was standing at the bedside, staring at a woman with long grey hair and a sophisticated face. It had to be Corrigan’s wife, and she was fast asleep...

  I pulled back, slid a belt from a silk dressing gown, then returned to the bed and placed my hand over her mouth. A second later she gasped in horror at the impediment and released a muffled scream into my palm.

  ‘Shhh…’ I said pointing the muzzle of the gun at her face with the other hand. ‘Scream again and I’m going to empty the rest of this magazine into your skull, okay?’

  She nodded terrified and fell silent.

  ‘Now answer my questions, each in turn, calmly, quietly and truthfully, and I might just let you live...’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Where’s Corrigan? Is he here?’

  I lifted my hand slightly so she could speak.

  ‘No…’ she said, her fragile voice quaking.

  ‘Where has he gone?’

  ‘Probably to see his mistress, that bitch the painter.’

  I smiled.

  ‘So you know?’

  ‘Everyone knows, but he thinks that I don’t...like the arrogant fool he is.’

  Her voice was steadier now and infused with a virulent anger.

  ‘Do you know where that might be?’ I said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, satisfied that she wasn’t about to scream her head off.

  ‘Probably the hunting lodge at Jackson’s Hollow, not far from Crow Creek. He’s got her holed up there from what I’ve heard. Good for her creative flow I’d imagine…and his.’

  I smiled and lowered the gun some more.

  ‘Do you know about the British girl?’

  ‘I know that he brought her back to the house after the break-in, but after that I don’t. He doesn’t tell me much anymore. I’m just his wife...’

  I looked into her pale green eyes and decided that she was telling the truth.

  ‘You know, if I think you’re lying I’ll smother you here and now with that pillow you’re laid on.’

  ‘Good…it might free me from the hell that has become my life and take me back to the Lord,’ she said, nodding at a wheelchair opposite

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Since I was twenty-fiv
e, when I slipped off some mountain trail, paralyzing myself from the waist down. So you see...if you want to kill me, then I’ll gladly let you do it, son. It would liberate me from that damned chair, from this charade of a marriage and from the daily hell of not being able to ride my precious horses freely anymore.’

  I offered a sympathetic smile and stood up, aware that I had little time to get out of there in one piece.

  ‘Is there a helicopter somewhere on the ranch?’

  ‘Yes, it drops him off anywhere he wants, then flies back and waits for the call to come and pick him up.’

  ‘And the pilot?’

  ‘He lives on the other side of the estate, but most of the time you’ll just find him in the hanger down near the lower paddocks, working on the chopper.’

  ‘Where’s that exactly?’ I pressed, hearing voices in the corridor.

  ‘Head out the back, through the woods for a while, and you’ll come to the hanger on your left on the edge of some fields.’

  ‘Thanks…’ I said, thinking that perhaps I’d already seen it when I’d crossed the road earlier at the stable-block.

  ‘So are you going to kill me now?’ she said bluntly.

  I ignored the question.

  ‘Are there anymore guards lurking around, apart from the one that was outside earlier?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, easing herself up onto the pillows, as if she were trying to make herself comfortable for when death finally came. ‘But if you go through that door there, you’ll find a dressing room…’

  She raised an arthritic finger and pointed at a row of cupboards. I looked at her in bewilderment.

  ‘You serious?’

  ‘Open the third door on the left and push the clothes to one side and you’ll find another slimmer door behind it. The key for it is in the bedside drawer. It’s Lyle’s own private chamber, so to speak. In the corner of the room you’ll find a narrow staircase that leads all the way down to a tunnel and comes out in a smokehouse, near the edge of the woods by the servants’ bungalow. The Confederates built it as an escape route back in the war.’