The Devil's Right Hand (24 page)

 
The balding man took off his
shades. He tucked them in an inside jacket pocket. His hand came
out of the pocket with a slim brown wallet. “Ms. Hager?” he said.
Without waiting for an answer, he flipped the wallet open, showing
a flash of gold badge that swiftly disappeared as he tucked the
wallet back in his pocket. “I’m Detective Barnes, Fayetteville P.D.
This is my partner, Detective Stacy.” Stacy crossed his arms across
his chest. He didn’t show a badge or take of his
sunglasses.

“
I’m Angela Hager,” she said, standing
up. “What can I do for you?”

“
We’re attempting to locate a Jackson
Keller,” Barnes said. “I understand that he’s employed
here.”

 “
Mr. Keller is an employee of
mine,” Angela said guardedly. “May I ask what...”

 “
What does Mr. Keller do here,
Mrs. Hager?” Barnes interrupted.

“
He does fugitive recovery,” Angela
said.

Stacy spoke for the first time. “A bounty
hunter,” he said.

Angela stiffened. “I’d like to see your
credentials, Detective Stacy,” she said. The big man bristled, but
at a look from Barnes he reached into his jacket pocket and
produced his badge. He flicked the case open, then closed, managing
to make the gesture look insulting. Angela sat back, trying to look
calm, but her mind was racing. “What is it you want to see Mr.
Keller for?” she asked.

 “
First things first, ” Barnes
said. “Do you know where he is?”

“
It’s his day off,” Angela
said.

“
That wasn’t what we asked, lady,”
Stacy said.

“
He’s not at his apartment,” Barnes
said.

Angela shuffled some papers behind the
counter. “You seem to know an awful lot about him already,” she
said.

Barnes and Stacy ignored the observation.
“Does he have a cell phone number?” Barnes said.

“
First, I think you need to tell me
what this is about,” Angela said.

“
You know damn well what this is about,
lady,” Stacy grated. “A cop, a friend of mine, is dead. We got a
house looks like a fucking war zone and we think your boy Keller is
responsible.” He grinned nastily. “By the way, you might want to
keep a closer eye on him. He’s screwing someone else.”

Angela ignored him. She turned to Barnes. “I
don’t have any idea where he is.” Barnes started to say something,
but Stacy cut him off. “Bullshit,” he said. “You need to think real
hard about just who you’re fucking with here, lady. We can make
your life pretty goddamn hard if you don’t play ball with us.”
 

 
Angela looked at Barnes. He
shrugged. “He’s got a point,” he said mildly. “Interfering in a
police investigation is a serious matter. You could lose your
bondsman’s license.”

Angela looked at him for a long moment. Then
she began rolling up her sleeve. “Six years ago,” she said, “I
tried to leave my husband. He responded by breaking both my legs
with a baseball bat and setting me on fire.” She started on the
other sleeve. “I was in a burn ward for eight months. I was wrapped
in bandages from my neck to just above my knees. The blood and
fluid from the burns caused the bandages to stick to me. Every time
they changed the bandages, it was like being skinned alive. They
changed the bandages twice a day. Every time they did it, I
screamed until my voice was gone.” She held up her arms. Stacy’s
eyes widened at the web-work of puckered scars on the backs of her
hands and forearms. She looked back and forth between the two men’s
faces. “When I got out, it took me a year to learn to walk
again.”

Barnes remained expressionless. “Ms.
Hager...” he said.

Angela looked directly at Stacy. Her
voice was a whisper. “You think there’s
anything....
anything
....you
two can do to scare me, Detective Stacy?” There was a long silence.
Angela continued to stare into Stacy’s eyes. He held her gaze for a
moment, then looked away.

“
Get out,” Angela said. “You want to
talk to either me or Mr. Keller again, you do it through my lawyer,
Scott McCaskill in Fayetteville.”

Barnes took a card out of his coat pocket.
“If Mr. Keller gets in touch with you,” he said, “Tell him to call
me at this number.” He held out the card. Angela didn’t take it.
Finally, Barnes laid the card gently on the counter. He turned and
walked out behind Stacy.

DeWayne sat in the passenger seat, squinting
against the late morning sun. “Are you sure this is the place?” he
said.

