Atonement (17 page)

Larry attempted to kick Logan in the stomach, only to feel his ankle grasped and twisted so hard that he knew it was badly sprained or probably broken.  He was propelled backwards and released, to rise into a crouch with both fists balled, but ineffectual against the devastating blow that hit him flush on the nose, breaking it with a loud snap that echoed in the cave and caused his eyes to shed tears as he closed them against the pain.

The next blow was high up in his solar plexus; a punch that scrambled the nerve cluster and totally disabled him.

Logan got to his feet and kicked Larry in the head, hard, to render him unconscious.  It was over.  A part of him wanted to bring his knee down on Larry’s throat with his full weight behind the strike, but he held back.  There was no need to kill him.

Kate wanted to cry, such was the relief she felt as she saw Logan approach the rear of the house with Larry draped across his uninjured shoulder.

Logan walked into the kitchen and shrugged Larry off, for him to hit the floor like a sack of potatoes.

“I see you’ve got the other piece of shit under control,”  Logan said to Kate.  And to Miriam.  “What does a guy have to do to get a cup of coffee around here?”

While Miriam made a fresh pot of coffee, the three of them talked as Logan used a length of nylon rope from the garage to bind Vicente and Larry together.

Logan drank a full cup of coffee, then poured himself another and asked Kate to phone Lyle in Carson Creek and explain what had happened.

“Lyle’s off duty,”  Deputy Earl Dempsey said.

“He’s the sheriff, Earl,”  Kate said.  “He’s always on duty.  Get him to phone me back. I’ve got a couple of murders to report.”  She gave him Miriam’s number and rang off.

The phone rang less than ninety seconds later.

“Kate?”

“Yeah, Lyle.”

“Where are you?”

“Out near Leadville.  I’ll give you the address in a minute.  Just listen.”

Being a lawyer, Kate relayed the situation in a concise manner, and then gave the address.

“There will be police and an ambulance with you, a.s.a.p.,”  Lyle said.  “And I want you and Logan to still be there when they arrive.  Okay?”

“You got it Lyle.  We’ll just drink coffee and chitchat till the troops show up.”

Logan left the house and headed back toward the tree line.  His shoulder was pounding from the blow from the rock, and blood was still seeping from the deep wound to his cheek, but he was far from incapacitated, and had a final job to attend to.

Bama made a whining sound as Logan knelt down next to him and stroked the top of his head.

“Just hold still, boy,”  Logan said.  “And don’t try to bite me again or I’ll leave you here to bleed out.  Understand?”

Bama made a chuffing noise, and Logan smiled.  The big mutt deserved a chance to be a better dog.

It wasn’t easy.  Carefully, gently picking up a dog that weighed maybe a hundred pounds was no mean feat.  But he lifted Bama, cradled him in his arms and somehow made it back to the house without dropping him, and asked Miriam to call out the local vet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The
State Police took Logan, Kate and Miriam directly to Denver, after a paramedic first checked Logan over and applied antiseptic and tape to the wound on his cheek.

Lieutenant Eddie Bryson eventually entered the interview room that Logan was in.  He saw that Logan was laying on the floor behind the table, his head on his folded parka, apparently fast asleep.

“Hey, fella!”  Eddie said.  “Rise and shine.”

Logan sat up and yawned.  He grimaced as his now swollen cheek complained at him stretching it.  “You got coffee?”  he asked.

“I’ll arrange some,”  Eddie said.  “Sit at the table, Mr. Logan; we have a lot to talk about.”

“Just Logan will be fine.  Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Eddie Bryson, Denver PD.”

“Do you know what went down and why?”

“I know that an elderly couple was shot dead and that a person of interest to us is in hospital with a shattered hip.  And I know that Larry Horton is also in hospital with concussion, a broken nose, fractured wrist and other minor injuries.”

“So far so good,”  Logan said.  “How about Horton’s dog, Bama?”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I don’t kid very often,”  Logan said.  “Did the dog live?”

“I’ll make inquiries.  For now, let’s start at the beginning.”

“I assume that Lyle Bumgarner contacted you after Kate made the call from The Lodge,”  Logan said.  “So you know most of it, right?”

“I need to hear your version of it, Logan.”

“So get the coffee, my mouth’s dry as sand.”

“Easy, Logan,”  Eddie said.  “I know your background, but it won’t buy you dirt if you’ve stepped over the line and broken the law.”

They drank coffee and talked it through several times for almost two hours, and with Logan’s consent it was all recorded.

