by Jack Lacey
I walked over to the bedside table, gun trained on her in case she was feeling clever, then slid open the drawer. Inside was a key, as she’d said. I returned to the side of the bed and picked up the pyjama belt again.
‘I’d rather you shoot me, if that’s okay?’
‘You promise you won’t scream your head off if you get the chance?’
‘No, and the name’s Nelly by the way…’
‘Because I don’t want to have to gag you if I don’t have to, Nelly?’
She forced a graceful smile and shook her head slowly.
‘Okay...’
I slid the gun back in my belt, picked her frail body up in my arms, then carried her through to the dressing room without further protest. At the wardrobes she’d described, I lowered her down and negotiated the secret door, then lifted her up carefully again and carried her through the dark opening into Corrigan’s private chamber.
When my hand finally found the light switch, I was shocked at what was illuminated before me. Stuck to the far wall was a sea of newspaper clippings and photographs covering every square inch. I scanned them hurriedly unable to ignore some of the headlines jumping out:
‘MINE BOSS’S WIFE FALLS INTO RAVINE.’
‘COAL BARON’S BELOVED CHEATS DEATH.’
‘BLACK MOUNTAIN ESCAPE’
Then I noticed some older pictures of the couple taken before and seemingly after the accident - one which captured happier days when they were sitting by a sparkling pool with friends laughing, then another taken of her in the wheelchair looking glum, as the horses grazed in the background.
My gaze wandered for a moment then settled on the large map pinned to another wall. I felt a chill run up my spine as I slowly took in its significance. Depicted before me were the entire Appalachians, each mountain that had supposedly been mined, having been replaced by a red rose, just like the film I’d watched at the activists’ house.
I shook my head in disbelief unable to compute the scale of the destruction if it was indeed for real, then looked down at the woman on the floor, tears running down her cheeks.
‘He’s never got over it you know…the accident.’
‘Therapy would have been a better route.’
My eye caught another photo suddenly, pinned just below the map. In it, two young men were standing either side of a gorgeous girl in a conservative swimsuit, posing by a sun-kissed lake. She had long, blonde hair and a mole above her top lip, just like the woman who was now lying on the floor. Next to a young and cocky-looking Corrigan was I supposed, his brother Benjamin, gazing at her adoringly.
I drew my gaze back to Nelly. Her eyes told me everything.
‘Benjamin really loved me, you know. And I loved him...more than Lyle really, but my daddy wanted me to marry his older brother as he thought him the more ambitious, the better prospect.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that…’
She cracked a pained smile and stared at the photo as if in trance.
‘I wished I’d spoken up for myself back then when I had the chance, gone with my heart and taken Benjamin. Looking back, I would have been so much happier. Maybe God wouldn’t have engineered the accident either. Lyle just wanted to show me some damned mountain where he’d shot a huge elk once. It was silly really...Benjamin never forgave him for it.’
‘Is that why Corrigan didn’t force Benjamin out of Crow Creek? Because of guilt?’
‘Suppose,’ she said, looking wretched.
‘You know he’s dead,’ I said bluntly, feeling that she had the right to know.
Her eyes glazed over with shock.
‘How...?’ the question came out as fragile as she now looked.
‘Lyle or one of his men killed him the other night…probably over the murder of some of the protesters that tried to break in here.’
‘My god…’ she said beginning to cry. ‘I know that Lyle had said that they’d had an argument about something. But I never thought that they’d to come to blows.’
‘Whatever Benjamin said, must have tipped your husband over the edge.’
She released a single harshly-expelled laugh.
‘He forbade me ever to see him, you know. Even in a wheelchair he was still worried about me running off with him.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘How did Benjamin die?’ she pushed, as if not wanting to know.
‘With an axe in the back of his head…at his trailer.’
‘Oh, Lord, Mother and Joseph, no…’
For a moment there was silence neither of us knowing what to say. What had been revealed had been revealed and that was that.
‘What’s your name, boy?’ she said eventually.
‘Blake.’
‘Are you going to kill him?’
‘I just find people, Nelly. I’m not a killer unless I’m cornered.’
She eyed me intently as if plagued by some dilemma.
‘I want to ask you a favour, son…just one.’
‘You’re allowed that I reckon, after everything you’ve been through.’
‘I want you to burn this house to the ground.’
‘Really?’ I said surprised at the request.
‘This place has become my prison, Blake, symbolizes nothing but bad memories for me, and will only remind me of his vanity when he’s gone, if he goes before me...so yes.’
She pointed a trembling hand at an oil lamp on a small dresser nearby.
‘I will tell people that it was my fault, as usual, and that I knocked it over...’
I picked up the lamp and stepped back into the dressing room, walked through to the bedroom, then smashed it on the floor next to the curtains so that they would catch easier. Then I returned to the private chamber, picked up a box of matches next to an ashtray with Corrigan’s half-smoked cigar in it, then hovered at the false door again.
‘You’re sure?’
She looked at me steely-eyed.
‘The alarms will go off and the men will get everyone else out...’
I nodded and went back in and lit the oil. The flames rose in a split-second with an audible whoosh and licked greedily at the bed covers then the old curtains close by.
