Babychain Blues

by Tony Masero

  Cole had one more bullet in the rifle before he needed to reload. The M40 was a hardy beast but it had taken a beating since Cole had last fired. He did not know if the scope was off or the weapon damaged. It was a hell of risk.

  His advantage was that Abe was so big and Caitlin so small. Her upper body covered Abe’s chest and head but his broad girth was visible behind her thin frame. It was there that Cole took his aim. The bullet should slide past Caitlin and take Abe in the ribs or the fat of his waist and hopefully spin him away before he could fire.

  Cole took out his Colt and laid it on the ground beside him.

  ‘Where’s Penevale?’ he called, playing for time as he set up his shot.

  ‘He’s around,’ Abe answered. ‘He’s looking forward to seeing you.’

  ‘Been a while, Abe.’

  Cole centered the cross hairs on the black outline just visible behind Caitlin. He prayed she would not move.

  ‘Too long. Now get out here before I blow this little girl away.’

  Gently, Cole squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle barked and Abe spun around as Caitlin doubled over. Cole’s shot had scraped her side and taken Abe in the gut. As Caitlin fell to her knees clutching at the flesh wound in her side, Abe cried out in pain and spun around loosing a steam of automatic fire from the MAC 10 into the night sky as he fell to the ground. The suppressor effectively turned the sound of the subsonic bullets to a gentle putter of sound as most of his magazine shot aimlessly away.

  Quickly, Cole was on his feet, the Colt grasped in both hands straight before him.

  ‘Lie down Caitlin,’ he called, stepping forward.

  As he marched towards them, Abe twisted over, half his stomach was spilling out but he was still desperately trying to bring the MAC around.

  Cole started to fire; with every step nearer he sent another shell slamming into Abe’s bucking body. It was impossible to miss at the short range. The big Negro fought the impact of the bullets but the .45’s ripped into him and tore his head and chest apart before he could bring his weapon to bear.

  Sprays of erupting blood glistened in the firelight and Cole did not cease firing until the Colt’s slide clicked back empty. He stood over his victim and was surprised to note that his hand was steady as a rock as he shed the empty magazine and slid another full one in place. He kicked the MAC 10 away out of reach with his boot.

  ‘You alright, girl?’ he asked, not taking his eyes from Abe’s body.

  ‘I got this burning in my side. I don’t know if you shot me, Cole.’

  Cole knelt beside her and saw the hot weal the passing bullet had made as it tore through her shirt.

  ‘No, you’re fine. It’s a crease that’ll hurt like hell but it’s not bad. We’ll get something for it as soon as we meet up with Martha.’

  ‘The other one’s gone for her. The one with the big head, he took the car and lit out.’

  ‘Penevale’s after Martha?’

  ‘That’s what he said. ‘Added insurance’ were his exact words.’

  Cole lifted her to her feet. ‘We’ll take their SUV,’ he said.

  He was turning away as the bullet hit him.

  Old instincts came into play and as Cole felt the punch of the slug rip his left shoulder around and twist him in the air, he was already bringing the Colt up.

  The stunned figure of Buck was staggering towards them, he weaved in their direction against the wall of flames from the burning house behind. Blood was pouring from his ears and a gash on his brow and there was a demented wildness about his looping run. His mouth was open wide in a silent scream and his face distorted with bitter animosity. His shirt had been half ripped from his back by the blast of the exploding gas bottle and flapped about him like a ragged cloak.

  Even whilst he was in the air, Cole fired from the waist as he tumbled over, the Colt bucking in his hand.

  He hit the ground heavily on his side and saw Buck curl over backwards, spitting blood in a streaming arc from his gaping mouth.

  Then the pain hit Cole, he gasped and felt his body beginning to tremble in shock.

  ‘Cole, Cole,’ Caitlin cried, rushing towards him.

  ‘No, get away from me,’ said Cole, struggling to bring himself under control. ‘Maybe he’s not finished.’

  Awkwardly he dragged himself to his knees and with the Colt held before him, aimed the weapon at the fallen body of Buck. But Buck was not moving, only his legs vibrated in spasm as the last synapses in his brain died.

