Racing the Devil (32 page)

I cocked an eyebrow and tried to stay cool. “What am I supposed to have shot at you with? You know a nitric acid swab will prove I haven’t fired a weapon.”

“I’m sure Sonny will figure out something.”

“Like he did with Cal?”

“Cal shot himself.”

“I know. But you were holding his children hostage. You don’t have mine. Did you tell Cal you’d let the girls go if he pulled the trigger? Did you tell him you’d take care of them?”

“Shut up,” Sonny said. “You don’t know anything.”

I swung my attention his way. “It’s not just about Walter for you, is it? It’s about Valerie. I had her, you know that? She jumped me in the laundry room, and we fucked like rabbits.”

His face blanched. “Shut up,” he said again.

Valerie rolled her eyes. “Oh, just kill him,” she said to Sonny, and turned away.

I didn’t wait for him to pull the trigger. A man can’t outrun a bullet, but sometimes he can outmaneuver another man. I ducked and threw out my left leg in a hook kick that knocked the Glock from his hand just as it discharged. It flew across the room and bounced off the curtained window and onto the floor.

Valerie jerked the Colt around, and I dived for the Glock.

Time seemed both to slow down and to speed up at the same time. I heard three sharp cracks, a strangled cry, a stream of curses that might have been mine.

My hand closed on the Glock, and I rolled to my feet and pointed the gun at Valerie’s head.

She froze, Randall’s Colt trained on my chest.

Stalemate.

Beside her, Sonny sank to one knee, a flower of crimson blooming in the center of his chest. “Shit,” he said softly.

Valerie’s gaze flicked to her lover and back to me.

“He get in your way?” I asked. I noticed with an odd sense of detachment that the calf of my jeans was soaked with blood and that it had left a streak of crimson on the tan carpet.

“He’ll be all right,” she said.

“He needs a doctor.” “So do you.”

I couldn’t argue with that. The wound hadn’t begun to hurt yet, but I could tell it was a bad one because of the little pool of blood that was forming on the carpet around my boot. It felt surreal, the two of us chatting, our semi-automatics trained on each other.

“Tell me about Avery,” I said. “How did Calvin get involved with him?”

“Calvin didn’t have anything to do with it,” she said. “Amy introduced them. She said Reverend Avery reminded her of Daddy. Can you believe that?”

“I had the same thought myself.”

“He was nothing like Daddy,” she said sharply. “But she was all, ‘oh, he even has the same voice.’ It was guilt, if you ask me, for testifying against our father.”

I thought of Amy crossing a Wal-Mart parking lot, plucking a pamphlet from beneath her windshield wipers, glancing down at the photo on the front and seeing Avery’s face, so much like her father’s. Seeing a chance to relive the good parts and make up for the bad, to re-create the father she’d both loved and hated.

A dull ache settled inside my rib cage. “She didn’t have anything to feel guilty about,” I said.

“I’d expect that from you, since you helped her kill him.”

“What did Calvin think about all this?”

She gave an angry laugh. “Calvin just liked his message. He
would
.”

“But you went to his church too.”

She shrugged. “One big happy family. Besides, he let me sing.”

My head felt light. The room slowly listed to one side. Hang in there, I told myself, and shook my head to clear it. My left hand fumbled for my cell phone, which was still clipped to my belt.

“You’re bleeding to death,” Valerie said, calmly.

“Your concern is touching.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. It’s just an observation.”

My fingers found the keys. Punched one of them.

Another wave of dizziness swept over me, and I stumbled back, gun wavering. I steadied it.

“You’re a smart man, lover,” she said. “For a dead man. You have a good story, but you have no evidence. Cal shot himself. The girls were shot with the same gun. There’s nothing to connect either Sonny or myself to their deaths.”

I could barely hear her through the ringing in my ears. “Unless Katrina talks.”

“Katrina is a vegetable.”

“You’ve made mistakes.” My voice sounded hollow, and very far away. “The police already know I didn’t kill anyone. Where do you think they’re going to look next?”

