Hellhound On My Trail

by J. D. Rhoades

  “Your father’s awake,” Maddox said. “He wants to see you.”

  THERE WAS another man in the sunroom when Keller arrived, a short, stumpy man with a face like an elderly frog’s and wearing a doctor’s white coat. He was leaning over Trammell, listening to his chest with a stethoscope. He pulled the chest piece away, making a tch sound in his throat. Trammell was awake and looking impatient. “So?”

  “So,” the man in the white coat said. His next words were delivered in a thick Russian accent. “Once again, I discover miracle. I discover you actually have beating heart.”

  “Hilarious.” Trammell turned to Keller. “Good morning, son.”

  “Good morning”—Keller hesitated—“Father.”

  The smile on the old man’s face had too much of an air of triumph for Keller to like it. Still, it was the closest thing to a genuine smile Keller had seen from him. “You had a lot to take in last night. I imagine you’re worn out.”

  “A little.”

  “Maddox has already made up a guest room upstairs where you can catch some shut-eye. But first, I want your impressions.” He grimaced at the doctor. “When Dr. Death here stops fucking with me.”

  The doctor flushed a deep red. “Will be done in minute.”

  He was as good as his word. He replaced the IV line with quick, deft movements, taping it to Trammell’s bony wrist with strips of adhesive tape he clipped precisely with a pair of long silver shears. “Now,” he said. “You are fine for another day. If you do not die.”

  “That, Doctor,” Trammell said, “is the kind of incisive diagnosis that justifies all the money I pay you. Now go.”

  The man left without looking back, his head held high with wounded dignity. Trammell ignored him. “Now,” he said to Keller, “what do you think you could do with that information?”

  “I don’t know,” Keller said. “There’s a lot of it. But I do have a question.”

  Trammell’s face reminded Keller of a bird staring at a morsel on the ground and preparing to snatch it up. “Ask away.”

  “That film of you and Shea. It’s a bomb, all right.”

  Trammell nodded.

  “Say I wanted to drop it. How would I do it? Is there someone specific you’d send it to?”

  Maddox had caught the last bit as he walked into the room. “There’s a woman named Margeaux Nguyen,” he said. “Half French, half Vietnamese. She’s an investigative journalist. Or was, before her newspaper cut back and laid her off. Now I guess you could say she’s more of a blogger. Has one of those conspiracy sites on the Internet.”

  “And she’s got an interest in the war?”

  Maddox shook his head. “Just this part of it. The cameraman who was killed was her father.”

  Keller looked at Trammell. “She must not like you very much.”

  Trammell coughed out a short, grim laugh. “She’d love to see me dead. Well, she can take a fucking number. In the meantime, I’ve strung her along. Dropped hints. Steered her toward things I wanted her to find out.” He sighed. “It’s too bad there are so few real investigative journalists anymore. They do come in handy.”

  “I’d think investigative journalists would be your least favorite people.”

  “You’d think that,” Trammell said, “but you’d be wrong. Those people are some of the easiest to play. They’re so hungry. They all want the big story. You can use that.”

  Maddox was peering intently at Keller. “But you can only use it once,” he said. “Once you do, all your leverage is gone. It’s…” He smiled thinly. “I guess you could say it’s a kind of doomsday weapon. You only win if you don’t actually deploy it.”

  Keller shook his head. “I guess I don’t have the gift for manipulation that you two have.”

  Trammell smiled. “You’ll get better at it. John will advise you.”

  Keller turned. “That right, Maddox?”

  Maddox didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “Anything I can do to help.”

  “Okay,” Keller said. “Well, as you say, it’s been a long night. I’m going to grab some sleep. Maddox, do you have the original of that film?”

  Maddox nodded, his face expressionless.

  “Package it up for me. And give me the contact information for this Kathryn Shea, and for Margeaux Nguyen.”

  “All right,” Maddox said. There was something in his total lack of affect that bothered Keller, but he truly was dead on his feet. “Now,” Keller said, “if you’ll show me to that guest room.”

