The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man (39 page)

“We're waiting for the ambulance from Traverse City. Maybe another twenty minutes,” Barnett told him.

Strickland eyed me. “Time enough to talk, then,” he decided.

I considered it, and it was tempting: tell Strickland, head out to Katie's house with sirens screaming, bust Wexler and Burby if they were there or go find them if they weren't. Then I thought about Becky screaming Kermit's name, and how complicated my story was, and about a jury sitting through it all, basing the whole case on the testimony of a discredited repo man with a murder on his record and a voice in his head. And it added up to a different conclusion.

I needed to take care of Wexler and Burby myself. Tonight.

“Ruddy!” We all turned to see who had shouted, and Jimmy came running up to us, his face pale. He piled into me, grabbing me and holding me tight. Then he released me, looking apologetic. “Oh, hey, sorry.”

“It's okay, Jimmy. It's good to see you, too, actually.”

“There are police cars all over the place. You can't even get here.” Jimmy glanced at Strickland accusingly.

“I know, son,” Strickland said. “It's a crime scene.”

His statement brought us all out of reunion mode and back to the matter at hand. I knew how it would go. If I convinced Strickland I was well enough not to need an ambulance, I'd be stuck here answering questions. A ride into Traverse City in an ambulance would be just as bad, carrying me in the opposite direction from where I needed to be. I had to shake loose of the cops and the fire department and make my way to Katie.

Strickland was watching me and I knew too much speculation was showing on my face. “We need to discuss a few things,” he told me.

A firefighter walked up to our little group then, looking official and powerful in his rubber boots and thick fireproof clothing even though it was just Larry from the appliance store.

“Hey, I'm supposed to tell you that the ambulance from Traverse City got diverted. There was a rollover accident on 131, so it's going there instead. Triage.” Larry was speaking to no one in particular, not sure to whom he was supposed to address this information.

“Jimmy can take me,” I blurted, inspired.

Jimmy nodded, eager to help.

“You should go in an ambulance,” Barnett objected. “We can get one from Charlevoix, be here in less than an hour.”

“Why? When I lie down it just makes me want to throw up,” I argued.

“I have bucket seats, they don't even recline much,” Jimmy supplied helpfully.

“I shouldn't wait an hour to get to the hospital, right?” I appealed to Strickland, turning my head so he could see the blood in my ear. “And I get to pick who drives me.”

“Okay,” Strickland pronounced decisively. “You can ride with Jimmy.”

I nodded, trying not to look either devious or triumphant.

“Hey, Sheriff,” the radio at his side squawked. He raised it to his lips.

“Go for Strickland.”

“We've got a guy in the back alley.”

Strickland was watching me as he pressed the button on his radio. “Copy that. Secure the area, I'm coming back.”

“It's Kermit Kramer,” I said, my throat growing inexplicably tight. I took a deep breath, blinking. “He was back there.”

“He do this? The bomb?”

“
No.
Of course not. He died to save us.”

Strickland raised the radio. “The ten-seven in the alley, he have any ID on him?”

“Come again, Sheriff?”

His irritation showed in the tiniest flicker in his eyelid. “I asked, have you ID'd the body in the alley. Check for a wallet.”

“Oh, he ain't dead. He's in the Dumpster and he's afraid to come out.”

What? Despite all I'd been through I felt like leaping in the air. Kermit hadn't thrown the bomb in the Dumpster; he'd climbed the thick block walls and thrown
himself
in there.

“Just what the hell happened here, Ruddy?” Strickland asked softly, eyeing me with suspicion.

I shook my head, forcing myself to look damaged and beaten. “I need to go to the hospital,” I mumbled.

Strickland wasn't happy with my response, but with a last look at me he left to talk to Kermit.

“Let's go, Jimmy.”

“Copy that,” Jimmy replied. I had to hide a grin. We headed toward his car. “You cold? Jesus, Ruddy. What happened? What exploded? Is Becky okay?”

I stopped. “This is where I say good-bye. You keep going and drive on out of here—I don't want Strickland coming out and seeing your car still parked up there; I want his men saying you left.”

