Deadly Edge: A Parker Novel (22 page)

Jessup said something in his new raspy voice, speaking to Manny, whose response was sluggish and dull; he backed away deeper into the car, hunching backward without the help of his hurt arm, and Jessup reached out with his free hand and slammed the door. Parker leaned forward to try a shot at him, but Jessup was keyed up now, his senses hyper-alert, and he saw the movement and fired at it, and Parker ducked back again.

Parker was too impatient to live with a stalemate. In front of the tire on the bulldozer was a metal plate, a step for the operator getting up into the seat. Parker stepped up on that, and leaned forward with his elbows on the seat,
and looked down over the back of the bulldozer at the Plymouth. At first he could only see the top of the car, but when he hunched farther forward he could see Jessup.

And Jessup saw him. His head and gun-hand flashed up, his eyes staring, and Parker leaned back again, hearing the musical note as the bullet bounced off the machine, feeling the vibration run through the metal.

Was it going to be stalemate after all? Parker stepped back down to the gravel, and headed around the front of the bulldozer to the other side, moving fast despite the troubles in his legs.

Jessup was gone. Parker stepped out into the open, and the Plymouth stood there silent and alone. Manny must still be inside, crouched on the floor in back, but Jessup was somewhere in all this floodlit yellow machinery.

Manny could wait, again. It was Jessup that had to be taken care of first.

Parker stepped back beside the bulldozer and got down awkwardly onto the ground, his legs bothering him. He lay flat on his stomach and turned his head slowly back and forth, looking under all the vehicles, his view obstructed here and there by tires, but most of the graveled area open to him.

Nothing. Either Jessup was standing where a tire was between him and Parker, or he was up on one of the machines.

Parker got up again, having more trouble than before—his legs were tightening up on him, soon he wouldn’t be able to travel at more than a limping walk at all—and climbed heavily up onto the bulldozer once more. He looked out across the tops of the machines, and still saw nothing.

Jessup had to be around. From here Parker could see the road, and the fields on both sides of the floodlit area, and the front of the building. Jessup hadn’t had time to get fully away, even if he’d wanted to leave. And he wouldn’t want to get away. He’d want to stay near his partner, and he’d want to kill Parker.

Parker waited, up on the bulldozer step, scanning all the machinery under the lights. He’d outwaited Jessup before, he could do it again. Or had Jessup learned from that?

A wailing sound rose and fell. A banshee sound, a noise for something in a swamp to make when it’s near death.

Parker stayed where he was, on the side of the bulldozer, aching right foot on the step, left forearm on the seat, right hand with the gun in it resting on the yellow metal hood. He looked around, and the sound came again, louder than before, and when he looked to his left, the Plymouth was moving. It rocked slightly on its springs, and when it did, the smashed front end scraped against the tractor it had rammed. Small pieces of glass fell to the gravel.

Manny? Was that sound coming from him? Parker leaned over the seat and waited and watched.

After the two wails, there was silence for about a minute, and then a sudden huge shriek, violent and explosive and drawn out. Then silence, this time for less than a minute, and another shriek, and silence again.

Jessup’s new voice called, “Parker! Parker, listen to me!”

Manny shrieked again, and the Plymouth rocked back and forth, the metal of the car squealing against the metal of the tractor.

Jessup called, “Give me a truce! I’ve got to help him! Parker?”

There was a little silence, and then Manny yelled, “No!” And then, “No, I can’t!”

“Parker, for Christ’s sake, he took too much, I have to help him!”

“
No!”
Manny yelled.
“No, I can’t do that, I can’t do that, no no no, I can’t do that, the wings, I can’t do that, no! I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do that, NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!”

“Parker! I’ve got to trust you, I can’t let him stay there like that!”

Parker waited, and Jessup came out from the yellow machines, looking this way and that, the gun still in his hand as he hurried toward the Plymouth, where Manny was shrieking again without words.

And that was the difference. Parker shot him twice.

9

Manny was lunging around on his back inside the car, arching his body, slamming himself into the floor and the door handles, breaking himself to pieces. Four sugar wrappers lay on the seat.

Parker reached his arm in through the open side window, close enough to leave powder marks, and pulled the trigger. Manny fell still, his broken arms dropping onto his chest. Parker smeared his palms over the automatic and dropped it in on top of the body. The law could work out whatever theory it wanted: a car with Ohio plates, two dead bodies and one of them broken up and full of acid, both shot with the same gun and the gun in the car with one of the corpses, the other one carrying a second gun which had also been fired. They could work out whatever theory they wanted, but none of it would involve Mrs. Claire Willis at Colliver’s Pond.

Parker turned and walked away. From the knees
down, his legs felt like logs, heavy and unresponsive and aching. He limped badly as he walked back toward the main road.

About a mile up the main road, he remembered, there was a roadside snack bar, on the westbound side of the road, across from all the traffic. He would walk up to there and call Claire to come down and pick him up.

Except he didn’t have to. He limped out to the main road, trotted awkwardly across at a break in the traffic, and had walked about a quarter-mile when one of the few westbound vehicles, a farmer’s pickup truck, came to a stop beside him, and a gnarled old man with huge-knuckled hands on the steering wheel called out to him, “You want a lift?”

Parker climbed into the truck, and the farmer started off again, saying, “You don’t want to walk with legs like that.”

“No, I don’t. Thanks.”

“Shrapnel? You get it in the war?”

“No,” Parker said. “I had an accident.”

“I got a bullet in the leg myself,” the old man said. “During World War One, you know. Still bothers me in the spring.”

10

Claire was putting a log on the fire. Parker walked into the living room and she looked at him and said, “What happened to your legs?”

“I banged them up. They’ll be okay.”

She straightened from the fireplace and stood looking at him, wiping her hands together. “Is it finished?”

“They won’t be back,” he said. There were no lamps lit in the room, only the fire for illumination; it made Parker think of candlelight, and the muscles in his back tensed. He thought of switching on the lights, but he knew she’d done this for the romantic effect, and he didn’t want to spoil it for her. It was easier for him to get over things than for her.

She went over and sat on the sofa and waved to him to join her, saying, “It is a nice house, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.” He sat beside her and slowly stretched out his legs, and looked into the fire.