Bad Signs

by R.J. Ellory

  Back in the house he gathered up his money, his jacket, a couple more knives from the kitchen, which he dropped in the bag in the hallway, and he was all set to go.

  That’s when the lights came on again. Out front. Right out there in the front yard. And it was like daylight through the windows, and he didn’t understand what the goddamned hell was going on … It was like a fucking spaceship had landed outside of Morton Randall’s house, and then he heard a voice, and it was loud, and it cut through everything inside his head, and he knew the rules of the game had just been changed.

  “You! You inside! We have you surrounded back and front. There is nowhere for you to go! Come on out here, son … drop whatever weapons you have and get on out here with your hands on your head!”

  “Fuck!” Digger said. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  It was the girl. He would have to use the girl as a hostage, somehow hold her upright, make them believe she was still alive. Now there was no other way. Earl had made it work, and now he could too. The bitch upstairs was his ticket out of the shit.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  The drive over to Randall’s place had been at breakneck speed. A convoy of three cars, which rapidly became five, six, then seven, as Nixon and Koenig, Cassidy, Summers, another sheriff’s department vehicle, and two more civic volunteers were called in to make the ten-mile run out there.

  Cassidy knew that Bailey Jacobs was dead. He knew it in his heart. He tried to convince himself that this was not the case, that the irony that would place Bailey Jacobs within the grasp of Elliott Danziger could not have happened. No God could be that cruel. But he also knew that this was what had happened, as if Clarence Luckman and Bailey Jacobs had somehow attracted Danziger back to them. As if some strange dark star had overshadowed them all the way from Hesperia, and now it had finally caught them.

  He wanted to speak to Alice. He wanted to tell her that he had done everything he could. He wanted to hold her, to shed his tears, to hear her tell him that she understood … but he knew that there would always be that edge in her tone, that wonder, that unspoken question …

  Did you, John? Did you do everything you could to save her?

  “Yes, I did,” he said out loud. “Yes, I did. I did everything I could,” and he pressed his foot down on the accelerator and urged the car forward to Morton Randall’s house down along the highway.

  Nixon and Koenig were up front, Cassidy behind them, Summers behind him, and the other vehicles in the convoy following close on their tail.

  And then Koenig’s car was slowing, he was indicating left, and they were turning, and in the distance Cassidy could see the lights of Randall’s house, seemingly the only house for miles … and he knew that it was here, here in the middle of nowhere, that the nightmare was going to end. There was relief, and there was fear, and there was grief, and there was a slow-burn sense of disillusionment as he appreciated all that had happened, all that could have been done but was not. Just one more hour, one more day, one more slim clue, and Bailey Jacobs might have made it.

  They came to a stop, each of them lining up in a semicircle around the front of the house, Koenig out of his car now, directing the unit car and the two volunteers around to cover the back of the building. Their collective headlights illuminated the scene like daylight, but it was a stark and cold illumination, almost monochrome, and Cassidy knew that this image—Morton Randall’s lonely house off of the I-10—would now be burned in his mind forever. The nights he could not sleep—when the nightmares came, as he knew they would come—this was the scene that would play over in his mind again and again and again.

  The lonely house in the middle of nowhere. The dead girl. The sense of guilt

  Nixon had a bullhorn then, and he was speaking into it, his voice commanding and direct.

  But Cassidy just wanted to push them all aside and get in there. He wanted to see her. He wanted to see what Elliott Danziger had done to her. He wanted to see the dead body of Bailey Jacobs and start dealing with his pain.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Digger was at the top of the stairs. He was mad. Mad enough to burst.

  “Where the fuck are you?” he screamed. “Hey! You ain’t gonna get away from me, you bitch!”

  He went back to the bedroom. There was the bed, there was the mattress, there was the extraordinary amount of blood on the sheets … and there was no girl!

  He did a double-take. He had even rubbed his eyes like he was in a cartoon and could not believe what he was seeing. Where the fuck was she? How the fuck had she moved? She was dead! She was fucking dead! He saw the blood. He heard the gun. He had pulled the trigger himself! Goddamn motherfucker piece of shit son of a bitch cocksucking bitch fuck shit fuck! What the damn hell was happening?

  It wasn’t another room. He hadn’t moved her. There was the blood. There was the bed where he’d put her before he picked up the pillow. There was the damned pillow, right there on the floor with a bullet hole burned right through it.

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  Digger gripped the .45 even harder.

  The bathroom! She was hiding in the bathroom!

