Absolution (11 page)

Logan had one long gone black and morbid shadow that crossed his mind infrequently and disconcerted him.  It now materialized unbidden, and he drove on automatic as the dark memory emerged and played in slo-mo.  In what seemed an old black and white movie he was fifteen again and in the company of Richie Kerry and Elliot Warner, riding out to Miller field – part of the Gateway National Recreation Area – on their mountain bikes, to just explore, spot wildlife and swim in one of the many ponds.

Elliot spotted a white-tailed deer, and Joe saw an egret snap up a frog in its beak. It was August and hot as hell, and they leant their bikes against a tree and stripped down to their boxers and dived off an old rickety jetty into a murky pond; their splashing causing a line of snapping turtles to slip off a rotten log and vanish from view.

“One of those critters could take off your tallywacker with one bite,” Richie shouted to Elliot and Joe before he upended and disappeared under the surface.

As if a portent of doom, a cloud shrouded the sun from view, and a cool breeze blew through the trees to rustle leaves and cause branches to creak.

Joe and Elliot doggy-paddled and turned in circles, expecting Richie to swim towards them underwater and try to pull their shorts down.

Richie did not reemerge.  Joe had a bad feeling.  More than sixty seconds, that seemed an eternity, passed before Elliot shouted, “Over there, Joe,” and pointed to where bubbles broke the surface thirty feet away.

Joe swam to the spot and dived down.  The visibility was nil in what he now saw in his vagary as tea-colored water, and so he used his hands to feel around, then had to resurface to take a deep breath before trying again.  His fingers came into contact with cold flesh, and he thought it was one of Richie’s wrists, so grasped it and attempted to haul him up, but couldn’t.  Something was holding Richie in place.  Pulling himself further down, Joe realized that one of Richie’s ankles was wedged among the tangle of branches of a submerged tree that had somehow ended up at the bottom of the pond.

It took another ten or fifteen seconds to free his pal’s foot and get him to the surface.  He put his left arm around Richie’s chest with his hand under his armpit and used his right arm to swim to the side of the pond, where Elliot helped Joe to get the limp teenager out and onto the bank, on his back in thick, foot-high grass.

Joe saw that Richie’s denim-blue eyes were open, and knew that he was dead.  He started CPR, one hand over the other to pump the heart, breaking off every few seconds to give mouth to mouth as his mind screamed, ‘Breath damn you, breath, Richie, please don’t be dead’.

But Richie
was
dead.  Beyond resuscitation.  Beyond anything.

Elliot had ran to his bike and pedaled off in his sopping shorts and found an SUV with two park rangers in it just a few hundred yards from the pond.  They were drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, and started to laugh as they watched Elliot ride towards them, dripping wet.

The rangers had to pull Joe off Richie when they got to the scene.  He sat back in a daze, breathing heavily and in mild shock as one of them took over the lost cause and the other radioed for an ambulance.

The demise of his best friend had been a seminal experience; one that on reflection had in part modified his outlook on life, to prepare him for the death and violence that he would be faced with as first a soldier and then a cop.  It had also caused him to back away from truly meaningful relationships with others.  That was a downside.  He had become too insular, knew it, but couldn’t go back and start over, and told himself that he didn’t need or want to enough.  He was hard of body, harder of mind, and did not have the capacity to tolerate what to most people was a normal way of life.  You had to be happy in your own skin, and for the most part he was.  It was compromise, finding the middle ground and being accepting of the pros and cons.

As the phantom taste of the muddy, sulfurous pond water – that had flowed from Richie’s slack mouth into his – evaporated, grew fainter and was mercifully lost to him, Logan became fully aware of the present again and stopped the car at the side of the highway, to sit in the darkness and find composure and let the bad memory totally dissolve.  And when it had, he drove on and was soon at the cabin, parking behind Fran’s car.

Andy had heard the vehicle approach and knew that it could not be Logan.  He was not due back until at least the next day, and he would be on foot. She woke Fran and said, “There’s someone outside. We need to do something.”

