The Devil’s Share (26 page)

Her chin hit the floor, her head snapping back, and for an instant everything went red. Instinct got her hands under her, tried to push the floor away, and sudden pain tore through her left palm, made her cry out. He held her leg tight, and she twisted onto her back, kicked at him with a bare heel, hit his forehead. Blood was coming from his nose. She kicked again, and he swatted her foot away, starting to climb up her, pinning her with his weight. She tried to buck him off, couldn't. She looked up and saw the holster clipped to the bedsprings, swept her right hand toward it. It was still a foot away, unreachable.

His left forearm came down across her throat, his weight behind it. She punched at him with her right hand, aiming for the ruined nose, hit his cheekbone instead.

“Stop fighting me, goddammit,” he said. “Stop … fighting.”

Sparks in her vision again, his arm on her throat like an iron bar, bearing down. She raised her hips, trying to push herself closer toward the bed, her bloody left hand sliding on the wood.

Her vision seemed to narrow, constrict. His face was close to hers, red with exertion, grinning. A drop of sweat fell from his forehead to her lips. He gripped his left wrist with his right hand, pushed down. She felt something start to give way in her throat. She reached back with her right hand, felt the bed, the frame, then the springs.

All his weight on her now. The hardness of the vest beneath his sweater as he pressed into her, no space between their bodies, his face close enough she felt his hot breath. Her vision began to blur. Her fingers touched cool metal, plastic. The gun.

She drew it out, pressed the muzzle into his armpit, feeling for where the vest ended. Squeezed the trigger.

A flat crack, muffled by cloth and flesh. He cried out, rolled off her, and she fired again, the bullet hitting the wall behind him. She moved in the other direction, got her feet under her, tried to stand but couldn't find her balance. She fell back against the nightstand, knocked the lamp over, and he was up and moving fast through the doorway, into the hall. She fired at his back, heard his breath go out as the round hit his vest, and then he was gone.

She slumped against the bed, rested there for a moment, aiming the Tomcat into the darkness of the hall. Blood was in her mouth, and her tongue found a cut on the inside of her cheek, a loose tooth. She tried to steady herself, catch her breath, waiting for him to come back through the door again.

Her left hand throbbed. It was already swelling, the puffed flesh almost hiding the red hole in her palm. She held it close to her side, went into the hall. She could hear him breathing in the darkness.

She found the hall light switch, used the muzzle of the .32 to flip it. The track lighting went on.

He was on his knees in the living room, back to her, panting, head down, right arm draped over the back of a chair for support. Blood drops led from the hallway to where he knelt. Beyond him, the glass door rattled as rain blew against it. Thunder boomed outside.

She made a wide circle around him, went to the glass door. Rain was pebbling the inlet. The yard was dark and empty. Tied to the dock was a small dinghy, bobbing on the water.

He coughed, wheezed, looked up at her. “I think you hit a lung.”

“Are you alone?”

He coughed again, blood on his lips, then tried to smile at her. “I'm serious. You fucked me up.”

“You shouldn't have come back.”

“Too late for that now.” He rose unsteadily to his feet, leaning on the chair.

She pointed the gun at him. “Don't.”

He lowered his head, ran toward her. She fired, missed, and then he was on her, arms wrapped around her waist, lifting her, and they were going backward. Her back hit the blinds, the door, and then the resistance was gone, the glass exploding around them, and she was on her back in the rain, the Tomcat gone, Hicks on top of her again. They rolled down the slick steps and onto the grass. She got her knees up between them, pushed him away, kicked with both feet. He flew back, landed in a sitting position. She twisted, and there was the Tomcat, lying in the wet grass.

He rolled to his feet, came at her, teeth showing, and she grabbed for the gun, got hold of it, turned back just as he reached her, and shot him twice in the face.

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

She lay back on the grass, breathing hard, watching the rain come down. The slide of the Tomcat had locked back. She dropped the gun on the grass, got to her feet, almost fell, and had to sit on the steps. Hicks wasn't moving. He was on his back, one leg bent under him.

