Atonement (10 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lenny
wanted to go after Logan.  His head was pounding and he had a crescent-shaped gash on his forehead that had dripped blood onto the wall-to-wall oyster-colored Axminster carpet.  Wade was nearly as pissed at the state of the imported carpet as he was over his hand, which had swelled up and was causing him a great deal of pain.  He would set the wheels in motion to run Logan down, and then have the wound treated.

“He’s seen you, Lenny,”  Wade said.  “Go patch yourself up, and then arrange for this fuckin’ carpet to be cleaned.”

Lenny left the office and headed for the bathroom while Wade made a call on a pay-as-you-go cell phone.

“Henry?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s Wade.  Where are you?”

“East Colfax, boss.  Collectin’.”

“Is Bunny with you?”

“Yeah.”

“I want you both back here in fifteen minutes.  I’ve got an out-of-town job needs takin’ care of.”

Henry Shaw and Benjamin – Bunny – Dawson were back in the office twelve minutes later.

“Shit, boss, what happened?”  Henry said as he looked from Wade’s injured hand to the blood-stained desk top and carpet.

“I hired Mickey Morgan to hit some guy as a favor for a cop in Carson Creek.  The mark took Morgan out, got my name and paid me a visit.  I want you two to go down there and pick him up.  I’ll give you all the details you’ll need.”

Henry and Bunny used a Ford Cherokee from one of the chop shops that were part of Wade’s dirty little empire in Denver.  They set off at four p.m. and worked out a plan as Bunny drove south.

“This creep Logan sounds lethal,”  Bunny said.  “Morgan was a sharp operator.”

“Everyone fucks up,”  Henry said.  “We know that Logan is plannin’ on lookin’ up this hick deputy, Horton.  So we’ll be waitin’, after we’ve had fun with the bitch he’s tight with.”

“Do we get to play with her?”  Bunny said.

“You bet your ass we do.  She’s the cherry on the cake.  Could even help us draw Logan in.”

Henry was really up for the action.  Most of the time he collected protection money from small businesses, and kept things running smooth by administering a constrained amount of violence, if and when absolutely necessary.  Wade had told him that it was a pointless exercise to cut off a hand that fed you.  The boss was right, fear was the key.  A threat to hospitalize a guy’s wife or child usually resulted in him coming across with payments on time.

Henry Shaw had been born and raised in what had until two thousand three been South Central, but had been renamed South Los Angeles, as if a name change would in some way erase the associations of urban decay and street crime.  He had survived being a gang member, when many of his friends had not.  The murder rate was off the scale, and being a little more intelligent than many of his peers, Henry had decided to quit L.A. and employ his streetwise education elsewhere.

Henry was five-eleven, slim, and had a definite look of Obama, that he found useful in conveying a false sense of trustworthiness in many strangers, which surprised him, for who in their right mind would trust any politician?  But beneath the well-groomed and pleasant veneer, Henry was as cold-blooded as a western diamondback.

Bunny sat back and thought about food.  He was five-eight and bordering on obese, with overlong and thinning dirt-brown hair.  He wore a leather duster coat over jeans and a thick cotton shirt.  A shoulder rig holding a Glock 17 was hidden under the western-style coat.

Bunny was thirty, the same age as Henry.  He had dropped out of high school in Lubbock, Texas on a whim, stolen a car and headed northwest, determined to see White Sands National Park, the Painted Desert, the Grand Canyon, and maybe settle in Vegas for a spell.  But Sin City had been a letdown.  He had worked intermittently as a dishwasher in many diners, and even drove a sewage truck, before upgrading to mugging tourists on ill lit streets off the Strip.  They say that crime doesn’t pay, but Bunny knew that it did.  Anyone that would rather pump shit out of tanks for a living was welcome to it.  He would in all probability have stayed on in Vegas, if it hadn’t got too hot for him.  He had attempted to rob an old guy in a parking garage.  Showed him the knife he carried and asked for his billfold.  The crazy old fart had started shouting for help at the top of his voice and attacked Bunny.  He’d been given no choice.  Had to shut him the fuck up, so had stabbed him a few times.  The next day he had boarded a bus for Reno, and eventually moved east and settled in Denver.

