Straw Men (21 page)

He passed under the decrepit span of the Panther Hollow Bridge, then followed the road left, running full tilt with his ice scraper down the service road's first significant dip. Through the trees to his right, way down on the hollow's floor, he could see a fountain dancing at the center of a small pond. The branches of a weeping willow hung well out over the water. A little more than a year earlier, on a bench beneath that tree, Brenna had first suggested that they move in together. “Merge the households,” she'd said, leaving him to calculate, or miscalculate, her precise levels of love and commitment.

He couldn't think about that now.

The road narrowed and got steeper. He should have shortened his stride for control, but his steps got longer as he sprinted down the damp, treacherous slope. The road leveled off, and just ahead was a small stone bridge across a rushing creek. Christensen read its chiseled cornerstone as he flashed past: “WPA 1939.” Just beyond it, the road forked. One part dipped even deeper into the forest, to the right. The other narrowed further still as it rose to the left, back up to street level. Tire tracks scored the soft mud of both forks.

He stopped, panting, his breath rising in wispy vapor around his face. Damn. He crossed the bridge again, back to the last clear imprint of the tracks he'd been following from the maintenance yard. He knelt down and memorized the tread pattern, which was clearly from a snow tire. Brenna's Legend had snow tires. That much he knew.

He checked the freshest tracks on the left fork. They were wider and deeper, with knobby tread along the edges. A maintenance truck, maybe? They clearly didn't match, and none of the older, drier sets did either. He moved across the fork, knelt down, and found the snow tire tracks immediately. They bore right, deeper into the chasm.

Christensen felt as if he were running toward the dark bottom of the ocean. This far down in Panther Hollow, the shafts of sunlight became pinpoints. The gold was fading to the color of lead, and he was surrounded by the damp smell of forest decay. His ankle gave way as he stepped on a rock the size of a golf ball. Momentum carried him forward, arms tracing a desperate pattern in the air. He lurched for several strides with his chest parallel to the ground, but he didn't go down. He skipped for a few steps to test the ankle, then continued his headlong descent, the pain dulled by panic.

The road dwindled to a path. He was deep in the hollow, alone with an ice scraper, looking for a nightmare. The snow tire tracks turned left up ahead into what looked like a small clearing. The heavy chain across the clearing's entrance was down in the mud. It disappeared completely in two places where the car had driven over it. Christensen stopped to catch his breath, and that's when he heard a noise, dull and indistinct, coming from the clearing. Then he saw it. In the dim light, on the other side of a stand of maples, a swatch of silvery steel.

He stepped off the road and crouched behind a boulder, wondering whether he'd already been seen. Or heard. For the next thirty seconds, he focused on his breathing, willing it back to a resting rate.
You don't know what you might walk into down there.
Stealth couldn't hurt. Neither could self-control.

The Legend, if that's what it was, was maybe twenty-five yards away. Following the tracks would take him right to it, but he'd be completely exposed as he approached. Not an option. He might be able to make a wide circle to the right, move between trees and rocks, stay hidden until he was close enough to get a better look. The ground was a minefield of leaves, twigs, and fallen branches, but it was his best shot. He moved off, stepping cautiously, keenly aware of every rustle and snap.

A minute later he was fifteen yards closer, standing behind a sturdy oak, staring at the back end of Brenna's empty car. One of the rear doors was open. The courtesy light along the door's lower panel glowed—an eerie still-life suggesting something out of order.

Then, the car moved. Or did it? Christensen blinked. A subtle shift of weight maybe, but it caused the rear shocks to sigh. He leaned around the tree, waiting to see if the car moved again, when a man stepped into full view from the woods just beyond the car.

His ski mask registered first, a black full-face cover with red trim around the holes for his eyes, nose, and mouth. Christensen thought of terrorists, of Klansmen, of cowards of all stripe who carried out their work from behind a mask. Then he noticed the shovel, spade-end up, which the man used like a walking stick as he hurried toward the car. Despite the cold, his gray sweatshirt was damp at the underarms, and there was an oval of sweat at the center of his broad chest. Fresh mud spattered the legs of his sweatpants. Christensen had no easy way to gauge scale, but the man looked well over six feet tall.

The masked man took off his leather work gloves and laid them on the car's hood, revealing hands that to Christensen seemed oversized and unnaturally white. He looked closer as the man let the shovel fall to the ground. He was wearing surgical gloves underneath the work gloves. Christensen noticed his massive forearms, and in that moment he was sure he was looking at David Harnett.

Circling to the driver's side, Harnett put his knee on the backseat and leaned into the open rear door. The Legend sagged. When he backed out again, he had a handful of black steel.

The gun was unimpressive—like the pictures in posters that urged a ban on Saturday night specials—but a gun nonetheless. Christensen tightened his grip on the long handle of his ice scraper. Where the hell was Brenna? The question consumed him right up until Harnett slid a key into the trunk lock.

Then he knew.

