Red Dog (22 page)

“Reach got the gun from Carol Ray?”

“Right. Carol Ray knew J.T. hocked it, probably to pay off his bar tab, and she collected it, maybe to piss him off, maybe hoping one day to pay back whatever bullshit he'd pulled on her by connecting him to something like this.”

“A little extreme,” I said.

“A little? Son, you're tougher than you look,” Carter said. “Meanwhile, Tibbs put two and two together and came up with five. From his perspective, though, it's no
great loss. Black is in on it, Tibbs gets rid of a major pain in his ass. He's not in on it, well, too bad, but . . .”

“Civilization will endure.”

“Yes.”

“Any idea where J.T.'s gone?”

Carter shook his head but answered with certainty, “Indianapolis.”

“Terrible,” I said. “So what now?”

Carter shrugged. “Nothing. We sit on Carol Ray while she still has some value as an intelligence asset. She's not virgin-clean, but she did us a good turn. She'll walk. The Black fight will be taken down. Maybe it'll be moved somewhere else, maybe not. Whichever it is, it won't resurface for a while.”

“You'll arrest Tibbs?”

That took him a while. I already knew the answer, but for some reason making him say it seemed important. He sucked a tooth and frowned. He said, “We won't. Not yet.”

“He didn't get his fingerprints on anything?”

“He did not. There are a few minor players who might drop, but . . .”

Yeah. But . . .

“You'll pick up Harold Tipton?”

“Him. One or two others. And the Cleaveses, if we can find them.”

“And whoever killed Reach walks away clean.”

It wasn't a question, but he answered it with his eyes anyway.

“Frankly, he's not worth burning the resources on.”

“That sucks.”

“These are the workings of the universe, Slim.”

“So it's over?”

“All but the screaming of a thousand attorneys.”

“And the bad guys win.”

“No, but they abide. So do we.”

“I'm leaving,” I said.

“So soon?”

“Because I'm starting to like you.”

“You ruined my coffee,” he said simply.

“And you're a sonofabitch.”

We shook hands on it. I woke my lawyer.

“I wasn't sleeping,” he said. He rubbed a hand through his greasy hair.

“You were snoring,” I replied.

He laughed in relief. “Thank God, man. I thought reality had gone to fucking shit.”

It had. But pointing it out seemed uncharitable. The kid had enough problems.

I
T WAS NEARLY NOON BY THE TIME WE CRUISED PAST
D
EVIL'S
Kitchen and the wildlife preserve. We took the back way, the Lincoln screaming over the gravel roads, crunching the limestone chunks to powder. My lawyer insisted on driving, and I was too worn out from my talk with Carter to object. At least he kept it under eighty. Near Watertown, I called Jeep Mabry.

“Sheldon,” I said. “Kick him.”

“Done and done, boy.”

“Kick him
loose
.”

There was a long and disappointed silence. At last, Jeep growled, “Make a deal.”

“Okay.”

“I'll tie him up in a sack, drop him at police headquarters.”

“Wince?”

Jeep grunted no.

“Lindley?”

Jeep grunted yes.

“Okay. Slow down some before you drop him?”

“No promises.”

He broke the line. Sheldon Cleaves was in for a rough ride. I rang Anci.

“I think it's pretty much over,” I said.

“Pretty much?”

“Least ways, we can go home again. Most of the bad men have gone to ground.”

“That's good news, anyway. Still . . .”

“Yeah, I know. Still.”

There was a burst of garble. Our connection broke up for a moment.

“Where are you?” she asked through it. “I can barely hear you.”

“Near the preserve. The signal's bad out here, so if I lose you, that's why.”

Another break in the connection, this time longer.

When it came back, I heard Anci's voice say, “. . . Miss Shotguns & Shakes?”

“Carol Ray? Well, it turns out she's one of the good guys. Pretty good, anyway.”

“Wonders never cease. Maybe I'm not cut out for mystery solving, after all.”

“What? Why not?”

“Why not? I talked you into taking the case in the first place. I thought the dog was a car. I thought Miss Shotguns & Shakes was the culprit. And the only clue I thought I'd found led me to Lew and Eun Hee Mandamus.”

“What was that last thing?”

Another interruption in the connection.

“. . . Wichelle. I knew I'd seen the name somewhere before.”

“Bran-Wichelle?”

“. . . can barely hear . . . I said Bran-Wichelle . . . metal fabricators. It was the name stamped on Lew's new security fence. I reckon I . . .”

The call dropped. I punched some buttons, hoping to bring it back up, but the signal was gone. I looked at my lawyer.

