by George Wier
“Was it the White Knight?”
“Yeah. I think it was that batshit guy from the news.”
Terry Roberts was suddenly rooted to the spot. The tumblers rolled in his head and began to click in place.
“You there?” the man asked.
“I’m here.” The tumblers suddenly clicked into place. “Shit,” Terry said. “It’s Shelby.”
“Who’s Shelby?”
“Never mind. I need you to get over here. Now.”
“Where’s here?”
“You got a GPS?”
“I don’t know how to use all that fancy shit. Just tell me where. Like, your street and house number.”
“Got a pen?”
“I got something better than a pen, white bread. I got a million-dollar memory. You tell me, I won’t forget it.”
“It’s at Ski Shores. Out in the country and down on the river.” He rattled off the address.
“Got it.”
“Are you coming now?”
“It’s a long way out there, and I’m having a bit to eat. I’ll be there in about an hour and a half.”
“You want to get paid?”
“For what? I ain’t done nothin’ yet.”
“If you’re as good as Gil, I’ll pay you for two hits, and I’ll pay half in advance.”
“What hits?”
“The cop and the White Knight.”
“You got a deal,” the man said. “Say, I’ve got this other job. This girl I’m supposed to whack. Maybe I should do her first, then come out there.”
“What girl?”
“Her name is Rachel.”
“Rachel Ward?”
“That’s the bitch.”
“Who’s paying you for her?”
The man laughed. “Wouldn’t you like to know. I’m a professional. I don’t kiss and tell.”
“You’re a professional all right,” Terry said, and rolled his eyes. “Right now I need an extra gun here. You can take out the girl later. If you haven’t already done it, that means you’re having trouble finding her, am I right?”
“Huh. Maybe.”
“Well, then come on out here, uh...I didn’t catch your name.”
“It’s Skillet.”
“Skillet. Come on out. Be here in a little over an hour, and I’ll give you all the information you need to carry out all three hits. Sound like a deal?”
“That might work,” Skillet said.
“Oh, and you don’t need to bother your other employers with what you’re doing for me. I don’t think you will, seeing as how you’re a pro at this.”
“That’s right. I’m a pro. Don’t worry about a thing. See you in a bit.”
Skillet hung up.
Terry Roberts laughed. His laughter echoed off the arched ceiling and skylight of the bright kitchen and continued on through the house.
“No, seriously, Lily,” Shelby said. “Your house has exploded. Somebody blew it up.”
Rachel’s mother sat at one of the chairs in front of Sheppard Payne’s desk. Next to her in the other chair was Sully. Rachel stood by Shelby and Billy Strongbow leaned against the corner of the room, Squire in his arms. He stroked the dog’s fur and listened to the exchange. Sheppard sat a little back from everybody and leaned back in yet another chair. No two chairs in the entire office matched.
Lily Ward smiled beatifically. “That’s quite impossible, Shelby. We were just there and the place was fine. I promise you, someone has made a silly mistake.”
Shelby shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Well,” Sully began, “you do have enemies, Lily.”
“Hush, darling.”
“Okay,” Shelby said and turned his attention to Sully. “Look, Sully, I’m sure you got a pretty good look at the guys in Rachel’s house.”
“Damn right I did. One of them was a little fellow. I think he was the leader. Right now he’s got a gash in his forehead and one side of his face should look like the purple people-eater went to town on him.”
“That’s one of them. What about the other guy.”
“The one who shot me in the foot?”
Shelby nodded.
“Black fellow. Kind of skinny, eyes like a dope fiend. The kind of fellow who doesn’t shop at K-Mart, but instead shoplifts there.”
“That’s him,” Billy said. “I watched him get out, stuff the other guy’s hand under his arm, then put the rest of him in the SUV. He kept calling the other guy ‘Gil’.
“Yeah. I didn’t so much see him,” Shelby said, “as heard him.”
“Wait a minute,” Sully said. “What do you mean, put his hand under his arm?”