“So you’re just the white knight in all this, eh?”  Eddie said, getting up and walking around the room to stretch his legs.

“That’s a dramatic way of putting it,”  Logan said.  “I didn’t want to see an innocent teenage boy go down for a crime he didn’t commit, so I dug around and followed my nose.”

“How did you make the connection between Horton and Wade McCall?”

“Horton had McCall send two goons to the Creek to take care of me and Kate Donner.  The survivor, Benjamin Dawson, was good enough to give me details before the police arrived.”

“And what about Mickey Morgan?”

“Who’s he?”

“The guy that got murdered and burned up in a car trunk.”

“I never had the pleasure of meeting him.”

Eddie saw a flash of what he thought was black humor in Logan’s gray eyes; an almost adversarial look.  But there had been no forensics to tie Logan or anyone else to Morgan’s murder.  And he would have been more than a little surprised if an ex-homicide cop with Logan’s experience of crime scenes would have left a single clue. Without an admission, the late hitman’s demise would remain unsolved.  But Eddie would have bet his pension on Logan having made the connection to Wade McCall through besting and interrogating Morgan, and then going the extra yard and killing him.

“You’re a dangerous man, Logan,”  Eddie said.

“Only if you’re someone offering me violence,”  Logan came back.  “Are we all finished here, because if you aren’t bringing any charges against me, I’ve got places to go and people to see?”

“I’ll arrange for you and Ms. Donner to be taken back to Carson Creek,”  Eddie said.  “I’m sure that Sheriff Bumgarner will want to talk to you both.”

“Fine,”  Logan said.  “What about Miriam Carmody?”

“She, as you and Ms. Donner, are material witnesses against Horton and the man that we have identified as Vicente Martinez.”

Logan nodded and headed for the door.

“You do realize that there is probably still a contract out on you,”  Eddie said.

Logan turned and smiled at Eddie, but said nothing as he walked out of the room and down a corridor to the reception area of the police headquarters, to where Kate was sitting on a chair waiting for him.

“I need to go outside and have a smoke,”  Kate said.

Logan followed her out on to the sidewalk.  The snowstorm that had been promised had still not arrived, but the air was freezing.

“What happens now?”  Kate asked as she fired up a Marlboro.

“We go back to the Creek via the motel, if you left anything behind.”

“I did.  I borrowed a car off a guy staying there.  He has my driver’s license.”

“We’ll swing by and pick it up, and let the guy know that his car has been impounded, due to it being at a crime scene.”

Behind them, Eddie opened the door.  “Looks like the dog is going to make it, Logan,”  he said.  “But Horton won’t be in any position to look after it.”

“Thanks,”  Logan said.  “I’ll take care of it.”

The cop that drove them back out to the Travelers’ Rest Motel was happy to be given the extra hours.  After Kate had retrieved her license from a disgruntled Howard Yardley, they called in at the vet’s on Main Street in Leadville.

“Your dog should be called Lucky,”  James Kelly said to Logan.  “The branch missed his heart and grazed a lung, but he should be good as new in a few days.”

“Look after him for me,”  Logan said, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a roll of bills, to remove the rubber band from it and peel off a thousand dollars in fifties that he had kept separate from his stash, that was in the rucksack he had left with Clifton Marshall to take care of while he was gone.  “I’ll keep in touch and pick him up when you think he’s good to go.”

Two hours’ later, after stopping once for a coffee at a twenty-four hour 7-Eleven, they were dropped off at the Pinetop.  They entered Logan’s room to find drawers and closets open and the bed stripped.

“I think Lyle must have been looking for clues as to my whereabouts,”  Logan said.  “He must have been really pissed until the Staties contacted him.”

They straightened the room, and then showered together.  Making love came naturally, without any hesitation or much in the way of foreplay; both needing release, but dog-tired and also in need of a few hours’ sleep.

The knock at the door woke them at eight a.m.  Logan pulled on a shirt and chinos and went to see who it was.

“Let’s walk and talk, Logan,”  Lyle said.

“I’ve done my talking to your buddy, the lieutenant in Denver.  And I know that you’ll have been told everything I said to him before driving out here this morning”

“So humor me,”  Lyle said.

Logan sighed.  “Give me a minute,”  he said.  “I don’t go hiking barefoot.”  He closed the door, sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on his socks and boots.

“That sounded like Lyle,”  Kate said, still in bed, looking as though she was going to turn over and go back to sleep.

“It is.  He wants to talk.  I’ll spend a few minutes with him, while you get dressed and make fresh coffee.”

