The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (50 page)

The double doors weren’t
locked. I pushed one of them partly open. Nothing was in sight back
here except a twenty-foot-long trailer, painted white with green
trim, white-and-green trailer thirty yards away on my right, and a
beat-up brown Jeep parked in front of it. The Jeep had a
trailer-hook affixed to its rear bumper, obviously mate to the
heavy metal coupling built onto the trailer’s front, but the hook
and coupling were a few feet apart, not joined.

Before leaving Grinner on
the floor of Wintersong’s office I’d emptied his pockets. Nothing
had been of interest to me except a key ring with four keys on it,
one of them stamped with the Jeep name and logo. I knew Grinner and
Kell must have some kind of vehicle available, and remembered the
Jeep racing toward me and the gatehouse earlier today. So I’d put
everything else back into the corpse’s pockets, but kept the
key-ring.

It was almost a sure thing
that key fit the beat-up brown Jeep’s ignition. And the trailer had
to be the one Grinner mentioned to Kell when suggesting they flop
there. If Kell was in there now, I assumed he’d be alone, because
the two remaining guards were probably out front in the gatehouse.
Probably; no guarantees.

I stepped out onto the
loading dock, eased down to the graveled earth four feet
below—careful not to bang my cardboard-box carrier—and walked in
the open, but swiftly, those long thirty yards. When I stopped next
to one side of the trailer, a few feet from an open door, I could
hear audio from a television set inside. The Mercury-Bunion fight
wasn’t on yet; a commercial was, a gal confessing in a steamy
whisper, three times in a row, “When I’ve got sinus stuffiness, I
take—” I wasn’t sure, but I feared she had said NAZELKLEEN all
three times. Then a twangy-voiced male announcer began describing
action in a light-heavy bout on the undercard.

The Jeep was about six
feet from me. I moved over to it, sat my box, and cat, down on the
passenger seat, then got out Grinner’s key-ring and tried the Jeep
key in the ignition. It fit. I took a big breath, let it out
slowly.

One of the light-heavies
was pounding the other guy all around the ring, and the
twangy-voiced announcer was getting excited. This had to be as good
a time as any. With my fully-loaded Colt Special in my right hand I
moved to the trailer’s open door, up two steps, and
inside.

It was a cluttered
crudely-furnished room. Ahead on my left, beyond an unpainted
wooden counter upon which sat a brown phone, was an electric range
with a coffee pot on one of the burners. In the corner beyond the
range was a white refrigerator. There was a lumpy couch with a
folded-up card table resting at one of its ends, four large wooden
chairs—and the television set.

In one of the chairs, on
my right and about three feet from the glowing TV tube, slouched
Kell. He was alone, can of beer in his meaty left hand. He heard me
step inside, but obviously thought I was Grinner returning from his
tour of the buildings.

Without looking my way he
said, “About time you got back, Francis. What the hell you get hung
on?”

“
Me,” I said.

He jerked his big head
around starting to spring up from his chair, saw my Colt pointed at
his nose and thought better of it. The expression on his pale,
blotchy face wasn’t so much alarm or fear as disbelief.

“
You?” he said. “You? Where
the hell did you come from?” Without waiting for an answer, he went
right on, “Where’s Francis? Hey, where’s Francis?”

“
He’s dead, Kell. Which is
what you’ll—”

“
Aw, not Francis! Not
Francis!”

He got out of the chair,
all six-foot-three and two-twenty or so pounds of him, and all the
way up this time.

“
Don’t try it,” I
said.

That big sour face still
looked as if it was fermenting, but anger, or whatever emotions
were bubbling up in him, made his pimpled skin flush almost
healthily pink. He was wearing jeans and a dark blue sleeveless
sweat shirt, and I could see muscles in his arm bulge, wiry red
hairs wiggling, as he squeezed the beer can in his left hand. The
can crumpled, and beer spilled onto the floor near his
feet.

