Final Vector (6 page)

Everything felt hazy and a little unreal. Nelson was angry with Joy for waking him up when he was so goddamned tired, especially considering how she did it: by lying across the foot of the bed, the full weight of her body covering his legs. He struggled to kick them free, to pull them out from under her, but he hadn't realized how much weight she must have gained recently because he couldn't move his lower body at all. He kicked again hard and was rewarded for his efforts with lightning bolts firing up each shin all the way to the knee.

The bright, throbbing pain in his legs dragged Nelson fully back to reality from his haze of semiconsciousness. He wasn't at home sleeping in his comfortable bed at all; he remembered now that he had just been involved in a very bad automobile accident after being forced off the road by his contact from earlier in the day, the man whose name he didn't even know and furthermore didn't
want
to know. His legs were pinned in the wreckage between the car's dashboard and fire wall, which had slammed together like pincers from the force of the impact and trapped his shins in their viselike grip.

Nelson knew immediately he was in big trouble. His legs were undoubtedly shattered, and blood was flowing freely down the side of his face. Maybe he had been cut by flying glass. Who knew? His head pounded with what felt like the world's worst migraine--

concussion, anyone?--and he was having considerable difficulty breathing. He wondered about internal injuries and felt the first stab of real panic.

How far into the woods had the car gone before smashing into the trees? Was the wreckage visible to anyone who might be passing by on the road? If not, Nelson knew there was a good chance he could die right here before ever being discovered. This road was pretty remote, but it wasn't so far out in the sticks that no one would come by for hours on end. Nelson felt confident that if his car were visible from the road, help would come along relatively quickly. And if it wasn't, well, he didn't want to consider that possibility.

The sounds of cracking branches, of people working their way steadily through the heavy underbrush penetrated Nelson's consciousness, and even in his state of panicked confusion and pain, he knew the best-case scenario had already occurred. Someone had seen the wreck and called for help or perhaps stopped on the side of the road to investigate before calling the authorities.

Nelson wondered how long he had been trapped in his car and realized he had no way of knowing. But it didn't matter. The main thing--the only important thing really--was that help had arrived and he was going to survive.

"Help me!" he tried to scream, succeeding only in issuing a soft breathless croak. This frightened Nelson more than everything else combined--more than seeing the guy from the park driving the truck that had forced him off the road, more than crashing into the trees in the forest, more than the utter certainty that both his legs were broken and he was quite possibly suffering from life-threatening injuries.

And the pain was worsening. Rapidly. Nelson tried to take a full breath and could only manage to force a short little bubbling gasp through his windpipe. Where the hell were the people he had heard approaching through the woods? Didn't they realize they had to hurry? He peered out what was left of the smashed driver's side window, and his heart leapt as he saw what looked like two fuzzy shadows.

The rescuers seemed to be taking forever to reach the Chrysler.

The forest couldn't possibly be that dense out there, could it? If it was, how had his car managed to travel so far from the road before hitting something?

Finally the shadowy people made it to the door and wrenched it open. A loud screeching noise told Nelson that there had been significant damage to that side of the vehicle--he was lucky they were able to get the door open at all. A large chunk of shattered safety glass fell to the ground. He tried once again to tell his rescuers to hurry but succeeded only in rasping out something unintelligible, even to him.

"You okay, buddy?" one of the men asked.

It seemed like a stupid question to Nelson, who shook his head.

"Need help," he croaked out. The sharp coppery taste of blood in his mouth was getting stronger, and he could still feel the torrent of blood running down the side of his face like a small stream. He was freezing.

"No problem. That's why we're here," the guy answered.

Nelson smiled in gratitude and forced himself to focus on the faces of the Good Samaritans, and when he did, he felt his bowels clench in fear. It was the men from the truck, who had intentionally forced him off the road in the first place!

The man from Lady Bird Johnson Memorial Park grinned when he saw the recognition dawning in Nelson's eyes. He pulled the door open a little wider and reached into the car with both hands.

