Throw in the Trowel (25 page)

Marco

“G
lad you could join us, son.”

Rusty's voice came out of the darkness. Before I could react, two men grabbed me from behind, preventing me from reaching my gun. It was yanked from my waistband. A hand felt down my pant legs and found my knife. I'd been ambushed. Like a rookie.

A light went on over the hole, illuminating my wife tied to a rusty chair, her mouth gagged, her eyes wide, alert, relieved, frightened. I saw that and my insides twisted. If my hands had been free, I would have killed the nearest man. I locked gazes with her as my wrists were tied behind me.
I'm sorry, Sunshine.

It clicked in my head then. Gert had found the back door open. The men had brought Abby in while I was out searching for them. They'd been down here the whole damn evening.

•   •   •

I was pushed forward to the other side of the hole, where four dilapidated barstools had been resurrected from the pile of junk and put in a circle. “Have a seat,” Doug said.

“You assholes really think gagging my wife is going to make me cooperative?” I asked. “You want to talk to me, untie her.”

“In due time,” Henry said. “She hasn't been hurt, have you, Abby?”

She glared at him. That was my Fireball.

I sat on the stool and studied each man in turn, not giving them the satisfaction of asking what they wanted. Rusty flicked his fingers against his boots, clearly uncomfortable. I gave him a look that said,
What the hell are you doing?

“We need to explain a few things,” Rusty said, his expression pleading. “We want you to understand how it happened.”

“Why it happened,” Henry said.

I sat and waited. Silence unnerved people.

“You don't know everything about Kermit,” Doug said. “It would take hours to tell you everything he put my family through—the abuse, the lies, the shame, the neglect—for years before the drinking got bad.”

“Not just his family,” Henry said. “Kermit knew I was a hard worker and wanted to make money, so he promised me whatever it took to reel me in. He treated me like a son, and I actually fell for it. My father left my mother when I was two, so I'd never had a dad. Kermit became my dad.”

Henry looked down. “The abuse started slowly—a criticism here, a complaint there—making me try harder to please him. I worked from early morning until late in the evening, all week and every weekend, doing all the jobs Kermit was too lazy to do. Then the criticisms escalated, especially after he started drinking heavily. I blamed it on the alcohol at first, but then I started to see him for the selfish, mean-spirited bastard that he was.”

“My mother knew Kermit had cheated on her over the years,” Doug said, “and she suffered in silence because she believed divorce would be harder on us kids than living with him. I was the one who saw him with Parthenia. I heard Kermit plan to take the money from the business account and make a new life with her. ‘Away from those stupid, whiny brats of mine' were his exact words.”

“You told me he was undecided,” I said.

“We were hoping you'd think Parthenia did it,” Henry said.

“So you dropped off a photo of her, pregnant, from nineteen seventy-six.”

At Henry's nod, I asked, “What happened to the money?”

“We put it back into the account,” Henry said. “We would have gone into bankruptcy otherwise.”

“That ol' bastard was ready to leave them all with a foundering company without so much as a pang of regret,” Rusty said.

“I hated him,” Doug said through gritted teeth. “I would lie in bed at night and wish I could make him disappear. I would drag him home from the bar and think about driving him to the lake and pushing him in. The same day I heard him make his plans with Parthenia, I found him here late in the evening, drunk out of his mind, and I knew I had to stop him before he destroyed all of our lives.”

“So you killed him with a garden trowel that Rusty kept down here,” I said to Doug matter-of-factly, with a quick look at Abby. Her body was as tense as a coiled spring.

“I didn't plan to kill him,” Doug said. “I threatened to spread it around town about Parthenia being pregnant, unless he dumped her. But all he said was, ‘I'm leaving, and you can't do nothin' about it.' He was so drunk, he couldn't even stand. He asked me to help him get up, and I told him he could just die there.” Doug began to sob quietly. “He laughed at me.”

“It's okay, son,” Rusty said. “You don't need to say anything else.”