“
Oh, yeah,” Debbie said. “They tried to
lock me up in this loony bin one time. I told them to fuck off. I
ain’t got no fuckin’ drug problem.”

They were parked at the head of a long paved
driveway that led through the open gate of a massive iron fence.
The drive crossed a broad lawn as flat and green as a golf fairway.
At its end, the drive flared out to a small parking lot, in front
of a huge Victorian house with a broad front porch. The lawn was
empty. The house was flanked by lush gardens and shrubbery that
seemed to cradle it in a green embrace. A small wooden sign by the
gate identified the place as Rescue House.

“
It looks like a mansion,” DeWayne
said.

“
It was a dump. Some old guy willed it
to some foundation. Some fancy nigger doctor runs the place. Thinks
he can tell everybody what to do.” Debbie took a drag on her
cigarette. “No one tells me what to do.”

DeWayne made no reply. Debbie had been
wild-eyed and giddy last night, practically dragging him into the
bedroom. This morning, however, she was depressed and vicious.
Nothing DeWayne could say seemed to placate her, so he said as
little as possible, even when she had insisted on coming with him.
He still thought her presence was a bad idea, but he was too tired
and burned out from all the rocks they had smoked the night before
to argue about it. He considered just shooting her, but he had
thought that so many times that it had become one of those ideas
you thought about but never did, like quitting a lousy job.

Debbie started the car and turned down the
driveway. “They won’t let you see her,” she said with a sort of
grim satisfaction. “They try to keep you away from your family and
friends. It’s easier for ‘em to brainwash you that way.”

“
I ain’t goin’ in the front door,”
DeWayne said. “I’m gonna sneak around them gardens and stuff in the
side yard and see if I can spot her. Maybe I can get her to come to
a window.” Debbie shrugged and pulled the car into one of the
parking spaces. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever,” she said. DeWayne got out.
He tucked a pistol into the waistband of his jeans and strolled
towards the gardens to the right side of the house, trying to look
nonchalant.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Keller checked his watch as he pulled
into the driveway. He grimaced. He was running late. It was going
to be hard enough to explain to the Major why he wasn’t going to be
coming back for a while. He pulled into a parking space next to a
blue Trans Am. As he got out, he thought he could see the outline
of a blonde girl slumped in the seat of the car. The windows were
tinted dark enough so that it was hard to make out her features,
but she appeared to be asleep.
Visitor or
client
? he wondered idly as he walked up the front
steps. He put it out of his mind as he opened the door.

The garden to the right of the house was a
grassy area shaped like a long “U”, with the open end of the “u”
against the side of the house. An iron gate between the hedge and
the house offered access. The garden was surrounded by hedges
higher than a man’s head which provided a feeling of isolation from
the world. The grass was longer here, and there was a round pool in
the middle of the area near the curve of the “U”. A greenish statue
of a robed woman rose from the center of the pool. Red and yellow
flowers surrounded the pool and further rows of flowers nestled
under the hedges. Wrought-iron chairs and benches were spaced at
regular intervals around the garden. DeWayne paused for a moment
and looked around. He longed to sit down in one of the chairs and
rest, just for a moment. Every thing had been so fucked up since
they shot that old man. Ever since then, fear had been what defined
his life. He was tired of running. But he knew to stop running
would be his death.

DeWayne looked around at the flowers. He
wished his cousin was there. Leonard’s favorite job had been
working in a greenhouse. He had liked growing things. DeWayne had
never cared for it; it was too much like farm work. He hated farm
work with a passion. He sighed and turned away. He looked at the
windows on the side of the house, wondering which one Crystal might
be behind. The windows were set high off the ground, higher than
DeWayne could see. He grabbed the nearest of the wrought iron
chairs and dragged it beneath the window. Then he clambered up to
peek through.

The same receptionist was there, seated
behind the desk in the front-parlor-turned-waiting-room. She looked
up as Keller walked in.

“
I’m here to see Major--ah, Doctor
Berry,” Keller said.

She smiled. “He’ll be out in a minute. Please
have a seat.”

Keller sat uncomfortably in one of the
antique armchairs in front of the desk. He looked over at the pile
of magazines on the side table. Mostly women’s magazines promising
instruction on how to have cleaner homes, thinner thighs, and
better orgasms. He passed on those and looked out the window. As he
did, a face appeared outside the window, peering carefully over the
sill.

