Denton - 03 - Way Past Dead

by Steven Womack

  “Dear Mac,” it began.

  I’ve given it a lot of thought and decided that we’ve gone about as far as we can go together. I hate to do it like this, but I really couldn’t handle telling you to your face. I also thought I’d send this to your home so you could handle telling the people in the office.

  I’ve been negotiating with another manager who I feel can advance my career a lot farther, a lot faster. I’m sorry, but like our contract says, I’m giving you my thirty-day notice. Thirty days from your receipt of this letter, I will no longer be a client of Mac Ford Associates, Inc. If there’s any papers to sign, please send them to me. I’m grateful to you and wish you the best of luck in the future.

  Sincerely,

  Rebecca

  I eased back in Mac Ford’s office chair, the springs squeaking as wearily as I felt.

  “That’s it,” I said.

  Alvy’d been standing behind me, reading the letter over my shoulder.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” she said. Only there was an energetic edge to her voice, as if the thrill of discovery outweighed the terrible thing we’d discovered.

  Ford McKenna Ford had murdered Rebecca Gibson. He’d done it quickly and, in terms of his purposes, neatly. Two million dollars was too much money to kiss goodbye because some goddamn ignorant west Tennessee cotton-field crooner got sucked in by a different snake-oil salesman. This might not be enough to convict Ford, but it would sure get Slim out of the crosshairs.

  The only question was what to do with it. If the police came in here and found this without a search warrant, the evidence would be tainted, inadmissible. But if an employee of MFA, Inc., blew the whistle and took it to them, would it hold up in a court of law?

  I was willing to take my chances that it would.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “We’ve got one more stop to make.”

  I stood up and dropped the letter back into the file, then tucked the file under my arm.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Just come on,” I said. “This is some serious shit here, Alvy. We’re going to the police.”

  “Oh, no, we’re not,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “No!”

  I stepped to the door of the office and turned to her one last time. “I’m not going to argue with you. Let’s go.”

  Then I turned and stepped through the door into Alvy’s office.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. Maybe it was the fatigue and stress, but this was becoming my favorite expression.

  Alvy came up behind me. She grabbed my arm without saying a word and squeezed so hard it would have hurt like hell if I’d bothered to notice.

  Mac Ford was standing in the middle of Alvy’s office. In his right hand, he held what I can only describe as a very large, chrome-plated pistol.

  “Let me just ask one question,” I said. “Why didn’t you come in this morning and get rid of this file? You’d have saved us both a lot of trouble.”

  Mac Ford stood there for a moment, his hand steady but his eyes clouded and thick, unfocused. It took me a few seconds to figure it out, but I think he was blasted out of his gourd. When he spoke, I knew it.

  “ ’Cause,” he said, his voice low, with just the edge of a slur in his words, “she’d still know. Wouldn’t have done any good …”

  He motioned toward me, I thought, but then I realized he was indicating Alvy. She still had a grip on my arm. I felt a shove as she pushed me out of the way and walked past.

  “Excuse me, asshole,” she said in passing.

  She crossed the room, stood next to Ford, and crossed her arms with a nasty smile on her face. Smug little bitch, I thought. My headache, which had never really gone away, bounced back with a surge of pressure. I brought my hands up and massaged my temples.

  “You told him I was here, Alvy?” I asked, shaking my head. “I don’t believe this.”

  “Believe it,” she said. “Actually, Harry, I knew about the insurance policy when it was taken out. And I found Rebecca’s letter two days ago. I have my own copy. So you see, Mac and I are partners. I had to let my partner know you were onto him, and that you’d be here today.”

  Mac held the gun on me and said nothing.

  “What for? I mean, what’s this going to get you?”

  She took a step toward me, arms still crossed. She rolled her lower lip out again and did her best Winona Ryder. “Half of two million dollars, smart-ass.”

  Alvy stood to Mac Ford’s left, facing me. She uncrossed her arms, then put her right arm across Mac’s shoulders and laid her head on his shoulders. “Right, partner?” she cooed.

