Habit (22 page)

His arms were shaking. His entire left side was pulsing with pain; it felt like electric shocks running up and down his leg, like teeth biting into his hip. It hurt just to sit on the tractor seat.

The figure was motionless. It was hard to make out the shape, but it looked like the driver was standing with his arms at his sides. Tough to know if he was carrying a weapon or not.

“I’ll ask you again – who are you, and what are you doing here?”

For another agonizing moment, the vehicles rumbled and the driver said nothing. Brendan couldn’t make out any information, not a license plate on the truck, or its true color. The driver was a silhouette. There may have been some slightly visible human features – some skin tone, the edges of clothing, but nothing definite. In the middle of it all, the fear, the anger, and the pain, Brendan felt a gnawing guilt: He had allowed himself to be trapped like this. He had been backed into a corner, and now he was feeble. Helpless.

He thrust out his gun.

“Answer me!”

The driver spoke. He raised his voice as well, but he didn’t sound like he was shouting. He didn’t sound strained at all.

“Did you visit Eddie Stemp tonight?”

Brendan’s mind raced. His whole body shook. “I asked you who you were. Answer me and I’ll answer you.”

The driver took a step forward. Brendan squeezed the trigger. One more ounce of pressure, and he would be in his second officer-involved shooting of the week. He would take this man down.

“You know who I am,” said the driver.

Brendan froze. The man standing there at the entrance of the shed was the killer.

“Stop right there,” Brendan said. “Don’t come any closer.” His voice sounded like it was coming from far away.

The driver repeated his question. “Did you visit Eddie Stemp tonight?”

Brendan licked his lips. They felt numb. He took a stab at something. “I think you already know the answer to that.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing.”

He was aware that the power was in the hands of the killer. This man had him pinned. He had every advantage.

Bile rose in Brendan’s throat. He thought he was going to throw up. Yet all he had to do was pull the trigger. The killer’s silhouette was thinned by the immensely bright lights. It was still a good enough target.

“He told you about things?”

“‘Things?’ No. He didn’t tell me about things.’” Brendan’s heart slammed against his rib cage. He thought his pulse must be visible. With every beat his body must be pulsing in and out.

He saw a flash of his wife and daughter. They were both sitting in the car. His wife wasn’t looking at him. His daughter was in her car seat in the back, looking at a toy. It was the last time he had seen them.

Then his daughter looked up and smiled.

Brendan fired his gun.

* * *

He knew that if he fired and missed, any chance of a second shot would be minimal. The killer would either draw and return fire, or simply duck out of the lights. Outside of the sun-like blast of headlights, the world was pitch black. Brendan could keep firing, but he would be wasting time getting to cover if he did.

His shot missed.

When the killer disappeared from sight, Brendan dropped his gun and tramped down on the tractor’s accelerator. The tractor lurched forward, nearly bucking him off.

The thing was, it did not move very fast, even though he had put the pedal to the floor. Its engine roared, but it closed the gap between it and the truck far too slowly.

The killer had gotten back into the cab of his pick-up, and thrown the vehicle into reverse. The truck backed away from the oncoming tractor just as the two machines were about to collide.

Brendan drove the tractor on, clearing the shed. Once outside, he could see a little better. The front of the large pick-up swung away, and Brendan caught a glimpse of the killer behind the wheel, caught in the lights of the tractor. The face was just a blur, a flash of salt and pepper hair, there one second, gone the next, and Brendan expected the truck to lurch forward.

It didn’t. The window came down. Something poked out of the truck that was no handgun, it was bigger. It was the muzzle of an automatic weapon.

The tractor was still moving forward when Brendan leapt from the seat. He hit the ground hard and rolled away, fresh and terrible pain tearing through his leg and hip. When he landed, bright pain encircled his ankle like barbed wire. He rolled in the dirt driveway. He was vividly aware that he no longer had his revolver.

Bullets first sang off the metal of the tractor and then punched into the earth inches from where Brendan lay. The tractor kept advancing, however, and it forced the killer to drive on in his pick-up.

Brendan scrambled to his feet. He thought only briefly about taking shelter in the shed once again. Bad idea. It was just a runway for the truck. He glanced at the house to his left. While the pick-up was traveling away from the front door of the house, the tractor was already slowing and the truck would have a clear line to drop into reverse and come after Brendan as he made for shelter inside the house.

He remembered the barn out in the back. He started hobbling towards the side of the house. It was narrow here between the shed, the trees, and the house; it wouldn’t be easy going for the big pick-up. Brendan ran as best as he could, but his legs weren’t cooperating. His left hip still felt terribly
crunchy
, as if bone fragments or cartilage grist had been knocked loose in there and were grinding together. His right ankle was a screaming throb of pain from his jump from the tractor. He could barely put weight on it. He took a few awkward, lunging steps and toppled back to the ground.

He desperately turned his head to look behind him. In the front yard, the truck was turning around. Narrow passage or not, it was going to come for him again.

Brendan screamed. He hadn’t expected to; it just came out of him. A wild, guttural yell from somewhere down in the pit of him. It was an animal scream, wretched and primal. In the midst of it he closed his eyes. And then he did something he hadn’t done for years.