“I need to eat,”  Bunny said to Henry as they approached a strip mall that was visible from the interstate.

“You don’t
need
to, Bunny,”  Henry said.  “You could live off the fat you’re carryin’ for a year.”

“It’s hereditary,”  Bunny said.  “My parents’ were fat fucks, just like a couple of those Wal-Mart slobs you see on e-mails that get sent round on the Net.  We ate decent food; a lot of chicken and vegetables.”

“So how come you now live on burgers and fries?”

“Because it’s fast and cheap.”

“Okay,”  Henry said.  “I could use a coffee.”

After parking in a slot near the front door of an Arby’s, Henry and Bunny went inside and slid into a window booth.  When the waitress came with the menus, Bunny ordered a chocolate shake.  Henry asked for coffee. When she came back with the drinks, Bunny ordered a Three Cheese and Bacon with fries, and Henry plumped for a chicken salad.

“So run through it,”  Bunny said through a mouthful of beef and cheese.  “How are we goin’ to deal with the woman and Logan?”

“If the bitch is at home, we break in, talk to her, and then do what comes naturally before we hurt her,”  Henry said  “She probably has Logan’s cell number.  She can phone him and get him to join the party.”

“Then what do we do with them?”

“Put them in the back of the Cherokee, suitably subdued and covered up.  Wade wants them alive.”

“You think he’ll whack the broad as well?”

“I know he will,”  Henry said.  “Then we’ll have the job of getting’ rid of the bodies.”

Kate bought a few items at the general store, and then drove home, had a shower, got dressed in jeans and a sweater and opened a bottle of chardonnay. Had a glass while she made a sandwich, but had no appetite.  Her thoughts were of where Logan might be, and of the gory details she had been unofficially told of the burned body in the trunk of a car.  She could not imagine what sort of person could truss up another human being with barbed wire and set fire to them.  So much seemed to have happened since the murder of Tanya Foster.  Carson Creek was now under a microscope.  The press was in town, and the State Police were involved.  Many houses were offering accommodation at a high price, and the Pinetop Motel had a No Vacancy sign up.  The small town was enjoying an unexpected injection of revenue, but for all the wrong reasons.

Sitting on the sofa with her legs tucked under her and an episode of the Brit drama Downton Abbey on the TV, Kate sipped her way through a second glass of wine and began to doze.

Henry drove down Cherry Street.  There was a Kia in the driveway and a downstairs light on in number twenty.  Behind the row of houses on that side was a stand of trees.  He smiled.  The darkness at the rear of the property would give them the privacy that they needed.

Henry parked the Cherokee down a rutted lane, and with Bunny following in his footsteps he walked forty or fifty yards through the trees to the fence enclosing the backyard of the woman’s property.

The lock on the kitchen door was cheap and no deterrent to Henry.  He picked it inside thirty seconds and entered the house.

Kate was on the edge of sleep, but came fully awake as something struck her across the cheek.

“Scream or do anythin’ stupid and I’ll cut your throat from ear to ear,”  Henry said in a toneless voice.  “I need for you to answer a few questions.”

Kate was frozen in place; just stared up at the two men standing in front of her.  The one with a knife in his hand was tall, black, well-dressed, and was smiling.  The other was shorter, wore a coat that almost reached down to his ankles, and was perspiring heavily and licking his lips.

Nooo!  Kate’s mind screamed.  She was in part transported back to the night that she had been raped and almost beaten to death in a Chicago alley.  Her bladder actually voided as fear flooded through her.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It
is absolutely erroneous to believe that things cannot get worse.  They can and often do.

Clifton tapped on the door and entered Ray’s bedroom to ask his son if he wanted a cup of coffee or anything for supper.  It was ten p.m., and Ray had been in his room since just after six.