“I sort of...cut it off,” Shelby said.
“The hand?”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “I saw it all. He’d already shot me once. He was going to do it again when Shelby swung his sword and the hand with the gun ended up on the ground.”
“How daring, Shelby,” Lily said. “And I thought you were all washed up.”
“This all means one thing,” Billy said. He put Squire down, straightened up and said, “They were going to kill Rachel, then they were going to kill Quinn. Either they were working for one guy—”
“Terry Roberts,” Shelby said.
“Yeah,” Rachel said.
“—or, they were working for two different factions who wanted the same thing.”
“I’ll bet this has something to do with the Moore killing,” Shelby said.
“Probably only everything.”
“We were going to interview some kid this morning?” Shelby asked Billy.
“Yeah. His name is Paul. Paul Rob—”
“Huh?”
“Paul Roberts,” Billy finished. It was written plain as day on his face that he had made the proper mental connection.
“Sounds to me,” Lily said, “that it’s an appointment you’d better keep.”
“I’m coming with you,” Sully said.
Shelby looked up at Billy. Billy nodded.
“Hmph. Before we go, I’m going to do something.”
“What?” Rachel asked.
“You’re going to help me.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to get myself fully armored and ready.”
“The White Knight rides again,” Sheppard said. “Shoot, I’m going too. You couldn’t keep me away if you wanted to.”
“Then it’s settled,” Billy said.
It was one of Paul Roberts’s jobs to keep the Ski Shores house and grounds in decent repair. In return, he could spend his days drinking beer and swimming or fishing in the river out back and he could spend his nights MOD-gaming on the internet. He had become a bit of a professional on the gaming front. His avatar, Ded-Z, was well-known on the Dungeons & Dragons servers, in Eve Online, and particularly on Urban Terror, where he was one of the elite players. Gaming was Paul’s world. Over the last ten years his build had gone from that of a slim teenager to something on the order of the proportions of a sumo wrestler, sans the muscle mass. The doctor Paul’s father had sent him to six months ago told him that at the rate he was going he would be fortunate to make it past the age of forty. Paul told the doctor he could eat shit and die.
The subject of death had been on his mind ever since that day in the doctor’s office, and thinking about death invariably brought to mind his friend Aiden Holloway. Aiden had been killed by a cop ten years ago. The anniversary of that terrible night had passed a month before, in fact. But Aiden and their LARP (live action role-playing) days with the armor, swords and shields, as well as their paintball days, was long in the past.
The truth of the matter was that Paul had witnessed the whole thing, and at first he thought it was funny that Aiden was being threatened by a cop at gunpoint. Funny, that is, until the cop had shot Aiden—had snuffed his life out as easily as discarding a spent tissue paper. Paul had dropped the gun and run that night, only to come back when he realized he could find no other way out of the com
plex of buildings in the dark.
Paul, along with Sherry and David had given statements that night to the swarm of policemen that had arrived. Nowhere in the cordon of policemen was his Uncle Terry. Sherry had moved to Washington State a few years later after she and David broke up. The last he heard, David was career military, stationed somewhere in Alaska.
With a beer in his hand, having been asked to cede the space of the kitchen to his Uncle Terry and while thinking about that night ten years before, Paul walked out the front door of the house to see if he could finally do something about the lawn sprinkler. His father had been ragging on him for weeks to fix it, and it was getting to the point that he wanted the old son of a bitch to shut the fuck up about it. As Paul saw it, the only way to do that was to break down and have a look at the thing, and barring anything else—such as it magically fixing itself—he might have to get down on his hands and knees and fix the damned thing himself.
The problem with the sprinkler was that it worked about halfway down the front walkway, then petered out. He would have to turn the sprinkler on, stand there and observe it for a few minutes until all the air was out of the water lines and it ceased to spit and sputter and gave a continuous stream of water, then isolate the sprinkler head that was the culprit.
