Jericho's Razor (24 page)

I went home, got five hours of sleep, and then went to see Alyssa at the hospital. Someone had brought her a change of clothes. Her arm was in a sling, and her bicep and shoulder were heavily bandaged. But, like Torrez said, she was lucky to be alive. Eli had nearly taken her head off. Instead, she had a gash than ran from her arm to her shoulder blade. It was going to leave a nasty scar, but the doctor assured her that with enough time and physical therapy, the wound would heal with no permanent damage. He warned her to take it easy for the next few days, eying me as he said it. He knew what we were planning to do and wanted to at least voice his objection. Back at my place, I took Doomsday for walk and told Alyssa to make herself comfortable while we were gone. I returned twenty minutes later to find her standing at the window with a bottle of Newcastle. Doomsday walked up to her, tilted his head and walked away.

“I don't think he likes me.” She said, setting down her bottle by the salsa bowl I use as an ashtray.

“He barely likes anybody. Sometimes I think he only tolerates me because I feed him.”

“Still. That's got to be some kind of warning sign.”

“He'll warm up to you.” I lied. Doomsday doesn't ‘warm up' to anybody. He either likes you, hates you, or is completely indifferent. The best Alyssa could hope for was him ignoring her completely.

Alyssa went to the bed, set her purse on the nightstand and kicked off her shoes. I helped her remove the sling and set it on a chair as she slipped off her blouse. I traced the white tape that secured her bandage with my finger, thinking again how lucky she'd been.

“I'm wounded. You going to go easy on me?”

“Not a chance.”

“Good.”

After that, we didn't say anything. Alyssa and I got lost in a perfect rhythm that made it seem like it was our hundredth night together rather than our second.

Torrez's words came back to me.
Tread carefully.
It was too late for that. I was falling for her, too fast and out of control to bother applying any kind of brake, even if I wanted to.

Chapter Twenty

I woke to Doomsday dropping my phone on me. It was set on vibrate and buzzed against my chest with an incoming call. I had already missed three calls, all coming within the last four minutes. After two more buzzes, this latest one went to voicemail. Seconds later, my phone emitted a soft chirp, letting me know that I had another message. Alyssa was still asleep. I sat up and grabbed a pair of sweat shorts.

Doomsday looked at Alyssa and then back to me, as though asking if this was going be a regular thing. My dog is protective and territorial and doesn't appreciate strangers invading his space. Other than me, Kat and Gus Tanner are the only people he does not growl at on sight. Alyssa was new and carried herself like a cop. It was also clear she was Kat's “replacement,” a designation that put her instantly on Doomsday's shit list. While I thought about the possible actions my dog would take in response to a new woman in my bed, an odor pulled me toward the door. I walked over and looked down at Alyssa's shoes. The stench coming from her pumps could rival the one that still lingered in my garage.

“Dude,” I whispered. “Really?”

He looked at me as though daring me to do something about it.

“Shitting on cue has always been a talent of yours that I've greatly admired. But this is seriously disgusting. You realize I'm going to have to pay for those, right?”

I took the phone into the living room as another call came in. The caller was listed as unknown, but I had no doubt who it was.

“How many lives do you have?” I asked my brother.

“At least one more.”

“The last guy who jumped off that bridge did it because he wanted to die. His wish was granted. When they fished him out of the water he looked like a crash test dummy that had been gang raped.”

“I'm obviously better than he was,” Eli said. “But I had an advantage. I spent some time cliff diving in Mexico after my release from federal prison. I learned how to hit the water without killing myself, how to hold my breath. It wasn't hard.”

“It was insane.”

“Insane would have been sticking around for the cops to shoot me. Now, speaking of cops. I'm guessing your new girlfriend is with you.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, ditch her and meet me at the mall.” He hung up before I could respond.

I looked back at Alyssa. Her arm was stretched out and propped on some pillows. Her wound had not been much of a hindrance last night, although some of our more ambitious maneuvers did threaten to rip out her stitches.

I dressed quietly. Doomsday gave me a “what gives?” look.

“I have to go out,” I whispered. “When Alyssa sees what you did to her shoes, there is a very real possibility she will shoot you. Good luck.”

My revolver was on the nightstand beside Alyssa's. The two guns were set handle to barrel, mimicking one of our many positions from the night before. I considered taking it, but decided to leave it behind. A crowded shopping mall on a weekend is no place for a shootout. And I doubted I would be able to pull the trigger on Eli anyway. Despite the horrific acts my brother had already committed, I still held out hope that I would be able to talk to him. My eyes caught a glimpse of a black rectangular object visible in Alyssa's purse. I reached in and found a small tazer device. 500,000 volts. Plenty to knock Eli on his ass if things got out of hand. I wasn't going to kill my own brother, but I wasn't going to allow another bridge incident, either.

With the Tazer in the pocket of my leather jacket and my keys in my hand, I looked down at Alyssa. Her breathing was slow and steady and there was a hint of a smile across her lips. That would vanish when she woke up and found me gone.