“Okay, boss,”  Kate said, and then threw a pillow at him.

“So talk,”  Logan said as he walked past the sheriff’s car and headed up the driveway towards the highway.

Lyle kept pace with him.  “I know that you killed Mickey Morgan,”  he said.

“You believe I did,”  Logan replied.  “And we both know that believing or even knowing something doesn’t count for shit.  You need evidence.”

“I’d only need evidence if I was trying to pursue it,”  Lyle said.  “I just wanted you to know that I know how you found out about McCall.  I also
believe
that you went up to Denver and somehow got McCall to give you Larry’s name.”

“Is there a point to this conversation?”

“Yeah.  You use criminal methods to get things done.  I’ve done some digging.  People vanished or got hurt down in West Virginia recently, and it looks like you were playing hero again, saving two women from bad guys.”

“Somebody had to.  If it had been left to the police they would have both been killed.  And as for here in the Creek, Ray Marshall would have taken the fall for Horton if I hadn’t got involved.”

“That doesn’t make what you do right, Logan.  You turned in your badge and gun, but still act like a cop.”

“I act like a guy who doesn’t turn a blind eye and let scumbags get away with serious crime that the law can’t deal with.  And I absolutely never go out of my way to look for trouble.”

“Pax,”  Lyle said.  “Maybe I can appreciate to an extent where you’re coming from, Logan.”

“I’m coming from nowhere, and going nowhere important,”  Logan said. “And I don’t need appreciation.  I spent twenty years working the streets, surrounded by cops on the take at all levels, that were as bad if not worse than the perps they helped put behind bars.  The world is full of rotten apples, and if necessary I’m happy to pick them up and dump them in a trash can.”

Lyle decided that Logan was in essence a better man than he would ever be.  Being the sheriff in a small town with a low crime rate didn’t test him, and he didn’t have to put his life or his freedom on the line.  He played politics with the mayor and selectmen and did what was necessary to keep his job and salary.  His family came first, and their continued security depended on his pay check every month.

“Okay,”  Lyle said, turning to walk back down to the motel.  “We’re done.  But you’ll be required as a witness when this case eventually gets to court.  How can you be contacted?”

“I’ll stay in touch with Kate.  She can keep me up to speed.”

“Are you and Kate―”

“No, Lyle.  We’re just good friends.  I’ll be moving on in a few days.”

“Where to?”

“Somewhere warmer,”  Logan said, looking up at the snow-filled, leaden skies.  “I’ve decided that being this far north in winter doesn’t agree with my joints.”

“We all get older,”  Lyle said.

Logan nodded.  “Like Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes’.”

“More is the pity.  Comfortable, healthy immortality would be a far better deal.”

“You’ve just got to move forward and endeavor to put to bed all the indecision, fear, indifference, intolerance, and any unfounded guilt that can stop you from functioning in a way that you need to.”

“You bring to mind characters that roamed the west when it
was
wild, Logan; a relic of a breed like Shane, riding into town, dealing with the bad guys and then moving on again.”

“You watched too many westerns as a kid, Lyle.  And Shane was a fictional character.  The folk in most places I pass through don’t even know that I was ever there.  And the west and the rest of the country is wilder now than it has ever been.  We live in a very hostile world.”

Lyle extended his hand to Logan as they stopped next to his Dodge Charger.  Logan shook it and then went back into his room as the sheriff drove away.

“You okay?”  Kate asked, holding out a cup of coffee to Logan.

“I’m fine,”  he said.  “Lyle was just getting stuff off his chest.  He’s a good man.”

Kate sipped at her coffee, and then lightly bit her bottom lip.

“What?”  Logan said.

“Just you and me,”  Kate said.  “I know that you’re going to up and leave town soon, and I’m going to miss you.”

“I’ll keep in touch.  And I’ll be back for Horton’s trial.”

“Do you have to go?”

“Yeah, Kate.  I’m not the kind of guy that can be part of other people’s lives for too long.  I need to be…separate, as free as a bird.  And I know how selfish that sounds, but it’s how I am.  Too long in one place and I go a little stir-crazy.  I never learned how to find the middle ground needed to make something permanent work.”

Kate put her cup down, went to Logan and held him in a hard embrace.  She knew that he cared for her, and that he was at a time in his life when he couldn’t be any more or less than he was.

“We’d better go to the house and tell Clifton what went down,”  Logan said, gently pulling away from Kate.  “And then we should go into town and eat at the Steamboat.  I’m starving.”