Blood Rites (24 page)

“At least until one of his family can come.”

“That’s OK. I can handle him by myself.”

Dick went into the kitchen, returning with two beers and a square of cheese. “Do you want me to explain about these people?” he asked as he opened the bottles.

Her human flesh
, the beautiful man with the dark eyes had said. “No,” Donna decided. “I’ve had enough weird stuff happen today. Tell me tomorrow.‘’

“If I’m here.” Dick studied Donna. She seemed so calm in the face of everything that had happened, as if yesterday and the preceding few weeks had been no worse than all the years before them. Like the girls he’d see walking the night streets when he drove a squad, she’d had to grow up fast. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t thought twice about handing the beer to a kid who ought to be sound asleep dreaming of her junior prom. “Listen,” he said kindly. “Russ Lowell has my son. If you can, I’d like you to tell me about him. Not about what happened today, but about him, how he acts and thinks. If it’s too hard to talk about him, I’ll understand.”

“I want to.” Donna stared into the fire. “But I’m scared to even mention his name like if I do, that son of a bitch is going to hear it and come back here to beat the hell out of me again. You’re a cop, ain’t you? You going to turn me in?”

“That depends. Is somebody missing you?”

“Not the ones I’d get sent back to.”

“Then I’ll wait until this is over and help you get settled somewhere else.”

Since the day Donna had made breakfast for Russ, she had acted her emotions. Now the real ones spilled out and she cried as she told her story, as if this were her confession; her evil, not his.

When she’d finished, Dick sat beside her on the sofa, rocking her slowly as they waited for Stephen to return.

By the time Dick heard the truck, Donna had fallen asleep. He moved away from her carefully so she wouldn’t wake, picked up one of the oil lamps, and went outside. Stephen had just taken a shovel out of the storage room on the side of the house and began walking up the hill next to the house. Without a word, Dick grabbed a second shovel and followed him to a clearing out of sight of the road. They dug Hillary’s grave in silence, Dick standing beside it while Stephen went for the body. Dickey, who had been sitting motionless beside Hillary’s corpse the entire time the men had been digging, followed his father up the hill.

Stephen had wrapped Hillary in a blanket, tying it at the waist and feet with a length of rope and the bright green sash Hillary had been wearing when Russ had killed her. Laying her body on the ground beside the grave, he unwrapped the top of the blanket for one last look at her. Dick raised the light and looked down at the wound on Hillary’s chest. The small deep hole a bullet would make had been extended, the skin and flesh ripped outward. He pictured Helen caught in a frenzy of need, digging for the last drops of life. How could she survive this with her mind intact or would it heal with the same perfection as her body?

“Touch her,” Stephen told his son.

Dickey who had neither the luxury of tears nor understanding watched his father expectantly as he rested a hand on Hillary’s forehead, as if he were convinced his father could bring Hillary back with just a word. Stephen covered the boy’s hand with his own, then brushed the wound from which a dark circle of blood still seeped, moistening Dickey’s lips and his own with it.

They stood without speaking, but Dick knew by the boy’s quick breathing and the intent way he looked at his father that Stephen was conveying a great deal to his son. Then, for the first time since he’d brought her body home, Stephen spoke, making a vow in a tone that managed to be both solemn and ruthless, “The death of those we love is never truly real until we touch and taste it. Now I promise you, Hillary Dutiel, that whatever happens, the man who caused this and the one who ordered it will die.”

Stephen spoke with total confidence. He believed he could not fail. Though Dick knew what anger fueled Stephen now, he made the quick unsettling connection that Stephen’s grief was a pale imitation of how Carrera must have felt when he saw the body of his son.

Hours later, Dick was awakened from a fitful sleep by the sound of soft footsteps in the main room. Though it scarcely seemed possible, Lowell might have returned and Dick crouched low, keeping to the shadows as he slowly cracked open his door.

Stephen stood at the near end of the sofa where Donna still slept. His back was to Dick. His arms were rigid at his sides, his fists tightly clenched and pressed against the outside of his knees. Though his head was bowed, Dick could see that the body beneath the black turtleneck and slacks was as tense as his arms.

Dick angled himself so he could get a better look at Donna. The girl was sleeping, soundless and motionless but equally tense, forced to share her nightmare.