It was DeWayne Puryear.

For a moment, Keller sat there in shock. His
first thought was that he was hallucinating, that he had finally
gone off the deep end. But the look of shock on Puryear’s face
convinced him that he wasn’t imagining it. Puryear dropped out of
sight as Keller sprang to his feet. The receptionist looked
alarmed. “Mr. Keller?” she said. Then she screamed as Keller sprang
to the window. He looked out to see a figure on its hands and
knees, scuttling towards the garden gate.

Even with the heavy chair beneath him,
DeWayne had to stand on his toes to look in the window. There was a
woman sitting at a desk, talking on the telephone. DeWayne looked
beyond her to the waiting room. A man sat in one of the waiting
room chairs, hunched slightly forward with his elbows on his knees.
The man looked up. Their eyes locked.

“
Holy shit!” DeWayne whispered and
threw himself backwards in a reflexive attempt to get away. He
attempted to turn in the air like a cat, but he lacked a cat’s
instinctive grace. He landed on his side with a painful grunt.
Immediately he scrambled to his hands and knees and propelled
himself towards the gate. He stumbled to his feet just as he
reached the gate. He ripped it open and sprinted for the parking
lot. He bellowed at Debbie to start the car.

Keller bolted out of the parlor room and
toward the front door. He yanked it open in time to see DeWayne
sprinting towards the car he had seen earlier in the parking lot.
He was halfway across the porch in one stride, down the steps in
another, then halfway to the parking lot. He saw DeWayne turn
slightly and pull something from his jeans. Something small and
black.

Gun
, Keller’s
mind registered. If he slowed down, DeWayne would probably still
shoot him. He put his head down and charged. He hit DeWayne around
the midsection, running full speed like a linebacker. He knocked
the air out of DeWayne with a huge grunt. The gun went flying. It
landed a few feet away at the edge of the parking area, where
gravel and grass were separated by a thin wooden border. The two
men collapsed to the gravel of the parking lot, Keller on top of
DeWayne. DeWayne made the mistake of trying to turn and crawl
towards the gun. Keller took the opportunity to straddle Dewayne’s
back. He grabbed a handful of the smaller man’s long hair. He
yanked DeWayne’s head back then viciously slammed his face into the
gravel. DeWayne screamed. Keller did it again. He remembered the
sight of DeWayne by the side of the road, his grin in the flashing
lights of the patrol car...“Son of a
bitch
,” Keller grunted. There was a red haze over
his vision. “Kick me in the fucking
head
...” he pulled DeWayne’s head back for
another blow.

Something slammed into him and knocked
him off DeWayne’s back. He found himself on his back, face to face
with a skinny blonde girl he had never seen before. She was
screaming, her face contorted in incoherent rage. He raised a hand
to ward her off. She bit it savagely, worrying it with her teeth
like a dog, her screams muffled by the blood that welled out of
Keller’s torn flesh. Keller screamed along with her. He slugged her
on the side of the head as hard as he could. She only bit harder.
Her eyes were wide and staring, her nostrils flared. She looked
insane. Keller could feel a hard object under his back.
The gun
, he thought. Using all his
strength he rolled over and got her beneath him. He reached down
with his free left hand, felt it close around the solid cold
hardness of DeWayne’s gun. He didn’t even know if it was cocked or
a round chambered, and it wasn’t his shooting hand. He settled for
clouting the girl as hard as he could in the temple with the butt
of the pistol. Her eyes went foggy. She released her bite enough
for him to rip his hand from her mouth. He staggered to his feet.
DeWayne was climbing into the driver’s seat of the Trans Am. He was
blubbering in fear, tears running down his face. Keller made it to
the car before DeWayne could close the door. He grabbed a handful
of DeWayne’s shirt and yanked him up out of the seat. DeWayne’s
face was covered with scratches and cuts from the gravel. The sight
of the blood made Keller’s ears buzz with the rush of adrenaline.
He slammed DeWayne against the car and rammed the barrel of the
pistol up under his chin. His hand was slick with his own blood;
the gun almost slipped out of his hand. He gripped it tighter. He
took a deep breath to clear his head, caught the slight tang of
blood in the air. “You were going to shoot me with this gun,
weren’t you, DeWayne?” he said. His voice was a low growl, almost a
purr.