Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) (33 page)

“Elizabeth got away,” Heath said. The pride in her voice cheered Anna somewhat.

“So I noticed.”

“She just slithered out when the plane exploded,” Heath said.

“Smart,” Anna managed. Concentrating on what Heath said was hard. Speaking in whispers was hard. Being cold in the dark was hard. “It’s a hard life,” Anna said.

“First thing she did was come looking for me,” Heath said.

Anna wished somebody who didn’t want to kill her would come looking for her.

“Wily found me,” Elizabeth said fondly.

Elizabeth had set the headlamp on the ground. Between her feet, she held a strip of torn aluminum. From the shape of it, Anna guessed it was once part of a strut. Wily lay beside E, his chin on her thigh, watching her saw at the plastic.

“Good old Wily,” Anna said. At the sound of his name the dog raised his eyes. Anna looked into them. The darks were darker and the amber more golden in the lamp’s light. “Hey,” she said.

The dog gazed at her. He seemed to scarcely notice her.

“Wily?” Anna felt panic swell in her chest.

The dog turned his eyes to the face of his mistress as she sawed at her bonds.

The Wily of the woods, Anna’s comrade in arms, was gone. This was just a dog. A good dog, but just a dog. Anna almost howled with loneliness. Had she been crazy for a while? If she had, she liked the part of crazy with Wily. Crazy. Killing men and running with wolves.

More battles had to be fought. No time to mourn fallen comrades. Whether or not they really existed.

Prying her eyes from the dog’s devotion to his young mistress, she asked, “How are you doing with the ties?”

“Slow,” Elizabeth said, “but coming.”

“What do we do now?” Heath asked, a thread of sound from the murky shadows.

“Kill the dude and Reg,” Anna said wearily.

“That’s cold,” Heath said.

“Yes.”

“I’m okay with it,” Elizabeth said.

“Without the plane, my guess is the dude will try to take Katie and Leah out the logging road to wherever they left their vehicle, then make a run for it. That or murder them, bury the bodies, and write off the ransom,” Anna said.

“The pilot had a satellite phone,” Elizabeth said. “The dude called somebody named Mr. Big.” She snorted her derision.

“Damn,” Anna said. “If he has a phone, he can get another plane. Soon as it’s light, the guy could land.”

“We are so screwed,” said Heath.

“Not yet,” Anna said. She said it for Elizabeth. Personally, she thought Heath was right. “Anybody have water?”

“I do. The dude left it next to my body,” Heath said.

“What a sweetheart.” Anna accepted the bottle and drank. Life-giving, that was the right description for water. Life poured down her ashy throat and she was renewed. Still damaged and miserable, but capable of believing they had a chance. Where there was life, there was a chance. “Anybody have any idea how long until dawn?” she asked.

“It has to be soon,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t think nights are this long in Anchorage in January. Got it!” She held her freed hands up in the faint glow to show them off, then turned out the headlamp, plunging them into the total lightlessness of a cave at midnight.

“You have the strength of ten men,” Anna said.

“I ate,” Elizabeth admitted with audible embarrassment.

“Good,” Anna said. “Times like these, eat when you can and rest when you can. Like we used to say fighting fire: If you can stand, you can sit. If you can sit, you can lie down. If you can lie down, lie down in the shade.”

A small gray-blue square appeared bobbing like swamp gas over Heath’s chest. Anna watched it wondering if it was a harbinger of further madness.

“It’s five fifteen,” Heath said. “Sun should be up in less than two hours.”

Heath had found the cell phone in the pocket of Jimmy’s coat. Before Anna could ask, she said, “One bar, no coverage. Clock works, though.”

The dude had a satellite phone. For all they knew he could have called in the marines. Hordes of barbarians could be skulking up the logging road with Uzis and flamethrowers.

Between them, Anna, Elizabeth, Heath, and Wily had five good arms, seven good legs, one set of pointy teeth, a sharp-edged chunk of twisted aluminum, and a clock.

“We’re all set,” Anna said and closed her eyes.

FORTY-EIGHT

Charles poured two fingers of Jim Beam into one of the little waxed paper cups from the box. Lifting it slightly, he toasted the pilot.

Toasted the pilot.

The grim humor would have pleased him, had he been in a mood to be pleased. Charles had worked jobs before where the best-laid schemes gang agley, as Brother Sebastian used to say. If one stayed long in this business, it was inevitable, but he’d never worked a job as screwy as this one.

