Silencer (29 page)

“You're showing me a rock?”

“Thousands of years ago these creatures covered the seafloor that was two miles below where we're standing.”

Thorn kept his hand out until Jonah flicked a look at the shell, then stepped back and reset his hands on his weapon.

“What the fuck you talking about?”

“I found the rudist down in the pit. It came up in the backwash of a well.”

“What well?”

“An oil well. That's what formed that pit. An oil well drilled a long time ago.”

Jonah mouthed a silent word.

“It's why they sent you and Moses to kill me, Jonah. Why they murdered Earl. Because Earl and I were making a deal to preserve this land. But somebody knew there was oil here and didn't want that deal to go ahead. That's what you and Moses wanted to know. You wanted a piece of the action. You just didn't know what the action was. Well, now you know. It's oil. That's why Moses died. Because of oil.”

“Fucking oil?” Jonah rocked his head forward, peering at the rudist.

“If Moses were still here, wouldn't he want to cash in? Wouldn't he tell you to go ahead with your original plan?”

“You don't know anything about my brother.”

“I know more than you think.”

“Step away from that counter. Do it now.”

Thorn obliged, putting another two feet between the Glock and himself. This time he wasn't going to save his ass with a pistol.

“Moses is dead. I'm the one you have to deal with. I'm running things.”

“Are you, Jonah? Are you running things?”

“I make the decisions. I do what I want. I don't need anyone's permission.”

“You missed some hog blood,” Thorn said. “On your forehead.”

Thorn reached out as if to wipe it away, but Jonah lurched out of range. His feet were clumsy. He swallowed hard, his facial muscles working, his eyes sliding from Thorn's face to the air around him as though he were tracking the erratic flight of a moth.

“Moses and I talked before he died. I got to know him a little.”

“Don't,” Jonah said. “Don't talk about my brother.”

“He told me something. His last words. He whispered them to me. I had to bend down, get my ear right up to his lips.”

“Shut up. You don't know anything about anything.”

“You don't want to know what it is? Your brother's dying words?”

Jonah said, “That's it. You're dead. I've had enough of you.”

“Moses told me to pass it on. He said it was important, that you needed to know.”

An electronic warble came from Jonah's pocket. He reached reflexively for the device, then caught himself, brought his hand back to the Mac, refocused his aim.

“Maybe that's him,” Thorn said. “Your boss, the guy who wanted me dead. Maybe this is your chance to let him know who's in charge. Tell him you know all about the oil. See what he says.”

“What did Moses tell you?”

The warbling in his pocket ceased.

“It was sad. Very sad.”

“What did he say, goddammit?”

“He was whispering. I could barely make it out. I had to lean in close.”

Thorn spoke a few words below his breath. A penitent mumbling his prayers.

Jonah drew a half step closer and again the phone in his pocket trilled. When his right hand made the same automatic move to his pocket, Thorn flicked the rudist at his face.

Jonah swatted at it with the stubby barrel of the Mac-10, and in the same motion squeezed off a dozen rounds that chewed up plates and pans and blew apart a section of the pine paneling.

Thorn ducked his shoulder and tackled Jonah around the waist and drove him backward into the refrigerator. Kept his knees pumping as he'd been coached to do on that long-ago high school football field. Keep going forward, keep pushing. That coach, and Kate Truman, and that geology teacher, all those long hours young Thorn had spent trying to learn proper technique, proper manners, trying to understand how the land beneath his feet was fashioned.

Jonah chopped the Mac against Thorn's shoulder, chopped a second time, and Thorn felt his body soften, felt some of the drive drain from his legs. At his left ear the Mac blasted at least a hundred rounds at the ceiling. In an instant he was deaf and faint and something else was droning inside him, a crazed surge that wasn't hate or fear or rage but some poisonous cocktail of all three.

Jonah was a generation younger, the muscles in his arms as supple and unyielding as braided rubber. In a swift pivot, Jonah released the Mac, let it crash to the floor, and seized Thorn in a grinding headlock, wrenched Thorn's bulk around, and bent him forward and danced across the kitchen with Thorn's skull as a battering ram. It was a rash and childish move, some half-remembered maneuver from the violent playgrounds of Jonah's youth.

