Dead Wood

by Dan Ames

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Too many people doing too many things on your behalf,” I said. It didn’t seem to register for a moment. When it did, she went pale, and it was hard to see her as the superstar in the press. On the covers of magazines and the object of countless fan clubs and websites. She looked like a scared, lonely woman approaching middle-age.

  “Please help me,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on.” Her lips trembled, and the tears started rolling down her cheeks. “Do you know what’s going on?” she asked.

  I let out a long breath. “I think I do.”

  “Can you explain it to me?”

  I took the CD from Molly’s purse, the one I’d found in the twins’ silver BMW. I went to the control panel of the boat where a small, built-in CD player was housed. I flicked on the power button and slid the disc in. I waited a moment and then hit play.

  It was just static at first. Almost like a gentle scratching. And then soft, acoustic guitar. Gentle notes, full of sorrow and melancholy.

  And then a voice.

  A really beautiful, haunting voice that sang of lost love and the ghosts of lovers past.

  I was listening at last to Jesse Barre.

  The music itself was rough, but you could hear the quality, the command of the song and the ease of the voice. She sounded like a natural. But it was the power of the words that moved me the most. It was the kind of song that if you heard it on the radio, you would wait and hope the DJ would tell you who it was, so you could immediately go buy the CD.

  I looked at Shannon, and I could tell she knew the same thing. The fear in her face was gone, replaced with a kind of warm recognition. Even in the midst of murder and mayhem, she was enough of a human being and a musician to recognize true beauty when she heard it. And she was hearing it now.

  When the song was over, I turned back to the player and hit pause.

  I heard clapping and when I turned back, Teddy Armbruster stood next to Shannon.

  And next to Teddy was a man.

  He looked oddly familiar to me. He had a smirk on his lean, slightly wolfish face.

  The boat seemed to sway under me, and my knees felt weak. I reached out with my hand against the side of the cabinet to steady myself.

  “Surprise, surprise,” Teddy said.

  The man just looked at me, curious amusement on his face.

  It was him.

  The man who I’d met on a snowy night so many years ago.

  “Look at him . . . he’s in shock,” Teddy said.

  I couldn’t stop looking at the man. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out.

  Teddy spoke again, a wide smile on his face.

  “I’d introduce you,” Teddy said, unable to suppress a chuckle. “But I believe you two have already met.”

  It was him.

  The man who’d killed Benjamin Collins.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  “Why don’t you step away from the CD player, John?” Teddy said. On cue, the man who’d killed Benjamin Collins eased out a handgun from a shoulder holster.

  “Take out the CD and hand it to me,” Teddy said.

  I did as asked.

  “Teddy, what are you doing?” Shannon said.

  Teddy smiled at her, took the CD, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his suit coat.

  “Nothing you need to worry about, Shannon.”

  “But I do,” she said. She turned to me. “That was Jesse Barre singing, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded. “And singing beautifully,” I added, still not taking my eyes from the man across from me.

  “What a shame,” Teddy said.

  “John,” Shannon said. She was looking at the final destination, but wasn’t sure how we’d gotten here.

  “Jesse Barre was going to retire from making guitars,” I said. “Her boyfriend, Nevada Hornsby, told me she was taking a sabbatical.”

  “Permanent sabbatical,” Teddy said. “An oxymoron, I suppose.” His smirk was vile.

  “At the time, I didn’t know what it meant,” I said. I was about to ramble, but I didn’t know what else to do. No one was stopping me, and I needed some time to try to figure something out.

  “But then when I found the CD in Molly’s purse—the one Erma and Freda had killed her for—I started to realize what happened,” I said. “Jesse had contacted Memphis, probably for advice. Memphis lied to me about not knowing Jesse. Memphis was probably threatened by it, worried that Shannon would start buying Jesse’s songs, so she convinced Laurence Grasso that when he got out of prison, if he killed Jesse for her, Memphis would try to get him back with Shannon.”

  “Oh my God,” Shannon said.

  “Oh please,” Teddy said. He was bored, looking around the inside of my sailboat with obvious disgust. The man with the gun was only looking at me.

  “And Grasso set Coltraine up to take the fall.”

  “This isn’t true,” Shannon said.

  “I think at some point, when Grasso was out of control, Memphis went to Teddy and spilled the beans,” I said. “Somehow, Molly realized what was going on and, ever the spin doctor, Teddy had both Memphis and Molly killed. And now he’ll try to kill me. All to keep the gravy train rolling in.”

  Shannon began to sob outright.

  “Time to go,” Teddy said. “Get up.”

  “You’d better go with him, Shannon,” I said. She looked like a broken woman. Her head down, silent sobs wracking her narrow shoulders—

  And then she launched herself at Teddy, windmilling her arms, slapping at his face, trying to claw him. It caught us all flatfooted. Teddy struggled to get Shannon under control. Too late, I started to make my move.

  Way too late.

  The man was already next to me with the muzzle of the gun just behind my ear. How he moved that fast, I had no idea. But any chance I had was gone.

  Teddy finally pinned Shannon’s arms against her sides and hauled her up the stairs. She was screaming at him and calling my name until he managed to clamp a hand over her mouth.