I said, “We have to get back to civilization. Fast.”

“We can do fast.”

He flattened the pedal. The Lincoln jumped like a gazelle. We'd just rounded onto a long and lonely gravel road when we blew a flat. It was 11:45
A.M.

“Hell,” the boy said. He roared to a dusty stop, flattened his hands against the steering wheel in little slaps. “No spare, either.”

Shit.

“Call a tow,” I suggested.

“No phone signal, remember?”

Double shit.

He stepped out of the car, intent on inspecting the damage, I guess. I climbed out on my side, saw him walk with a crooked head toward the rear driver's side tire. A puzzled look crossed his face. He uncocked his head, opened his mouth to say something to me.

The first shot spun him around in a full circle as a little blur of blood blossomed from his left shoulder. The second shot knocked him over backward, leaving his big sunglasses floating an instant in the air. I hit the deck just as a spray of bullets spattered the Lincoln, pocking the trunk and blasting out the rear windshield. Someone was screaming. It took a moment to realize it was me.

There wasn't a shooter in sight, but the shadows of the tall growth and trees by the lake could hide a small army of snipers. I might never have seen the motherfucker if he hadn't set his dogs on me.

But he did, two of them, great burly pit bulls with necks of furiously knotted muscle and eyes ablaze with the full force of a carefully instructed hate. Right then, I knew I was going to die. And then I wanted to. Trailing the dogs was A. Evan Cleaves. And walking calmly round the bend in the road behind A. Evan, rifle in hand, was my old friend Lew Mandamus.

L
ITTLE
EGYPT
.
THE
S
HAWNEE
.
A
PLACE NEAR THE
S
IMPSON
Barrens.

I rehearsed my location, trying to bring myself to my senses. I needn't have bothered. The first dog jolted me back into the real world. It hit me so hard with its cinder-block skull that I doubled over and went back-of-the-head-first into the Lincoln's side-view mirror, knocking it off its post. The beast snarled from somewhere deep inside its bony chest, latched onto my right arm, and tore away a chunk of cotton and flesh. The second dog leapt atop the first and made for my throat. Lew called them off. If he hadn't, I'd have died right then on the roadside. The dogs broke away and trotted back to their master. Lew patted them on the blocky skull before returning his attention to me.

“Slim.” We might have been passing each other in the grocery store.

I tried to say “Lew” back, but all that came up was a gob of blood and snot. I rolled onto my elbows and pried myself free of the road. Bits of limestone dug deeply into my palms. A. Evan chuckled and shook his funny-looking head.

“Slim,” Lew said again. He looked away. “It's . . . complicated.”

“Fuck you.”

“I always did like you, boy.”

“Double fuck-you,” I said. “Eun Hee . . .”

He flashed angry. “What about my wife?”

“This is going to kill her.”

He shook his head.

“She's never going to find out.”

“She will.”

“How's that, boy?”

“When I fucking tell her, man!” I screamed.

Lew blushed. That's something you don't see very often, a killer blushing. For a moment I thought he might relent, let me in on the joke. Instead, he crouched down and dug around in the dirt with his fingers thoughtfully, his rifle flat across the tops of his knees. “She's never going to find out,” he repeated, more softly this time. “I'm your friend, boy, so I'm going to give you a head start. Turn. Run. See how long you live.”

Somehow or other, I managed to stagger to my feet. God alone knows how. Standing hurt. Standing hurt bad. I was pretty sure the dogs had rebroken my ribs, and I could feel one or two of them sliding around beneath my skin. Move the wrong way, and it or they would skewer through one of my lungs and that would be the ball game. My head throbbed, and I was gasping and snapping like an angry turtle for every breath of air.

“Just one thing,” I said.

“Let me guess: Why, right?”

“No,” I replied. “I know why. You're a fucking insane prick. What I want to know is, what do you want me to tell her?”

I thought he'd kill me right there. Or let A. Evan do it. Sometimes, when you push it, that's the risk. Instead, he said, “Tell her what?”

“About how you died?”

“About how I died.”

“When I break your fucking neck or stick your gun up your own ass.”

A. Evan couldn't help laughing. Lew wasn't amused.

“Thirty seconds,” he said, breathing out his rage. “And then we kill you. Or the dogs do.”

The dogs were going to be a problem, no question.

I turned and started down the road, slowly at first, acclimating myself to the utter agony of it all. Faster when the utter agony of it all seemed better than what would come next.

