Nailed (40 page)

“Sonofabitch,” Ron whispered.

Now he had the motive.

“And that fella in the truck,” Jack went on. “My horse-playing friend, who I just got off the phone with, tells me his full name is Arthur Gilbert Braddock. Former groundskeeper at the track in Maryland my friend favored. And, of course, the dead boy’s daddy.”

“A son for a son,” Ron murmured. “After all these years.”

“That’s why I’m telling you all this, Ron Ketchum. I’m a man who believes in squaring accounts. And if Braddock had killed Jimmy Thunder for what he’d done to his boy, I’d never have let on about him. But that boy, Isaac Cardwell, he had no more business being killed than Roger Braddock.”

“No, he certainly hadn’t,” Ron agreed.

Chapter 53

Well after darkness had fallen, the mountain lion slipped out of the wilderness. It left behind the shelter of the endless pines and the cover of the brush and boulders. Using great stealth, it crept forward onto the hard manmade surface and passed the boundary of the town limit. The trees were sparse here; there was hardly any of the natural shelter on which it depended when hunting.

But the supply of game in this place was boundless.

The big cat’s gut burned with hunger. It rarely got enough to eat these days; it was almost always ravenous. Bringing down an adult deer on which to gorge was beyond it now. It had to subsist on rabbits and squirrels and fawns. But not long ago it had found another source of food: the two-legged creatures. Their senses were dull and they were slow afoot.

They should have been easy prey for the big cat, and sometimes they were. But at other times they had proved dangerous. They surprised the cat with defenses beyond its instincts and experience. But it was learning.

The cat slunk through the shadows where the streetlights didn’t reach, amidst the orderly rows of lairs in which its new prey lived. Sniffing the air, the scent of quarry came from every direction. The animal could hear the sounds of their calls and the noises they made moving about, though these were muted by the enclosures of their lairs.

The lion pressed itself into the deep shadow at the mouth of an alley as a car approached. It watched from concealment as two members of its newly favored food group rolled past. The cat understood instinctively that the two-legged creatures were beyond its reach in these moving lairs. No, it had to pounce on them as they walked upright. Unprotected.

Then the big cat’s head whipped around as it caught a scent. It was not alone in the alley. With a grace and strength it had not completely lost, it turned silently and sinuously around and moving low to the ground crept deeper into the alley.

A pair of eyes appeared in front of it. Terrified eyes. The lion caught the sour scent of its prey’s fear. The big cat moved carefully, taking no chance to allow its cornered victim any avenue to escape. As it closed in, a deep, low growl rumbled deep in the lion’s chest.

Just before it could pounce, the prey bolted.

But as the alley cat tried to leap over its savage cousin, the lion batted it out of the air with one fierce swipe of a paw. The domestic feline hit the base of a brick wall and lay still, stunned, when the lion pounced upon it, the weight from its one hundred and forty pound body snapping the little cat’s neck.

The meat from the prize was barely worth the lion’s effort. It was an appetizer, nothing more. The big cat’s hunger was only further whetted. It needed to eat more. It needed to eat now.

The big cat moved back to the mouth of the alley.

It saw no two-legged prey. The hard surfaces all around it were empty. The cat moved out of the alley, further into the town. Game was everywhere, but none of it was within reach. All the two-legged creatures were in their lairs. The cat’s hunger almost drove it mad.

Then out of the endless array of olfactory impressions available to its keen nose, the cat found a familiar scent: one of the two-legged creatures it had been stalking the past two days. This one had spent much of its time outside. If the cat could find it now, at a place in which it was vulnerable …

The mountain lion stalked with a new sense of purpose. A sense of direction. It was closing in on one of the scents that had filled its mind for the past two days. This was a creature of significant size.

This was meat worth the taking.

Oliver and Lauren Gosden had put Danny to bed and turned in early themselves. Lauren had told her husband of passing out her new buttons at the hospital and to the Goldstrike PD. She said she thought she’d made some progress at reconciling the hard feeling that had arisen in the Sunshine Ward — among both the adults and the children. Oliver told Lauren of his day in the woods with Corrie Knox. How they’d found the ghastly remains of Didi DuPree, and how’d they’d felt the cat had been watching them all day, stalking them, just waiting for them to drop their guard. But they hadn’t, and Oliver had to give credit to Warden Knox. She was right out there keeping up her end, moving a whole lot better through the woods than him, and not letting her fear get the better of her.

