Atonement (7 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Logan
was in the sheriff’s department to talk with Lyle.

“And what can I do for you today?”  Lyle said, intimating that Logan should pull up a chair.

“I just wondered if you’d come up with anything new.”

“Nothing yet,”  Lyle said.  “Have you?”

“An idea.  I’m positive that you’re looking for a local.  This is a small town, so it would narrow the search if you initially look at every unattached male between say twenty-one and forty-five that holds a current driver’s license.”

Lyle liked it.  Couldn’t find fault with Logan’s reasoning.  “And then eliminate them one at a time by confirming where they were on the night of the murder.  Right?”

Logan nodded.

Lyle got up and went across to the coffeepot and filled two mugs.  “Why do you think that the perp is a single guy?”  he said as he handed one of the mugs to Logan.  “And why twenty-one or older and not someone the approximate age as Ray and Tanya?”

Logan almost imperceptibly hiked his shoulders.  “Shorter odds.  I don’t rule out a family guy, but think it more likely to be some footloose and fancy-free type.  And I still think it was some guy on his way back to town from the Wagon Wheel or some roadhouse farther south, which excludes an underage drinker.”

“It’s all supposition,”  Lyle said.  “It could have been a stranger passing through, maybe heading north to another town, or to pick up the I-70.  He could be in Kansas or Utah now.  Or maybe it
was
Ray Marshall.  He’s a bright boy.  He could have dumped the body and then tossed the tab from the zipper out the car window.”

“That would be smart thinking on his part.  He loses the plot, kills the girl he loves, and then removes the tab from her zipper and hopes that by some miracle it gets found to help his case. I don’t buy that for a second.”

Logan left the office ten minutes later.  Lyle was going to check out the lead he had just been given, and hoped that he would get lucky.

Angling across Main Street towards the door of Kate’s office, Logan stopped and casually looked in the window of the hardware store; not through the plate glass but at the reflection in it.  He had noticed an old model gray Nissan parked up, and more importantly the driver, who he knew had been eye-balling him.  It was inbuilt radar; a facility that was some kind of early warning system that he always took heed of.  He had a choice, walk straight across the street and brace the guy or, now aware that he was being watched, let it play out with the advantage of knowing that he was a person of interest to a complete stranger.  He decided to let the stranger believe that he was oblivious to being under surveillance.  It crossed his mind that Carl Purvis may have reached out from his hospital bed, made a call and arranged something.  Time would tell.

He went up the stairs and rapped lightly on Kate’s door with the knuckle of his index finger.  Waited until she opened it.  Her smile was all he needed to see to know that he was welcome.

“Hi, Logan, come on in,”  Kate said.  “Is this business or pleasure?”

“I was just passing and thought I’d drop by and have coffee with my favorite attorney.”

“I’ll make fresh,”  Kate said.  “Do you ever not want coffee?”

“Only when I’m sleeping.”

“You’re a strange man, Logan.”

“Define strange.”

“Out of the ordinary, different.  I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you.”

“You haven’t, Kate.  Everyone’s an individual.”

“What’s your Christian name, Logan?”

“Joe.  But it sounds odd to me.  I’m happier with Logan.”

“Okay,”  Kate said as she poured coffee for them both.  “So what do you know?”

“I know that I’m not someone you need to get tight with.  And that Tanya Foster’s killer is almost certainly a resident of Carson Creek.  And that someone is watching me and has bad intentions.”

“Who’s watching you?”

“Some guy.  He’s parked across the street in a gray Nissan.”

Kate went to the window.  The blinds were slanted at forty-five degrees so that she could not be seen from the street unless she put her face up close to them.  She kept a couple of feet back in shadow and squinted through a gap. Saw the small saloon car, and could make out the face behind the steering wheel.  Put the guy at about thirty.  He was smoking a cigarette, and was obviously waiting for something or somebody.

“What makes you think he has an interest in you, Jo…Logan?”  Kate said.

“Experience.  I feel vibes. Do you recognize him?”

“No.  Never seen him before, so he doesn’t live in town.  What are you going to do?”

“Let him feel safe from me, and then have a quiet word with him when he least expects it.”

