The devil and Jessie Webster

by Lydia Burke

  "And something she doesn't want," Ben said. "A long inside look at a federal penitentiary."

  "Uh-uh," Ed said. "Nothing I had her do was illegal, so Leutzinger can't get ho- as an accessory if I'm caught. Which I don't intend to be."

  Jessie angled her bound legs to the floor, heels to hips, and leaned toward Ed intendy. "But you can't be sure—"

  Ed cut her off. "I don't feel like talking about it anymore, okay? Don't ... I just don't want to talk about it."

  "Well ... all right, but I think you're making a big mistake. If you love Marie, and I think you do—"

  "Drop it, Jessie."

  Jessie sighed and sank back against the wall. Ben gave her points for a damned good try, but it was clear Ed wasn't willing to be deterred.

  Even so, things were looking up. The gun was still a threat that couldn't be ignored, but Ben was confident now that Ed meant them no harm. If nothing got screwed up, he would be gone before long. Then Ben and Jessie could scoot together and work on untying each other's bonds. Ben didn't put much stock in Ed saying he'd notify someone to rescue them. Even if he meant it, too much could go wrong in the meantime.

  The sudden loud knock on the door made them all jump. It came in a burst of three rapid thumps, followed by three more, even and slow. Obviously a prearranged signal.

  "There's your payoff now," Ben said to Ed.

  Ed got up, looking puzzled. "No, it's not. I'm meeting Douglas later at an all-night grocery store."

  The coded knock came again, accompanied this time by a muffled, "Open up, man. It's me—Donno."

  Ed approached the padlocked door, but made no move to open it. He raised his voice enough to be heard on the other side. "What're you doing here, Donno?"

  "We got a glitch in the plans," came the disembodied voice. "Douglas is with me. He's nervous about seeing that cop tonight. He thinks you might be setting him up for a fall and made me bring him here. He's... he's got a gun on me, man."

  Ben mentally echoed the heartfelt curse that exploded from Ed's lips. Here was a wrinkle Ed obviously hadn't counted on. The throbbing in Ben's head made itself felt again as he considered what this could mean for him and Jessie.

  "You there, Douglas?" Ed called.

  "Yes, I am." Even through the door, it was easy to recognize the raised voice belonging to the suave attorney. It was ominously pleasant.

  "What's your problem?"

  "like Donno said, I'm nervous. If s time for a change in the rules/'

  "There's no need for that. I give you my word, I'm not working any double cross."

  "I'm glad to hear it. Let me in, then, and we'll take care of business right now."

  Ed glanced at Ben, then Jessie. "I'd rather stick to the original plan," he said to the door.

  "Look, Agent Brock, I'm short of patience tonight, and your friend here is going to reap the consequences."

  "You mean Donno? I wouldn't exactly call him a friend."

  "Then I guess you won't mind if my finger slips on this trigger and his brains get splattered all over the wall, will you?"

  "Do what he says, man," Donno whined. "I don't wanna die."

  Ed closed his eyes and muttered a foul expletive under his breath. "Did you bring the fax?"

  "You'll have to open the door to find out," Douglas answered.

  "First put your gun away and let Donno go."

  There was a brief silence. "You don't give me much credit, Agent Brock. I know when I'm holding the high cards."

  "Then I guess we're at a standoff. If you want to blow our arrangement, go ahead. I told you, Donno's no friend of mine. And I've still got the journal."

  "Hey, man, wha—whaddaya mean? I been helpin' you out all this time, ain't I?" Donno sounded desperate.

  "Sorry, Donno," Ed said unrepentantly. "How about it, Douglas? You want a murder rap on your head, or do you still want to deal?"

  Ed turned his head and met Ben's gaze. He didn't try to hide his anxiety. Ben knew in that moment the ex-agent was bluffing for Donno Carr's life.

  Maybe for Ben's and Jessie's, too, if Douglas found out Ed had brought them here.

  "So cold-blooded. You surprise me, Brock," Douglas said. "Do you put as low a premium on your ex-wife's well-being as you do Mr. Carr's?"

  Ben could see Ed's sudden pallor, even in the dim yellow glow of the lantern.

