Ridley snapped the blade shut and slipped the knife back into his pocket.
“It won’t be hard,” Mark said. “Finding her? It won’t be hard at all. Because she came from you, and my guess, Ridley, is that you don’t have too many friends.”
When Ridley took his sleeve away from his nose, his face was masked with blood. He spit into the snow, then touched his nose gingerly with two fingers of his left hand.
“What did you think of the file?” he said. The words were muffled and distorted by the blood leaking into his sinuses.
Mark stared at him. “You are truly insane.”
“That’s what you took from the file?”
“No. That’s what I take from you.”
Ridley breathed deep, blinked hard, and said, “I asked about the file.”
Mark thought about smashing his fist into that blood mask of a face, finding the nose again, adding pain to pain. He kept his hands flat at his sides with an effort and breathed, four-count in, four-count out.
“I don’t know the point of your game,” he said. “Maybe you got bored once the cops stopped coming by, I don’t know. I also don’t know how or why you selected me for your continued entertainment. But it was a mistake, Ridley. Sending that woman to me, asking her to impersonate the girl’s mother? In a lifetime of bad choices, that might have been your worst.”
Ridley stood and listened, blood working out of his nose and down his face.
“What I’d like to do,” Mark said, “is bounce you off that car a few more times, long enough for me to get tired of the effort, and then drop your ass on the ground and drive away and be done with it. I can’t do that, though, do you see? You took that option from me when you sent her. Now I’m going to find her and deal with her, and maybe you’ll be a part of that, maybe you won’t. I don’t give a shit. Not when it comes to you, Ridley. But tell her that I’m on my way.”
Ridley Barnes said, “What about Sarah Martin?”
Mark felt his hands curl into fists again and knew from experience that things wouldn’t go well from here if he stayed. He couldn’t afford to stay. Instead, he shook his head in disgust and got in the car. Ridley kept talking.
“You’re going to need to think about her at some point, Novak! You’re not going to be able to keep walking away from her. Too many people have for too many years!”
It was a relief to slam the door on the sound of that voice. Ridley was visible in the side-view mirror, standing there in the bloody snow, still babbling about Sarah Martin. Mark started the engine and pulled out of the yard.
He made it three miles before his hands started to tremble on the wheel. A mile beyond that and there was a shudder in his vision, and his head felt high and spacey. There was no shoulder to the road, just the fields, and he pulled off into one and put the car in park and got the door open and placed one hand on the snow-covered ground and gasped in air and waited for the rise of vomit in his throat.
It never came. The frigid air filled his lungs and cleared his head, and the feel of the earth brought the high dizziness swirling back down.
When it was done, he hung on the door frame and breathed in the cold air. There was blood on his shirtsleeve and the back of his hand. He wiped at his face, soaked in sweat despite the temperature, and then fell back into the seat, leaving the door open, and looked at himself in the mirror. His usually tan skin looked gray, waxen, the dark circles below his eyes standing out starkly.
Can’t have that, he thought, staring at his own face. Can’t go there again.
If Ridley wanted to make a call to the police right now, Mark would be in jail by the end of the night, and an already bad story would spiral into something far worse. He hadn’t wanted it to go that way. He’d wanted to confront him, yes, get something from him, and Ridley was the type who called for intimidation, but the rope had been enough, and things should have stopped there. It was that smile, the way Ridley Barnes had looked at him, like he was enjoying the game.
So much time had passed since he’d allowed a lapse like that. But then the old feeling had knocked, and he’d known what waited on the other side of the door and still he’d opened it and welcomed the familiar visitor in.
The first time he’d gone looking for blood—his own or someone else’s, it didn’t matter—was nine months after Lauren was killed, and Mark had just gotten off the phone with her father, just finished summarizing another week of no answers and no leads. He’d gone directly to the worst bar he could think of, the one where he could count on a chance. He hadn’t needed to wait long. All it took was the right kind of stare to the right kind of man, and things got started fast. The guy needed to be right, though; he couldn’t be just any guy. He had to look the part, had to come straight out of central casting.
He had to look like he might have killed a woman.
Jeff London had bailed Mark out of jail after talking with a prosecutor who’d said that he understood, who’d said that Mark was damn lucky the other guy had been a piece of shit with a bench warrant out for him or things would have gone different.
You’re shaming her, London had told Mark. His eyes held a sheen under the streetlights. Forget about yourself. Forget about me. You’re shaming her, Mark.
It was so close to those last words Mark had offered Lauren: Don’t embarrass me with this shit. Then came London: You’re shaming her, Mark.
People had their pride. Even the dead.
Or they should have it.
He used handfuls of snow to scrub the blood from his skin and shirt as best he could, and then, as the Midwestern wind picked up and whistled over the fields, he closed the door and got back on the road.
