Gecko (29 page)

And the night was silent and dark.

“
Is it gone?” She wrapped her arms around him and held tightly.

“
I don’t know.” He listened to the night and the soft purr of the Miata’s engine. He heard an owl off in the distance. A cricket chirped and was answered. “Yeah, I think it’s gone.” He got up, dusted off, offered her his hand and helped her up.

“
Did you see it? It looked like it had been in a fight. It looked hurt.”

“
Good,” he said and started for the car.

Fifteen minutes later, after filling the tank at an all night service station, he asked the night clerk for directions to Dr. Kohler’s.

“
Just follow Kennedy out to Mountain Sea Road and turn left. Big gray house on the right. Bars on all the windows, you can’t miss it. No point going by though, he ain’t home,” the youth said.

“
How do you know?”

“
Cuz he just gassed up, not ten minutes ago. In a hurry. And he didn’t head home. He was going out of town and he was going fast.”

“
You sure it was him?”

“
You don’t forget a man like that. You had to have passed him coming in. Big gray Mercedes.”

“
Was he alone?” Jim asked. “Was there a woman with him?”

“
Hard to see through those tinted windows, but I think he was alone.”

“
How do you know?”

“
Cuz he pumped his own gas.”

Jim thanked him and paid him.

“
Do we take off after the Mercedes or do we check out his house?” Glenna asked after they were back in the car.

“
The way he was driving, he’s on Highway 1 by now. We’d never catch him.”

“
Do we go by the house now or later, when it’s light?”

“
We know he’s not there now. Besides, I’d like to see my wife as soon as possible and make sure she’s all right. And I have to tell her about her sister.”

“
Do you want to go alone? Should I wait in a motel?”

“
No, we’re still looking for your father. And if he’s any kind of father at all, he’d never forgive me if I left you alone after everything that’s happened. We stay together till we find him.”

He stopped before turning onto Mountain Sea Road.

“
When we get there,” he said, “we’re not going to be as stupid as we were back there.” He reached behind her seat and picked up both laundry bags. He reached into hers and withdrew the forty-five and handed it to her. “One for you,” he said, “and one for me.” He withdrew the second pistol and set it on his lap.

“
You think we might need these with Kohler gone?”

“
I wasn’t thinking about Kohler.”

“
Oh yeah, our yellow-eyed friend might still be lurking around.”

“
Right.” He tossed the bags back behind her seat, turned onto Mountain Sea Road and headed up toward Kohler’s house. It had been a long night and daylight was still over three hours away. He downshifted into third as they approached the house.

“
Look, it’s my father’s car!” She pointing to an antique Chevrolet parked in the driveway. Monday continued on, slowing, but not stopping. He pulled over when he was safely past the house and parked.

“
Come on, let’s go! My father is back there.”

Jim grabbed one of the forty-fives, got out of the car and started for Kohler’s at a run.

“
You die, motherfucker!” a voice boomed out as he was going up the porch and Jim knew someone had a gun pointed at him.

But before the man pulled the trigger, a skinny man came running out the front door. “It’s gonna blow,” he shouted, and the night was rocked by an explosion coming from the back of the house and the place erupted in flames.

Jim knew there wasn’t enough time to bring his own gun to bear on the man behind him, but he had to try.

Another blast lacerated the night. Jim turned and saw a big man jerk forward his finger squeezing the trigger, sending still another explosion out into the dark, the shot going wild.

Glenna stepped out of the thicket, a look of horror on her face as she watched the man jerk and dance, a stringless marionette out of control, finally collapsing, face down on the driveway.

Jim stared at her standing in the middle of the road, holding the smoking gun at her side. Her sweat soaked skin reflecting bronze from the rising flames. She was an avenging angel and he was sure he had never seen anyone so beautiful.

He heard movement behind, spun around toward the skinny little man who had come screaming out of the house. And he saw into the eyes of a demented soul.

“
You killed my brother,” he wailed. Then he turned away from Jim and fled into the house.

“
My father’s in there,” Glenna screamed.

If there was a chance Washington was still alive, he owed it to Glenna to try and get him out.

He dashed through the front door holding his breath. He almost tripped over his wife’s nude body. He was heartsick. Smoke filtered in from the back of the house. He bent low in a search for breathable air. He went to his wife, threw down the gun and dropped to his knees. Her throat had been cut. She was dead and there was nothing he could do for her.

It was too much, first David, then Roma, now this. The despair was total. He was lost in a black sea of agony, sinking under waves of heartbreak and anguish, the raging fire of his grief, as real as the fire raging around him. He rocked his head back and stared up at the smoke running along the ceiling and wailed one long, loud word, “Noooo.”

He felt the smoldering heat on the back of his neck, but didn’t care. It was over, he couldn’t go on. Sweat dripped off his forehead, stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. It was hard to breathe and getting harder, but it didn’t matter anymore, nothing mattered anymore. The sooner it was over the better.

“
Stop it! Get a grip on yourself.”

“
Go away,” he thought.

“
No, you can’t do this. She’s dead, you’re not. I need your help. I need you. Glenna’s father needs you.”

“
Glenna’s father?” she had his attention.

“
Over there. Do something!”

Washington was on the other side of the room, tied to a toppled chair.

“
He might be alive, you have to check!” Donna ordered. “You can’t feel sorry for yourself and let that man die.”

He slid along the carpet to the police officer, staying under the rising smoke, fighting to ignore the heat. Washington was unmoving and looked dead, but Jim had to be sure. Using his index finger he felt his neck for a pulse and found one.

“
He’s alive.” Donna thought.

