Envy the Night (9 page)

He grabbed Nora around the waist and pulled her into the body shop and swung the door shut behind them with his free hand. Nora’s feet tangled with his, and she started to fall. He let her go, turned away as she hit the floor hard on her ass, reached for the dead-bolt lock and turned it. He banged his hand over the light switch and dropped to the floor, and then it was just the two of them inside the dark room and Mowery outside with his prisoner and a man with a gun.

__________

T
hey’d been closed for the day. That was the first thought Nora had, lying on the cold concrete floor with paint chips under her palms and dust in her mouth. She’d locked the door and hung the
CLOSED
sign, ready to drive home and take a shower. Should be curled up on the couch now with a pillow under her head and a warm sunset filling the living room. Instead she was here with a wounded cop and two gunmen outside and an oddly capable stranger crouched beside her.

“He might’ve have killed him,” she said, pushing upright. “Do you think he could have—”

“Get the phone,” Frank said. “Call 911.”

He disappeared then, slithering off into the darkness almost noiselessly, toward the row of toolboxes on the far wall. His motion was enough to propel her own, and she started for the office on her hands and knees, went about ten feet before she felt foolish and stood up. If they were going to start shooting through the walls, they’d have done it.

The thought had hardly left her mind when the gunshots started. Four in succession, muffled by the walls of the building but somehow seeming the loudest sounds she’d ever heard. She was back on the floor before the final shot was fired, pressed down into the dust and grime. In her mind, holes opened in the walls and bullets tore through and sought her in the darkness and found her in
an explosion of black pain. But the shots had been directed somewhere else; there was no sound against or inside the building. The cop, then. Mowery.

“They killed him,” she said, and Frank’s answer was immediate.

“Tires.”

“What?”

“They shot the tires on the police car.”

She rolled over and chanced a look back at the door, expecting to see him there, surveying the scene. There were only shadows, and she finally found him across the room, a long ratchet in his hand.

“How do you know?”

“You could hear them pop.”

Could hear them
pop?
She’d heard nothing but the shots, was
still
hearing the shots, rattling around in her ears as though the bullets remained active, floating out there somewhere, looking for a destination, for
her.

Frank crossed the room, the ratchet dangling in his right hand, but his walk was unconcerned. He reached for the dead bolt, and she hissed at him in shock.

“What are you doing?”

“They’re gone,” he said and opened the door. Nora braced for more gunshots, but none came. Frank stood in the doorway for a second, and from the floor she could see past him to the police car, which now rested on its rims, the tires reduced to cloaks of flabby rubber. The back door of the car stood open, and Mowery’s body was slumped behind it, only his legs visible to Nora.

“Make that call,” Frank said, and then he stepped outside.

She’d left the phone on the stool by the office door when Mowery arrived, and when she reached for it she saw the ugly red marks on her wrist. The pain in her arm and shoulder seemed to pulse faster now. When the 911 operator answered, Nora’s explanation came out in a voice she’d never heard—too fast, too high, on the edge of hysteria. She brought it down with an effort, explained what had happened to Mowery, and then disconnected despite the operator’s attempt to keep her on the line. She went to Frank, walking to the open back door, one she passed through countless times each day, now looming like the most treacherous of gateways.

Frank was kneeling beside Mowery, and there was blood on his jeans. He’d stretched Mowery out on the gravel, and the cop made neither motion nor sound. Frank turned to her.

“Ambulance on the way?”

“And the police.” She took a single step outside, pulling against the strings of a fearful desire to cling to the safety of the building. The parking lot was empty except for Mowery’s car.

“They’re gone?” she asked.

“Yeah. Probably not far, though. No cars in the parking lot except this one, and the only one I saw on the street was empty, so that’s not where the second guy was waiting.”

“They came in a Dodge Charger the first time.”

He looked up. “New model? Kind of sporty-looking thing?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s what was parked out front, but it was empty when I got here. So I don’t know why the first guy went after you alone. Where was his friend? Why’d he wait on the cop before he decided to help him out? Doesn’t make sense.”