“They need to know,” Doug said through gritted teeth, wiping his face with his sleeve. “They need to know that he laughed so hard, he vomited all over himself. That was when I picked up the trowel. I wanted to hurt him for all the times he hurt us. I swear to God I never meant to kill him.”

But he did kill his father, and then he covered it up. I looked at Rusty. “Damn those brawling itinerants.”

Rusty had the decency to look ashamed. “So you were in on it, too,” I said to him.

“Yeah, I was in on it. Doug called me down here and showed me what he'd done. Poor boy was hysterical, sobbing, shaking all over, even had the dry heaves. I called Henry, and we met here and did what we had to do to protect the kid.”

“And you're still trying to protect
the kid
,” I said.

“We didn't want it to come to this, Marco,” Rusty said. “But here we are.”

They all looked at me, waiting.

“So we sing ‘Kumbaya'
and everyone goes home happy?” I asked.

“We're hoping you'll work with us, son,” Rusty said. “Drop your investigation. Tell the cops you reached a dead end or whatever. You'll know what to say.”

“Otherwise?” I asked.

The men glanced at one another. Rusty looked down. The other two gazed at me with cold eyes. “Otherwise you both end up in cement,” Doug said.

I didn't want to look at Abby. She was waiting for me to get us out of this, and I wasn't seeing a way yet. All I could do was stall for time so I could think.

I fixed my gaze on Doug first. “You know why I became a cop? Because I believe in justice. So what you're telling me is that you meted out your own justice that day.”

“That's it, Marco,” Rusty said. “The way it worked out, Kermit got what he deserved. The world became a better place with him gone.”

“Kind of a vigilante thing,” I said to Henry.

“I guess you could say that,” he said.

“Yeah, I get it,” I said. “The abuse ended, Henry got rid of a negligent partner, Doug got rid of his cheating father, and you got your high school sweetheart back, Rusty.”

They looked at one another with congratulatory smiles. Assholes.

I glanced around, checking for anything that I could use against them, but they'd cleared all the junk to the far end of the basement.

“See how well it all worked out, son?” Rusty asked.

“Rusty, do me a favor. Don't call me
son
anymore.”

They looked at me skeptically.

“What's it going to be, Salvare?” Doug asked. “Are you going to work with us?”

I had an idea. “Take the gag off my wife's mouth.”

“No, I think you need to answer first,” Henry said.

“No, I think you need to take her gag off first,” I said, letting my temper show.

At Doug's nod, Rusty got up and went to her, untying the bandanna in back. She spit it out and made a face, as though the taste in her mouth was bad.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Just thirsty.” She was signaling me with her eyes:
Don't you dare give in to them.

“Now her hands,” I said.

“You're not serious,” Henry said.

“Now. Her. Hands.” I used a tone that meant business, and they listened. I've known men like these. They weren't really brave. They were just desperate.

“Go ahead, Rusty,” Doug said. “Henry, guard the doorway.”

Shit.
There went my plan.

Abby rubbed her wrists and glared at Rusty. “I used to admire you.” She pulled off her new boots and tossed them in the dirt. Her symbolic gesture of
Up yours.

“Your answer?” Doug reminded me.

“Are you crazy?” Abby asked defiantly. “You're asking a former United States Army Ranger to cover up a murder? Are you
all
crazy?”

“Abby,” I said.

“How do you propose to kill us?” she demanded of Doug. “Shoot us, drag our bodies up the stairs, through the alley, and into your SUV? I don't think so. Imagine all the trace evidence you'd have to scrub off, not to mention having to carry two deadweights all the way to the end of the alley without anyone seeing you. Or maybe you think you can just bury us like you did—”

“Shut up!” Doug said, running his fingers through his hair. “Rusty, tie her up again.” He was tense, unraveling. “We'll bury them here.”

Abby looked at me as Rusty bound her wrists, willing me to hurry with our rescue. And I had nothing. What the hell could I do? I didn't care about me, but I had to get her out of this.

The men went into a huddle by the doorway, but I could hear their whispers.

“The basement has been cleared by the detectives,” Doug said. “They'll never look here, especially once we get the new cement floor in.”

