Shadow Season (20 page)

Finn thinks, Okay, none of this “hey, I’m at home in the dark, I’ve got the advantage now” bullshit, but shadows will help.

He hears their footsteps approaching.

“Run,” he tells her. “Use the west door.”

“I can’t.”

“Get up and run, Vi.”

“I can’t.”

He wonders if he’s got enough time to rush over and hit the lock. It won’t keep them out for very long, but a few seconds either way still counts.

But the chance is gone. A burst of freezing wind and ice crystals whips into the lobby. It sounds like someone’s taking a bucket of sand and throwing it across the floor. Finn can feel the cold on his teeth. He’s grinning again.

He breathes the fresh air in deeply. He’s got the cane in his left hand, the open knife in his right. He
holds the blade down against the side of his leg. The rage runs over him in a friendly, loving manner. It licks his earlobe, it tickles his balls.

“So what’s this all about?” he asks the holler men in the hall.

No response. The front door slams shut.

Vi is doing an incredible job of controlling her panic, but a brief moan of terror drains from her.

Finn snaps his cane down and the echoes return. His facial vision shows him that there are two men in the lobby before him. They stand on either side of the corridor, about six feet apart. His bones tell him that the men are large. He can hear that they’re creeping forward with an animal canniness. Sons of bitches. One snickers. It’s a twisted, degenerate sound.

Finn lets out the same kind of chuckle, equally sick.

One is retarded. The other doesn’t speak.

Finn decides to ask the big question.

“What’s this all about, Pudge?”

He’s not expecting an answer, but Pudge mutters with an odd guttural bleating, “You done did bring this on yourself, blind man.”

“And how’d I do that, Pudge?”

The grating titters again. “You owe us.”

“What the hell do I owe you?”

“You know what you done. You know the way that led us here. You know the way of where we’re going.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Finn whips his cane down again, senses they’ve covered half the distance to him. The knife feels righteous in his fist. His shrink says this is asserting his independence, feeding his need for security, taking a hand in his
own self-preservation, but Finn thinks that in some fashion he’s been waiting for this moment. Hoping for this moment.

In response to his rage, Finn turns the knife point just enough so that it jabs into his leg. The sting refocuses him.

“Pudge, you hurt a little girl. You’re the one who’s got to pay.”

“We don’t want to hurt no one. That girlie, she gonna be all right. She all right. I like her. I only kissed her up some.”

“You motherfucking bastard,” Vi hisses. She’s trying to clamber to her feet. Finn wants to lend a hand, but the situation is precarious, tremulous. A delicate tableau liable to shatter in an instant. He waves her back with his cane, hopes she’ll run for it. Vi takes a step forward. “You rotten son of a fucking bitch.”

Finn wishes she hadn’t spoken. He needs these two to concentrate and stay focused on him. He needs to keep this argument going. People who are willing to talk have an inherent expectation to continue the conversation. He can keep Pudge busy.

But Rack. Who is Rack? What is Rack?

The gruff bleating is baffled. “You mad at me, girl? You shouldn’t be mad at me none. We made you a woman. Made you a woman’s what we done. That’s a good thing. It’s a good thing for you. You find you a husband soon. Soon enough, you find one.”

When he imagines Pudge, Finn sees Stan Collins, a guy he went to the academy with. Two weeks in, during a self-defense class, Stan had an aneurysm that left him disabled. Since Stan wasn’t technically a police officer
yet, the brass weren’t about to pay a lifetime of special-care bills. A long, very public legal battle ensued. Finn remembers seeing Stan in front of the microphones at press conferences, his overwrought wife and two little girls standing behind him on the courthouse steps, Stan speaking in a kind of strangled growl, lips perpetually tilted into a drooling smirk. With his thinning hair they couldn’t hide Stan’s surgery scars as easily as they’d done with Finn.

“Give us what you owe,” Pudge says, “and we can get on our way.”

Finn thinks, Maybe this is all just about money. Maybe this is the way these backwoods pricks pull a score. This is their version of a heist, a smash-and-grab. “So how much do we owe you, Pudge?”

“You mean you don’t know? You don’t know what you owe, man?”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“You shame yourself. You shame my family. We deserve to be paid for our product. We cooked our load. You carried it on. You carried it on and we deserve to be paid. We need a new truck. It’s time for a new truck.”

