Rage Against the Dying

Forty-eight





Again taking side streets and keeping an eye out for cops along the way, I pulled into a parking lot adjacent to the bar. Rather than risk being spotted in the car, I took my 1911 and a bottle of water and sat on a shaded bench at the end of the strip mall, pretending to ponder a real estate circular, to keep an eye on the entrance to the bar.

As I watched, customers came and went, most of them cops. Emery wouldn’t do anything to Coleman while there were cops around. Neither could I. I wished I could enlist their help, but by this time there might be a warrant out for my arrest and they would hardly help me search the place. So I waited.

By the time the small parking area in front of the bar indicated there were no more customers inside it was early evening, shortly after the dinner hour, which is about five P.M. in Tucson. There was one remaining car out front. It wasn’t the same car I had seen the day I came to fetch mine and Emery and Cheri had driven up. This was a nondescript black Subaru. Probably a rental. He was on the move.

I got up from the bench and walked up to the car. Rapped on the trunk once, hard. There was no answering rap. If Coleman was in there, she was dead. Game over. I told myself she wasn’t in there.

I stepped around the front of the car with my back against the wall of the building. The civilian traffic went on its way in the fading light of the summer evening, bent on its normal pursuits, without any idea of what was happening in this place.

Rather than charge into an unknown, I first made my way around the perimeter of the building, quickly so I could enter before another customer walked in, a cop who would foil my search or a civilian who could be collateral damage if things got ugly. The windows of the place were all placed high, up by the roof, so there was no seeing in or out. A single door at the back must lead to the kitchen. When I tried it, quietly, I found it locked. Across a small patio a storage shed that appeared to belong to the bar was locked as well. I rapped lightly on that, too, but heard no moan or responding knock from within.

With more urgency now, I made my way around the other side of the building and had no choice but to come in through the front door. I held my 1911 poised as with the other hand I pushed open the thick wooden door of the bar, glad that Emery hadn’t yet locked it. The doorjamb felt good against my back as I peered into the interior lit only by the lights over the bar. I locked the door behind me and flicked off the neon OPEN sign.

If a law enforcement officer is seasoned enough, has witnessed enough violence, he can smell a crime scene. It’s not just the coppery smell of blood you read about, or the more obvious rotten-meat odor of decomposition. There are aromatic subtleties. Most homicide investigators will be able to say the same, that a homicide scene carries its own distinctive scent, the lingering aroma, something like a mix of asparagus urine and olive oil, the smell of the person knowing they’re about to die. They say it’s the smell of terror.

No one coming into a crowded, noisy place, not even if they were a cop, would notice it. I did because I was there alone, in the dim light, with no sounds to distract me. Behind Emery’s signature scent of cherry-bourbon pipe tobacco, behind old fried onions, behind a thousand bodies, there was the smell of stale blood, too. And bowel. Somewhere there was also an odor of gasoline. Not your typical bar smells.

There were three places that smell might be coming from: behind the bar, in the kitchen to the back, or in the office off to the right. I dropped down for a second to scan the floor underneath the tables, found nothing, and came back up to find some comfort again in the feel of the wall against my back. I was about to take a chance moving to my first target behind the bar when I heard whistling from the office area. Emery emerged looking genuinely startled to see me standing in the shadows with my weapon pointing at him.

“Hello, Emery,” I said.

Once he’d gotten over the initial surprise of seeing me standing in the dim light of the restaurant area with a drawn weapon, he didn’t seem surprised at all, and that was what made me certain. The sight of my weapon must have told him I knew everything. He nodded, apparently intending to work with that.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. The light over the bar illuminated his face so I could see that one of his front teeth was missing.

Without speaking, I moved a little closer, stumbling once with the stress and fatigue of recent days. My brain was sending my body instructions to recharge the muscles because my brain didn’t give a shit how out of shape I was.

When he saw me fumble, Emery’s eyes gleamed in the light from the bar. He was taking my measure, whether I was really dangerous. I had my doubts as well. “Don’t go behind the bar,” I said. “Stay where you are, hands in view.”

He lifted a calming hand and pushed himself an arm’s length from the far end of the bar so that he stood unguarded, midway between the bar and the door of his office.

“Is Coleman alive?” I asked. I wanted to keep my eyes on him, but for a second I glanced at the jar of pickled pigs’ feet at the end of the counter.

