American Crow

by Jack Lacey

  I shoved him in the flank with the gun, cajoling him to run back to the helicopter, where he flopped heavily in the seat then fumbled with his belt as if he were drunk.

  I lay down in the long grass and called out to him knowing time was short.

  ‘I want you to wait for Corrigan to get in and for the jeeps to turn back before you take us up, okay? Then do it nice and slow...’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied, looking petrified.

  ‘Does he usually take some of the security guys on-board with him?’ I shouted as he started up the engines.

  ‘Sometimes...’

  ‘Well, I want you to tell him you’re light on fuel if anyone else looks like they’re going to get in…Explain that you don’t want to take the extra weight on board.’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied, his hand visibly shaking on the cyclic.

  ‘And don’t do anything rash, Jerry, or you’ll be the first to go down. Remember I’m just outside your fucking door...’

  He looked over and nodded as two sets of headlights morphed eerily from the darkness, then illuminated the field brightly with their undulating beams.

  I pressed myself flat in the long grass, gripping the gun anxiously, waiting for Corrigan’s arrival; hoping Jerry would play his part and take my threat seriously. Gradually the jeeps hammered their way across the uneven ground until I could feel the earth vibrate beneath me as they closed in.

  I raised my head slightly and saw the blades beginning to turn. Corrigan ran over and jumped in. For a few seconds, he and Jerry looked deep in conversation. I tensed, waiting for the tycoon to call for help. Finally the engines increased in thrust and began to roar ready for take-off. It seemed as if Jerry had kept his end of the bargain...

  The revolution of the blades neared their peak as the jeeps started to pull away signalling Corrigan’s security was satisfied that their boss had been safely transferred. Seizing my chance, I rolled four or five metres onto the landing rail and gripped it like a monkey as the main bulk of the chopper began to lift slowly in the air.

  Fifty feet up, I looked down and watched the jeeps head back towards the forest. At a hundred feet I slowly righted myself, grabbed the vertical strut and glanced in the back window. Corrigan and the pilot were still talking. The tycoon looked relaxed. Unaware…

  I exhaled nervously my stomach churning, then reached out tentatively for the rear-door handle with my right hand. The chopper wobbled suddenly as if waiting for its chance to evict me. I teetered and grabbed at the door desperately. Missed. Then started to fall backwards…

  ‘Fuck!’

  I kicked out at the skid desperately just as I was heading down and managed to hook my leg over it, then grimaced in agony as I swung upside down like some half rate trapeze artist…The chopper rose and fell again awkwardly, but this time I used the motion to launch myself upwards and grab the skid again with both hands.

  I exhaled in relief, righted myself slowly, then climbed back up the rear vertical strut where I took a moment to compose myself, waiting for my arsehole to head back down south.

  When I was calm enough, I pulled out the Colt, threw open the door and launched myself across the rear seat, the gun trained on Corrigan. The tycoon twisted around at the intrusion, his stony face moulding into one of complete shock when he absorbed who it was...

  ‘What in the hell…’

  I sat up, slammed the door shut and pointed the automatic in his face.

  ‘Mr Blake…you are becoming tiresome in the extreme,’ he said unflustered.

  The pilot glanced around anxious for some instructions.

  ‘Black Mountain, Jerry.’

  He turned again in his seat and eyed me nervously.

  ‘I, I don’t think we got enough fuel for that, sir…’

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said matching Corrigan’s stare.

  ‘Why in the hell do you want to take us there?’ he snapped as if he were in still control of the situation.

  ‘Because you love it so much…’ I said with a cold smile, ‘Fly!’ I shouted at the pilot who was still hovering indecisive above the landing area.

  ‘Sure thing!’ he said thrusting forwards on the cyclic.

  ‘You know if you kill me, it won’t bring her back,’ Corrigan said smartly, as if he were reliving the moment he’d strangled Nancy and got some sort of kick out of it.

  ‘No…’ I said pressing the muzzle into his chest, ‘But it will make me feel one hell of a lot better...’