“
I’ve got to get him out of here.” Jim tried to untie the ropes, but his hands were sweaty and slippery and the bonds too tight. He only succeeded in frustrating himself and wasting time.

The back of the house was covered in flames, but the fire hadn’t reached the living room yet. Flames were licking their way down a hallway, advancing like an invincible army. In seconds the living room would be engulfed, the heat already intense, and the more Jim struggled with the binding rope, the closer the fire came.

He stopped struggling with the knots. He wasn’t going to get the rope untied in time. There had to be another way. He looked around the room for something sharp and found nothing. His eyes settled on his wife’s body and again he felt a pang of grief, but it was replaced with a shot of hope. The straight razor that had been used to kill her lay by her side, bright, bloody and evil.

Staying low, he slithered along the plush carpet back to Julia. He had to reach over her body to get the razor. He did it quickly, his hand brushing against her breasts. She was still warm. His hand locked on the open razor and he felt her blood on the blade, hot, alive. He jerked his hand away and cut himself. His blood mingled with hers on the sharp silver blade and he turned away from her body, his eyes squeezed closed, and fought down the bile that raged to come up.

“
Hurry!” A voice screamed through the heat.

Jim opened his eyes and stared into the deep brown eyes of Hugh Washington, laying on the opposite end of the room.

“
If you don’t pick it up, we’re both gonna be toast,” Washington said, not so loud now that he had Monday’s attention.

Jim snaked his arm over Julia’s body again, picked up the razor and started to slide back toward the bound police officer, when he heard a booming explosion, and something slapped the floor near his face. He looked up frantic, pulse racing and saw the little man standing in the hallway, shirt on fire, feet slightly apart, both arms extended, right hand firmly holding a pistol, left hand around the right wrist. There was nothing he could do. In seconds he would be dead, but as the man started to pull the trigger the flames leapt to his scraggly hair and face. He screamed as they danced over his body. In his death throes the man pulled the trigger again and again and again, but he was firing blind, his shots going wild.

Covered in flames, the man screamed louder, chilling the night with his wild death yell. For an instant it looked like he was going to make a flaming dash through the living room to the front door and the cool night beyond. But he spun around, a burning ballerina, and dashed back down the hallway, into the flames, his screams spurring Jim into action.

He crawled toward Washington and sliced through the ropes that bound him to the chair. Once free, Washington pointed toward the door.

“
Let’s get out of here.”

Jim nodded and together they crawled toward safety.

“
Dad,” Glenna shouted, when they came through the door. She jumped onto the front porch, started pulling her father away from the flames.

“
Easy, daughter, I can do it.” Washington stood and together, father and daughter, they helped Jim Monday get to his feet. Then to Jim, Washington said. “Police?” It was more question than statement.

“
No,” Jim answered.

“
Want them?” Washington asked.

“
No.”

“
Then we gotta go.” He stopped, pointing. “What’s that?” He was looking at Bobby Markham, dead on the ground next to his car. “Did you do that?” He was asking his daughter with his eye on the forty-five tucked into the waist band of her jeans.

She nodded.

“
Give me the gun.”

She obeyed, handing it to him, butt first the way he had taught her. He wiped her prints off with his shirt, then he tossed it through the front door into the blazing house.

“
Hopefully when they sift through all this, they’ll think these two shot each other. Now we really gotta go.” He looked at Jim, “You got a car?”

“
Down the road.” Jim pointed.

“
Okay, we go.” Washington looked in the car, checking to see if the keys were in the ignition, they were.

Five minutes later Jim Monday drove into the parking lot of the Tampico Motor Inn behind Washington, two and a half hours before dawn. Another ten minutes and Washington had secured two more rooms, one upstairs for Monday and one downstairs, next to his, for his daughter. It was another five minutes, as they were entering the all night diner across from the motel, before they heard the sirens.

“
Feel the earthquake?” Susan Spencer greeted him.

“
Saved my life,” Hugh said.

“
How so?”

“
Someone had their hands around my throat and the earthquake frightened them into letting go.” He paused. “What are you still doing here?” He asked.

“
Two girls called in sick. One of the drawbacks of being the owner.”

Washington laughed and said, “I’d like you to meet my daughter, Glenna.”

“
Any daughter of Hugh’s is a friend of mine.” Susan shook Glenna’s hand like a man. “And I know who you are,” she said. “Your picture has been all over the news.”

“
It’s not true,” Jim said, “none of it.”

“
I know that, otherwise I would have called the sheriff the second you walked through the door.” She wore her smile wide and she winked at him. “Hugh wouldn’t be bringing you in here if you were guilty.”

“
I appreciate your trust,” he said.

“
I’m not trusting you. I’m trusting Hugh. We go back a long way.”

“
Thanks Susan,” Washington said. “We’d like some coffee, quiet conversation and a poor memory.”

“
How poor?”

“
If anybody ever asks, Glenna and I came in alone and we got here an hour ago.”

She looked up at a Felix the Cat shaped wall clock, with a swinging tail, counting the seconds.

“
Yeah, I remember now, you came in at 3:00, I remember because that’s the time I was supposed to get off, but Clara and Ellie didn’t come in and I had to stay. You were here from then till whenever you leave.” She smiled at Hugh and asked. “Will you be leaving town in the morning?”

“
Yes.”

“
Well, I wish you all the luck.” Then she took their order.

They sat in silence, tired, tense and hungry. When the order came they wolfed it down quickly and quietly.

“
Why did you need to establish an alibi?” Monday asked when they were finished and drinking coffee. “It would have been easier and less risky to say nothing. Nobody need ever know we were up there.”