Aftershock (21 page)

“You just make sure you keep out of our business,” he said. I could tell from his voice that he wasn’t sure about anything—not anymore, anyway—so I just looked confused.

“Are you threatening me?” I said, trying to sound indignant.

He smiled. I guess whatever I put into my voice worked—he had his confidence back.

“Threatening you? Man, what makes you say such a thing? We’re just, you know, hanging out.”

“Do you have guns?”

“Guns? Come on, man. Don’t make such a big—”

The water bottles were on the ground. They were all staring at them, like they’d just seen a magic trick. Or maybe they wanted to look anywhere but at the pistol I was holding.

“A threat is nothing but a promise. You believe it or you don’t. I don’t know what you want, and you don’t want to tell me. So here’s
my
promise: If you don’t disappear in another minute, I’ll kill you. Then I’ll call 911 and tell the cops that you came at me with those bats and things. I was forced to defend myself.

“I’m a licensed private investigator. There’s a background check for that, so you know I don’t have a criminal record. This is a legally registered weapon. I won’t even go to jail. You—some of you, anyway—you’ll go to the morgue.”

“Look, we made a mistake, that’s all.”

“Mistake? You think people inside that store behind me haven’t been watching us? They can’t miss seeing your bats and stuff. But they can’t see my pistol. So get in your car and go away. I’m not talking anymore. Get in your car and go away or you start getting dead in the next few seconds. At this distance, I couldn’t miss. Especially with you all standing so nice and close together.”

S
caring bullies is always a tricky business. If I went back the same way I’d come, there was always the chance one of them could use his cell phone to order up a few firearms. And they knew the Lexus.

If I’d thought they could trace that car to Dolly, they’d already be dead and I’d be making that phone call I’d promised them.

I picked up my water bottles, got back into the Lexus, and drove off in the same direction I’d been heading.

L
ess than four miles up the highway, I saw a wooded piece of flat-land. I pulled over to let the car behind me pass, checked the lanes on both sides until the road was empty, then went off the road. I drove in deep enough to be invisible to passing cars. If a trooper spotted me, I’d say I lost control to avoid hitting a deer.

I scratched the hell out of Dolly’s friends’ new car by going in so deep. But I knew they carried full-collision and I’d make up the deductible, so I didn’t think they’d be too mad … especially when I told them how it happened—the “miss a deer” story, I mean.

Only a drug dealer would be stupid enough to use the same throwaway cell twice. I used one to call 911 and say a big greenish car just passed me going in the opposite direction, around mile marker 31—I figured that was a safe estimate, since it would put them about ten miles from that store’s parking lot. I said the car was really flying, weaving all over the road. At first, I thought it was an unmarked police car, but as it shot by, I could see it was full of young guys. They had to be drunk or …

I lost my connection then. Laying the canvas-wrapped phone across a flat rock and smashing it with the hammer side of my tomahawk made sure of that.

The second throwaway was to call Dolly. On the only throwaway she ever had. She carried it with her everywhere she went, and never used it. Any incoming call would be me.

She opened the channel without saying anything. “It’s me,” I said. “I had a little accident, but it’d take a fucking winch to pull that little Jap car of yours out of this damn ditch.” When she didn’t say anything, I was proud of her—anyone can have a good memory, but it takes a soldier’s skills to stay calm in crisis. “Yeah, I know it’s ten at night,” I said, slurring my words even more. “What the hell do you want me to do? I’m still a good fifteen miles from the nearest town, and it’s not like I can call fucking Triple-A!”

The second phone broke as easy as the first. The canvas protected the rock from showing signs of the hammer strikes. I bagged the little pieces of the phones inside the canvas. Disposal would depend on what I found after I took a deeper look at the terrain.

I
had plenty of time to use the ax blade of the tomahawk to cut cover for the Lexus. There was more than enough foliage to construct a complete blanket, even down to making sure the mirrors wouldn’t throw off a glint.

It must have been state-owned land; I couldn’t see a thing that resembled a farm, even going in more than a mile deep. I wasn’t worried about hunters—much too close to the highway for even the dumbest of them, and it wasn’t deer season yet.