  With a groan, Cole pressed a hand to the blazing pain in his shoulder and climbed to his feet.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, jerking his chin in the direction of the Chevy. ‘You drive.’

  As the vehicle pulled away into the dark, Gil made his way around the corner of the blazing building. He limped into the clearing before the house and dazedly watched the dust settling from the retreating car as its rear lights vanished into the night. His hand clutched at his ringing head and as he looked around at the bodies lying sprawled in the dust, he wondered why he was still alive and not down there amongst them.

  There was a smell of roasting flesh, like the crisp stink of overcooked pork coming from the black smoke billowing out of the building behind.

  Gil turned his back on the blaze and began the long hike back to town.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cole knew where Penevale would be.

  He was like a feral dog. He had to leave his dirty scent mark wherever he went if only to prove to himself that he was lord and master.

  Cole had Caitlin pull up at the corner to his street in Rivers Bend and sure enough the Ford was parked in the driveway of his house.

  They circled around, parked in a side street and approached the rear of the house through the farm fields out back.

  Cole was driven on by a mixture of the pain of his wound, anger and anguish for Martha. There was nothing left of the amiable plumber and Caitlin watched him cautiously, hardly recognizing the man as he forged ahead with dogged determination through the long ears of corn.

  Dew had fallen and their legs were soon soaked by the dampness. Behind them they left dark winding trails through the corn stalks as they worked their way across the field and around to the yard. Caitlin felt cold and wretched and she kept her arms huddled about herself as she watched the lone figure in front pressing on in the darkness. The fear of death she had experienced and the deaths she had witnessed in the past few hours seemed distant to her now. She felt numbed by the suddenness of events.

  But her life had been tough enough already and she was not about to fall apart. It was distressing but despite everything she still trusted Cole.

  They climbed into the back yard and made it to the garden door. The door was unlocked and dragging out his Colt, Cole eased the door open and with a signal to Caitlin to keep quiet he slipped inside.

  Everything was in darkness.

  Cole moved easily, he knew the way and slipped across the kitchenette his eyes peering into the shadows, the Colt held ready. On the way over in the car he had carried out a quick emergency treatment for the gunshot. He had removed his socks and bunched them into a wad over his shoulder wound and fastened it tightly in place with his belt, the damaged arm he kept stuffed into his unbuttoned shirtfront like a sling. The pain was immense but Cole was driven and he pushed the agony to one side.

  The sound came from above. It was either a sob or the sound of furniture moving, Cole was not sure which.

  Cole maneuvered slowly over to the stairway leading up to the bedroom with Caitlin tiptoeing along behind.

  Cole guessed that Penevale would be thinking him dead by now. Confident that his three men would have taken care of him, he would be feeling safe. He would be secure that Cole was no more and he could do as he wished with Martha. Perversely staining her and enjoying denigrating his absent enemy with all the insults his degenerate mind could envisage. It was a mark of the man that he would find pleasure not only in death but also in a vilification of t
he living.

  As Cole eased open the door of the darkened bedroom with the tip of the gun barrel he saw Penevale caught by the streetlight outside.

  He was busy pushing his shirttail back into his pants tops. He stood between the bed and the windows looking out onto the street.

  Cole glanced across at the bed. Martha lay there, spread-eagled and face down, lying on her stomach. She was naked, her wrists and ankles lashed to the bedposts. The light slid over her limbs and Cole saw the bruising and marks of brutality. She was still and he wondered if Penevale had killed her already.

  His thoughts were piteous as he looked over the raised mound of her buttocks and the spread cleft beneath and remembered his own hands playing that spot softly with his fingertips. It enraged him to think of Penevale invading her privacy and his own sweet memory.

  Cole pushed the door open wide with a crash and Penevale started at the sound.

  He froze, the streetlight streaming in through the window and sidelighting him. He looked like a waxwork in the bright light.

  ‘So,’ he snarled. ‘You made it away.’ His voice sounded mild but there was an underlying jitter to it and his eyes darted with twin pinpoints of light like fireflies in the shadows.

