Harry Dolan

by Bad Things Happen

  “Charlotte might have made it if she had gone for the stairs, but she didn’t feel right about abandoning me. There was a phone in the elevator alcove—an emergency phone—and she snatched up the receiver. She realized too late that the cord had been cut. The line was dead in her hand. She spun around and Peltier was on her. She swung the receiver at his face, but he caught it on his shoulder. It hurt him enough to make him angry. He shoved her into the wall, yanked her hair, put his knife to her throat.

  “By then I had come to my senses. I had lost a few seconds, mesmerized by the sight of my own blood. But now I approached him, cautiously. I called out to him—I’m not sure I even used words. It was like trying to get the attention of a wild animal. He turned around warily, put Charlotte between us. The knife at her throat.

  “I stopped a few feet away from him, showed him my empty hands.

  “ ‘Back off,’ he said.

  “I took a step back.

  “ ‘I’m taking the car,’ he said.

  “ ‘Take it,’ I said.

  “ ‘And the girl,’ he said.

  “I shook my head. ‘You can’t expect us to go along with that.’

  “I watched his fingers flutter as he loosened and tightened his grip on the handle of the knife. Charlotte strained against him, trying to tuck her chin down toward her chest.

  “ ‘I guess you’re right,’ he said. Then his knuckles went white and he slashed with the knife and she screamed and he pushed her roughly to the ground.

  “Next thing I remember I was on my knees beside her. Blood on my hands and her eyes were closed. Her head had struck the pavement hard. But when I put my cheek next to her mouth I could feel her breath. I got a handkerchief out of my pocket and tried to stanch the bleeding. That didn’t get me very far.

  “I had my jacket off when Jimmy Wade reappeared. He had figured out that Charlotte’s keys wouldn’t open the car. He stood over me with his knife.

  “ ‘I’m only going to ask this once more,’ he said. ‘Give me your keys.’

  “I reached into my pocket and tossed them up to him without thinking. I hoped he would go away. But he singled out the key to my car and said, ‘This is for a Toyota. That car’s a Mazda. Do you think I’m stupid?’

  “I had an answer for that, but it wouldn’t have calmed him. So I explained to him once more that the car wasn’t mine. I handed him my wallet, hoping he would take it and go. I reached for Charlotte’s handbag, which was on the ground beside me, thinking I would give Peltier her wallet too.

  “I reached in and felt something wet, and for a moment I thought that blood had somehow gotten into her handbag. But it wasn’t that. She had taken a bottle of Perrier from the restaurant—one of the three I had juggled—and the bottle had broken when she fell.

  “I got out her wallet and passed it to Jimmy Wade, and while he was looking it over I wrapped my fist around the neck of the broken bottle and brought it out and jammed the jagged edge of it into his thigh.

  “He sank to his knees then and let loose the knife. I left the bottle in his thigh and looked down at the silver blade where it had fallen. I saw the shape of him reflected in it. Then my own face. I picked up the knife and drove it into his stomach and drew it out again and I swear it came out clean. He gasped and fell toward me and I drove it into him again and he wrapped his arms around me in a weak embrace and I could feel his breathing on my neck. I kept at it until I could feel all his weight against me and then I got out from under him and eased him to the pavement. The knife stayed where it was.

  “I staggered up to my feet. Charlotte was still unconscious. There was a good deal of blood and I didn’t know then if she would live. She needed help, so I had to go look for a phone. My clothes were stained with Peltier’s blood and if anyone had seen me on the stairs I don’t know what they would have thought. But no one saw me. I found a phone one level down and got through right away to a 911 operator. She promised an ambulance. I left the receiver dangling and went back up to the top.

  “Charlotte was awake when I returned. She had managed to sit up and had her back against the wall near the elevator. One hand rested at the base of her throat, the other at her cheek. Blood trickled down her wrist. The sight of me must have frightened her—she slid herself sideways along the wall. I crouched down, told her help was coming.