  ‘But then you won’t find the girl you’re looking for either, will you?’ he said smartly.

  ‘You reckon?’ I said, eyeing him with utter disdain.

  ‘That’s what you came here for after all, isn’t it? Just like the other two investigators who came down to snoop around?’

  I remained silent, trying not to react, Nancy’s soft features etched into my mind still.

  ‘It’s the only reason I came down here, Corrigan...’ I said eventually.

  ‘I didn’t even know who the girl was, until one of those awful private detectives gave up her name,’ Corrigan announced casually, as if there wasn’t a gun pointing at him.

  ‘Really?’ I said not believing him.

  ‘You should have helped my men when you had the chance. Maybe it wouldn’t have come to this? We could have found the girl before things got serious, before she and her friends tried to break into my ranch.’

  I raised a contemptuous eyebrow.

  ‘But you wanted to talk to her before that, Corrigan. You were worried about something else, weren’t you?’

  I watched him squirm.

  ‘If outsiders start snooping around, poking their noses into my operation, threatening my business, then I have to act...

  I snorted my contempt. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘You see, we mine coal here in Appalachia and are proud of it, Blake. We provide electricity for other states too, that don’t have any of this magnificent resource. And sometimes we have to bend rules to keep on doing that, much to the displeasure of the regulators and those damned protesters with their romantic notion of keeping the mountains untouched for eternity. We need energy. America needs energy, and some of us are just brave enough to give her what she wants. We are the true patriots...’

  ‘Nice speech,’ I said laughing at him dismissively. ‘How long have we got til we get there, Jerry?’

  ‘Five minutes.’

  ‘You’ve got five minutes to say what you gotta say, Corrigan.’

  ‘Jesus, man, you’re not one of those wacky environmentalists too, are you? Do you honestly care about some ignorant mountain girl who was happy to ignore the truth?’

  My finger twitched against the trigger, but didn’t squeeze.

  ‘The only thing you care about is your profit, Corrigan, and your next fuck.’

  ‘I’m a god-fearing man and live my life with integrity, sir. Nothing you can say will ever change that.’

  I laughed again.

  ‘Really…and what about your wife? Does she think that too? She knows that you killed Benjamin by the way...’

  ‘You spoke to my wife?’

  Corrigan looked unsettled by the revelation, as if it had undermined his self-righteousness somehow.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you harm her?’ he asked tentatively.

  ‘No, I think you’ve been doing that over the years with your simmering resentment.’

  His aquamarine eyes flashed with anger.

  ‘I…I’ve given her everything, looked after her, and…’

  ‘And destroyed slowly everything she cared about…the mountains, her self-respect, with all your philandering, then finally Benjamin whom she still loved.’

  ‘She knew about Reya?’ he said, as if that was more important than murdering his brother.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Mother of God…’

  ‘You know something else? She asked me to burn the place to the ground before I left, erase everything that you’ve come to represent in her life
.’

  ‘She would never say such a thing...’

  ‘Wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Two minutes,’ Jerry interrupted, his voice sounding strained.

  ‘Did you ever think to ask her what she wanted, Corrigan? Did you ever think that your one-man crusade to wipe out the entire Appalachians was actually going to give her some sort of satisfaction, some sort of closure about the accident?’

  His stony face twitched briefly with a flicker of emotion. I was beginning to get under his skin and was enjoying it.

  ‘Who ever really knows what goes on in the mind of a woman,’ he said belligerently.

  ‘She wants to start a new life somewhere else, Lyle. She wants to be left alone now.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Corrigan spat, becoming riled again, his calm exterior beginning to crack.

  ‘One minute, Blake...’

  ‘Where’s Olivia?’

  ‘Do you think I’m going to tell you and sign my own death warrant,’ he said, his cockiness returning. ‘There’s other’s involved you know...’

  ‘Like Reya?’

  His laughter was laced with mockery.

  ‘She doesn’t know...’

  I offered a flicker of a smile.

