He staggered.
She pressed the attack, unleashing a barrage of blows to his face and body.
Garrett stumbled away and as he backpedaled, tripped and fell over Charlie, who knelt, hands cuffed behind his back near the fire. Charlie rolled out of the way as Sam charged past him.
Garrett jumped to his feet, swinging the knife wildly before him. Blood oozed from his belly and face.
“I’ll kill you,” he screamed, his voice high-pitched, angry.
He charged toward her, the knife leading the assault, but she stepped away from the blade and stopped him cold with a straight right hand.
His knees buckled.
She attacked with a flurry of rights and lefts, each connecting solidly with his macerated face. He staggered, attempting to ward off her blows, but she pounded him with a fury she never knew she possessed.
A wide left hook collided with his right jaw. His eyes rolled back as he spun, the knife slipping from his grasp, and fell face down in the fire. His bloodstained orange jumpsuit erupted into flames and his screams ripped through the cold night air.
His flesh seemed to feed the fire, which blazed red-orange, painting the rocks, the cacti, and her skin a hellish red. Garrett rolled, first one way and then the other, attempting to escape the inferno.
“Help me,” he screamed. His flesh blistered and bubbled.
“I thought you controlled everything,” Sam said, shielding her eyes from the intensity of the blaze.
“Please,” he begged, his voice now shrill.
“Ask Lucifer.” Sam backed away from him, the acrid odor of burning flesh assaulting her.
His struggles diminished to tremors, then he lay motionless, his skin hissing and popping as the flames consumed him. As the searing heat boiled the water from his tissues, his muscles and tendons contracted and flexed. His arms folded to his chest, fists beneath his chin, and his legs curled against his abdomen, drawing his charred corpse into a fetal position.
Sam stood, staring at the fire. Its angry red flames chewed on the remains of Garrett’s body, reducing it to a burnt matchstick figure. She made no effort to remove the body from the fire.
Standard procedure would have been to salvage what evidence remained, including the body of a murderer. But somewhere inside, Sam felt that anything short of complete destruction of his corpse might leave enough of him to regenerate, reanimate, and arise from the ashes like some hellish phoenix. Allow him to regain a foothold in this world. Better to let the flames consume everything she convinced herself.
The fear and anger that minutes before had pumped adrenaline through her blood stream, now settled in her gut. A wave of nausea gripped her. Her stomach knotted and cold sweat oozed from her pores. Her vision shimmered.
For a brief moment, she feared Garrett’s spirit had somehow leapt from the flames and into her. Could he do that? she thought. A week ago, she would have laughed at the idea. Not today.
What she felt was nothing that sinister. It was merely the aftermath of the conflict. Just as it had been years ago after the two shootouts in LA. The dissipating fear and anger, the stench of Garrett’s burning flesh, and the cold night air released a cold shiver through her, followed by another wave of nausea. She collapsed to her knees.
“Sam?”
The voice came at her from far away as if drifting on the breeze. She pushed it aside, her eyes focused on Garrett’s remains.
“Sam?”
She turned toward the voice. Charlie knee-walked toward her, his hands still cuffed behind his back.
“You OK?” he asked.
Was she? She wasn’t sure. “I think so,” she said. She struggled to her feet, her legs still weak, and walked toward him. “Let me get those cuffs off you.”
She snatched his key from his shirt pocket and unlocked the handcuffs. Charlie stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around her.
“Where are your clothes?” he asked.
“Garrett burned them. Said I wouldn’t need them anymore.”
She walked to where Nathan lay and knelt. His face was pale and drawn. He held one hand over the knife wound in his shoulder. “Are you OK?” she asked.
“I’ll live. How about you?”
“I’m OK. Let’s get you to the hospital.”
Charlie circled the fire and walked the 100 feet to his Jeep, cranked it up, and pulled it to where Nathan sat. He opened the back hatch.
“Here,” Charlie said. He handed Sam a pair of worn dark blue sweat pants and a gray sweatshirt.
Sam stepped into the pants. They swallowed her. She tugged the drawstring tight and rolled the cuffs, whose elastic had long ago given up, a half dozen turns. They looked like clown pants. The shirt fell over her, hanging to her knees.
“You look stylish,” Nathan said as he stretched out in the Jeep’s cargo area.