It took Clifton three of the longest seconds’ of his life to react to the sight that met him.  A table lamp shone dimly on a night table, but the bright light from top of the stairwell flooded the room and the open closet to illuminate the body.

Ray had made the decision that he could not live with the guilt and loss he felt over what had happened to Tanya, so had sought oblivion that he could not return from.  He had used a short length of blue nylon rope to end it all.  One end was tied to the rail inside the closet, and the other had been fashioned into a noose that was tight around his neck.  Had the fittings that held the metal rail to the interior of the closet been made from plastic, they would have most likely snapped.  But they were fashioned from metal and solidly screwed in place.

Ray’s feet were on the raised floor of the closet, but his legs were bent at the knees. He had allowed his full weight and gravity to do the job.

Clifton ran across the room, gripped his son around the thighs with both arms and hoisted him up.  Somehow wrenched-ripped-tore the bar free and lowered Ray onto the carpet.  He scrabbled at the noose with both hands, unmindful of the pain to his fingers as he worked it loose from where it had embedded into flesh.

Using CPR and breathing into Ray’s mouth, Clifton was in a state of panic.  He needed help.  Would have to leave his son and use the phone to call 911.  After working on Ray for a minute he looked around and saw his son’s cell on the dresser.  Made the call and left the phone on the floor on speaker as he continued compressions and spoke to the operator.

The ambulance arrived within ten minutes.  The paramedics took over from Clifton and used a defibrillator to shock Ray’s heart into starting up again.

“He’s alive,”  one of the paramedics said.

Clifton got shakily up from his knees, staggered over to the bed and sat on the edge of it, trembling and crying.  “Will he be okay?”  he asked.

“If you found him in time and kept enough oxygen flowing to his brain and heart, then he has a good chance of making a full recovery, sir.”  Jerry Corbin said as he worked on Ray.  “But we won’t know exactly how he is till we get him to the hospital for treatment and tests.”

Clifton contemplated what had taken place.  Ray had survived attempted suicide, but could be brain dead or in a condition that would leave him with no quality of life worth spit.

Five minutes later Clifton was on board the ambulance, holding his son’s limp hand as the vehicle headed at speed for the Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs.

Henry sat next to Kate on the sofa.  “Here’s what’s goin’ to happen,”  he said.  “You tell us where Logan is, and we tie you up and leave.  How does that sound?”

Kate blinked away tears and made eye contact with the man.  “I think that you plan on killing me, whatever I tell you,”  she said.  “Who are you?”

Henry smiled again.  “I’m Henry, and my associate is Benjamin, but his friends call him Bunny, due to the size of his ears.  And now that we all know each other, I suggest you start talkin’, before I lose my temper.”

“I have no idea where Logan is,”  Kate said.  “He got a ride out of town this morning.  I don’t even know if he plans on coming back.”

Bunny made a performance out of drawing his gun from the shoulder holster.  He then retrieved a suppressor from a pocket of his Duster and screwed it on to the Glock’s muzzle and aimed the weapon at Kate’s stomach.

“Bunny is low on patience,”  Henry said.  “He’ll gut shoot you if you play dumb.”

“Please, don’t.  If I knew where he was I’d tell you,”  Kate said, a little ashamed to be pleading with the two thugs.

Henry reached out and grasped her right breast.  Dug his fingers in deep and twisted hard.  Kate moaned against the pain and tried to pull away from him, but his hand was like a vise.

“Last chance, bitch,”  Henry said as he held the short blade of the box cutter up to within an inch of Kate’s left eye. “Give me his phone number or I’ll blind you.”

“She doesn’t have my cell number,”  a voice said from the open living room door behind them.

As Bunny spun round, his right wrist was gripped and twisted back, forcing him to drop the gun, as simultaneously he was head butted in the face with enough force to break his nose and knock him back to land on Henry.  Twin loops of blood from Bunny’s nostrils seemed to hang in the air like bright red rainbows that glistened under the overhead light.

