Bad Signs

by R.J. Ellory

  But the more he thought about it, and he did think about it, the more he realized that the reason this felt so damned good was that she was Clay’s girl. That was just the best shit ever.

  Well, how about that for coincidence and fate and destiny and all the rest of that shit, eh? Clay winds up out here in the same place at the same time, and Digger gets to take his girl. Un-fucking-believable! Just un-motherfucking-believable! Maybe the balance had been set straight already. Yes, maybe that was closer to the truth of things. Now he was set to get what he deserved as opposed to being endlessly overlooked.

  It didn’t matter whether Luckman was dead. In fact, it was probably better if he wasn’t. Where would he be now? Running around like some fool chicken with its head cut off. He didn’t have a damned clue where the girl was. All he’d know was that she was dying in the most horrible way, and that he—Digger—was doing it to her. Ha! Who said there wasn’t such a thing as divine intervention and universal justice?

  He didn’t pass one car on the way, and no one overtook him. He went unseen, and it felt so good to just be in control of everything, and to have some time to fool around with the girl, and to not have to worry that someone was going to come knocking on Morton Randall’s door. Places like this people stayed home after dark.

  He could barely contain his excitement and anticipation.

  He had a hard-on like a fence post.

  Digger drove the pickup around back and parked. He didn’t want it seen from the highway.

  He walked around the front of the truck, the gun in his right hand, and he opened up the passenger door.

  “Get out,” he said.

  She hesitated.

  He stuck the gun in her face, just inches away, and he told her again. “Get the fuck out of the fucking car, you fucking bitch.” He said it slow and precise, like he had all the time in the world, which—as it happened—he did.

  Bailey Redman—more terrified than she believed possible—inched along the seat and came out slowly. One foot on the ground, then the other. She had never seen Elliott Danziger directly. Only Earl Sheridan. She would never forget the face of the man that had killed her father, but his accomplice … This young man’s face was new, unrecognized, but she believed it would perhaps be the last face she ever saw.

  She knew with certainty that tonight she would die. It horrified her. It left her speechless, dry-mouthed, unable to think or feel much of anything but the nightmare that awaited her, but it did possess some small saving grace.

  Whatever happened tonight, whatever he might do to her before he killed her, however long it took and however she might hurt, at the end of it she would find her father. Of that she was sure.

  Digger walked her into the house through the back way. Up the steps, through the screen, opened up the door into the kitchen, and then they were inside.

  He told her to sit at the kitchen table.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “I-I’m n-not telling you,” Bailey replied.

  Digger smiled. Her eyes flashed at him. She was challenging him.

  He put the gun in his left hand and he grabbed her hair. As he hauled her to her feet she summoned every ounce of self-possession she owned to keep herself from screaming in pain. Digger dragged her across the kitchen to the back door once again. He marched her down the steps and across the yard to the outhouse. He tucked the .45 into the waistband of his jeans and opened the door. He tugged the light cord and the place was suddenly illuminated in stark shadow-less brilliance.

  Still holding her hair, Digger pushed her face right up against the dead girl’s.

  “This is Candace,” he said. “Or, as I liked to call her before I stabbed her to death, Candy Ass. Now say hello to pretty Candace, little girl …”

  And with that he twisted his grip on Bailey’s hair.

  Bailey shrieked in agony. She felt like her hair would come loose and her eyes would just burst out of the front of her face.

  “Say hello to pretty Candace, little girl,” Digger repeated, and with her face no more than two or three inches from the gray, cold features of the dead girl before her, Bailey opened her mouth and said, “Hello, C-Candace …”

  “Good. Now say goodbye, Candace.”

  “G-Goodbye, Candace.”

  He hauled Bailey up by her hair again. He tugged the cord, the outhouse was dark once more, and then he walked her to the steps and through into the kitchen. He sat her down again, took the gun from his waistband, and put the muzzle against her nose.

  “Tell me your name,” he said.

  “B-Bailey,” she replied.

  “Bailey what?”

  “Bailey R-Redman.”

  “My name is Elliott, but people call me Digger. You can call me your worst fucking nightmare.”

  Bailey looked up at him, and through tear-filled eyes she watched as he took his jacket off.

  He had the gun in his left hand then, and she knew he was right-handed. Remembered that he was right-handed. His left would be weaker.

  He threw the jacket on the other chair and then he leaned close and pressed the muzzle of the gun between her legs.

  “I’m not going to tell you what’s going to happen tonight because I don’t want to spoil the surprise,” he said. “But you’re here for a party. A special kind of party. Just you and me are invited, but you’re the guest of honor, Bailey Redman. This is a party for you, Bailey Redman, an early Christmas party, a birthday party, a party for no other reason than to have a party. We would have had cake and liquor and all that shit, but you know something … I really couldn’t be fucking bothered. We have the entertainment, you see, and as far as I’m concerned it’s the quality of the entertainment that makes the party. Wouldn’t you agree with that, Bailey Redman?”