  IF THERE was one good thing about all of the shit that had happened in Keller’s life in the past few days it was that he’d gotten to sleep in some of the best beds he’d ever experienced. The antique four-poster bed in the upstairs guest room was huge and almost obscenely comfortable, and he was exhausted beyond all reason, but this time, he could not get to sleep. He could drift off to a half-alert, half-dreamlike state that seemed somehow familiar, but true rest eluded him.

  Part of what was keeping him awake was that it was light outside, the bright sunlight leaking through the old and yellowing venetian blinds. Another part was the turmoil in his mind from what he’d just learned.

  But in the back of his mind, something even more compelling was keeping him from achieving more than a light doze. When he heard another, louder voice, raised in anger or shock, followed by a sharper, more emphatic impact than he’d heard before, he realized what it was that was keeping him awake. It was the always-on-edge awareness of a soldier who knew there was an enemy out there, a soldier who was expecting an attack at any moment. Now, he realized as the house’s unnatural silence was broken, the attack had come.

  Keller felt the adrenaline rising with that knowledge, at the same time that the eerie calm that always came upon him at such moments wrapped him in its embrace. He checked the drawer in the eighteenth-century table beside the bed, just to be sure. There was no gun hidden there, nothing he could use as a weapon. He looked around the room. Nothing. He walked as softly as he could to the bedroom door and opened it slowly, trying to force it by sheer effort of will not to squeak. It swung silently open; Keller was facing the stairs. He moved slowly down the narrow wooden steps. Faintly, he could hear the sound of an agitated, upraised voice. He couldn’t make out the words.

  Keller found Maddox lying at the foot of the stairs, his head bleeding profusely from a deep scalp wound. He felt at the throat for a pulse and found it, fluttering weakly against his fingertips. The voice he’d heard earlier was louder now, more insistent. It wasn’t Trammell’s voice, but it seemed to be coming from the direction of the sunroom. “Where is it?” the voice was saying, and now Keller recognized it. It was the voice of the man Keller had seen directing the action in South Carolina. Riddle, Maddox had called him. Trammell had provided the nickname. El Perro del Infierno. The Hellhound.

  Keller stepped into the sunroom. The early morning light slanted through the high windows, casting an incongruously idyllic light on the scene. The man he now knew as Riddle was standing over Trammell, holding a silver revolver to the dying man’s throat with his right hand. The other held Trammell’s oxygen line pinched shut. The old man was gasping and struggling for breath, his back arching, his body writhing in agony.

  “Tell me,” Riddle was saying, this time softly and insistently. “Tell me where the film is. Tell me what’s in it.” He released the line and Trammell fell back onto the hospital bed and began sucking in air like a bellows, the frantic inhalations collapsing into a fit of hacking. It sounded as if his lungs were trying to be expelled from his body.

  “Just tell me, old man,” Riddle said. “Tell me and I’ll end all of this. Quick. Clean.” He gestured with the gun, taking in the hospital bed and the IV pole. “This isn’t how men like us should die. You’ve put up the good fight. At least that’s what I heard.” Trammell was panting, looking up with narrowed eyes at Riddle, who went on: “Hell, if only half of what I’ve heard is true, I give you a lot of respect. But now it’s time to accept the fact that—�
�

  “Shut the fuck up, Riddle,” Keller said.

  Riddle looked up, his eyes narrowed. “Keller.” He smiled, but the look in his eyes made it more like a baring of teeth. Keller noticed his pallor, the sweat that stood on his brow. He remembered the man staggering after he’d fired. He was wounded, perhaps badly. But that only made him more dangerous.

  Riddle shook his head. “Goddamn, son, you must have nine lives.” He trained the gun on Keller.

  “I could say the same thing about you.”

  “You need to back off, though. You’ve caused me a lot of trouble. More than I was paid for, that’s for goddamn sure.”

  “Yeah, well, sorry,” Keller said. “I tend to be troublesome to people who are trying to kill me.”

  “Nothing personal. But there’s some film that the people who hired me really didn’t want you to have.”

  “Yeah, I know. Apparently Kathryn Shea thinks it could do her some damage.”

  Riddle’s brow furrowed. “Who?”

  “You’ve got be kidding me,” Keller said. “You don’t even really know who you’re working for?”