He prayed.

He did not pray for long. He opened his eyes and started to pick himself up again. At the same time, he saw something new. At the head of the driveway, another set of headlights turned in from Route 12.

Brendan started dragging himself towards the side of the house. The truck completed its turn and was aiming back towards him, but it had stopped. Brendan continued to yell as he pulled himself along. His words were garbled and made little sense. “Help me. Stop him. The killer.”

There was a flash of light coming from the new headlights. A wave of nauseating terror swept through Brendan as he thought:
accomplice
. It wasn’t the first time he had considered that maybe more than one person was responsible for Rebecca’s death. Now here was someone else firing at him. He heard the shot a split second after the flash of light. Nothing had impacted anywhere near him. There were more flashes, more
pop pop
of gunfire in the night. The newcomer was shooting at the truck; Brendan heard the distinct sound of bullets biting into steel. Not an accomplice after all – help had arrived.

The pick-up truck was facing the wrong way to return fire. Its passenger side was facing this new vehicle. The truck started to back up. It gained speed and then swung around in reverse to face the other direction.

The flashfire gunfight continued, a barrage of bullets coming from the new vehicle. Now the pick-up was in position to return fire.

There was the menacing noise of a submachine gun. The weapon had a suppressor on it, so that it seemed to drum the air –
Bududududud.
The recently arrived vehicle was raked with the shots.

Brendan, in the meantime, had reached the house. He pressed himself against the exterior. He smelled onion grass growing along the foundation. He tasted blood in his mouth and wondered distantly if he’d bitten his tongue when he’d jumped from the tractor. He realized he was going to go into shock, if he wasn’t there already. A second later, he passed out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT / MONDAY, 2:33 AM

Brendan awoke from nightmares in which he relived the terrible ordeal at the Bloomingdale farm again and again. Only in his dreams, it wasn’t an indistinct killer at the wheel of the truck. Instead, his wife and daughter were in the cab, and he rammed the tractor into them over and over again.

As he came to and got his bearings, he was aware of how dry his mouth was. Next, he realized he was hooked up to some tubes. An IV. His vision came into focus and he looked around. He was in a hospital bed. Machines whirred and beeped nearby. A curtain cordoned off his area.

He lifted his head in order to look down at himself and take inventory. He tried to lift his legs beneath the covering blankets. Something was restricting his movement; a brace of some kind around his thigh and hip. After only a short time, he dropped his head back to the pillow, exhausted. The attempts to move about aroused a dull pain that began to spread up from his hip. He gritted his teeth and moaned as it reached a startling climax. He was afraid he was going to pass out again. What had happened to him down there?

He tried to recall everything as best as he could. The blood red pick-up truck swam into his mind’s eye. The killer silhouetted by the dazzling headlights. He searched his memory for what had happened next. The arrival of someone else, possibly one of the deputies supposed to be keeping surveillance on the farm. He remembered crawling away, dragging himself to the side of the house. And now he had formed a complete picture of the recent events.

He closed his eyes as the pain in his hip slowly abated. As it waned, sleep overtook him again.

* * *

An hour later, and he was awakened by the Sheriff. For a moment, Brendan thought he was back in his rented house, sleeping on the couch. He wondered how the Sheriff had gotten in. Usually, Brendan locked his doors. He tried to ask Taber this, but found his mouth was dryer than ever.

“Water,” he croaked.

Taber looked around, and then disappeared out of the curtained area.

A minute later he returned with a cup full of ice.

“The nurse said you can have these ice chips. No water right now.” He passed Brendan the cup and looked him over. “I’m sorry,” he said. Brendan didn’t think the Sheriff was just apologizing for the lack of water.

Brendan greedily dumped as many ice chips as possible into his mouth. He felt some of them fall onto his neck and chest. He sucked on the jagged bunch of them. Nothing had ever been as satisfying. When they had melted to thin slivers, he crunched away the remaining bits and then tipped the cup back for more. In the second round, he emptied the cup.

Taber waited patiently. Brendan’s eyelids fluttered as he experienced the momentary bliss of the ice chips. He swallowed and looked at Taber.

The Sheriff affected a lopsided grin. “Given an ability to forecast these recent events, I wonder if you would have still taken the job up here.”

“Sure,” said Brendan.

“I . . . How are you feeling?”

“Okay. Pain in my hip. Ankle.”

Taber nodded. “They’ve got you on a little morphine. But I’ll go easy on you and won’t take this out of your vacation days.”

Brendan smiled feebly. Taber ran a hand through his hair. He seemed uncomfortable. Maybe it was being in the hospital. Brendan didn’t particularly like them much, either.

He tried to sit up a little. “Did you get the guy?”

Taber shook his head, no.

“I have a description of the vehicle. Couldn’t get a plate number. The lights, it . . .”

Taber patted the air with his hands.
Calm down
. “It’s okay. Deputy Bostrom got a good look at the vehicle just before it hightailed out of there. Red pick-up. We’re thinking a Ford, Heavy Duty, maybe a recent model. It’s on the wire.”