12
The snow had begun to fall again, fat, wet flakes, and Mark remembered the sheriff’s assertion that some forecasts were calling for as much as ten inches. He hadn’t seen a plow or a salt truck yet, but that wasn’t saying much, because he hadn’t seen any vehicle until a white Chevy Silverado rattled up behind him. The truck would have stood out even on an interstate, though—the muffler had been modified to enhance the growl of the engine. The driver was pushing it hard, rode right up on Mark’s ass, and Mark considered tapping the brakes to screw with him, but the last thing he needed right now was a fender bender that would roll out a deputy. He put the window down, letting snow blow into the car, and waved his hand, calling for the truck to pass him.
It didn’t pass. Just stayed planted. Mark could see that there was only one occupant and that he was wearing sunglasses, which was logical, of course, because the sky was the color of an old nickel.
They went another half a mile and the truck stayed on his ass, and Mark began to understand the situation. He’d been right in his assessment that Ridley wasn’t going to call the police to deal with Mark. That didn’t mean he hadn’t picked up the phone, though.
The snow was blowing harder, and the powder was coating the road quickly. Every now and then, a gust of wind strong enough to buffet the car came across the fields. Up ahead, where the fields ended, trees loomed, rows of tall hardwoods with bare canopies shifting in the wind.
A stop sign came up, surprising him, not just because he’d been distracted by the truck but because visibility was so poor. When he hit the brakes, the Ford fishtailed. The stop was a four-way intersection, but Mark saw no reason to divert from his plan to return to town, so he drove on. Within a few seconds, something felt wrong. There’d been a change in sound. The growl of the Silverado had faded. For an instant he thought perhaps he’d been mistaken, that maybe the truck’s driver had no interest in him at all and had turned in another direction. Then he looked in the mirror again and what he saw almost made him press the brake. The truck was in the middle of the intersection, the driver executing an awkward three-point turn.
Called off? Satisfied that I’m headed back to town?
The truck didn’t finish the turn, though. Once it was broadside in the middle of the road, blocking both lanes, motion stopped, the brake lights went off,
and the hazard lights went on.
What in the hell was this about?
Mark kept driving, but the mirror had his attention. The truck remained in place, hazards blinking, as if there had been an accident that forced it to stop there in the road. There’d been nothing of the sort, though. The driver had come to a stop and then carefully turned the truck into that position, which achieved nothing except to…
Block the road.
You didn’t block the road behind someone because you wanted to see where he was going. You blocked the road behind him so somebody else ahead of him would have time with him.
Through the blowing snow, another vehicle appeared. This one was headed east, toward Mark, driving with the wind, seeming to be pushed by the snow. A white panel van. The van slowed and pulled sideways, cutting off the road in front of Mark in an identical fashion to the truck behind him, which was no longer visible in the mirror. The road was completely blocked now, eastbound and westbound, and Mark was alone in the middle.
Mark brought the Ford to a stop. The van doors opened on both sides and two men climbed out. Both wore jeans and hooded sweatshirts and black masks. Both carried shotguns. Behind Mark there was the sound of another door. The truck’s driver was out. He also wore a mask and carried a shotgun.
My guess is that you don’t have too many friends, Mark had told Ridley Barnes.
He had at least three.
The men walked toward Mark, shotguns pointed down, closing the gap fast. Then they fanned out, leaving the road so they were protected by the trees, their guns raised in shooter’s stances.
Mark had nothing approaching a weapon in the rental car. There was an empty Styrofoam cup that had once held coffee; a file folder of old case notes. He wasn’t going to take these three down with paper cuts. The only weapon was the car itself, and given the way they were flanking him, even the car wouldn’t be much use. He’d force them to open fire if he drove at them, and right now there remained at least a chance that they didn’t intend to shoot.
Lauren was found outside of her vehicle on a rural road, Mr. Novak. She’d been shot.
He wanted to reach into his pocket, wanted suddenly—desperately—to feel that worn diving-permit tag that had traveled all these years with him, but reaching for anything was potentially deadly. Instead, he put both hands on the wheel and waited. It wasn’t long—the men on the flanking sides closed quickly and simultaneously through the snow, like wolves. The one from the truck walked past them and then turned to face the car.
Nobody spoke. The guy on the passenger’s side was small, maybe five six, and he seemed to like holding the shotgun, had a more aggressive posture than the others. A bantam, a little guy eager for a fight. On the driver’s side was a bigger guy, over six feet, forced to stoop to have a clear visual on Mark. Wide through the shoulders, hands so big they curled around the stock of the shotgun as if it were a handgun grip. As long as he didn’t have to catch someone, the advantage would usually be his, and he didn’t have to catch Mark. Their gray sweatshirts were identical, no brand name apparent. Just generic hooded sweatshirts. Generic black knit masks. No telling features. The black pump shotguns were probably twelve-gauges, nothing fancy or expensive. Like the sweatshirts and the masks, the shotguns matched. Nobody was allowed to be an individual in this group, and that was troubling, because it was smart.
The man from the Silverado stood directly in front of the Ford, feet spread wide to give him a good base, his shotgun held at belt level, pointed at the windshield. His finger on the trigger. The wind raised the snow from the road and swirled it around him like a protective force.
It’s his show, Mark thought. Whatever happens from here, it’s his decision.
“Get him out.”