“And exactly what do you mean by saying that I shouldn’t get tight with you?”

“That you know I can’t settle in one place and play house, Kate.  I’m strongly attracted to you, but would not want you to think it could be an enduring relationship.”

“So whatever happens between us would be as transient as you are?”

“‘Fraid so.  I can care a lot, but not enough to change being who I am.”

“And run it past me again, who exactly are you?”

“A guy that needs to keep moving.  I don’t want to feel tied to some way of life in a place that I would have a hankering to walk away from.”

“So we could never be anything more than passing strangers?”

“That’s about it.  I have absolutely nothing to offer anyone, Kate.”

“I think you have.  You just don’t realize it.  You’re like me in a way, Logan.  You’re running away from something, but you probably don’t know what.”

“Maybe I just don’t like stability, Kate.  I don’t want to be part of the accepted system anymore.  Every day is like coming to a crossroad on a highway to me.  I turn left or right or go straight on and see where it leads.”

“Don’t you ever want to share experiences with someone?”

“I tried once.  It didn’t work.  There was too much expectation.  Her name was Maddie, and like most women she envisaged some kind of permanence, and maybe a house with a white picket fence, and a couple of kids.  I’m not very good at compromise.  It wasn’t the life I wanted.  Maddie eventually saw the light and walked.”

“Do you have any regrets?”

“None.  You have to know who you are, and live accordingly.  I don’t look back at anything and waste time thinking how life might have turned out if I’d taken a different route.”

“Thanks for sharing your philosophy with me, Logan.  I’ll still take you up on the meal you offered, but won’t read anything too deep into us being together.”

Logan was silent for a few seconds.  “Doesn’t mean I don’t care, Kate.  I can love a spring day, a sunset, all manner of things, including people.  But I don’t need to own them or see them all the time.  Does that make any sense?”

“If I was a psychologist it might.  I’d peg you as having lost a lot in life, and that you feel vulnerable, so have decided that if you keep people you care for at a safe distance, you can’t get hurt.”

“Maybe you’re right, Kate.  I don’t do self-analysis.  We all have to do what gets us through each day the best way possible.”

Before leaving, Logan told her what he had suggested to Lyle.  And that he thought it likely that the perp would be identified sooner rather than later.

The Nissan was gone when he stepped back out onto the street.  He called in the hardware store and made a purchase, and then set off on the road back out to the motel, half expecting the stranger in town to be waiting along the way.  A few vehicles drove past him, but not the Nissan.

Back at the Pinetop he got in the pickup and drove off.  Made his way at a steady forty miles an hour to the track that led up to the ruin of the Carver house.  If he had been followed, then it was by a pro, because he had kept an eye on the rearview mirror all the way.

Parking outside the husk of the burned-out house, he went inside, through the remains of an internal doorway into what he recognized as having been a kitchen, due to the blackened and cracked pot sink that was positioned beneath and in front of a rectangular hole that no longer had a frame or glass in it.  Standing in deep shadow with his back against the wall, he waited, listening for the slightest sound as he reviewed the conversation with Kate and begrudgingly decided that she had him pegged.  He
did
avoid forming strong relationships with anyone.  He was a loner by choice, unable to lower his mental defenses and allow his emotions to lead him into situations that would constrain his inherent need to keep moving on.  Being a murder cop in New York had kept his mind occupied.  Case followed case, and he was always investigating, and running killers down with a ruthless determination.  It had been a mission in some way.  He had been addicted to bringing the worst of society to book; to see them pay for the atrocities they had committed.

A sound.  Wings flapping as skittish birds took off from the bare branches of surrounding trees.  He remained as still as a statue.  Ten minutes ticked by before the almost inaudible sound of a shoe sole on a piece of glass confirmed that someone was in the house with him, stalking him with what he chose to believe was deadly intent.

Mickey had nearly missed seeing the pickup turn into the opening on the back road.  He had kept well back, always keeping another vehicle or a bend in the highway between himself and Logan.  He was not to know that his quarry had stopped at the entrance for a few seconds before driving up to the house at no more than a slow walking pace, to give any pursuer chance to see him.