“Very LA, isn’t it?” Sam said.
Charlie drove, Sam sat shotgun. She used Charlie’s cell phone and called Cat Roberts, telling her they would be in the ER in twenty minutes. She then called Penelope. Though still shaken, she seemed relieved when Sam told her Garrett was dead.
“I’ll have Vince Gorman come by and get Carl’s body,” Sam told her. “After we get Nathan to the hospital, I’ll be there.”
She called Vince, apologized for waking him, and told him the story.
*
Doctor Cat Roberts walked into the waiting room.
Sam jumped to her feet. “What’s the story, Cat?”
“Good news. Nothing important damaged. Pretty clean wound.”
Sam exhaled heavily. “Thank God.”
“I’m going to take him to the OR. Get a closer look and clean the wound. But, I don’t expect to find any surprises. Come on. Let me take a look at you.”
She led Sam into an empty treatment room. After a quick general examination, she cleaned the dried blood from Sam’s hair and inspected the wound in her scalp. “Just an abrasion and contusion. Won’t need stitches. I’ll have Rosa clean it and put some antibiotic ointment on it. See me in three or four days.”
“OK.”
“I’d better get to work on Mister Klimek.”
“Tell him, I’ll be back later. I have a couple of scared little girls and a dead body at my house to deal with.”
“And maybe some clothes,” Cat said, eying Sam’s outfit.
“That, too,” Sam said.
*
Charlie drove to the office where Sam picked up her Jeep and headed home. Dawn was just beginning to lighten the eastern horizon. When she pulled into her drive, Vince Gorman and his son were loading Carl’s covered body into the back of their hearse. Penelope and Melissa, wrapped in a pale blue blanket, stood on the porch. They ran toward her, clutching the blanket around them as they ran. They looked like a two-headed woman. They embraced her, both talking at once.
“What happened?”
“Are you OK?”
“Is Richard really dead?”
“Relax,” Sam said. “I’m fine. And, yes. Garrett is really dead.”
Vince walked up, eying her up and down.
“Long story,” Sam said. “I’ll tell you later.”
The sound of a ringing phone drifted out the open front door.
“Want me to get it?” Melissa asked.
“Sure,” Sam said.
Melissa slipped out of the blanket and ran into the house. She reappeared in half a minute. “It’s Sheriff Walker.”
Apprehension swelled within her as she walked into her house. Garrett’s still alive, she thought. She picked up the phone. “Charlie?”
“Just got a call from Belinda Connerly. Billy’s secretary. Hysterical. Says Billy and his niece have been murdered.”
“So Garrett wasn’t lying. What did you tell her?”
“Nothing. That I’d be right over.”
“Want me to meet you there?”
“You get some rest. I’ll handle it. Is Vince still there?”
“Yeah. Just getting ready to leave.”
“Tell him to meet me at Billy’s bus after he drops Carl’s body at the morgue.”
“Will do.”
After telling the girls the story, Sam took a long hot shower, pulled on a tee shirt, and crawled into bed with Scooter. Sleep came quickly.
*
It was just past noon when she walked into Nathan’s hospital room. Cat Robert’s was talking with him. They both looked up.
“How’re you doing?” Sam asked.
“Better,” he said. “Thanks to Doctor Roberts.”
Cat smiled and looked at Sam. “I left a drain in the wound. For a couple of days. We’ll pump him full of antibiotics, but he’ll do great.”
“He’s too ornery to kill,” Sam said.
“Me?” Nathan said. “What about you?”
“I’m out of here,” Cat said. “I’ll leave this argument to you two.” She headed out the door. “See you later,” she shot over her shoulder.
Sam sat on the bed next to him and took his hand. “You OK?”
“Fine. A little sore is all. You?”
Sam lightly touched her head. “A little sore, too.”
She leaned and kissed him lightly on the lips, then lay her head on his bare chest. He stroked her hair. Tears escaped her eyes and fell onto his skin.
“It’s OK,” he murmured.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“You saved my life for one thing,” she said.
“I thought it was the other way around.”
She sat up, sniffed, and wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hands.
Nathan reached up, cupping her cheek, and pulled her down to him. He kissed her. When their lips parted he said, “You beat him. You were stronger.”
