Atonement (6 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sunday
morning was bitterly cold.  But the sky was clear with just a few smudged white lines of jet contrails tracking across it, which Logan thought were mainly from flights into and out of DIA; Denver International Airport.  Flying was his least favorite mode of travel.  Packed into a steel tube with wings at thirty plus thousand feet was not his idea of a fun way to move around the country.

He had bought a heavy insulated parka, a thick pair of snow pants, walking boots, some new socks, underwear and a couple of plaid shirts from the general store before running into Larry Horton the day before.  And now he was sitting outside his room again, suitably attired and drinking coffee.  He planned on a walk into the Creek and a big breakfast at the Steamboat Diner.  After that he would make his way west out of town and loop through a part of the Pike National Forest, to see more of it than he had so far during his stay in this beautiful part of the state.

Clearing his mind of the Foster case, Logan enjoyed the invigorating stroll, and was famished and ready for what Amy called her Sunday morning special. After eating it, he set off without a care in the world.  He had learned in the Corps to live in the here and now, and to put all problems on hold when you needed to.  That had got him through tough times, serving him well throughout his police career, and all the tension that burned a lot of cops out, or even ended up with them eating their guns.  You had to be able to keep things separate, disassociate when necessary and not let that bitch called life grind you down too much as you passed through it.

Kate Donner came to mind as he walked along a wide woodchip-carpeted trail through the forest.  He liked her a lot.  She exuded a certain degree of melancholy, which he reckoned was due to something major that she had experienced and not been able to dispel, but was coping with in her own way.  She didn’t seem to fit in Carson Creek, so was probably an outsider like him.  She seemed more of a big city girl, who’d uprooted and started afresh.  But why?

Entering a large clearing that was a designated picnic area with rustic tables, Logan sat down on a bench for a spell and absorbed the great outdoors.  Being in such a tranquil spot caused him to think of all the large cities that spread like morbid growths all over the planet.  The majority of the masses were trapped in an environment that he had been fortunate enough to walk away from.  Way back, he had visited Shanghai in China, to be totally overawed by the teeming multitude that was now approaching eighteen million in number.  Up till then he had thought that New York was big.  Perhaps in the way that nature seemed to regulate numbers of animal species, humanity would eventually be cut back by a super virus or some other catastrophic happening.

Setting off again, Logan looked forward to having the promised steak meal with Kate.  Decided that he wanted to know her.  And wanting to know someone was a very rare occurrence.  He closed doors behind him as a rule as he moved endlessly on through time and space.  He had almost lost the capacity to truly bond, need relationships or long-lasting friendships, and supposed that he was the personification of what others would label a loner.

Back at the motel several hours’ later, he found a note taped to his door, it read:
Took a call for you.  Drop by for coffee, Clifton.

He walked over to the house, knocked the door and heard Clifton shout, “It’s open, come on in.”

Wiping the soles of his boots on a welcome mat inside the door, Logan made his way through to the rear of the house and took a seat opposite were Clifton was pouring freshly brewed coffee into two mugs.

“You can take the pickup whenever you need to,”  Clifton said, sliding a spare set of keys across the tabletop. “No need to ask.  I’ve got an old Impala in the garage that I use most of the time.”

“Thanks,”  Logan said, pocketing the keys.

“Kate phoned.  When I told her you’d gone off hiking, she just said for you to call her back whenever.  Said it was nothing important.”

“Uh, okay,”  Logan said.

Clifton smiled.  “Kate’s a nice person and a looker too,”  he said.  “Maybe destiny is keeping you in the Creek, Logan.”

“I don’t buy that there is a predetermined future laid down for us, Clifton.  We just muddle through the chaos and manage the best we can while we’re here.”

“I tend to agree.  But it sometimes strikes me as strange how some things work out as if they’re meant to.”

“Just seems that way.  I don’t believe that anything is laid down for us as individuals; that we have no power of self-determination.  That would make me feel like some kind of puppet.”

“I still think that you and Kate are on a collision course, Logan.”

“Whatever.  We don’t even know each other.  What can you tell me about her?”

“All I’ve got is secondhand info.  I heard from Amy at the Steamboat that she came here from Chicago after being mugged or something.  Wanted to start afresh.  And she implied to Amy that she’d been married, way back.  That’s it.  She’s a damn good lawyer, and would rather help than hinder anyone.”

Logan nodded.  Asked, “How’s Ray?”

