The Jigsaw Man (29 page)

ing for him to move close so he could hit m e , I might be

able to spin around, deflect his gun away, and drive my

knife home.

It wasn't aperfect plan, and it probably wouldn't work

but I had to admit it wasn't a bad plan either; the best I

was going to get, anyway.

Do it then. Don't wait.

Adrenaline pumped through my veins, making me

primed and ready to make my stand, but I'd always

been a bit of a coward and fear made me hold off. I wasn't

ready to die yet. Maybe a better chance would present

itself around the next corner.

Dammit Mike! Do it now before it's—

"That's for enough, scumbag," Jackson said.

"What?" I stupidly asked. I looked around for signs

of a graveyard but there was n o t h i n g in sight. The path

looked the same as it always had, maybe even a bit nar¬

rower than a lot of the trail. "But what about the grave¬

yard? Drake said there was a—"

"Forget the graveyard, Mike. This is far enough. I'm

tired of walking and I'll be damned if I'm gonna freeze

my ass off out here digging a hole for a freak like you."

I turned to face Jackson, scared and frustrated I'd

wasted my best chance to win this fight, but there was

also a part of me getting pissed off. W h o did these

people think they were?

"So, you're going to plug me and then what, j u s t

leave me here to r o t ? "

Jackson smiled, raised his gun to point it at the cen¬

ter of my chest, and said, "Yeah, that sounds about

right. Any famous last words?"

This was really going to happen. Jackson was going

to shoot me dead, his finger already tightening on the

trigger. The time for delaying was over. One in a mil¬

lion chance or not, I had to act, and I had to act now, go

for the knife and to hell with the consequences. I was a

dead man whether I moved or not.

"No last words, Jackson " I said. "I'd like to show you

something cool, though "

Even while I was saying it, I knew it was a pretty

lame plan, but I reached for the knife anyway. Jackson

was standing at least ten feet from me so how was I

supposed to close the gap without getting shot? Maybe

I could throw the knife? Maybe I could—

Holy shit!

I saw her before Jackson did, and it shocked the hell

out of me. If n o t h i n g else, my bumbling plan to draw

out my switchblade had distracted Jackson enough that

he was looking down at my hand to see what I was pull¬

ing from my pocket. He never registered the presence

of a third person in the forest until it was too late.

Junie!

W h e r e she came from or how she snuck up on both

of us so quietly I'll never know, but when she attacked

she attacked hard. I thought she was carrying a baseball

bat but it was only a broken tree branch. By the time

Jackson realized what was going on, Junie was already

swinging. She was a small woman, but she walloped

Jackson so hard across the chest and neck he flew eight

feet backward, smashing against the trunk of a nearby

tree and slumping to the ground with a groan. Junie

moved in for another swing and I shook off my disbe¬

lief she was here rescuing me long enough to pull.out

my knife, trigger the spring that released the shiny

steel blade out to its full-length, and go help her.

Jackson was down and probably broken up inside, but

he was far from out. Junie raised the branch above her

head to strike again, but Jackson shot her point blank in

the belly, a red exit wound the size of a silver dollar

spraying out above her right kidney. The sound of the

shot was deafening, a thunderclap close enough to nearly

knock me off my feet. I didn't fall, though, didn't panic;

I kept running, closing the gap.

Junie fell off to Jackson's right; screaming only once

before hitting the ground. Jackson was watching her

fall, enjoying the moment from the look on his face,

but that look changed in a hurry when he saw me launch

into the air, diving on top of him. He tried to swing his

gun up to shoot m e , too, but I was faster than him, my

reflexes acting in survival mode now. I landed on him

full force, using my entire weight to drive home the

blade to the left of Jackson's sternum. He screamed but

the force of my body had driven the air from his lungs

and what came out sounded more like a car tire going

flat than a cry of pain. There was surprisingly little

blood but I knew I'd done some big-time damage. I was

no fool, though. I'd seen enough cheesy horror movies

to know that once you get someone down, you never

give them the chance to get back up. So I drove the

blade back into Jackson's chest a second time, and a

third, and a tenth. I don't know for sure how many

times I stabbed the guard or at what point he was dead,

but by the time I rolled off him his chest was destroyed

and there was no worry of a B movie sneak attack once

my back was turned.

Junie!

I had to help her.

Please let her be all right,
I prayed, but in my heart I

knew that wasn't going to be the case. She hadn't moved

from where I'd seen her fall. I dropped to the ground,

scooping Junie into my arms and used my hand to help

turn her face toward me. Her eyes were unfocused and

distant, but with a heroic effort she managed to gather

herself and look up at me. .

"Why, Junie?" I asked, tears in my eyes, overcome by

the magnitude of her sacrifice. "Why take a bullet for

me? We barely knew each other."

She was fading fast, blood bubbling from the corners

of her mouth, as well as from the grievous wound in her

abdomen. "Because they've hurt you enough," Junie

whispered. "I couldn't live knowing—"

That was it; the lights suddenly went out in her eyes

and Junie went limp, dead in my arms without the

strength to finish her sentence. She'd said all she needed

t o , though, and I pulled her closer to me and held her

tight as I wept for her, her crippled son, and her sense¬

less death. If I could have traded places with her on the

bed of forest leaves I would have gladly.

In a heartbeat.

I closed my eyes and prayed for the world to go

away.

C H A P T E R T H I R T Y - F O U R

Surprise, surprise, my prayers went unanswered. W h e n

next I opened my eyes the world was still there, cold

and rotten as ever, and I had two dead bodies lying at

my feet to prove it.