  Martha turned her head at the sound and whimpered something indistinguishable, her face hidden by her hair.

  She is alive, thought Cole. Thank God for that.

  He kept the pistol aimed at Penevale.

  ‘You’re done, you know that?’ said Cole.

  A slight smile quirked Penevale’s gloomy face. ‘What happened to the others?’

  ‘You’ll be seeing them soon enough. You can ask them yourself.’

  Martha twisted her head and cried out, ‘Cole! Is that you?’ Her cheek was swollen and a thin stream of blood ran from her nose and lips.

  ‘Get her free,’ Cole said to Caitlin, over his shoulder.

  ‘How’d you get a hold of her?’ he asked.

  ‘We met on the road,’ said Penevale. He sounded calm but there was a tautness about his posture that said otherwise. ‘She was coming to get you, saw my headlights and thought I was you. Silly girl, huh?’

  ‘You bastard,’ snarled Cole, his finger tight on the trigger.

  ‘I suppose there’s no point in discussing this?’ Penevale drawled easily.

  As Caitlin brushed past Cole on her way to Martha, Penevale moved.

  He ducked down and Cole fired at the same moment. The gun flash was searing bright in the room and the booming sound amplified by the enclosed area.

  Penevale spun away sideways, crashing into a bedside table behind him.

  Cole saw the bright needle of light reflected from a silvered automatic in Penevale’s hand and felt concussion as the bullet slammed into him. He fired again and watched Penevale propelled away back by his bullet’s impact.

  Penevale hugged the corner, his face and body twisting as he sought protection from the trap of the angled walls. He fired again. His bullet slugged into Cole, who ignored the impact and paused. Tiredly he forced his wavering arm up and aimed carefully at the oversized head and the dark pool of Penevale’s eyes.

  He pulled the trigger and Penevale’s head exploded. It seemed to vanish into the corner behind him, disappearing into a wash of shadow and bloody matter that streaked the wall. Penevale’s broken body crumpled into a lifeless heap that slipped like dust into the corner.

  Cole went limp with sudden exhaustion, he breathed a long sigh and fell over backwards as his legs went from under him and he slid to the floor.

  The last thing he heard was the sound of two women crying out his name.

  Epilogue

  The Present

  Gil Gurns made it safely away.

  He crossed over into Canada and there eventually made a small fortune at open air rock concerts dealing in balloons of nitrous oxide, the bizarrely, and in his case, aptly named ‘Hippy Crack’. He shaved his mustache, grew back his hair and covered his tattoo, slimmed down his body and took on a more manageable physique. The money he made enabled him to forge a new false identity. Eventually he branched out into a legitimate business and became a wealthy entrepreneur creating a new life in the film industry as a producer. He married, had three children and is now retired and lives contentedly in Vancouver with his family.

  Over the years, Caitlin also became prosperous. Her invested wealth enabled her to fulfill her passion for travel but her emotional life was not so successful. She married three times, each time the marriage ending in disaster. She grew obese and self-indulgent and took to living in isolation in the luxurious house she had built on the ruins of her old place in Bulver’s Backlot where she keeps a vast quantity of cats.

  In later years, Caitlin became curious about her origins and with little else to do she determined to discover the truth and spent a great deal of money commissioning an agency to discover the facts. According to the orphanage records it was determined by the agency that two female babies had arrived at the Spokane orphanage in the same month of May that Caitlin arrived. One child, had been seriously ill on arrival, suffering from exposure and had soon died of pneumonia brought on by dehydration and cold. The dead child was unnamed and its ancestry unknown, all that was known for certain was that it had arrived at the orphanage packed in a rucksack with a heap of dollar bills lying underneath.

  Caitlin, it proved to be, was in fact the illegitimate daughter of an underage rape victim who had been abused by her stepfather. Although making numerous attempts, Caitlin was unsuccessful in connecting with her natural mother, who was now married with a family and wanted no reminder of the disaster of her early life.

  On discovering this, for some reason, Caitlin became disenchanted and resentful of her surrogate father and benefactor and made no further contact with Cole Junger.