“Not so good.  He’s finding it hard to accept what went down.  Spends a lot of his time in his room, and hardly talks.”

“You want for me to have a word with him?”

“I don’t think so.  I’d rather give him time to work it out himself.  But thanks, Logan.”

Back in his room, Logan called Kate.  “You wanted a word?”  he said when she picked up.

“It wasn’t urgent.  Just an update.  I ran into Lyle at the indoor market over in Westcreek this morning.  He took time out to mention that there were no tapes from the CCTV at the Wagon Wheel.  Also said that there had been a minute amount of tissue under one of Tanya’s fingernails, but that it was too degraded to use for matching.”

“Any good news?”

“Yes.  Among other things, the market sells fresh local produce, and I bought some choice cut beef.”

“That sounds like an invite.  When did you have in mind?”

“Tonight if you aren’t watching TV in your motel room.”

Logan laughed, which was something of a rare event.  He sometimes looked at the weather channel, and took in an old movie, but that was about it.  “Give me a time and your address,”  he said.  “I’ll find my cleanest dirty shirt.”

He used the pickup and was parking in the driveway of the linked house on Cherry Street an hour later.

Kate answered the door wearing a check shirt and blue jeans.

“Come in, Logan,”  she said.  “Make yourself at home.”

He felt big and awkward in the small house.  He was not used to being in such close proximity to a woman he found so attractive.  His relationships with the fairer sex were sporadic to say the least.  The last woman he had slept with had been Sharon Jennings, who with her mother, Rita, he had protected from hitmen that had been contracted to kill them both.  Sharon was young enough to have been his daughter, but was an adult, and so he had been happy for her to seduce him.  He was not in the habit of kicking a gift horse in the mouth.

“You look ill at ease, Logan,”  Kate said.  “You want a cold beer while I start grilling the steak?”

“Sounds good,”  he said, following her into the kitchen, taking his parka off and hanging it over the back of a chair.

Kate was a bag of nerves.  One on one with a guy she didn’t know too well was now not as good an idea as she had thought a few hours’ ago.  But he didn’t crowd her, or seem to have any side that threw up warning signals.

They made small talk as they ate.  Logan told her about the hike he’d taken through the forest, and how if he had been an artist he would have wanted to build a cabin with a view of the Rocky Mountains and stay there and paint till he died.

“I wish I had your attitude,”  Kate said.  “It must be nice to have no sense of responsibility, and just keep moving on with no need for stability.”

Logan drained his glass of beer and said, “I was what you may think of as responsible for decades, Kate.  I took my duty in the Marines and then my police career very seriously.  I’m fifty now, and feel that I’ve earned the right to take time out.  I keep on the move because there is no such thing as permanence.  A lot of folk live in the same house in the same town or city all of their lives, with the same neighbors dying around them as they get older.  I find that a little depressing.  Nothing lasts.  Even the sun is slowly burning itself out.”

“I didn’t mean that you were
irresponsible
, Logan.  I just haven’t met anyone like you before.  My life has all been about learning, and then putting that knowledge into practice.”

“So was mine for a long time, Kate.  Tell me, why are you in Carson Creek?  What are you running away from?”

Kate realized that she had inadvertently begged inquiry, after digging into Logan’s mindset.  Decided to lay it all out and keep the air clear between them from the outset.  “I’m thirty-five, was married briefly to what turned out to be the wrong man, and while working for a firm in Chicago, managed to get myself beaten up and raped.  So I decided to relocate somewhere that is hopefully safer.  Although after what happened to Tanya Foster it would appear that nowhere is really safe.”

Logan admired her forthrightness.  Everybody has secrets, and most people keep them just that, a secret.

“I shouldn’t have pried,”  he said.  “I apologize.”

“No need, Logan.  Shit happens.  I’m getting on with the present, but needed new surroundings to do it in.  And I’m finding it hard in some ways.”

“Nothing much in life is easy, Kate.  Peace of mind may exist, but I’ve never met anyone that really has it.  Everything is a tradeoff.”

“You don’t seem too worried about anything.”

“I’m a survivor, Kate.  I have the ability to absorb most of the dire consequences of what others do and keep some balance.  I’ve witnessed so much of mans’ inhumanity to his fellow man that I must have built up some kind of immunity to it.”

“What do you see as your future?”

“I don’t even think about tomorrow too much.  Things just work out for better or worse.  Most of the time we have no control over it, so why sweat it?”

