Blackbird (33 page)

I knew exactly what it meant, but I made it to Jana’s place a few minutes too late anyway. Slaloming through the traffic and blowing through lights with the bubble flashing, I tried Jana’s landline, the gallery and her cell again, getting no answer anywhere. I threw the phone down on the seat beside me. The street ahead was jammed both ways, and I angled between parked cars and bounced over the curb as I took to the sidewalk, mowing down half a dozen parking meters with the brushbuster. A few seconds later I had to cut back left to avoid a barbershop customer who’d stepped out in front of me and frozen, causing me to hit a couple of shopping carts someone had left in front of the Dollar Store. From the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of one of them spinning insanely through the air as it cleared the roofs of the passing cars and crashed through the display window of the Auto Zone across the street.

Reaching Border, I swung south toward Kiln-Roi with the accelerator jammed to the floorboard, veering from one side of the roadway to the other as I dodged vehicles, screaming insanely at their drivers to get the hell out of my way. As I approached the gallery I wrenched the wheel over, jumped the curb and smashed through the hedge, finally sliding to a stop between the gallery and the A-frame. Jewell’s white GMC van sat at an angle across the flagstone walk near the front door.

Jana’s silver Odyssey was in its usual parking place just beyond the walk, the side door wide open as if she and the girls had been unloading their luggage. But there was no sign of life anywhere that I could see – no talk or laughter, no wrangling over suitcases, no sound but the ticking of the cooling engines.

Knowing I was out of time and unwilling to concede
even another second or give any warning by trying the knob, I drew my backup SIG, forced out of my mind the white-hot pain from my knees and without breaking stride kicked the A-frame door off its hinges, bursting into the room while splinters were still flying.

What I saw was one of the scenarios I’d been praying for: Jana alive, but gagged and bound with duct tape in a side chair. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, the pupils dilated by fear as she looked at me, breathing hard. My own senses seemed to have sharpened supernaturally, so that every detail of the A-frame’s interior stood out razor-edged and brilliant, even the smallest of the wood splinters and flecks of white paint from the door frame scattered across the floor and the individual dust motes drifting slowly in the shaft of sunlight coming through the side window. The house was dead silent except for the tap-tap-tap of the battery operated clock on the wall to my left as it parsed time into seconds that seemed to stretch out like minutes. There was no other sign of life at all, no Jordan, no Casey, no cat, no Jewell.

I looked at Jana again, seeing fear and desperation in her eyes, a sheen of sweat forming on her forehead and cheeks, but no sign that she’d been injured physically. But her stress level had not come down with my arrival; it was still rising.

Suddenly I caught a whiff of sweat, tobacco, stale marijuana smoke, and concrete sealant, all of it combining to create the smell I’d noticed outside my shop the night I’d made LA’s bookends, the same odour LA herself had smelled at my kitchen door. I could tell it was coming from the kitchen. I moved as soundlessly as possible to my right to get a better angle on the kitchen entry, holding the SIG
in both hands and at low-ready, the muzzle directed toward the floor a few feet in front of me, trying not to think about how in a few more heartbeats Jana’s position would probably have led me to turn my back on the kitchen.

At that moment Rayford Jewell and Casey appeared from behind the dividing wall, Jewell wearing the Harley-Davidson jacket Jordan had described and holding Casey in front of him, one hand clutching her right breast under her sweater, the other holding a short-barrelled Taurus revolver, a .38, with the muzzle against the side of her neck. He was grey, sweating and weeks past his last shave, his hair bound with a filthy red bandanna, his meth-ruined teeth like an abandoned graveyard. Looking at his drug-shot eyes, I saw a feral hog at bay, a thing long past fear and completely devoid of reason.

‘Where’s – ’ I said before something in Jana’s eyes stopped me. I glanced back at Casey. Same look.

Jordan was in the house, but Jewell didn’t know it.

Having no idea exactly where she was, I began mentally reviewing the walls, appliances and other obstacles that could be concealing her, trying to calculate which ones could be counted on to stop a bullet, and visualising trajectories on the other side of the ones I knew wouldn’t.

‘Say, po-leece,’ Jewell croaked. ‘If I’d known you was comin’ I’da baked a fuckin’ cake.’