Logan dropped to one knee, picked up the Glock and aimed it at Henry’s head.

“Logan?”  Henry said.

“You got it.  I’ll tell you once, lose the knife.”

“I don’t think so.”

Logan was through talking.  He put a slug through Henry’s forehead and watched him jerk back and then rebound and slump to the floor to become as still as ditchwater.

“Are you okay?”  Logan asked Kate.

Kate nodded.  She was finding it difficult to believe that in the space of just a few scant seconds Logan had appeared from nowhere and saved her.

Bunny pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, only to be clubbed back down with his own gun.

Kate couldn’t move.  Didn’t think that her legs would support her.  Said to Logan, “Why are you here?”

“Would you rather I hadn’t dropped by?”  he said.

Kate just swallowed hard and stared at him.

“I phoned Clifton earlier.  He said that you’d asked for me, so I thought I’d call in before I went back to the motel.  Timing is everything.  I saw an SUV cruise up and down the street with these two unsavory types in the front, so waited and watched.  They parked at the back behind the trees and made their way to your house.”

“Who are they?”  Kate said.

Logan shrugged.  “I think they work for a hoodlum in Denver that I ran into today.”

“But why would they come here?”

“It’s a long story that you don’t need to know the details of.  Tanya’s killer must have seen us together; maybe followed me to your place.  You were leverage to get to me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I was digging deep enough to worry the perp.  He contacted a guy in Denver and arranged for me to be capped.  It didn’t work out, and I got a name.”

“Do you know who murdered Tanya?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me.”

“No can do.  There’s no proof yet.  Probably won’t ever be.  I need to take care of it.”

“What now?”  Kate said.

“I have a word with this piece of garbage on the carpet while you make coffee.  Then you call the sheriff and report the attack on you, and that I turned up and defended you against armed intruders.  Okay?”

Kate nodded.  Tested her feet and went to the bathroom to throw up, then take a quick shower and put fresh clothes on before returning to the kitchen to switch on the coffeemaker.

Logan searched the corpse and the semi-unconscious man that he planned on interrogating.  Came up with two cell phones that both had Wade McCall’s number in them.  He then manhandled the fat little hoodlum upstairs.

Bunny’s next unclear thoughts were of how much his face hurt, and why he was out in the rain.  He felt like he sometimes did when he woke up in a hotel room after a late night drinking session, to find himself totally disoriented with no idea of where he was.  Maybe the drilling jets of water helped to clear his head.  He opened his eyes and found himself sitting in a bathtub.  The rain was just cold water from the showerhead above him.  He was still fully clothed, with his arms secured behind him and his ankles bound together with duct tape.

Kate couldn’t pick up her cup up to drink the coffee she had poured.  Her hands were shaking too much.  “There was a body found in the trunk of a burned-out car,”  she said to Logan as he came back downstairs.  “Were you responsible?”

Logan nodded.

“Did you have to…do that to him?”

“I do what’s necessary to get the job done, Kate.  He was a professional hitman.  He had murdered a great many people, and tried to kill me.”

“So you played judge, jury and executioner?”

Logan said nothing.

“That’s wrong, Logan,”  Kate said.  “The law is―”

“The law is pathetic,”  Logan said.  “It’s a lumbering machine that turns up after the event and is basically inadequate.  While crime rates spiral out of control, cutbacks and do-gooders that worry about scumbags’ rights make the streets less safe for law-abiding citizens.”

“So you set your own laws?”

“Yeah.  Like I just did here.  Should I have phoned the police and waited while you were tortured and probably killed?  Or are you happy that I intervened on your behalf?”

Kate went to him, put her arms around his waist and rested her head on his chest.  “Thank you, Logan.  I thought I was going die.”

Logan held her for a minute.  “Turn up the volume on the TV and stay here,”  Logan said.  “I need information from this guy before we call for the cavalry.”