He said all of this while working on Mowery, checking his pulse and loosening his shirt collar.

“Is he okay?” Nora asked.

“He’s not going to die, but he’s not going to feel or look right for a while, either.”

She rocked up on her toes to look past Frank’s shoulder at the cop, and when she saw him her eyes seemed to swim out of focus, everything a blur of red. She sucked a breath in through her teeth and forced herself to look again. His nose was almost unrecognizable, turned into a bloody smear across the right side of his face, and shredded lips revealed broken teeth.

Frank pulled his own shirt off and used it to wipe gently at Mowery’s face. Then he sat back on his heels with a frown, studying the unconscious cop before leaning forward to move him again. He tilted him off his back and onto his side, tucked the shirt under his head, and worked on the angle of his neck until Mowery’s face was pointed slightly down, toward the pavement.

“Shouldn’t you leave him on his back?” Nora said.

“I don’t know how well he can breathe. There can’t be much air going through his nose, and if he’s on his back all that blood goes into his throat. I want it to drip away from his throat.”

Nora looked away again and took the door frame in her hand, squeezed it tight.

“I almost missed that phone call,” she said, and if Frank heard her he didn’t respond. He wouldn’t know what she was talking about anyhow. Wouldn’t know
that the Lexus had been one ring from being bound for someone else’s body shop, someone else’s life.

Report a routine assault, and it takes a while before the cops finish sorting it out. Report an assault
on
a cop, and watch that time frame expand.

Frank told the story six times to three different cops—everybody seemed to want to hear him run through it twice—after Mowery had been taken to the hospital. He was semiconscious when the ambulance got there, but in no state to explain the attack to his police brethren. That put it back on Frank and Nora, who had an intensely interested audience. Seemed to Frank that it must have been a long time since someone bloodied up a cop in Tomahawk.

They started at the body shop, walking two of the cops through it step by step, then went to the police station to explain it to a third, this time on tape. By the time they were done, the sun was gone and the small town was quiet, moving on toward nine in the evening.

One of the officers dropped them both off at the body shop. The groceries were still sitting on the sidewalk out front. Probably not a good idea to try that milk, Frank thought. Man, what a day. Twenty past five, you’re worried about keeping your milk cold. Five thirty, you’re worried about staying alive.

“If I hadn’t promised you a ride,” Nora Stafford said, staring at his groceries, “I wouldn’t have been here when that asshole showed up. I would’ve been home already.”

“Sorry.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m just thinking. If I hadn’t promised you the ride, I wouldn’t have been here, right? But if I hadn’t promised you the ride,
you
wouldn’t have been here, either. And if you didn’t show up . . .”

Neither of them said anything for a minute after that. Nora shook her head, snapping away from all those possibilities.

“My point is, you
still
need a ride, don’t you? And I’d say it’s the absolute least I can do.”

She managed a smile at that, and Frank felt better. She’d handled the first round well enough, better than most would have. It was the second, that guy rising up out of nowhere and taking Mowery down, that had shaken her.

They walked back into the rear lot—you could see Mowery’s bloodstains on the gravel, but Nora kept her eyes high—and out to a little Chevy pickup with the Stafford Collision and Custom logo emblazoned on the side. Frank opened his Jeep and got to work transferring his belongings into the bed of the truck.
Nora helped silently. When everything had been moved, Frank paused to get a fresh shirt out of a suitcase, the blood-soaked one having departed with Mowery. Then he was in the passenger seat and Nora was behind the wheel and they were northbound, headed out to the Willow twelve hours after he’d expected to arrive.

“Temple the Third,” Nora said as they pulled away from the last stoplight in town.

“What?”

“I heard you give your name to the cops. Frank Temple the Third. Sounds fancy.”

He looked out the window. “Not really.”

“If you have a son, would you feel obligated to name him Frank Temple the Fourth?”

“No,” Frank said. “I certainly would not.”

He wished she hadn’t overheard him with the cops. He’d gone through the internal bracing that he always did when he gave his name, watching the cop’s eyes and waiting for recognition. There wasn’t any, though. It had been a few years since his father made headlines.