  The baffled look turned into a scowl. “It usually doesn’t matter who I’m working for. I get a job, I get it done.”

  “Kathryn Shea’s a candidate for the U.S. Senate. That’s who you’re working for.”

  “Wrong. Right now, I’m working for me. So if this Shea bitch wants something this bad, let’s see what else they’re willing to trade for it.”

  “Idiot.” The word came in a strangled wheeze from the bed.

  Riddle’s pale face twisted in anger at Trammell. “You shut up, old man.”

  Trammell ignored his words. His laugh was a ghastly croak. “You wouldn’t know what to do with power. You’re an attack dog. An animal. Your paws aren’t made to hold the leash.”

  “I said shut up.” Riddle’s hands were shaking as he shoved the gun against the side of Trammell’s head hard enough to break the skin.

  “Cut it out,” Keller snapped. He moved toward the bed, fists clenched. The barrel of the pistol snapped up to bear on him. At that moment, Trammell’s hand came out from under the sheet that covered him. Something silver gleamed in the morning sunlight. With a grunt of effort, Trammell buried the shears that the doctor had left behind into Riddle’s belly, just beneath the navel.

  Riddle screamed with pain and shock, looking down in disbelief at the handle of the shears protruding from his abdomen. He reflexively swung the barrel of the gun against Trammell’s forehead with a sickening crack. Then he staggered back, pointing the gun at the old man. Keller was charging, but he wasn’t fast enough to stop Riddle from firing. The sound of the gunshot was enormous in the small space. Then Keller was upon him, swinging a fist as hard as he could against Riddle’s jaw. The blow knocked him sideways, but he staggered and straightened, trying to point the gun at Keller.

  Keller wasn’t going to give him the chance; he closed as fast as he could, his left hand grasping the wrist holding the revolver and pushing it aside as he reached down and grabbed the silver shears with his right. He gave the blades a savage twist. Riddle shrieked with agony and his hand tightened convulsively on the gun. It went off again and again, the bullets shattering the tall windows. Glass cascaded to the floor, glittering in the sun. Riddle’s free hand was clawing at Keller’s, still fixed around the shears. He was roaring like a wounded bear. He snapped his head forward, jaws snapping, and got a chunk of Keller’s cheek between his teeth.

  Keller screamed with the pain as Riddle began worrying the flesh like a dog. He pulled back, taking a chunk of Keller’s face with him. His mouth was covered in blood. The pain was so intense that Keller’s grip slackened and Riddle pulled his gun hand free just as Keller yanked the shears out, wrenching another howl of pain from Riddle’s throat.

  Both of them were spattered with each other’s blood by now. More had dripped onto the floor and was spreading in a thin slick on the wood. As Keller stabbed downward with the shears, aiming for Riddle’s neck, the other man tried to step backward and his foot slipped in the crimson puddle. He stumbled and went down on his back, swinging the gun around and firing as he fell. The shot went wild, but it nearly parted Keller’s hair before impacting in the ceiling, sending a fine spray of plaster dust cascading to the floor. The back of Riddle’s head hit the floor with a dull thud. Keller followed him down, landing on his chest with both knees. He raised the shears again, his mind filled with a red haze of fear and rage, ready to stab and stab and stab again until his enemy’s face was nothing but a bloody mess of chopped meat.

  “Do it,” a voice croaked from the bed. “Finish him off.”

  THE WORDS stopped him. He looked down at Riddle’s face. The man was unconscious, finally knocked cold by the impact of his head hitting the floor. The gun was lying a few inches away from his outstretched hand.

  “Do it,” Keller’s father said again, his voice a faint wheeze. “Do it.”

  Keller slowly got to his feet. He wiped the blood from his face as best he could, gritting his teeth at the pain from his ripped cheek. The blood throbbed in it, bringing tears to his eyes as he bent and picked up the gun.

  “What are you doing?” Trammell’s voice was a little stronger.

  Keller blinked at him, his vision still fuzzy from the blow to the head. There was blood on the sheets as well, a deep red stain that seemed to be spreading. “Are you okay?” He walked on unsteady feet to the bed. “You’re shot,” he said.

