Good Day to Die (33 page)

The track turned left just past the streambed, hooking away from a steep slope that terminated abruptly at the edge of a huge patch, maybe half an acre, of cattails marking one corner of the beaver pond. I tried to stay down below the edge of the track, to keep my silhouette concealed, but the pitch was too sharp, and I soon found myself lunging from one handhold to the next.

With no real choice, I came back up to the road, expecting to cross it and work the other side, when I noticed what appeared to be a bundle of rags at the edge of the reeds. Unbelievably, my first reaction was to shake my head in disapproval. New York City is pig paradise. You expect the garbage; after a while you don’t even see it. But not here, not in the heart of the Adirondack Park.

Then the bundle of rags moved, and I knew what I was looking at. I also knew that my head and shoulders were above the edge of the road, which meant that I was visible from the higher elevations. I had to get out of there, but I didn’t. Instead, I froze for a moment, waiting for my heart to slow down. I’d been at the scene of a hundred homicides over the years and never felt anything more than mild disgust. Now, faced with a living victim, I had to force myself to take action.

I made plenty of noise going down, skidding from tree to tree, kicking up loose gravel and rocks. As I got close, that bundle of rags pushed itself to its knees and slowly turned to face me. I froze, my hands literally trembling, knowing on some level what I was going to see. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the red, swollen face, the blood-soaked hair, the narrow, unseeing eyes, and what I saw was myself as if I’d been suddenly transported back to those first years. Those years before I learned how to escape, when I could do no more than wait for the end of my beating, then lie in bed with the pain for company. When I could neither understand nor accept.

I don’t know how long I would have stayed like that. Thoughts whipped back and forth through my mind, too short, too quickly gone to form any coherent message. My hands rose up, as if in touching my face I could pull myself back into the present.

“Who? Who?” The figure stumbled toward me, one arm outstretched. “Please.”

Still, I held my position as if rooted to the rock and earth. Held it until I heard the deep boom of a shotgun and felt the buckshot punch into my back. The shock propelled me forward, forcing what I could not bring myself to do.

I
’D BEEN EXPOSED TO
any number of ambushes in Vietnam, sudden explosions of terrifying gunfire that always seemed to come when I was least prepared. What I’d learned, as had most of us who made it through alive, was a simple reflex: Take cover immediately. Do not hesitate. Do not analyze.

I shot forward, snatching up the woman who reached for me, and plunged into the reeds. The shotgun roared again and again, but what I remember, even more than the deep reports, was the
snick, snick, snick
of individual pellets cutting through long, dry reeds. I remember reeds falling all around me as I searched for some place to make a stand.

A mallard hen flew past my face, followed closely by her panicked mate, both squawking at the top of their lungs. If they were nesting in the reeds, they’d be doing it on solid ground, ground that wouldn’t flood in a thunderstorm. If I could find their hummock, we’d have a chance.

As we got in deeper, I dropped low, trying not to offer my back as a target, though I knew Kennedy would have no trouble following our progress through the swaying reeds. What I wanted to do was crawl, but I couldn’t think of a way to do it without dragging the woman’s face through the mud. Kennedy was taking his time now, zeroing in despite my attempts to zigzag. I was ready to stop and take my chances in the muck, when I stumbled onto my patch of solid earth.

It wasn’t much, maybe the size of a dining-room table and covered with some kind of dense woody shrub, but it would have to do. I worked my way behind it, then lay the woman’s head and shoulders on the ground, letting the rest of her body trail off into the reeds and mud.

“Don’t scream,” I whispered, lying down next to her. “Please. We’ve got to be quiet.”

The woman nodded her understanding, staring at me with unseeing eyes. I knew she was blind, had known it the minute she turned to me. I also knew I had to protect her, to die first, if that was the way it was going to be. As if her death was my own.