  I heard her muffled sobs as she and Teddy stepped off the boat onto the dock.

  The man and I stood there for a moment, the boat gently rocking from the departure of Teddy and Shannon.

  I thought I was going to die. Ellen would probably find me. She’d have to call Anna. I wouldn’t see my daughters grow up. For just a moment, I felt a sense of closure. The same man who had killed Benjamin Collins was now going to kill me.

  “Just like old times,” the man said, affecting an effeminate lilt to his voice. The same one that had fooled me a few years back. “Me and you,” he said.

  If I was going to die, I at least wanted some answers. I thought I deserved them before I had my brains splattered on the boat’s walls.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  He chuckled softly. There was a pause, and I expected to see a burst of light and then nothing but darkness.

  Instead, the man said, “Start the boat.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  There was now a raging storm on the water. Gray clouds obscured the stars, and white foam whipped off the waves.

  With the man’s gun trained on my head at all times, I backed the boat out of its slip, then pushed it toward the harbor opening where I could see Lake St. Clair in all its glorious frenzy. It had begun to rain, and the water came down in sheets, as if poured from the black sky. Chain lightning flashed on the horizon across the lake, over Canada.

  I toyed with the idea of jumping overboard, but something told me I’d get as far as one step, maybe two, before my head was fully vented.

  As I steered the Air Fare, I thought about how appropriate this was. The boy entrusted to me, Benjamin Collins, had been sliced up and found floating in Lake St. Clair. A lot of people blamed me, including myself, for what had happened. Although I hadn’t actually been the one to kill him, I’d had the opportunity to save him, and I’d blown it.

  So now her
e I was with his real killer, and I was faced with the same fate. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be able to save myself from him either. I could imagine the story in the newspaper: “Cop Killed in Same Manner as Earlier Victim.” They’d have a field day with it. Or maybe the man here had a plan to make it look like a suicide. I was sure he had a plan.

  “Where to?” I shouted as the rain whipped directly into my face.

  “Out,” he said.

  Maybe he was going to conk me over the head and toss me overboard. Even in good shape, I’d have trouble swimming in this shit. Knocked unconscious, I wouldn’t have a chance.

  The Air Fare was a good-sized boat, twenty-nine-feet long. However, Lake St. Clair was some three hundred square miles, and waves commonly got as big as they do on Lake Huron, or even Lake Michigan. Right now, my boat was being tossed around pretty good. In fact, I’d never been out in water this rough. Wave after wave bashed into the prow, and we rode the water like a mechanical bull.

  “Why?” I shouted to the man, who had now moved around directly behind me. He seemed a bit unsteady. If he killed me, how was he planning to get back to shore? Somehow, I was sure he would manage.

  I glanced back at him, and he shook his head then gestured with the gun for me to look back to where I was going.

  In my mind, some questions were starting to get answered. I’d always assumed that the man who’d killed Benjamin Collins had been a psychopath. Not a jilted lover. But now I knew for sure. My guess was that when I’d killed Erma and Freda, Teddy had brought in someone new. Or someone old, in this case.

  The man was a hired killer.

  So why had he killed Benjamin Collins? As soon as I thought about it, I realized it wasn’t the right question.

  “Who hired you to kill Benjamin Collins?”

  I looked back, and he had a smirk on his face. He shook his head.

  I turned back just as a giant wave washed over the front of the boat. Water hit me in the chest, and I staggered back. I didn’t know what to be more afraid of. Being murdered by a contract killer. Or being washed overboard and drowning. Same result, different paths.

  Did he plan on taking me over by the yacht club? Where he’d left the butchered body of Benjamin Collins? Right now, we were pointing straight out to the middle of the lake.

  I heard the man singing behind me. Over the din of the wind and the rain and the crashing waves, this fucker was singing. I recognized the tune. “Let it Bleed” from the Rolling Stones. Wonderful.

  It pissed me off. Here I was, about to die. My two daughters were about to lose their father, Anna was about to lose her husband, and my killer was singing. Having a grand old time. Well, fuck him.

  I let go of the wheel and faced him. “You’re the scum of the earth—just so you know,” I shouted at him.

  He continued his little musical number.

  “You can kill me,” I said. “But you’re a coward. A rotten, murdering piece of dogshit.”

  The anger choked up inside me, and I realized there was no point in waiting. If I was going to die, I was going to die the way I wanted.

  He seemed to read my mind.

  He brought his gun up and now held it straight out from his body pointing at me.

  “Come on, you rotten sonofabi—” I started to say.

  A resounding crash screamed in my ears, and the boat’s deck slipped out from underneath me. The splintering of wood shattered the sounds of the storm, and I landed on my side, pain slicing up my back. I saw the prow of another boat bisecting the Air Fare. Cut it right in fucking half.

  The ship’s prow was white, and I saw the line of blue down the side along with the word POLICE.

  I struggled to get to my feet as water rushed all around me. The Air Fare was sagging, nearly broken in half.

  A weight pressed on my back, and hands grasped the side of my head. My head was wrenched to the side, and the pain shot up my neck. He was on top of me, trying to break my neck. Unbelievable. How had he moved that fast? How had he gotten behind me again so soon after we were rammed?