I took a deep breath to steady my frayed nerves, then

climbed shakily to my feet. I spent a couple of minutes

covering Junie up with leaves and saying good-bye. She

deserved a better grave and burial than that, but time

was of the essence and the shroud of foliage was the best

I could do with no shovel or tools. Jackson, I left to rot

where he lay, j u s t as he'd planned on doing with me. Let

the birds pick out his eyes and the rest of the forest ani¬

mals and bugs have their way with him for all I cared. I

had to get moving. I wanted to put as much distance

between me and this spot as I could before anyone fig¬

ured out Jackson wasn't coming back.

I made it about a hundred feet farther down the for¬

est path, j u s t around the next bend, when I finally found

Drake's cemetery.

My God!

The path didn't widen out a lot, maybe twenty feet at

its widest, but there were grave markers everywhere,

little white wooden crosses stuck all over the path and

covering the forest floor to my left and right. I didn't

bother to count, but there had to be sixty or seventy of

them, easy—maybe as many as a hundred.

I hadn't expected to see anything like this. Why

would Drake mark the graves? D u m p i n g bodies was

one thing, the animals and the elements clean up the

mess in no t i m e , but to mark the graves seemed like a

silly idea to me. W h a t if the police ever found this

place? Drake would be sunk, Dr. Marshall too. I couldn't

believe he'd allowed this. Unless, of course, they were

both arrogant and brazenly stupid enough to think

they were so far above the law they could do whatever

they wanted and consequences be damned. That was

it—had to be. There was no other answer for this evil

place. And that's what it was—evil—a shrine to N a t h a n

Marshall's God complex, a mockery of the poor souls

unceremoniously buried here to appease Drake's de¬

ranged superego.

These were the men and women from before the

basement incinerator, Drake had said. How many more

had died since, their collective ashes dumped in the

woods for the wind to scatter. Probably more than

this—a lot more.

My God.. .all those people/

The full scope of Dr. Marshall's madness hit me

then. I'd known he was completely off his rocker, and

Drake was no better, but I'd never known j u s t how nasty

and cruel they truly were. This cemetery made me sick

to my stomach. It also royally pissed me off.

Somebody had to stop these bastards.

Somebody with n o t h i n g to lose, a person who be¬

lieved that retribution was for more important than

their own personal safety.

Somebody like me.

That sounded good. It was j u s t the thing the hero in

every big-budget action movie would say. Trouble was,

this was my life, not a movie, and I sure as hell wasn't

anybody's hero. Far from it. But then again, it
was
true

that I had nothing to lose. And somebody
did
have to put

a stop to Dr. Marshall and his crazy boyfriend, Drake.

Ah, man, how did it ever come to this?

Deep down I knew I'd already made up my mind. I

was j u s t trying to avoid it for another few seconds.

Freedom was finally within my grasp, but I couldn't j u s t

walk away. I knew I couldn't. My conscience, having

always been a right stubborn bugger, wouldn't allow it.

Too many people had suffered here. Too many people

called to me from their nameless graves, tormented

souls who whispered the word
revenge
in my ear. They

deserved retribution—all of them, but especially Junie.

H o w could I walk away from her?

Fuck it. Marshall and Drake are going down!

I had no idea what I was possibly going to do, or if I

had it in me to pull something like this off, but as I

turned and started walking back toward the castle, I felt

good about my decision. I was scared, hell, who wouldn't

be, but in a good way that made me feel alive for the

first time in years. Today I had a chance to be more

than j u s t an expendable bum or a patched-together

sideshow freak. Today I could be the great equalizer,

the h a m m e r of justice—a hero for the dead and down¬

trodden everywhere. That was taking it
way
too far,

crazy talk, but I needed to believe in myself again—really

believe—something I hadn't done since before the car

accident that destroyed my family.

Back where Junie and Jackson had died, I stopped to

see if the security guard had anything on him that

might be useful. I grabbed his gun, of course, happy to

see it still had nearly a full clip of bullets. I also found a

small black penlight and a Bic disposable lighter, but

the thing that shocked me and made me shake with an

equal mix of fury and fear was a white, wooden cross

tucked into his jacket pocket.

Another grave marker.

Mine!

I put the flashlight and lighter into my pocket along

with Junie's switchblade, but the cross had a ten-inch

vertical shaft and it was too big to fit. I considered j u s t

throwing it away but it had a point on one end that

could maybe be used as a weapon. I stuffed it inside my

jacket and decided to take the damn thing with me.

The gun I kept in my hand and at the ready. Believe it

or not, I already had the beginnings of a plan forming

in the back of my mind. I didn't force it, j u s t letting it

simmer for a few minutes as I kicked some leaves over

Jackson's body. People would be coming to search for

him soon and covering him up might give me a few

extra minutes before my best weapon—the element of

surprise—was gone forever. In the m e a n t i m e , I had to

get my ass moving.

I took off at a run back down the forest trail. Well, it

was more of a fast limp but it was the best I could do. I

had to make it back to the outer edge of the forest be¬

fore Drake sent the reinforcements to look for me. He

would t o o ; I had no illusions about that. Surely he'd

have heard the shot that had killed Junie. My ears were

still ringing from the gun blast. Drake would presume

that shot had been Jackson shooting me, but if the guard

didn't show up at the castle to give Drake the gruesome

details, he'd know I'd somehow turned the tables on

Jackson and immediately send out the guards.