  I shook my head again. In my shirt pocket, the stun gun sat points down and useless. I could rush him, but there’s nothing more dangerous and unpredictable than a man with a gun who happens to be in the middle of a good buzz.

  No, I thought, I am well and truly pronged.…

  “You guys mind if I sit down?” I asked. “I’ve had a lousy couple of days and my head’s killing me.”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I pulled out Alvy’s desk chair, sat down, and plopped the file on her desk.

  “Keep your hands in sight,” she ordered, then turned to Mac. “I don’t think he’s carrying, but he has got a stun gun.”

  “Get it,” Mac ordered, motioning with the pistol.

  She stepped over and leaned across the desk, then reached inside my pocket and pulled the stun gun out.

  “You don’t really think this is going to work, do you?” I whispered.

  “Oh, shut up,” she said. Then she slapped me, open-handed and hard. There was a snap inside my head, and I felt a burning on my cheeks. I fought the urge to jump up and choke her. She backed off quickly. I carefully rubbed the sting on my left cheek.

  Goddamn Generation Xers. Never trust anyone under thirty.

  Alvy had my stun gun, and they both had me. It was so bloody crazy, I almost wanted to laugh. I was exhausted, at the absolute end of my tether, and I think on some level I wasn’t really in touch with just how bad this really was.

  I looked up at Mac. “What are you going to do?”

  “The first thing we’re going to do is take a drive, say somewhere out in Rutherford County. Way out in the country. You ever drive a Rolls?”

  “Oh,” I said, “you mean it hasn’t been repo’d yet?”

  His hand tightened on the pistol, and he took a step toward me. “You’re a smart little son of a bitch, you know that?”

  I held out my hand. “I apologize,” I said wearily. “You’re right, I have a terrible attitude. It’s hard to have a good one when—”

  I stopped midsentence. Downstairs, there was the creak of a door being opened.

  “Who’s that?” Alvy said, her voice tightening.

  “I don’t know,” Mac said.

  “Well, what are we gonna do?”

  “Don’t panic,” he said. “Here, hand me his stun gun.”

  She handed over the hunk of black plastic. Great, I thought. It’s getting deeper by the nanosecond.

  “Close that door,” he ordered.

  Alvy stepped over and eased the door shut. “What now?”

  “Just stand here and be quiet.” Mac Ford’s voice had lost its slur. Had adrenaline driven the other chemicals in his body into seclusion?

  I sat at Alvy’s desk as the two of them stood stock-still, the gun pointed directly at me. If I jumped him now, he might not shoot. Then again, if I’m wrong, it’s not going to do me any good to get shot even if it does bring help. I’d never been shot before; I once interviewed a cop who said it doesn’t usually hurt much at first. Just a stinging, burning sensation. It’s later, after the shock’s over, that you think the pain’s going to kill you.

  Great.

  The footsteps grew louder in volume, up the stairs now, left at the head of the stairs, then down the hall toward us. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and I was beginning to develop a touch of tinnitus.

  The s
teps stopped in front of the door. Mac Ford lowered his right hand and tucked the pistol out of sight behind his leg. Alvy’s hands were knotted into fists and held stiffly at her side. The doorknob turned. I sucked in a deep breath and locked it in. I was trying to come up with a script, but all I could think of was “Help!”

  The door moved. Alvy backed off a step.

  Faye Morgan stepped in.

  Oh, hell, I thought, so it ain’t the cavalry.

  “What are you doing here?” Mac asked, bringing the gun up.

  Alvy shook her head from side to side, disgusted. “Faye, you scared the pee out of us.”

  “I told you not to come,” Mac said. “I’ll take care of this.”

  Faye had on a pair of pleated khaki pants and a military-style shirt with epaulets. A large knitted bag hung from her right shoulder. Her permed red hair was full, bright. She was gorgeous, and what a hell of a thing for me to notice given the circumstances. I stared down at the floor, deflated.

  “Mac, I had to,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

  His jaw tightened. “I’ve got to take care of these two!”

  My head snapped up. These two?