They didn't wait thirty seconds, either. You can't even trust a murderer these days. The first shots came at around the fifteen-second mark, but they went wide right, pocking shallow craters in the asphalt road. Something hard broke free and leapt up to kiss me on the cheek. I kept moving, fast now, diving off the road to my left, into the tangled brush and up a steep grade and into the tree line. I could hear the dogs scrambling on the road behind me, their long nails clicking the rough surface. In another moment . . .

But that moment didn't come. Not yet. The dogs over
ran, seeking a better way up, maybe, their stubby legs unable to make the sharp climb up the embankment. The hill continued on and on, losing itself in the denser growth of oak and elm trees until it lost itself entirely in darkness.

My lungs were on fire. For some reason, I started to laugh. Something lashed me across the cheek, a bullet. Or a sapling. My feet slid around on the slick layers of leaves. Behind me, I could hear A. Evan singing, some sad old song. At the time, my frantic brain wasn't able to place it.

I climbed, heading west and trying to keep sight of the sun through the dense canopy. Once or twice, I dared to look behind me, but there wasn't anything but the sound of A. Evan's voice, seemingly quite distant, and the barking of those damned animals. I had no idea where Lew was. I'd nearly made it to the top of the hill when I remembered that I still had my phone.

Top of the hill, there was just a hint of a signal. I dialed Jeep's number with a thumb that twitched all over the little keypad, but came up empty. Voice mail. I didn't have A. Evan's number, so I dialed Lew Mandamus next.

“Where are you?” he said.

“Cute,” I said. “I ask you a question?”

“You already asked me one of those, boy.”

“One more. What's there to lose?”

Silence. Then, “Ask.”

“What was inside Shelby Ann?”

“A chip.”

“A chip?”

“A computer chip. Animals have them all the time now,
for tracking strays. Like I told you. I brought her in the shop, sewed it up inside her.”

“And there's a bank account number on it, right? For the Dragons' accounts? Wasn't that an awfully dangerous way to store that information? Animals run away, after all.”

“It was Tibbs's idea. He'd scan her to add money to the chip. I'd scan her to move the cash to my account. If she ran away and got picked up, all anyone would find was an ordinary tracking chip with a few extra numbers mixed in.”

I said, “What do you think happened to you, Lew?”

Mandamus laughed. There wasn't anything inside that sound, no humanity, only the ice that gets left behind when everything human sluices out.

“Who the hell knows? Same thing happens to everyone. You see enough bad shit in your time, it gets inside of you, fills up your guts. Am I really any worse than Tibbs or Dennis Reach? At least I've put things back into the world. You can't erase that, Slim. Not all of it.”

“I guess not.”

“I can't see you, but I can hear you. Not the phone, you. The other you. You're close.”

It was everything I could do not to stand and run.

“One last thing,” I said. “Who took Shelby Ann from you? A. Evan or Dennis Reach?”

“It was Dennis. He saw us transfer Shelby Ann once or twice. He knew she was important but didn't guess why. I think he thought we were using her as breeding stock. He broke into the compound one night and snatched her. Stu
pid asshole even called me to brag about it. Dennis never could keep his mouth shut, even to save his own life.”

“He didn't know that A. Evan and Sheldon had screwed him over, joined up with Tibbs.”

“Not at first, no. But it didn't take him long to figure it out. The Cleaves wanted their cut. They didn't give a goddamn who gave it to them. You might say they were like dogs, loyal to whoever's feeding them.”

“Tibbs got to you through the Animal Cruelty Task Force, I take it?”

“Through Leonard Black, yes. He helped Reach set it all up, but he was
persona non grata
with the Dragons because of that boy of his, so he started looking for a way to sweeten the pot, win his way back into the fold. He thought he could bring me along, an animal medicine expert, as a bargaining chip. Not everyone is ready to toss his dog in a garbage bag after one bad fight. Tibbs took a liking to me, but Black's plan for himself didn't pan out. J.T.'s former buddies were almost as shitted-off at him as they were at Reach.”

“He's left the state,” I said. “J.T.”

“No. He tried, but Tibbs's men got to him first. Two in the back of the head. He's in the Little Grassy somewhere, I think.”

“There wasn't a young woman with him, was there?”

“Was, yeah. Little cheerleader thing. Why?”

“You fuckers killed Mandy.”

“So?”

“So now I'm pissed.”

The line went dead. I hit my belly and snake-crawled toward the crest of the hill. I started down the other side, and then the first of the dogs appeared. He jumped on my back, and we rolled. It wasn't much, but I didn't have much. We rolled, and the dog fell off. I leapt to my feet. Something in my leg tore loose. I turned. The dog was coming on again, fast. He jumped. Just then the second dog came flying, too fast. It collided with the first dog and both went tumbling sideways and down the grade.

