The Man Who Heard Too Much

by Forrest, Richard;

  He shrugged, wrapped the chain tighter around his wrist, and peered through the trees toward the road.

  Rutledge trusted her to do it right, but she wondered if that was all there was to it. She was honest enough with herself to admit that the senator’s trust was not all that impelled her. To the extent she was capable, she loved him. She was fascinated with the power he held now and the power which would soon be his, but there was more—much more. She felt it within her now. The feeling started at the beginning of each operation and swelled until it nearly consumed her—a sense of excitement, danger that pushed her to a high pinnacle where she felt that all her senses were alert and functioning at their utmost capacity.

  The first time she had accepted one of his “assignments,” she had recognized the feeling. Then, Rutledge was trying for his first senatorial term, impatient at the restrictions imposed on members of the House of Representatives where he was one of many. He had been the underdog in the senatorial primary race, a dark horse who was given little chance to obtain his party’s nomination … until his opponent had died in a plane crash.

  The plane’s mechanic, whom she had seduced, had conveniently killed himself afterward. It had saved them the difficulty of removing him in another manner.

  She hadn’t known Rutledge’s opponent would be on that charter flight, just as she didn’t know the reason for killing Martin Fowler … but reasons didn’t matter.

  It would be done.

  She had arrived at the motel the night before. After checking in and leaving her luggage in her unit, she had gone to the small bar off the dining room. In addition to the bartender, there were two men at the far end of the bar playing liar’s poker. They had glanced up when she entered and gone back to their game.

  She ordered a vodka gimlet and waited. It annoyed her that it took five minutes for the larger of the two men to approach her.

  “Buy you a drink?”

  “I’m on the wagon,” she replied.

  “You’re A.” A statement, not a question.

  “Let’s take a booth,” she said and scooped up her drink and proceeded to the furthermost booth in the dimmest corner. The bartender’s eyes followed her with an incredulous look. He hadn’t seen a hooker of her caliber in Horton in a dog’s age.

  Althea appraised the two men as they followed her to the booth. They were both large, with bulging necks that seemed barely restrained by collars and ties, and looked uncomfortable in their business suits.

  “Do you have the motorcycles?” she asked.

  “Two Kawasaki KDX 420’s. They’re safely hidden.”

  She nodded. “Good. I’ll need one man on a bike with me, and the other in the car as backup.”

  She explained the plan completely as she tried to gauge their ability.

  “I think that’s him,” the man by her side said.

  Althea glanced through the stand of trees that hid the motorcycles. The young man from the gas station was riding toward them. His bike tottered slightly as if he were unsure of his balance.

  “That’s him,” she said. “Wait until he passes us.”

  She quickly donned her helmet and snapped down the visor. They sat poised to kick start the cycles.

  Martin wasn’t tired—the work hadn’t been that difficult, and he was filled with a deep satisfaction. All in all the day had gone well. At the end of the week he would be paid and would actually have real money. In a couple of months they would let him look around for his own room or apartment. Perhaps someday he could even buy a cheap car and take driving lessons.

  He was pleased at the new beginning. He began to whistle “Over the Rainbow” from the Wizard of Oz movie they saw on TV each year at the home.

  The sound of the motorcycles revving up startled him and he glanced to the rear. The road was empty both behind and to his front. The staccato cough of the engines drew closer, and he turned to look toward the far side of the road as both cycles broke from the trees and jounced over the dirt onto the pavement. He recognized the machines and the drivers as the two who had stopped at the station earlier in the day.

  The riders made a sweeping curve so that they pulled abreast of him. Reluctantly, Martin let a hand leave the handlebars in order to give them a short wave of greeting.

  There was no response from the bikers.

  The motorcycles and the bicycle rode in parallel formation down the deserted road. They were in a remote area on the outskirts of town, three miles from the Victorian mansion that was the group home. Stands of tall pine bracketed the road with sparse underbrush intermittently growing between the trees.

  The biker to the left of Martin began to edge his motorcycle closer to the rim of the bicycle’s wheel. Martin looked down in alarm. “Hey!”

  The cycle kept coming closer, and Martin swerved to avoid an imminent collision. His bicycle jounced onto the dirt shoulder of the road, the front wheel careened off a large boulder, and he flipped off the bike and landed with a thud on his right arm. He lay immobile a moment, assuming that the motorcycles would continue on and he could pick up his vehicle and proceed to the house.

  With military precision the motorcycles swerved onto the shoulder. The first machine swiveled to a stop before him, the second stopped five yards behind him. Martin scrambled to his feet, brushed his pants knees, and slowly looked from one helmeted figure to the other. “What do you want?”

  The larger of the riders cut his ignition, kicked down the stand, and dismounted. He walked slowly toward Martin while twisting a length of chain that he held between his hands.

  The chain whipped through the air and caught Martin painfully on the shoulder. The force of the blow knocked him to the side and backward. The man with the chain moved closer. One end of the chain now dangled back over the man’s shoulder, while the other was clenched tightly in both hands.

  Martin rolled quickly to the side as the chain streaked downward and whacked the rocky roadside with a clank. He scrambled to his feet and without a backward glance at his fallen bicycle loped toward the trees.