I said nothing, watching him closely and trying to control my own breathing. His hands shook slightly with a fine amphetamine tremor, but he had a solid, white-knuckled grip on the revolver.

‘We fixin’ to have us a little party before I head out for the coast,’ he said. ‘I’m thinkin’ this little coochie-mama here might wanta come with me. Kind of a payback for Jerry,
right? Daughter for a brother.’ He leaned down and nibbled at Casey’s ear. ‘Bet I can make her last a whole week.’ Shuddering, she stared at me with huge eyes.

‘Can’t see that working, Bone,’ I said. About two-thirds of his head was behind Casey’s. The SIG’s grip was solid in my hands, the three tritium dots steady on Jewell’s exposed eye. I had put more than three thousand rounds through the weapon without a jam or misfire, and I’d never picked it up without making sure the magazine was full and there was a round in the chamber. At the training range this was a dead-certain shot. But what was outside the ten-ring here was not white paper but my daughter’s skull.

‘Better hope it does,
Lieutenant
,’ hissed Jewell. ‘Only other way we go is I finish this little trout here, and then we find out how quick I can get to you and take that piece-of-shit gun away from you while you’re trying to shoot through her.’

Looking at Jewell’s expression, I saw no weakness, no indecision, and no doubt. He was going to do exactly as he threatened.

No options left now. No more decisions to make. Right here and right now the entire justification for my presence in the universe came down to what I did in the next second. I shifted my weight invisibly for better balance and began my trigger squeeze.

But at that moment I suddenly understood with absolute clarity where my other daughter was. And what she needed from me. I gently eased the pressure on the trigger, trying to keep the SIG completely motionless.

Jewell’s expression and body language didn’t change; he hadn’t seen my reaction. Careful not to look up, I stared
hard at Casey, cleared my throat and waited a second to be sure I had her full attention.

Then I said, ‘Hairball,’ as sharply and authoritatively as I could.

Jewell looked at me in confusion but said nothing.

Casey’s wide eyes blinked a couple of times, and a moment later her beautiful, delicate, mortally endangered throat began to convulse.

The gagging sounds caused Jewell to look down.

‘Hey,’ he said.

Casey vomited noisily down the front of her sweater, over his arm and onto the polished wood floor.

‘Shit!’ cried Jewell, reflexively pushing her away.

I glanced up in time to see the thirteen-pound, 3,000-page
Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
Jordan had saved up her allowance for months to buy, tightly bound shut with the neon-pink laces from her sneakers, falling in deadly silence through the three storeys of air above Jewell’s head. With the sound of a slamming car door it struck the crown of his skull and collapsed him bonelessly in his tracks, where he lay motionless, his eyes vacant and a trickle of saliva starting from the corner of his mouth. I grabbed the Taurus, checked its cylinder, and stuck it in my belt.

‘Daddy!’ cried the fouled Casey as she scrambled up from the floor. ‘He caught us! He was gonna kill us!’ She looked down at Jewell as she wiped her mouth with her clean sleeve. ‘But you came!’

Outside, the sirens of half a dozen cruisers wailed as they closed in from different directions, and from overhead I heard the loose, flapping thumps of Jordan’s sneakers coming down the stairs as I ran to free Jana.

Mouncey burst through the side door, weapon at low-ready. ‘How many we got, Lou?’ she said tightly, taking in the collapsed Jewell and scanning the upper floors.

‘He’s it,’ I said, stripping away tape from Jana’s mouth.

‘Ow!’ yelled Jana. ‘Shit!’

Mouncey put up her gun.

‘We clear in here,’ she said into her radio as I handed her the Taurus. ‘One bad guy, he down. Look like the Lou kilt him with a book.’

She bent to frisk Jewell and check for a carotid pulse, shaking her head once at me when she didn’t find one.

FORTY-THREE

Mouncey had taken Jana and the girls to CiCi’s for therapeutic pizza and Cokes, and LA had just gotten here to Lanshire to meet me. Trying to fight off the acid edginess that for me always came after the wrong kind of adrenaline rush, I looked at her sitting across from me on the end of the sofa. ‘Hypnotise me again,’ I said.