“Wait, what do you mean?”

“There's no
time,
Jimmy. Do it, okay?”

His gaze was confused and even wounded, but a lifetime of seeing me as his big brother led him to do exactly what I asked.

My pickup was, as far as I knew, still out in the woods. Despite the fact that I felt that I'd done enough running for the night, I dashed into the darkness. I stuck to the shadows and within a few minutes I was slipping inside the fence at Milt's repo lot. I scooped the keys off the tow truck's left rear tire and cranked up the engine, which leaped to life as if it understood that I was in a hurry.

The back streets of Kalkaska were clogged with traffic picking its way through unfamiliar territory, so I flipped on my warning lights and the drivers dutifully pulled over and let me charge past.

I kept my brights on and hoped I wouldn't see the red eyes of deer charging across the road, because I wasn't going to be able to stop for them. My speedometer quivered at eighty and I threw myself recklessly into turns that threatened to flip me.

I wasn't at all sure that Wexler and Burby would actually do something to harm Katie. She didn't know anything that could get them into trouble with the law, and as far as they knew, Ruddy McCann was at that moment being scooped into body bags by the Kalkaska volunteer fire department. I just wanted to know that she was safe. Then I would figure out what to do with the two killers. No, not do with. Do
to
. I was going to do something to them that would make it impossible for them to ever hurt anyone I cared about, ever again.

My optimism stuck with me up until the point where I steered my truck into the long curve in the road where Katie lived with her mom and saw, so, so clearly, Frank Wexler peering out of the window of Katie's travel trailer in the backyard, a rifle cradled in his arms.

I had the sense there were others in the travel trailer, whose lights were ablaze, but I kept my foot on the accelerator and blasted past, thankful that the inside of my cab was repo-dark. I kept going until I was out of sound and sight, then cranked my truck around and stopped facing the way I'd come, my heart pounding.

What are you doing there, Wexler?

But I knew what he was doing there. “He's going to tie up all the loose ends tonight,” I said out loud to Alan, who, of course, was no longer there to hear me. Katie, her mother Marget, and probably Nathan Burby. Bang, bang, bang.

I flipped my repo switch and my electronics went dark. I stealthily headed back down the hill toward the house with only the moon to guide me. I killed the motor when I was about twenty yards away and wrestled the power steering around so that I rolled into the driveway. I was coasting silently at about fifteen miles an hour over the back lawn as I approached the travel trailer, and caught a full view of Katie standing up against the sink, talking, looking relaxed, not at all as frightened as she should be. Wexler was out of sight, but Nathan Burby stood next to his wife, his shiny head in stark contrast to his wife's wispy white-blond hair. No one noticed a tow truck ghosting by in the night.

I nearly ran out of momentum before the front wheels hit the lip of the steep hill down to the lake and pulled me forward. I kept my foot lightly on the brake, working harder because the power brakes were out, thinking, not for the first time in my life, that I was glad Milt put the brake lights on the repo switch.

I stopped just a few yards shy of where the pitch in the yard got serious and plunged steeply toward the black water of Patricia Lake. I eased out of the driver's seat and looked up the hill to the travel trailer. My plan, such as it was, was to go into the trailer, get the rifle from Wexler, and kill him with it.

Out of habit I glanced at my watch as I started climbing. It was just past midnight.

Prime time for the repo man.

 

 

31

The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man

 

After I had trudged halfway up the hill I thought of something and reversed course, dashing back to the tow truck, the steep declivity turning my gait into ridiculous, Superman-sized leaps. The problem with walking into the trailer and grabbing the rifle was that Wexler might not like it. He'd already tried to kill me twice and I doubted there was much I could say to dissuade him from taking another shot at it. I needed an edge, something to turn the tables my way.

I slipped on gloves and released the brake on the winch, so that I could stand behind the truck and pull the tow hook off the spool with no resistance. Working frantically, I yanked steel cable off in big loops, trying to estimate how much I'd need. A lot, I'd need a lot. It pooled at my feet, gleaming like dozens of coiled snakes. Finally I figured it had to be good enough, and as quietly as I could I flipped the lever. The electric motor obliged by humming and slowly winding the tow cable back onto the spool.