Gathering speed, Jonah took two steps, three, four. No fancy judo was required from Thorn. He just went with it, let his arms drop and tangle in Jonah's legs, then clutched an ankle, jerked upward, and sent the young man sprawling.

As their bodies broke apart, Thorn banged a shoulder against the edge of the stove and regained his balance. Jonah stumbled another yard into a clatter of dishes and plates that covered a four-legged aluminum table. The table buckled under his weight, and the plates spilled around him onto the floor.

Thorn searched for the Mac-10, didn't see it, then chose from the stove an iron skillet caked with grease, grabbed its handle and raised it above Jonah's hairless skull like the devil's own sledgehammer and cracked him once, then again.

Jonah remained sitting upright, limp but conscious, his legs stretched straight before him, blood streaming from the gash on his scalp, spilling onto the collar of the well-creased shirt. His head rocked from side to side as if its weight was suddenly too much for the slender stalk of his neck.

 

 

THORN RETRIEVED THE RUDIST, DROPPED
it in his pocket. He collected the Glock from the countertop, the Mac-10 from the floor by the doorway. He snapped the release on the Mac and let the big clip fall to the floor. He aimed at the ceiling and held the trigger down to make sure no rounds were left inside. If he'd had sufficient strength, he would have cracked the goddamn thing in half.

His ears were ringing and the fumes of his rage had scalded his throat as though he'd been bellowing at the moon for an hour.

Jonah struggled to stand.

Thorn kept the Glock steady while Jonah staggered to the sink and ran the faucet and lowered his bloody head into the stream of water. When he was done, he used a dish towel to pat himself dry.

Turning to face Thorn, he let his eyes wander downward and saw the stains on the front of his shirt.

“Aw, man. One of the Brooks Brothers.”

“Soak it in cold water,” Thorn said. “That works with blood.”

Jonah looked up and eyed Thorn for a moment.

“What did he say? What did my brother say to you at the end?”

“He said he was fucked. He smiled and he died.”

“That's all? That's everything?”

“He wasn't much of a philosopher.”

Thorn kept the pistol balanced in his hand. Hardly a quiver at all.

“Well, fucked is right. From day one till now. Fucked.”

“What we need,” Thorn said, “is some duct tape. Where do you keep it?”

“Duct tape?”

“I'm tying you up, and you and I are going to drive out of here.”

“Just shoot me in the head, man. Get it over with.”

“I'm over my quota already. Duct tape, where is it?”

Jonah's shoulders slumped and he waved a lazy hand toward the door.

“Back bedroom.”

“Lead the way, Jonah. Be careful.”

Thorn tagged behind by several steps. A slow march through the living room. Several of the candles had guttered out. The papers on the wall were rattling like a field of brittle grass before an approaching storm.

“What's this? Your collected works?”

Jonah halted in front of the poster with rows of skulls. In the top left corner a single circus clown in pasty makeup was grinning wildly.

“These were done by monsters. Gacy, Dahmer, Manson, you know, the heavyweights. Doodling in their prison cells. Moses and I sold this stuff. It's how we made our spending money.”

“Oh,” Thorn said. “Like a paper route.”

“Bunch of whackjobs,” Jonah said. “These are very sick fucks, sicker than me. I wasn't sure before, but now I know. Totally sicker than me.”

Jonah led him down a narrow hallway to the last door. He opened it, stepped inside. Thorn hung back in the corridor and waited. The Glock was centered on Jonah's back. Thorn fighting the urge to end this now.

Jonah walked across the room to a dresser, keeping his hands extended to the sides for Thorn to see as he reached out and took something off the dresser.

“Duct tape,” Jonah said, turning around and holding up a roll. “All that's left.”

Thorn stepped forward through the doorway. There were twin beds, side by side. A lamp burned on a table between them. Moses was laid out on top of the blue bedspread. He was wearing a fresh pair of slacks, a crisp white shirt, his hair combed flat. His hands were folded together over his stomach, concealing the puncture wound.