  The second cyclist, still astride her machine, pushed up her face visor. “Get him,” she commanded.

  “He’s going like a bat out of hell.” The man with the chain started his cycle and turned in the direction Martin was running.

  Martin ran with a bent-over stumbling stride. His breathing came in wracking sobs, not from loss of breath, but in surprise and fear due to the unexpected and unprovoked attack. He knew that he must reach the protection of the trees and lie in wait until his tormentors left.

  There was a sound behind him, almost at his heels. He glanced back to see the man on the motorcycle nearly upon him. Martin took evasive action and ran in a zigzag manner, but the cyclist compensated for his movements.

  The chain swished through the air and again caught him on the shoulder. The blow sent a jarring sensation through him and he fell to his knees.

  The motorcycle swerved erratically as the angle of the slope increased, until the driver lost his balance. The machine tilted on its side and stalled.

  Martin scrambled to his feet and ran deeper into the pine forest. He heard loud curses behind him as the man disentangled himself from his machine and finally restarted it. The sound of the second cycle was now also apparent as it approached.

  His arm and shoulder were numb from the blows. As it struck him the last time, the tip of the chain had flicked up across his cheek and ripped a gash that now dripped blood.

  He must keep running. He must hide. He had to find a deep thicket to crawl inside.

  The chain again. It slashed across his back with sufficient force to splay him forward. He hit the ground with another jarring blow. Before he could regain his footing, his pursuer dismounted his machine and whipped the chain toward him.

  Martin caught the end of the chain in his right hand. The force of its downward momentum nearly fractured his hand, but he held it and jerked forward.

  It was the other man’s turn to slither face-first and groani
ng across the rough ground.

  Althea stopped her machine at the foot of a hill twenty yards from the fighting men. She took off her helmet, threw it to the ground, and shook her head in anger. The son-of-a-bitch was botching it.

  She dismounted and slipped out of her backpack. She undid two straps and impatiently pulled open the bag. The weapon, wrapped in cheesecloth, had been laid out for quick assembly. She unwrapped the barrel first, and then the trigger housing mechanism, and began to screw them together.

  The gasping cyclist tore the crash helmet from his head as he and Martin faced each other. Each held an end of chain. The man had a .357 magnum strapped to his side under his jacket, and he debated dropping the chain and fumbling for the weapon. The idiot bastard holding the far end of the chain was strong as hell. He was afraid if he let go, Fowler would whip the lethal chain through the air, around his neck, and kill him. He prepared instead to jerk backward with all his force and weight.

  Martin saw the man’s muscles tense and knew he was going to make a lunge to obtain full possession of the chain. The instant the man snapped the chain toward himself Martin let go of his end, and the man tumbled, landing on his back. The chain whipped forward across the man’s face, fracturing his nose.

  Martin began to run. His zigzag course took him up a small rise. He ran like a hunted animal, searching for some safe lair.

  Althea felt the barrel click into place and she shoved the small magazine into position under the chamber. She pulled back the bolt, engaging the first bullet, and snapped the weapon to her shoulder just as Martin topped the rise to her front. He disappeared over the far side.

  “Goddamn,” she said aloud and ran forward.

  She passed the fallen man who was now on all fours. With one hand he held his wounded nose that dripped blood down over his fingers, while with the other he fumbled inside his jacket for the magnum.

  Without breaking stride, Althea beckoned with her weapon. “Come on.”

  Martin was now able to see railroad tracks below him, winding through the shallow valley. A freight, pulled by a grimy diesel engine, was laboring up a steep grade. Several of its boxcar doors were open. He moved directly toward it, avoiding the zigzag course he had previously run—his only thought was the safety of the moving train.

  The magnum boomed twice from the top of the ridge. Martin glanced back and saw a figure with fiery hair standing next to his assailant.

  Althea knocked the man’s arm down. “Fool. You’ll never hit a running man at this distance with a hand gun.” She again raised the rifle to her shoulder. There would be no necessity to lead the target. The running man before her was nearly straight ahead. A clear shot at fifty yards. She couldn’t miss. The sight picture was clear … the target was properly silhouetted in the sight. Her finger squeezed, and the rifle bucked slightly against her shoulder, as the high velocity projectile streaked toward its target.

  The impact knocked Martin off his feet and he skittered across the ground. Cinders and gravel from the track bed ground into his cheek and he momentarily lost his breath.

  He knew he had been shot.

  Althea automatically levered another shell into the chamber as her target fell. She held the small rifle at the ready as she beckoned to her companion to follow and slowly picked her way down the ridge toward the roadbed below.

  For a moment, wild berry bushes obscured their view of the train as they stepped through a draw. The caboose passed them as the train, now on a downgrade, began to pick up speed.

  “He should be right over here,” she said.

  “Well, he ain’t,” her companion said through the handkerchief held across his broken nose.

  “He’s got to be. I hit him. I know I did. I saw him fall.”

  “Some dummy you picked to hit,” the man said with disgust as he kicked at the high grass.

  “Shut up and let’s find him.”