  Douglas's voice continued evilly. "Her name's Marie, isn't it?"

  "What about her, you son of a bitch?"

  "Ah, so you do care. Tell me, do you know where she is at the moment?"

  Fear and rage etched themselves into the prominent lines on Ed's face. "Somewhere safe from bastards like you," he growled.

  "You think so? I admit it took us awhile to find her. She ted us quite a chase until we remembered that someone had to go to the Caribbean to set up that numbered bank account for you."

  A fine sheen of perspiration glowed on Ed's skin. For a moment, his mouth moved soundlessly. "What have you done with her?" he finally managed.

  "Nothing, really. Our men are just keeping her company right where they found her. She's—how shall I put it?— undamaged for now. And as long as you cooperate, she'll stay that way."

  "How do I know you're not bluffing? I want to talk to her."

  "I'm surprised at you, Agent Brock. You of all people should realize there's no need to bluff. You know very well what the resources of my organization are." Douglas's voice grew suddenly hard, as though he'd tired of the game. "Your request is denied. Now, are you going to open this door, or do I leave to make a phone call to the men holding your wife in the Cayman Islands?"

  Ed seemed to collapse in on himself for a second, then slowly he straightened, his features grim and set. "You didn't wire the money, did you?"

  "Finally you're beginning to understand. Now I'm getting tired of talking, Brock. I didn't hesitate to kill Mai Duan, and I can just as easily pull the trigger on Donno right here to show you I mean business. One more body won't make a damned bit of difference to me. And the next one will be your wife."

  "Wait!" Ed cried. "You know I don't have the journal here."

  In a flurry of silent motion, he hurried to the other side of the room and picked up his pistol.

  "I'd like to check that out for myself, ,, Douglas said. "You have ten seconds to open this door."

  Ed rushed back to the door and shouted, "No. Give me a little time to think."

  "Ten seconds." Douglas started counting.

  The next thing Ben knew, Ed was kneeling beside him and cutting the rags at his wrists with a pocketknife. "I'm giving you the gun," he whispered.

  Ben stared at him. "Why?"

  "Kidnapping is one thing, but I got a feeling Douglas has murder on his mind. It's going to take both of us to stop him. Now, I don't have time to load this thing, so you'll have to fake it."

  "It's not loaded?" Ben whispered back incredulously.

  "I didn't want to accidentally shoot you. Pretend your hands are still tied and wait for an opening. Douglas'll be distracted when he sees you and Jessie. I'll try to take advantage of that."

  "See if you can cut the light," Ben rasped. "Leave me the knife, too. A gun without bullets isn't going to do me a hell of a lot of good."

  "Here. Good luck."

  The knife handle pressed against Ben's palm, and he grasped it. It felt small, inadequate to the danger of their situation.

  Good luck. A precious commodity, Ben thought. What they really needed was a miracle. Douglas had freely admitted his crimes, which could mean only one thing. He intended to leave no survivors.

  Ed rushed back to the door, his hand in his pocket. He fished out a key as Douglas intoned "nine," and fit it into the padlock.

  "Okay, you win," he said as he turned the key. "I'm letting you in."

  He turned and looked at Ben then, and for a moment they were two cops again, pitting their wits against a common adversary.

  Jessie observed the unfolding drama without feeling like an actual participant.
It was more like having a center seat in a

  movie theater, watching the protagonists in a suspense film move toward certain disaster. She saw that Ed had left the gun with Ben, but had been unable to hear their furtive whispers.

  Something terrible was going to happen, she just knew. The sense of impending doom increased whoa she pulled her eyes from Ed and found Ben, tense and alert, his attention focused on the door.

  She blamed herself that he was in danger yet again. It was her fault that they had quarreled, her fault that Ed had been able to take them by surprise. What had been so important to her just a couple of hours ago now seemed insignificant in light of their currant peril. She wished she could tell Ben she was sorry, that she loved him, that if somehow they got out of this hopeless situation, she wanted to try again.

  But now wasn't the time for such revelations. She could only hope and pray there would be a time somewhere in the uncertain future.

  Ed turned the knob and opened the door only a crack, moving away immediately to a position in front of the two wooden crates. Pretty smart, Jessie thought. Douglas would have a hard time watching everybody at once, when the three of than were spaced in a triangle at least ten feet from each other.