“Bostrom didn’t give chase?”

“He called it in the second he could. By then it had already left the scene. Bostrom checked you out instead.”

“God dammit.” Brendan tried to get comfortable. Everything hurt.

“Look, he did the right thing. A high speed chase in the middle of the night wouldn’t have helped anyone. Not you, nobody. You’re lucky Bostrom acted fast. You were bleeding pretty badly.”

Brendan considered this new information. He remembered tasting blood in his mouth. That was nothing though, just a split lip or a bitten tongue. Then he thought about the pain in his hip. Maybe it wasn’t a break or fracture, but a laceration?

“Bleeding from where?”

Taber looked at Brendan’s body, hidden under the covers. “They said you had internal damage. Didn’t say from what. They’ll talk to you about it.”

“I can’t be on morphine,” Brendan said. Taber either didn’t hear him or didn’t understand, and cocked his head quizzically, leaning forward.

“I’m a recovering addict,” said Brendan. “Painkillers are no good.”

Taber leaned back, frowning. “Well, from what they tell me, Healy, you need the meds.” He blinked. “You’ll be alright.” Clearly he was someone who didn’t understand addiction. Brendan was used to that.

He wondered if he had any choice anyway. He had no idea what the full extent of the damage was, or the pain, if it was already being ameliorated by drugs.

He sighed, and looked up at the ceiling. “This is a total fucking mess,” he said.

Taber looked tired. “Did you get a look at the guy at all?”

“About six feet, Caucasian. 180 pounds. Black, greying hair.” Brendan shrugged. “That’s it.”

“That’s okay, Healy. That’s something.”

“It was him. I had him, and I let him go.”

“We don’t know who that was.”

“Who else would it be?”

“What were you doing there, anyway?”

“I found more messages.”

“More messages?”

“Things, phrases, written on the backs of the photos. The dining room.” Brendan’s mind was wooly. It was a challenge just to form coherent sentences.

Taber was nodding, but his expression was dubious. “You think they’re linked to the porn videos?” He lowered his voice on the last two words.

“All linked. The whole thing is right there. Right in front of us.”

“Then who is this new guy?” Taber raised his eyebrows. It was a challenge. So far during the investigation, Taber had seemed right there with Brendan. He could feel it. Maybe it had to do with being vetted by Argon; Brendan didn’t know. When Delaney was around the Sheriff had often acted skeptical and deferred to the senior investigator, but one-on-one Brenan felt like Taber really listened. It felt like Brendan was at last beginning to lose the man’s faith in him.

Brendan shook his head. “That’s the last piece. I don’t know. But he’s a hired man.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Sub-machine gun, Sheriff. I know there are rednecks around these parts – there are rednecks everywhere. But typically disgruntled ex-boyfriends or ex-husbands who got religion don’t go out and get a machine gun to seek revenge. This guy, last night, he works for someone. An organization.”

“Our killer used a knife, Healy.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Brendan licked his lips. He wanted more ice chips. “I talked to Stemp last night, too. He told me. Something.”

“What? You talked to Stemp?”

“He said Rebecca started out as an escort. I think that’s why she left school, to work for a service in Albany. Government types with fetishes.”

Taber looked nervous. “And you believe Stemp? I thought he was just a religious nut.”

“That’s maybe what Delaney told you. But Stemp is an educated man. Used to work in some capacity. For the . . . brass. I don’t know politics. I was a goddam science major . . .”

Brendan’s mind started to drift. He could feel sleep pulling at him. He saw a vision of his wife. They had met in school. She was standing in her cap and gown. She looked worried.

“So Rebecca drops out of school to be a high-class pro? Why? She had all the money she could need.”

“Maybe. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Maybe that’s why her father is so keen on controlling this case. Influencing it, whatever. Maybe he doesn’t want it to come out.”

“What to come out?”

“That he cut her off. Who knows? Feels responsible for what she did. What she became.”

His mind was playing nasty tricks on Brendan. Now he saw Rebecca in one of her porn videos. She was grinding away, but she was looking at him, looking at him the way her lifeless eyes had stared back from the bureau mirror in the bedroom. And then his wife was there too in this phantom video. His wife became Rebecca.

“Dammit,” he muttered. “Stop.”

Taber looked around. His tired face was expressing more concern by the second. “Let me go get you a nurse. That’s enough for now. We can finish debriefing when you’re better.”

“Where’s Delaney?”

“At the scene.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself.”

The Sheriff offered a surprised laugh. Then he started to leave.

“Wait.”

Taber stopped as he parted the curtain and turned.

“Did you know about Olivia?”

The Sheriff took a step closer. He wrinkled his eyes in question.

“That she was Rebecca’s therapist. Did you know?”

“I had no idea.”

“Did Delaney?”

“I can’t say. But if he did, he would have introduced it.”

“Is there any reason he wouldn’t have? Any reason he would keep it to himself?”

“I don’t think so. I hope not. Why?”

Brendan said nothing else. His eyes were glazing over. The last thing he saw was the Sheriff stepping away, and he heard him calling for a nurse. By the time one arrived, Brendan had slipped into unconsciousness again.