Shot of Tequila (23 page)

“I doubt it, Mr. Royce. I deal with killers, not liars. Now Marty the Maniac here, he’s the real item.”

“You accusing me of murder now, Daniels?” Marty warned. “You think this gung-ho bullshit is going to work with me? You’ll be off the case by the end of the day, bitch. Now get the hell out, I’m sick of your bullshit.”

Jack slammed her palms down on the desk and leaned forward, getting in the Maniac’s face.

“I know about Tequila, Marty. I know you’re after him. And if he turns up dead, a blind man would be able to follow the trail straight to you. It happens with you old-timers, Marty. You get sloppy. You lose control. Even outside help like this pathological liar Royce won’t be able to fix it. You’re heading for a fall, and I’ll be there when it happens. If you think I’m a bitch now, wait till I get your fat ass in my interrogation room.”

“Get out!” Marty screamed.

Daniels smiled cordially at Marty, at Royce, and at Slake, and then she and Herb left the office. They met Leman in the hallway, holding his shoulder.

“You little—”

He didn’t get to finish because Jack threw another palm at Leman’s bad shoulder, putting her body into it and spinning the ex-cop to the floor.

“Am I a vicious person, Herb?” Jack asked, stepping over Leman.

“Not at all. You’re a pussycat.”

“Then why is it I got the biggest kick out of smacking that dirtbag around?”

“It’s probably just too much caffeine.”

They took the stairs down to the door and exited through the bar.

Daniels waited a moment before putting the car into gear after starting it. Her hands were still pulsing from the adrenaline rush, and she was thinking through her recent actions and wondering if they’d come back to haunt her. Jack Daniels wasn’t a strictly by-the-book cop, but she was honest, and she didn’t like trampling over people’s rights or engaging in police brutality.

“Seriously, Herb. Did I push it too far in there?”

“I think you met a resistance with an equal amount of force.”

The answer satisfied Jack, and she pulled into traffic.

“What’d you think of Mr. Royce?” she asked her partner.

“Scary son of a bitch. I think I’ve heard of someone named Royce, but I’m not sure where.”

“We’ll run his name, see what comes up. What stone do you want to turn over next?”

That was how police work went sometimes. Just keep turning over stones and watch if anything scurries out from under them.

“Let’s find Frank Michaels, get him to ID Slake. I liked that creep even less than Mr. Royce.”

Benedict radioed the surveillance team watching Michaels’s apartment, only to find he hadn’t shown yet.

“Do you think we scared Marty off Tequila’s trail?” Jack asked.

“Hell no. You see Marty’s eyes bulge when you mentioned Tequila’s name? He wants that guy, bad.”

He’s not the only one. Jack wanted him too. Tequila was the cause of all this violence, and once they got him, Jack knew the violence would stop. But as long as Tequila was free, there would be more bodies. Jack was sure of it.

So where the hell was he?

T
equila parked the stolen Trans Am two blocks away from Slake’s house in a strip mall lot. He had no plan of action, because there were too many variables. The first move would be to see if Slake were home or not, and then go from there.

Most of Palatine, as was typical of all Chicago suburbs, was residential. Ranks and files of houses and housing developments, interspersed every so often by a convenience store. Slake’s neighborhood was woodsier than most, with full grown trees and bushes separating the half-acre lawns from house to house. Tequila walked along the well-kept sidewalk, his feet crunching on the salt that the township had spread out to melt ice. When he came up on Slake’s address he cut across the neighbor’s lawn and entered the property via the backyard.

It was a mid-sized ranch, white and gray wood paneling and black tar shingles. Tequila couldn’t picture a psychotic like Slake living in it. The house was better suited to a young yuppie family or a wealthy elderly couple. But everyone had to live somewhere. Every spider had a web.

He sprinted over to the side of the home and crouched next to a window. It was curtained, preventing Tequila from seeing inside. The next window he tried was similarly draped.