When the command came, the big man on the driver’s side cradled the shotgun against his shoulder and held it in one hand so he could free up the other to grab the door handle. That would have been Mark’s best chance, nine out of ten times—when the attacker had one hand off the gun and was opening a door toward himself. Mark could help the door along, kick it into his face and knock him off balance, or at least knock the gun out of his control long enough for Mark to get his hands on him, but this wasn’t nine out of ten times. This was the tenth, when you had shooters on every side.
The big one pulled the door open only to have the wind try to push it shut again. He wrestled it back and got one leg inside, trapping it open.
“Step out.” He had a voice that suited his frame. Loud and deep and commanding.
“I’m unarmed,” Mark said. “And you can see my hands on the wheel, can’t you?”
“Don’t care.”
“I’m just saying that if we’re talking, we can do that here.”
“We’re not talking.”
Mark nodded. “You mind if I turn the engine off? This is hell on my fuel economy.”
The big man shoved the shotgun muzzle into the car and smacked it against Mark’s forehead.
“You know what,” Mark said, “I think I’ll just get out and worry about the gas later.”
Mark released the seat belt and stepped out of the car and into the snow.
“Hands in air or hands on the back of my head?” Mark said. “What’s your preference?”
The big guy regarded Mark as if he distrusted the questions. “Back of the head. Then walk toward the van.”
Mark laced his fingers together behind his head. The gesture pulled his coat open, and the big guy took advantage of that to frisk him. The wind rose to a scream, and Mark shivered involuntarily.
“Cold,” he said. “Wouldn’t mind having one of those masks myself. Maybe you could take yours off and let me borrow it? Would be thoughtful, considering you’d still have your hood.”
A shotgun-muzzle jab to the forehead again. He heard his teeth click together as he fell back against the car, and he bit his tongue and tasted blood. He sucked the blood to the front of his mouth and then spit it into the snow. Looked like a small thing, but it wasn’t. That copper-flavored spit held his DNA signature, and there was a chance some detective might appreciate his leaving it behind. Dark thoughts, yes, but this was how it ended for some people. Places like this, moments like this. Men with guns on lonely roads. Sometimes this was exactly where it ended.
“Walk to the van.” That deep voice suggested there wasn’t going to be any further discussion. Mark walked away from his car and toward the van. The path took him directly into the wind, and the snow stung his eyes.
“We leaving my car behind?” he said. “Sitting there with the engine running? Seems like a good way to attract some attention. And you probably don’t want attention.”
He just wanted to talk, because talking gave him a chance to see reactions and learn more about these men behind the masks, and hopefully talking would also distract them from the way he kept spitting blood, trying to leave a trail of it as he walked. Leave a clue. Lord, what he would have given for a clue on another day and another road, one where windblown cypress leaves cast rippling shadows.
“Don’t worry about your car,” the big man said. He was walking with Mark; the bantam had stayed behind, and the headman was motionless, waiting.
“It’s just that, you know, I never spring for the full coverage,” Mark said. “Saves a few dollars, but it does make me worry.”
They reached the point man. He was about Mark’s size, maybe an inch taller, and thinner, but in a rangy way. The sweatshirt was too big for him, hanging loose.
“We could have this talk,” Mark said to him, “without me getting in the van.”
The other man didn’t respond. The bigger one jabbed Mark with the shotgun again, a hard shot to the kidney, and while it made him wince and stole his breath, he took a sad pride in the fact that he stayed upright and didn’t lower his hands.
A crunching sound came from behind them, and Mark turned to see that the third man, the smaller guy with the tense nerves, had climbed behind the wheel of the Ford.
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” Mark said. “It’s nothing personal. It’s not even my rule. The problem is with Hertz. They want you to identify everyone who is going to drive the car. So maybe if I could just get a real quick look at his driver’s license, that would be enough to—”
This time the blow knocked him down. Mark fell onto his knees in the road. He still had his hands clasped behind his head.
“There might be some confusion,” he said, “about what I’m doing in your town. I’m sure we can straighten it out. I don’t intend to stay here. I never did.”
When the thinner man without gloves nodded, the next blow came almost immediately, and the world wavered away. There was pain and there was darkness and there was cold, but not much else. Mark had a vague awareness of being lifted. They dragged him around the back of the van, and he thought, License plate, but his vision couldn’t anchor on anything, and then there were two metallic snaps and he thought, Kill shot coming.
No gunfire followed, though. He was lifted higher and then shoved into darkness and he realized the metallic noises had been the doors on the back of the van, and now he was inside of it. He tried to bite down on his tongue again and missed it somehow—how could you fail at an attempt to bite your own tongue?—but found his lip instead. He was satisfied with that, and he ground his teeth until he tasted blood again. That was the only thought he could hold in a mind that was swimming in and out of consciousness: he wanted to leave blood in their van. A strange hope, the polar opposite of what he should want to happen, yet he knew what it could mean to someone later. Without forensic evidence, good luck. Without forensic evidence, cases stayed open. Murderers stayed on the streets. Questions added layers of grief. He was determined that a lack of forensic evidence would not be a problem for anyone working his case.
So bleed, then, and keep bleeding. Leave a mark on this world.
13
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