The Big Law (1998)

by Chuck Logan

  Finally she stopped. Everything stopped.

  He tore her blouse away, and needing to touch her, to feel her, flesh to flesh, he ripped the bra to shreds, snapped off the rubber glove and placed his right hand, palm down, on the calm silent chamber of her smooth chest, between the swell of her breasts.

  Felt. Listened.

  Nothing. Slowly he pulled the latex glove back on. Never this close to Death, he paused to study it. The writer in him, perhaps. Her lips looked like raw meat. Her teeth imbedded like stones in the clay gums.

  Too much. He shuddered, panicked, scrambled to his knees, reached up and turned off the light.

  The real thing. Not shoving someone off a slippery rock.

  Okay. Now what.

  His eyes swept the dark interior of the house and encountered the innocent perpetual motion of the screen saver looping itself. He literally watched his reason leave, a toy helicopter flying off the top of his head. Thus unencumbered, like a true denizen of WITSEC, he could argue that the sonofabitch Broker was to blame for this. If he had left Ida alone, she'd be alive today.

  All Broker's fault. Danny got up. His hand closed around the handle of the stubby pistol on his belt. More bad luck for Broker. Now I got a gun. He stooped among the cans, boxes and vegetables on the floor, found the slim manuscript he'd dropped. Tucked in his belt, in back.

  Remembered kicking over the chair in the study. Returned there, righted the chair. Picked up a can of soup that he'd thrown. Now.

  The keys still in the door and the strewn groceries sketched a desperate scenario. He could leave the door untouched, ajar. A smash-and-grab robbery gone sour. In thirty seconds he found the spare set of keys she always carried in her purse.

  So. What would a dumb junkie do? First, he wouldn't take off his shoes and figure out where the house key was hidden. Danny retrieved his tennis shoes and coat from the hall broom closet and put them on.

  He slipped outside, walked back along the side of the house and stamped his feet in the snow beyond the throw of the house light, next to the garage. Then he walked back and stomped into the house, leaving distinctive sneaker treads on the linoleum. He continued this little routine around the kitchen, reenacting his fight with Ida. Throwing in a few extra moves. Victory dance.

  Then back to the purse, tore through the contents and pulled out the wallet. Standing up, he took a quick inventory. Had the manuscript. And the gun. Without looking down, he stepped over the sprawled form and exited the house, careful not to disturb the door. The dangling keys.

  Like complicity, a heavy fog cloaked the street. Lights were smears of jelly in the soft gloom. With his shopping bag and travel bag, he got in Ida's car and backed into the street. Turned on to Cleveland Avenue and rolled down the window near the crosstown bus stop.

  He pulled the currency from the wallet and the VISA, Dayton's, and Neiman Marcus credit cards. Twenty yards from the bus stop, he tossed the wallet into a frost-painted hedge. Since all the gang kids started shooting each other on the streets, cops made jokes about the bushes being full of guns. They always checked the shrubbery near a crime scene. They'd find the wallet.

  Free of the wallet, he checked the gas gauge. Nice of her to leave him a full tank.

  Real deep in the "danger zone." Driving a stolen car, with a loaded handgun, on his way to visit two million bucks. Master of Life and Death. So this was what it was like, living in real time. One of Joe Travis's clients for sure, now.

  He toed the gas. The muscular snow tires surged and carved a sidewinder pattern in the slush. Behind him, back on Sergeant Street, a cold draft knifed through the ajar inner and outer side doors. It ruffled a strand of sticky hair that coiled in a tiny trickle of blood on Ida's cheek.

  The trickle stopped. Seeped. Stopped.

  Slowly, her powerful heart failed, fought, failed, fought. Until. Lubdub. Lubdub. Through the firestorm in her brain, a red push rallied to whip the sluggish blood; a wispy spark fired the slack lungs. The tiny bubble of vomit swelled at the corner of her mouth. Popped. Ever so slowly, another bubble started to form.

  63

  Unseen in heavy fog, Danny drifted north, up the deserted lanes of U.S. 35. Cooler now, he took the long view.

  A difficult task. Ruthless necessity. Like a killing in wartime. Tying off the loose end. She had to go. Living privileges revoked. Air stopped. Lights off. Her magnificent snatch and her cockeyed face stuffed in a hole in the ground like any other dead animal.

  His thoughts swelled until he blundered on Profundity. Like slavery and killing the Indians, her death was the regrettable, but necessary, price of admission to the American Dream.

  The thrill propelled him miles and miles up the foggy empty road. Time elongated. Contracted. Stood still. Why, he marveled, don't more people do this.

  South of Duluth, he stopped at a Holiday to gas up. He saw a display of kids' plastic sleds, marked down. Bought one. Might need it to pull the suitcase out of the woods, if the snow was bad. He also bought a flashlight and a thermos. Duct tape, to wrap the canvas bags.

  On impulse he got a half dozen jelly donuts. Filled the thermos with black coffee.

  Back on the road, he gobbled the pastry, licking jam and sugar off his fingers. Driving the ghostly highway was

  retracing his journey with Caren Angland. A pilgrimage.