He moved cautiously around the perimeter of the house until he reached the back of the adjacent garage. Like most garages, it had a rear door leading into the backyard, and at the top of the door was a window. Tequila peeked in. The garage was empty. Tequila recalled the front of the house, and Slake’s silver Monte Carlo hadn’t been parked in the street or the driveway. He probably was with Marty, helping with the search.

Still, no reason to get killed because of a bad assumption. Tequila hit the button and demagnetized his holsters, and he walked around to the front of the house and rang the doorbell.

No answer.

He rang again to make sure, holding his ear to the door, listening for movement.

Nothing.

Tequila went around to the backyard again, thinking things through. Either no one was home, or no one was answering. If Slake had owned a dog, it would have barked or at least come to investigate the doorbell. He scanned the backyard for dog crap and found none. His guess was that the house was probably empty.

He chose a backyard window, breaking the glass with his elbow and then clearing the excess off the pane with the butt of a .45. Heaving himself up easily, Tequila pulled through the opening and landed hands first inside Slake’s bedroom.

Getting to his feet, he took a look around. It was a normal bedroom; a dresser, a closet, a four poster bed. Except this four poster bed had chains and shackles attached to the posts. Tequila searched through the drawers and wasn’t too surprised to find several whips, black leather masks, ball gags, and a riding crop. There was also a rusty car antenna, and a black box with a handle that Tequila figured out was a hand crank electric generator, complete with clamps to enhance anyone’s perverted sex life.

He opened the bedroom door and looked down the hall into the kitchen. Two things caused immediate panic in Tequila. The first was the sight of five oversized dog bowls all lined up on the kitchen floor. The second was movement behind him.

Tequila whirled around, the .45s in his hands, and fired as fast as he could.

The first of the pit bull mastiffs, as broad in the chest as Tequila and weighing damn near as much, was already in mid leap when the bullets thudded into its body. Tequila shot it three times from each gun, but momentum propelled it onward and the animal slammed into him with the force of a football tackle.

Tequila fell back, trying to push the dog off of him. It wasn’t quite dead yet, and it snapped its massive jaws feebly at Tequila’s neck. While he struggled with the beast, he felt white-hot pain surge through his left ankle as another dog bit into his foot.

Screaming, Tequila emptied his right .45 into the biting pit bull’s head. The dog fell back, taking Tequila’s shoe with it. Sensing movement behind him, Tequila swung around his left .45 and fired four times at the charging black form. He hit the dog in both front legs and twice in the mouth. The animal fell forward and ate the carpeting, choking on blood.

With the last bullet in the gun, Tequila delivered the coup de grace into the forehead of the first dog still quivering on top of him. With a sharp explosion of gore the beast went limp and Tequila pushed the dead weight off his lower body, gaining his feet.

He hadn’t brought extra clips with him. He had figured if he couldn’t kill Slake with fourteen bullets, then a few more wouldn’t help much. So he holstered his .45s and took Terco’s back-up .38 from his waistband.

Two dogs dead, one out of commission. But there were five bowls in the kitchen. Where were the other two?

Tequila whistled, hoping to draw them out. He wasn’t surprised that it didn’t work. These dogs were highly trained. They didn’t bark. They didn’t make any noise at all. And they’d flanked him on both sides like a wolf pack. The other two were probably watching him right now, waiting for the right moment to pounce. The thought made Tequila’s bladder feel tight.

Tequila looked down at his wounded foot. It was covered in blood, but that might have been the animal’s. Walking slowly, he eased past the dying pit bull whose legs he’d practically shot off. It was gagging, pushing itself slowly forward with its rear paws. Tequila ended its pain with a quick switchblade slash across its throat, then advanced in a crouch to the kitchen.

He immediately recognized it as a bad move. The kitchen had four different entry points; the hall, the foyer, the living room, and the dining room. Tequila couldn’t cover them all at once. Acting quickly, he went into the dining room and the fourth dog sprung from its hiding place.