But there’s no such thing as being perfectly safe. I couldn’t predict what might be coming, especially after it got dark. All I could do was deal with whatever showed up.

A
t 9:45, I DayGlo-taped an “X” on the tree closest to the highway.

At 9:59:25, I heard Dolly pull up. She was behind the wheel of our Jeep. It had plates and registration, but if anyone looked close enough, they’d see that registration was “farm-use limited.” The insurance company didn’t care that we overpaid every year, and the state didn’t care that we had plates for a vehicle that wasn’t allowed to leave our property.

I stepped out from the dark, climbed into the Jeep, and told Dolly I’d drive the Lexus back to her friends’ place, with her following me.

“Can I?” Dolly asked, holding up her own cell phone.

“Sure.”

She called her friends while I cleared the Lexus. Then I just pulled straight out and headed over there, checking every minute or so to be sure I had her headlights in my mirrors.

I
t wasn’t until we were inside their garage that I realized Rascal had come along with Dolly. He watched with great interest as I opened the hatch of the Lexus and removed the set of Velcro’ed plates. I held them out so both Dolly’s friends could see them.

“This is my fault,” I said to Martin, pointing to the scratched-up paint. “One hundred percent mine. But you don’t have to worry about anyone coming around—these plates don’t trace back to you.”

“We have insur—”

“I apologize for interrupting you,” I told Johnny. “But there’s no way you can explain all these scratches to any insurance company.”

“As if we had to explain anything to those thieves,” Martin sneered. “With what we pay them for the bundle, Billy, that’s our agent, he would just shoot himself if we ever switched. Fire, theft, on home and business, homeowner’s on the house,
plus
the umbrella, never mind the zero deductible on the cars. And we’ve never made a claim on anything. It’s been—what?—fifteen years—”

“Thirteen,” Johnny said. I got the impression that they did this all the time.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told them. “Even if they don’t question a word you say, it’s still a claim, and you don’t want that—especially not with your perfect record. You did a real favor for Dolly, and never asked a question. So there’s only two ways to do this: One, you get a complete new paint job, maybe a color you like better? Or I can buy the car from you. It’s got less than five thousand miles on it, so it’s the same as new.”

“Martin’s car is just a toy,” Johnny said. “This one is a utilitarian vehicle. It’s bound to get scratched up one way or another. We’re only keeping the car until the warranty runs out, anyway.”

“You don’t want to sell it to me?”

“Oh, don’t act so offended. We don’t want to sell it to anyone.”

“Then it’s the paint job.”

“Your husband is a difficult man to deal with,” Martin said to Dolly.

“Tell
me
,” she said. But her squeezing my arm as she spoke told me all I wanted.

“You know more about cars than I do,” I said. “How much is the best paint job going to run?”

“The dealership—”

“Come on. It’s getting late. Maybe I don’t know cars like you do, but I know any dealership is going to screw you. You’d pay less at a custom shop, and get a much better job, too.”

“What do you think we want?” Johnny said. “One of those paints that change color, or something crazy like that?” But I could see Martin didn’t think the idea was all
that
crazy.

“Nobody’s got money today. They don’t have enough work as it is. Five grand would buy you the best there is,” I said.

Now they both looked annoyed. Dolly’s right—I’m real good at some things, but real bad at others. So I just took out the money—even in hundreds, it was a pretty thick stack—and put it on the still-warm hood of the Lexus.

I saw Martin make a “call me” gesture to Dolly out of the corner of my eye just as we pulled out.

O
n the way back, I told Dolly everything. She listened patiently until I said, “MaryLou killed the wrong man.”

“What?!”

“Dolly, I didn’t mean—”

That’s when she started to cry. All I could do was kind of pat her and wait it out.

“Dell, this town, it looks so beautiful, but there’s poison in it. And Cameron, he’s just a little piece of it. Those men who threatened you, they were older than him. So this must have been going on for a long time.”

“Isn’t that what that SANE boss said?”

“I know. But there’s no way to change it. I see that. I see that now, anyway.”