Paul walked into the open garage and turned the front sprinkler on.
He stood on the driveway and watched until he spotted the last head that was working fine, then tracked to the right of that and saw one that had almost no outflow at all. He then counted the horizontal seams from the front door back down the walkway to that point until he had a number he could lodge in his head. It would be the head nearest the fourth seam down.
Paul took a pull of beer, traipsed back into the garage and turned the sprinkler off again, then started looking for tools. The feeling insinuated itself down into his ponderous gut that this wasn’t going to be a quick fix. Instead, he felt pretty sure he was going to have to get himself good and muddy. At that moment he would have given anything for one of those little packages of C-4 his father sold illegally. With that he could blow the whole front yard and maybe the house with it straight to kingdom come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“You’re on your way where?” Quinn Thompson asked through the speaker phone in Billy’s car. Billy was driving, while Shelby sat next to him in his gleaming steel armor. His helmet was off and perched on his lap—at the moment his sword and shield were in the trunk. Sheppard Payne was in the rear seat behind Shelby and Sully Kross sat opposite him, looking uncomfortable. Sully was all knees and elbows.
“We’re on our way to have a talk with Paul Roberts,” Shelby said.
“Who the hell is Paul Roberts?”
“One of the kids,” Billy said, when Shelby didn’t immediately reply. Billy then realized he would have to explain further. “One of the kids who was there that night playing paintball when Holloway was...when it happened.”
“Oh. Roberts?” Quinn said.
“Right,” Shelby replied. “Do us a favor and do a search for a Roberts who lives at Ski Shores.”
“Hold on a minute,” Quinn said.
“This is some bad shit,” Sheppard whispered from the back seat.
“Yeah,” Shelby said.
“Roberts,” Quinn said to himself. “Roberts. Here it is. There’s a house owned by...oh crap.”
“Cleve Roberts?” Shelby asked.
“Yeah,” Quinn said.
“He was the guy I was investigating when the shooting...happened. Remember me telling you about the illegal gun thing? I know, it was a long time ago.”
“I remember something about that,” Quinn said.
“That’s our man,” Billy said. “The same one in my files. There’s a chance that Detective Roberts is out there right now.”
“He sure as hell isn’t at home,” Quinn said.
“You got a warrant?” Shelby asked.
“One is being obtained. In the meantime, I have permission to bring him in for questioning. You guys are going to need backup.”
“They’ve got back up,” Sully said.
“Who the hell is that?” Quinn asked.
“Sully Kross,” Sully said.
“Oh my God.”
“That’s right,” Sheppard said. “We got this.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the right arm of the Lord. I am his avenging angel. I am death that walks in the night.”
“Huh. Got it,” Quinn said. “Look, Shel, I’m dispatching a couple of patrol cars. I’ll tell them to meet you at the turn-off at City Park Road. If you’re right and he is there, we don’t want a...well, we really don’t need—”
“A situation?” Shelby said.
“Right. That’s a quiet community back in there. It’s a little retirement village. I used to go and listen to Waylon Jennings play down at the Captain’s Table. Also, Roberts is liable to have a ton of guns, and I’m not talking about popguns, either.”
“Noted,” Billy said. “Quinn, we’re hanging up now.”
“You fellahs wait for me at the turn-off. I’m heading that way right now.”
Billy turned to look at Shelby, who nodded. “Suits us fine.”
Billy jabbed the button on his dashboard, hanging up the call. “Okay,” he said. “Who here is armed?”
“Me,” Sully said. “Got a pea-shooter in my pocket.”
“Pea-shooter, huh?” Shelby asked.
“You know it.”
“Mr. Payne?” Billy asked.
“He doesn’t do guns anymore,” Shelby said. “His mouth is a lethal weapon.”
“Shut up, whitebread,” Sheppard said.
“Yes, Sensei.”
“Questioning,” Shelby said. “Bring him in for questioning.”
“That’s what the man said,” Billy replied.