  ‘You’re bluffing.’

  ‘Well, you’ll soon find out if you kill me, find out what a fool you’ve been, Blake.’

  ‘We’re over Black Mountain now,’ the pilot announced, ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Circle around.’

  ‘So it’s stale mate,’ Corrigan announced smugly, eyeing me up and down, his nostrils flaring in proud defiance.

  ‘Why did you kill Ethan and his friend?’

  ‘I didn’t. The men did. And they were just protecting my property. It’s what any decent upstanding American has the right to do.’

  ‘What, even though they weren’t on it and were driving away when they opened up on them?’

  ‘They might have come back, harmed some of the horses, or some of my staff. I know what these extremists are like...’

  ‘All they did was daub some graffiti on your stable block wall, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s because the men stopped them. Who knows what they might have done next if they’d had the chance...’

  ‘And what about Benjamin? He found something else out, didn’t he? Something he shouldn’t have, like Ethan and Olivia had done up at your hunting lodge. What’s up there, Corrigan?’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘So you’re not going to tell me, even if it means saving your life?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about plain and simple, sir.’

  ‘Sure you do…Unclip your belt,’ I ordered, tiring of the games.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Un-clip-your-belt,’ I repeated, pressing the gun into his neck to reinforce my point.

  He reluctantly unfastened it and turned back fully in his seat.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘How far is Gallow’s Creek, Jerry?’

  ‘Not far away, just over the next valley.’

  ‘Fly there.’

  ‘Your idle threats don’t work with me, Blake. Take me back to the lodge and I’ll take you to the girl, then we’ll discuss things...’

  ‘What is there to discuss?’ I said through gritted teeth.

  Jerry cut in suddenly.

  ‘We’ll be flying over the creek in exactly a minute, sir.’

  ‘Where the dam is, you know, the place with all the toxic sludge in?’

  ‘Yes…the slurry basin with all the wash-off, sir.’

  ‘That’s it, the wash off…sounds so inoffensive when you put it like that, Jerry, doesn’t it?’ I said eyeing Corrigan.

  ‘It’s part of the process,’ the tycoon rebuffed. ‘We need to put the waste somewhere. There are always unsightly elements to any job, you know that. There are always compromises and sacrifices in life…’

  ‘Open the door,’ I ordered, cutting him off.

  ‘I shall not.’

  ‘Open it or I’ll splatter your brains all over the glass,’ I said coming to the end of my patience.

  ‘Look, let’s get back on the ground and we can discuss some sort of compensation for the biologist…How much she was worth to you?’

  I ignored the vile request and stared at the sun coming up over the mountains in the distance, tingeing the forested canopy with a soft golden hue.

  ‘Open the door and step onto the rail.’

  ‘We’re over Gallow’s Creek now,’ Jerry announced nervously, glancing at his boss.

  ‘Everyone has their price,’ Corrigan said suddenly, trying to sound reasonable.

  ‘Come on, friend, how much was that poor mountain girl worth to you…a hundred thousand? Two?’

  I looked down at the treacle-black lake below, thinking how surreal it looked in the half-light then visualized Nancy slowly falling through the air towards it.

  ‘Get out on the rail...’

  ‘Three?’ he said glancing down nervously.

  ‘Out…’ I pressed placing the gun against his neck.

  ‘Half a million…in cash?’ Corrigan added, sliding off his seat onto the rail, one foot at a time.

  ‘Keep it steady,’ I said to the pilot, not wanting a lapse in concentration to spoil the moment.

  ‘Look, let’s call it a round million, eh? And call a halt to this nonsense...’

  The chopper rode a thermal suddenly making it rise and fall sharply for a second, forcing Corrigan to grip the upholstery for dear life.

  ‘God, you drive a hard bargain, sir?’ he added as the helicopter settled in the air again.’

  ‘A million, man, a million in cash, surely she was worth that?’