Lauren told her husband that the chief had all but admitted to her that he and Ms. Knox were an item.

“Dirty old man,” Oliver commented.

“You’re not envious, are you?” Lauren asked.

Oliver Gosden gave his wife the definitive non-verbal answer.

Now, Lauren lay asleep, the ghost of a smile playing at her lips. Oliver was starting to unwind and drift off himself, sleepy enough to ignore the light sheen of sweat on his forehead from the warmth of the night. He had the sensation he was falling, leaflike, through a medium slightly denser than air when the phone rang.

He jerked upright and answered groggily, “Gosden.”

“Oliver, it’s Ron. Were you sleeping?”

“Just about.” Lauren still was.

“Sorry. But we’ve got Isaac Cardwell’s killer. Sergeant Stanley told me you wanted to be in on the arrest.”

Oliver Gosden sure as hell did.

“Be there in ten—”

The deputy chief heard a ripping sound at the back of his house — a door or window screen being slashed open. This was followed by a low growl. A chill ran the length of Oliver’s spine that tightened both his scalp and sphincter muscles.

The mountain lion was in his house. He knew it with absolute certainty.

“It’s here!” Oliver whispered urgently, his throat suddenly so dry he had to fight to get the words out. “The mountain lion is in my house!”

That was all the time he could spare for the phone, but he had the presence of mind not to hang up. He laid the receiver on the nightstand so the line stayed open. Then he shook his wife once, firmly. When her eyes popped open and she recognized who he was, he covered her mouth with his palm.

“The mountain lion is in our house. I’m going to get it. Lock the bedroom door behind me, and don’t open it until I tell you.”

Oliver didn’t have time to dispel the horror that appeared in Lauren’s eyes. He grabbed his service weapon, and on instinct his Zippo lighter, from the nightstand.

Then he ran into the darkened hallway outside his bedroom.

Praying he got to Danny’s open bedroom doorway before the big cat did.

Ron shouted at Sergeant Stanley to man line one on his phone, to maintain the connection to Deputy Chief Gosden’s house at all costs. Then he and Corrie Knox sprinted to her 4x4. Ron drove, and Corrie grabbed her Winchester 94 from its bracket. Her fingers danced nervously on the stock and barrel as she held it. With the streets deserted, Ron raced toward Oliver’s house without using his emergency lights or siren.

Neither he nor Corrie said a word.

Oliver was less than three feet from his son’s room when the mountain lion appeared around the far corner of the hallway. The cat stopped and fixed Oliver with a feral stare. Its eyes glowed hypnotically. Its jaw dropped open and the lion gave a shrill, keening yowl that froze Oliver’s soul.

But not his gunhand.

He raised his weapon to fire and —

“Daddy, daddy!” Daniel cried. “There’s something bad outside my room! Come quick!”

The deputy chief took his eyes off the cat for only a split-second to look toward his son’s room, and he knew instantly he’d made a terrible mistake. He felt as much as heard the cat leaping at him. There’d be no chance to get off a shot now. Maybe no chance to save himself at all.

Out of pure reflex, he dove for the opening of Danny’s doorway, trying to hit it as low and fast as he could. He felt a blast of hot, fetid breath on his face. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the blur of the mountain lion going by
above
him.

Time seemed to slow to a viscous crawl. Oliver floated through the air as lazily as if he were swimming just beneath the surface of a sunlit sea. The lion, having anticipated a stationary, upright target, drifted past high overhead, no more threatening than a fanciful balloon. All Oliver had to do to enter his son’s room would be to simply twist a few muscles, bend a few joints, and let the breeze carry him along.

Suddenly, joltingly, painfully, the world rushed back to full speed with a bang. With a swipe so stunning it felt like his hand had been broken, the cat knocked Oliver’s gun from his grasp. Next, he felt a flash of pain as scalpel-sharp claws raked his left calf muscle. Finally, he slammed shoulder-first into the doorjamb of Danny’s room.

