Jeremy took another sip of Jack Daniels.
“I’d say the dude’s just playing us off against each other, Mick. Watch yourself.” Madison looked at Brocchi.
“Watch yourself?” he mimicked, turning it into a question. “How much have you told these boys already, Lee?”
“There was a murder last night,” the road manager bristled. “You want it straight? Okay. That man’s wife was killed and every man in this room is wondering who killed her. There’s a lot that no one’s had the guts to talk about or suggest yet. Yeah, everyone’s being real careful about what they say!” From the bed, Keith Terrance was glaring at Brocchi.
“Let Jeremy take care of himself,” he said. “Why don’t you tell us what Madison’s talking about, Lee? You told me yesterday on the plane that you didn’t know anything about that girl’s murder in Chicago that Madison was telling me about. What have you got to say now? What’s this about you and Madison working together?”
“All right, everyone’s letting their hair down all of a sudden,” said Brocchi. “I’ll do the same.” He looked at Madison. “But I want this sonovabitch out before I do.”
“That’s good enough for me,” agreed Mick from across the room. “We used to all be pretty tight with each other before this bastard Madison joined the tour.”
Keith Terrance stood and faced Madison. The drummer’s hefty form seemed to fill the space between the two beds.
“I think it’s about time we got back to the business at hand,” he said.
His tone implied that this statement should be sufficient as both a suggestion and a threat.
Jeremy Bates pushed himself upright from where he’d been leaning. He was still holding the whiskey bottle—only now it looked like it could become a weapon.
“I can tell that you’ve been touched by my wife’s death,” he told Madison solemnly. “I appreciate you stopping by. But we do have things to talk over. Personal things. So why don’t you split? You grieve your way—we’ll grieve in ours, okay?”
Lee Brocchi cast the final vote and he did it without a word. He crossed over to the door and held it open for Madison.
Madison did another inventory of the faces of the three band members, as he had when he stepped in. There was no way of ignoring the determination set into each one’s expression. There were four of them—and Brocchi had a gun.
“Someone in this room is a murderer,” Madison said quietly. “But he’s not going to murder anyone else. Does everyone here understand that?”
“Forget the exit speeches,” sneered Terrance. “You sound like a Charlie Chan movie. Lee’s got the door—be on your way.”
As Madison, passed Brocchi, he said to the road manager in a low voice, “Relax, I got you back in solid with the boys, didn’t I?”
There was a glint of satisfaction along with the hate in Brocchi’s intense eyes.
“You conned me, Madison,” he admitted. “Jeremy was my friend and I almost turned rat on him. But Mick is right. You’ve just been playing head games with everybody.” He nodded toward the band members. “I’m going to level with these guys,” he said. “Just like I should have in the first place. Then we’ll try and put together what happened last night—and we’ll do it between the four of us. Now split.”
Madison stepped into the hallway and was glad to hear the door slam shut behind him. Once by himself, he began smiling as he walked on down the corridor.
Yeah, he was playing head games, and he wasn’t anywhere near done, either. The pot that he’d been stirring since his arrival on the tour in Chicago was now ready to boil over, just like it was supposed to. Madison had pushed these men, had pressed all their paranoia buttons, had coldly played them against each other without any show of favoritism, solely to get them to this. He had them all up against the wall now. Whoever the killer was among the four of them was watching his whole little card house come tumbling down, because the pressure wouldn’t be off the others until the murderer was caught.
They were pulling in their ranks. But that wouldn’t help. It was too late for that now. Madison had them all in objective focus. Waiting. When the psycho among them finally panicked and bolted and revealed himself, Madison would be ready, and the game would be over.
One way or another.
Rounding a hallway corner, he decided to pay a call on Connie Frazer in her room, two down from his own.