It was a reprieve but not much of one. They found their footing. They turned and sprinted back toward me like a pair of slobbery missiles. I caught the smaller of the two with a rock upside the head and sent it sailing into the trees. The larger came in low, then swept upward and lunged for my throat. I'd only just managed to get my hand between me and it, so its jaws passed cleanly through the ball joint on my left hand. I barely felt it.

What I did feel was that I was going to lose this fight and lose it badly. I pressed forward on the tops of my legs and the dog and I went end over end, yin-and-yang-style, down the slope. When we came up, the dog was on top and my leg pinned between us. I kicked as hard as I could, and the beast flew off me and into the tall growth, landing hard on its side.

There wasn't any stopping it, though. The creature lunged. I feigned to one side, but tripped and went over backward, only just catching myself as the dog grabbed hold of my right shoulder and tore away a sizeable piece of me. If Lew Mandamus and A. Evan hadn't known my position
before, they did then. They'd never make it to me in time, though. I was going to come apart like a scarecrow, bleed to death, have a heart attack. Die badly.

There was no good way to turn. The downward slope to my left ended abruptly in a sharp drop, to where I wasn't able to see. But what the hell? One drop was as good as another. I ran for it, the dog carried along for what seemed sure to be our last ride. A bullet hit me in the back of the leg, but felt like little more than a bee sting. Over we went. I'm not sure which of us was the more surprised.

It seemed like a long way to the bottom, but it couldn't have been more than twenty or thirty feet. We hit the ground. The dog flattened beneath me with a bony deflation, its life crushed away in a sudden burst. I prized its teeth from my shoulder and stood, walked slowly, tried out the ground. There wasn't much left. Not much blood. Not much sanity.

And then A. Evan was there, cackling, crazy-eyed, scratching his damn balls.

“Slim.”

“Asshole.”

“First time I laid eyes on you, I knew I was going to end up killing you. Told the old man on the way home that night, too. Said, you know that I'm going to end up putting two in that boy's brain, right?”

“Shut up and try.”

“Uh-huh. Just so you know, I get done with you, I'm going to do that daughter of yours, too.”

I didn't have much juice left, so the kick I planted in the
boy's midsection didn't do much more than knock him back ten feet or so. When I flew up off the ground and into his grill, I think I surprised him so much that he forgot about the gun. I punched him in the throat and kicked him in the balls so hard I thought they'd come out the top of his head. Then I wrapped my fingers around the back of his head and bounced his face like a basketball three times off the nearest tree trunk. It should have killed him. But A. Evan isn't like you and me, and all I really managed to do was piss him off. When he wrenched himself free, he was trying to spit away a big yellow tooth that had stuck to the blood on his lower lip and laughing like it was the funniest joke he'd ever heard. His right arm swept up, a boot knife clutched in his hand, and I went over backward to avoid being gutted, again hitting the turf. And it was then A. Evan remembered the gun.

The first bullets from his little semiauto slapped the ground beside my head as I rolled hard to my left and down a steep embankment into a thin stream of brackish water. I'll never know how I found my footing, because there were bullets buzzing around my head and the madly repeating whipcord crack of the little machine pistol like a last devil's tattoo. I do know I was thinking of Anci.

I exploded through the tree line and back into the dark, turned hard right, and had just rounded another sandstone crop when the second dog reappeared. Appeared like an oncoming big rig. We must have taken each other by surprise, as when we collided it was like seventy pounds of fist in a twenty-five-pound sack. I shoved it away with all my
might, then kicked it fiercely in the chest when it tried to scramble again onto all fours.

“Fucking stay down!” I screamed, as though it could somehow do anything but what it was programmed to. I must have hollered louder than I thought. For an instant, the beast hesitated. But only an instant. It lunged, crashed into my forearms, and over and over we went, back down the slope and back into the water, where the dog snapped at my throat with a sound like two slabs of wet plaster slapping together.

So. Fuck it. Whatever. I'd finally bitten off more than I could chew. No pun intended. This was it: the last roundup, my last case. The long, wet good-bye.

I could sense A. Evan coming out of the tree line. I could feel him raise his gun, train in on both of us like the killer he was bred to be. But that was a mistake—and it was the boy's last. When the first shots went wild, slapping the surface of the water like flat, heavy stones, the dog took one to its shoulder. It yelped and in a flash bounded away from me and charged, unknowing and insane, at this new threat. A. Evan shouted a command. But it was too late.