The most wanted man in the state sat in plain sight at the center of a food court in a crowded shopping mall, drinking Starbucks and eating a banana nut muffin. He wore a hunter-green ball cap and a tan Carhartt jacket, looking like a third-shift factory worker who just punched out and stopped for breakfast. I pulled up a chair. The metal feet of the chair scratched the floor as I sat down.

“I got you a coffee.” He said, motioning to the cup on my side of the table.

“I didn't come here for coffee, Eli.”

“OK. How about a muffin? These things are great. And I think the blond at the counter with the eyebrow ring kinda digs me.”

“You're lucky she didn't recognize you.”

Eli shrugged.

“That picture they're pasting all over town hardly looks like me. Besides, she's like seventeen and works at a Starbucks kiosk. How often do you think she watches the news? The only way she would have recognized me is if I were some celebrity who was dating Miley Cyrus.”

Eli went back to his muffin and chewed like it was last thing on earth he was ever going to eat. He carved it into small pieces with plastic knife and lifted each piece to his nose, stopping to take a sniff before placing it in his mouth.

“Prison,” he said, noticing me watching. “The food in the stir is … less than satisfactory. When I got out, I learned to stop and appreciate real food. You never realize what you'll miss until it's taken from you.”

“Very profound.”

Eli smiled and shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Jericho. When did you turn into such a cynical ass?”

“Right around the time you left a headless corpse in my garage.”

Eli started to say something, apparently thought better of it and shrugged it off. “Whatever bro.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and watched a couple walk into a toy store trailing a toddler who was jumping up and down in anticipation. Carolers could be heard from farther down, singing tidings of joy and good will.

“Christmas always sucked at our house, didn't it?”

“Yes, it did,” I said.

“You remember that one year I tried to smuggle a tree into the house? Father made me set fire to it. Then he beat me with a horse strap. I was nine.”

I remembered. I had found Eli on the back porch, bloody and crying. When I tried to help him, Peter turned the strap on me. It was hours before our mother, who would often play the good cop to Peter's bad cop, came out to bring us water and help us to our room.

“My first Christmas gift came in prison. It was from one of the guards.”

“What was it?”

“A book. Your first one,
Black as Night
. I think he was trying to show me that you made good, so I could too. I used it for toilet paper.”

“So did a lot of critics.”

Tables around us began to fill. To our right, a couple pulled out chairs and sat with steaming cups of coffee. Lines were forming at the doors of some of the stores advertising pre–Black Friday sales. I saw kids running around and retirees power-walking.

“You chose a good spot for this, Eli. I doubt that even Torrez would risk a frontal assault here.”

He seemed not to hear me.

“I had just got back from cleaning the fish when the feds showed up,” he continued. “Mom and I were in the kitchen. We were talking about your party for that night. She had baked a cake, and it was sitting on the kitchen counter. Chocolate with coconut, because she knew you liked that crap, even though anybody with sensible taste buds knows it's like eating dried-up paste.” Eli took a drink from his coffee, repeating the same procedure he used for the muffin. Lift. Sniff. Drink.

“Anyway, that's what we were doing when an FBI sharpshooter put her down with a high-velocity round through the bay window. It went right through her head. I was splattered with her blood and hair. I can still hear the shatter of glass. The thump of her corpse as it hit the hardwood floor. One second she was there; the next, she was put down like a wild animal by the federal agents who you had called in.”

“I didn't call them in, Eli. I was practically dead at the time. Calling anybody in would have been difficult.”

The couple at the table beside us giggled. I looked over and saw that they were making funny faces and taking selfies with their phone. I wanted them to leave. It wouldn't be long until Eli did what he came to do, and they were in danger of becoming collateral damage. I leaned over.

“Hey, you two. Get lost.”

“What?”

“Take your idiotic giggling somewhere else. We're trying to have a conversation.”

They looked at me like I had just pissed in their coffee. After tossing out the best insults their young minds could conjure, they stood and walked away. When they were a safe distance away, the guy turned and gave me the finger.

Eli shook his head. “You're still trying to save everybody. How's that been working for you?”

I pushed my coffee aside and leaned forward. “I'm sorry about what happened, Eli. But there was nothing I could have done. Our parents brought it on themselves, and on us. They were killers. They were freelance assassins who went around torturing people because they believed it was God's will.”

“They were our parents, Jericho! Our blood! No matter how hard you try to hide from it, they were our family. And you sold them out! You sold me out.”

I heard the crackle in his voice. Of all the regrets I had from that day, not being able to help Eli was the one that I couldn't escape with any amount of cigarettes, alcohol, or distance.

“I fought them off from the kitchen with my rifle,” he said. “I didn't know they were feds. I was fourteen, young and terrified out of my mind, and I was covered in my mother's blood. I thought we were being attacked by the wild, godless heathens that Peter always warned us about. When I ran out of ammo, they stormed in and beat the living shit out of me. Beat me so bad I couldn't move for over a month. Brutes with high-powered assault weapons and body armor, pulling a Rodney King on a scrawny fourteen-year-old. They did the same to our brothers. And our sisters. Beat them. Humiliated them. By the time they were done they made Waco look like a cozy little barbecue.”

Eli stopped and looked around the mall. “Have you ever been back there?” he asked.

“Once. Right after I got out of the hospital. I stood on the hilltop and looked down at it.”