“You up here by yourself?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“From?”

“All over. Chicago, originally. I’ve moved around.”

“But you’ve been here before.”

He turned back from the window. “You say that like you’re sure about it.”

She flicked her eyes to the rearview mirror as she accelerated onto the highway.

“You call it the Willow. Not Willow Flowage, not the flowage, but the Willow. First-timers don’t say that.”

“Interesting. If I want to impersonate a real tourist later, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“But I don’t see any fishing tackle in your stuff, which makes you a real mystery. Everybody that goes to the Willow in May is going to fish. I think you got here about a week early, though. Season hasn’t started yet.”

“I may do some fishing. The gear’s already up at the cabin.”

“Really? You own the place? Nice.”

“It’s my father’s.”

“Is he joining you? A little father-son bonding?”

“He’s dead,” Frank said, and she winced.

“I’m sorry.”

“That would make you one of the few.” Then, to fill the awkward pause, he said, “What’ll you do with that car? The Lexus.”

“I’m not going to fix it, that’s for sure. Minute I hear from him, he’ll hear from the cops.”

“They ran the VIN and the plate, right? Did they tell you who owned it?”

He was thinking of that powerful and total conviction he’d had when he saw the Florida plate. Devin Matteson’s car. He’d been
sure
of it in that moment. Sure of it and reaching for his gun.

“If they already know, they didn’t tell me,” Nora said. “I bet it’s stolen, though. As crazy as all this got, I’m almost positive they won’t be able to find out who that guy was from the car.”

“Maybe.”

She shot him a glance. “You disagree?”

“Not necessarily. I’m just thinking about how fast his buddies showed up. Guy wrecks his car out in the woods, nobody else around except me, and then people immediately are looking for him at your shop. They knew the car was there, but they didn’t know where he was, or even what name he was using. How?”

“That’s a fancy car. Has the navigation system, the satellite link. Maybe they used that somehow? Called Lexus and reported it stolen or something, got the satellite to position it.”

“Could be.” Frank was thinking about other methods, though. Things like tracking devices, which, when mixed with men who carried Glocks and had no problem attacking strange women, did not present an appealing scenario.

“All I know is I want that damn car out of my body shop,” Nora said.

“Aren’t the cops going to impound it?”

“Yes, but I need to get it put back together first. Can’t tow a car that’s in a dozen pieces, you know? I’ll call Jerry in the morning, ask him to come in and put the parts back on so I can get it out of my sight. He’ll demand time-and-a-half, I’m sure, but I don’t care. I want it gone.”

There was vehemence in her voice that Frank hadn’t heard before. It was as if she blamed the car.

“Where do you live?” he asked, looking for a more relaxed topic of conversation.

“Almost up to Minocqua. You’re not far out of the way for me at all.”

“You always lived here?”

“Nope. I’ve been here for about a year.”

It was a disclosure that presented all sorts of questions—where was she from originally, what in the world had brought her to a body shop in Tomahawk—but Frank didn’t ask them. She was quiet for a bit, as if waiting for the inquisition. When no questions came, she offered another of her own.

“When was the last time you were up here?”

“Seven years ago.”

“That’s a long time. How do you know the place is still standing?”

“Guy named Ezra Ballard checks in on it, keeps it in shape.”

“Well, no wonder you’re so relaxed about it. Nobody in the world’s more reliable than Ezra.”

“You know him?”

“Everyone does. He’s one of a kind. Supposed to be the best guide in the area, too. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”

Frank nodded without comment. A hunter without peer, that was Ezra’s reputation. The stories Frank knew were probably far from those Nora Stafford had heard, though. A different sort of prey.

They were on Willow Dam Road now, the Chevy’s headlights painting the pines with pale light, and at Frank’s instruction Nora turned left, toward the dam. This was maybe a quarter mile from where the wreck had taken place. He’d been that close to his destination. Once they were across the dam and past the Willow’s End Lodge, he instructed her to take a right turn onto a gravel road leading to the lake.