Aha.

Product.

Cooked product.

They’re crystal-meth makers acting like Finn’s fucked them on a deal.

Do they have him mixed up with Murph? Does Murph still have notions? Was he trying to rise above his station? Did he throw in with these two to rob a bank?

Or is it one of the girls? Claiming he’s the chief in
charge while they rip off backwoods bathtub meth-heads?

He’s hoping there’s still a chance to defuse the situation, but the rage flows up his throat like venom and he feels the need to spit.

“You shouldn’t have touched the girl.”

“She all right, man. She all right, she is.”

“Did you beat on Harley Moon too?”

“Harley? You seen Harley?”

“I have. You thumped her head.”

“She’s our sister,” Pudge says.

Fin thinks, Ah, the Moon brothers. He smacks his cane. Rack is stone solid still.

“Isn’t for you to question us about her,” Pudge continues. “Isn’t for you. We take care of our own. That’s right. You’re the one. You’re the one not looking out for your house.”

It’s true. Finn hasn’t looked out for his own house. No matter who’s responsible for this, he’s the man in charge. Harley came to warn him. She was persistent. She tried twice. He was thick. He was dense.

“You like hurting little girls, Pudge, you and your brother.”

“That isn’t any of your say. None of your say at all. None of it is.”

Finn snaps the cane down again. The sound fills his face. They’ve both moved up another couple of steps. “I’ll protect my house.”

“Give us our money. We need our money. The truck, it don’t work so well no more.”

Vi’s managed to stand. Finn hears what sounds like a kitchen faucet with a slow drip. They cut deep inside of
her, and she’s bleeding much worse than he’d thought. She’s not attempting to run. Finn shifts on the balls of his feet, trying to keep himself in front of her.

He addresses the silent one. The really bad one.

“You got anything to add, Rack?”

Rack says nothing.

“You let this idiot do all your talking for you?”

Rack says nothing. Pudge gives a grunt of exasperation. He says, “I’m smart enough, blind man. My brother, he run the show. He run the show but I talk. I do the talking, I do. He less for words than me.”

So if they want cash, he’s got to play them along and buy himself some time. “I don’t have your money here.”

“You gonna get it.”

“I’ve got it, just not here. But I’ll pay you.”

“You remember how much it is?”

“Yes.”

“How much more time? What time you gonna need?”

“One more day.”

“That all? All the time?”

“Yes.”

Pudge rubs his chin, which is thickly stubbled. The leisurely scrape of knuckles against the bristles is in sync with Vi’s blood spattering the tile.

When he imagines Rack standing there in the hall before him, Finn sees his own shadow thrown against a wall. It’s perfectly recognizable as his shadow, standing at an angle with the outline of the shades discernible, the cane in his left hand, the knife in his right.

“My brother don’t believe you, man. Where you
gonna get the money tomorrow if you don’t have it today?”

“I can get it.”

“Where? Where you gonna get it?”

“What difference does it make?”

“We don’t believe you. It’s not a believing thing, what you say.”

“Who else do you hurt, Pudge?”

“Isn’t none of your affair. If you had paid when you was supposed to, if you’d done what you were supposed to, when you were supposed to do it, then—”

“Did you hurt anyone else?”

“We got our ways, man.”

It’s like talking to a goddamn cinder block. “I know you’ve got your ways. Have you hurt anyone else?” They move in closer.

“We got us a nurse, case anybody bleeds a little.”

So they’ve got Roz. Finn takes a step forward. Maybe they’ve harmed her. Perhaps raped her. Perhaps left her for dead down some lonely hall, stashed in a room, or maybe murdered out in the snow. Finn can cut at least one of their throats.

They move in closer.

“So what are you going to do, Pudge?”

“That’s the question there. The question that we got an answer for. We gonna hurt your house some more. We gonna teach you the lesson that needs to be taught. She didn’t learn none either, your lady. Your girlies. A little more blood’s what you need for the lesson to hold.”

Finn’s shadow elongates and moves across the wall, taking two steps forward. Finn goes to meet it.

He chokes up on his cane and swings it in a short arc. It slaps Rack across the face but the holler man doesn’t make any sound. All Finn can tell is that Rack has a strong jaw.