The shots hadn't been loud, had been lost in the wind and rain. No lights had gone on in any of the other houses. Her own deck was dark. She looked up and saw that the bulb for the motion sensor light was missing.

Thunder boomed again. She managed to stand, found the two shell casings, went back up on the deck. All that remained of this half of the door was the frame. There were scratch marks around the lock where he'd forced it.

Stepping carefully over broken glass, she pushed the bent blinds aside, went in, put the gun and casings on the counter. There was always the chance someone had heard the struggle, called the police, so she had to move fast. The body first.

In the bedroom, she peeled off her wet and bloody clothes, put on jeans and a sweater, a dark windbreaker, struggling to do it one-handed. Her left palm was swollen, the fingers curled into a claw, but the bleeding had stopped.

She went back out into the rain. He hadn't moved. She turned out his pockets, found car keys, a wallet, the magazine for the Glock, and a folding knife with a four-inch blade. She put them in her jacket, then caught him under the armpits, gripping with her left hand as well as she could. She dragged him down the lawn and onto the dock.

The dinghy was riding high in the water, the inlet swollen by the rain. Halfway toward the ocean, on the other side of the inlet, an outfall pipe protruded from the seawall. Gushing storm water churned the surface there, the current picking up speed as it ran seaward.

She caught the rope, pulled the boat closer until it was directly below the dock, scraping against a piling. The dinghy was old, unpainted. He might have stolen it from any number of houses on the inlet. Rainwater had gathered in the bottom.

Headlights passed across the bridge. She stayed low until they were gone, then caught Hicks's jacket, turned him over and pushed. He rolled off the dock and into the dinghy, his head thumping against the gunwale. He landed faceup. The boat rolled as if it would capsize, then steadied.

There was a single oar in the dinghy. Lying on the dock, she reached down with her right hand, stretched, caught the oar and dragged it up beside her. She had to rest then, her breath coming in gasps. A flash of lightning showed her Hicks's ruined face, lit as if by daylight.

She had to keep moving. If the rain kept up like this, it might sink the dinghy too close to the house. She used his knife to cut the rope, threw the loose ends into the dinghy, then tossed the blade out into the water.

The oar was harder to handle, but she got the flat end against the transom, pushed. The boat slid away from the dock, toward the center of the inlet. She tossed the oar down into it. It fell across Hicks's chest.

She sat there in the rain, watched the dinghy drift out, already listing to the side. It slowed to a stop about ten feet from the dock, sitting heavy in the water. Then it did a lazy circle as another current caught it, pushed it farther out. It began to move faster. As it neared the seawall, the water sluicing from the outfall pipe drove it on. It sat lower in the water now, but if she was lucky, it would reach the ocean before it sank or capsized. The vest would drag the body down.

There was nothing more she could do. She watched the boat vanish into the darkness, then went back inside.

Water was puddled on the living room floor. She threw towels down to soak it up, then got a sponge, scrubbed at the still-damp blood spots on the hardwood floor. There weren't many. Most of the bleeding from his gunshot wound had stayed inside the vest.

When she was done, she got a pillowcase from the bed. Into it went all the shell casings, then the disassembled parts of the Tomcat and the Glock, the magazines, the handcuffs, and the ice pick. She rinsed her hand clean in the bathroom sink, then poured hydrogen peroxide over the wound, grinding her teeth at the pain. She wrapped it as best she could with gauze and surgical tape.

Wind was rattling the vertical blinds. There was little she could do about the door tonight. She pulled one of the wrought-iron chairs inside, laid it on its side in the puddled water and broken glass. If police showed up at her door before morning, her story would be that the wind had driven the chair through the door.

She got an extra shower curtain from the pantry, a staple gun from beneath the sink. Holding the curtain up with her bad hand, she managed to keep it in place over the trim long enough to use the staple gun across the top and down the side. When she was done, the curtain moved like a bellows, the wind pulling at the edges, but it held, and no more water came in.

