The White Mountain (19 page)

“That doesn’t make sense. 
Why ruin himself like that?”

“I think, in part, it was
because some of the men we’d disposed of over the years were veterans, too. 
Who knows what goes on inside anybody’s head but them, but I figure it was
because he couldn’t reconcile killing the very same type of people he was
trying to help.  And, he’d had some sort of argument with Uncle Jackson a while
back that really sent him over the edge.  He never said what, but it was enough
to make him want to bring his daddy down with him, which also meant me, too.  You
put those two together, you got a perfect storm of a meltdown.”

“You people are insane.”

“To each his own.”  Billy
looked out the bay window.

Mary sneaked another step closer
to the doorway.  She had to try, at least.

He said, “Anything else you
want to know while I’m on a roll here?  This opening up, it feels good.  Better
than I thought.  Maybe that’s why the villains spill their guts.  They bottle
up all these secrets and lies, all that hate and anger.  That need for
revenge.  All that evil shit must eat away at their insides, you know?  Maybe
it’s cathartic to let it all out.”

Mary tried to think of all
the questions she’d come up with over the past twenty-four hours.

“What about me?  How’d you
know all those details about my life if you’re not CIA?”

“Your life story, you can
thank Randall for that.  You get some drinks in that boy, he’ll tell you
anything.  He thinks of you as a sister, by the way.  More than just by marriage,
like you both came from the same mama.  Big brother, little sister.  It’d be
cute if it wasn’t so damn…
gooey
.”

Mary shifted her weight off
the bad leg.  She’d been standing for so long and it throbbed, sending ripples
of pain up through her body.  Pain that reminded her of what Billy—back when
he’d been Friendly Guy Chuck from the CIA—had said last night at dinner about
swallowing the spoonful of self-pity every day.  Whether Randall had told him
that, or whether he’d made the summation on his own, it was true.  She’d
refused to have any more surgery on it, had refused any more attempts to
improve it or her quality of life, because she held onto the pain as a reminder
of her failures.  She didn’t have to bottle anything up or swallow any hate or
anger because they were right there on the surface, day in and day out,
smacking her in the face with continuous, aching jolts with every step she
took.

And now, as she stood in the
middle of a dead man’s kitchen, feet away from a murderer with a gun and a threatening
smirk, her stubborn refusal to let go of what had happened to her, to forgive
herself for a single mistake that she never saw coming, would probably lead to
her death.

The impetus for change often
comes during unexpected circumstances and blindsides us when we least expect
it.  Mary decided right there that if she ever made it home, it was time to
listen to what everyone else had been telling her for years.

Acknowledge, and move on.  If
she had any time left, life was too short to waste it on things she couldn’t
change.

Life was too short to
continue dreading the past.

One more attempt at a
distraction, and she would have to try something to save herself, because she
couldn’t imagine anything worse than sitting around, waiting to die an
inevitable death.

She said, “You never told me
why Randall called you a friend.”

“Oh, that,” Billy said,
standing up from the table.  “Checking out the competition.  We did it with all
of them.  Every competitor since 1976.  We approach, tell them we’re with the
CIA, and that we know what they’re doing.  Scare ‘em a little, offer some sort
of help, you know?  Tell them we’ve got an inside track on who Ares is, and if
they ever need the help, all they have to do is show up at the end and ask. 
It’s the secret rendezvous that the handler sets up.  Makes it so much easier
to put a bullet between their eyes when they’re meeting with something they
think is an ally.  It always works.  Always.  Friends close, targets closer.  And
Randall?  The proverbial fish in the barrel.  Interestingly enough, in almost
forty years, he’s been the only one dumb enough, or
smart
enough maybe,
to send somebody out to do some recon.  Your brother-in-law must be awfully
sure of himself.”

“He would’ve won.”

“Maybe so, if there’d been anything
to actually win.  Doesn’t matter now.  The game’s been tainted, so Randall, and
whoever’s left—we’ll dispose of them and start fresh.  Milk it for whatever
it’s worth for as long as Uncle Jackson is around to front the—”

Mary swung her cane at Billy’s
head. 