  Watch it. Don't flirt with being caught.

  The profilers counted on that. Gloating in the crime. Why Ed Kemper had frequented the Jury Box bar and hung out with cops. He was dangerously close to the profile, baiting Broker.

  Had to watch that. "Control that," he said out loud because, as the miles rolled beneath his tires and he drew closer to Cook County, he could feel the urge to settle it.

  Creep into his house. Scamper around in the dark like the Manson disciples. Press the pistol against his sleeping head. Surprise ending for Jeremiah Johnson. This time, the Indians win.

  A night like this. One shot, then disappear into the fog.

  He softened the hard thoughts. Self-dramatic. Spare the child—no—pardon the child. Noblesse oblige. Hey. He wasn't a monster.

  But then her eyes would still be there. Bugging him at night.

  Have to think about that.

  Focused, he drove past the red and orange blur of the Black Bear Casino sign without so much as a nod. God. Where'd all this fog come from? Duluth was out there, someplace. Superior.

  The distance narrowed to Cook County. Discipline was important now. He removed the nondescript pocket calendar card from his wallet on which he'd carefully copied the directions to the money stash from one of his old business cards. When he was in the Orientation Center.

  Flashed on Ida, sprawled, a broken doll among the vegetables. Shook it off. Never could have changed his life this much, this fast, without shooting through the keyhole of opportunity Keith and Caren Angland presented.

  He'd still be going into debt playing the quarter slots at Mystic Lake. Be Ida's latest goddamn rehabilitation project.

  Ida. Past tense. Concentrate. The mileage and the map. He literally had to navigate by them because his vision was so limited.

  The road he wanted was represented on the map as a black and white checked line. A secondary gravel road. The number in a square marked it as local as opposed to county. Number

  4. Just past Lutsen.

  Then he had to turn 3.7 miles up that road and turn right onto the property of Keith Angland's father.

  Tension pounded a wedge of pain between his shoulder blades. He had to force himself to stop clenching his latexgloved hands on the wheel. In the last forty-five minutes he had not encountered a single car. Only his low beams, pushing at the thick fog.

  He barely saw the road sign for Lutsen. No hint of what lay off the road to either side. Solid cotton batting, opaque, white.

  In first gear now, driving this slow, he was begging for a rear end accident. Some tanked-up Jack Pine Savage speeding.

  And then, his road sign blurred in the mist. Number
4 on it. Danny stopped. Had to get out of the car and walk across the road to see the turnoff. He returned to the Accord and edged forward a few yards to make his turn.

  A wet red shadow blinkered the mist. He jumped and then laughed out loud. Out of habit, he'd hit the turn signal.

  Take it easy.

  Carefully, he drove the road, his eyes constantly dropping to check the speedometer. He passed three miles and began counting off the tenths. Six rolled up and then seven. He stopped and got out again to scout on foot.

  A chain. A chain. Linking two trees. In December, with no snow, there had been a rutted path filled with orange pine needles. Not much snow down on 61, but up here, in the woods, there was plenty of snow. The trees

  looked like faint black girders joining the white mist to the white snow.

  He'd backtracked less than fifty yards when he saw the ragged horizontal line draped between two trees. Remembered the small yellow metal sign hanging in the middle. PRIVATE.

  Feeling in the snow for the key. Tin box under the rock, by the roots of the tree. He laughed again. It was turning into a night of hidden keys.

  He stopped his searching. Peered into the solid wall of white. The obvious. Ida's city car couldn't make it through even this wilting snow.

  And with no tracks to go by he could go off the path. Get stuck. Better to use the plastic sled, walk in. It meant leaving the Accord on the road. Had to risk it.

  He returned to the car, backed up and parked. He pulled the sled from the backseat and exchanged his tennis shoes for the new Sorels. Took off the leather coat, put on his sweater, pulled the coat back on, a hat, gloves.

  Hauling the flimsy sled, sweeping his flashlight before him, he set off through the drifts. No way the Accord would have made it through this. Couldn't get lost, just follow his tracks back out. A hundred yards into the pines, he had his bearings. The shanty, the birch tree. The place was still engraved on his memory.

  He figured his direction and set off into the pine thickets.

  At first he couldn't find the cistern in the snow. So he walked a circle and crisscrossed it until he hit the mound, knocked through the surface snow and found the tangle of rusty tin debris.

  Calmly, taking pride in the way his muscles warmed to the work, he removed the layer of junk, and soon the black plastic peeked through the snow.

  He brushed it off, shoved, pulled, yanked, and lifted it out with his new muscles. No work at all, with the sled. Almost wanted to run; that's how greased he was with the physical high, coming off of Ida.

  A few minutes later he was huddled in the front seat, coaxing the heater to warm faster. Catching his breath. Checked his watch. Just past 2 A.M. What time did it get light?

  He forced himself to drink a cup of coffee from the thermos. Had to calm down before he got back on the road.

  Chill out. Formed the phrase in his mind. Curious usage under these circumstances, freezing.

  Okay. Very carefully he turned around, fearing unseen ditches in the snow and drove back toward Highway 61.

