Riders on the Storm (20 page)

I hadn't had time to climb to my feet so he stood over me punching at will. Stomach, sternum, face, skull. This was the pattern he'd no doubt found most successful and most efficient. He was not a dumb man. Stomach, sternum, face, skull.

I kept rolling left and right, deflecting as many punches as I could.

The formula he'd been using must have gotten boring for him because he suddenly felt the need to pick me up and hurl me again, this time halfway across the width of the fireplace and into the stand of tools including the hand-tooled poker.

He looked as surprised as I felt when I was able to creak to my feet and grab the poker.

He'd been ready for another round of stomach-sternum-face-skull or some variation thereof when I waved the sharp-edged poker in front of me. He didn't move, just watched.

I moved several feet away from the fireplace. He stood where I'd just been.

“You're doing a lot better than I thought you would, Counselor.”

“Thanks for the compliment. You're not doing quite as well as I thought you would.”

“C'mon, now, Counselor, you're not dumb enough to think this is really over yet. Are you?”

“No, I guess it probably isn't.”

And once again he showed me why he was Byrnes and I was McCain.

He bent down and snatched up the fireplace shovel from among the other scattered iron instruments. Now it was his turn to cut through the air with it. He used both hands the way he'd swing a baseball bat. None of this candy-ass McCain nonsense of just waving it through the air to keep him away. I'd been playing defense. Byrnes, of course, was playing offense.

In this brief respite I had time to realize that I was in some real pain and that my nose was streaking blood into my mouth. The surprise was that I did not have a headache.

I kept thinking of the gun. The gun could save me. I couldn't think of anything else that could.

He lunged. I backed up three steps into a grandfather clock in a corner. The chimes went wild for a minute or so.

He smiled. He was probably playing a movie in his head. The best scenes would be me on the floor and him savaging my head with his iron shovel. Maybe when I was at least half gone he'd take my poker from me and bash what little remained of my life with my own weapon.

Oh, yeah. He'd been rejuvenated. The baseball bat swing came closer and closer. Backing me up. Making me stumble not once but twice. Enjoying himself because he got to see that he was in control again.

I was now on a path to reach the couch. He was pushing me to reach it, slashing the air when I tried to move in a different direction, leaving me no room to maneuver. I needed to get the gun under the coffee table.

Then it was my turn. Or I hoped it was. I attacked him. My turn to carve my own direction. Fuck him.

And it worked.

His response to my sudden strike was to swing in an ever wider arc and that left him off balance. And that was when the hook of my poker caught him on the right cheek. It wasn't a particularly sharp
edge but I had the opportunity to hit him three quick times along the eye as well.

Blood poured from the massive cut I'd inflicted. His eyes lost focus for a few seconds.

I risked one more slash. It didn't cut but it disoriented him enough to lose his grip on his shovel.

He came at me but I'd been able to run around to the front of the couch.

I had half-ass good luck.

I wasn't quick enough to avoid the kicks he leveled at me as my hand scrabbled under the coffee table. He had to be wearing steel-toed boots. But I was quick enough to fill my hand with the gun so that when he grabbed me again—to hurl me across the room again?—I turned and shot him in the right shoulder. His hand shot out for the gun. He had the strength to wrench it out of my hand and it went off again. This time a bullet blasted his right thigh.

His first response was disorientation. He didn't cry out at the pain. He didn't try to shield himself from another shot. He just stood there staring at me in disbelief.

This wasn't the way his world was supposed to run. He was attacker, not victim. The other guy was supposed to be in pain.

Then he tried to reach me with his other arm.

I walked over to a brown leather armchair and sat down.

“Where's the heroin?” The trips to Mexico, packing the shipments privately. And heroin being the most profitable. I just took a guess.

He was starting to cry now. But as I soon found out, it wasn't because of pain. Not physical pain anyway. He careened around to the front of the couch and just let himself fall down on it. His eyes were closed for a second. No tears though. The crying I'd heard was in his throat.

“I go up again I won't be with my mom when she dies.”

So easy to mock him. But I didn't. He was fading fast. His head wobbled and his breath came in gasps. He tried to reach up with the hand of the wounded shoulder and he sobbed.

“I always promised her.” But that was all he muttered.

“Where's the heroin you and Anders ship?”

Drifting off: “Shoulda killed you.”

Then: Sirens. Nearby. On the wooded trail.

A single siren now, coming this way.

It was enough to rouse Byrnes, but not for long. He was bleeding badly from both wounds. He mumbled something angry that I didn't understand.

I ran to the door and threw it open.

Chief Foster's car slid across the grass, stopping about ten feet from the house.

Then he was running with his own gun ready.

Then somebody else was exiting the car.

Mary; Mary Lindstrom; my Mary.

M
ORE SIRENS, THIS TIME INCLUDING AN AMBULANCE. BUT ALSO
three more cars from the police station, including Sheila Kelly, the forensic expert Foster had brought with him from his last job. Within five minutes of striding through the door with a large black bag, she had found the subbasement where all the shipping equipment was placed on a Formica work table along with two sizable bags of heroin to be shipped to Anders's buyers.

Mary had called Foster and explained where I'd gone and why. He had picked her up immediately and brought her here.

Now Mary, Foster, and I talked on the front porch.

Foster wore a short-sleeved yellow shirt and brown trousers. “The drugs explains how Anders could live so well.”

“And why he had to force Al Carmichael out. Carmichael would never have put up with using the company as a ruse for shipping drugs.”