She raised her unbandaged eyebrow.

‘Why?’

‘There’s something I’ve got to know.’

I explained what I wanted.

She was silent a moment.

‘Okay,’ she finally said, getting up to adjust the lights. ‘Go ahead and start your breathing routine – ’

–
I’m weightless and moving without effort or sensation over the springtime landscape of Rains County, drifting along above the quarterhorses and cattle herds of the Flying S, the long brown box of Braxton Bragg and the green rectangle of the football field beside it
.

Now it’s Sunday. Daz, Johnny and I are going to the antique car show at the fairground, and I’m here at Johnny’s house to pick him up. Johnny’s mother saying her son is in
the shower and telling me make myself at home. Would I like something to drink? A Coke?

Yes, ma’am, thank you
.

The house is open and airy, the pine floors clean, bright pictures on the walls, comfortable furniture. Mrs Trammel is glad to see me. She thinks I’m a good influence on Johnny, who was getting a little wild before I came along and Johnny got into football. You were like the cavalry, she has said. She is a schoolteacher, fourth-grade
.

You can wait in his room if you like, she says
.

Sipping Coke, I stroll into Johnny’s bedroom. On the inside of the door there is a poster from some vampire movie, featuring a woman in black lipstick, black nail polish, a torn black dress, with two black fang-marks on her neck. The room is messier than I could get away with, the bed unmade, Johnny’s blue jeans and sweater on the floor where he dropped them on his way to the shower, a couple of soft drink cans and a half-finished Baby Ruth on the dresser. The radio is playing ‘I Remember You’. The window is open and the white muslin curtains gently lift and fall in the warm breeze. I can smell the asters in the flowerbed outside the window
.

I wander over to the little table Johnny uses for a desk. Among several magazines I notice a collector’s album, drab green canvas backing, with a hand-lettered label reading:

I.
Republican

II.
Imperatorial

III.
Imperial

I have always known Johnny is a coin collector. He uses these coins for his magic tricks. But the hobby doesn’t interest me, and until now I’ve never seen the whole collection. Idly flipping through it, I find an array of lopsided, roughly struck coins, some with serrated edges, others worn almost featureless or with cracks and cuts in the rims. A weight too heavy to bear grows in my chest. I want to turn away but movement is impossible. I can’t look at what I’m seeing, but neither can I look away –

‘ – three, two, one – wake up, Biscuit,’ said LA.

I looked at her and wiped my eyes.

‘Why were you crying?’ she said.

FORTY-FOUR

LA and I made it to Rick Hart’s office without seeing any Texas Rangers or warrant-servers. Bytes had been called in again, this time on the state’s dime, and had set up his laptop and a few peripherals on a table in Hart’s law library. Now he was looming like a mantis over the keyboard, watching the monitor with unreadable, long-lashed eyes as he worked to get his systems talking to each other. He was wearing a green Rice sweatshirt and baggy khaki chinos, boat shoes on long sockless feet despite the season. The way his reddish hair spiked up reminded me of a cartoon character who has just been surprised, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved this week. I saw his Adam’s apple travel to the top of his neck and back down as LA and I walked into the room. He looked up as we joined him. ‘Hello again, Lieutenant. Hi, doc,’ he said, doing a quick double-take as he saw my expression. His face was open and innocent, and if he felt the weight of what he was doing, it didn’t show.

Somebody had brought coffee for LA and me, and I waved mine off with thanks while LA accepted hers. We stood back as Kevin worked, his face expressionless and still but his fingers dancing like insane spiders over the
keyboard, the screen images coming and going so fast I couldn’t tell what I was seeing.

Trying not to sound impatient, I said, ‘Anything?’

He transferred his attention back to me. ‘No, sir, but I’ve been working on the list. Let me just get this started – I wrote this program myself. It should help.’ He manipulated the mouse, typed in a command and clicked a few more times. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘What you see here is Dr Gold’s actual total caseload.’

A column of initials, all the As and the first few Bs, appeared on the right side of the screen.

‘And over here we have the ones you gave me.’

On the left another column of initials flashed on, short enough that all of it fit on the monitor screen.