This is going to take time. Rack is going to draw his arm back and throw a vicious punch aimed for Finn’s chin. Finn reacts as if he can see it all happening, twisting aside to let the fist pass his ear by inches, then snapping his elbow back hard into Pudge’s belly.

It’s an enormous belly. Finn wonders what he was expecting considering the guy’s name is Pudge. He sees Stan Collins’s thinning hair waft, his gaping, drooling mouth tugged to one side, black bags under his eyes. Finn stays in close, it’s the only way he can fight. He doesn’t need to have his hands on these guys all the time, but he wants to be near enough that contact is inevitable. He’s got to keep these two off balance.

He brings the knife up and stabs at an angle. He strikes nothing. Finn turns on his heel and slashes outward. He misses again.

He moves in another half step, swings the blade around, and this time catches some thick clothing. It’s a coat covered in fur. It’s made of tanned animal skins. No good. Vi is shouting. Vi is screaming. Finn whips the cane around but can’t find Rack. Only four seconds in and already he’s fucked.

But the knife worries Pudge enough to make him back off. He says, “Blind man, you want to know who else I hurt? I’m going to hurt you now. Now I’m going to hurt you.”

Only those outside the darkness think they can hurt
him. They’re all mistaken. He’s met his death already. The worst has already happened. But he’s got to protect Vi.

She’s moved to his right, close enough behind him now that he feels her breath on the back of his neck. The slow tap-tap of dripping continues. At this rate she’ll be dead in ninety minutes. He angles his head to the side and says over his shoulder, “Where?”

“Rack’s to your left, ten feet away. Pudge is five feet straight ahead.”

“You just don’t learn, girlie,” Pudge whines. “You don’t learn and you don’t live right. It’s a sad state. You sadden me.”

Vi hisses in response. Finn hears a knife leave its sheath. It takes two full seconds to draw. Maybe an eight-inch blade. Rack’s not dicking around. But anybody who wears a sheath on his belt probably isn’t. He likes to jab little girls.

The rage is humming inside Finn, washing on and on like a river. His mind skitters. He waits, listening for footsteps. There aren’t any. Then there are. Rack is sort of galloping around. Pudge is moving. Vi touches Finn on the small of his back, where he likes women to touch him. She wants him to move away, to retreat with her. He moves backward and steps into her blood.

“You aren’t no good with that sticker. My brother, now, he’s good. He’s real good.”

Finn snaps his cane down and the echo washes over the holler boys. The sound waves return and touch Finn everywhere.

He turns and faces his shadow. It moves the way he
does, it holds the weapons he does, it is ugly in the sun, like he is.

He’s got no choice. He has to lure them away from Vi. He’s got the knife. His hands are strong. He cannot survive against two armed men, but he can wound them, maybe badly. He’s not afraid to die, not even for something as stupid as this, whatever this is. All that matters is his duty. It’s all that remains of his being a cop and being a man. It’s his job to protect the innocent. It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t a foolish comment after all.

He thinks, I am a stone in the night. I will not break.

I dream of murder.

Violet says, “I love you.”

Her voice courses through him. She fastens to his side, leaning on him for a moment before standing on her own. He hears her knuckles crack. She’s balling her fists. Vi is fighting alongside him. She’s fighting for him. She actually rushes forward. He drops the cane and reaches out to stop her.

But he’s too slow.

There’s a sound like the sound of the incident. His skull is fragmenting.

A breath eases from Violet’s lips and rattles on and on until it stops forever.

Within him, in the place where he’s weakest, Finn shrieks. His scream moves up through him, gaining momentum and force until it erupts through the bottom of his brain. He lunges and gets his right arm around Pudge’s throat and smashes his left elbow into Rack’s cheek. It’s pure luck.

The three of them move together like a trio that has
practiced this dance many times before. They fall against the door and glass shatters and wood splinters as they crash through. Finn tries to slash at Pudge’s carotid but his neck is protected with a thick scarf. The storm inside Finn meets the storm outside.

He slips, goes down in the snow, and tries to wheel to his feet. The wind is fierce and tears at Finn’s face. Rack is beneath him and Finn hammers wildly. He slams down with the meat of his palm, hoping to crush Rack’s throat. He scrambles as quickly as he can through the knee-deep snow. He hopes he’s headed across the lawn and into the woods bordering the academy. He’ll draw them after him.