  When he got to the intersection, he stopped. Slammed by waves of impulse. Broker to the left. Freedom to the right.

  Discipline. Think of everything he'd achieved. Can't take the chance of blowing it. Stick to the plan.

  But he knew that, in the house where Broker lived, a computer was turned on, the website the hick ex-cop had concocted. Up there, glowing in the dark.

  Mocking him. And causing problems. They'd probably move him from Santa Cruz because of it. Stick him in some trailer court in Idaho.

  Reached under the seat, checked the cold shape of the pistol. What if he wasn't there. Nah, he'd be there, with the brat.

  The big-eyed brat who haunted his dreams.

  It was wrong. Stupid. But Danny knew he was going to do it anyway. Because of who he was now. Because he was through taking shit off people. His foot released the brake, stabbed at the gas and turned left.

  64

  Broker had stayed up late, had consumed too much coffee. He watched for trucks. He had even crept through the woods, up to the cabin next door and peeked in the window. David and Denise were fused together on a foldout couch, a carnal pretzel illuminated by the glimmering TV screen. Stacks of video cassettes piled the coffee table.

  Chastised, cursing himself for a paranoid, he came home and headed for bed. Caffeine limbo waited, a dehydrated shadow of sleep. At 2:30 A.M., his kidneys prodded him and he got up and padded to the bathroom. On the way back to bed he saw the bright display of the video monitor suspended in the dark, Tom James's face under the garish orange type.

  He and Ida Rain had missed each other. She'd communicated remotely, leaving a message on his voice mail. She thought the website, while novel, was desperate—if he really wanted to find James. Like she was promising something.

  No reaction from the FBI.

  Wouldn't be, either. He was out of moves. It was over.

  Out the windows, fog slowly crept into the chinks and crannies. Broker never sighed.

  He sighed.

  Too much thinking. What he needed was sleep. He

  went into Kit's room and checked on her in the soft spill of the night-light. She lay as if flung headlong, limbs willy-nilly, in a clutter of stuffed animals. Her head was thrown back in a nest of sweaty curls, one arm twisted out and ended in an upturned hand. The tiny fingers continued to reach. A miniature detail from Michelangelo.

  The mystery of Peace made simple, in the undisturbed sleep of a healthy child. Everywhere, always, the same. Softly, he touched her chest, sensitive to the tiny rise and fall, felt her warm forehead, said one of his wordless daddy prayers.

  Back in the covers he drifted in shallow tangles. Fatigue marched over him, an ant army of tiny distractions. The fog turned to rain, which lulled him. But then the rain turned hard, a sleet downpour. Eventually he sagged in a hammock of consciousness, just below the surface of sleep. A muffled drawn-out crash shot him bolt upright. Up, looking out the windows. A whole row of pines had keeled over against the roof, their branches weighted down with ice.

  Ice storm. Like they were getting up in Canada. Nothing for it tonight. Back in bed, his last snatches of wakefulness recorded the ominous scrape of ice-burdened branches against the roof and eaves. The steady thud of icy rain. The crash of trees falling in the woods.

  His muscles snapped to while his mind was still blind with sleep. A tinny musical reveille insinuated through the groan of the wind and ice-tormented trees—Cucaracha Dog.

  Dada Dah da

  Dada Dah da

  Kit's cry, simultaneous to the calliope weirdness of the toy. Then—the scramble of feet in his house. In Kit's room.

  Broker sprang off the bed in a gymnastic movement at combat speed. The twelve-gauge came off the floor and swung comfortably into his hands before his eyes opened. KARAA-CKKK went the steel slide, chambering a load of double ought buck.

  Lizard brain pushed the mammal brain, then cerebral cortex, the civilizing membrane, but way out front and absolutely ready to kill—was the new daddy brain. And the daddy brain propelled Broker through the dark. Seeking the threat in a cold rage, thumbing off the safety on the shotgun, heading for his daughter's cries, filtering out the sound of the toy.

  Someone in the house. Stepped on the toy?

  How? Figure it out later.

  Without thought of caution or strategy, he went immediately to the crib and scooped up the bawling child. He backed from her room—Kit in one arm, the weapon ready in the other—to his room, and as he dropped her in a plastic hamper in his closet and closed the door and heaved the dresser in front of it, he realized—

  No yard light.

  No night-lights.

  No light over the stove.

  Just ice glowing in the luminous mist. He proceeded to search his house. Room by room, corner by corner, closet by closet. Finally he backtracked, pausing in Kit's room. Found the musical toy at the foot of her bed. She could have tossed it out, that could have set it off.
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  But he didn't believe that. He heard somebody. He crept out on the back porch on planking slick with ice. Ice was everywhere. Trees dipped in it. Every branch and pine needle was sheathed. His driveway was a transparent sheet.

  Then he saw the power line and the phone line, sagging to the ground under the heavy whiskers of ice. An ice-stricken pine had toppled with them, the snowy crown punched in a basement window.

  Immediately, he went inside, down the basement stairs. Found tiny pools of dirty melt on the steps. Led to the broken window. That's how they got in.