She'd known it was coming. The digging had stopped, and she'd heard footsteps circling the car again. As soon as the key slid into the lock, she'd braced for pain. It was worse than she'd imagined, an agony that turned her rigid, knotted her fingers and made her whimper like a child. She hated herself for that.

She bucked and turned face down into the trunk's synthetic carpet, desperately seeking relief in its dark fibers. The trunk floor smelled of ammonia and rubber and grease, and it nearly made her gag. A hulking shadow passed over her, and she welcomed it. At least it blocked the light. In that relieved instant, she turned her face and opened one seething eye toward the silhouette above her.

It was shaped like a giant beer keg with a head. She squinted, searching for detail until the silhouette had a face. She counted four red circles—two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. She'd seen those red-rimmed eyes before. Then they'd seemed vicious; now they just seemed startled.

“Jesus H.,” it said.

A man's voice. He bent toward her, and she felt the same hands she remembered struggling against in her darkened office. The latex smell. The stifling odor of chlorine. The power. It came rushing back to her in a sickening wave. He grabbed her upper arm, the one on top, and pulled as if it were a handle. She tried to relax, to pretend she was still unconscious, thinking,
Pick your shot, Brenna. Wait. Don't waste whatever you've got left.
But she tensed and whimpered again as searing pain arced through her.

He rolled her forward and checked her wrists, making sure they were still secure. Then, in a single motion, he lifted her like a suitcase and set her in the wet dirt behind the car. She stared at the elastic ankle gathers of mud-spattered gray sweatpants and a familiar pair of basketball shoes. Frankensteins. Almost completely unlaced to accommodate the large feet that seemed stuffed inside. But she'd seen shoes just like them.

Last month.

In prison.

On Carmen DellaVecchio.

But it wasn't him. Too big. The voice all wrong. She looked up. The sky above was laced by branches, but that could be anywhere in forested western Pennsylvania. The man closed the trunk and bent toward her again. He hoisted her by her tethered arm, apparently without effort. Every nerve in her body came alive as she rose. He set her on uncertain feet, then leaned her back against the car trunk. She focused her strength on her neck, struggling to support her head. But it fell backward; it weighed ten thousand pounds. He grabbed the collar of her shirt, the one she'd been wearing when she fell asleep at the office, and pulled her upright again. Her head tipped forward as he held her steady with an enormous white fist that smelled like a doctor's office. She looked down at his other hand and saw the gun.

The fog cleared.
He's about to kill me,
she thought.
So that's how it ends.
Taylor's face popped into her head, first as an infant, then as a boy. She saw him with Jim, holding Jim's hand, and felt herself relax. Taylor was with him. He'd be fine.

Jim.

Who'd understood from the start the limits of her love.

Who'd loved her anyway.

She willed the thought away, but in its place came a cold, analytical reality. She'd known enough killers to understand what was happening. This guy knew exactly what he was doing. He'd driven her here in her own car, so there'd be no vehicular evidence to trace. Her hair, blood, any contact matter at all, would be in her own trunk. He'd waited until now to kill her; that way he could control the death scene. A smart killer would walk her to her grave, shove her in, shoot her, and bury her along with the blood and bullets and anything else that might help the cops figure out what had happened. He might get away with it, too, as long as he controlled the scene.

He leaned her forward, balancing her against the car's trunk, then eased himself around behind her. The once-numb fingers on her right hand were alive again, and she felt the smooth cotton of his sweatpants as he snaked one of his arms around her waist. He waited until her feet were under her, then said, “Walk.”

She stumbled. He lifted and shoved her toward the place where she'd heard him digging.
So this is how it ends.

She thought of Taylor.

She thought of Jim.

She grabbed his balls with both hands.

“Fuck!” he howled.

She felt him give, and saw his gun hand rising reflexively toward her head. But she was beyond pain. She squeezed through the cotton sweats with all her might. A death grip.

“Bitch!”

The gun's butt connected with the back of her head, but she held on. He turned her toward the car, shoved her forward and pressed all his weight against her, pinning her face down against the trunk lid. She turned her head as he raised his gun hand again, saw him bring it down hard on the side of her head, peppering the car's silver paint with flecks of her blood.
Good,
she thought.
Evi­dence. A voice to tell my story.

Behind her, he gasped desperately for breath. He raised the gun again, but this time he pressed its short barrel against the side of her head.
Fine, but I'm not letting go
…

She opened her eyes, waiting, ready. And that's when she saw Jim through a web of blood, moving like a blur from the left, a final, bizarre hallucination before the bullet. She managed one last, incoherent thought:
An ice scraper?

“The hell?” Harnett gasped, but his flinch was distraction enough. He let go of Brenna's collar and rolled to his right as the gun clattered across the trunk deck. It fell into the dirt near the Legend's back tire. Harnett tried to pull away, but—Christensen saw it now—Brenna had a vise grip on
him.
As Harnett turned, so did she.

Her eyes were empty and cold, uncomprehending. Her cheeks and the tape covering her mouth were laced by blood oozing from gashes that already had matted the hair on the back of her head and pasted several strands to her forehead.