As they cautiously approached the Chrysler, canted at an angle and wedged up against a tree, Tony and Brian could see that Michaels was alive but clearly trapped and in bad shape. He was dazed, moving slowly and clumsily, and sliding into shock.

Michaels smiled out the window in misplaced gratitude; his eyes were glazed over from pain, and it was obvious he did not yet recognize them.

Tony managed to pull open the damaged door. Broken glass littered the car's interior, and a steady pulse of blood washed down the side of the man's face. It wasn't exactly streaming, but it was flowing steadily, and in addition, both his legs seemed to have been swallowed up by the car. He looked exactly like a helpless bug being devoured by a Venus flytrap.

The injured man mumbled something Tony couldn't make out. His breathing was labored, and he seemed to be fading fast.

Tony grinned at him--this was going to be even easier than he had hoped. As long as their luck held for a few more minutes and no nosy passing motorists stopped to investigate the crash scene, he and Brian would be out of the woods--literally--and on their way home soon.

Tony glanced at Brian and nodded slightly, and the younger man slipped behind the vehicle to approach it from the other side.

Meanwhile, Tony hefted a bottle of cheap whiskey in his right hand and splashed liberal doses of the amber liquid over the seats, the dashboard, the floor, and, of course, over Michaels. He was fading fast and didn't seem to notice what was happening.

As the sharp, tangy smell of the whiskey filled the air, Tony roughly pulled Michaels's head back by his hair and poured some down the man's gullet. He choked as he reflexively swallowed.

Whiskey and spittle flew from his mouth in a fine mist, spraying Tony and everything else in its path. His eyes flew wide with fear and panic, but in his weakened condition he was unable to defend himself in any meaningful way.

The bottle now nearly empty, Tony pitched it hard against the dashboard. It smashed into a thousand glittering pieces, razor-sharp missiles shredding the air, and the brown glass from the liquor bottle mixed with the opaque greenish automobile safety glass scattered throughout the vehicle.

Tony glanced across the front seat and saw Brian reach for the briefcase full of cash Tony had given Michaels just a few hours ago.

The case had gotten wedged under the ruined dashboard, much like Michaels's legs, and Brian tugged it back and forth before it finally popped free, its battered leather shell ripping on an exposed jagged iron support bracket.

Tony studied the inside of the car thoughtfully, like an artist stepping back from his easel to get a better perspective on the entire canvas. Time was of the essence, but he wanted to make sure this was done right. Satisfied, he nodded and returned to the driver's side door of the disabled vehicle for the last time. The stench of cheap whiskey was overwhelming and almost made him gag.

Wrinkling his nose in disgust at the smell, Tony leaned inside and gently, almost reverently, placed two gloved hands around the flabby neck of Michaels. He was clearly terrified, but he gave Tony a look that was almost indignant, as if he couldn't wrap his brain around the fact that he was being double-crossed.

"Don't take it so hard," Tony said with a brief smile, leaning into the wrecked car and putting his mouth next to Michaels's ear so he was sure he could be heard. "It's nothing personal; this is just business. I'm sure you understand." With that he began choking what little life remained of Michaels, who tried to thrash and resist but was unable to do much of anything but shake his head like he disagreed with Tony's plan, which undoubtedly he did.

Within seconds Michaels was gone. He had been breathing only with extreme difficulty anyway, and even in the short time Tony and Brian had been working at the car, his respiration had become noticeably more labored.

Tony again examined the inside of the car with a critical eye, pulling off his latex gloves and stuffing them into the back pocket of his trousers. Blood and glass were everywhere, giving it the look of some twisted surrealistic painting. Michaels was slumped in the driver's seat, an indignant expression still framing his slack, lifeless features.

"What do you think?" Brian asked, handing Tony the briefcase with the slashed leather front and removing his own gloves with a snap. "Does it look believable? Will the cops buy the idea that the guy croaked as a result of the accident?"