  Alvy noticed it, too, and I saw a look on her face that was like a curtain dropping. Suddenly, what I had figured all along dawned on her.

  “Maybe I’m naive,” I said to Alvy, “but you aren’t stupid enough to think he’d actually give you a million dollars, are you?”

  The curtain-dropping look turned into terror.

  “Okay,” I said offhandedly, “so you are that stupid.”

  She turned to Ford. “Mac?” she said, pleading. “We had a deal, an arrangement. Right?”

  Mac Ford rolled his eyes. “Get over there and stand against that wall, you little twit.”

  She drew herself up straight. “What about my copy of the letter?”

  “I’m tired of fooling with you, Alvy. Screw your copy of the letter. It won’t do you a bit of good after—”

  Mac didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  “Oh, no,” she squealed.

  “What’s going on here?” Faye demanded. Alvy slowly backed up, her eyes open their widest, her hands crossed in front of her open mouth. Textbook terror, shock, disbelief, all interwoven on her face.

  “Well,” I said brightly, “let’s review the day’s events. First, I blackmailed Alvy into helping me get evidence that Mac Ford is a murderer. Alvy then sold me out in order to successfully complete her plan to blackmail Mac into giving her half of the two-million-dollar insurance settlement. Then Mac betrays her and is going to kill us both.

  “Now tell me, Faye,” I said, turning to her. “Just who did you fuck in this little drama?”

  Mac Ford took a step toward me and pointed the pistol, as best I could tell, right at my forehead.

  “For a guy that’s about to take a record-breaking dirt nap, you sure are awful goddamn funny.”

  “I’m sorry, Mac. It’s that bad-attitude thing again. I’m so tired and stressed-out that my mouth is writing checks my ass can’t cash. But I think you’re making a big mistake here, buddy.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Look, let’s start with the fact that I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill Rebecca Gibson. At least, that’s what I’d say if I was your defense lawyer. You know, ‘That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.…’ The bitch betrayed you, was going to cost you a fortune after you’d risked everything to put her name up in lights. So you went over to talk to her, to try to reason with her, to beg her to come back into the fold. She went to work on you just like she did everybody else. She got abusive, maybe even took a swing at you. You got in a fight, and in the heat and passion of the moment, she winds up dead. Worst-case scenario, you cop to involuntary manslaughter. You get five-to-ten, but let’s face reality here. With prison overcrowding and the fact that despite your scruffy appearance, you’re basically a middle-class professional with a lot of good contacts, you’ll do maybe eighteen months in a minimum-security facility before you’re paroled.”

  “And lose everything,” he said. “The agency, the career, the two million dollars.”

  “Big deal,” I said. “What are you, thirty-eight, forty? Another ten years, nobody’ll remember this and you’ll be back on top. On the other hand …”

  All three of them stared at me. “Yeah?” Mac said.

  “On the other hand, you drive us out to Rutherford County and bury us in some farmer’s field, it’s premeditated murder. That’s capital, pal. They’ve got Ol’ Sparky working out at Riverbend again. How’d you like to spend the next decade on death row, then get plugged in for your last ride?”

  “That’s if I get caught,” he said.

  I waved my hand. “C’mon, you’ll get caught. Plus, you’ve got somebody here who knows you did it.” I pointed at Faye. “You guys are tight as a duck’s ass now, but who can say what’s going to happen a few years down the road? She’ll always know you committed three murders, and you’ll always know she knows.”

  Faye and Mac looked at each other. Behind me, Alvy slumped down against the wall and slid all the way to the floor. I wondered if she’d passed out and hurt herself, then realized I didn’t give a damn.

  “Don’t listen to him, babe,” Mac said. “He’s full of shit.”

  “Mac,” Faye said slowly, “I think he’s right.”

  “No!” Mac screamed, the rage coming to the surface now. “I won’t give it up!”

  “And to complicate matters even further, Mac, I left written instructions with friends telling them everything I intended to do today and telling them what to do if anything happened to me.…”

  That wasn’t quite the truth, but it would do for now. I just hoped he bought it. I stood up slowly from behind the desk, my hands palm outward in front of me.

