"We’re going to get him, Jack." Sam put his hand on the younger man’s arm. "It’s all going to be over soon."
"What are you two talking about?" Patty asked, perplexed.
"Never mind, Patty," Sam said quickly. "All you have to know is we’ve arrived at our destination. He’s been heading for Bloomington all the time."
There was not a car moving in the town. A few lights burned inside store windows and street lamps shone on empty sidewalks. A sprinkle of rain started, gently coating the windshield.
"Rain," Jack said softly.
"Where do we go?" Patty asked. "This place is dead."
"We go over the railroad tracks. I remember that much," Jack said.
He turned left on the only street crossing the tracks and the tracking device went crazy.
"I wish Garbo was with us," Patty whined. "Where is he anyway?"
"He’s coming. He’s a few miles back. Sam, will you let him know exactly where we are?" Jack asked.
While Sam relayed the message, Jack slowed the car even more. They were on a gravel road where the pavement had petered out. The rain began falling more heavily, and the windshield wipers clacked as they swiped at the water. "Goddamn rain," Jack muttered, trying to see where they were going.
"There!" Patty yelled, hanging over the front seat and pointing. "That’s the Chrysler!"
Jack instantly killed the headlights and pulled to the side of the road. Sam replaced the mike and felt in his old black, policeman’s jacket for his service .38.
"Christ, I don’t want to go up to that fucking car in this rain," Patty said, fidgeting in the back seat.
"Then stay here!" Jack had no more patience left. He opened his door.
“What the hell, Garbo will be here in a few minutes. The fucker’s not going anywhere." Patty sounded as if he were trying to convince himself.
Sam scowled at the young officer and got out of the car to follow Jack. Still scared, Patty Trumbine felt for his holster and joined them.
When a streak of lightning lit up the dark sky, the rain looked like a million silver coins. Water ran down Sam’s collar and soaked his shirt within two minutes. His shoes sloshed through puddles, and a biting cold worked its way next to his skin. At the Chrysler, they squatted and moved to the passenger side. Jack looked in first. "Not in here," he whispered to Sam. Patty pushed against Sam’s back and shivered uncontrollably.
They crept along the side of the roadway and were thankful the noise of the rain kept their approach from being heard on the gravel. A stand of pine thinned and Jack led the way across a full drainage ditch that gurgled and streamed like a small river. On the other side of the ditch, the men halted, Patty running into Sam’s back again.
"I see someone back toward those trees," Sam whispered close to Jack’s ear.
"Let’s spread out and come from behind. If he sees us coming, he could get lost forever in the woods."
Jack nodded and struck off in a crouch to the right side of the land. Sam turned to give Patty his orders, then moved into a thick growth of winter-dried weeds and bushes that would take him close to the shadow ahead of him.
The .38 in Sam’s hand felt heavy but familiar. He hoped he would not be forced to use it. It had been many years since he shot at a man, and even more years since he was responsible for someone’s death. Despite what Nick might have done--and it was unforgivable--Sam did not want to kill him. If he could just get to Nick before Jack did. Jack was a good policeman, but his only son was dead, and part of Willie might be buried here. Even without positive proof of Ringer’s guilt, it was probable that Jack might use his gun and ask questions later. Who the hell would blame him?
Rain beat down on Sam’s slick leather jacket, and rivulets streamed down his hair, his forehead, his cheeks.
The figure he had seen had not moved and that was the most disconcerting fact of all. What was he doing standing quietly in the rain, his back to the road? Was his mind completely gone?
Tangled dead vines whipped across Sam’s knees as he trudged through the dense growth. Nothing, he suddenly understood, was as it seemed. It was not a normal rainfall. It was a deluge. It was not a normal man standing in the night with water cascading down his shoulders and back. It was a shell of a man, a hulk. He had led them to this place. They were on his land, in the midst of his territory. It was a fitting night and a fitting place. The murderer awaited them. He had chosen the time and the place. He alone had decided how it would end.