Jimmy missing, Sean killed, the pilot in flames, howling of wolves and seeing of ghosts: This was one for the record books. Charles had no doubt that demons were real. Jesus Christ himself saw and dealt with demons. The Bible was unequivocal on the demon issue. Demons did exist, did possess people and, on occasion, animals. Even if the Bible hadn’t gone into such detail regarding demons, Charles knew from experience that that much was true. He also knew it was rare in the modern world. Not because demons had gone the way of the dodo and the passenger pigeon. Demons walked the streets and rode the subways in greater numbers than at any time in previous history.

Thy name is legion, Charles thought and sipped his whiskey.

Possession was rare in modern times because demons had no need to possess a resisting soul anymore. Millions of souls were awaiting with arms outstretched to welcome demons in. Why go mano a mano with Max von Sydow when boys with automatic weapons are just begging for a chance to slaughter little children by the score?

Jimmy, James R. Spinks, forty-one years of age, out of Detroit, Michigan, IQ of 84, walks out of camp, never walks back in. Charles assumed he’d gotten lost in the dark. The eerie noises could have been anything. Loons, coons, hyenas, whatever passed for wildlife in these woods. Tonight there’d been a dog barking, or a coyote, a fox, a wolf. Charles didn’t know if wolves and coyotes barked like dogs or only howled. The noises could have been Jimmy in a panic. Who cared. No Jimmy was a blessing. The wolves were welcome to his stinking carcass.

Reginald Waters, ex-gangbanger, low-end drug dealer, con man, into bookies for a hundred and seventy-three grand, says he has seen Jimmy’s ghost as well as the dog, whose bones had snapped audibly when Charles smashed him into the tree, and seen him wearing a Superman cape, no less. Unlike Jimmy, Reg wasn’t borderline retarded, but he’d found something that scared him more than the collectors his bookie was going to send after him if he didn’t come up with the cash. Reg had reached that level of terror where men gibbered. Charles had been the instrument of that kind of terror often enough to recognize it. Under the influence of all-consuming fear, nothing a man—or woman—said could be trusted.

Sean Ferris, small-time muscle. Philadelphia, Chicago, then Detroit. Rapist. The Hendricks child said Jimmy smashed in Sean’s head with a stone, then tried to lure her into the big bad woods at night.

That was three; three times Jimmy had appeared.

Three might matter. Christ rose in three days, appeared to the apostles three times.

One possibility was that it was Jimmy. Not the oaf who couldn’t remember which was his drink cup and which was his spit cup, but a demon-possessed Jimmy who could appear and disappear at will.

Demons.

The pilot, on fire, burning man, arms out like the holy cross; that was sufficiently demonic to set a nun’s rosary to quivering.

However, what self-respecting demon would possess Jimmy Spinks’s sorry self? And to what end? Demons weren’t in the business of saving the virginity of female children, or offing one of their fellows. Sean was a child molester, a rapist, a demon’s dream come true. Wasting Sean was wasting a good resource.

If the individual making Charles’s life such a trial wasn’t Jimmy, possessed or unpossessed, that left the fifth woman. Charles had not thought of the fifth woman since the cripple had told him she’d missed the canoe trip due to family issues. He’d taken that statement at face value. More fool he. The sin of pride, one of his favorites. A cripple would not dare lie to him. A cripple wouldn’t lie at all. A cripple might grovel or beg, but never show the presence of mind or the cunning to lie.

Charles stared through the rich brown liquid into the bottom of the Dixie cup. Surrounded by the likes of Sean and Jimmy, guns and knives, that broken piece of human flotsam refused to quit, or even to shut up. She reminded him of something. Arnold Schwarzenegger, that was it, at the end of
Terminator
when all that was left of him was a torso and a couple of arms, and he was clawing his way along the road after the hero. That would have been Heath, clawing her way after him, if he hadn’t killed her.

Respect, that’s why he’d shot her in the thigh instead of messing up her face. No pain in crippled legs, and bleeding to death was a peaceful exit. Blood under the bridge, he thought. Eyes scanning the clearing, then the top of the walls, he took another sip of whiskey.

The fifth woman.

He was having trouble getting his mind around the concept—the reality—of a fifth woman. The fifth woman killed Jimmy? The fifth woman took the dog? The fifth woman dressed in Jimmy’s clothes and scared the shit out of Reg? Unseen, unheard, unnoticed, this fifth woman smashed Sean’s head in?