He remembered yesterday afternoon when he had been on his walk back to the Holiday Inn from his talk with Mick. That seemed like eons ago now. But he did remember two things quite distinctly: seeing Connie Frazer drive off with Jeremy Bates—and experiencing an admittedly unjustifiable pang of jealousy at the sight. Maybe the second part was meaningless soap opera stuff after everything else that had happened. Madison was prepared to admit that this might be the case. But he did want to find out what had been discussed on that drive.
As his defenses relaxed somewhat from the meeting with the band, some of his fatigue returned. But he tried to blank it from his mind, refusing to slow down. He still had to be doing something. He owed that much to the memory of what he and Laura had once had.
She’d been right, that last time they’d spoken, yesterday afternoon in the motel cocktail lounge. She still held a special place in his heart that would always be hers alone. The memory of the love they had shared was a sacred thing. Her death would be avenged.
But at the same time, Madison knew enough to distinguish duty to the dead from his own flowing life forces.
He wanted to see how Connie’s head was doing. He wanted to see how she was, without Arn Shapiro lending an ear to every word.
He knocked on her door a few times but there was no answer.
It hadn’t been more than ten minutes since he’d left Connie and Shapiro down in the parking lot. It didn’t make sense that they’d immediately split up. Her original assignment had been to keep an eye on Madison for Shapiro, whether she knew it or not. Madison wasn’t willing to guess whether Shapiro would decide she’d been a howling success or a miserable failure. But he did realize that Shapiro would want Connie to render a full report immediately. Madison could probably take the elevator down and catch them right now in the bar.
He had to pass his own room on his way to the elevator. He did a quick mental placement of everybody. Brocchi and the members of The Screaming Tree were back in Mick and Keith’s room, keeping an eye on each other. Shapiro and Connie Frazer were either downstairs or off in some other bar or restaurant, discussing the case. He’d known Shapiro long enough to know that the promoter might indeed be a bloodsucker in some ways, but he was no raving psycho..
Madison also knew that there was only one thing he needed now to refresh himself; to purge the fatigue and deliver fresh energy so he could keep on doing things. No one in the scenario would miss him snatching a ten-minute shower and a change of clothes.
He paused before his door, fitting his key into the lock.
His mind was busy turning over the various aspects of the case. Arn Shapiro’s fear had been right from the very start. Someone in The Screaming Tree had a taste for blood. Brocchi could not be considered as guilty of the murder of Laura Bates. Laura’s throat had just been slashed, her blood had been warm and pumping, when Madison discovered her corpse. Lee Brocchi had been by Madison’s side since Madison had rousted him across town at the Holiday Inn. So, who did that leave? That’s right, it was back to Square number one: which member of The Screaming Tree was it? Wiry, always high Mick Adamson? Big Keith, the Satanist freak? Or Jeremy, first the cuckold, then the widower?
Madison turned the doorknob and began to step into his room.
He sensed the shadowy movement from behind— too late!
His last rational thought was that he should have listened to his body! That he had pushed himself too far after all. The physical fatigue was about to kill him.
Then the blow struck. It was hard, smashing, vicious. It caught him at the base of his neck. The universe exploded with a blindi
ng flash and he pitched forward, into the room. He wasn’t unconscious, but his senses were reeling. He hit the floor and rolled onto his back.
A figure moved into the apartment after him, closing the door behind him. Madison shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to make out the features of the man who was now approaching him., Madison was pushing himself to his feet when the next blow struck. The effect of the first hadn’t worn off yet. The bastard’s shoe nailed him beneath the jaw and pitched him onto his back again, waves of blinding pain washing over him. A pause—and a powerful kick to the side that seemed to tear his body in half.
He tried to push himself up with his elbows, fighting the unconsciousness; the dark pit that was trying to pull him into it. He reached for the Magnum. The reflexes were numb with blinding pain, but still functioning.
But it all must have been happening faster than his mind could grasp. Reality was a warped, twisted thing.
His attacker, he now realized, had already stepped across the room to the single bed, and back. He was holding something, something big and bulky. He was standing over Madison, looking down, his features still foggy and shimmering and unclear.