I grabbed the tow hook and scrambled back up the hill, working my legs against the gravity, dragging the heavy cable behind me.

The travel trailer's thick, heavy tow tongue rested on a stack of cinder blocks in a reasonably stable arrangement. Without the blocks, the whole trailer would tilt forward like the deck of a sinking ship. If it happened suddenly, it might give me time to lunge across the inside of that trailer and get my hands on the rifle. The winch would pull the trailer off the blocks and it would drop hard.

As I affixed the tow hook to the trailer hitch tongue I despaired to see far too much slack in the cable. I had way overestimated how much I would need. My diversion would be awfully late in coming.

I'd have to think of something to say to keep Wexler from shooting me until the cable snapped taut and the trailer was yanked off the blocks.

I could hear them quite clearly through the open window. “We just need to know what you said,” Burby was saying in his unctuous voice, funeral-director nice.

“Honey, like to Dwight, did you tell him anything about what's going on?” came a female voice. That would be Marget, Nathan's wife.

Wait, why was
she
asking that question?

“Think, Katie,” Marget urged.

“Anything McCann might have said,” Wexler interjected impatiently.

When I opened the door, everyone turned and gaped at me. I suppose I must have made for quite a sight—oil-smudged face, dried blood trailing down my neck, plus, of course, the fact that two of the people in the trailer assumed I had been blown into pieces by Nathan's bomb.

Nathan himself looked more shocked than anyone, ready to crumple into a dead faint. His pistol was still tucked in his rear waistband, though, so he was far from being a neutral threat. He was closest to me, on my right, standing in an odd little space created by folding the dining table up against the wall. Marget was sitting on the bench seat just inches from him, while Wexler leaned against the sink to the left and Katie stood at the far end. It was all pretty close quarters. The rifle was leaning butt-down against the sink counter next to Wexler, as if people came over with weapons all the time and said, “Oh, let me just set my deer rifle here in the kitchen while we have a friendly chat.”

“You were in on it, weren't you, Mrs. Burby,” I said to Marget.

Katie looked as if she had been getting ready to rush to me but my flat, hard tone halted her in her tracks. Confusion flickered in her gaze—but not in Marget's. I didn't know the woman at all but the cold glare in her blue eyes let me know I was right on target.

“Was it your idea?” I asked her. “I mean, Nathan calls Alan, asks to meet him out by the Jordan River, the same place where Nathan suggested he and Frank have their little meeting? You thought that one up, didn't you? A divorce is expensive and takes a long time. Murder is more messy, but with all the bodies you three were planning to stack up, what's one more?”

Ah, that one got to Wexler, who had shifted his gaze from me to the married couple, calculating.

How much longer before the cable yanked us off the blocks?

“Mom?” Katie asked.

Burby licked his lips nervously, looking in obvious panic at his wife, who was staring intently back. I knew what Marget was thinking, so I said it.

“You probably don't have more than a few seconds to use that pistol in your belt, Nathan,” I advised quietly.

Everyone froze. Katie's eyes were huge.

“You want to die? Shoot Frank, Nathan,” I shouted. “Shoot!”

Burby took a breath and his arm twitched and Wexler reached down and swung his rifle up and pointed it at Burby in one motion. We all heard the click as the safety went off.

There were ten feet between me and Wexler. I wouldn't have a chance. My diversion was too late.

“Hey, Frank,” Burby whined.

Wexler fired, the percussion lashing my ears, and Burby's head flew back and he went down with a crash. Katie and Marget both screamed. Wexler's face hadn't changed expression. He turned the smoking eye of the rifle toward me, and that's when a shudder went through the trailer, unsteadying all of us.

Now
.

I leaped forward just as the trailer tongue dropped off the blocks. The shock of it was everything I could have hoped for, completely disorienting everyone. The rifle dipped and fired again and then I was there, falling on Wexler, using my weight to bring him to the ground. He thrashed beneath me while a hot pain spread through my left shoulder. I'd been hit.