I ran back and picked up Nelly Corrigan in my arms, then worked my way down the staircase carefully one tread at a time, until we’d reached the bottom and the beginnings of what appeared an old tunnel as she’d described.
Carefully, I edge my way forward in the darkness, then stopped suddenly as row upon row of ceiling lights flickered along its arched roof as if activated by our movement. Thankful for the illumination, we continued slowly along the passage until reaching another set of steps, which worked their way upwards in a short straight flight into an old smoke-house.
‘This is where I will leave you, Nelly.’
She nodded dutifully, her face partially lit by a streak of moonlight.
‘Are you going to tell them where I’m going?’
She shook her head.
‘Good luck...’ I said, feeling sad for her.
She offered a parting smile and I stepped out into the woods, relieved to be outside in the elements, to be free of the dark basement where so much evil had been enacted. My god, what in the hell had gone on in there? It hadn’t seemed real.
The house’s alarms burst into life suddenly breaking my thoughts. I turned to see the mansion come alive again, its occupants awaking to renewed chaos. Then I ran in the direction Nelly had advised, hoping her instructions were good and true. After several minutes of scrambling through the blackness, I reached the edge of the woods and was relieved to see a large corrugated hanger in the adjacent field.
I waited for another security patrol to race past, then ducked under the rails and weaved my way across the open ground, until I’d reached its rear wall. I pulled out the gun and edged my way around the side, then discovered the entrance was open and the hanger lights were blazing.
I worked my way along to the end of the concertinaed doors and checked out the situation. I
nside was a slick-looking blue helicopter and someone who I assumed to be the pilot, lying underneath it.
‘Hey,’ I said hearing the muffled sound of music.
‘Hey!’ I said again without any response.
I stepped back and grabbed them by their ankles, then dragged them out roughly from the chopper’s belly.
‘What the…’ the scrawny guy shouted, pulling out his ear pieces angrily before freezing at the sight of the gun.
‘You fixed it?’ I said, eyeing him up and down, thinking that he wasn’t the sort of guy to give me trouble.
‘Err…yeah, just fine-tuning the old bird…I like working at night when it’s cooler and quieter. What do you want?’
‘I want you to fly me where you’ve just flown Corrigan.’
‘To the mountains?’ he said dumbly, his voice nervously high.
I sighed with exasperation.
‘If that’s where he went...yes.’
‘I can do that...but I’d sure appreciate it if you stopped pointing that hand-cannon at me.’
‘You took the British girl there a few days back?’ I said ignoring his request.
‘Yes I did, sir.’
‘And was she alive and well when you did?’
‘Yes sir, she was...’ he said, sitting up tentatively.
I tried to suppress my optimism.
‘You dropped the dead girl off earlier as well, didn’t you?’ I said painfully.
He lowered his head and looked sheepish.
‘Yes we did.’
‘They threw her out into some creek on the way?’
‘Well, one of Corrigan’s men did. I didn’t have much say in the matter. I’m just the pilot...’
‘Of course you are,’ I said, swallowing my rage.
‘Right, get in, and take me there, before we have the whole of the Lexington City Police department breathing down our necks.’
‘Sure thing…’ the willowy pilot answered, clambering aboard and belting up.
‘And what are you going to do after I’ve dropped you off, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘I do mind you asking,’ I rebuffed sharply. ‘But seeing as you have, I’m going to find this English girl and try and stop Corrigan killing her, even if that means killing him...’
‘Je-sus…you’re planning on killing Lyle Corrigan?’ he said astonished, as if I was talking about shooting the President.
‘Yes, I might just have to do that, Jerry,’ I replied reading the name on his flying jacket, ‘and do it very, very slowly.’
The helicopter’s engines rose to full power and we edged our way forwards out of the hanger, then accelerated slowly up into the air. I stared out of the window down at the Red Rose mansion as we climbed, which was now engulfed in egg yolk flames and plumes of acrid smoke, a blur of flashing blue lights rushing towards it.
‘Je-sus…the whole place is on fire,’ the pilot muttered to himself, pulling us up higher.
‘It certainly is, Jerry, it certainly is,’ I repeated, hoping in vain that the sight of the inferno would erase the image of Nancy’s brutal end there, as much as the slow and painful death of Lyle Corrigan would when I finally got my hands on him...
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘jackson’s hollow’
We landed in some pasture about a half a mile from the hunting lodge. The pilot said it was the closest we could get before we hit dense tree-cover. Corrigan, he explained, arranged it to get picked up from the landing area as soon as he’d arrived, and then to be collected from there after he’d completed his business.
And sometimes the pilot stayed if it was just a brief visit when his boss’s business was purely physical with Tolley, other times when he wanted to spend longer, the pilot flew back to the Red Rose and waited for the call.
‘You got any rope?’ I pressed, feeling the adrenalin pumping in my veins.
‘Yep, in the lock up at the back. What you planning on doing, hanging the guy?’
‘No,’ I said cracking a smile, ‘I’m going to tie you to a tree, Jerry, so that you don’t fly off.’
‘Mister, I’ve seen the same look in your eyes as I’ve seen in Mr Corrigan’s, so I aint gunna mess with ya...’
