“You want another hole? Or to die from the one you got, maybe a little farther out?”
Bunny ain’t bled much yet and part of me thinks it’s likely she’s got very little blood in her. Or soul. Just a whisper—no more’n a image on the big screen.
Five steps I kick the knife out her hand. Bring the Smith butt to Bunny’s crown and drive through like to snap her neck on the first try. I don’t feel the bones give but she’s light’s out.
Step back to the other demon snatch. Barrel in her neck I shove her toward the hall. Talk low-voiced at her. “You take that feller’s belt and tie his hands good. ’Cause here’s why. When you’re done, I’m gonna put this gun to his head and count to forty. Tell him if he can get his hands free, he lives and I shoot you. Understand? Nod if you understand.”
She nods.
“Oh, and one thing. You say a single word to him while you’re doin’ his hands, I’ll judge you for cheatin’.”
Her eyes wander. Brow draws tight.
“That means I’ll shoot you for cheatin’, too. I’ll shoot you for most anything. All right. Git to it.”
I shove her and she trips on her man’s feet. Lands on him. I toss the belt with my busted arm and keep Smith pointed at the girl ’cause the man don’t give off the hero vibe. Imagine that. Meanwhile Bunny’s gurglin’ and squirmin’. I lean agin the wall and shift a boot to her neck. Grind it a little so the sole is flat and don’t irritate the ankle.
Bambi shakes as she works that belt around her john’s wrists. She jerk the belt and he flinch and wrench his arms, but with her workin’ behind his back he just squirms.
Bunny wiggles under foot. I press more.
Bambi’s done with her granny knots. She falls away from her john and got the legs up missionary showin’ off the goods. Knees get farther apart.
She say, “Why don’t we work something out?”
She move the right hand at her undies but it’s the hooties I notice, and alla sudden I see Chicago Mags. I bet hers was the same as these, if it woulda been my lot to see ’em. Bambi’s writhin’ like a sex serpent and I see Chicago Mags loving on me through the conversation we had, sometimes laughin’ so much I smell her coffee breath. Like the sex was built into everything else we did, and I had her every which way just listening to her talk and soaking up her curves. Mags come to me through the death haze like she walked all night in the woods. Mags come from where I sent the men forward and her face is so full of love I could cry for her and me both right now. For all of us. Mother, Larry, and her other son. For Fred. It’s like all the love in that other place wants to shine right through her and fill me up, but afore it all spill into this world she whoosh away and I see her dead face agin, that godawful smile drippin’ blood.
Some kind of cosmic interference. Static. The shiny happy Mags from beyond look at me and say, “This is not you and this is not a thing you are compelled to do.”
Lower Smith to my side.
“You aren’t a killer,” Mags says.
Her eyes flicker.
I got a boot on one girl’s throat and a 44 Smith N Wesson on the other’s heart. These women is rat fuck evil and any justice in the world at all — any justice at all — they’d be dead.
But Mags look at me with love and I don’t have the wherewithal to hate. All I want’s the love. Church is dead. It was his mind thought up the evil. And Frank Lloyd and his boy is dead. They drove and pull the trigger. They’s dead. I even got the body sellin’ man.
Ain’t that enough killin’ for the day? How much blood these pod jockeys need in one go-round?
But the vision is gone and Mags smile got blood out the edge agin. I see Fred curled in his diesel turbine crate, eyes scabbed and a hole at the top his head drawin’ flies. I see my mother sprawled out reachin’ a busted shotgun already let her down once. I see Mags bloomin’ blood from holes up and down her chest.
And I think of Corazon, lookin’ at me from across Jubal White’s garage, her head slunk low and her eyes steady, like she hides but don’t need to. I think on her wonderin’ what kind of man I am, whether even after all she’d seen of my loyalty, her life so far taught her she’d never see a man she could trust. So she look at me not knowin’.
I hope she saw enough to hope, is all. That one day she’d be free. I hope she saw enough to think the world don’t gotta be shit even if sometimes it look like that’s the general plan.
I hope she saw a man’d love the truth and the right enough to look past what she got ’tween her legs and on her chest.
I hope she saw a man’d kill a woman if truth and right command him to do it.
“All right Bambi. Same deal. Take the belt out your jeans over there and do his feet. Same deal’s afore. You understand?”
She close her legs and sit up. All business, now the sex gambit fail. She crawl to her jeans and draw out the belt. Wrap the feller’s feet.
“All right, back on the couch.”
Smith in the air I let up on Bunny’s throat. Aim at the man.
“Fella, you got ’til I count to forty in my head. You won’t hear me count so you won’t know if I’m a-countin’ quick or slow. When I get to forty, if you’re still in the trailer I’ll put a bullet in your head. Forty seconds — give or take — for you to untie and get out. One… Two…”
He flips. Wiggles.
I credit the man’s effort but they’s no way in hell he’s gettin’ on his feet, let alone free.
Tits thought it was her or him.
I don’t count in my head like I said, but I watch and when he’s flopped about enough I spot his pissy drawers, I say to Bambi on the couch, “You recall a red Mustang?”
“What year?”
“Sixty eight. Had the four twenty-seven.”
“That wasn’t us.”
“Wasn’t you?”
“No. They made us do that.”
“Made her? Or made you?”
“We were both there.”
“How you do it? When?”
“Frank and Abraham…They made us. We followed the girls all day.”
“When you put the C4 on the steering column?”
“They went into a hair salon. It only took a minute.”
“How you do it? Since when’s a woman know shit about cars?”
“I grew up in a garage. My father raced — ”
“Ah, hell. Shut up. Where you put the charge?”
“On the column.”
“Where?”
“Right after the firewall. What, you think a woman can’t turn a wrench?”
“No. I just hoped you bein’ a woman, you’d have better judgment.”