  ‘No, she wasn’t,’ I said, eyeing him coldly. ‘You could never find enough, Corrigan. You could never find enough…’

  I leaned forwards and pushed him hard in the chest sending him toppling backwards as if in slow motion. For a second he wavered in the air, his face aghast, then mouthed the words, ‘why?’ before falling backwards into darkness, then downwards, hundreds of feet towards the pool of toxic sludge that he’d help create.

  Jerry looked at me aghast.

  ‘Jesus, you’ve just killed one of the most important men in Kentucky, if not in Appalachia…Oh my god…Oh my god.’

  ‘Back to the lodge, Jerry,’ I said slamming the door shut, ‘I’ve got a girl to find...’

  Chapter Thirty

  ‘olivia’

  The five minutes that it took to get back to the landing area seemed like an eternity, the whir of the chopper’s blades circulating tirelessly as images of Nancy and Benjamin, traversed my mind.

  Killing Corrigan had helped ease some of my rage that was for sure, but ultimately only finding Olivia alive would salvage something from Nancy’s senseless death. Salvage something I thought. It had come to that...

  I tied Jerry to the tree again, much to his displeasure, then sprinted back through the forest as quickly as I could, until I saw the hunting lodge loom impressively again in the soft morning light.

  Now there was just a single jeep parked outside, perhaps a handful of men left behind to protect Tolley, the others I imagined, having begun the long drive back to Lexington to help with the clear-up operation.

  At the clearing I stopped for a moment, drew a breath, then peered through the branches, assessing the situation. On the lower porch, a guard wearing a headset, with a rifle slung over his shoulder was doing the rounds. He probably had back up of at least another guy. If I decided to go in, it was going to get real rough again, just like it had at Corrigan’s ranch…

  I waited until the guard had rounded the corner then threw my jacket on the grass, sprinted towards the porch steps and rolled underneath them, then waited for his return, my heart beating fast, my Colt pointing skywards through the slats in case I was spotted from above.

  A minute later, the slow purposeful thump of heavy boots worked their way towards me, accompanied by the sound of a tun
eless whistle. I watched him walk passed, then heard him go down the main steps one tread at a time, until he was out in the garden and heading towards the jacket.

  I stared at the guy in the half-light, taking him in fully as he crouched down, then realized it was Redhead, one of the guys who’d tortured me back in the Daniel Boone. I grunted in satisfaction. It was time to get re-acquainted...

  I crawled out on my elbows willing him not to turn like the woman in Minneapolis, then cat-walked up behind him in double time and cracked his skull hard with the butt of the gun as he looked around. Red-head groaned and fell forwards unconscious, then remained sprawled at my feet, temporarily out of the game.

  Hurriedly, I dragged the lump of meat into the cover of the trees, tied his hands behind his back as best I could with his belt, then tore off his headset, emptied his rifle and threw it into the undergrowth, then ran back to the house, adrenalin pumping, hoping there was just one more guy between me and some answers.

  I ran softly up the steps towards the main door and tried the handle slowly. It was open...I raised the Colt and worked my way into the dimly-lit room. Inside appeared pretty normal, just a living room stuffed with hunting trophies and bland antiques. I walked over to a set of glazed doors at the far end and cracked one of them open, sliding the gun through the gap.

  On the other side was just a darkened room that seemed reserved for Tolley as a working area. The shutters were down and the distinct smell of oil paints lingered in the air. I scanned the dozen or so paintings hanging around the walls as my eyes adjusted, then stared bemused at the handful of work fixed to a half-dozen easels.

  Immediately I could see that they looked different to the ones I’d seen at the exhibition. They were more abstract. And portraying people this time, rather than nature; some capturing just the profile in bold brushstrokes of dark jagged colour, others a writhing, awkward-looking body, depicting a moment of pain or ecstasy.

  I stared at the square of paper attached to one of the frames and read the title, then the one next to it, then the next, and felt my stomach tighten at the recurring themes.

  Fear. Conflict. Vengeance. Redemption.

  ‘Unbelievable…’ I said, my gaze wandering.