  “After a few seconds she got over the shock of seeing me. Slowly she peeled her hand away from her face. The knife had missed her throat. It had sliced a long curve that started below her ear and passed over her cheek and along her jaw. I found out later that Peltier had cut her clear to the bone. Her face had already begun to swell. She kept her hand away and lifted her chin and whispered a question. ‘How bad?’

  “I didn’t expect it. I should have. If I had been prepared I might have handled it better. But she saw something in my eyes. I got the words right. ‘It’s not bad,’ I told her. ‘You’ll be fine.’ But my eyes betrayed me, because I knew it was bad, and I wasn’t at all sure that she would be fine. She turned her face away from me then and I knew that something good was gone. Whatever we had gained that night was lost, it was over, and nothing would be the same.

  “I heard the sirens then, the police and the ambulance, faintly at first but growing closer. I stood up, half intending to go watch for them, but just then Jimmy Wade Peltier stirred. If he had stayed still, he might have lived, they might have saved him. But as I watched, he planted his palms, he dragged his knees along the hard concrete until he was up on all fours. The palm of his right hand separated itself from the ground and hovered in the air, trembling. He got control of it slowly and sent it trailing along his chest, along his stomach, until it found the knife.

  “The fingers closed around the handle and his breath caught and the blade began to slide free of his flesh. I got down beside him and our eyes met and he adjusted his grip on the knife and drew the last slow inches out of him. His knuckles dragged along the concrete and his fingers went slack and there was a click of metal on stone. He closed his eyes and I reached for the knife. I looked at Charlotte but she had turned away from me. There was no one watching.

  “Then the sirens suddenly went quiet and patiently with my fingers I hunted for a space between his ribs. And Jimmy Wade’s eyes came open and I found what I was searching for and sank the blade in.”

  Sometime in the course of Loogan’s story, Elizabeth found that the light of the table lamp had ceased to flicker, her muscles had ceased to twitch. A mild ache remained in her shoulders, the consequence of having her hands cuffed behind her back. With the end of the story, in the silence that followed, she had a strange thought: He would be feeling the same ache.

  She looked up and saw that James Peltier hadn’t moved. He was still there by the sofa, with the picture frames behind him. He still held her nine-millimeter. She saw his heavy-lidded eyes and thought for a second that Loogan’s story had somehow put him to sleep. But it wasn’t so. He was awake. The story had done nothing to him, unless it had borne down upon his body, bowed his head, bent his back.

  Loogan himself sat patiently. His words had gained him time, but nothing more. They hadn’t saved his life. It would be different, Elizabeth thought, if this were a story in Gray Streets. She thought again of the shotgun that Loogan had laid on the front steps, that Peltier had left there. If this were a story, some conscientious passerby would have seen the shotgun and called the police. They would have come, and they would have recognized the address—Sean Wrentmore’s condo. They would have seen her car in the parking lot.

  Carter Shan would have come, and Harvey Mitchum, and all her colleagues. Owen McCaleb himself. They would have cordoned the place off and surrounded it. All without sirens or lights, without tipping James Peltier off. And one of them would have come in—it would be Carter. He would have come in through the sliding glass door of Wrentmore’s bedroom. He would have stalked through to the hallway without a sound and he would have come down the hallway toward the living room, and he would b
e there now, with a clear shot at Peltier. He would be behind Peltier and off to the side, and Peltier wouldn’t see him. And Carter would wait until Peltier raised the gun, and then he would take the shot.

  If this were a story in Gray Streets.

  James Peltier came sluggishly to life and unbent his back and looked at Elizabeth sadly. He gestured at Loogan with the gun. “You see how he is. A liar on top of everything else. He said he would tell me my son’s final words. And I let him talk, and you see what good it did me.”

  “Mr. Peltier—” she began.

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot him. Just one. I’d like to hear it.”

  She searched for an answer that might restrain him.

  “It won’t bring Jimmy Wade back,” she said finally.

  “That’s true,” he said, “but it’s not a good reason.”

  He raised the gun.

  Elizabeth bent her knees, braced her shoulder blades against the wall, tried to get her feet under her. At the same time, Loogan shifted his feet and leaned forward in his chair as if he would try to lunge at Peltier.