Sam crept to within three feet of the motionless figure. He squinted past the water running into his eyes to see Jack or Patty. Where were they?
With his heart hammering and his tongue thick with the black bitter taste of fear, Sam barked, "Turn around with your hands up. I don’t want to have to kill you."
What happened next was all muddled in Sam’s brain. He saw the image of a man turning, fast, almost with a ballet dancer’s perfect pirouette. The distance between them might never have existed, it was crossed so swiftly. Sam had the sight of a face reflecting horrors burned onto his eyes and into his brain. His finger squeezed the trigger of the .38 and a shot rang out, missing its target and thunking instead into a tree trunk.
They scuffled, the rain and the dark night obscuring their gestures. Hands fumbled, fingers slipped, bodies collided.
Sam saw the wire coming for him. He saw the fist swing out around his face, the thick fingers gripping a handle. Garrote, his brain screamed, God no...
Sam jerked his right hand up to his own head and the wet barrel of his gun was instantly slapped against his cheek by the force of the wire clanging into place. He screamed in pain. The wire was caught, stretched around the gun barrel and his neck. A horrible grunting sound of effort roared in Sam’s ear as the madman twisted and tightened the garrote’s wire. The wire began to cut through the left side of his neck.
Jack!
Sam tried to scream for help, but nothing came from his open mouth. Suddenly he was kneed in the small of his back and felt something give.
The detective sagged to the ground, and his attacker followed, struggling to tighten the wire.
Painfully Sam turned the barrel of his gun along the side of his face. He lifted his elbow and the gun moved slightly. When his elbow was straight and the .38 was pointed behind him, Sam fired.
The garrote dropped away, and Sam fell to his hands, his head down. The side of his face was burned black with gunpowder, and the skin was seared. The hammer and viewfinder of the .38 had ripped holes in his cheek. A scorched line on his scalp trickled blood and he was deaf in his right ear.
"Oh my God. Sam, Sam, are you all right?"
Jack tried to lift his friend, but they both slipped in the mud. Sam felt the younger man’s arms around his shoulders, trying to hold him.
"Let me...let me see," Sam managed to say after spitting more blood. His head continued to ring.
He turned to look at what he had done. The body lay sprawled on its back, half the head and brains blown away. The rain continued to beat down in torrents. Water ran in tiny streams down the corpse.
"Shit," Sam said, trying to get to his feet. He put one hand over the torn side of his face. "I didn’t want to have to kill the bastard."
Patty Trumbine emerged from the woods, wet, bedraggled, and shaking with fear. He stumbled up to where Sam and Jack stood over the dead man.
"That’s one dead motherfucker," he commented shakily.
A siren and lights blared from the gravel road. Jack supported Sam across the open land.
Garbo and three other men got out of the car and waited.
"What the hell happened?" Garbo asked Jack.
"Sam killed him, but got his face torn up in the process. He needs a doctor."
Sam leaned on the Fury’s fender, bleeding into his hands.
"Think I broke my jaw too," he said thickly.
Jack brought out a handkerchief to try to stop the flow of blood.
Patty Trumbine wandered to the driver’s door of the bl
ue Chrysler and opened it. He saw the bowling bag in the center of the seat and grabbed it.
"Hey, this is heavy," he called over the droning of the downpour.
"What the fuck are you doing, Trumbine?" Garbo asked.
Patty set the bag on the trunk of the Chrysler and unzipped it. He peeled open the vinyl top and let out a short, startled scream.
Sam and Jack both looked up at the same time. They followed Garbo to the Chrysler where Party was trembling and rubbing his hands together in the rain as if to wash them clean.
"What’s in there?" Garbo asked.
Patty pointed, turned away, and vomited.
Garbo reached inside to what looked like a wet, fuzzy stuffed rabbit. He entwined his fingers in the blond hair and pulled out Nick Ringer’s head.