Fran picked up the submachine gun that Logan had shown her how to use.  “It must be Slater’s men,” she whispered to Andy as she tiptoed through to the living room and aimed the weapon, intending to spray the door with bullets if she heard anyone approach it.  After what they had done to her house in Pisinimo, she wasn’t prepared to just wait and see if they intended to break in the cabin or just burn it down.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It
was nine a.m. the next morning when Zack got the call on his cell. “Mornin’ Sheriff,” he said.  “Do you have good news for me?”

“Yeah, Zack.  You got a pen and paper?”

Zack was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for the Mexican maid to serve him up a breakfast of steak and eggs.  He got up from his chair and went over to where a wall-mounted phone had a spiral-bound pad and pen below it on the counter.

“Okay,” he said.

“A guy by the name of Walter Corby lived in Tucson, but also owned a cabin near Ruby,” the sheriff said.  “He’s dead now, and he left the place to his nieces, Andrea Corby and Fran Wallace.  It took me a while to find the link.”

“The address,” Zack said, not interested in the details.

“There is no proper address.  But I can give you directions to it.”

“Fine,” Zack said and wrote down what he was told and ended the call.

His spirits were lifted, now that he was confident that he knew where Logan was holed up.  He would arrange for the cabin to be hit that evening, while he had the perfect alibi of being at the art exhibition and being seen there by many of the townspeople.

As Zack savored his breakfast and relished the thought of Logan being hopefully taken alive, the kitchen door opened and Martin limped through it supported by a hospital issue walking stick that the nurse had called an assistive cane.

Martin thought cane an erroneous word to describe it. It was made from some metal alloy, not cane.  And even though it featured three shaft pieces for a user to telescopically adjust the length of it, it was still a little short for him, and caused him to stoop slightly as he took the weight off his wounded foot.  Being almost six-nine was fine and dandy for basketball players, but a disadvantage in some ways to guys in other walks of life.

“Thought you’d be laid up for another day or two,” Zack said with his mouth full of steak.

“I got bored,” Martin said through his wired teeth.  “And the bed was way too short. They gave me some heavy-duty painkillers, so I’m fine, just slowed down a little.”

“You fit enough to take a team out tonight?” Zack said.

“Where to?”

“To where Logan and the two broads are hiding out.”

Martin wanted to smile, but couldn’t.  Nothing at that moment would give him greater pleasure than to settle the score with Logan.  His intention of tying up a few loose ends and heading west to his younger brother’s place in Yuma would have to wait.

“I feel better already,” Martin said.  “Where are they?”

Zack handed him the sheet of paper that he had ripped out of the notepad.  “Out in the boonies,” he said.  “They’ll be sitting ducks.  And, Martin, feel free to damage them, but bring them back alive if you can.  I want to meet Logan and deal with him personally.  Give me a call when you’ve got the situation under control.”

Fran’s reactions were fast. She somehow jerked up the short barrel of the MP5 as she simultaneously heard Logan’s voice and pulled the trigger, to empty the slightly curved, steel clip in just over two seconds, ripping a jerky path through the timber above the door.  The noise in the cabin was deafening.  Fran dropped the weapon and ran over to the door to unlock and open it.

Logan grinned at her. “Was it something I said,” he quipped as she embraced him.

“You said forty-eight hours,” Fran said.  “We thought it was Slater or his men.”

Andy hung back.  She had gone deathly pale and was visibly shaking.  She realized that an instant had been the difference between life and death.  Logan could have been almost cut in half by bullets if he hadn’t called out, or if Fran had not instinctively aimed high as she heard his voice.

A few minutes later they were sat at the table, waiting for the water to boil for coffee.  Logan told them what had happened in Ajo, and that he had decided to deal with Slater as he made his way to or from the exhibition he was due to attend the following evening.

“What will you do?” Fran said.

“Play it by ear,” Logan replied.  “Take the opportunity when it arises.”

Andy made the coffee.  Thought how callous and wrong it was to be planning a man’s death, and then reminded herself that Slater had been responsible for Sam’s terrible end, had burned down Fran’s house, and was their worst nightmare, hunting for them with the full intention of killing them all.