  Peltier’s finger began to squeeze the trigger and there was an explosion of sound and a burst of red mist and Peltier’s scalp peeled away from his skull. Great gaping pits opened in his cheek and the loose skin of his neck was torn away in ragged chunks. On the wall behind him, the glass shattered in the picture frames.

  His body gave way at the knees and dropped and slumped against the sofa. The nine-millimeter bounced a little bounce on the carpet.

  Elizabeth went tumbling sideways and Loogan, free of the chair, dove to the floor and rolled in front of her to shield her with his body.

  From the hallway a tall figure stepped into the living room. He held the shotgun aloft like a scepter. His hair was a tangled white crown. He wore a trench coat and black leather gloves. Nathan Hideaway.

  He stood over the body of James Peltier for a moment, a black snub-nosed revolver in his fist. He dropped the shotgun onto the sofa. A final shudder passed through Peltier’s body and then it went still.

  Hideaway lowered the black revolver. He stooped to dig through Peltier’s pocket for his key ring. He collected Elizabeth’s nine-millimeter from the carpet. Both went into a pocket of his trench coat.

  Only then did he speak. “Detective Waishkey,” he said, “and the remarkable Mr. Loogan.” His tone was jovial.

  Elizabeth started to say his name, but he silenced her with a gloved finger raised to his lips.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  He grabbed Loogan by the collar and dragged him away from her. Stood over him with the revolver at the back of his neck and patted him down. He tugged a canister of pepper spray from Loogan’s coat pocket and tossed it casually aside.

  He gave Elizabeth the same treatment, then took the butterfly knife from the sofa and slashed through the tape binding her legs.

  He seized the handcuff chain and hauled her to her knees.

  “On your feet now,” he said. “You too, Mr. Loogan.”

  Chapter 38

  WHEN THE 911 CALL CAME IN, CARTER SHAN WAS ALREADY ON HIS WAY TO Sean Wrentmore’s condominium.

  He had contacted Elizabeth’s cell phone provider and had run a trace on her phone. It was easy enough to do, once he convinced the operator that it was an emergency. Elizabeth’s phone had a GPS chip; there was no need to triangulate the signal. When the operator gave him the location, he recognized it at once. All he needed were the words “Carpenter Road.”

  He tore a jagged path across Ann Arbor, weaving in and out of traffic, and was first to arrive at the scene. He saw Elizabeth’s car in the lot, went through Wrentmore’s front door with his gun drawn.

  He found Wrentmore’s neighbor there with Peltier’s body. The nurse, Delia Ross. She had placed the 911 call. She had come off a long shift at the hospital and had been drifting on the edge of sleep when she heard the shot. She convinced herself at first it was a car backfiring in the restaurant parking lot nearby. She turned over and pulled the blanket up and drifted some more until it occurred to her that backfiring cars were something she had mostly read about in books; she had rarely encountered one in real life.

  By the time she rose and went to the window, there was nothing to see, but she got her coat and went out and stood on the sidewalk under the blue-black sky. She thought of Sean Wrentmore’s empty condo, of some mischief that might have happened there. Kids breaking in; teenagers with firecrackers. She walked to Wrentmore’s door and the knob turned under her hand, and even before she passed in, she knew that what she’d heard had not been firecrackers.

  A single lamp bathed the living room in golden light. James Peltier’s body was a still figure of bronze and crimson and shadow. She made the call and waited with him. She knew at once he was beyond her help.

  Shan talked to her in Wrentmore’s kitchen, then asked her to wait outside. He tried to make sense of the scene. He was sure Elizabeth had been there. He had more to go on than the car outside; he had a broken strand of necklace on the living-room floor, a scattering of glass beads.

  He took note of the overturned chair. The sliced remnants of electrical tape. He found the Taser in Peltier’s pocket, the shotgun on the sofa, the sliding glass door left ajar in the bedroom. He traced the path that Peltier’s killer must have taken. Soon Harvey Mitchum and Ron Wintergreen arrived, and once they’d had a chance to look around, there were other clues: James Peltier’s car beneath the crab-apple tree, with Elizabeth’s cell phone on the floor on the passenger side. Loogan’s car abandoned in the restaurant parking lot.

