The Siege (30 page)

“Come on,” Hocker said. “Make yourself useful.” He bent down and, grasping the cop by the utility belt, lifted him off the floor a bit and rolled him over onto his side. “Grab his handcuffs.”

Tasha did what she was told because she didn’t dare defy Hocker; she had enough evidence to convince her that he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to her if he got mad enough. He had said as much before, and she believed it now. He was nuts, really
dangerous
nuts!

After they had wrestled the cop’s deadweight around and gotten his hands safely cuffed behind his back, Hocker made a brief inventory of everything in the man’s utility belt and pockets. He dropped his heavy key ring into his own pocket, then rifled through the cop’s wallet.

“Well, you might be pleased to know his name is Jeffrey Winfield.” Hocker said, glancing at the identification cards in the wallet. There were three twenties in the billfold. Hocker snickered as he slid them into his own pocket. “Officer Winfield,” he said, his voice taking on a sudden dangerous tone. “I’d like to introduce you to Tasha Stewart. Tasha, this is Officer Winfield,”

Tasha stood there, staring blankly at Winfield’s closed eyes.
He looks so peaceful
, she thought.
So peaceful he could almost be dead!

“Say ‘hello’ to Officer Winfield, Tasha,” Hocker said, his voice harshly edged and high-strung. “You’re not being very polite to our guest!”

Before she could check herself, Tasha muttered a low, “Hello.”

“And you, Officer Winfield? Aren’t you going to say ‘hello’ to Tasha?” He suddenly reached down, grabbed Winfield by the lapels, and lifted him while giving him a rough shake. “You’re not being very polite!” he shouted, and with that, he let go of the policeman’s coat. Winfield’s head fell back onto the floor with a sickening, dull thump. Tasha had to turn away when she felt her stomach constrict and begin to rise.

“Well, you can stay here with our unsociable friend,” Hocker said. “I think I’ll do something about that police cruiser in the driveway, first. Wouldn’t be too smart of us to leave it out there in plain sight, now, would it?”

Tasha didn’t say a word as Hocker, swinging the key ring around his finger, started for the front door.

“If he wakes up, make sure he doesn’t get into any trouble, all right?” Hocker said.

Tasha heard him swing open the front door and walk outside. She knew Hocker was feeling good because she heard him bring up some mucous from deep in his chest and spit violently into the night.

VI

K
ellerman’s was a lot busier on a Monday night than on a Sunday. Dale figured, like any other workingman’s bar, the customers felt they needed a break after facing another Monday. He and Donna were sitting at the bar, working their way slowly through a loaded pizza and a pitcher of Pabst.

After leaving Winfield’s office, he called Mrs. Appleby’s to see if Angie and Lisa wanted to join them for pizza, but Angie said no. At first she didn’t want to tell him why they couldn’t join them, but Dale noticed her nervousness, so she told him about Lisa’s accident with the bike. It had taken Mrs. Appleby a while to reassure him that the injury was very minor: no, they didn’t need to drive to the hospital in Houlton; no, he didn’t need to cancel his date with Donna; yes, Mrs. Appleby had everything under control; yes, she was fine and would watch out for herself.

What Angie didn’t tell him about was the morass of self-guilt she was feeling about the accident. That could wait until later she figured. It seemed to her like just yesterday that she could tell her father anything but now, she wasn’t quite so sure.

The same country-western music was playing on the jukebox, and, it looked to Dale, the same group of guys were slamming away at the pool table. He felt unnerved by the scrutiny he and Donna had gotten when they walked in. He wasn’t sure if they were wondering who in the hell he was, or if they were busy checking out Donna. Either way, it wasn’t very comfortable.

Dale and Donna carefully steered their supper conversation away from what had been happening to them recently. The strain of what had happened out on the Haynesville Road was taking its toll on Donna. Her face looked drawn, and her eyes looked tired; whenever there was a sudden outburst of laughter from somewhere in the bar, she jumped and looked around.