She smiled, then gazed toward the window. “What happened last night?”
“This week’s front page story,” he grinned.
“That’s a given,” she smiled and lightly punched his stomach. “But, what really happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. You know more about this kind of stuff than I do. Everything about the last week and especially last night is beyond my experience.”
“All I can tell you, is that strange things happen all the time. The stories you think we make up? This was one of them.”
“Does this mean I’m going to cough up moth balls or something?”
“No,” he laughed.
"Before Garrett fell into the fire, what did he look like to you?"
"Like Garrett. Why?"
"Just wondering."
"Come on, Sam. You saw something else didn't you?"
She exhaled loudly. "Snakeman. He looked like Snakeman to me. Weird, huh?"
"Not really."
She smiled and shook her head. "I guess nothing seems weird to you."
"I've just seen a lot of strange things."
"Then, what was Garrett? Satan? Beelzebub? Or some mortal being who happened to have special powers?”
“I don’t know," Nathan said. "Maybe he was Nita Stillwater’s ‘Beast with the Iron Finger’.”
"I thought about that," she said.
"And?"
"He did use stealth, came to people in their dreams, and carved out an organ or two. Of course, he used a knife rather than his finger."
"Basically the same thing," Nathan said. "What if the original beast, the one in the cave in North Carolina, the one that plagued Nita Stillwater's ancestors, was Garrett's ancestor, so to speak?"
"What if Satan created both of them?" Sam said.
"Or neither."
Sam sighed. “Maybe Garrett was all of them. Satan, Beelzebub, Nita's beast.”
“Aah. The universal question.” Nathan said. “Are all demons the same? Are all gods the same?”
Sam looked at him. “What do you think?”
“I’m Jewish. You’re Catholic. And there are millions of Hindus, Buddhist, Muslims, and Protestants. That covers most of the people on the planet. Oh, yeah, and there are even Satanists. Who’s right? Who has the answer? Whose God is God? Whose Satan is Satan?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do they,” he smiled. "In the area of gods and demons, the truth is hard to come by. I don't know what to believe."
She raised an eyebrow. "I thought you believed in everything?"
"No. I said I believe in the possibility of everything."
"So, is it possible that Richard Earl Garrett was Beelzebub? Satan's right-hand man?"
"Sure, it's possible."
She stood and walked to window and looked out. The sky was a clear blue and the sun warmed the window, which radiated the heat onto her face. “I guess we’ll never know,” she said.
"I would take him at his word," Nathan said.
She turned and looked at him, but said nothing.
"He said he was Satan's disciple," Nathan continued. "Based on everything that happened, that's hard to argue with."
Sam exhaled loudly. "I don't like to admit it, but I don't see any other explanation either. I don't know if I truly believe that, but I'm too tired to argue the point." She returned to him and sat on the edge of the bed. He took her hand.
"Regardless, it is a good story," Nathan smiled.
"It is at least that," she said.
"The big question is, if he is some kind of supernatural demon, is he really dead?"
"You saw him," she said. "Burned to a crisp."
"His body. Maybe not him."
"You mean like his spirit is out there somewhere looking for a body to inhabit?"
"Maybe."
She flashed on her dreams and on Garrett's Snakeman appearance as the fire consumed him. Her heart stuttered. She turned her head and looked at the door, then the window. Why? Did she expect Garrett's essence to float in on a purple mist and take her?
"What is it?" Nathan asked. "Are you OK?"
"Uh...yeah. I thought I heard something."
"You look like you saw a ghost."
She forced a smile. "No. I'm just tired." She kissed him, and then stood. "I'm going over to the office and see what Charlie has found out about Reverend Billy's murder. I'll be back later."
"I'll be here," he said.
Nathan lay on the plush king-sized bed in his suite at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Three weeks of healing had dissipated most of the pain from his stab wound. He worked the shoulder in a circular motion. A little stiff, but otherwise everything seemed to be returning to normal. He picked up the newspaper’s sports page and reread the page-three article. He knew every word. After all, he wrote it.
Las Vegas, NV--Last night, the world of women’s professional boxing took a giant step toward legitimacy, while welcoming a new star on the sport’s scene. Six highly competitive bouts took place at Caesar’s Palace, including Kristie Bates’ successful defense of her World Middleweight Championship.