Though he should have quietly gone back to bed and gotten whatever sleep he could, Dick remained standing in the shadows watching the silent exchange. When it ended, Stephen relaxed, moved closer to the girl, and ran the back of his hand lightly down the side of her face. As he did, he looked in Dick’s direction, acknowledging his presence for the first time. His back was to the fire, his face in the shadows, his dark eyes glittering in the reflected light from the front door. Without a word, he turned and padded silently from the room.

I

The fog that had rolled into Powder River still covered the ground at dawn. Jason Halli buttoned his red flannel shirt and lit a cigarette, then walked to the bare open window and looked down at the hazy street below. Nothing moved, but in a town this size at this hour he didn’t expect anything would. He thought he glimpsed someone, a figure beneath the awning of the store across the street, a pale face looking up at him. He leaned out the window and stared into the shadows and saw nothing at all.

His mind was playing tricks. No wonder. In the last twenty-four hours, his plans had fallen apart and his partner had gone insane.

He stretched and winced from a sudden spasm in his back. In the years he’d worked for the Carreras, he’d slept in dozens of cheap hotels but none had made him feel like getting out of the business quite like the mattress in this one.

He turned away from the window and, cigarette dangling from his mouth, pulled his suitcase from under the bed and methodically began to pack, waiting until he was finished before pulling his gun from its hiding place beneath the lower drawer of the water-stained pine dresser. As he surveyed the room one final time, he congratulated himself on his caution. There was no evidence to tie him to the Wells kidnapping, none at all. He’d never even been seen with Russ. He didn’t have to run from this crime. He could go anywhere he wanted this time, even straight for home.

Not that Halli was anxious to move to any place but a larger town with a better hotel, someplace where he could shed the bright cotton flannels, put on a suit and tie, and feel civilized again. Though Carrera had immediately posted bail, no one doubted that he would eventually go to jail. Halli would just as soon stay out of Cleveland until the cards were reshuffled and dealt and he knew exactly which players would demand his loyalty and which he should trade it to. He left his keys and last night’s rent on the dresser and walked down the outside stairs to his car.

The first doubts surfaced before he’d even left town. What if Russ had left some evidence, some link between them for the provincial police to find? Hell, after the argument they’d had yesterday, Russ might even do it on purpose.

Though Halli had taken the road leading away from Russ’s campsite, the need to know became too intense to ignore and he made a U-turn. If anyone was waiting at the site, he’d just drive by. But if it was deserted, he’d take one quick look around, then leave with his mind at ease.

He’d never felt the need to be this cautious before, but the truth was, everything about this job shook him—killing a cop, a goddamn
captain
, most of all.

And for what? Not the money. This job was worth three times what Domie was paying for it. No, it was to keep the respect of a man who was facing five to fifteen in the can.

A suicide run, that’s all it had become. And when you’re stuck with a suicide run, it pays to be careful.

Halli fiddled with the dial of the car radio and found a single station legible through the mountain static. He switched it off and settled for humming aimless songs from records his father had played on their Edison, songs he hadn’t thought of in years.

There weren’t any cars at the campsite turnoff and Halli couldn’t see any farther down the dirt road. Still, to be on the safe side, he backed down the rutted drive, ready to take off the minute he saw anything suspicious at the site.

He felt pleased with his caution until a truck came up the narrow drive after him. Halli frowned. He’d been watching, making sure he wasn’t followed. No, someone must have been waiting for him, assuming he’d come here.

Halli cursed his stupidity, backed into the clearing, and waited. The other driver might think he was trapped, but Halli was prepared. The road widened at the clearing. It would be tight, but even if the driver parked in the middle, Halli knew there’d be enough space to squeeze by on one side or the other. He revved his engine and reached for the shift.

A shadow moved across the passenger side of his car. The window shattered. In a motion too fast for Halli to see, a long arm reached in, turned off the engine, and stole his keys. Halli automatically reached down for the gun on the floor, then froze as he recognized the face in the window, the pale face of the man he’d seen under the awning across the street from his hotel.

Seen and forgot. Until now.

“Get out of the car, Jason Halli,” the man said in a voice that had the tone, though none of the warmth, of a sideshow ‘ hypnotist’s.