"Who…?" Garbo held the head over the bag, his fingers twitching with the urge to get rid of the head. He wanted to drop it and couldn't.
"Nick!" Jack exclaimed.
"Nick?" Sam asked, turning to stare into the rain-gutted woods. "Then who was out there? Who tried to kill me?"
The three men trekked across the muddy ground toward the woods and the body. Patty Trumbine followed, wiping his mouth. Sam stared down at the corpse and with the help of flashlights was able to identify the dark-haired brother, the one he had met in the house, Daley Ringer.
Lieutenant Garbo shook his head in bewilderment. "This man tried to kill you?" he asked Sam. "But I thought we wanted the one called Nick? What the hell’s going on here? Were there two of them in the car we chased?”
"They were both doing it," Jack said tightly, backing away through the rain and mud. "There wasn’t one killer--there were two.”
Sam remembered the looks exchanged between the brothers when he had questioned them. He remembered the air of authority Daley had over his brother, the way he seemed to control everything that was said in the conversation. They were like two parts of one person. Could they have entered into a murder pact together?
Or did Nick even realize Daley was playing his alter ego? And in the end the stronger of the two murdered the weaker one. That's exactly what happened and he knew it, knew it in his gut.
"We’ll never know which one was responsible for which murder," Sam said.
"One of them did us a favor," Jack said. "Jesus, how could they have done these things? Maybe Nick never did any of it. It might have been Daley all along."
"No, the hair sample from the McCombie murder proved the killer was blond. Nick did that one. Blood tests and the footprint will make it conclusive," Sam said. Despite himself, the older detective began to groan from the pain in the side of his head. When he talked, it was like being inside a metal cylinder.
Everything reverberated.
"They’ll dig up this place," Jack said, sweeping his arm around the land. "They’ll find the missing…they’ll find…”
"Let’s go home, Jack. I need to get my cheek sewn up," Sam urged.
Jack helped his friend into the Fury and stood a moment looking over the roof to the glittering lights in the woods. His hair was plastered to his forehead. No one could distinguish the droplets of rain on his face from the tears he was unable to repress. Willie’s death was revenged, but nothing would ever bring his son back. He thought he would feel better, feel vindication, and all he felt was a blank place in his heart.
Old and tired, Sam thought, fingering his aching jawbone. I’m just old and tired and I’ll never understand the crazy landscape inside a killer’s head.
He looked through the windshield and the rain. The green vinyl bowling bag still sat on the rear fender of the Chrysler. Sam imagined it filling with water, washing clean the bloodstained face of a dead man whose eyes had seen a tragic world--a man who had faced a tragic death at the hands of his own brother.
The Ringer brothers had come home to where death had always waited in Bloomington, Texas, home to where it all began one hot, summer day years before, when hate sprouted and secret fantasies took possession of a child. They had come full circle.
The wire that bound them together glistened dully in the rainy night where it lay on a bed of pine needles. It would never again vibrate with death. It was silenced forever, a harmless coil just beyond the fingertips of a man lying cold and rigid in the Texas mud.
Houston was now safe from the Wireman. But after forty years with the city, Sam knew one day another terror would strike. It could be tomorrow, next week, next year, but one day evil would come back into the world. And Sam would be there, he had to be, just as Maggie predicted. He would help hunt down the evildoers. While wiremen and gunmen, poisoners and stranglers and knife-wielding murderers stalked the innocent, Sam, and Jack, too, would be there to try to stem the tide.
THE END
WIDOW
by
Billie Sue Mosiman
Copyright 2010 Billie Sue Mosiman, All right reserved
This book was recreated from scans & copy-edited by David Dodd
Previously published in print by Jove/Bantam, 1992
Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Novel
Prologue
Perfection was the key. If she could manage to create a flawless environment it might prevent any further descent into the chaos that had intruded itself into Kay Mandel's life.