Time flew.  It got late, and Logan said that it was time he left.  Kate had the sudden urge to ask him to stay over, but didn’t.  There was something so relaxed and dependable about Logan that it was hard believe that a man who she had not even met until a few days ago could have such a powerful impact on her.

“The steak was terrific,”  Logan said.  “It’ll be on me next time, but I won’t be cooking it.  We’ll have to go to a nice restaurant.”

At the door, Logan wasn’t sure what to do so bent down and kissed Kate lightly on the cheek, said goodnight and walked across to the pickup without looking back.

Kate waved as he drove away.  He raised his hand and was then gone as falling snow shrouded the vehicle from view.

He didn’t need to follow Logan.  Just lit a cigarette and thought things through as the radio churned out shit-kickin’ country rock.  Looked like the big guy and the bitch lawyer were becoming an item.  And they were both actively attempting to solve the murder to clear Ray Marshall.  He needed them out of the way, or discouraged from poking their noses too deeply into police business.  He knew from meeting Logan that the drifter was not the type to back down; he’d proved that when he’d beaten the crap out of Carl and the other two.  No, Logan would need to be dealt with.

Larry drove home and had a large shot of JD, and then another.  The guy he knew in Denver would take care of the problem.  He would drive out of town and call him in the morning.  With any luck, Logan would soon be out of the picture.

CHAPTER NINE

Wade
McCall had got into drugs back in high school, taking them and selling them, and dropping out to pursue a life of crime.  As a kid, his two best friends had been Larry Horton and Tim Noone.  It was like an old gangster movie with Cagney, Bogart and Pat O’Brien. Wade had grown up to be a gangster, Larry was a cop, and Tim Noone had been a priest, up until his god had taken him young by way of a brain tumor.  They had lived in seedy apartments off East Colfax near East high and City Park; an area of Denver that was populated by prostitutes, gangs and homeless people.  More drugs were consumed than burgers in this underbelly of the city.

Wade owed Larry.  As a young patrol cop, Larry had seen Wade shoot a guy dead in an alley, but had turned a blind eye.

Larry drove for ten miles before stopping at a diner to use a public phone to contact Wade.

“Hey, Wade, it’s Larry.  How’re you doin’?”

“Never better, pal.  You still out in the boonies issuin’ speedin’ tickets and generally avoidin’ any action?”

“I’m livin’ the American Dream, Wade.  Got myself a lakeside house, a good old dog, and a quiet life.”

“Sounds like being dead but still breathin’ pal.  Why the call?”

“Hopin’ you can help me out, Wade.  I need for someone to vanish.”

“Who?”

“A drifter in town.  He’s causin’ me grief.”

“Give me a name, description, and where he can be found.”

Larry furnished Wade with the details.

“He’ll be out of your hair within thirty-six hours, Larry,”  Wade said.  “Tomorrow night seems a good time to deal with him, so make sure you have an alibi from between eight p.m. and dawn.”

“Thanks, Wade,”  Larry said.  “I owe you one.”

“What are friends for?”  Wade said.  “I know you’re there for me if I need you, Larry.  Make some time to visit.  We’ll have a night on the town that you won’t forget in a hurry.”

Larry drove back to the Creek without a care in the world.  Stopped off at the Beavertail Bar on 285 near Conifer and nursed a beer until Connie could take a break and sit a spell with him.

Connie Bartlett lived in an old Airstream situated on a rundown park overlooking the South Platte River.  She was an ex-hooker who had seen the light, found God, weaned herself off drugs and started over away from the city.

Connie was thirty, looked forty on a good day, and was determined to stay clean and live right.  Too many of her friends had OD’d or been murdered.  Having a regular job and just getting by in a rural setting suited her just fine.

“Hi, Larry,”  Connie said, sitting on the bench seat next to him.  “What brings you out here?”

“To see you, Connie.  It’s been a week or two.”

“As I recollect, you said you’d give me a call.”

“I’ve been off duty with a bad back, hon.  But I should’ve let you know.  Sorry.”

“No problem.”

“Can you get tomorrow evening off, Connie?  I’d like to take you out for a meal, and then you could stay over if you want.”

Connie liked Larry.  He was fun to be around, didn’t take her for granted, and showed her some respect.  They got on well; were good for each other, even though she knew that it would probably not lead to anything more permanent.  Larry wasn’t the marrying kind.  And neither was she.  “Sounds good,”  she said.