He noticed my shifting glance. “She’s right in here,” he said, and on the last word he ducked out of sight to his left, through the door of his office.

“Shit,” I muttered for having lost my advantage, but I still had the gun. There was no sound from inside the office, but my quick search had told me there was no exit from it either. I had to move fast and hope he had left his shotgun behind the bar. Knowing the flimsy paneling between us was no cover at all, I crouched as low as I could and moved quietly to the door of the office.

Standing just to the side of the entrance thinking, It’s so simple—stay alive, find Coleman. Spotting the far left of the office: no one there. Trying to slow my heart down with my breathing. Whipping around to the other side of the door, still no shots fired, scanning the other side of the room—desk, chair.

My glance caught Coleman slumped in the chair, lots of blood.

Anger taking control, I started to charge into the room to kill or be killed, and then I heard a moan. I turned, tunnel vision kicking in, and almost fired. Then I saw another Coleman.

All the muscles in my body strained against the absolute imperative to press the trigger, the way they do to save yourself when you’re falling. At the same time my brain took a split second to process the second Coleman—which came at me like a puppet tossed across the room. Her body hit me hard across the legs without giving me time to brace myself. We both went down. The gun slipped out of my hand, and I watched with despair as a man’s hand picked it up. You don’t ever want to lose your gun.

I hoped Max had put out that APB on me and that they were finding me, closing in. I could use a good cavalry charge about now.

The man I knew now as a killer trained the gun on me. “Roll her over,” he said.

Coleman had a piece of clear packing tape across her mouth, which mashed her lips in a grotesque way. I sat up and started to help Coleman do the same, but she emitted a muffled roar from deep in her throat. She seemed out of it either from pain or drugs.

I removed the tape as gently as I could and asked her, “Where are you hurt?”

She whimpered and her hands moved between her knees, which she had drawn up to her chest in a fetal position. Then she passed out again. I noticed a little blood on the floor.

“You cut her tendon,” I said.

“Both of them,” he said, staying a safe enough distance away from me. Even with the benefit of a weapon, he was taking precautions.

But Coleman was alive. And the one thing I would do is save her. Gently, with as little pain to her damaged legs as possible, I helped her out of the line of fire, to the far side of the room where she could rest against a battered gray metal storage cabinet. Her eyes silently pleaded with me, and I wanted to tell her my best lie ever, that there was nothing to worry about. I wanted to tell her whatever she’d believe, but I didn’t think that was much. Then still heedless of the gun in Emery’s hand, I turned my attention to the body I had first thought was Coleman.

I saw now that it had been one of those disconnects when you’re imagining one thing so hard that’s what you see. I expected to see Coleman’s body there, and that’s what I saw. But the body was that of Cheri Maple, and she was just as dead as the smell that led me to her. She was sprawled in an old chair next to the desk, facing me. From the faded look of her pupils and the impossible tilt of her head, I could tell she was gone even if she hadn’t taken a frontal shotgun blast.

“You need to be dead, man,” I whispered aloud. “You really need to be dead.”

Emery didn’t respond as he moved behind me and patted my back for the presence of another weapon. He gestured with his free hand to another chair in front of the desk. The desk was very tidy, nothing but an old-fashioned landline, a stapler, a few menus, a humidor with pipe holder, and a pencil cup crammed with everything but pencils.

Emery took the chair behind the desk for himself and said, “Sit.”

Wondering why he was in no hurry to eliminate or at least immobilize me, I sat down across from him while Cheri’s body sagged in the chair to the right of me. Even with a psychopath like Emery, it felt macabre to have Cheri in on the conversation.

But it helped, too. The sight of Laura Coleman lying helpless across the room and Cheri dead before me made me drain out of myself in much the same way as when Carlo had found my bloody clothes in the washing machine. Only this time it was good, that I could stay as collected, as free of sympathy, as the killer before me. This is what I had tried to explain to Coleman, that we all must become what we want to conquer, and it was welcome, because it meant the Brigid Quinn I needed to survive had just kicked in.

“Why did you kill Cheri?” I asked, stalling for time until I could figure a way out of this mess. “Because she saw what you did to Agent Coleman?”

“No. Because she saw this in the walk-in freezer.” He kicked a booted leg out from behind the desk. He looked disgusted, as if he blamed the corpse for his lover’s death.