“I don't understand why a man like Steve Donovan would have, either.”

“I don't think he did. Not at first. I think he probably found it out after Anders had been at it for some time. Donovan had political aspirations for one thing. And for another he loved that company. He and Carmichael had turned it into a going operation. I'm pretty sure he confronted Anders and Anders made a promise to stop but then never did. And that's why the two were always arguing all the time. And that's why Anders killed Donovan.”

He smiled at Mary. “Mary and I had a little talk while we were racing out here.”

“All I told him, Sam, was that I was at least
willing
to consider the possibility that Will was guilty.”

The night went on. Bird racket in the trees; rain wind slamming against the windows and chilling us on the porch; animals scurrying for shelter before the rain itself began.

I sat there briefly comforted by nature because there would be no comfort coming from Foster.

“So even after all this you still don't think Anders killed him?”

“As I said to Mary, Sam, why would he? He didn't know how to run the company. With Donovan gone it would become obvious that the whole operation was getting a fair share of its profits from an unknown source. The IRS would have a lot of questions and pretty soon after that they'd get real suspicious and kick it over to the FBI. And then Anders would be all over.”

“Maybe Anders didn't have any choice except to kill him.”

Mary looked pained that I'd rushed past Foster's take on Anders to go right back into mine.

I said, “Maybe Anders was afraid that Donovan had finally had enough. That he was going to go to the authorities and tell them everything.”

“He'd be willing to sacrifice his political career?”

“Donovan had a terrible temper and he could be a bully when he got sanctimonious but generally he was an honorable man. He had to be miserable every day of his life knowing what Anders was up to. So I could see him snapping, saying that he'd had enough. Figuring out the best case he could for himself so maybe—just possibly—he could tell the law everything and avoid prison. Put everything on Anders, where it belonged anyway.”

“It seemed to me that Senator O'Shay had gotten Donovan pretty fired up about becoming a congressman.”

From the front doorway, Sheila Kelly said, “Think I could borrow you for a little while, Chief?”

“Be right with you,” Foster said, standing up. “We're pretty much done here with you folks, Sam, if you'd like to go home.”

“I asked Mrs. Nelson to watch the girls. She's usually in bed by nine thirty and it's almost that time.”

“You know where to reach us, Chief.”

After a clumsy handshake, I said, “I'm still going to prove that Anders killed Donovan.”

His smile went to Mary, not me. “And I'm still going to prove he didn't kill Donovan.”

The rain came as soon as we reached the highway. I kept the radio off so we could hear it play on the roof. Mary had her head back, eyes closed. Headlights were all we could see of the oncoming cars till they passed us.

“I was afraid you'd be mad at me, Sam.”

“You love me. You were afraid for me. You wanted to protect me.”

“If I ever need a lawyer I'll hire you. You made a very nice defense of me.” Then, “So now will you tell me what happened with Byrnes back there?”

Foster had apologized to Mary but said he wanted to question me alone. He started by saying that even though I'd technically broken the law by entering the cabin without any kind of permission or warrant, he was grateful for what I'd done and no charges would be filed against me. I thanked him.

I hadn't had time to tell Mary about the confrontation with Teddy Byrnes. But now that I repeated what I'd told Foster I realized how easily the situation could have turned out the other way around. Byrnes was not only a psychopath but also a skilled thug. The two things that saved me were his blind hatred of me, which had led him to make bad decisions in his attempt to kill me, and my ability to stay cool enough to think through how to outplay him.

“I can't believe you're still alive. Aren't you in pain?”

“Yeah. My right side hurts quite a bit.”

“And you don't have a headache?”

“Just now starting to. But it's not bad.”

“A big drink and right to bed for you.”

“I need to unwind.”

“All right. A big drink and then you unwind.”

“This'll all be on the news. I wonder what the girls'll make of it.”

“They'll be proud. They'll make you tell them all about tonight. The cleaned-up version, of course.”

“That should be an interesting version. I don't even get to mention the hookers?”

“What hookers?”

“See how fast that got your attention? Any kind of story you're telling, you can never go wrong with hookers.”

“Didn't we learn that in seventh grade?”

“No,” I said, “I think it was eighth.”

Since it was a workday I went to the office.

I did not stop anywhere along the way. Half of the front page of the morning paper dealt with the arrest of Lon Anders and the hospitalization of Teddy Byrnes. Valerie Donovan said that she would have no comment on the relationship between her husband and Anders. Chief Foster thanked me for my help with the case and called me
“courageous.” There was a photo of me looking like a sixteen-year-old. I'd never seen it before.

TV and radio people had shown up at the house around eight o'clock. The girls watched them from the front window. Kate kept asking me if she would get to be on TV.

Mary did a fine job as my public-relations representative. In her blue skirt with the blue buttons running down the right side and her smart white collarless blouse, her makeup modest and perfect, she cordially explained that I would be making a statement very soon but that I had other matters to deal with and right now just couldn't afford the distraction.

The word “hero” must have been used twenty times in the eight or nine minutes Mary was on the front porch. I was obviously no hero.

I hadn't expected to find Teddy Byrnes at Anders's house so you couldn't say I'd sought him out. And as much as I hated him, I hadn't been fighting him to rid humanity of a scourge; I'd just been trying to save my own sorry ass. But you couldn't say that to the press. To them you were a good guy or a bad guy, and if you were a good guy you just had to be heroic in some way.