He was holding his hand
slightly before him, about waist high, and I could see his entire
hand—thumb, plus all four extended fingers, probably including
splints for at least the two I’d snapped—was covered by a
professional-looking bandage.

“
Francis,” he said softly.
“He was the only friend I got.”

“
So now you don’t have
any,” I said, and then—as he took a step toward me—thumbed back the
Colt’s hammer. “You want to join him, I’ll oblige you,
Kell.”

He almost took the second
step. It was close. He stared at my face for long seconds, then
dropped his eyes slowly to that bandaged right hand. And when I
said, “Sit down,” he sat.

After that, the rest was
easy.

I told Kell what I wanted
him to do. He argued, but his heart wasn’t in it, and two minutes
later he was sitting in his chair facing the wooden counter upon
which was the beige, not brown, very dirty phone. When I tossed
Kell my roll of surgical tape he opened his mouth and said “You—”
and let it go.

While I watched, to make
sure he did it right, he wrapped the wide tape around both his
ankles several times. He had a little difficulty, working primarily
with his left hand, but when he’d finished that part I was
satisfied.

He looked at me again and
said, “You goddamn...” But then finished his task, extending the
tape around both legs of the chair he sat in, grumbling and
swearing, but doing a reasonably competent job. I had him peel off
enough of the tape so he could toss—not hand—the bulk of it to me,
then stepped behind his chair.

I pulled his arms behind
him and taped them first to each other and then to the chair’s
back. When I finished, the big roll of surgical tape was only half
the size I’d started out with; but I figured, since I’d earlier
used some on the kid inside, there was probably enough left for my
purposes. Also, with Kell immobilized, I felt sufficiently
comfortable to ask him a few questions before pulling the telephone
over near his sour chops.

He was quite cooperative,
especially after I wondered aloud whether or not to bandage off his
hand and try for five little piggies. He started talking at the end
of round seven, and was all finished before the middle of round
eight—the TV was still on, and the announcer’s voice was a
half-noticed series of twangs in the background.

When Kell ran dry—which
didn’t take long because he knew little more than Grinner had
already spilled—I lifted the phone from its cradle. Kell had told
me the phone was working, and I’d listened for the dial tone once,
but I checked it again before poking the gatehouse number he’d
given me.

Then I held the phone in
my left hand, near his ear and mouth, and held the Colt Special in
my right hand, pointed at one of his eyes.

He did splendidly. I’ve
long had a hunch that most hoods are frustrated actors, and Kell
did nothing to change my mind. I could hear “Yeah?” from the
earpiece, and then Kell started right in. “Fred? You and Horse get
the hell down here quick, both of yez, it’s a goddamn
catasterphism—”

Squawking come from the
earpiece, and Kell rushed on excitedly, as though overcome by an
excess of catasterphizes, “Hell, yes, it’s me, Georgie, inna
trailer, you get here in a hurry—you and Horse both, both of you.
The sunbitch shot Grin—”

I’d been waiting for
something like that, and I shoved the Colt’s muzzle at Kell’s eye.
Well, not exactly at, but more kind of onto, or into, it, banging
the orb rather severely.

Kell let out a great
“OLP!” then went on, “...ah, it’s Francis. Francis, you hear me?
Who some call, Grinner by mistake—Francis is shot, he’s bleeding
all over here, and me. Yeah, yeah that sunbitch Shell Scott
killed—shot him, and Francis is bleedin’ his life’s blood...Will
you shut up?”

After a moment, “Yeah,
Scott, the P.I., he snuck in and I think the sunbitch is still
prowlin’—”

I hung up the phone. There
was a last strip of tape in my left hand, one about a yard long,
and I grabbed the free end in my right hand and started to press
the sticky gag over Kell’s mouth.

But he said, “Wait a
minute. You must be the dumbest sunbitch in California.”

“
Oh?” I smiled thinly.
“You’re sitting there like an Egyptian mummy, and I’m
dumb?”

“
I mean, you don’t really
think Fred and Horse is gonna fly in here and let you get the drop
on ‘em, and wind ‘em both up like me, do you?”