My resolve slipped for a moment before I could get it into my head that Carlo didn’t wear boots. “May I?”

“Be my guest. Just move slowly.” He kept my pistol trained on me as I stood slowly, steeled myself for what I might see, and moved to the side of the desk for a better view. The body was fairly intact except for a little dried blood around the mouth.

“Who is it?” I asked, relieved that I did not know.

“Who knows? It took a while to find someone with decent teeth who was apparently homeless so no one would be looking for him.”

“Was there a reason, or just for kicks?”

He looked offended. “A very good reason. He is going to be me when I blow the place up.”

I managed to avoid reacting, kept to the key information. “What about ID, fingerprints, dental records?”

Emery knocked at the side of his face. “There aren’t any dental records. I have a jaw like a rock. That’s what the cops will remember me saying. Plus, just in case, I had this happen in the bar earlier today…” He lifted his front lip to show me the gap where his tooth was missing. Then he lifted the lip on the corpse to show it had one missing, too. “No fingerprints on record,” he said. “But thank you; just in case, I’ll make sure to obliterate them in the explosion. Anything else I may have missed?”

“How long have you had him?” I asked, to keep him talking and discover whatever mistakes he might have made.

“Oh, he is fresh enough. He wasn’t in the freezer long.” Still holding the gun on me with one hand, he opened a desk drawer and took out some clear packing tape. “Amazing how useful office supplies can be,” he said. He tossed me the tape. “Sit on the floor over there and wrap some of that around your ankles, would you?”

“Go f*ck yourself,” I said to him without rancor, without any feeling at all. I said it to test the effect.

Emery picked up a metal stapler from the desk with his left hand and stepped over to where Coleman lay listlessly on her right side, her head on the floor. I shouted, but not fast enough to stop him from stapling the edge of her ear. The pain brought her around and she screamed.

“There, I do make myself clear, don’t I?” Emery said with a patience that sounded almost sincere.

I took the tape and wrapped a strip around my ankles as he directed, thinking all the while how I could buy time to save us both. When I had disabled myself to his satisfaction, he took the tape from me, stood me up from the chair, and wrapped my wrists and hands behind me in the same fashion, so that my fingers were covered.

“Tying up loose ends,” he said, and, despite his being behind me, I could almost feel him smiling to himself, his confidence growing. “Being able to make puns in a second language is very smart, don’t you think? I thought I had lost any chance of taking care of you. And here you are.” He threw me onto the floor.

After catching my breath and gaining some balance, I said, “Did you meet Peasil the same way you met Lynch, over the Internet?”

Emery shrugged his assent. “I thought Floyd Lynch really was another killer. He told me he was not when I saw him in the hospital. I assume he did die?”

I nodded.

He said, “Lynch was the mistake that has led to my losing this bar. But I can always buy another one in another place. With a different identity. And now that Cheri’s gone, start all over.”

Without explaining what he meant by starting all over, Emery tucked my pistol in the back of his pants and left the room. I turned my attention to Coleman. I needed to know what she knew, what the possibilities were. I scootched closer to her so I could speak more softly.

“Talk fast,” I said. “Are you on something?”

Coleman nodded, her eyes closed. “I’m sorr—”

I would have slapped her if I had the use of my hands. Instead I leaned my forehead against hers and said, “Look at me, Coleman. I’m going to get us out of this. We’re both going to live. So get tough now. Did he drug you?”

She stuck to essentials in staccato bursts. “Roofie. Worn off.”

“How did he get you here?”

With more strength in her voice she said, “He was waiting outside my house. Tasered. I didn’t see it coming.”

“Happens. Keep looking at me. Weapons.”

“The shotgun he used to kill Cheri. I don’t know where it … and yours. That’s all I know of.”

Coleman’s teeth started to chatter and her eyes grew vague. It looked like she was going into shock.

“How much pain?” I asked, keeping my tone as bland as if I were asking for the time.

“Not too bad,” she said.

“You’re doing great. You’re doing great. Stick with me, kiddo.”

She kept trembling, but her eyes were back on mine as she shook her head. “He kept me locked in a storage room somewhere.” I could see her struggling to think of anything else that might be useful.

“Why are you still alive?” I asked.

“He said … he said he wasn’t sure when he would need to get out of town and he needed my body to be fresh.”

I nodded, then heard a footstep in the hallway leading to the kitchen.