But he was too charged with fear and adrenaline to let any of these traumas incapacitate him — especially when the mountain lion’s momentum carried it skidding along the polished hardwood floor affording him the opportunity to escape.

Oliver scrambled on his hands and knees into Danny’s room and kicked the door shut.

Just before the cat slammed into it, shook the door in its frame, and howled in rage.

Ron pulled up at the Gosden house. Both he and Corrie heard the savage cry of the animal within the structure. But the lights in the house were extinguished and they couldn’t tell who was where. They exchanged a tense look.

“Any other situation,” Ron said, “I want as much backup as I can get.”

Corrie shook her head.

“Cops aren’t trained for this. Too many guns, too many frayed nerves, and we’re more likely to shoot the Gosdens, each other, or some neighbor in her nightgown.”

And lights in the neighboring houses were coming on in response to the lion’s continued uproar.

“We’ve got to go in now,” Corrie said, “before we draw a crowd.”

“Or a neighbor opens up with
his
gun.” Ron gave Corrie a quick description of the layout of the Gosden house. “Okay, I’ll take the front door, you take the back. But we have to do one more thing first.”

Ron radioed Sergeant Stanley, told him to advise whomever he could raise on the Gosden’s phone line of their movements. He didn’t want Oliver to blow away either of his would-be rescuers.

Oliver leaned his weight against the door to his son’s room as the big cat slammed into it with another thunderous crash. The deputy chief didn’t give way, but the hinges on the doorjamb were starting to yield. If the hardware went, keeping the beast out might be more than he could manage.

Fucking thing had to be getting a running start from the bathroom across the hall, the deputy chief figured. Then he just threw himself at the door with everything he had. That, and bellowed and snarled for all he was worth.

Oliver was past fear and in a rage himself. He wanted that motherfucker
now.
He was half-tempted to throw the door open, half-sure he could strangle the sonofabitch with his bare hands. The lion hit the door and howled again. Oliver roared right back at it.

“Daddy, make it
stop!”
Daniel pleaded through a veil of tears. “Shoot it, shoot it!”

If Oliver’d had his gun, he would have. Right through the door. Now, however, he had to think of something else. He wasn’t quite berserk enough to go the barehanded route. And he wasn’t going to open the door at all until Danny was out of harm’s way.

There was a momentary lull. The cat had backed off and was quiet. Danny was sobbing softly. Oliver had a moment to look around and think. He saw a broom in the corner. His son had been earning his quarter a day keeping his room neat. At the same time, Oliver realized he still had his Zippo held tight in his left fist.

“Danny,” he whispered. “Hand me that broom, son. Go on bring it to me.”

The little boy looked bewildered, but he wasn’t going to question his father at a time like this. He brought him the broom. Then he stepped back and instructed Oliver quietly, “Daddy, you can’t hurt a lion with a broom.”

Despite everything, Oliver had to smile.

“Danny,” he said in a soft, soothing voice, “I want you to go into your closet now. Close the door and don’t open it for anything, unless Mom or I come to get you. Can you do that?”

“I’ll be scared.”

“The lion won’t be able to get you in there, son.”

“I’ll be scared for you.”

“Danny, we’re all going to be fine. And what I’m going to do to that cat, I don’t want you to see. Now, go on, son. Right away.” Oliver took a step away from the door to urge Danny on his way with a gentle pat on his bottom.

He watched as his son ran into the closet and pulled the door shut tight behind him.

Then he knew just what he had to do.

But before he could do a thing there was a knock on the wall between the two bedrooms. Lauren told him Ron Ketchum and Corrie Knox were about to enter the house with weapons drawn.

That changed everything. What he had to do now, Oliver decided, was sit tight.

That plan lasted only the second it took for Danny’s bedroom door to explode open, smack the deputy chief square in the face, and knock him on his ass.

But once again the momentum of the mountain lion’s charge made it overshoot its prey. When it turned, however, Oliver was still down and trying to clear the cobwebs from his head. A stunned victim. An easy kill. In the split-second before the predator could pounce, however, Daniel Gosden, having heard the commotion, and sensing the big cat was near, screamed in fear from the refuge of his closet. Then Lauren Gosden shrieked from the next bedroom, voicing the horror a mother knows when her child is threatened. The two outbursts confused the cat.