Halli felt a quick stab of pain behind his eyes as he forced them away from the man and focused on the truck and Dick Wells just getting out of it. Halli recognized Wells as soon as he saw him. Hell, nobody who should know him could miss him. Wells was practically a department of his own on the Cleveland police force. And he ran it by the book; one real easy to read. Once more congratulating himself on how careful he’d been, Halli got out of his car. What, after all, was wrong with a little talk when they could never pin a thing on him?

“In there,” the man said. He even added “please” as he pointed toward the shed.

All traces of civility vanished the moment they were inside. When the man with Wells ordered Halli to sit in the patch of sunlight near the door and Halli refused, the man slammed him to the ground so hard Halli felt his neck crack. He rubbed the back of it as he eyed his captors with defiant suspicion, concentrating longer on Wells’s partner. Though the man stood in the shadows, he wore dark sunglasses. Halli had always hated them, how they made it impossible to know what a man was thinking until things had gone too far. “I can guess why you’re here but it won’t do you any good. I don’t know where Russ Lowell went.”

“But you saw him?” Wells asked.

“Sure. I met him a few days ago. I told him Carrera had been arrested and that he should forget any agreement he made with anyone in Cleveland.” Halli’s head began to pound and a sharp needle of pain rose from the nape of his neck. Wells’s friend had probably dislocated something the way he’d slammed him down. Hell, the pain must have made him a little woozy or he never would have added, “I told him those were Carrera’s orders. I made sure . . .”

The dark-haired man cut him off. “You saw Lowell four days ago. You didn’t say anything about Carrera’s arrest. You met with him yesterday and when you heard his attempt to kill Richard had failed, you ordered him to shoot his hostages and dump their bodies in the hills.” The man spoke as if he didn’t have the slightest doubt that he was right and Halli didn’t bother to argue his lie. His advice had made no difference anyway and he’d never even seen the kid.

“But Lowell didn’t listen,” the dark-haired man continued. “He’s going back to Cleveland. Why?”

“He has some crazy idea that he can have Carrera’s charges dropped. He came to my hotel room raving about world communist conspiracies and deals with the FBI. Domie never should have sent him on this job. The guy’d gone nuts living on his own. Look what he did to all those girls.”

“But you let him leave with our sons?” Dick said with soft dangerous rage.

“ ‘Our sons’? I told you I don’t know anything about your sons.”

“My son Alan. Stephen’s son and now Lowell has Stephen’s wife as well.”

Wells looked at his partner as he said this and Halli sensed that with the first mention of the man’s name some sort of agreement between them had just been reached. Halli didn’t like the emotion building in this shed. Wells had a reputation for his temper and Halli was getting too old to take the beatings anymore. He eyed both men warily, then concentrated on Wells’s partner as he said, “Look, Russ thinks you’re someone who died three years ago so I’d say he’s crazy. And he’s twenty years younger and a hell of a lot bigger than me. I didn’t have a gun handy when he showed up, either, or we wouldn’t have had any damn discussion. I would of told him to get lost.”

“How did Lowell plan on getting back into the States?” Wells asked.

“Hell if I know. Hey, in this business you don’t want to know any more than you have to.”

“You’ve been with the Carreras a long time, yes?” the man with Wells interjected. His bossiness made Halli angry. And Halli didn’t like it at all when the man moved into the shadows behind him, crouched down, and rested one hand on the back of Halli’s neck.

“I don’t have to answer that,” Halli retorted, his eyes straight ahead meeting the detective’s.

“Of course you do,” Wells said. “Make it easy on yourself and don’t try to lie.”

Halli winced from the pain in his head. It had reached an intensity that seemed to cloud even his hearing as he dimly listened to the man behind him say, “Twenty-two years. First for Raymond, now for Dominic.”

“How in the hell . . .”

The man behind him continued to speak, the singsong rhythm of his voice becoming more pronounced as he moved from one thought to the next. “You came here a week before Russ. You found this site and thought it was ideal because of its isolation and the shed. This is the place Lowell would have brought Richard if he’d captured him. Lowell carried a camera in his car, yes? Would he have recorded the execution step by step or would a final picture have been sufficient?”