  Pain shot through my body, and I twisted beneath him. Just as I wondered why he wasn’t shooting me, I realized he must have lost his gun.

  I immediately stopped twisting and, instead, pulled him in the direction he was trying to make me go.

  We both rolled and crashed against the side of the boat as another wave broke over us. It knocked him off me, and I thought I heard other voices shouting.

  I got to my feet and whirled around just as he came at me. He hit me in the face and then in the stomach. My breath flew out of me in a gush, and then he whirled, a karate kick that would’ve finished the job of taking off my head had I not ducked at just the right moment. I slipped as another wave caught me full in the face, and my feet flew out from under me. I crashed into the Air Fare’s stern, which had become the receptacle for the damage done in the boat’s middle.

  I slumped to the deck, water up to my waist, and felt sharp fragments of wood scrape my back. I looked up and saw the impossible.

  He was coming at me, full bore, with a steadiness and animal grace that made me look on in awe.

  As I watched him come with the inevitability of Death itself, my hands wrapped around something that felt like a wooden bat. Just as he got close enough and I could see him winding up for another killer kick, I lashed out. The blow caught him in the side of the neck at just the right time. Off balance, he fell to the deck as another wave crashed over us. I was knocked down and the pole, which I now saw was the jib’s handle, had broken in half. A nasty, jagged break with a long sliver of wood jutting from the middle.

  The Air Fare tilted, the weight of the water in the stern sending the bow up. The man slid down the deck toward me, blood in his mouth either from my blow or from being knocked down by a wave.

  I raised the pole over my head with both hands and fell on top of him, driving the pole straight into him like a pile driver. My mind was on autopilot, just a raw, savage fury and a fear of dying pounding in my head.

  I felt the pole plunge through his chest and bury itself in the softer wood of the deck. He reached for me, but I saw his eyes glaze. His arms went instead to the wooden spear, now rammed firmly into the sinking boat’s deck. He tugged at it, but it didn’t move.

  Blood gushed from his mouth.

  “Who are you?” I screamed at him. His eyes were open, and I thought he was going to speak.

  Instead, he laughed.

  There was another loud crack, but this time it wasn’t thunder or another ship. It was the Air Fare. The boat seemed to break in half, and suddenly black water was below me and I was sinking. There was an explosion. A bright-orange flame licked the air, and I was under, trying to kick off my shoes and pants, my ribs and back and neck screaming in agony. I kicked toward the surface, my lungs on fire.

  I broke through the surface only to have a wave slam into my face with such force that my head snapped back, and I saw black, and then green again as I was forced back underwater. I bobbed to the surface and heard voices. Something hit me in the face. It wasn’t rain or wood debris from the boat.

  It was rope.

  I got my hands around it and felt myself being pulled.

  The blackness came again.

  And this time, it stayed.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  This is what it must be like to go insane. Black sky. Flashes of brilliant white. Ear-shattering cracks of thunder. A roaring motor. And the voices. The voices that shout your name. That shout nonsense. The voices that keep shouting long after you’ve tried to stop hearing them.

  I went out, and when I came back, all I could tell was that everything felt soft. I felt a needle go in my arm.

  And then more blackness.

  * * *

  •

  * * *

  “Laying around in bed,” I heard a voice say. “How typical.”

  I struggled to open my eyes, but it was like jerking open an old garage door. The hinges felt rusty. The light that
poured in was bright and stabbing. I closed my eyes again to try to stop the pain that seemed to pierce the middle of my head.

  “Gross, look at how much he drooled on his pillow,” the voice said again. This time I recognized the bemused irony.

  “Ellen,” I said. My throat felt like 60-grit sandpaper.

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut up,” I managed.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “I let you saw logs all night. I know how much you need your beauty sleep, but it’s time to make your statement.”

  “I already did. I said shut up. That’s my statement.”

  She sighed, and I heard the scrape of a chair across the floor. Now the voice was next to me. I opened my eyes, and she was handing me a glass with orange juice in it.

  “Drink up, Gilligan,” she said.

  I took a drink and tried to sit up. My ribs ached, and I had a few thousand sore spots on my body. I took another drink and turned a small corner toward feeling human again.

  “Start with when you left the scene of Molly’s murder,” she said.

  It took me the better part of a half hour, with plenty of breaks, to describe the shootout with Erma and Freda, the connection I made between Rufus Coltraine and Memphis Bornais, and then my decision to meet Shannon on my boat.

  When I got to the part about Teddy and his hired killer showing up, I said, “It was him, Ellen.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy with Teddy. It was him. The guy who killed Benjamin Collins.”

  “Come again?” she said.

  “I haven’t lost my mind, Ellen.”

  “You need to rest,” she said.

  “No, I don’t. It was him, Ellen. The guy I turned Benjamin Collins over to. The guy who cut him up and tossed him in the lake.”

  She held up her hands. “Okay, okay, let’s finish talking about this later.”

  “But—”

  “Shannon Sparrow showed up at the station this morning,” Ellen said. “She has a little tape recorder she carries around for song ideas. She recorded her manager admitting to orchestrating the murders of Memphis and the others.”