by Kyle Mills
He looked into her face and saw horror, guilt, and betrayal there. For a moment he was enraged. That the church would stoop to something like this. That Carrie would believe it. But then he remembered Jennifer’s uncle. David Passal had been run out of Oregon for similar unsubstantiated charges. And Beamon hadn’t for a moment questioned his guilt, only his motivation and ability to get at Jennifer.
What was it that Passal had said when Beamon had last seen him alive? Something about there being a plot of land down the hill—that he’d save it for him.
Beamon closed his eyes to block out Carrie’s face and the card that seemed to be burning in his hand. Passal had probably been a good guy. More than likely, he’d tried to help out his brother and sister-in-law, and for that he’d been condemned to dying alone in the bitter cold of the Utah mountains.
Beamon opened his eyes again, realizing there was nothing left to be said. He slipped the card into his pocket and turned away without looking up. “Good-bye, Carrie.” He walked slowly out onto the snow-covered walk and across the courtyard. Halfway to the parking area, he finally heard Carrie’s door push shut. A moment later, the laughing started.
Beamon stopped and watched Robert Andrews lean over the rail outside his second-floor condo for a moment and then walk inside his unit, still laughing. The small gap in the drapes, there since Andrews had moved in, disappeared. A clear message that the church no longer saw him as a threat.
Beamon felt the anger build in him until it was at the edge of his control. He’d spent the last month screwing around, treating this like any other kidnapping case. And that had kept him from seeing the big picture—from believing that the church could actually mount an effective attack on him. He’d concentrated everything on offense, ignoring defense. And now Carrie, his job, his reputation were all gone—probably never to be recovered. He had no family to stand behind him and most of his friends would run hard and fast at this kind of trouble. They had their own lives and careers to worry about.
Beamon jumped over a small hedge and ran up the steps toward Andrews’s apartment, taking them two at a time. When he burst through the man’s front door, he was sitting calmly on his sofa. Waiting.
“What a surprise,” Andrews said, not rising from his position on the couch.
Beamon yanked his pistol from its holster and aimed it at the man’s face. He could feel the blood throbbing from his heart to his head to his gun hand.
“Oh, my!” Andrew said, mocking Beamon by throwing his hands up in a cartoonish display of terror. “A desperate man with a gun.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Beamon screamed, rushing forward and stopping with the barrel of the pistol only a few inches from the man’s nose. In his mind, he saw Andrews walking up to Carrie’s door and handing her that business card. He could see the expression on her face as she went back inside her home, knelt down, and looked into the eyes of her daughter.
“What is it you want exactly?” Andrews said, casually lowering his hands. Beamon followed their progress with his eyes, focusing on the band around the man’s wrist. It was made of black iron, probably three-quarters of an inch wide and a quarter of an inch thick. A deep white scar had been carved into the man’s skin beneath the heavy bracelet. A souvenir from the torch that had been used to weld it in place.
Andrews moved his arm to better display the symbol of his devotion. “Well? What do you want?”
“I want to cut your heart out with a fucking spoon,” Beamon said through clenched teeth. “That’s what I want.”
Andrews rolled his eyes. “I’d heard that you were given to fits of melodrama. Now why don’t you run on home before you get yourself in any more trouble.”
Beamon pushed the gun closer until it was almost brushing the skin of the man’s forehead. “Get Sara Renslier on the phone. Now!”
Andrews ran his tongue slowly over the front of his teeth. “I’m not sure why she’d want to talk to you.”
Beamon flicked his wrist and caught Andrews in the mouth with the barrel of his pistol. The blow split the man’s lower lip and at the sight of the blood, Beamon’s control slipped a little farther away from him. He grabbed the handset of the phone from the table next to the sofa and slammed it into the side of the man’s head. “Do it now!”
Andrews’s mouth tightened into a thin slit, increasing the flow of blood from his lip. He began to rise, but when Beamon cocked the hammer on his pistol back, he sank back into the cushions and sat motionless.
“You better start dialing that phone, boy.”
Andrews thought about it for a few seconds and then picked up the handset and began punching angrily at the buttons.
“Ms. Renslier? This is Robert Andrews.” Pause. “He’s standing right here pointing a gun at me …” He looked directly into Beamon’s eyes. “No, I’m in no danger. I don’t think he can do much harm to anyone anymore.”
Beamon snatched the phone from Andrews’s hand and raised it to his ear. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Silence.
“Answer me!”
“I’m not sure I understand your question, Mr. Beamon,” Sara Renslier said, speaking slowly and clipping her words as though Beamon was a child who had difficulty understanding adult speech.
“I’m not through with you, Sara. Do a little research. I always get who I’m after.”
“Oh, yes. Special Agent Beamon was impressive. But you’re not Special Agent Beamon anymore, are you? You’re just a drunk, out-of-work pedophile.”
“Fuck you!”
He couldn’t tell if the mechanical edge to the laughter coming over the phone was the result of the line or the woman. Beamon suddenly realized that she was enjoying this immensely.