  When Owen McCaleb drove up a few minutes later, Shan and Mitchum had worked out a theory of what had happened, one that came very close to the truth. They huddled with the chief on Wrentmore’s front lawn and sketched it out. It seemed clear enough that Elizabeth had come here looking for Loogan. She found Peltier instead and got into his car. Peltier caught her by surprise, used the Taser to subdue her, and hustled her into the condo. There was no sign of forced entry, because Loogan was already inside.

  “Suppose Loogan cooperated, he let Peltier in, because Peltier was threatening Lizzie,” Shan said. “Once Peltier had them both under control, he could relax a little. He planned to kill Loogan, because Loogan killed his son. But he couldn’t resist taunting him first. He wanted Loogan to know exactly what was coming.”

  “But he delayed too long,” Mitchum added. “Long enough for someone else to show up. Someone with a shotgun.”

  Owen McCaleb stood with his arms crossed, his head bowed. “And this someone would be Tom Kristoll’s killer,” he said. “And he showed up here because Loogan went to a lot of trouble this afternoon to make himself a target.”

  “Right.”

  McCaleb looked up. “So why isn’t Loogan lying dead in there with Peltier? What am I missing?”

  “Maybe the killer wants something else from Loogan,” Shan offered. “Maybe there’s unfinished business between them.”

  Shan watched McCaleb shift his weight from one foot to the other, thinking it over.

  “All right,” McCaleb said at last. “Loogan talked to four people this afternoon. Laura Kristoll, Bridget Shellcross, Casimir Hifflyn, Nathan Hideaway. I want to know where each of them is right now, and where they’ve been. That’ll do for a start.”

  Just then Ron Wintergreen came loping up. He had been canvassing some of Sean Wrentmore’s neighbors. “I don’t know if this is important,” he began.

  “What is it?” the chief asked him.

  “I talked to a woman four doors down. Lady in her sixties. Retired. She says she didn’t hear anything or see anything. She’s been watching TV all night.”

  McCaleb frowned. Harvey Mitchum made a gesture to hurry his partner along.

  Wintergreen went on at his own pace. “She only came outside after we showed up. She mostly wanted to make sure no one trampled her lawn. She’s protective of her landscaping, and her garden.”

  Mitchum started to
interrupt, but Wintergreen raised a hand to show he had come to his point.

  “She had a shovel out by her front steps. She says someone stole it.”

  A twig is a poor implement for picking a handcuff lock. She had hoped it might be otherwise, but twenty minutes of patient experimentation had convinced her.

  Elizabeth relaxed her hands, slowly flexing her fingers. She kept her movements small, and Nathan Hideaway seemed not to notice.

  He stood a little way off, at the edge of the clearing, in a thick woolen sweater and corduroy slacks. He had shed his trench coat and his gloves. Too warm, perhaps. He had kept his black revolver.

  He had pressed the muzzle of the revolver to the back of her neck as he took her out of Sean Wrentmore’s condominium. He made sure Loogan saw the muzzle at her neck, and the sight of it was enough. The threat didn’t have to be put into words.

  They walked out in a line, with Loogan in the lead. When they got to Hideaway’s car—a sleek black Lincoln—Hideaway used James Peltier’s key to unlock one of Loogan’s cuffs. The left hand. Loogan would do the driving; Elizabeth and Hideaway would travel in the backseat.

  The shovel was a last-minute acquisition. It appeared in the spotlight glow of the Lincoln’s headlights, standing upright beside the front door of one of Wrentmore’s neighbors. Hideaway sent Loogan to fetch it. Stowed it in the trunk.

  They crept through the parking lot to Carpenter Road, Loogan with his wrist cuffed to the steering wheel. She could see his eyes—dark, colorless—in the rearview mirror.

  When they reached the road he said, “Where to?”

  Hideaway said, “Take me to Sean Wrentmore’s body.”

  The dark eyes narrowed to slits. “What for?”

  Elizabeth felt the muzzle hard against her neck. Hideaway said nothing.