“I’ll go buy some home security stuff in the morning,” Logan said.

“I thought you said we would be safe here,” Fran said.

“I reckon we will be, but it doesn’t harm to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

He slept well, after another enjoyable night visit from Fran.  At eight in the morning he was back on the road in the ‘borrowed’ Kia.  He drove east for twenty miles to I-19, then south into Nogales.  Stopped to gas up the car, bought a long-billed ball cap and then drove round town until he found a gun store on a side street just a spit from the Mexican border.  He parked next to the curb, picked up his rucksack and crossed the sidewalk.  The faded sign above the door read; Old Mission Guns & Ammo.  Logan opened the door and a buzzer went off to alert the owner of a potential customer.

Leo Marks was a small, now one-armed vet of Desert Shield.  He had graying shoulder-length hair, a pockmarked face and features that reminded Logan of a rodent; maybe the runt of a litter.  His two front teeth were long, curved and yellow.  The guy was pallid, which contrasted with his almost black, close-set eyes that were in shadow beneath his pronounced brow.

“Help you?” Leo said to Logan.

“I don’t know,” Logan said.  “If you can’t or won’t, then I’ll find someone else that can and will.  I’ve got money, but no ID.  I could be a cop, but I’m not.”

Leo smiled.  It was not a pretty sight.  “You could always tell me what you were looking for, and we could take it from there,” he said.

“Anti-personnel mines,” Logan said.

Leo’s eyes widened.  “I sell guns, ammo and accessories,” he said.  “And the US stopped manufacturing land mines back in ninety-seven.”

“We still have one of the world’s largest stockpiles of them, though.” Logan said.

Leo shrugged his narrow shoulders.  “I can’t help you.  But out of interest, how many did you want?”

“Eight would get the job done.  And I’d need some ammo for an MP5 and a Glock 17, and a decent combat knife.”

Leo said nothing.  But the tip of his tongue flicked out of the corner of his mouth to slide along his bottom lip to moisten it, as the fingers of his remaining hand drummed on the glass top counter of a cabinet displaying handguns.  Logan could see that he was calculating what he could charge, which meant that he could supply the mines and ammo if he felt safe enough to.

“Okay, I’m gone,” Logan said, turning for the door.

“I’m taking a break,” Leo said.  “Join me for coffee.”

Logan stopped, but said nothing.

Leo sidled out from behind the counter and locked the door.  “This way.” he said, and went out back.  Logan followed him.  They left the store by a rear door that opened onto a narrow alley.  Leo set off at a fast pace, to reach the end of the alley and cross a street into another one.  They were soon in a rat maze of slum dwellings, which Logan thought was apt, as the shifty little man not only looked like one, but scurried like one.

Leo eventually stopped outside a steel-faced door covered in graffiti, opened it and climbed the stairs behind it, which led up to a large second floor room of what appeared to have been a warehouse in days gone by.

There was a long bar running the length of the back wall, and the open space facing it was crowded with wooden tables and chairs.  A juke in a shadowy corner was lit up and playing a Charlie Pride song about crystal chandeliers, and the click of pool balls bouncing off each other emanated from an area behind a fiberboard partition that sectioned it off from the main bar.

Logan gave the score of customers a fleeting glance.  There were a few Mexicans, a few Indians and a few whites.  No one appeared to pay any attention to him, but he knew that he would have been evaluated, and that because he was with Leo, not considered to be a threat.

“In the can,” Leo said to Logan.  “That’s where I do business like this.”

Logan pushed the door open.  The smell inside the filthy restroom was a mélange of vomit and urine and excrement.

“Assume the position,” Leo said.  “I need to check that you’re not wearing a wire.”

Logan kept hold of the rucksack, but placed his hands on the begrimed, chipped wall tiles – that were filmed with nicotine – and spread his legs.

Leo found the Glock in Logan’s pocket, but left it there.  “You don’t have a wallet,” he said when he was satisfied that his every word was not being transmitted.

“I don’t need one,” Logan said.