  He backed up a step, turned silently, and on the balls of his feet he tiptoed carefully to the door. It was ajar no more than six inches, and with his fingertips he edged it open, hoping it would make no sound. The bath. The shower curtain. She was in the fucking bath hiding behind the fucking shower curtain!

  Digger smiled. He tightened his hold on the gun. He could edge up against the faucet end of the bath, and with his left hand he could whip the curtain back and there she would be. Bitch! The fucking bitch was gonna die this fucking time, no fucking doubt about it! But first she would get him out of here. This was better; maybe luck was on his side. Alive, she was a far better hostage.

  He heard the bullhorn outside again. He ignored it. He needed the girl. He needed to take her out of there alive or otherwise—preferably bleeding and kicking and screaming at the top of her lungs, and they would give him a car, and they would let him drive the fuck on out of here, and this would be the last time Texas or anyone in this shithole would see him. He was gone, man. Gone like the wind!

  He was beside the bath then, and he reached out slowly, carefully, tentatively, and he gripped the shower curtain.

  One swift tug and it would disappear, and there she would be—in all her glory—and he would have his one-way fare all paid up and ready to go.

  One-two-three, and he yanked it back, and he was looking at the vaguely yellow-stained porcelain of Morton Randall’s bathtub … and no girl!

  “Fuck!” he said out loud.

  The bullhorn voice started up again.

  “Motherfuckers!” he said. That was it. Enough was enough! He was going to go out there to the front of the house, and he was going to shoot those sons of bitches in the yard. Shoot them down like dogs, just the way they had Earl Sheridan. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

  He turned, the gun in his hand, and he looked up.

  And she was there.

  Right there in front of him.

  He opened his mouth. He smiled.

  She had been right behind the door all along.

  And Elliott Danziger kept on smiling—imagining the fast ride to Mexico, the slow cruise across the border, the cerveza, the pretty girls, the …

  And he kept on smiling until Bailey Redman showed him the scissors clenched in her fist, and then took those scissors and plunged them right into his eye.

  “Fuck you!” she said defiantly.

  He stared back at her with his one good eye, and he was still smiling when his finger jerked involuntarily, and it kept on jerking until that .45 was all emptied out …

  And it was the sound of those gunshots that prompted Koenig to drop the bullhorn. He went at a run, far faster than a man of his size could be expected to run, and he went up the steps and through the front door of Morton Randall’s lonely house like an unbroken horse.

  The door came off its hinges, and Nix
on, Cassidy, all of them went after him as fast as their legs could carry them.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  It took the surgeons at the El Paso General Hospital an hour and a quarter to get the .45-caliber bullet out of Bailey Redman’s thigh. As Digger had fired, as he’d leaned toward Bailey, the pillow in his left hand, the .45 in his right … as he’d aimed for her chest and pulled that trigger, she had instinctively raised her left leg to kick him. The bullet had stopped dead in her bone.

  While she underwent the operation, Detective John Cassidy sat beside a bed in a room three doors down. In that bed was an unconscious Clarence Luckman, himself having undergone an operation to repair the flesh wound in his right upper arm, the through-and-through that punctured the side of his stomach. Even as he slept, and despite being given sufficient sedatives to floor a horse, he was nevertheless handcuffed to the bed frame.

  Nixon and Koenig had found Morton Randall. They had found Candace Munro. Sam Munro was being attended to. They had taken the knife out of his shoulder, stitched him up, and then they’d had to tell him his daughter was dead. They’d sedated him too, and now he slept—perhaps believing, as Cassidy would have—that it was all a nightmare. The sense of relief when he woke would last only so long as the unawareness of his location. Then there would be a moment of recognition, of orientation, and it would all come flooding back. The nightmare, at least for Sam Munro, was real. As real as it had been for all of them—the Eckharts, for Laurette Tannahill, for Marlon Juneau, his head blown apart at the side of the highway for no other reason than he was there … The very same reason for all of them.

  And those gunshots. The ones they had heard in the house. They had gone through the floor—one after the other after the other—as Elliott Danziger spasmodically reacted to the collapse of his nervous system. Those scissors that Bailey held, a good six-inch blade on them, had gone directly through his eye and into the frontal lobe of his brain. Elliott Danziger was dead before he hit the ground, though perhaps not so quickly as to miss the grim smile on Bailey’s face as he fell to his knees. That’s what Cassidy wanted to believe. That’s what he told himself had happened. And that’s what he would tell Alice.

  Later, when Clarence Luckman came round, Cassidy told him where the girl was, and of all that had taken place. He would remain handcuffed, just for the meantime, just while they got everything straight. Clarence would be there for a while, and no, he would not be able to see the girl. Not yet. She was going to be fine, as he was, but there was a procedure and a protocol to follow, and follow it they would.