“How do we, you know,
do
it?” Rusty asked, giving me a guilty glance.

“Marco's gun,” Henry said. “It's loaded.”

“But
who's
gonna do it?” Rusty asked. He was the least sure of them.

They said nothing for a few seconds; then Doug let out a breath. “I'll do it.”

Abby sprang from her chair and ran to me, curling up against my chest. I wanted to hold her and tell her she'd be fine, but I couldn't. I'd never felt so helpless in my life.

“They're bluffing,” she whispered.

“They're not bluffing,” I said against the top of her head.

She looked up at me. “What are we going to do?”

“Just go along with whatever I say. Don't antagonize them.”

“Get away from him,” Doug snapped, his voice edgy. He came toward us, pointing the pistol at me.

“Get as close as you can to the doorway,” I whispered, then said aloud, “Do what he says, Abby.” I watched her back to the side of the hole, but before she could step up onto the cement floor, Henry dragged her back into the middle.
Shit.

Doug moved behind me, so I twisted around so I could see him. It was always better to face the man with the gun. “We agree,” I said. “We'll drop the investigation.”

“Good to hear that, Marco,” Rusty said, his shoulders sagging in relief.

“It's too late for that, Rusty,” Doug said. “Abby's right about him. He's too honest.” My gun was shoved against my spine. “I knew it was a waste of time to talk to you, but the other two thought you might give us a break, that you'd understand Kermit was better off dead.”

“You can't play God,” Abby burst out. “You can't decide that another person has no right to live.”

“Shut up,” Doug snapped. He jabbed me with my pistol. “Kneel down in the dirt.”

“No,” I said. “You'll have to shoot me here. More of a mess to clean up.”

Doug swore under his breath. “Henry, help me drag him into the hole.”

Before Henry could move, I snapped my head back, hitting Doug in the diaphragm. As he gasped for a breath, I jumped to my feet, pivoted, and kicked the chair at him, then used one booted foot to send him crashing to the ground. Doug landed hard on the floor, but didn't let go of the pistol. With my hands tied, I was helpless to go for it.

Rusty grabbed my arms to hold me as Doug got to his feet, dusting off his pants. “You son of a bitch.”

“Just shoot him and be done with it,” Henry said.

I heard Abby struggling and turned to see Henry leading her back toward the dirt. She must have tried to make a break for the stairs.

I was shoved toward the hole so hard I lost my balance and fell face-first. Abby broke free from Henry's grip and knelt beside me. “Marco, whatever happens—”

“Get up,” I ordered through gritted teeth, struggling to my knees. “Get out of the dirt. Now. Don't make this easy for these bastards.”

Abby rose and turned toward the men. “You won't get away with this. You're crazy if you think you can.”

“Hold her,” Doug said. He put the pistol to my temple. Rusty glanced away.

“No, please!” Abby cried, her voice strangled, tears flowing down her face. “We'll do whatever you want. Just don't kill my husband!”

Suddenly, lights came on in the storage room and a barrage of footsteps sounded on the stairs. Shocked, I turned to see Reilly round the corner, gun drawn, followed by half a dozen of New Chapel's finest. I'd never been so happy to see cops in all my life.

“Throw the gun down!” Reilly shouted, as the other cops took aim at Doug. “Throw it down now!”

Doug backed away, startled, and tossed the pistol into the dirt.

“Hands up, all of you. Now!” Reilly ordered.

As the cops handcuffed the three men, Reilly cut through Abby's restraints and then mine. She wrapped her arms around my chest and squeezed tightly, but I did her one better. I picked her up in my arms and carried her upstairs, kissing her all the way.

At the top, I saw my brother pressed against the wall, biting his fingernails. He smiled in relief. “Thank God! If the cops hadn't gotten here when they did, I was going to go down myself.”

“You called them?” I asked, setting Abby down.

He nodded.

“How did you know we were here?”

“I found the back door propped open with a piece of cardboard, so I snuck downstairs to see if anyone had gotten in. When I heard what those guys were saying, I called the cops.”