But he was quick, faster than
she’d expected him to be.  He blocked it, twisted to the side and down,
wrenching it from her grasp.

She tried to run.

Three steps into the living
room, she felt the hook of the cane around her ankle, tripping her and she went
down hard, knocking her head against the floor.  Her teeth clanged together,
piercing her tongue.  From the corner of her eye, she saw Billy approaching,
cane in one hand, gun in the other as she shoved herself around and kicked him
behind the knees.

He dropped, but caught
himself on the coffee table, knocking over a stack of magazines and a small
candelabra.  Rolling to his right, he fired a shot at Mary.

She moved just in time as the
dull puff from the silencer blended with a hole ripping open in the hardwood
floor next to her head.

He fired again.

He missed again.  The bullet flew
by, too close, ripping open the fabric of her jacket, burying itself in the
loveseat.  She yelped, pushed herself across the floor and kicked at his arm.

Another shot went into the
ceiling overhead.

Billy swung the cane, caught
her on the hip.

Mary kicked at him again,
missed, and in a moment of panic, she scrambled backward until the couch
blocked her path, swinging her head left and right, looking for something to
throw at him.

There was nothing within
reach.

Winded, Billy pushed himself
up, wheezing and coughing.  His white hair splayed out wildly.

He aimed, and once again,
Mary found herself looking down the barrel of his gun.

“Get up,” he said.  “Get up
or you’ll die right there.”

Mary used the couch for
leverage and pushed herself to her feet.  Slowly.  Silently.

Billy smoothed out his hair
and wiped a hand across his face, then fished around in his pants pocket and
pulled out the set of car keys.  Tossing them to Mary, he said, “Let’s go. 
You’re driving.”

CHAPTER 18

Randall wanted to leave Mein
Kampf alone and let him die slowly, as he’d demanded, but the fact that the
German leviathan remained somewhat coherent forced him to reconsider.  What if
he managed to survive?  Unlikely, given the table leg protruding from his
abdomen, but what if he did?  What if he escaped and came back one day, looking
for Randall, and instead found Alice and Jesse home alone?  Randall was certain
the guy would keel over eventually, yet at the moment, inaction was too much of
a risk.

Twice, Mein Kampf had tried
to get up from the floor, and twice, Randall had shoved him down with a boot
heel.  Mein Kampf’s skin had taken on a dull hue, looking wet and clammy from
where Randall sat some five feet away, trying to make up his mind.  But, the
beast held on and Randall had run out of curses and ways to tell him to hurry
up and die already.

Killing him now would be
outright murder, which didn’t gel with Randall’s plan to come up with a
believable story.  He could choke Mein Kampf with his bare hands and claim
self-defense, risking the possibility that no one would ever know.  But, if he
killed the man now, the timing and the sequence of events would lead to, at the
very least, a manslaughter conviction or worse, if someone investigated
properly. 
Someone
meaning a team other than poor Henry’s cohorts.

The cuckoo clock chimed. 
Every moment of indecision sent Mary one inch deeper into her grave.  He
should’ve been gone already, thirty minutes up I-81, thirty minutes closer to
rescuing her.  And why wasn’t she answering her damn phone?

He replayed the situation in
his mind.

The Devil Himself and Yankee
Doodle remained where he’d left them as evidence of his battles.  Tampering
with the crime scene, stowing the bodies, would show a kind of motivation that
he didn’t want to approach whenever the inevitable questions came.

With four bodies lying in
various stages of death and destruction around his home, he’d be lucky if he weren’t
convicted of mass murder and sent away for life, especially with a dead
detective in the room.  With no witnesses, no one to confirm his story, it
would be his word against whatever scenario a prosecutor could concoct.

Randall looked at the clock
again, and then back to Mein Kampf.  “I said take your time, damn it, but I
ain’t got all day.”

Mein Kampf let go of the
table leg long enough to raise a hand and lift his middle finger.