The flowers were arranged with Japanese economy in the black vase on the entry-hall table. The tablecloth on the gleaming dining table was freshly ironed, precisely centered, the china and silverware for two placed opposite each other. Dinner was her husband's favorite. Rib-eye steaks broiled to medium rare, scalloped potatoes, artichoke-heart salad.
The children—Gabriel, two years old, and Stevie, four—had been bathed earlier, fed their dinners, and now sat playing with plastic blocks on the floor of the immaculately clean den. They were quiet, always eager to please their mother. Good children. Perfect sons.
Kay checked her hair in the mirror on the living room wall. She patted a stray black strand into place just above her right brow. Did her eyebrows need plucking? They were all right. She looked her best in the white summer dress and the sandals with little heels. The white offset her naturally dark olive complexion. The sandals brought attention to the lovely curves of her legs. She knew her legs were good because Scott told her so. He preferred mini-skirts on her for that very reason.
She wet her lips nervously, frowned. Was he late? Late meant he might come home in a foul mood. She glanced at her watch. Ten after six. Just ten minutes late, it didn't mean anything. Not yet.
His moods had been swinging violently between euphoria and depression for over four months. He might come home ecstatic over something she didn't understand at work. Or he might enter the front door wearing a pained look, unable to speak except in monosyllables. Yes, no, not now, stop, go away.
When it all began—suddenly, inexplicably, without any cause that she could discover—she had searched for meaning. Was it his job? It was not, he claimed. Was it her, something she had done or left undone that upset him? Or was it the children, the routine of married life, some sort of midlife crisis? Not likely, he told her, I'm too young to be middle-aged. Then what? What could be wrong? Would a massage work, more frequent sex, a hot bath, another drink?
Nothing helped. At her wit's end, she suggested he see someone.
“Me? See someone? Why don't you see someone,” he'd screamed that night, frightening the children so that she hurried them into their pajamas and into bed.
Stevie asked, “What's wrong with Daddy?”
Kay couldn't answer her son. She tucked the covers beneath his arms, leaned down to kiss his forehead. “Go to sleep now. Tomorrow's another day.” Yes, it was. Tomorrow Scott might feel better. Tomorrow it was possible her children would not have to ask her unanswerable questions.
“What do you think is so wrong with me I need to see someone?” he asked upon her return to the den. “I know what that means. It means you think I'm going crazy. Well, I'm not. Do you hear me? I'M NOT.”
But all evidence pointed to the conclusion that he was.
What about the nights he argued with her over nothing, then slammed the bedroom door in her face and, when she entered anyway, she'd find him sitting on the side of the bed loading and unloading the Smith and Wesson .38? He had bought the gun for protection against burglars, he told her. There had been a rash of break-ins in the neighborhood the year before. In some other neighborhoods a plague of ‘kick burglaries' were becoming commonplace. Two or three young men wearing ski masks or hoods kicked in the front doors even when families were at home, and proceeded to loot and pillage.
Yet Scott wouldn't let her touch the gun. He didn't really approve of guns, he said, they simply should have one on hand. Just in case.
“What are you doing?” Kay asked when she found him with the gun and the ammunition box lying open on the comforter, shiny brass cartridges scattered around, ominous signposts she could not decipher.
His stare was one she did not recognize. His eyes didn't reflect any emotion she had ever seen before. They were hateful and suspicious, callously weighing thoughts she was not privy to. The look chilled her so that she wrapped her arms around herself to keep from shivering. When he had no answer forthcoming, when he continued to stare at her with those cold, reptilian eyes, she backed from the room and slept on the sofa, an afghan thrown over her legs, tossing and turning throughout the night, wondering if he was still loading and unloading the gun in the other room.
She didn't know what to do. She didn't have any women friends to ask about the behavioral change. She had dedicated herself to being the best wife, mother, and housekeeper she knew how to be. She didn't make friends easily, didn't feel she needed them. Her own family was enough.
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