Larry put his hand over hers.  “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty, okay?”

“I’ll be waiting.”

Larry drove back to the Creek feeling mellow.  The knot in his stomach was loosening, now he knew that Logan would soon be history.

Logan slept late.  It was a luxury that he took full advantage of these days.  Throughout his life of duty he had grabbed sleep when and where he could.  Now, he was his own master, and lived by a new set of rules; his own, which were extremely flexible.  Maybe he was eccentric, or unconventional, which was a term he preferred. He chose not to own a wristwatch and only carried a pay-as-you go cell phone in a pocket of his rucksack in case of emergency.  The twenty-first century was technologically too advanced for his liking.  There was a lot more to life than computers and what he considered to be a virtual reality that governed the masses of peoples’ lives.

After showering and getting dressed, he drank two cups of coffee before heading out to walk into town.  A midmorning breakfast at the Steamboat would set him up for the day.  And walking kept him fit in both body and mind.  He could think better and clearer as he put one foot in front of the other and let his subconscious throw out information for him to collate and attempt to make sense of.

He had decided that Carl Purvis was not a viable suspect.  The deputy was just a big, slow-witted young guy with a bad disposition.  It was personal with Purvis.  After their first encounter he had wanted to get back at Logan.  Hopefully the injuries he had sustained would keep him incapacitated until after the killer had been identified.  Logan would be heading south before Purvis was fit enough to mount a further attack.  Not that he was particularly worried.  But he preferred not to go out of his way to seek trouble; it just seemed to be attracted to him.  He was a honey pot, and the bees just kept on coming.

Kate was in her office.  She had developed a habit of glancing out of the second-floor window, which was next to where she sat at her computer.  She stopped tapping the keys as Logan came into view.  Just the sight of him caused her to feel a farrago of emotions.  She had wanted him to stay over the previous evening.  Knew that if he had, then they would have slept together, taking their relationship to a new level.  But he had not made any advances, and so neither had she.  Raising her hand to her face, Kate imagined that she could still feel the sensation of his lips on her cheek like a warm feather brushing it.  Stupid!  She needed to get real.  Logan was a drifter, with no intention of settling in a place like Carson Creek, or anywhere else.  And she was not the type to contemplate a nomadic lifestyle.  She needed to have more of a goal in life than to just follow the sun, or to wake up every morning with no plan or structure to her life.  There could be no future with Logan, and probably out of respect for her, he had not attempted to bed her.  Or maybe she just wasn’t his type.  She needed to know.  He had concentrated her mind.  Made her wonder what the hell her long-term plan actually was.  She had run away from a past that she had needed to put behind her in miles as well as emotionally.  But you couldn’t run away from the memory of a single event that had branded your psyche.  Logan had caused her to question her whole outlook.  He had some kind of ability to not look ahead, nor need any goals.  His past had obviously shaped the man that he now was.  He was a guy that had truly got his act together; knew what he liked and liked what he knew.  That was uncommon, and therefore made him interesting in some indefinable way.  Enigmatic was the word that she felt best described him.  He was as big and as strong and apparently as resilient as an oak tree, and obviously had the ability to look after himself.  He could use violence if necessary with no hesitation or apparent regret.  That was a little frightening.  And yet there was also a gentle side to his nature.  She believed that he was essentially a good man, who in an old-fashioned way would stand up for what was right and not bow down to any form of pressure.

Kate pushed aside her thoughts of Logan.  She had the urge to phone her mother in Peoria, Illinois, just to hear her voice.  Their relationship had suffered after Kate had been raped.  The unfounded shame she had felt had caused her to pull away from everyone she knew.  It was as if she had in some way made herself even more of a victim; feeling to a degree at fault for being selected.  Knowing that it was not true had not dispelled the seed of self-condemnation that had germinated and subsequently grown.  Her mother had begged her to return to the family home, but Kate could not contemplate going back to the nest she had flown from.  Her father had died in two thousand nine after a routine hip replacement had been followed by the development of septicemia, which he had not recovered from.

Her mother craved company, having never lived on her own, and finding it hard to adjust to the loneliness that was consuming her.

Kate punched in the number.  Let it ring four times, and was about to close her phone when her mother picked up.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Mom, it’s me.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.  You?”

“Can’t complain, Pumpkin.  I’ve started getting out more.  It’s amazing just how many women of my age are divorced or widowed.  I joined a local social club, and it keeps me sane.  Gives me a reason to get up in the morning and get on with getting on.”