“Yeah, yeah.  I know. 
Ficke
dich.
”  Randall twisted his baseball cap in his hands, tapped a toe on the floor,
chewing on a loose piece of lip skin.  Aching, he groaned as he got up from his
chair, slammed the cap down on his head, and walked over to Mein Kampf,
frustrated.  “How do y’all say ‘between a rock and a hard place’ in German?”

Mein Kampf swiped at
Randall’s leg with his massive paw of a hand, missed, and then winced at the
pain.

Randall eased back to a safer
distance.  “Still trying, huh?  Hell, you got some fight in you, I’ll give you
that much.  So how’s this gonna play?  I can’t leave you like this.  No way.”

Mein Kampf laughed with a
scratchy whisper.  “Smart.”

Randall shook his head,
dreading what had to be done.  He was losing precious time.  He’d gotten Mary
into this mess, and he needed to get her out, and fast.

He doubted Mein Kampf had the
strength left to put up much of a resistance if he were to grab the table leg
and gouge a bigger hole, but he didn’t want to take the risk.  On the slightest
chance that the big German was playing possum, waiting on him to get close
enough—nothing but a bad idea, all around.  That eliminated choking him as an
option, smothering him with a pillow, snapping his neck.  Anything hands-on was
off limits.

He thought,
Tie him up? 
Let him wait it out on the floor?

No, that would create an even
dirtier image if anybody over at the police station wondered why Walls hadn’t
checked in and came by to look for him.  They’d find the rotund detective with
three bullets in his back, an impaled man on the floor, and two more dead in
the basement.  Empty shell casings, grenade fragments, bullet holes in the
doors and bricks—all signs of a massive firefight, however crazy or implausible
the whole crime scene appeared to be.

Walls.

Randall snapped his fingers. 
What if—yeah, maybe that’ll work.

He sidestepped around Mein
Kampf and walked into the kitchen, grabbing a dishtowel from a drawer to
prevent fingerprints, and then dug out Walls’ snub-nosed .38 from his shoulder
holster.  The rolls and layers of fat made it difficult at first, but he succeeded
in removing the weapon.

Randall thought about putting
a bullet between Mein Kampf’s eyes, then second-guessed the decision.  Lying on
the floor as he was, the evidence would easily point to an execution-style
slaying.  And with Walls in his current state, it wouldn’t make any sense if
forensics checked the ballistics of both weapons.  Again, the timing and
sequence were off.

He doubted if any of
Smythville’s finest were smart enough, or dedicated enough, to conduct such a
thorough investigation—angle of the entry wound, blood spatter radius—but if
the high profile identities of the three assassins were somehow discovered, the
feds would surely, and quickly, figure out that something didn’t add up.

Randall paused in the center
of the kitchen floor, trying to come up with a story to tell that wasn’t so
improbable.  Broken cabinet door, shit scattered everywhere, table overturned.

Okay, Randall, what
happened here?  First two are easy.  Number one, get rid of the tarp
downstairs.  I was fighting with Devil in the basement, Doodle tosses in the
grenade.  Devil takes the hit, Doodle is coming after me, I shoot him through
the door.  Good...good.  Easy enough.  All self-defense.  Then, I come
upstairs...what then...what then...I’m trying to get out of the house and Kampf
rushes me from outside.  Two shots in the door, one in the wall, we’re inside. 
So then...then Kampf and I duke it out—that’s how the house gets so trashed. 
So far, so good.  We’re fighting...Henry comes in, sees Kampf about to jab me
with the table leg, shoots him in the head.  In the head?  No, ‘cause how does
Henry die then? 

Randall looked at the clock. 
Five more minutes had disappeared.

All right, damn it, what
happens to Henry?  He—what does he do?  What would Henry do?  How ‘bout...okay,
he shoots Kampf in the kneecaps...sees Kampf about to open up on him, turns,
Kampf shoots him in the back, then falls on the stake.  Shit, gotta remember to
pick up his empty shells in the yard and bring ‘em in.  Okay, yeah, that’ll
work.  Henry saves my pathetic ass and takes three before he hits the ground.  Kampf
has two busted legs and ain’t going anywhere.  Damn, it ain’t much, but it’ll
have to do for now.