Driving a hundred yards further along the road, Mickey stopped in a small parking area, checked his gun and screwed on the suppressor.  This was a perfect location to kill Logan.  He could then return for the car, to go back and load the body into the trunk.  Sometimes the hits he carried out were almost too easy.

He hunkered down behind evergreen bushes in sight of the pickup, and the house that looked as if it had suffered a direct hit by a bomb.

After waiting for a while and seeing no movement, Mickey skirted around the ruin, and noted that a trail led off from the rear of it.  He doubted that Logan was still inside the building.  He had probably gone off walking, and would be a sitting duck when he made his way back to his vehicle.

He took no chances.  Entered the house with the gun raised and his finger on the trigger.  Once satisfied that it was clear he would pick a spot and wait as long as need be.

Logan smiled as a faint shadow was cast on the crumbling concrete floor inside the doorway.

Mickey almost slid around the opening and into the room like a human snake.  He looked to his left first, and as he turned his head to look the other way, a blow to his wrist knocked the Sig from his hand.  He pulled back, instinctively cradling his lower right arm as a dull, sickening pain erupted within it.  He knew that the bones in it were fractured, and also knew that he had been suckered.  The big man had somehow expected to be followed, and had been waiting for him.

Logan kicked the pistol across the floor and then sideswiped the retreating man across the side of his head with the large piece of quarry tile that he had armed himself with.

Mickey’s senses reeled.  He thought he would lose consciousness, but somehow stayed alert.  He was lying on his side now, and knew that he was in a desperate situation.  With his eyes closed, he played possum.

There was a tension in the body’s muscles.  Logan knew that the man was still aware, and so leaned forward and drove his right fist into the side of the man’s jaw, to both feel and hear the blow as it splintered the zygomatic bone in the cheek and shattered the mandible away from its moorings.

Mickey surfaced to a world of pain.  He was in a sitting position with his back against a wall.  His wrists were pinioned behind him with a length of rusted barbed wire, as were his ankles, and Logan was hunkered down three feet from him, holding the handgun loosely in a hand that made the weapon look like a kid’s toy gun.

Logan said nothing.  He was in no rush.  Silence was an unsettling weapon that he had used to great effect on numerous occasions.  He had searched the man’s pockets, but found nothing to ID him.  Just a pack of cigarettes, a Zippo lighter and car keys on a cheap plastic fob.

Mickey waited, expecting Logan to start questioning him, but was met with no more than a smile that did not reach the man’s cold, gray eyes.  He suddenly felt a tongue of fear lick at his brain.  He recognized callousness in Logan that he himself possessed.

“Who are you?”  Mickey asked in a slur through his damaged mouth.

“I’m the man you planned on killing.  So you know who I am.  The question is, who are you, and who sent you?”

Mickey looked down into his lap.  He had no intention of telling Logan anything.

Pain detonated in his face as Logan side-swiped him hard on his already damaged face with the suppressor of the Sig.  “You need to wise up,”  Logan said as Mickey cried out in pain.  “The only chance you have of leaving this place alive is by telling me everything you know.”

Mickey tried to hold out.  Logan pointed the gun at his leg and said, “Well?”

No reply.  Logan smoothly squeezed the trigger and a round was spat out of the nine millimeter to blow the kneecap apart.  The sound of the shot was much quieter than Mickey’s subsequent scream.

Logan stood up to stretch his back and legs.  Unscrewed the suppressor from the barrel of the gun and placed the weapon in a pocket of his parka.  Dropping to his left knee, he pulled up his right pants’ hem and removed his recent purchase from the hardware store from its ankle sheath. He held it out for Mickey to see, and saw fear blossom in now tear-filled eyes at the sight of the knife.  It was a fixed bladed hunting knife, razor sharp and sporting a genuine ebony handle.

“Let’s start over and treat this as a game”  Logan said.  “Here are the rules.  I ask you questions, and if you don’t answer them or I think your lying, I cut a piece off you.  I’ll start with your ears, and then your nose.  And we’ve got all the time in the world out here.  We won’t be disturbed, so I won’t need to rush.”