He let the phone drop a few inches and looked around him. At Andrews sitting on the couch, at the sparsely furnished condominium that was a mirror reflection of his own. The pounding in his head was starting to subside, leaving him feeling disoriented—like he’d just woken up from an intense dream.
What the hell was he doing? Running up there all rage and no reason. Throwing around a bunch of threats that everyone knew had no teeth. He was looking like a complete idiot, even to himself.
“Do you have anything of interest to say Mr. Beamon?” he heard Sara say. “I’m rather busy.”
The pathetic thing was, he really didn’t. Suddenly he just wanted to be out of there.
“Your God must be very proud, Sara—” He almost finished the sentence with, “plotting the death of Kneiss’s granddaughter so soon after his death,” but he realized that it would have been his bruised ego talking. Tipping his hand like that would be stupid. There might still be time to do something. That is, if he could manage to pull his head out of his ass.
“Did you ever consider, Mr. Beamon, that if you had accepted God and followed His path, you wouldn’t have been so easy to break?”
Beamon looked up at Andrews, who was still sitting calmly on the couch, and holstered his gun. “Oh, I’m not broken yet. I’m just really bent out of shape.”
The liquor store was nearly deserted when Beamon walked in. He went straight to the back, picked up a half-gallon of bourbon, and returned to the counter.
“Better throw in a carton of Marlboros, too. I’m having a really bad day.”
The girl smiled and grabbed a carton off the wall behind her.
“Put it on my account. The name’s Mark Beamon.”
At the mention of his name, she started to look a little nervous.
Beamon rolled his eyes and sighed. What now? Had the church bought the fucking liquor store and cut off his credit? He figured they’d want him drunk.
“Could you hold on a second?” she said and then scurried out from behind the counter, returning shortly with the store’s manager.
“Barry. What’s the problem?” Beamon said.
The man held out a white business card, but Beamon didn’t bother taking it. He knew what it was.
“Some men came around today as
king questions about you,” Barry said angrily.
Beamon remembered that he always made a point of asking after the man’s seven-year-old daughter when he came in.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come in here anymore, Mr. Beamon. We don’t need your kind of business.”
Beamon tapped the top of the bourbon bottle on the counter. “Let me pass along a piece of advice my dad gave me years ago, Barry. Never refuse a bottle and cigarettes to a heavily armed out-of-work child molester.”
Barry took a step back but managed to regain his composure quickly. Apparently seeing the wisdom in Beamon’s words, he walked behind the counter and pulled out an index card that Beamon assumed was his tab.
Barry nodded toward the items on the counter as he ripped up the card. “They’re on the house. So’s your account. Now there’s no reason for you to ever come back.”
Beamon slammed his hands against the steering wheel of his car. It felt good, so he did it again. And then again.
If the church’s lackeys had gone so far as to visit his liquor store of choice, they’d probably talked to every goddamn person he’d ever known. He was screwed. Thoroughly and completely screwed.
It was unlikely now that he’d ever get his job back. And he probably had a better chance of marrying Christie Brinkley than getting Carrie to speak to him again. Or for that matter, getting any of the few friends he had to speak to him again.
Not that it really mattered, he reminded himself. When Sara had completed her little plot, she’d turn her attention back to him. Most likely, he and Jennifer would be sharing that chuckhole in Outer Mongolia.
He slammed his hand into the steering wheel one last time and felt the pain vibrate up his arms.
Enough. He had ten days and very little left to lose—nothing but his life, really. And from where he was sitting, that just didn’t seem all that valuable anymore.
Beamon started the car and pointed it toward Jack Goldman’s apartment. After making an ass out of himself in front of Andrews and with Carrie thinking he’d felt up her daughter, home just didn’t seem that inviting.
45
“SLOW DOWN, BOY. CAN’T SEE A GODDAMN thing if you drive like a bat out of hell.”
Beamon let his foot off the gas and flipped on the high beams. When the speedometer had drifted down to twenty miles an hour, he returned his foot to the accelerator.
Back at Goldman’s apartment, there were only a few sad inches left in the bottle of bourbon Beamon had taken over last night. As for what was left in the carton of cigarettes, he was trying not to think about that. It was hard not to, though, with his lungs feeling like someone had poured a quart of motor oil into them right after they’d emptied their old car battery into his stomach. And then, of course, there was the crowbar prying apart his skull.
“I think you should talk to her,” Goldman repeated for what must have been the hundredth time. Despite the fact that the old man had kept up with him shot for shot, smoke for smoke all night, he seemed miraculously unaffected. It must be the excitement—that or all of the old SOB’s nerve endings had preceded him into the grave.
Beamon groaned. The bourbon had loosened him up enough to mention his unfortunate position with Carrie last night. “Let’s concentrate on what we’re doing, okay, Mr. Goldman?”
The old man looked over at him. “Son, I don’t need you to tell me how much to concentrate to set a phone tap.”
Beamon backpedaled. In his current condition there was no way he could take one of Goldman’s tirades. “I need to concentrate. I’ve never done this before.”
“And you’re not going to do it today. You’re just going to stand there and let me do my job.” Goldman gazed out the window. “Yeah, I’d march right over there and talk to her. Make her listen. Get this thing straightened out once and for all.”