  A man poked his stocking-capped head warily around the door. His eyes shifted in jerks about the room, then widened in surprise, darting to Ben, to Jessie, to Ed, and back to Ben. The infamous Donno Can, Jessie presumed.

  "Hey, man." Donno's pointy chin aimed his slightly nasal voice over his shoulder to Rory Douglas, who had not yet come in. "The cop's hare, and some babe, all trussed up like turkeys for the kill."

  The door flew back on its hinges and struck the wall with a bang that echoed through the warehouse.

  "Well, well, an unexpected pleasure. Struttin' Sutton at my mercy." Douglas stepped in behind Donno, his height dwarfing the smaller man. "And Ms. Webster, too. Things are getting somewhat complicated. But then, I've always been one to rise to a challenge."

  The deadly looking pistol he held competently in his manicured hand swept the room and stopped, its barrel pointed

  steadily at Ed's stomach. Ed lifted his hands slowly, palms out, his eye on the gun.

  "Frisk him, Donno."

  Once again Jessie had the unreal impression that she was watching a movie—a second-rate one, with clich^d dialogue.

  "All right/ 99 Donno approached Ed with a gleeful smirk. "I always wanted to do this. Put your hands behind your head, man, and spread your legs."

  At this unmistakable evidence of his hireling's collusion with Douglas, Ed spat, "Bastard!"

  "Sorry, man," Donno replied with a shrug of his narrow shoulders. "Looked to me like things was getting flaky. I had to hedge my bets. Besides, Mr. Douglas pays better than you."

  He took his time patting Ed down, then stepped back. "He's clean, man."

  "Search the blankets and under the mattress. He may have stashed his gun there. Look for a blue cloth-bound book without a title, too."

  "Let Jessie go, Rory," Ben said to Douglas's back. "She's an innocent victim in all this."

  Douglas kept his eyes on Ed, obviously considering him to be the greater threat, since Ben was tied up. Shaking his head slowly, he said over his shoulder, "What an idealist you are, Ben. Still championing women and underdogs, just like you did back in high school. It never occurs to you that some people might not want your help."

  "In your case, I got the message," Ben said.

  "God, how I hated you and your goody-goody parents. I was making it just fine until you butted in."

  Ben's vigilant gaze never left Douglas's eyes, which were still on Ed. "That's not the way it looked to me."

  As he spoke, Jessie saw his right hand slowly move from behind his back and ease its way under the bridge of his knees, holding an open pocketknife. Quickly she averted her eyes so she wouldn't give him away. Hope surged in her breast.

  "You hold a grudge for a long time, Douglas," Ed said.

  "Some things a person never forgets." Bitterness tinged Douglas's words.

  "like what?" Ed asked. "What did Ben do to you, anyway?"

  "He interfered in my life when it was none of his business!" Douglas snapped. "He saw some bruises on my ribs once while we were playing basketball— old bruises that were almost gone. I told him it was nothing, but good old Ben couldn't let it go. The next thing I knew, his father and mother were at my place with the county children's welfare department, and my sister and brother and I were all farmed out to foster homes."

  "HelL it seems to me he did you a favor, if your old man was beating you," Ed said. "Most kids would want to get away."

  "The beatings weren't so bad I couldn't take it. I was fourteen, and big enough that I had already started to fight back."

  Jessie sensed a change in Douglas's mood. He was no less tense than he'd been when he first entered the room, and the gun in his hand remained level and unmoving. Still, as he spoke to Ed, his eyes seemed less focused, as though he were looking inward, remembering. Donno, too, was distracted by the conversation, occasionally stopping to listen as he searched the bedclothes and pallet on his hands and knees. A quick glance out of the corner of Jessie's eye showed the bonds on Bra's legs were loosening as he severed the cloth from the underside.

  Keep talking, she mentally urged Douglas.

  "I was the only one who stood between that drunken sadist and my mother," he wait on. "When they took us away, I begged her to leave him, but she wouldn't go. Without me there to protect her, it took him less than a year to beat her to death."