Exhausted, she sat down at the kitchen table, opened his wallet. Two hundred dollars in twenties, a California driver's license, credit cards. The wallet went into the pillowcase. She kept the money.

*   *   *

She found the car a few blocks away, in a cul-de-sac that dead-ended at the inlet. It was a Dodge Avenger with Tennessee plates, likely stolen. She knew he'd have a vehicle close by, couldn't have come far in the dinghy in that weather.

She parked her own car on a side street, carried the pillowcase to the Dodge, locked it in the trunk, then got behind the wheel and started the engine. She wore a pair of knit wool gloves, had managed to pull the material over her swollen left hand. The pain was a steady throbbing, keeping her awake, keeping her moving.

She drove a half mile west, paralleling the inlet, then pulled into the empty lot of a dark seafood restaurant. She parked in back, turned the lights off but left the engine running, got the pillowcase from the trunk.

There was a dock here for customers who came by boat. It ran fifty feet out into the inlet, ended on a floating platform. All the slips were empty.

She went out to the platform, the rain beating down on her, the floating dock unsteady beneath her feet. She tossed the shell casings and gun parts as far as she could, heard them splash, threw the handcuffs and ice pick out after them, then went back to the car.

She drove three towns north to Asbury Park, wipers thumping. She parked on an empty street near a housing project, left the keys in the ignition, took the pillowcase. The wallet went into a storm drain, the pillowcase into a Dumpster she passed. Walking toward the center of town, she saw the lights of the all-night taxi office next to the train station. She got a cab back to where her car was parked, paid with one of Hicks's twenties. Five minutes later, she was home.

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

The sun was high over the ocean, the water calm and flat. She stood on the boardwalk, looking out over the jetty at the mouth of the inlet. A light breeze blew in off the water. Gulls wheeled above her.

She was sore all over. Her hand was bandaged, but the swelling had gone down. She'd been to a walk-in clinic that morning, told the doctor she'd stabbed herself while defrosting her freezer, was chipping away at ice when the pick slipped.

He'd asked about the bruises on the throat, why her voice was hoarse, and she'd told him she'd run into a clothesline in her backyard two days before. He'd been skeptical, but hadn't asked any more questions, had given her a prescription for antibiotics and painkillers. The pick had gone through cleanly, without nicking any tendons. Her fingers were stiff, but she could move them.

Contractors were at the house now, replacing the glass door. She'd called them first thing in the morning, told them the storm had blown a deck chair through the glass. They'd had a replacement door in stock, would be done by the time she went back. In the bedroom, she'd moved a dresser to cover the bullet hole in the wall. There were no other signs of what had happened in the night.

She took out the phone she'd bought that morning, held it awkwardly in her bandaged hand, called Chance. When his voice mail picked up, she said, “It's me,” and hung up. Two minutes later, her phone buzzed

“Where are you?” he said.

“Home.”

“What's wrong with your voice?”

“Nothing. It'll pass. How's the leg?”

“Cleaned it out, patched it up myself. Another scar, but what's new?“

“How'd it go when you got there?”

“A little rough. Told her what I could. None of it seemed to have made much difference, though. I'd promised her once that I was out of it, you know? And she believed me.”

“I'm sorry.”

“She'll come around. We'll find someplace. Maybe another farm if we're lucky, if I can find someone to carry the paper.”

“You need some short-term money, let me know,” she said. “We'll work it out.”

“Should be all right for a while. I've already cleared out my Ohio accounts. I've got some more stashed away, here and there. That last deposit helped. There won't be any repercussions from that, will there?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“So what are you not telling me?”

She flexed the fingers of her left hand, felt the dull ache there.

“There was a little drama last night. I had a visitor.”

“Who?”

“Our military friend.”

He took a breath. “How did it go?”

“He won't be coming back.”

A pause on the line, then, “And you're all right?”

“Yes.”

“What about his employer?”

“He dealt with that himself. There won't be any blowback.”

“So we're clear?”

“We are.”

She heard him exhale. “They did some damage, though, to both of us.”