The pounding in Beamon’s head rose in tempo from a polka to more of a disco beat. “I appreciate the advice, Mr. Goldman, but you’ve never even been married. So—”
“Not because there weren’t plenty of women willing, that I didn’t get married. Hell, when I first started in this business, I could just walk into people’s houses in the middle of the day and wire their phones while I ate lunch. That’s before women got all hot and bothered about careers and trying to compete with men. No, those little housewives used to be damned happy to see me … “
“So why didn’t you ever make an honest woman out of one of them?” Beamon said, hoping desperately to change the subject before Goldman started relating details of his sexual prowess. His stomach was just barely hanging on as it was.
“Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Turn left here.” He looked over at Beamon. “But son, you aren’t me. Let’s face it, you ain’t the best-looking guy in the world. You’re a sloppy dresser, and, well, you’re a little obnoxious. No offense.”
“None taken.”
Goldman reached over and smacked Beamon on the stomach. “Hey, at least you took care of that weight problem. Now what was I saying …
“That I’m not you,” Beamon sighed
“You’re not me, right. Son, if you’ve got an intelligent, attractive woman interested in you, I say you should get your ass in gear before she changes her mind. May not be anybody around the next corner, you know?”
“I think she already has changed her mind, Mr. Goldman.”
“Boy, you just don’t know anything about women, do you? They change their minds like the weather.”
Beamon wasn’t sure, but he suspected Goldman hadn’t ever been in quite his situation. A woman who initially thought you dressed funny and watched too much football might come around, it was true. A woman who thought you were keeping compromising Polaroids of her four-year-old daughter in your wallet would probably be a little more difficult to win over.
“I’ll try flowers,” Beamon said.
“That’s the spirit, boy. Broads love flow—There it is! The cross-connect box is right there.”
Beamon tapped the brake and started easing the car toward the curb. “Jesus, son, don’t slow down! Drive past it and park around the corner there.”
Goldman was out of the car before it had completely stopped, walking without his cane and with very little difficulty. In the harsh glare of headlights reflecting off the snow, he still looked like he’d been dead for a couple of days, but when he turned his back and began digging in the back seat for his gear, he could have been forty years younger. His movements were decisive, quick, and smooth. He was back in his element.
Beamon took a position behind Goldman, hefting the large duffel the old man passed back and following him as he hurried up the sidewalk with a bright red toolbox dangling from his hand.
Beamon didn’t see the large metal cabinet half- buried in the snow until Goldman slipped a headlamp over his thick knit cap and shined it off to their right. It was about ten feet back from the road amidst a widely spaced stand of pines that were casting long shadows across it, blending it into its background.
“You’re going to have to dig, Mark,” Goldman said, struggling through the snow toward the box.
Beamon sighed, pulled a collapsible Army-issue shovel out of the duffel, and started to work on the snow blocking the doors.
The nausea hit him full force on about the fifth shovelfull of icy snow. He did his best to ignore it but ended up having to stop. He unzipped the vaguely official-looking overalls Goldman had provided him and felt the cold wind dry the sweat covering his chest.
“No time for a coffee break, boy.”
Beamon looked down at the shovel and then at the old man’s head, then went back to chopping at the ice blocking the doors. Ten miserable minutes later, they were clear.
Goldman inserted a key into the box and opened it as Beamon stepped back into the shadows and fell onto a snowbank. The cold against his back felt like it might bring him back to life, given enough time.
The old man looked like a surgeon as his twisted fingers danced over the bundl
es of wires with dexterity that should have been impossible. He stopped his work every ten seconds or so to look at a complex schematic that he had stuck to the inside of one of the open doors.
A car’s headlights suddenly illuminated them as it turned the comer and started down the street in their direction. Beamon tensed and sat up, but Goldman seemed to read his mind.
“Relax, son. Just a couple of repairmen working late. Everyone expects their phones to work perfectly but they don’t give a second thought to the people who keep them working. In five minutes, the guy in that car won’t even remember he saw us.”
Beamon had no reason to think Goldman was wrong, so he settled back into the snowbank and breathed in the scent of the pine tree behind him. He tried to let his mind go blank, to focus only on the quiet rustling as Goldman did his magic and the sweet smell of frozen pine needles, but it didn’t work. Thoughts of the women in his life kept pushing out any momentary peace he might be able to steal.
The women in his life.
His mother had been dead for years and his sister pretty much hated him, leaving only three women of any importance. Jennifer Davis, a fifteen- year-old girl whom he’d never met and who he would probably get to remember as the other girl he couldn’t save. Carrie Johnstone, a woman who now saw him as a psychotic pervert with eyes for her daughter. And Sara Renslier, who would do everything in her considerable power to destroy his life, and who, when he was rendered completely helpless, would undoubtedly swoop in for the kill.
God. How sad was that?
“Drill, Mark! Quit daydreaming and give me the drill!”
Beamon fished around in the duffel lying next to him and pulled out a beefy-looking battery-operated model, which Goldman used to cut a small hole in the side of the metal cabinet. He ran a wire through it and then went back to whatever it was he’d been doing before.