  "Damn, that's tough," Ed said with what sounded like genuine sympathy. "But you can't blame Ben for that."

  "Oh, but I do. If he hadn't interfered, I could have killed the old man sooner, and my mother would still be alive. As it was, I had to wait to avenge her, and I never got to tell her how I made him suffer. On my eighteenth birthday I drove him to Indiana, to an isolated woods over two hundred miles from here where he'd be a nameless bum. He was drunk as usual, but I waited until he was good and sober before I did anything. I wanted him to fed every punch, every kick."

  He spoke almost fondly of the memory, and Jessie shuddered in revulsion.

  "It was my birthday present to myself. There was no finer way to celebrate my coming of age than to pound the life out of that stinking excuse for a father with my bare hands."

  "Damn," Donno breathed reverently.

  "That day I learned revenge is very sweet. And now, thanks to you, Agent Brock, tonight I can have vengeance on my old childhood enemy, too, at the same time as I take care of the problems you've caused me. Very convenient."

  "Yeah, I'm a real accommodating guy," Ed said.

  "Accommodating, but not very clever. You'll be glad to know nobody in my organization knows about this deal we cooked up. It was in my best interest to keep it to myself, since the man at the top is already upset with me for getting arrested, not to mention making Mai disappear and bringing the law swarming all over the Port Mangus operation. I have to do something to redeem myself. Presenting him with this journal will go a long way to securing my future. So, Agent Brock, my threat about your wife involved a good piece of guesswork. You should have called my bluff"

  The single syllable Ed uttered was fervent and obscene.

  "Now, now, there's a lady present Did you find the gun, Donno? Or the journal?"

  Donno scurried to his feet, the spell broken. "No, man, there's nothin' here."

  "You might as well stop looking," Ed said. "I lost my gun somewhere while I was getting away from Leutzinger, and the journal is in a bus locker in Detroit. The key is with a lawyer, by the way, and he won't release it to anyone but me."

  "Not so convenient, after all," Douglas mused aloud. Then he appeared to come to a decision. "I guess I'll have to take you with me, then. Donno, take that gas can in the corner and soak the other two down. Save a little for the bedding, if you can."

  "You wanna burn 'em? Hey, man, I didn't sign on for no murder."

/>   "Do it." The order was calmly stated and allowed for no argument.

  "Not so fast, Douglas," Ben said.

  All eyes turned to his side of the room.

  "He's got a gun!" Donno shouted.

  Everything happened at once then. Douglas aimed and fired just as Ben flung himself to the side, no longer hampered by the restricting bonds. Jessie screamed, afraid he'd been hit. The light suddenly went out. Scuffling sounds and masculine grunts

  filled Jessie's ears, but she could see nothing. Suddenly another shot rang out, and a searing pain tore through her thigh.

  Stunned, Jessie clumsily lay down on the floor and pulled her knees to her chest, hoping to make herself a smaller target. Her injured teg felt hot from her knee to her groin. Amazingly, she felt only a little soreness lingering from the first powerful sting of impact. It was curious that the ache in her tied arms caused her greater discomfort than the more serious wound. How could that be?

  There were two more shots. They made brief, horizontal candle flames in the darkness, the flashes spewing out of the end of the gun barrel close to the floor. Jessie realized a struggle for possession of the gun was in progress, and she could very likely be hit again. She drew her legs up tighter and closed her eyes, praying that Ben was all right, that they all would come out of this alive.

  Another shot. Sudden weakness assailed her. Odd. She was already lying down; she shouldn't be feeling dizzy. And when had her head started pounding? A swirling black hole in her mind beckoned, promising oblivion.

  From a long distance, like a voice in a dream, somebody said, "This is the FBI. Put down your weapons and come out with your hands up."

  A bad movie, Jessie thought again. Then she gave in to the seductive pull of the dark whirlpool and knew no more.

  Chapter 16

  Oen wasn't allowed into the ambulance that carried Jessie away, so he chased it in his car, recklessly running every red light and stop sign right behind the wailing vehicle. At the hospital, he cursed and veered off to visitor parking when he saw the Ambulance Only sign at the emergency entrance. By the time he raced into the trauma center reception area, Jessie was already out of sight in a treatment room.