I gave him one of my meaner stares, not enjoying the comparison with a mindless sadist then nodded.
‘Let’s go...’
We jumped out and jogged over to a stand of trees a couple of hundred metres away. I made the pilot sit down with his back against one of them. Then I started to tie him to the trunk.
‘What I don’t get, is why someone of his importance hasn’t built a helicopter pad right next to his retreat,’ I said pulling the binding tight.
The pilot winced then looked up at me.
‘I asked him the same thing once. He told me he wanted to keep it wild up there. Untouched…’
I raised an eyebrow at the hypocrisy then stared down at the deflated figure slumped before me.
‘How long you planning on being up there, mister, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘As long as it takes, Jerry,’ I said bringing the side of the gun down hard against his temple.
I checked his jacket for a knife and found just a cell phone. A phone. Corrigan probably rang the pilot directly when he wanted picking up. It might be useful...I stuffed it in my jacket then sprinted hard across the field and jumped the fence, heading in the direction of the lodge as the pilot had described on our way over.
I glanced skywards and saw that dawn was fast approaching. I looked at my watch. I had perhaps another half hour of semi-darkness at most to infiltrate the lodge before I became a sitting duck, especially if Corrigan’s security were up there and armed to the teeth.
I checked the Colt, not quite believing that the case had ended up like this, then carried on with renewed purpose, two simple thoughts running through my mind - find the girl and confront Corrigan. Anything less wouldn’t be enough...
I stumbled onto a more pronounced track then weaved my way uphill through the forest until I saw a flicker of light just about discernible through the tightly-packed trees. I slowed my pace as I neared, then stared intently at the imposing mountain lodge looming in the half-light, silhouetted against a gibbous moon that was nestling proudly on the ridge behind it.
At the edge of the glade running to the house, I went down on my haunches and eyed the scene more carefully. It was a sizeable building constructed on huge stilts that thrust their way out of the mountainside, and was capped by a trio of steep, high-pitched gabled roofs that cut sharp triangles into the brooding Appalachian sky.
My gaze fell to the wooden porch running all the way around it on the lower level, then up to the first floor balconies situated beneath each apex. The middle set of glazed doors had their shutters closed. A soft orange light was leaching out from underneath them...
As if the occupants inside had sensed something outside, they opened suddenly. I hit the ground. Corrigan came out on the balcony dressed in just his dressing gown, phone in hand. He was obviously taking a call from the Red Rose about the fire. Burning the house down had given him an early warning. Not the smartest move, even though it had been satisfying...
Now he was going to be calling Jerry to take him right on back there to examine the ashes. I cursed myself quietly then remembered I’d taken the pilot’s cell.
As if on cue, it rang loudly in my pocket.
Hastily I pulled it out and answered.
‘Sir...’
‘Jerry, I need you to get down here as fast as you can, the bloody ranch is on fire,’ Corrigan boomed.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said again, trying to emulate the pilot’s voice as best I could.
‘How soon do you think you can get here?’
‘I’m already here, sir. Thought you might need me…’
‘Good work, Jerry…Thank god I can rely on someone to do something right. Hopefully there’ll be a home to return to by the time we get back. I can’t leave anything for five seconds without some
imbecile fucking things up. I’ll be down in ten minutes...’
He clicked off and I watched him head back inside, where a naked Tolley came briefly into view, sliding a dressing gown over her lithe frame. She looked in good shape for her years, and far too good for a monster like Corrigan...
I edged closer on my elbows and watched bemused as she seemed to reassure him with a barrage of kisses as he finished getting dressed. Then my gaze dropped to the now illuminated lower floor, where a host of burly henchmen were pacing through the house gathering up their belongings, preparing to leave at a moment’s notice.
I had to move fast and make a decision. Corrigan was going to be ready to fly in a few minutes, and when he got to the landing site and found Jerry all tied up, the shit was going to well and truly hit the fan.
I melted back into the darkness. Then when I was sufficiently far enough away ran hard towards the clearing with everything I had left. Perhaps confronting Corrigan was the best way of finding the girl anyway? If I had the tycoon cornered, then maybe I had a bargaining chip to find out where he had Olivia holed up? If it turned out she was dead already, then it didn’t matter. It was just me and him…
At the edge of the wood land I coughed up some lung, then scaled the wire fence again and sprinted back to where I’d left the pilot. As I approached I heard him moaning, beginning to come around. I tapped him gently on the cheek with the back of my hand, hastening his return.
‘Wake up, Jerry. Wake up…’
He opened his eyes and tried to raise his arms, then discovered quickly that he couldn’t. I cut the rope around him then hauled him up, where he teetered groggily.
‘We’ve got to get back to the chopper and fast.’
‘You want me to fly you somewhere else now? You killed Mister C?’
‘No Jerry...he’s heading this way and is expecting you to fly him back to the ranch. I need you back in the chopper, hands on the controls with the blades turning, looking exactly like you’ve been asked to do that, okay?’
‘Right…’ he said in a daze.
‘And if you are unwilling in any way, I’m going to make sure the next bullet in this magazine has your name on it, you understand? Now run…’