Harnett swatted at him, but Christensen had him off balance. Still clutching the scraper's shattered handle, Christensen shoved the heel of his left hand up under the mighty chin, pushing Harnett's head back as far as he could. At the same time, he brought his right hand over the top like a sledgehammer. It came down square on the mask's nose hole, and the cartilage underneath gave way with a mushy pop. Even so, Christensen knew it wasn't over. He felt like a bull rider in the chute, straddling, for the moment, the malevolent mass beneath him. But the gate was about to open.

“Hang on, Bren!” he shouted.

With an animal cry, the bull rolled and raged left. The move broke Brenna's grip and she collapsed onto the back of the car. She was barely conscious, her fingers still clutching instinctively for soft flesh as she rolled to the ground. Christensen jumped on Harnett's broad back, riding him across the trunk as he moved toward the gun. Christensen snaked the shattered remains of the scraper handle around his head and tried to choke him, but Harnett brushed him off like a pesky fly. He landed in the dirt maybe ten feet from the car, the remains of the sub-lethal scraper still in his hand.

By the time Christensen struggled to his knees, Harnett was already reaching for the gun. Christensen flung the scraper handle, hoping to distract him again, but it bounced lightly off one steely shoulder and landed on the Legend's hood. Harnett was hunched in pain, protecting his crotch with his free hand, but he calmly leveled the gun. Rushing him would be suicide.

Christensen sat back on his ankles, and Harnett shifted immediately to a wider stance. He brought his free hand up under the gun's butt and aimed the weapon in a two-handed grip, ignoring the blood streaming from his nostrils.

“Don't,” Christensen said. The word emerged in a puff of his breath and he watched it disappear in the cold morning air, wondering if it was his last.

The gun was rock steady. Why Harnett hesitated, Christensen couldn't guess. But he did, and Christensen pulled the only weapon he had left.

“Kiger already knows,” he said.

The broad shoulders seemed to sag, but only for a second. Christensen rose defiantly to his knees.

“
David.
”
Christensen practically shouted the name. “Don't make it worse. It's over.”

A contrail of breath poured from the mask, as if the man inside were deflating. Christensen waited, trying to will away a single, gripping fear: Who would raise the kids? He looked at Brenna, who lay morbidly still in the dirt behind the car. She was on her stomach, hands still bound, her face twisted toward him, her eyes open but registering nothing. Only her fingers moved, desperately clutching at the air above her back.

“You people shoulda left this alone,” Harnett said.

The voice jerked Christensen back. “Too late for that. It's over.”

There was a nod, followed by another stream of warm breath. Harnett moved two steps closer, so they were maybe five feet apart. Christensen stood as tall as he could while still on his knees. He saw the muscles tense in one of Harnett's mighty forearms—the one with its finger on the puny gun's trigger.

Another nod, and the barrel rose until it was pointed directly at Christensen's head. Harnett straightened his elbows and sighted him down. “It's over, all right.”

Christensen closed his eyes to better see the faces that suddenly filled his head. Melissa. Annie. Taylor.
My
God
…

A gunshot's report rang through the silent, sheltering trees, and Christensen heard himself fall. He felt nothing except the warm embrace of the people he loved, the children he'd never hold again. Then another sound, a strangled gasp. The sound of collapse, unbroken and dense, followed by ghostly silence.

Christensen opened his eyes. He'd twisted and fallen backward, so that he faced away from the car. His shoulder and one side of his head were in a puddle filled with rotting leaves. He lay still, listening, waiting for the pain. But he was conscious only of the water, of a damp, delicious chill. The pain never came.

Somewhere nearby, the crackle of underbrush. He pushed himself out of the puddle, stood, and in the same motion wheeled like a startled deer. Brenna hadn't moved. She lay maybe three yards from what looked like a stone-still block of granite. Christensen stepped forward, trying to make sense of the scene. Where was the gun? He moved closer, saw it twitching like a nerve in Harnett's pallid right hand. Without thinking, he stepped over the crumpled legs and onto that quivering wrist. Still, the gloved hand held tight.

He looked down. Harnett was on his back, his heart pumping blood through a ragged new hole in the mask where his forehead would be. He might have been staring at the branches above, but blood ran in thin streams over his unblinking eyes and from the hole around his nose. Christensen pried the gun from his fingers.

“Drop it.”

The air crackled. Christensen tossed the gun away.

“Step away, goddamn it. Don't touch him again.”

Christensen sensed movement in a thicket of pines to the left, but he dared not turn his head. “He's dead,” Christensen said. He nodded toward Brenna. “She needs help.”

“Step
away.
”

Christensen took a giant step backward, then a second. A lone figure stepped cautiously into his widened field of vision. Christensen cut his eyes as far as he could toward the man, who was slowly chewing a thick wad of gum behind his outstretched hands. In those hands Christensen could see a gun maybe twice as big as the one he'd just tossed away. The gunman was long and lean in hiking boots and jeans, and the shirt beneath his stylish anorak was flannel.

Christensen thought,
Eddie Bauer.
What he said out loud, though, was “Milsevic.”