On the second bed lay a naked woman. A brunette, average build. Her legs were spread wide, ankles bound to the bed posts with silver duct tape, her arms stretched out as though she were making a swan dive into a bottomless pool. Her wrists were taped to the frame. A single strip covered her mouth. Her eyes were open but empty. Thorn saw no rise and fall of her chest. Across her throat a bruised and bloody crease dented the flesh as though she'd been throttled with a lead pipe.

Jonah had backed into a corner of the room. His eyes were ticking back and forth between his dead brother and the woman's naked body. Thorn stepped fully into the room. There was an odor he couldn't name and didn't want to.

“Who is this?” Thorn said.

“Her name is Donaldson. She's a cop. She tried to arrest me.”

“You did this?”

The phone in his pocket sang out again. But Jonah made no move. He held the roll of tape in his left hand. His right was pressed flat against his heart as if he were pledging allegiance to some dark and secret nation.

“I had to see,” Jonah said. “I had to see exactly how fucked up I am.”

Thorn felt his finger tense against the trigger.

“I'm not a monster,” Jonah said. “I thought I was, but I'm not.”

“You might want to reconsider.”

“No, see, I touched her after she was gone. I tried, I really did. But it didn't give me a thrill.”

“It's not supposed to.”

Jonah's eyes wandered from the dead woman's body to Thorn.

“But how do you know until you try? How do you know for sure?”

Thorn had no answer for that. It was one of the Zen koans he hadn't gotten to yet.

“Let's go,” Thorn said.

“Where?”

“Out of this room.”

Jonah walked past him into the hallway. Thorn took one backward glance at the woman on the bed, then shut the door and told Jonah to keep walking.

When they were in the living room, the phone in his pocket trilled again.

“Answer it,” Thorn said.

Jonah drew out the glossy red phone and looked at its screen.

“Who is it?” Thorn said.

“He's asking where the fuck I am.”

“Asking? How's he asking?”

“He's texting me. You know about texting.”

“I should but I don't.”

Jonah held up the phone and Thorn stepped closer.

“See,” Jonah said. “ ‘WTFUB'—where the fuck you be? He's always asking that. You want me to hit him back?”

“Who is that?”

“Guy you told me you saw in a bar on TV. You know. One-Ton Antwan.”

“That's who's running the show?”

“He's the man. They don't come any badder than that zombie.”

“Ask him what he wants.”

Jonah thumbed the tiny buttons.

“He always gets back quick. Man's very hyper, got blood-pressure issues.”

The device made an electronic tinkle, and Jonah looked at the screen.

“He wants us to come to the lodge. Me and Moses. Got a job for us.”

“What job?”

“The way you say it is, ‘WTF4?'—What the fuck for?”

“So say it.”

Jonah typed the letters, and a second later when the phone jingled again, Jonah held it close and said, “He's got some garbage needs to go to the dump.”

“What garbage?”

“I can ask him, but he won't say.”

Thorn felt the skin on his neck prickle. “Ask him: What garbage?”

Jonah danced his thumbs on the keyboard. A few seconds passed, the phone remained quiet, and Jonah said, “I told you. Antwan doesn't share his business dealings. He's one cagey primate.”

Jonah settled on the couch across from a crude drawing of a topless woman with large round breasts. He looked at it for a few seconds, then winced.

“This whole fucking disaster, man, it was my idea. I mean if we'd just smacked you, tossed your body in a canal, Moses would be alive. But I wasn't satisfied. I wanted more cash flow. Fucking money, man, that's the root of all evil.”

“No,” Thorn said. “It's only one.”

Jonah reached to a side table and touched a finger to a small white cell phone.

“Who are you, Thorn? Some kind of kingpin?”

“What're you talking about?”

“You're some kind of big deal, aren't you? I mean even Claire Hammond knows you.”

“Is that right?”

He tapped the white cell phone again.

“This is the cop's.”

“So?”

“After I killed her, I mean, it's like I had to see who she was, so I went through her stuff, her wallet, her purse and shit. Listened to her messages, one from her husband, sounding worried, wanting to know when she's coming home. And, hey, then there's one from Claire Hammond. She mentions your name, Thorn.”