She bit her lip and thought about it.

Sonny slumped against the wall, pressing his wound closed with one hand. Good idea. Maybe I should do that too. I would, if Valerie would put the stupid gun down.

Sonny coughed, cried out again.

“You going to let him die?” I asked.

Something in her expression warned me. A flicker of indecision. The tension in a muscle. I leaped to one side as she fired Randall’s Colt, and my finger, on the trigger, jerked.

The ringing in my ears intensified, and above the ringing, sirens, and finally the sound of my brother’s voice.

T
HEY’RE RIGHT ABOUT BULLET WOUNDS
. I hadn’t even known I’d been hit until I saw the blood, and two hours later, I felt like someone was digging through my calf muscles with a serrated knife.

The doctor gave me two units of blood and plenty of morphine and said I’d probably be up to speed in six or seven weeks.

Randall was waiting outside, and when the doctor left, a grandmotherly nurse with
Calvin & Hobbes
scrubs let him in.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “I dreamed you were there at Valerie’s.”

He gave me a quizzical look. “I
was
at Valerie’s. You called me, remember?”

My fingers, fumbling at the keys. I’d punched three instead of Frank’s less familiar four. Or maybe some part of me had meant to call for Randall all along. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

For ruining your military career. For not salvaging my marriage. For thinking, even for a heartbeat, that Frank might have been right
. “I think I lost your Colt,” I said.

“It’s just a gun. I’ll get another one. Besides . . .” He smiled. “Now you owe me.”

I leaned back against my pillow and said, “Randall, I always have.”

“HOW’S EVERYTHING?” I asked Jay.

“You tell me.” He crossed his arms and rested them on my bed rail.

“I meant, how are you feeling, and how are things with Mr. Perfect?”

“Fabulous,” he said. “Couldn’t be better. I don’t have any bullet wounds, unlike some people I know. My T-cell count is holding steady. And Eric is being a regular Prince Charming. Truth to tell, I think he’s too scared not to be.”

“Good,” I said.

“It’s a sad day when men have to be threatened to go out with me.”

“I didn’t threaten him. I merely reminded him of what he was missing.”

“For which I’m eternally grateful. But I do have one more favor to ask.”

“Never satisfied.” I forced a grin. “What’s the favor?”

“Do you think you might get through the next week without getting beaten up or shot at?”

It was a promise I was happy to make.

By the time Frank and Harry came in, I remembered to ask about Valerie.

They exchanged glances, and I read something in their faces that I didn’t want to see.

“Ah, no,” I said.

After an uncomfortable silence, Frank cleared his throat. “Good news is, the D.A. dropped the charges against you.”

“You could come back to work,” Harry said.

Frank nodded. “Now that everybody knows what happened with the Arneau bitch.”

“Maybe someday.”

I missed the force, but it was like that old saying: You can’t go home again. The force was home, but it would never be the same. There would always be the stares and the suspicions, the whispers and the smug, knowing smiles. Maybe one day I wouldn’t care. For now, though, I liked working for myself just fine.

“Just as well, maybe,” Frank said, but he sounded like he didn’t mean it. “Word is, the new chief’s planning to shake things up a lot. You take care, Cowboy.” He tapped two fingers to his forehead and turned to leave.

“Frank?” I stopped him at the door. “How’d you know I didn’t do it?”

“I didn’t know. You had me worried there for a while.”

“Yeah, but then . . . you started to believe me. You had a shitload of evidence, but you still believed me. Why?”

“I know you, Mac. The voice print made me lose sight of it for a while, but you’re not that kind of guy.” He gave me a small smile. “Besides, there was your gun.”

“My gun?”

“You might have forgotten to wipe the prints off the glasses, and you might have gotten carried away and left a message on her machine. But you would have thought to ditch the gun.”

I remembered how close I’d come to doing exactly that.
Two points for doing the right thing
, I thought. How often does that happen?