  They were an incongruous pair that wove across the roadbed looking for a fallen man—the woman with vivid red hair holding a rifle at her hips, and the man with the large handgun, holding a cloth across his face.

  Martin Fowler lay on the floor of the empty boxcar and felt the warm seep of blood as it spread from his shoulder down the small of his back. His breath still came in gasps and his body hurt.

  They had tried to kill him. They had beaten and shot him and he didn’t know why.

  He hunched across the flooring and leaned back against the wall of the car, as far from the open door as he could get.

  Chapter Three

  Sara Bucknell stood nude before the ornate bathtub, which was supported on clawed feet. She poured bath salts from a small plastic container and marveled at the size of the tub as it filled with warm water. The tub was huge, as was almost everything else in the converted mansion that was now the halfway house.

  Sara considered her job as resident director a temporary one. It was a sort of halfway house for her, too, a safe haven, a place to take stock and reorient the direction of her life.

  The job squeeze had made her an academic bum. She hadn’t intended for it to turn out that way, but reality had forced her into a nomadic wandering from campus to campus.

  Everyone had encouraged her during her undergraduate years; teachers, fellow students, and faculty advisors had painted a rosy picture of her life in academia. She had taken her undergraduate degree with honors, her master’s with near-honors, and although her doctoral thesis had proven more difficult, she had finally obtained the coveted Ph.D.

  Fellowships, loans, and scholarships were always available. During the period of her predoctoral studies she had had teaching positions—history survey courses for freshmen—and grading themes for full professors. The income was sufficient to allow her to pay her own fees and still have enough money left for a modest standard of living.

  When her course work was complete, she had accepted a one-year contract at Middleburg College as a junior instructor in American History. It had taken her all of two weeks to discover that was exactly what she had—a one-year contract, which would not be renewed. It was a simple matter of economics. There just weren’t enough tracked tenured positions available, and she was one of many doomed to an academic life of limbo in the constant search for a tenured opening.

  She hadn’t found one.

  Shaking her head to break the reflective mood, she noticed, with chagrin, that she had poured nearly her whole bottle of fragrance into the bath water. She turned with a bemused smile and replaced the nearly empty container on the shelf by the door. In so doing, she caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror bolted to the room’s door.

  She was high-waisted, long-legged, and small-bosomed, with a round gaminlike face that seemed to belie her innate intelligence. She ran a hand over the tight curls of her close-cropped hair. Still not too bad, she thought. She might be pushing thirty, but her body was taut and firm. She turned from the mirror and climbed into the tub, sinking up to her neck gratefully in the warm fragrant water.

  The house was quieting around her. The TV was still on in the large living room which ran nearly the length of the house, but most of her charges were abed.

  Her eyelids half closed in the luxury of the warm soothing water; she might have fallen asleep if there hadn’t been that one nagging thought.

  Where in hell was Martin Fowler?

  When he hadn’t arrived home by eight, she had called Mr. Dunn, the service station owner, at home. The querulous old man had told her that Martin had left on his bike at five-thirty. He had nearly hung up on her.

  The halfway house wasn’t more than half an hour’s bike ride from the station at the center of town. Martin should have arrived at six or no later than six-thirty if he had dawdled.

  She would have to go looking for him. First, she would call the authorities, and then the medical clinic. If they didn’t have any information, she would dress and take the van to retrace his route.

  Sara climbed reluctantly from the tub and began to towel off. />
  Althea’s hand lashed out and rained a stinging blow across the man’s face. “You blew it!”

  “I thought he was supposed to be a dummy. I figured I could take him easy.”

  “You aren’t being paid to figure. I told you to chase the train. The tracks run parallel to the road.”

  “It took me to Dawsonville to catch it and I couldn’t find him. I don’t know if he jumped off or was hiding. Hell, you shot him—maybe he died.”

  “Don’t you think he moved rather quickly for a dying man?” She poured herself a heavy dollop of bourbon and half filled the glass with ginger ale. It would wreak hell with her diet, but tonight she needed a drink. She sat back in the single easy chair in the motel room and appraised with distaste her accomplice sitting uneasily on the edge of the bed.

  “We should have shot him right away and forgot the games.”

  “Our contact didn’t want him shot except as a last resort.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We go looking for him,” Althea said. “We start looking now and keep looking until we find him.” Their quarry was tired and wounded. They would start with the area doctors, clinics, and hospitals. They would locate him and they would take him.

  She drained a third of her drink. “And then we kill him.”

  He lay against the track embankment with his face pressed painfully into the gravel. His body ached, and any movement caused sharp shooting pains to course through injured muscles with such severity that he groaned aloud.

  He struggled to his feet, wobbled, half fell, and pushed himself up again. He had to get back to the house. He had to talk to Miss Bucknell. She would know what to do.

  Martin staggered away from the railroad tracks. He wondered how far from home he was. The bleeding from the wound in his shoulder had stopped, but there was still a dull ache in the area. His body was bruised from the chain slashes, and the jump from the slowly moving freight had skinned his knees and palms.

  A car passed on a distant road and for a brief moment its headlights illuminated the direction. His gait was uncertain and the darkening day made him stumble over rocks and small brush as he pushed toward the road.