Dale, too, was beginning to feel wrung out from everything he had had to absorb since Nichols’ early morning call, informing him of Larry’s death. A good part of his mind, the sensible part, he told himself, told him to let it all drop. Larry was dead and buried, and that was the end of it.

“So was Natalie,” a small part of his mind whispered, as softly as a cobweb fluttering in a dark corner.

The incident out on the road had no connection with Larry’s death or any secret he was close to uncovering, he told himself. It was just some hotshot in a fancy car who probably had a bumper sticker that read:
Excuse me, but I do happen to own the road!

Then again, there was the cassette tape! He hadn’t had a chance yet to pick up some double-A batteries so he could play it. Demands of the stomach had superseded that, but now that they were almost through eating, and the beer pitcher was just about empty, Dale was getting anxious to buy some batteries and hear whatever was on that tape. He didn’t want to mention it to Donna, though; he was hoping she would bring the subject up first.

While they sat at the bar, making small talk, a heavyset man, wearing a plaid, wool jacket and a fluorescent orange cap, strolled into the bar and hoisted himself up on a stool three seats down from where Dale and Donna sat. He glanced at Donna, and a faint expression of recognition passed across his face as he tilted his cap in her direction. Donna flushed and looked down at the bar.

“How yah doin’ tonight, Pat?” the man in the orange cap asked as Kellerman came over and slid a frosty beer mug to him.

As the man leaned back and took several generous gulps of beer, Kellerman shrugged. “All right, I s’poze. You hear any more on how Perry’s doin’?”

The man in the orange cap put his half-empty beer mug down on the bar and wiped his mouth thoughtfully with the back of his hand. “You ain’t heard?” he said. He spoke with great effort, and it struck Dale almost as funny that such a large man would appear so shaken!

Kellerman shook his head, and the men at the pool table got suddenly quiet and looked toward the bar.

“Reggie didn’t make it,” the man in the orange cap said softly, but still loud enough to be heard over the sounds of Dolly Parton. “He died at the hospital a coupla’ hours ago.”

“No shit?” Kellerman said, his face paling as his eyes flicked nervously from face to familiar face. He looked like he wanted to say more, but instead, his mouth just kept making small motions that made him look like a fish.

“I don’t fuckin’ understand it, pardon the French, miss,” the man said, glancing at Donna who was looking just as stunned as the rest of the people in the bar. Dolly’s song finished, and for the moment no one put in another quarter. The bar filled with an ominous silence.

“I’d heard he was doin’ all right,” one of the men at the pool table said. He placed his cue stick on the table and knocked a ball out of position, but no one seemed to notice or care.

“Yeah,” another said. “My brother was out on Bates Ridge when it happened, ’n he said when the Medcu guys picked him up, they said they didn’t think it was anything serious.”

The man in the orange cap took another series of gulps, draining the glass. Then, placing his empty glass gently on the bar, he nodded at Kellerman, who instantly drew him a refill.

“All I know is what I was told at the hospital when I went up to see him,” he said. It was obvious to Dale and everyone else that this man was under a great deal of strain, and Dale couldn’t help but wonder if he was the dead man’s brother or something.

“I’ll be damned,” someone at the back of the bar said softly, and nearly everyone grunted their agreement.

“I didn’t even hear about it ’till late in the afternoon, so I went up to Houlton right after work. Didn’t even bother to clean myself up.” He held his hands up so everyone could see he was still wearing his work-stained shirt and pants. “The nurse at the front desk said something about a… an eubolism or embulusion… somethin’ like that.”

“Embolism,” Dale offered, and the man’s eye flickered in his direction.

“Yeah, that’s it,” the man said, almost brightening for a moment. “They said it was probably ’cause he got a lung punctured, and some air got into his blood. When it hit his brain, he… he…” Rather than let his voice choke off, he grabbed the full beer glass Kellerman had placed in front of him and did some serious damage to its contents.

“I’ll be damned,” the voice at the back of the bar repeated. “You know what I think it is? I think it’s them clowns who work the ambulances. They ain’t real doctors. I think they don’t know what the Christ they’re doin’!”