But I had no intention of dying. I took the Anschutz off my shoulder, laid it on the ground in front of me, then drew the .45 and set it beside the rifle. I was hoping that Kennedy, once he stopped wasting ammo, would be stupid enough to come after me. Or better yet, decide to climb up the mountain for a better view. From a distance, his shotgun would be no match for my little .22. I put my hands on my back, working my fingers in a slow spiral until I found the two small holes in my left side, just beneath the ribs. The holes weren’t bleeding much on the outside, which I suppose was good news, though I knew I might be pouring blood into my abdomen. Even better, when I worked my hand around to my belly, I couldn’t find an exit wound, just a small lump beneath the skin about three inches to the left of my navel. Even the pain was limited to a dull ache that I could handle without slowing down.

Kennedy maintained a calm, methodical assault, turning his shotgun into an overpowered weed whacker. I felt calmer, knowing that I had time until he decided what to do next. Time, for instance, to slip out of the daypack and retrieve the first-aid kit. There wasn’t much I could do for my back (whatever was happening was happening on the inside), but I could do something for the woman’s swollen face.

When my fingers touched the welts on her skin, she jerked back for a moment, then surrendered to my probing. At first, I thought the swelling was due to a blow of some kind because of the dried blood in her hair, but a closer inspection revealed dozens of insect bites. Black flies, ants, fleas … it didn’t matter, because I had nothing specific for any of them.

“Were you unconscious?” I whispered.

“I think so. I don’t know.”

“You’re all bitten up. I’m going to put a salve on your face. It’s mostly used for sunburn, but maybe it’ll help.”

“No.” She pushed my hand away. “I don’t need anything. Kill them.”

Just like that? Maybe she thought I was a character from a “Dungeons and Dragons” adventure. Means the Magician.

Her fingers reached for my face, tracing my features, hesitating around my eyes.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Roland Means.”

“I’m Lorraine Cho.” She hesitated for a moment. “I heard him shooting.” Another hesitation. “Are we safe?”

I explained it to her as best I could, whispering directly into her ear. Kennedy had stopped firing, and while I guessed that he wouldn’t make any rash decisions, there was at least the chance of a full, frontal assault. The last thing I needed, if Kennedy came crashing through those reeds, was a blind, panicked woman on my hands.

“So, what it is,” I finished, “is that we’re in a stand-off. We can’t get out; he can’t get in.”

“What if he just waits?”

I began to work the salve into her bitten face, and this time she made no protest. “If he doesn’t get us out of here before dark, he’s dead. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s only eight o’clock and he’s got eleven hours to think about it.”

She grabbed my wrist, clinging fiercely. “Kill them
both.
”

“Both?”

“Becky is psychotic. You can’t predict what she’ll do. You have to kill her.”

There wasn’t much more to be said. There was certainly no sense in arguing the point. You can’t expect a victim to keep things in perspective. No more than you can expect someone trapped in a hurricane to remember that somewhere the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the cows are grazing peacefully. Besides, I could understand what she’d been through, because I’d been through it as well, and though I’d had no one to champion my cause, I’d dreamed of a rescuer, a savior.

I handed her the water bottle and she pressed it to her lips, drinking deeply. Too deeply.

“Take it easy, Lorraine. That’s all we’ve got. Unless you plan to drink the muck in this pond.”

“What if he makes a fire?” She handed the bottle back to me. “What if he tries to burn us out? Because he’ll do it. Daddy will do it and Becky will help him.”

It took me a second to realize that she meant Kennedy. I wondered how long she’d been with him. And what role his sweet-as-sugar wife had played in the fun. VICAP had reported female bite marks on the bodies of female victims. I could visualize the words as they’d appeared on the screen. There was no emphasis, just the bare fact, as if VICAP were reporting the weather for Tucson, Arizona. And we’d been happy to read it, Bouton and I. The only emotion we’d felt was joy. Yay! Bite marks! The link to King Thong. Let’s go out and have a drink. Let’s celebrate.

Kennedy suddenly opened up, firing random shots into the reeds. He emptied the .12-gauge, reloaded, emptied it again, then gave up. He was obviously frustrated, obviously pissed off. As a cop and a killer, he was used to getting his own way. Now he had a problem and no good way to deal with it. He had to know that I was wounded, maybe incapacitated or even dead. And there was always the chance that some game warden had overheard the firing and would come to investigate. But he wasn’t stupid enough (or frustrated enough) to come charging into those reeds. Even if he’d missed the .45 strapped to my hip, he had to have seen the rifle. If I was still in one piece, if I was lying in wait, he’d be …

“What if he makes a fire?”