  Bailey tried to keep herself from crying. She had felt nothing but shock since he pointed the gun at her through the passenger window of the pickup, that and the intense pain as he dragged her by the hair, and then there was the utter horror of being faced with a dead girl in the outhouse … But now there was something else. There was the memory of Clay. Of where he was, what he was doing, and worse than all of that … if he was dead. This, above and beneath all else, served to bring her to the present, to bring her into focus about what had happened, what was going to happen …

  “I said wouldn’t you agree with that, Bailey Redman?”

  Bailey choked back her fear. “Fuck you, you sick son of a bitch.”

  Digger laughed coarsely. “Fuck me? Fuck me? Somehow I don’t think so.” He leaned down until his face was mere inches from hers. When he spoke she could smell his breath. It smelled like something had crawled down his throat and died right there inside of him.

  “You listen to me now, Bailey Redman. There’s two ways this is going to go. The hard way, or the really hard way. You want it the hard way, believe me. You do not—not in a million years—want it the very hard way. Whether or not you die tonight … whether or not you die right here tonight in this kitchen—is your decision, and the more fun I get the better your chances. You understand me?”

  Bailey didn’t move, didn’t move a muscle.

  He slapped her suddenly, a vicious backhand, and before the pain reached her she found herself on the floor.

  He dragged her up again, the gun in his left hand, his right around her throat, and he sat her down once more.

  “You understand me?” he hissed.

  He held her by the neck and he nodded her head up and down for her.

  “Good,” he said. “I’m so thrilled that we now understand each other.”

  He let her go. She gasped for breath. She held on to the edges of the seat to keep herself from falling to the ground once more.

  “Okay, so first things first, sweetheart … take your clothes off.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  The call to the hotel in Las Cruces came in a handful of minutes after ten. By quarter past Ronald Koenig and Garth Nixon were in the car. Koenig had asked at
the desk for Cassidy’s room number. They had called him from the foyer but there was no response. Nixon had even gone up there to hammer on the door in case Cassidy was already sleeping. Again no response. They left word at the desk that they had gone to Van Horn, a town some hundred and fifty miles along I-10.

  Clarence Luckman had been shot. They knew this much. They left word of that as well. Just so Cassidy would appreciate the speed with which he should depart Las Cruces. Cassidy had wanted to be there at the end, and it appeared the end was in Van Horn.

  Cassidy, having enjoyed a steak in a restaurant on the outskirts of Las Cruces, returned to the hotel at 10:51. He received the note from the night manager at 10:54. By 11:10 he was in the car and had reached the end of the street. He was doing ninety miles an hour by the time he hit the I-10, but he was still a good thirty minutes behind Koenig and Nixon. He wanted to be in Van Horn within an hour and a half. All that mattered now was Clarence Luckman, and—according to the sheriff of Van Horn—he was there. The fact that he had already been shot told Cassidy everything he needed to know.

  At the same time Sam Munro, concerned now that he’d had no word from his daughter or the friend in Monahans, drove back down to the garage and put the lights on throughout the place. He had searched the house for any indication that Candace had left. Nightclothes missing, her cosmetics, other such stuff that she always took with her. All of it was present, at least as best as he could tell. He didn’t have a number to call the friend in Monahans. He knew her first name. Charlene. That was all he had. Charlene what? He didn’t have the faintest clue. He went down to the garage to see if there was anything he might have missed. A few scribbled words on a scrap of paper. A note on one of the pages of the receipt pad. He looked, but he found nothing. He found nothing because there was nothing. Of that he was now sure. This feeling, this sense of unknowing, began to worry him. He decided he would knock on some doors in the vicinity. Okay, it was late, too late really to be bothering folks, but this was Candace. Everyone knew Candace around there. They saw her pretty much every day. But if anyone had seen anything happen to her then they would have called him immediately. He knew nothing had happened to her. It couldn’t have. It was fine. There was an explanation. She was up in Monahans with Charlene and she’d just got too involved with whatever they did to call her dad. Boys, no doubt. Always boy trouble. At the bottom of this there would be a boy, and more than likely a no-good one. That’s what it would be.

  Aware that he was doing nothing but trying to convince himself that everything was okay, Sam Munro still went and knocked on some doors, and it wasn’t until the fourth or fifth door, already getting on for 10:45 that he even spoke to anyone who’d seen her the day before. That person was Dan Caldwell, a retired schoolteacher who owned a Chevy station wagon that was too big for his purposes and forever failing to start.

  “Seen her before Morton came over,” Caldwell told Sam Munro. “Morton Randall, sure. He was over sometime yesterday. Saw Candace before that, and then didn’t see her afterward. Saw the doors closed, that was all. Bay doors were never opened as far as I recall, so I don’t know what she was doing all afternoon.”

  “But you’re sure Morton Randall was here?”

  “Well, I seen his pickup, or one that was exactly the same. I remember seeing it and thinking that he must’ve been over there. He wasn’t there long, and then he was gone. Candace had been sitting out front reading a magazine or something, but after Morton left I never saw her again.”

  The thing about the doors made sense, Munro thought. Candace struggled to open the bay doors by herself, and if she could get away with it she just left them closed. They only needed to be opened when a car was in over the inspection pit. Otherwise all the fixing and whatever was done on the forecourt.