Kellerman was shaking his head sadly from side to side, obviously almost as upset as the man with the orange cap. “It ain’t that,” he said, a tone of firm command in his voice. “Those people are trained to handle all sorts of situations.”

“Well then, it’s them fools they call doctors these days,” someone else offered.

The man in the orange cap shook his head slowly and with his eyes closed, as though there was a pain far in the back of his skull.

“They told me he was fine when they brought him in. He’d been checked all over, and was all full of tubes. They were pretty sure his lung was punctured. That’s why he had a breathing tube shoved down his throat. I guess it’s something they can’t always prevent.”

His voice broke again, but he forced himself to continue. “I was there when Rodgers came with his goddamned hearse to pick him up. Jesus Christ!”

He suddenly raised his fist above his head and brought it down, forcefully onto the bar. His hand grazed his beer glass and flipped it over, but he didn’t seem to notice. Beer flowed in a foamy sheet across the bar. Covering his eyes with the heels of his hands, the man leaned his elbows right in the spilled beer and sobbed. Kellerman reached over the bar and clapped him firmly on the shoulder. “Just take it easy, Will,” he said. “Take it easy. I know how you must feel.”

The man looked up, his eyes glistening as he nailed Kellerman with an icy stare. “No, you don’t! You have no fucking idea how I feel! He was my brother!”

“You’re forgetting, Will, I lost a brother in Korea,” Kellerman said mildly. He started to sop up the spilled beer with a heavy towel. Everyone else in the bar was silent, just standing there, nervously shifting from foot to foot, as they stared at the large man, bawling his eyes out.

“That was different,” Will said, his voice rising up the register. He pushed his orange cap back and viciously rubbed his face with both hands. “That, at least, made some kind of sense. This! This! I mean, he was in the hospital, all checked over, supposedly doing just fine and
blam!
The fucking undertaker’s wheeling him out the door! You haven’t got the slightest goddamned idea what I’m feeling!”

With that, he pushed himself away from the bar and walked slowly toward the door. Two of the pool players caught up with him before he left and tried to say something, but he shrugged them off and strode out into the night, leaving the clientele at Kellerman’s wrapped in an awkward silence that took quite a while to break.

Dale, though, had listened to the whole exchange with an odd tingling in his stomach. That tingling had blossomed into a flush of fear as soon as the name “Rodgers” was mentioned. He nailed Donna with a wide-eyed, questioning look, but her expression had been impossible to read.

Was it just another coincidence?
he wondered. When you thought about it, who would be most likely to drive a big, dark limousine? It would be the perfect choice. Not a limo, but a
hearse
!

“You done?” Dale asked as he drained the last bit of beer from his glass.

Donna nodded stiffly, and when Dale started to say something else, she raised her forefinger and placed it gently over his lips.

“Don’t say a word, all right?” she whispered. “I know what you’re thinking.” She fished a cigarette from the pack in her purse, but rather than lighting it, simply rolled it between her fingers. “If Sparky doesn’t have the batteries we need, I’m sure LaVerdier’s across the street will.”

With that, Dale stood, took a ten dollar bill from his wallet, and left it on the bar top with the bill. They left, side by side, and when they stepped out into the night, Dale had to remind himself that it was just the cool of the evening that sent a wave of shivers up both of his arms, the evening chill and nothing more than that!

VII

E
arlier, Hocker had popped out one of the windows in the side door of the barn to get it open. Now, he had to use a crowbar to rip off the boards that held the front door shut. It would have been easier to do in the daylight when he could see what he was doing, but it would have been foolish to leave the police cruiser out where someone might see it and begin to wonder. By the time Hocker got the double doors swung outward, he was sweaty and angry as hell. He couldn’t resist the rush he felt, though, sitting behind the steering wheel of the cruiser and starting up the engine. He pressed the accelerator down, hard, letting the engine whine. He could feel the cruiser’s power, straining to shoot forward in a burst of speed. It took an immense amount of self-control not to flick on the flashing lights and siren, and then drive crazy circles around the abandoned farmhouse.