Logan went up and sat down on the toilet lid with Bunny’s box cutter in one hand.  He had dumped his own knife down a storm drain in Denver, not wanting to risk the chance of it ever being matched to the mortal wound he had inflicted on Morgan.  Next to him on the tiled floor was an electric toaster, plugged in and switched on.

“You ready to talk?”  Logan asked Bunny.

Bunny stared at him with small, porcine eyes that were full of malice, but kept his mouth shut.

“Here’s the only offer on the table,”  Logan said.  “You answer my questions or I throw the toaster in the tub with you.”

Bunny’s eyelids stretched open to their fullest extent as he looked down and saw the appliance.

“I’ll start with a real easy one, fella.  What’s your name?”

“They call me Bunny.”

“So far so good, Bunny.  Bear in mind that I tortured and killed Mickey Morgan and then burned his corpse.  I also hurt your boss and the dickhead with him at his office.  And I just put a bullet in your sidekick’s head.  So carving you up and then electrocuting you won’t be such a big deal.”

“I just follow orders,”  Bunny said.  “Do what I’m told to.”

“Makes you sound like a soldier,”  Logan said.  “Or maybe a mercenary, killing for money.  Why did McCall send you down here?”

“To stop you gettin’ to Larry Horton.”

“So why are you here instead of at Horton’s place waiting for me to turn up.”

“We were told that you and the broad were an item, and―”

Logan flicked his arm out and the blade of the knife lengthened Bunny’s mouth by an extra two inches.  Bunny recoiled and smashed the back of his head against the wall tiles.  The streams of blood from his mouth and previously damaged nose were diluted to candy-pink as they amalgamated with the cascade of water.

“The
lady
, not broad,”  Logan said.

“Jesus!  Okay, the lady,”  Bunny said with difficulty.  “We were goin’ to get her to contact you and draw you in, then take you both back to Denver.”

“For Wade to deal with personally?”

Bunny nodded.

“And what about Larry Horton?”

“He’s an old buddy of Wade’s.  The boss was doin’ him a favor.”

“Why?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know.  Like I said, I just follow orders.”

“So Horton knew that you were going to take care of business tonight?”

“Yeah, he’s at home, waitin’ for us to contact him.”

Logan thought it through.  He wanted to make a play for Horton.  Force Bunny to phone him and tell him that the problem had been taken care of, then head out to Horton’s place and finish it.  But the sheriff would have to be contacted over what had gone down at Kate’s.  He would have to give a statement and be in the clear before he took any further action.  Horton would have to wait, but hopefully not for much longer.

“We didn’t have this conversation,”  Logan said to Bunny.  “Tell the cops that you and your dead buddy were burglars for all I care.  But be sure to admit that your partner in crime was all set to kill the lady when I happened by and took him out.  I think that I should kill you now, but will save that for if I ever see you again.  Understand?”

Bunny nodded.  Knew that Logan was not making an idle threat.

“Good decision,”  Logan said, standing up and leaving the bathroom.

“Phone Lyle,”  Logan said to Kate as he entered the kitchen and headed for the coffeemaker.  “I suggest you keep it simple.  Tell him that two lowlifes broke in and hurt you.  That you were convinced they were going to kill you, and that I turned up and dealt with them.”

“And the other facts of why they were here?”

“Just clouds the issue, with no proof, because I’ll say I called round to see you and took what action was necessary to save you.”

Kate didn’t give it a lot of thought.  Whatever Logan said was fine by her.  She picked up the phone on the counter and called the sheriff’s department.  Held for a few seconds and was put through to Lyle.

“Yeah, Kate”  Lyle said in his usual drawl.

“Two men broke into my house, Lyle,”  Kate said.  “They were both armed and hurt me.  I think they would have killed me if Logan hadn’t shown up.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll live.  But one of the intruders is dead.”

“Is Logan still with you?”

“Yes.”

“Tell him to stay there.  I’m on my way.”