“Huh?” Without thinking, I looked into her eyes, suddenly realizing they were made of glass. I saw my own reflection in those dark pupils. Myself looking at myself looking at myself.

“Listen to me, you dope.” she hissed. “What are we going to do if he makes a fire?”

Dope?

“If he starts a fire, we may get out of here sooner than we expected. The wind’s blowing in from behind us; it’ll push the smoke back at him. Plus it rained hard all day yesterday, so everything’s wet except for the tips of last year’s growth. Besides, it’s spring, and there’s a lot of new growth that’s too green to burn. Here, feel this.” I took her hand and placed it on the nightscope. “This is a nightscope. It amplifies available light, let’s you see in the dark. It’s why we have to wait.”

She took a minute to think about it, then nodded at some inner decision. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

I told her that I was a cop from New York, that Kennedy was the target of an investigation that had nothing to do with her, that I just happened to come along, that someone else knew where I was, but it’d be at least two days before she came looking for me. I also told her that I’d been wounded, knowing it would frighten her. But she didn’t react with any show of fear. Instead she ran her fingers over my back, then over my abdomen.

“Do you have anything for this? Antiseptic? Bandages?”

I handed her a tube of antibiotic ointment, a package of sterile gauze bandage, and a roll of hospital tape. Thinking that none of this was necessary. If I was going to die of my wounds, it wouldn’t be because of anything coming from the outside. But we had a lot of time to kill and nothing much to do with it, so I rolled onto my side and let her go to work.

There was a confidence to the way she cleaned and dressed my wounds that was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Koocek’s hands were sure and swift, as if her fingers knew things her brain could never describe, but Koocek was clumsy compared to this woman.

“Are you in pain?” she asked, finally.

“Not much. It aches a little.”

“Does that mean you’re okay.”

“You really wanna know?”

“I
have
to know.” She put her hand on top of mine. “I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to be killed by
them.
”

I didn’t see how my describing the possibilities would help to prevent that, but I went ahead with it anyway.

“Kennedy hit me with two pellets from a .12-gauge shotgun. If he’d been using a rifle, I’d be dead, but buckshot doesn’t have a lot of velocity behind it. That’s why the pellets didn’t come out the other side.” I stopped for a moment, and she squeezed my hand in protest. “All right, Lorraine. The only thing I can say for sure is the pellets didn’t sever an artery or a large vein. If they had, I’d be unconscious by now. Unconscious or dead. But that still leaves the kidneys, lungs, liver, colon, spleen, and whatever else is in there. I really don’t know what happens if a chunk of buckshot the size of a .38 punctures your liver. Short-term or long-term. What I do know is that right now I feel all right.”

I turned my attention back to Kennedy. Imagining him crawling through the reeds, trying to get close enough to use that shotgun. The breeze was pushing the cattails back and forth, only dying down occasionally. That movement would provide him with excellent cover, assuming he had the balls to try it. Which I doubted.

Lorraine settled down beside me, but she didn’t fall asleep or drift off into daydreams. Instead, she went through the daypack, went through it without asking permission until she found the trail mix. Then she began to eat.

“You’re lucky I didn’t have a mousetrap in there.”

She didn’t bother to answer. Her mouth was drawn into a tight line, her nostrils slightly flared. I suppose her features reflected the intensity of her concentration, but at the time I read it as determination. She’d come through a long journey, losing nearly everything in the process, but she would not lie down and die. She would not surrender.

Which was just as well, because somewhere around noon I began to sweat, despite the cool temperature and the fact that most of my body was lying in wet mud. Within half an hour my hands were trembling, my teeth chattering. I tried to crush whatever was going on inside my body, tried to push it down. I might as well have tried to hold back the ocean.

“You have a fever.” Lorraine’s hands were all over my face.

“Very perceptive.” The wind had died down, and I had to remind myself to whisper.

“Show me how to use the gun.”