Bunny squirms under foot. The man can’t get free. I got what I want so I stomp her head with my boot heel ’til the crown bust open. Don’t take two more for her brain to shit out on the floor.
“No!” Bambi lurch forward on the couch and I swing Smith at her face.
“Oh God! We didn’t have a choice!”
“Uh-huh. Don’t move.”
Holster Smith and figger here’s as good a place to send a message as any. I been carryin’ a FBI Glock a month. Don’t like it. I fish the law enforcement pistol out my ass holster and bend knees to the floor. Press my hand in blood and wrap palm and fingers on the Glock.
“NO! Oh, please, God, no!”
Walk to her slow.
Man rolls and kicks but he won’t reach a phone ’til long after Baer Creighton’s down the highway. Step ’round him.
“Please don’t kill me,” says he. “I’ll do anything.”
“No!” Bambi screams. Her eyes cross while she watch the tube hole get closer and closer. Fat tears spill out and I can almost taste the salt.
It was stronger in Maggie’s blood.
“If it was only what you did to me at the bar, you know, the trick, I’d let things slide.”
“Please, I’ll do anything—”
“Shut up. Your stupidity breaks my heart so I’m doin’ you a favor. Now when you g
o to heaven, it ain’t a bunch of pillars and clouds, see? You get to live all the good stuff agin, and the best things you did, you’ll do ’em agin. The people you loved in your earthly life, you’ll be with ’em agin. That’s what I told the sister of the girl you murdered in the red Mustang. I told her you get the love from both sides. The love you give and plus you feel it comin’ back, as you feel what you created in the other. Heaven’s just swimmin’ in love, but they’s a catch.”
“What? What catch?”
“All that love is what you made on earth. If you didn’t give much…”
She shed a tear out the right eye.
“Yeah, you see. That’s a pretty nice heaven, ain’t it? You see all the good you did and the love the people felt. But that ain’t where you’re goin’.”
Now she spill a tear out the left.
“There you go. I think you understand. See, in a minute your whole everything’s gonna get nicer’n you deserve — but only for a minute. You’ll pass through the white tunnel and after that, you’ll see your life from the eternal side. Stop cryin’ and listen. This is important. Stop. You good? Okay. Once you’re there you’ll see your life from the sight of the people you wronged, too, not just the people you loved. You’ll see all the hurt you caused and you’ll live all that sufferin’ with ’em. Eventually, you’ll’ve seen your entire life, intimate with every hurt you made.”
She’s afraid but that fear is wholesome as apple pie.
“If you loved in your life that flashback’s gonna stretch eternal, and that’s the stuff of heaven. And if you done evil, you’re gonna suffer mightily, feelin’ all the pain you cause everyone else. That’s the beauty. Any hell you get is what you made for other people.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I expect that depends on whether you was a selfish piece of shit or not. Anyway, soon enough you’ll be right back here, livin’ each moment up to the one you die. And when you come back through the next time, you’ll know what I’m thinkin’ right now.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“I don’t want you to wait. It’s ’cause I’m doin’ you a sincere favor.”
She search my eyes.
“For your sake, I hope the pain destroys you.”
I fire one bullet into her face. Drop Glock.
Leave john on the floor in his shit.
Epilogue 1
Flagstaff.
I lean on the side as the pump fills the tank. Passenger window’s open while me and Joe talk.
“You gimme a scare, Joe.”
I couldn’t leave. I wanted to.
“I couldn’t drive off. I told you I wasn’t leavin’ you agin.”
I didn’t think you meant it.
“When you decide to come back the car?”
When the police came and you were still sitting there waiting for me.
“Yeah. Well I don’t think they can see me anyhow.”
Joe’s lookin’ ’cross the gas station bay.
I recognize that woman. The big one with the blonde.
“How?”
She tried to drown me. She drugged me and tried to drown me.
“You want I should put her down?”
No. Let them be. She has a completely different vibe.
“Looks harmless enough. What about the skinny blonde? You see the tits on that?”
Stinky Joe curl on the seat.
Epilogue 2
Nat’s on the step and Tat’s lookin’ out the window. I let Joe out to do his business while I lean on the grill.
Tat come out.
Cinder wave and go inside.
She come to me and when she’s on the porch her face is flat but each step closer and the muscles start movin’. Cheeks get tight. Eyes narrow. Tears and shudders. Tat wrap me in her arms and press her head agin my heart.
“The people did that to Corazon… they ain’t no more.”
Head still agin me, she nods, and don’t pull away.
“Once you’re ready, how ’bout you and me go murder what people needs it?”
“Which people?”
“They’ll announce ’emselves. They always do.”
“I thought you found a conscience.”
“I did.”
“Don’t you want to go someplace quiet? What about the law?”
I take Tat’s shoulders in hand and ease her back a foot. Eye to eye.
“Tat, no other man’ll do it. I AM the law.”
Two Things…
What’s next? Good question! The Baer Creighton universe currently includes nine novels, with more on the way. Visit the Baer Creighton Universe to see all the books and the best order to read them. Or for the next in the series, click here: Destroyer.
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About the Author
Hello! I appreciate you reading my books—more than you can know. If you’ve read this far, you and I are fellow travelers. I suspect you sense something is not quite right with the world. It’s not as good as it’s supposed to be. We human beings aren’t as good as our ideals. Yet, we prize and want to fight for them.
I do my absolute best to write stories that portray the human situation with brutal transparency, but also I strive to tell stories that are not as bleak as the human condition sometimes seems. There’s no limit to the darkness. Light is rare. But it exists, and I hope when you complete one of my novels, you find your values validated.
I’m grateful you’re out there. Thank you.
Remember, light wins in the end.
The Men I Sent Forward (Baer Creighton Book 6) Page 24