One hundred and twenty pounds of highly-trained, finely-tuned killing machine. It pinned Tequila down and went straight for the throat, its claws digging furrows in Tequila’s chest and its slobbery breath smelling like meat gone bad.

Tequila tucked his chin in and twisted his body, letting the dog sink its long teeth into his shoulder. He couldn’t bring the gun up to the beast’s head, but he got it to chest level and fired five times.

The animal continued to gnaw on his shoulder, seemingly unaffected by the five slugs in its body. That was the difference in stopping power between a .38 and a .45. Tequila shifted his body and rolled hard, breaking the dog’s pin. He came out of the roll with the switchblade in one hand and the gun in the other. The dog was on him before Tequila could get to his knees, but this time when the huge head lunged to tear out Tequila’s throat, he thrust the knife under the V of the creature’s jaw and through the top of its snout.

The dog tried to open its mouth but found it skewered by a seven inch blade. It brought a paw up to its face and scraped at the knife, repeatedly filleting its own foot on the exposed point. Tequila took advantage of the dog’s confusion and pushed the revolver between the animal’s eyes, firing point blank.

The dog’s head jerked back and it flipped onto its side, legs jerking spasmodically. Tequila placed his foot on the canine’s muzzle and yanked his knife back out. His shoulder was on fire, and he chanced a quick look and saw at least three puncture wounds that would require stitches.

But that wasn’t his biggest worry at the moment. There was one more dog in the house, and Tequila didn’t have any more bullets.

He stuck the empty .38 back into his waistband and spun around, eyes and ears on alert. He held his breath, listening for any sound that would indicate where Number Five was hiding.

Seconds ticked by. A minute. Two. The blood seeped from Tequila’s shoulder, down his side, wetting his sock. He didn’t hear a damn thing.

Maybe the fifth dog was at the vet. Or maybe it recently died. Or maybe it was locked in the basement, or was hiding from the gunfire.

Or maybe it was…

Tequila cocked an ear to the kitchen, detecting the faintest sound of slurping. Treading as silently as possible, he made his way to the dining room door.

He saw it in the hallway, next to the body of the first dog he’d killed, its snout buried in the ripped open underbelly.

Eating. It was eating its fallen pack member. Tequila wondered why a trained attack dog would bother stuffing its face when there was an intruder in the house. When the dog looked up at him, he realized why.

It was covered with scars. They streaked its fur, long jagged welts and bare spots, some still unhealed. Tequila knew that one of the best ways to train attack dogs was to teach them to fight their own kind, preferably dogs bigger than themselves. To give the smaller dogs a chance, the bigger one was usually tied up or muzzled.

This was the training dog. Though it was the largest, its will had been systematically broken by the attacks of the others. Now that the others were gone, it was top dog again, and it had taken advantage of the fact by gnawing on the body of one of its tormentors.

It stared at Tequila, fangs dripping gore. The years of pain were over. It could finally fight back. The beast leapt casually over the carcass and began moving slowly down the hall. Stalking. Head low, ears back, tail straight.

Tequila had never known unfettered, primeval terror until this moment. The dog had to weigh twenty pounds more than he did, and the switchblade he clutched seemed like a toy. The dark, massive figure advanced, its eyes never leaving Tequila, bloodthirsty and intent.

Tequila considered backing up and locking himself in the dining room. The only problem was it had two more doors, both of which were open. The beast would undoubtedly get in one while he was closing the others.

“Sit!” he commanded the dog.

The dog didn’t sit. It continued coming at him, low on its haunches, like a lion in the grass.

Since there wasn’t any place to run, and fighting was suicidal, Tequila decided on a different approach. He tucked away his switchblade and remagnetized his holsters.

Then he ran at the dog.

The dog bowed down, snarling, ready to spring. Tequila tried to pretend it wasn’t there, concentrating on a floor exercise routine from years ago. After five steps he dove into a hand spring, bounced from his hands to his feet, flipped into one more hand spring, and then pushed hard off his toes and executed a double summersault in the air, going over the head of the jumping animal and landing several feet behind it.