“
Sure. Why not?”

“
Man, you must be the
dumbest—”

Unfortunately, whatever
else he might have wished to say, I was unable to hear clearly
through the tape over his mouth. I wound the rest of it around his
head, then looked straight into his eyes, the good one and the red
one that was watering, profusely.

“
Count on it, Kell,” I
said, wearing a self-satisfied man-in-control smile. “Exactly like
you. No problem. Piece of cake.”

In truth, I was laying it
on him a little. A lot. I did not feel nearly as confident as I
tried to sound. Not nearly. But I should let Kell know
that?

I could hear a car—another
Jeep, probably—coming rapidly nearer, engine whining. At the same
time, from the television set, “...a beautiful right hand,
absolutely beautiful. Krynzik is down...”

I walked toward the open
door, stood against the wall as far from the door as I could get.
The Jeep was close, engine-sound dropping, then I heard the noise
of tires skidding, gravel flying.

“
... the count is
three...four...he’s not going to get up, not even moving, Krynzik
is destroyed!”

Car door slamming, running
feet crunching on gravel—sounded like another man close behind the
first one. I wasn’t sure, but I hoped it was both men,
running.

It was.

The first guard jumped
through the door without even looking around, just spotted Kell
lying on his side, taped to his chair, and ran to him saying,
“Whuh?”

The second guy came in
more slowly, and more carefully—looking first right—away from
me—then left, squarely at me. Me and my Colt. I jerked my head
left, wiggled the gun’s muzzle slightly. The man didn’t argue,
moved over to stand near the first guard, who was just turning
around.

In the now-familiar twang,
“... ten, that’s it. Krynzik still hasn’t moved. It was a left jab
set him up, followed by that beautiful right hand...A doctor’s
coming into the ring...”

Both uniformed guards had
guns. Not in their hands. In holsters. So, no problem
there.

Piece of cake.

* * * * * *

Hank got up, then sat down
again behind the desk.

There was, for the first
time in my brief memory of him, evidence of strain, maybe even
weariness, on his long narrow face. Since I’d come into the office,
five minutes ago, he’d seemed more subdued, less volatile, actually
more inclined to listen than orate, lecture, or volubly explode. At
least, so far.

On my way into town I’d
called Hank, but he’d said there was nothing to report yet, at
least nothing of special importance to me, and urged me to come
quickly. He’d seemed most anxious about the pictures I’d taken
inside Omega, and when I told him the camera was undamaged and in
my cat box—which may have puzzled him—he had asked me to bring the
camera “most expeditiously.” Then, as I was hanging up, I’d heard
him saying, “What box?”

When I’d reached the
office, just before six p.m., Hank was waiting for me, in the
company of a middle-aged woman I’d never seen before. Hank took the
camera, still loaded with its gold-mine, said, “Bueno!” and handed
it to the woman. She trotted outside, climbed onto a big
Harley-Davidson motorcycle, kicked it into a roar and zoomed
away.

In Hank’s office, while he
sat behind his desk, I brought him up to date hitting the high
points. In all of it, I managed not to mention Rusty by name, and
Hank didn’t ask about him. Actually, he interrupted me only once,
while I was reporting some of the things Kell had told
me.

“
Those two ruffians had
been stealing pets for three months? This was his admission to
you?”

“
Right. He and Grinner, the
guy I shot, drove around and grabbed two or three, maybe half a
dozen a day, dropped them off at Omega for Wintersong.”

“
Why pets? They are able to
get many animals from pounds.”

“
According to Kell,
Wintersong didn’t want pound animals. Claimed they were often
diseased, malnourished, too run down for his purposes. But pets
were likely to be well fed, lovingly cared for, in prime condition.
Dogs and cats, that’s all he wanted.”

Hank nodded silent, stayed
silent while I went through the rest of it. When I finished he then
said, “Very good, Sheldon. You have achieved results exceeding my
greatest expectations—as I expected.”

“
Well, that’s...As
you—?”