The sun was past meridian overhead, the shadows were their shortest, and it was a windless, cloudless day. The bright blue seemed to go on forever.
Quinn arrived at the turnoff onto City Park Road from Ranch-to-Market Road 2222, a dark, unmarked patrol car in tow. He pulled over, got out and walked over to Billy’s car. Billy rolled his window down.
“Hot day,” Billy said.
“It’s going to get hotter, I think.” Quinn looked through the passenger window and Sully gave the man a curt nod. Sheppard yawned.
“Are we doing this, or not?” Shelby asked.
“Will you follow my lead, Agent Strongbow?” Quinn asked.
Billy nodded.
“Shelby?”
“Sure.”
“Mighty fine, then. Let’s roll.”
By the time the keys were rattling in the deadbolt lock on the door, Gil was ready. While he had been preparing, he had to be sure of which way the door opened. It wouldn’t do to try and be behind a door that opened the wrong way—out, instead of in—but a cursory examination revealed there were no stops. The door definitely opened inward.
He’d found only two potential weapons in the room. One, a foot-long piece of pipe from beneath the sink—which he had to tear away from the drain by main strength—he held in his good left hand. The other, a surgeon’s bonesaw blade, was affixed to the metal stump of his right wrist. Attaching the saw had been a delicate operation, which he had sweated over as he tried to count the minutes until their return. All the while, his ears were peeled for any sound: a car turning in, possibly; the crunch of car tires on gravel, maybe; voices; the rattle of keys—anything. Mostly he had only caught the sound of cars passing on the distant roadway outside.
Gil knew exactly where he was. He had been in this backroom less than half a dozen times in the past. But those times were behind him now.
As the key turned in the lock, Gil tensed.
The two men were talking. This was a good thing. Their attention would be wrapped up in their own bullshit.
The door swung open.
“All I’m saying is she shouldn’t have talked to us like—where did he go?”
/>
The figure moved into the room. It was Lionel. The other shadow cast by the light in the next room hesitated for a moment, then entered the room. That one was Anthony.
Gil shoved at the door with all his weight and then sprang upon the two men. The lightweight metal pipe in his left hand caught the air with its passage and moaned like a bullfrog, the result of the wind passing the hollow metal tube. The saw that was his right hand whistled, and blood flew.
The two men screamed and tried to fend him off while getting at the guns in their shoulder holsters, but Gil was a wild man. He was death incarnate. He was Shiva. He was Anubis.
The blood flew and spattered the walls of the dark and dingy room with the incongruous ceiling tiles.
And after awhile, there was silence.
Gil stood. The serrated metal rod that stood in place of his right hand dripped crimson onto the floor, and the light from the room behind him cast his shadow on the back wall.
“I’m not Gil,” he said. “From now on, I am Saw.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
When Skillet turned off onto City Park Road, there was a black car sitting to the side of the road just after the intersection. He didn’t think anything of it until he was a few hundred yards down the road. When he glanced in his rearview mirror, he saw two other cars pulling up beside it.
Skillet passed a sign that read: No Poaching. Maybe the folks back there were game wardens, doing a sweep of the area. He decided that it had nothing to do with him or his errand, and pushed down hard on the gas pedal. It was a big hill to climb. He hadn’t been out this way since he was a kid, but he had a good memory. In fact, he very damn nearly had a perfect memory. The road would be all hills and valleys, twists and almost hairpin turns before it came out near City Park on the river. He would turn off to the left when he got to the sign for the park, he remembered this much.
He had driven through the Ski Shores neighborhood once in his life. He’d been a no more than a kid then, his new driver’s license burning a hole in his pocket along with money from his job at the car wash. But the neighborhood wasn’t his kind of neighborhood. It was all white folks back in there with their fancy big mansions and their boats and water skis.
Now he was moving up in the world. It was true he no longer had a driver’s license, but who really needed one if you knew how to drive right and you didn’t have any busted headlights or expired tags?