"Well, that whiskey I splashed all over the place will lead the investigators to believe he was drinking on his way home from work and lost control of the vehicle. And his legs being trapped under the smashed dashboard is very helpful to us. The investigators will assume he was alive after the accident but couldn't move and died before help arrived.

"Of course, when the autopsy is performed, it will quickly become clear that virtually none of the liquor actually made it into his stomach, so he really wasn't drunk, and they will discover fine traces of powder from the latex gloves around his neck. The authorities will piece it together and will reach the obvious and correct conclusion--he was murdered. But by the time they put it all together, it will be irrelevant. At least to us."

The two men had now hiked back to the road, bursting through the thick brush and running along the shoulder. They didn't want to be caught exiting the woods just as a car happened to be driving by. But there was nothing.

Tony and Brian hurried back up the lonely road to their stolen F-150 in silence. The sun had sunk beneath the trees now, and there was a very good possibility that Michaels wouldn't be found until morning, which would suit their purposes perfectly. Placing the heavily damaged briefcase securely on the bench seat between the two of them, Tony slid into the beat-up Ford and fired up the truck's tired engine. Then they chugged slowly away from the site of the ambush.

Nick was exhausted. He had never realized until now just how much effort, both physical and emotional, was involved in burying a loved one. Sure, he had been to plenty of funerals before, but putting your great-aunt in the ground after eighty-five years of life was a lot different than saying good-bye to your wife, especially when she had been just twenty-nine years old, taken from you without warning in a single violent instant.

"Honey, you need to get some rest." His mother brushed his shaggy hair from his eyes, something she had been doing since he was a little kid and something he had always hated. "Lisa wouldn't have wanted you to wear yourself down and get sick; I'm sure of that."

"Yeah, I know." Nick breathed deeply and looked at his watch.

Two hours until he had to drive his parents to Logan Airport to catch their flight back to Dayton.

Everyone else who had gathered to bury Lisa was already gone, and Nick was anxious to be alone so he could grieve the way he badly wanted and needed to. He was touched by all the support the throngs of friends and relatives had provided, but Nick had not truly been alone since those first few horrible hours after the police officers had shown up four days ago with the news that his wife was gone. Irrevocably and permanently gone.

With everyone using his house as a staging area--people coming and going at all hours for days, and his parents staying in the house with him--Nick felt as though his entire focus had been on remaining strong for everyone else, keeping up some sort of ridiculous charade where he convinced the onlookers who were watching him so closely that he was doing just fine.

The fact of the matter was that he was doing the opposite of just fine, whatever that was. Just crappy? Just stunned? Just lost and rudderless and totally numb? He hadn't yet had a chance to contemplate how he was going to continue without Lisa or whether he even really wanted to for that matter.

It wasn't like he was contemplating suicide; he knew Lisa would never forgive him if he were to take his own life. But since the very first day he had met Lisa Harrison, way back in high school, Nick had never given one solitary thought to the possibility that he might
not
spend the rest of his life with her. Now that the exact scenario had come to pass, Nick hadn't the slightest idea what to do next.

"Listen, Mom, maybe that's a good idea. I think I will take a short nap. I'll make sure I'm up in plenty of time to drive you and Dad to the airport. Don't worry."

"That's fine," she said, gliding gracefully out of the bedroom and pulling the door softly closed behind her. Moments later Nick heard the whine of the vacuum cleaner running at the other end of the house as his mother finished getting the home in tip-top shape before departing for Ohio.

Sleeping was out of the question, of course; Nick had simply used that excuse as a convenient way to maneuver himself into some time alone. In a way he felt badly, knowing his parents were going to be leaving soon and he wouldn't see them again for months, but he needed to be by himself. He rose and paced around the room, walking from the bedroom door to the dresser filled with his dead wife's clothes, behind the foot of their bed to the window, then back to the bedroom door, starting the cycle all over again. He was too wound up to sleep.