“That’s good, Mom.”

“And what are you getting up to out there in Colorado, apart from working too hard?”

“Not a lot, Mom.”

“Get a life, Pumpkin.  It slips by so fast.  One minute it’s all in front of you, and the next, you wonder where it went.”

“You’re right,”  Kate said, and meant it.  “I’ll give it some thought.”

“Well don’t put it off.  Your dad and I planned to do so many things, but always later, down the road.  Best to do things now, if you can.”

When Kate ended the call she felt better in herself.  Her mother had surprised her.  She had voiced what Kate had failed to realize.  It wasn’t just Logan that had the philosophy of ‘live for the day’.  Her mom had adopted the same outlook.  She sighed and stood up, left the office, walked down the stairs to the street and fired up a cigarette.  Somewhere within her was a free spirit fighting to get out.  It was time to open the door, set it loose, and see where it led her.

After Larry had disconnected, Wade made a call.  “Hi, Mickey, it’s Wade,”  he said on the throwaway cell phone that for the most part was kept in a drawer of his desk, switched off.  “You still over in Grand Junction?”

“Yeah, Wade.  S’been awhile.  Thought that maybe you’d retired and gone to live on the Big Island.”

“No way.  Magnum shirts and baggy shorts aren’t my style.  I’ve got an urgent job if you’re interested.”

“I’m always interested. Who, where and when?”

“Tomorrow evenin’.  And it’s not a straight job.  I need for this guy to vanish, permanently.”

“For the right amount of money I could make the Empire State Buildin’ vanish permanently.”

Wade gave Mickey everything he had on Logan.  He was happy to pay for a professional to deal with Larry’s problem.  Larry would be bought and paid for when it went down.  He had the call that Larry had made to him on tape.  It was business, and although his old buddy was only a deputy in a piss-ant town, he may prove useful in the future.  People were assets.

Mickey Morgan looked a few years younger than his actual age of thirty-six.  His boyish features and slim, five-eight build masked a ruthless sociopath.  He did not have the capacity to feel empathy for others, and possessing no conscience he was happy to hurt or kill anyone, usually for money, but also if he thought someone had slighted him in any way, however insignificantly.  He knew that he was always right about everything, and truly believed that no one else’s views – if they differed from his own – had any credibility.  He could appear to be a pleasant, caring young man, and present a personality that was wholly manufactured to fool everyone.

Mickey Morgan was a very seriously fucked-up individual, and was now running through various scenarios of what would be the most suitable method to kill Logan and dispose of his body.  He would have liked more time to plan and prepare for the hit, but realized that sometimes things came up that needed a quick resolution.

Mickey slept well, as always, to rise just before dawn and take the stairs down to the boiler room in the basement of the apartment building, for which he had a copy of the door key, to enter and lock himself inside it.  Moving a tubular steel-framed chair into a dimly lit corner, he stepped up on it, reached behind a thick, hot steam pipe and carefully pulled a cinder block out and put it down on its edge between his feet.  Reaching into the space behind where the block had been flush to the wall, he carefully extracted an oilcloth bundle that contained his Sig-Sauer nine-millimeter handgun, a suppressor and a box of ammunition.  Replacing the block, he aligned it perfectly, running his hand across the wall to ensure that it was undetectable.  He supposed that being paranoid went hand in hand with what he did for a living.  He had never trusted another person in his life, and was suspicious of everyone’s motives.  However inferior to him, some people – like the law enforcement agencies – needed to be given a certain amount of respect for their limited capabilities.  What he did was for some reason deemed as criminal activity, and so he had to always be on guard and protect himself from close scrutiny.

By ten a.m. he was on the road, after cleaning the gun and enjoying a breakfast of grilled ham and scrambled eggs.  He had stolen a nondescript gray Nissan the previous evening after dark, affixed a false plate, and was now heading east on I-70, which he planned to leave at Georgetown and use back roads for the final hour’s drive south to Carson Creek.

It occurred to Mickey that every hit he carried out was an adventure.  Killing the mark was an impersonal act.  His pleasure was derived from fulfilling the contract.  It gave him a sense of accomplishment and inflated both his ego and bank balance.  He would reconnoiter the area, pinpoint were Logan was, and then shoot him and put the body in the trunk of the car, to bury a long way from the town and any main road.  The authorities would not even know that a crime had been committed.  As far as they would be concerned, a drifter had moved on.  End of story.