Madison’s fingertips moved beneath his jacket, covering those last inches toward the .44.
The guy was holding a pillow. It was supposed to muffle the shot!
It did.
Madison perceived the flash and the dull blast, the pillow jumping in the figure’s grip and an exploding cloud of white as the feathers flew.
The sledgehammer strike against his chest was the final kick into utter, black oblivion.
Madison had one last horrible impression of what it was like to die.
14
Eternity was a shrill, ringing sound. It had been pulling him from the grip of unconsciousness for as long as he could remember. Then, slowly, the other senses returned.
The pain was worse than anything he had ever known. His first instinctual response was to yearn for the tranquility of unconsciousness once again. But that was no good. He was coming awake in quickening degrees. The shrill sound that had brought him back was reduced to its rightful size in the universe.
The telephone was ringing.
Madison opened his eyes. The pain that had been stabbing at the side of his chest now spread, exploding within his skull. He realized that he was in his Holiday Inn room stretched out on the floor. Somehow coming back from the dead. And the phone was ringing.
The room tilted as he stood. He forced himself forward, toward the pealing instrument. He snatched it up on what must have been its millionth ring.
“Steve?” a feminine voice asked tentatively.
“Yeah, Connie. It’s me. What’s left of me. Where are you calling from?”
The roar of a heavy truck engine from the background noise over the connection spoiled her reply. Madison pictured an outdoor pay phone near a highway.
“—for lunch,” she was saying when the highway sounds behind her died down a moment later. “It’s happening just like you thought it would. I’m going to tag
along and see what I can get.”
Madison’s mind was suddenly wide awake. “Connie, listen. Things have changed.” He accented each word, giving each a special importance. “We’re not playing I Spy with these guys anymore. The lid’s blowing off. Someone just tried to kill me.”
A gasp came over the wire.
“My god... then it’s even more important that I stay with what I’ve got here. I’m okay. I’ve got my gun.”
“Connie, where are you? Who is it?”
Another roaring engine from the highway behind her drowned out the reply. When the rumbling had died away, there was only silence over the wire.
Madison felt his stomach freeze into a tight knot.
“Hello...hello, Connie?’
The connection clicked in his ear. Then, only the monotonous hum of the dial tone.
He smashed the receiver back onto the phone and the movement sent lances of pain riding hotly, torturously across the entire left side of his body. The pain centered around his chest, just below and in front of his left arm.
Remembering now that he thought he’d been dying, he reached under his jacket for the wound.
There was no wound.
He pulled out the .44 Magnum. The weapon was as heavy and impressive as ever in his hand, but there was one difference. The thick, ornate butt was now a mangled mess. It had stopped a bullet. The Magnum had saved his life—but had been rendered useless in the process.
He pitched the wreckage onto the bed, then crossed to where his suitcase lay open on a low folding rack. Each step sent more jabs of pain hammering at the left side of his body. He could imagine what the flesh beneath his shoulder holster must look like: bruised, pulpy, and bones possibly broken. But imagining was enough. He wasn’t about to slow down for a look.
He found the finished maple wood box containing the ruined .44’s healthy twin under a pair of slacks, right where it was supposed to be. Checking the action and load, he holstered the new weapon. The slight pressure of the holster against the bruise sent more spasms of pain hammering through him. He stood for a moment, bracing himself. He would have to ignore the pain. He would function as if it didn’t exist.
He left his room, moving down the motel hallway at a steady jog.
He glanced at his watch. It was three-thirty-four. No wonder he felt like he was coming back from the dead. No wonder he had fooled his “killer.” He’d been out for most of the afternoon.
Yeah, Saturday afternoon...
His mind was working with a new idea, shaping the hunch in his gut into a concept which could be examined.
The killer had felt the pressure and snapped, all right. But just a tad ahead of schedule. Now he was bolting, and taking along as many with him as he could.