  “You ask me, dude,” I said, “it’s all over.”

  He moved the gun a little closer to me. “Nobody asked you.”

  “Mac, honey,” Faye said, “he’s right. It’s not worth it.”

  “It is worth it!”

  “If they take you away forever, it’s not! I’ll wait for you. It’s a chance for you to relax for a while, get out of this rat race. You’re killing yourself. Look at you.”

  “Shut up, Faye!” he screamed. His face was red now, his jaw shaking as he spoke.

  I kept trying to come up with something clever to say to him, but the well had finally run dry. I’d said all I could, and unless I got the chance to jump him like in the movies, then it really was over. And although I’d never tried it, I had a feeling that movie shit wasn’t going to work.

  Behind me, Alvy groaned. I looked down at her. She was huddled in a ball, her head buried between her knees.

  “Let’s go,” Mac ordered, waving the pistol. “Everybody out!”

  “To the car, right?” I asked.

  “That’s right, smart guy. To the car.”

  I crossed my arms and shook my head. “No,” I said, with a voice inside my head wondering where the hell that came from.

  He looked at me like I’d just spoken Farsi. “What do you mean, ‘No’?”

  “Tell me, Mac. What part of no don’t you understand? I’m not going with you. I will not cooperate in my own death. If you want to kill me, do it right here in this room. But I promise you, I’m going to flop around like a largemouth bass and make an enormous mess for the forensics lab to go over.”

  “You’re crazy,” Mac Ford said.

  “Nevertheless …” I leaned my hip against the top of Alvy’s desk and tried to relax. I was too tired to deal with this anymore.

  “Okay, we’ll do it here. My office is soundproofed.”

  “Has it been bloodstain-proofed?” There went that mouth of mine again.

  “Move!” he screamed again, waving the pistol.

  “Mac, please,” Faye Morgan said. “Let’s stop this.”

  Alvy groaned again, loudly. “Alvy, get up,” Ford said.

  “Stop it,” Faye s
aid, a little more sternly this time. I closed my eyes, exhausted, lethargic, not giving a big rat’s ass anymore. “Get up!” he yelled.

  “Mac,” Faye said, “I can’t let you do this.”

  “You can’t stop—” Then Mac Ford’s voice cut off like the plug had been pulled. I opened my eyes.

  Faye Morgan had a pistol of her own now, what looked to me like one of those small, lightweight “ladies’ guns” that are getting so popular with the paranoid cowgirl set.

  “What the hell are you doing, Faye?” Ford said, like he’d just caught her driving with the parking brake on again.

  “Put the gun down, Mac. It’s over.”

  “The hell it is. You put the gun down.”

  “I’m doing this to protect you from yourself, honey. I love you. I won’t watch you throw your whole life away.”

  “Don’t you see? I’m doing this for us. I’m closing the agency down. The two mil will get us off somewhere safe forever. We can retire, blow this shit off.”

  “It won’t work. It’s too late for that.”

  My eyes flicked back and forth between them like a tennis match. I decided that for once, I’d keep my mouth shut.

  “Faye, you’re starting to piss me off real bad.” Then he turned to me. “Don’t pay any attention to her,” he instructed. “Get your ass down to that parking lot right now.”

  I stared at him without speaking, and, more importantly, without moving.

  “Damn you,” he growled. “Move. This is the last time I’m gonna tell you.”

  I set my jaw, wondering what it would feel like. Would I be able to stand it? Would it be over quick? I only hoped it wouldn’t hurt too bad, then I thought of Marsha and the impending Enochian Apocalypse. I figured what the hell, maybe we’re going to see each other sooner than I expected.

  Mac Ford’s eyes lit up. “Damn you!” He raised the pistol. I closed my eyes.

  It was only a pop, really, not like the explosion I’d always imagined.

  Behind me, Alvy Barnes screamed, then started a continuous wailing. My gut clenched for a split second. My brain sent runners all over my body, collecting damage reports.