  “No, genius,” Trammell said in a fierce whisper, “I’m fucking killed. But that bastard’s going to Hell with me.”

  “Probably,” Keller muttered. A sound from the doorway made him look up. Maddox was there, leaning against the jamb, blood covering his own face. His eyes were wide with horror. “Call nine-one-one,” Keller said.

  “No,” the old man said, but either Maddox didn’t hear it or the shock of seeing his boss’s blood all over the sheets overrode any ability he had to follow orders. He disappeared back down the hall.

  “God damn it,” Trammell muttered. He turned to Keller. “Well?” he said. “What are you waiting for?”

  Keller pulled the sheet aside and grimaced. It was a miracle the old man was still alive, but the miracle wouldn’t last very much longer. There was nothing he knew how to do for a wound like that.

  “See,” the old man said. “Like I said. Killed. And about goddamn time.” He coughed and a light froth of blood leaked from his mouth.

  Keller reached for a towel and wiped it away. Trammell’s lips were turning blue. It wouldn’t be long now. Keller hated what he had to do next. But it had to be done. He took a deep breath. “Where’s the film? The original. Come on, we don’t have much time.” He remembered the look on Maddox’s face when he’d asked for the film last night. “I think Maddox wants it for himself.”

  For a moment, he thought the old man had finally given up the ghost. His eyes were closed and he didn’t seem to be breathing. Then he took a deep, shuddering breath and his eyes opened. “Bottom shelf,” he murmured. “Table beside the bed.”

  Keller checked. There was a square box, like a woman’s jewelry case, covered in leather. Keller snapped open the catch. Inside, nestled in red plush, was a silver film can. Keller snapped it shut. “Okay,” he said.

  “Riddle,” Trammell whispered. “Finish him.”

  Keller looked over to where Riddle was still unconscious on the floor. He thought of another man, helpless, surrendering, on a burning mountain in North Carolina.

  “You don’t do it, he’ll be back.”

  The words rang in Keller’s mind. He didn’t know if he was hearing Trammell’s voice or another one, from that mountainside where he’d killed an unarmed man, a man who he knew would be back to torture and murder more people he loved if Keller had let him live. He’s got some sort of get out of jail free card, his lover Marie had said. Keller had taken the gun from her. He’d killed the man to keep her from doing it. And in the process, he’
d lost her.

  “Sorry, sir.” Keller turned to Trammell. “I did that once. And it cost me everything I loved.”

  He couldn’t tell if the old man’s blank look was incomprehension or the knowledge of oncoming death. But he did recognize the next expression to cross Trammell’s face. Disgust. His mouth formed words that Keller couldn’t hear. He leaned forward, putting his ear next to the old man’s lips. “Say again?”

  It was a few seconds before the words came, and when they did they were faint but clear. “Failed. No…son of…mine.”

  Keller sat up. “No, sir,” he said. “And you know what? That’s a relief.”

  The old man closed his eyes and let out one last breath. His chest didn’t rise again.

  MADDOX REENTERED the room. He stopped as he saw the still figure on the bed. Then he walked over, pushing Keller roughly out of the way. He picked up Trammell’s wrist to check for a pulse. After a moment, he sighed and gently placed the hand back down on the bed. He showed no visible sign of emotion as he turned to face Keller. “It’s over.”

  “Yes.”

  Keller was still holding the box.

  “And you have the film. The original.”

  “Yes.”

  Maddox looked over at where Riddle still lay on the floor. “Is he still breathing?”

  “I think so. But he won’t be if we don’t get him to a hospital. Did you call nine-one-one?”

  Maddox walked over and knelt by the body. Keller thought at first that Maddox was going to be checking his vital signs as well. But when he stood up, he was holding Riddle’s gun.

  “Give me the film,” he said.

  “God damn it, Maddox—”

  “You’re going to just give it away. You’re not going to use it.”

  “That’s right. I’m not going to use it. I’m not going to start another generation of power games. People were murdered. Killed in cold blood. And all you and that sick old man lying dead over there could think of was how you could use it to manipulate other cold-blooded bastards just like them.”