All I could see was a dream dying. And if I couldn’t give Dolly her dream, would she still …? I couldn’t allow that question to pollute the pond. Not
our
pond.

“There’s a way, Dolly. I swear to you.”

“Dell! Don’t you even think about—”

“I wasn’t. For real, honey.”

“Then what?”

“You can’t change some people. Once they’ve become themselves, they’re going to keep doing what they do. But you can make them do it somewhere else.”

“I know you’re not talking about therapy.”

“No. I’m talking about raising the stakes.”

“Dell …”

“I’m sorry, baby. I don’t mean to talk in riddles. I wasn’t talking about playing poker, I meant—”

“I’ve been there, too, you know. I’ve seen those heads on stakes.”

“It’s no different here. You have to do it in a different way, but you can always deliver that same message.”

“But you said—”

“Dolly, listen, okay? Just for a minute. I don’t lie to you.”
I just don’t tell you some things
, I thought.
How was killing the deer-hunters and spraying those green “X” marks on them different from putting their heads on stakes?
“If I thought killing every last one of them would make you happy, if I thought I could pull the
poison out of your dream, yeah, I’d do it. But that’s not what I meant. We can’t change them, or even stop what they do. But we can make them stay away from our village.”

She didn’t say a word. I knew I had about five seconds to come up with something I could make her believe in. I thought about what I’d found myself saying to Amber. And then I knew.

“Right now, you’ve got this gang who can do all kinds of things because they’re not worried about having to pay for it,” I said softly. “There’s only one way to change that. And not what you think. The way to change everything is to get MaryLou off.”

“But that’s—”

“Dolly, listen. This wasn’t any Columbine ‘kill ’em all’ thing—it was an execution. What’s the chances of something like that ever happening again? Look, that gang does what they do because they’re not worried about their bill coming due. They can rape those girls and nothing happens. But what if that was turned upside down? What if the whole town changed its vote?”

“Dell, you are driving me insane. Nobody votes on … rape.”

“No? That’s
exactly
what they do. This has been going on for years, right? Nobody goes to prison. Nobody even gets arrested. Those girls—the ones like MaryLou’s little sister—the town passed judgment on
them
, not on the rapists.”

“You mean, like they deserved it?”

“You tell me, Dolly—you’re tuned into this place a lot more than I could ever get in a hundred years.”

She took a deep breath. Held it a long time. When she let it out, it was like a sigh of surrender. “I’m not plugged in at all, Dell. To the kids, sure. And I know a few of the folks my own age. But nowhere near enough to even take a guess. About what you said, I mean. The voting. If that’s what they voted for, goddamn them to hell! Every last one.”

B
y the time we got the Jeep back where it belonged, it was getting close to daylight.

“You don’t look tired,” I said to Dolly.

“Neither do you. I wish you did.”

“I don’t—”

“I want to go to bed, Dell. Not to sleep. To be with you. All this … filth. I need to get back to what love feels like, if I’m going to help you make this happen.”

“I
need you to rent a car,” I told Swift the next morning.

“Me?”

“You. Use your credit card. I need a car to keep on investigating, and I can’t have it traced back to me. I know you guys keep track of expenses, and you can take it out of the next retainer installment if you want to do it that way,” I said, putting another five grand on his desk.

“I … I understand what you’re saying. And it does make sense for all expenses to trace back to me.”

And makes you even more of a big shot than you were a few hours ago
, I thought. But what I said was “Would you mind taking care of that right now? I have someone I want to interview, and I want to get an early start.”

He didn’t mind at all.

On the drive over to the rental place, he said, “I don’t mind telling you, this case is taking up just about every hour I have.”

He must have felt skepticism coming off me. “I know what you must be thinking,” he said. “How much work could I be doing, when my own client won’t even speak to me without you there?”

I let my silence do my talking.

“Mr. Jackson, I don’t mean to come off as condescending, and I know you must be working very hard yourself. But one of the unwritten rules of being a criminal-defense attorney is this: when you don’t have the facts on your side, you have to use the law.”