WIREMAN

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  "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 blue 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

  Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review on the Kindle site. Other titles by Mosiman are at her Kindle store. Mosiman's Kindle Titles Read on for the first chapters of BANISHED, a new novel by Billie Sue Mosiman available for the Kindle as an e-book.

  BANISHED

  By

  Billie Sue Mosiman

  Copyright 2011 by Billie Sue Mosiman, All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Neil Jackson, Copyright 2011

  "The Magician rearranges the Universe to make himself the center, the Mystic rearranges himself to find the center."

  CHAPTER 1

  THE LITTLE DEATH

  She could barely breathe she was so hot. She could hear the night birds call and the rustle of her mother’s palm grass skirt as she moved about the small hut. She could see just the light from the flames of the fire in the center of the floor, but she could not make out anything beyond.

  She closed her eyes to blessed darkness and wondered when she would die. She knew she would never be well again, never stand and walk, never kiss her mother’s cheek, or feel the comfort of her mother’s loving embrace. She had not lived long, a handful of years, so there was not much to miss. Yet she knew she must fight against death. She must not willingly let it take her.

  A blanket of coolness slipped over her bare skin and it was not from the water her mother had been sponging onto her. She tried to reopen her eyes to discover the cause, but her lids were too heavy. She was so hot! The coolness that temporarily enveloped her was not helping. She wished they would carry her to the sea and float her in the waves.

  Dark grew darker. Grew to pitch black. Grew to encompass a vast void. She struggled to take a breath. It would not come; her lungs would not obey. She thought, Death has me. Death has slipped his arms around me and holds me so tightly I cannot breathe.

  Faintly she heard her mother’s wails, but she couldn’t lift a hand for her to come near, nor could she whisper the compassion she felt for the loved one she was leaving behind. She couldn’t even say goodbye.

  Take me to the sea, she begged of Death. Take me from this heat and pain and let me float in the cool frothy waves. I always loved…I always loved the sea.

  The heat grew like a malevolent cloud in the darkness until it filled the void. She couldn’t feel her body. She knew she was but a pinpoint of matter, a tiny bit of consciousness floating in the emptiness. It seemed time had stopped or it was moving so slowly it would last forever and nothing for her would ever change.

  I’m not ready, the child complained. I’m too young.

  And then she was swept off into the dark beyond where there was no more thought or heat or life.

  She was done with this world.

  CHAPTER 2

  A NEW TRUE BEGINNING

  “Life. A wriggling mass of cells blindly replicating, always in motion, endlessly in search of food. Is that life? They say it is.”

  The girl lay dying. Her week-long fever had put her into a coma and though her mother kept bathing her with cool water, her skin felt like hot coals. Though fevered, her light coffee-colored skin shone smooth and beautiful as a river stone in the flickering firelight.

  In the little one-room shack made from date palm leaves the heat was stifling. Not one stray breeze made its way through the open doorway. Flies were so thick they congealed the air and had to be batted away constantly from the comatose child.

  The mother, frantic about losing her only child, knowing in her heart death stood close with a skeletal arm extended, ran from the hut crying to the night heavens. She sped along the lone path through the jungle to the witch doctor’s hovel and stood outside wailing loud enough to wake the dead.

  In her native tongue she told the witch doctor about the dying chil
d and begged for him to save her.

  It seemed to take him forever to gather his special feathers, shells, rocks, and sticks tied in bundles with strings of dried pig skin. As the mother raced back along the path to her baby, the witch doctor stayed at her side, pacing her, a pale sickle moon at their backs.

  Bursting into the hut where a small fire in the center of the floor burned, grotesque shadows swathed the little girl who lay against the back wall. Both mother and witch doctor knew it was over and done with.

  The child’s arm lay limp off to one side, her head was turned toward them, her eyes open, glazed, and forever stilled.

  The mother turned to the witch doctor and in her grief made the ultimate request. She knew of the rumors.

  “They say you have raised the dead. Raise her up!”

  “I have only raised a few animals,” he said. “Never a human being.”

  “Raise her!”

  It was true he was renowned across the island as the most powerful witch doctor ever to have lived, but what the woman was asking he thought was surely beyond his powers. He had brought a dead chicken back to life. A dead dog. And once, even a dead panther, just to see if he could. But a human being? He had not dared try. He was not even sure that the gods would allow him that kind of power.

  “I will give you anything,” the mother cried. She beat her chest and rolled her eyes. “Anything! Anything!” She was close to madness.

  The witch doctor’s countenance darkened, his eyes took on a glow. His gaze left the mother and settled on the child. He stepped closer, two steps. Three. He went to his haunches and studied the girl. She was undeniably the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her skin was lighter than most islanders, as if it were lit from within by soft white flame. Her nose and lips and eyes and brow were perfection, and the face was shaped like a heart. Her long dark hair was smooth, shiny with whale oil, and it fell in curls like coiled snakes from her scalp. He reached out and trailed his fingers along her cheek. It was cold, so cold. It was a shame she was dead. It seemed to Mujai that the gods were intentionally cruel when children died.