  Munro thanked Caldwell and went on his way. He sat in his car for a while trying to explain things to himself, and then he started the engine and headed out to the highway. Randall’s place was—what?—maybe ten or twelve miles, and though he felt sure the man wouldn’t be able to help him any, it was still something he couldn’t let go of.

  So Sam Munro took off down the same highway as Koenig, Nixon, and Cassidy, believing that his journey out to Morton Randall’s place would be nothing other than a vain attempt to find out where his daughter had gotten to. He drove within the speed limit, unlike the police, and he was out there in a quarter of an hour. The lights were on downstairs, and he sat on the highway for another ten minutes or so until he convinced himself that he couldn’t rest until he’d spoken to Randall. It was late—a handful of minutes shy of eleven thirty—but the lights were on down there, and if Randall was anything like him then he was going to be up for a good while yet.

  Munro started the car again, turned left, and made his way down the long drive toward the house with an odd feeling in the base of his gut.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  “I have to tell you that the federal people are on their way,” Everhardt said, “and whatever difficulty you think you’re in right now … well, son, I gotta tell you that this really is the end of the line for you.”

  Clay Luckman looked back at Everhardt with some indefinable expression. He felt everything and nothing. He believed he had arrived in hell. He lay on the floor of the jail cell, blood leaking from his upper arm, a hole right through his waist, the pain ebbing and flowing in dark, scarlet waves that made it difficult to think of anything but the last time he’d seen Bailey Redman’s face. The terror in her eyes. The utter, indefinable terror.

  “The things you’ve done … well, I can’t even get my hat on. I can’t even begin to comprehend the kind of person you must be to do the things you’ve done—”

  Clay opened his mouth to speak for the fourth or fifth time, and once again Everhardt raised his hand and silenced him.

  “I told you before, and I’ll tell you again. Ain’t no use you tellin’ me a goddamned thing. First and foremost you should not say a word until they bring some sort of public defender down here from the El Paso district attorney’s office, and second because I really don’t want to hear a single word out of your mouth. You are whoever you are, and that is something I will never understand … something I hope I will never understand, and as far as I’m concerned you did the very best thing you could do by showing up here, ’cause I got you now and you ain’t goin’ no place at all and when the federal people get here, which should be about”—Everhardt paused and glanced at his watch—“which should be about an hour or so from now, then they’re going to take you out to wherever they take people like you and put you in a box that you ain’t never gonna see the outside of until they execute you.”

  Everhardt leaned forward, his expression grave.

  “You understand that that’s what’s gonna happen here, son. I gather you must, unless you is just downright crazy or dumber than a dog’s ass. You are gonna fry for this, or they’re gonna hang you or whatever the hell they’re doing these days …”

  “But—”

  Everhardt reached down and put his hand over Clay’s mouth. One hand behind his neck, one over his mouth, and then he leaned forward until their eyes were no more than six inches apart. “Not a word. Not a fucking single goddamned word out of you. You are one almighty sick son of a bitch, and if I had my way we’d go back to the old days, you know? We’d just drag you out the back here and horsewhip you unconscious, and then we’d hang you from the nearest tree and be done with it. We’d take our time doin’ it, you know we would. And we’d bring some beers and we’d get a little gathering together, and we’d kill you the long way round. But the law is the law, and the law stands here. You’re going on up to the big house with the federal people, and from the point you leave here you ain’t my concern anymore.”

  Everhardt released him. He stood up and stepped back. He paused before he opened up the cell door.

  “The girl … Bai—” Clay struggled to get up.

  Everhardt let fly with a backhander. The knuckles of his righ
t hand connected with Clay’s cheekbone and Clay went back down like a stone.

  “Son, you keep your fucking mouth shut, you hear me! Only girl you is ever likely to see is your own mother when she comes to identify your body.”

  Clay possessed insufficient awareness to even register what Everhardt was saying. He lay on his side on the floor, his knees up against his chest, his hands protecting his head, and he knew that whatever had happened here, whatever was happening here, was all the more evidence that the bad star had followed him from Hesperia, from Barstow, perhaps from the dingy apartment where his mother had died and he hadn’t even known it.

  The door opened. The door slammed shut.

  “Now, I’m gonna make a call and get some people down here to sort out this matter once and for all. I ain’t in a hurry, mind, as you’ve probably already guessed. It sure as hell doesn’t pain me none to see you lying there and hurting so bad. Only thing I care about is that you don’t up and die on us before we have a chance to see some kind of justice done here. That’s all that’s going on here, son, just so’s you don’t get the wrong impression and think I give a damn about you.”

  Clay’s awareness of what he was hearing drifted then, and he laid his head down on the cold stone floor, and he heard nothing at all then but the sound of Sheriff Everhardt’s boots as he walked away.

  DAY NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  Several minutes before midnight, in that brief window of time before Friday the 27th became Saturday the 28th, John Cassidy arrived in the small Texan town of Van Horn. He was a good half an hour behind Koenig and Nixon, and as he pulled up outside the sheriff’s office he was directed to the other side of the building by a young uniformed officer.

  Getting out of the car he was asked for some form of ID, and when he told the officer his name, that he was here with Koenig and Nixon, the young officer shook his head and looked away down the road.