  “Bailey Redman,” was his reply. He had looked at Cassidy with those wide and terrified eyes, and said, “Her name isn’t Jacobs. Her name is Bailey Redman.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  She walks with a limp. There is a strong possibility she always will. It does not tire her, nor does it seem to bother her, and the scarring has healed well and it is like the memory of another life.

  She is sixteen years old, and she lives in Tucson City. She lives with John and Alice Cassidy and she looks after their baby. The baby’s name is Evan, and he is a handsome boy, and he has dark hair like his father and hazel eyes like his mother, and Bailey believes that he will grow up and break as many hearts as there are to break. This is what she believes, and her belief is strong.

  She also believes that there is a dark star for her, and one for Clay Luckman, and though the dark stars have not left them behind, nor have they moved forward, they have somehow counteracted one another. If that was not the case, then how come they both survived? This she believes too, and her belief is equally strong.

  Some time after the nightmares began to diminish Cassidy told her about Earl Sheridan and Elliott Danziger, of all the things they did, the people that they were, and that her father—the shoe salesman from Scottsdale—was not the only one to die. Bailey understood then that there was a circle, and that the circle was present in all things, and that it was strange kind of justice that had delivered her into the hands of Elliott Danziger. She had been there to exact retribution for her father. Bailey wondered about the others who had lost their loved ones, and where they would find their justice. Perhaps she had delivered it for them. Perhaps she had channeled all of it. Perhaps she had been chosen to bring it all to an end.

  She spoke about this with Clay, and Clay listened and he did not try to explain. He just listened, and he heard her, and that was enough.

  They do not talk about it now, though sometimes when he holds her, when there is nothing but inches of muscles and skin and bone and blood separating their hearts, she feels that the bad sign still worries him and she knows better than to speak of it. To grant it voice is to grant it strength, and this she will not do. For now, perhaps forever, it will remain unvoiced, and in this way it will grow weaker and weaker with time, and soon it will disappear altogether and worry him no more.

  And he—Clay Luckman—living no more than four or five blocks away, walks over to collect her, and they go out, and they spend time together, and they speak of the future that they will have. That they too will have a child like Evan Cassidy, and he will break as many hearts as there are to break. And one day—perhaps—they will go out to Eldorado, Texas, to see if there is anything there for them. Whatever it might be, it will wait until they are ready.

  It took weeks, but people came forward. Clark Regan. Betty Calthorpe, the waitress in Las Cruces who found it strange that a couple of kids would leave her a dollar as a tip. Martin Dove, the water pump engineer who picked them up on the I-10 and set them down in El Paso. Emanuel Smith from Sierra Blanca. Dennis Hagen, the last ride they took, the ride that took them into Van Horn that night. They even found George Buchanan, the short-order cook from the drive-in. Ronald Koenig and Garth Nixon found them all, and they took their statements, and those statements put Clarence Luckman in different places and at different times, and thus they understood how he could not have been responsible for the killings that had taken place. And they tried to understand why Clarence Luckman, Bailey Redman, and Elliott Danziger had all made their way along the same highway, and why they all arrived in Van Horn that night. But there was no explanation, at least none they could rationalize.

  “Maybe my brother had the darkest star of all,” Clay told Bailey one night. “Or maybe we were always gonna be drawn back together. I don’t know. Perhaps I don’t want to know. He died in Van Horn, and we were there when it happened, that’s all.”

  And then he never spoke of it again.

  “Doesn’t matter where you are in the world, you’re always looking at the same sky,” she tells him.

  And he says, “The same stars too.”

  “And the sky and the stars can see you right back.”

  “They can for sure.”

  “Love you, Clay Luckman.”

  “Love you right back, Bailey Redman.”

  And then he holds her, and she holds him, and the circle is evident, and it closes tight around them, and somewhere in the world it is always nighttime, and the stars never sleep.

  R.J. ELLORY is the author of twelve novels, including the bestselling A Quiet Belief in Angels, which was The Strand Magazine’s Thriller of the Year, shortlisted for the Barry Award, and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He is also the author of Ghostheart, City of Lies, Candlemoth, A Quiet Vendetta, The Anniversary Man, A Simple Act of Violence, and the e-book original series Three Days in Chicagoland.

  RJELLORY.COM

  Printed in the United States Copyright © 2016 The Overlook Press

  Jacket photographs © GettyImages / iStock

  Author photograph © Les Pictographistes

  THE OVERLOOK PRESS

  NEW YORK, NY

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