“Let me check the rucksack,” Leo said.

Logan unzipped the top and let him rummage in it.  The money was at the bottom in a blue plastic bag.  There was nothing else to find of any significance.

“What’s in the bag?” Leo said.

“Walking money,” Logan said.

Leo grinned. “Okay, let’s get a beer and talk business.”

Sitting at a table near a window strengthened with wire mesh, Leo drank a half bottle of chilled Dos Equis in one gulp, and Logan sipped at his.

“I could probably lay my hands on some old PMR-2A stake mines,” Leo said after belching loudly.

Logan thought it over.  He didn’t have time to be overly fussy.  The Yugoslavian-made stake mines would serve the purpose.  They were relatively small, shaped like a can with a recess at the base to fit onto a stake.  The explosive charge was TNT surrounded by an externally serrated fragmentation jacket, with a fuse fitted on a threaded adapter at the top of the mine that triggered a tripwire mechanism.

They haggled over the money.  Came to a mutually satisfactory price, and made to leave the illegally-operated bar.

“What’s in the rucksack,” a tall, well-built young Latino said as he rose from a chair to step in front of Logan.

Logan ignored him and took another step forward, but the guy just stood there like a tree.  Two of his drinking buddies got up to back him.

“He’s with me,” Leo said.  “Let it go, Sergio.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you’ll be on a slab in the mortuary before midnight.  You know the kind of people I have as friends.”

“I’ll deal with it,” Logan said, and hit the guy hard above the right ear with his left fist.

Sergio went down like a skittle in a bowling alley, rolled over on to his side and was still.  The other two guys were impressed, and not as stupid as Sergio.  They sat down again and drank their beers.

“You pack a hell of a punch,” Leo said as they walked back to the gun store.

“I know,” Logan said.

They arranged to meet two hours later outside the Greyhound Station on N Terrace Avenue to make the transaction.

Logan passed the time having lunch in a Tex-Mex diner near where the meet was to take place.  He ordered soft shell beef tacos with refried beans and rice off the specials menu, and a pot of coffee.  The food was good and the coffee was strong.  The taped mariachi music was a little loud, but seemed to fade away as he ate and planned all that he needed to do over the next several hours.

Leo was outside the station on time.  Logan approached him and they walked to a nearby park to sit on a bench and make the exchange.  Leo counted the money and Logan checked the mines, ammo and knife that were inside a well-worn carpet bag that Leo said he could keep at no extra cost.

They didn’t have anything else to say to each other.  Leo got to his feet and said, “Be lucky,” and walked away.  Logan watched him vanish from sight and then strolled out of the park and back to where he had left the car.

Fran and Andy were sitting outside the cabin when he got back.  They cooked up some chicken on the jury-rigged BBQ, and the three of them ate it with salad.

Logan thought that the sisters both looked good in T-shirts and shorts.  He liked Andy, but liked Fran even more.  What they had going would be as ephemeral as an adult mayfly’s life, but that was fine.  He could move on with good thoughts about her, and would always remember her as she was now.  There were very few things that didn’t tarnish if you had too much of them.  Most repetition, to him, wore as thin as cheap cotton after a while.  New experiences became old very quickly, so he always looked forward to what surprises were up ahead.

“What’ve you got?” Fran said after they had finished eating and Logan went to the car and removed the carpet bag from the trunk.

“Nothing nice,” he said as he walked over to the silvered planks of the porch, set the bag down and opened it.  “These are anti-personnel mines.  I’m going to rig them up just in case you have visitors while I’m away.  You need to know exactly where not to walk, or you’ll at very least lose a leg.”

“You’re making this sound like a war,” Andy said.

“That’s exactly what it is,” Logan said.  “If you believe that you may be attacked, then it won’t take you by surprise.  And if you’ve prepared for it, you’re more likely to survive.”

Ninety minutes later he was ready to return to Ajo.  He had placed all but one of the mines and tripwires in strategic locations that he was sure would be used by anyone sneaking up to the cabin.  He thought it may be overkill, but always worked on the assumption that it was better to be safe than sorry.