If Sean was killed by this invisible woman, why didn’t the Hendricks child go away with her? Why did she insist it was Jimmy? Confusion? Was she told to lie? Could the child have the presence of mind to lie to him, say it was Jimmy, and go on lying to him?

Charles shook his head. Demonic possession made more sense.

Ceasing his constant scanning of the perimeter, he fixed his eyes on Katie Hendricks. Pale, sylphlike, a pupa of the venomous butterfly she was apt to grow into. Female children weren’t his bailiwick. No females were allowed in the monastery when he and Michael were growing up. They had attended all-boys Catholic schools. Entry into the world of women hadn’t come until Charles was nearly twenty-two. Adult females held no mystery for him. Female children held no interest.

Watching Katie Hendricks sleep in the circle of her mother’s arms, he thought how like Gerald she looked. On the heels of the thought came a memory. Reg:
Hey, dude, she’s seen a picture of you.

The plane, the food, the trudge had knocked that from Charles’s mind.

He did not allow pictures of himself to be taken. Once, that had been easy; see a camera, break it. In the age of cell phone cameras, one never knew. Possibly he was in the background of a photo some nincompoop had put on Facebook, or walking past during a video that went viral.

If the child had seen him in an anonymous context it wouldn’t matter—for several days she’d seen his living face. She could describe him to her heart’s content and it wouldn’t matter. Bernie, even the FBI, if Bernie screwed up and got caught, couldn’t do much with that, not after he’d had a shave and a haircut.

Context, connections, that’s where things got dicey. Putting his face and a person, place, or thing together would eventually lead to a name. Charles was not off the grid; he had merely built himself a life in the interstices.

He tossed the cup and the last few swallows of whiskey into the fire. Walking softly, he crossed to the Hendrickses. Both were deeply asleep, exhausted. He, too, would be exhausted if he allowed himself.

He knelt beside them. Tickling Katie lightly on the back of the hand, he waited for her to wake. Eyelids fluttered, then opened. In the low light, they were the dark blue of irises in early spring. “Hi, Katie,” he said in what he hoped was a kindly confidential whisper. “You saw a picture of me.”

Warily, she nodded. Yes indeed, this one could lie.

“Where did you see it?” Charles could see this child, this infant, considering what would be the right answer. Fortunately for her, she decided on the truth.

“Daddy had it,” she admitted.

Leah’s eyes opened.

Daddy
had it. Gerald Hendricks had it; not anonymous, disastrous.

“What are you talking about?” Leah Hendricks insisted. Since he’d taken her, Ms. Hendricks had grown a spine and a voice. Too bad she’d never get to exercise either.

“Your daughter says her daddy has a picture of me,” Charles said in the same kindly manner. Leah Hendricks had not grown a new face. Hers was more open than her daughter’s. She was startled by the question; she didn’t know about the picture either. “Where did you see it, Katie?” Charles asked.

Katie glanced up at her mother. Leah had no guidance to give her.

“In a box in Daddy’s closet,” the child answered. “It wasn’t exactly you, but like you. You were younger and with longer hair. You were smiling.” This last sounded like an accusation.

“Anything else in Daddy’s box?”

Katie shook her head, her blond hair, clumped with ash and sweat, writhing Medusa-like on her mother’s chest. “Just the picture and a bunch of mushy e-mails from Momma that he’d printed out.”

“They weren’t from me,” Leah said. Her face clouded. She wanted her words back.

“Why did you think the e-mails were from your momma?” Charles asked.

“They were signed ‘your loving partner.’”

“Bernard?” Leah’s eyes went suddenly wide with knowing. “Michael!” she said. “Michael Bagnold.” Narrowing her surprised gaze, she looked hard at Charles. “Michael is your brother, isn’t he?”

“Was,” Charles said.

Leah Hendricks had put it together. Connections would be made, contacts, monks he kept in touch with, the church he and Michael had attended, the chapel fund in Michael’s name.

Rising, he took the satellite phone from his coat pocket and crossed to the far side of the shed.

FORTY-NINE

“Momma?” Katie said, sounding confused.

“Never mind, Katie-did.” Leah kissed the top of her daughter’s head. Katie fell back to sleep. Not so Leah. Michael Bagnold had been one of her husband’s business partners when she and Gerald met. She had met the third man only once. Barnyard, Michael had called him because he left shit that his partners were always inadvertently stepping in. Bernard Iverson, Barnyard, had only ten percent of the operation before they squeezed him out.