He had Connie. That could be the only explanation for that disconnected phone call. So now the sick bastard has her. He thinks he’s killed Madison and now he has the lady—and he’ll probably take his own sweet, sick time about the way in which; she dies.
Where would he take her? Madison thought he knew the answer. But first, there might be a more direct way of finding out.
He reached Lee Brocchi’s door and slammed on it with his right fist. No response. He hurried down to the room shared by Mick and Keith. Again, no reply. He got the same at Jeremy Bates’ door. He was just turning as Arn Shapiro rounded the corner. Shapiro glared, came forward.
“I don’t believe it!” he growled peevishly. “I’m actually seeing a familiar face. Where the hell is everybody?”’
Madison ignored the question.
“When was the last time you saw Connie?” he asked quickly.
“After we dropped you off, we had lunch,” said Shapiro. “We split up downstairs. She said that she was really wiped out from last night and needed to fall out for a while.”
“That’s the last time you saw her?”
“Yeah. She took the elevator up. I tried to find you later, but there was no answer at your door. And now the goddamn band and Brocchi have all disappeared on me. What the hell’s going on around here, Madison?”
“I need your car keys,” Madison told him. “I never recovered my wheels from last night—and I’ve got some important business to take care of.”
Shapiro narrowed his still angry eyes, as if taking a quick, careful reading of the man before him. He grunted, then nodded at what he saw. He reached into his pocket and produced his car keys. But he held onto them.
“We’re going together,” he said. “The wire services have picked up what happened last night to Laura and all hell’s breaking loose back in the New York office. I’m out here to be doing something, goddammit!”
Madison made a grab and snatched the keys.
“I told you before. I can’t have anyone slowing me down, Arn.”
Madison started to turn. The promoter wasn’t about to stand for that. He made a reach. “Give me those keys!” he snarled.
Mad
ison turned back to face him.
“Sorry, Arn,” he said sincerely.
He made a loose fist and swung. The knuckles connected with Shapiro’s jaw loud enough to be heard down the hall. Shapiro’s legs folded, and he went down.
Madison didn’t bother with a backward glance. He didn’t bother with waiting for the elevator, either. He took the stairs, sailing. He burst from the ground floor stairwell door to the outside and made a bee-line toward Shapiro’s parked rental car.
The day had changed during the time he’d been unconscious. The rain clouds he’d noticed before off to the west were locked in over Kansas City now like a low, ominous roof. A chilled breeze carried the heavy scent of approaching rain.
He spun the car out of the parking lot and took off with a squeal, the rubber leaving long smoking patches behind him.
The hunch had crystallized. He was willing to bet that he knew exactly where this vampire psycho— whoever he was—had taken Connie Frazer. Hell, he was betting on it. He was betting the lady’s life. The life he had promised to save if it ever needed saving.
It needed saving now, damned fast.
Madison wheeled from the parking lot into the flow of traffic, peeling more rubber from the squealing tires. He headed due north with the pedal down. If that fine woman died because he was wrong or too slow, he would pray to be damned to an Eternal Hell.
Overhead, mighty thunder rumbled from the low clouds, sounding like some hungry animal about to feast. As he steered through the traffic with his left hand, Madison drew the .44 with his right and placed it on the seat beside him, where it would be easier to reach._
The dark clouds rumbled again. Droplets of rain began beading on the windshield. Madison felt a sudden cosmic oneness with the universe around him. As if he were part of the approaching, stormy violence which was about to purge the city, flushing the filth and decay down into the gutter where it belonged.
15
The front gates of The Sloan Gravel Company, flattened the night before by the homicidal dump truck, had been set upright again and loosely linked together. But it was a halfhearted job. Madison slid easily between them, thankful for not having to scale the top of the fence to gain entrance as he had on his previous visit. He was doing his best to live with the hammering discomfort of his almost- bullet-wound, but there seemed no sense in provoking it.
The Vampire Chase Page 12