I SLEPT, AND WHEN I AWOKE
, the room was dark and my leg was throbbing. Moonlight streamed through the slats of the window blinds and made the bed rails and the metal edges of the bedside table shine.

I fumbled for the remote, clicked on the TV, volume on low, and checked the time. Nine-thirty. It felt later. A news report came on, and I clicked the TV off again. Thought about how one thing leads to another, about unexpected consequences. Walter Christy fumbles beneath a little girl’s dress, and years later, Valerie aims a pistol at another child’s head.

Confluence.

Events converge. Strands meet, leading to inevitable endings. But at what point do they
become
inevitable? If you could unravel them at the beginning, could you change the course of fate? I squeezed my eyes closed and remembered.

“My God,” Frank says, pressing Caleb’s rambling letter into my hand. “He’s going to kill her.”

There is no time to wait for SWAT; a paranoid schizophrenic with an arsenal in his basement is holding them at bay in a normally quiet Donelson neighborhood. A sniper will eventually take him down with a single shot to the temple, but not in time for them to save Melody Wilford
.

“The hell he is,” I say
.

The hunting lodge squats at the end of a rutted gravel road fifteen miles from the city. Caleb’s pickup truck is parked a few feet from the front steps
.

Frank climbs from the driver’s seat of his Crown Vic.

“Caleb!” he calls. “Caleb Wilford!”

He prods the front door with two fingers, and it creaks open. Caleb is inside, his daughter clutched to his chest, his hunting knife pressed to her throat
.

I slip around the corner and head for the back of the lodge
.

Frank says to Caleb, “You don’t have to do this.”

He keeps Caleb talking as I pick the lock on the back door and creep inside, keeps him talking as I tiptoe through the mud room, cross the kitchen, and ease into the great room, where Frank and Caleb face each other across the scuffed hardwood floor
.

There is an unstrung bow propped against the hearth, and beside it, a quiver of arrows
.

A floorboard creaks beneath my feet, and Caleb turns toward the sound. His blade bites into Melody’s throat, and the child lets out a squeal of fear and pain. A thin red line appears across her neck
.

My fault
.

Moving fast now. My fingers close around Caleb’s wrist, and I draw the knife away and up, twisting until he cries out. The knife clatters to the floor. With my other hand, I push the girl toward Frank
.

My gaze follows the child—is she safe? Did we save her?—and in that split second, Caleb lunges for the quiver, snatches out an arrow, and drives it into my chest
.

The pain is blinding. It drops me to my knees, drives all thought from my mind. The titanium tip enters my chest two inches to the left of my heart, tearing flesh and severing the small blood vessels in its path. A gun goes off, and Caleb Wilford and I crumple to the floor in a pool of mingled blood
.

Confluence.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. Thought about Melody Wilford and Katrina Hartwell, about the scars, both visible and invisible, they’d wear for the rest of their lives. I thought about Tara.

The kids I’d saved and the one I hadn’t.

I lowered the bed railing and slid my legs over the edge of the bed. A blade of pain sliced through my calf. My teeth snapped together, and a gasp whistled between them. I perched there for a moment, waiting for the pain to ebb. When it had become a dull ache, I eased onto my feet and, IV apparatus in tow, made my way down the hall. The nurse at the desk looked up when I passed. She was wearing pink Snoopy scrubs and a pink barrette in her hair.

“Can I get you something, Mr. McKean?” she asked. “Something for pain?”

“Just needed to move around a little.”

“It’s late.”

“I won’t be long.”

IT SEEMED A LONG WAY TO PEDIATRICS
, and by the time I got there, my calf was throbbing. I stepped inside Katrina Hartwell’s room and let the door swing shut behind me, waited a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness.

Katrina made a slender lump beneath the thin blanket. Her pale skin glowed in the light from the window slats, and a tangle of wires and tubes stretched between the girl and the machines that monitored her vital signs. They made her look like an abandoned marionette.