  Cole survived his wounds. Speedy nursing treatment by Martha at the scene of the shooting did much to aid his survival. After his hospitalization and recovery he was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, his fingerprints being found on the discarded rifle amongst the bodies discovered at Bulver’s Backlot.

  Penevale’s death was considered an act of self-defense and justifiable after Martha gave evidence as to her torture and rape by the dead man.

  Portland PD were not too distressed by the departure of Penevale and his crew, but justice must be seen to be done and despite a spirited defense Cole ended up in the State Penitentiary at Walla Walla with a sentence of death hanging over him. The death sentence was commuted to life without parole thanks to the continued efforts of an energetic defense attorney.

  Cole serves his sentence there still.

  Martha rejected the offers of cash that Caitlin made her and returned to her old job as admissions nurse in Baxter General. She visited Cole for a while but as the years passed she eventually settled down to live with an orthodontist she met at the hospital. She has not seen Cole for a number of years now but sends him a Christmas card regularly.

  Recently, members of the Alan Lomax Memorial Society were allowed access to Walla Walla and permitted to make a TV documentary about the music played in the prison. Wee Willy’s rendition of ‘Babychain Blues’ was used as the theme for the program and became an instant success amongst blues fans and received many plays nationwide after being covered by some of the top names in the blues field.

  Unfortunately, Wee Willy passed before the news of his success reached him.

  IF YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK SEE THESE OTHER TITLES BY

  TONY MASERO

  WESTERN NOVELS

  HARD RAIN MUST FALL * BAD DON’T MEAN WRONG * GRINGO WADE * IN THE DEVIL’S GRIP * SLASHED STAR * WAR RIDER * THE KILLING DESERT * JAKE RAINS * THE RIFLEMEN * THE PURSUED * DIRTY SHIRT BLUES * DEEP WATER RISING * DEATH RIDES ON THE HEELS OF TROUBLE * THE RAID * THE WIDOWMAKER * THE VENGEANCE OF ENDER SMITH * DAMN FOOLS GOLD * BLOOD LEGACY FROM RAT HELL * JOHNNY DOLLAR * MISTER D’EATH AND THE JUDGE * DEADLY MANHUNT * FULLBLOOD BOYD OVERMOUNTAIN MAN * BLOOD MOON TRAIL * CROSS BORDER KILLE
RS * PEACE AT WAR * TULANE * MOSE GOES WEST * GO LIGHTLY RIDER * THE HEART OF DARK PASSAGE * THE LEFT EYE GANG * BLOOD RIDDEN * THE BIGGEST WINNER IN THE WEST * THE DEAD CUT * TWENTY DOLLAR DEAD MAN * GONE ROGUE * GILDED RAGE * WINTERTIME * THE RESCUERS * DIEHARD * THE THIRTY SIX HUNDREDS * BORDERLINE GRINGO

  WESTERN SERIES

  MISTY BLUE

  No.1 Misty Blue The Last Mountain Man

  No.2 Loaded for Bear

  No.3 A Dog called Kill

  No.4 Wild in the Woods

  No.5 Down and Dirty

  No.6 End of the Road

  BELLE SLAUGHTER

  No.1 Over Your Dead Body

  No.2 Lamb to Slaughter

  No.3 Five Belles to Hell

  No.4 Cut to the Quick

  TEARS OF APACHE STONE

  No.1 Season of the Killing Moon

  No.2 Time of Apache Tears

  No.3 Hunt for a Stone Killer

  THRILLERS

  DEAD FALL BACK

  THE GARDENER A John Chayne novel

  BLACK EYE

  THE BITTER STONES OF INTENTION

  I WENT DOWN TO THE VALLEY

  BABYCHAIN BLUES

  (Writing as MICHAEL D’ASTI)

  A WEB FOR ALL GOD’S ANGELS

  THE KHANDA KILLINGS

  IN THE FRAME

  Historical Thrillers

  FEED THE CROW

  Drama

  THE DECEPTIVE EYE

  MOMENTS OF RECURRENCE