The Reckoning (30 page)

“Did they find him?”

“Yes. In the east parking lot.”

“How did he get there?”

“He jumped.”

“
Jumped?
”

“Yes. They found his coat on the roof by the maintenance door.”

Nick could not get his mind around this. “Where is he now?”

“He's…in the basement. The morgue.”

Nick started to get out of bed, and his face went paper white, and the room began to disappear.

He got himself back in control. “Kate. Who's out in the hall?”

She found her voice.

“Beth and Eufaula went back to see about the kids. Mavis Crossfire is here. She's been in and out all day.”

“Mavis. Good. Can I see her?”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure.”

Kate went to get her.

In a minute they were back, Kate looking tight and worried, Mavis hobbling after her on a fiberglass ankle cast, but no crutch. She was in uniform, crisp and blue and gold. She looked as if she had lost weight, and some of her light had been dimmed, but she was still Mavis Crossfire. She came to the edge of the bed, looked down at him.

“Well, I'm happy to see you awake, my friend.”

“How's the ankle?”

Mavis smiled, let it fade away. “Bugger my ankle. You know about Frank.” A statement, not a question.

“Yeah. Kate just told me. How well can you get around?”

“Better than you.”

“Have you looked at Frank's room?”

“The hospital room? Yes. I've been all over it. I was looking for…something. Anything that would explain…what he did.”

“Did you find an iPod and some headphones?”

She thought about it.

“No. I didn't. I remember him wearing them last night before Yarvik showed up. I guess they took them away when they got him into the ER.”

“Were they on his body? When they found him?”

“No. Not in his clothes either. I'd guess they're still somewhere in the ER downstairs.”

“Kate says Frank was agitated. Anybody ask him why?”

Mavis gave it some thought. “They told me he was trying to get up…to look for something…and they wouldn't let him.”

“So they knocked him out and left him alone.”

“Yes.”

“Without his Chopin,” said Nick, mostly to himself, but they both heard it.

“Chopin?” said Mavis. “The piano player?”

“Yeah,” said Nick. “The piano player. Mavis, can you go get somebody, bring him here?”

“Sure will. Who?”

“Jack Hennessey.”

“The fire captain?”

“Yeah.”

She thought it over. “No way he'll be free to break away. Too much going on. Got a fire at Saint Innocent Orthodox, a broken gas main at Bluebonnet and North Gwinnett. And a stuck elevator full of ankle biters at the Dial Tower. If you like I can try to get him on a cell, or Dispatch can patch me through.”

“Got your radio?”

“I do.”

“See if you can get him.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. Please.”

Mavis pulled out her mobile, keyed
SEND
, had a brief exchange with Central. Nick and Kate waited. A gurney went by, a body on it, covered with a sheet head to toe, one withered hand hanging down. The gurney was followed by two young women, both crying, and two men, the husbands, looking grim.

“Yeah, Jack, this is Mavis—have you got a minute?”

“I got thirty seconds.”

They could hear a siren in the background, and men shouting, and machinery working, voices in the distance, a crowd of some kind. “I got Nick Kavanaugh here. Hold on.”

She handed the radio to Nick.

“Nick. I heard you were shot?”

“Yeah. But only a little. Are you still wearing those headphones?”

A pause.
“You called me about that? No offense, Nick, but we don't have nearly enough fans for all the shit that's flying around right now—”

“Frank Barbetta's dead, Jack. He went off the roof here early this morning, and I think he went because they took away his headphones.”

“Jesus.”

“Do you still have yours?”

A pause.
“Yeah. Chopin. Got one bud in, 'cause I need to hear what's going on around me. It was Frank's idea.”

“I know. He told me why. Jack, my advice, you keep them both in whenever you can.”

“I will. Fucking buzzing is like the worst migraine a man ever had. Look, you were there.”

“In the tunnel? With Dutrow?”

“Yeah. Did you get it?”

“The buzzing? No.”

“Lacy Steinert?”

“No. I don't think so.”

“Barb Fillion?”

Nick looked at Kate, and the memory came back, the woman in a blue uniform touching the glass—
–go wake them—

Nick looked at Kate. “Kate, was Barb Fillion here last night?”

“She was. I was going to tell you—”

He went back to the radio. “Yeah, okay, looks like Barb Fillion was here.”

“But her partner Kikki, he's dead, I hear?”

Nick looked at Mavis, who nodded.

“Man. I didn't know.”

“Well, there you go.”

“What do you mean, Jack?”

“Able-bodied guys.”

“What, like she was
choosing
people?”

“That's what Dutrow said, wasn't it? Down in the cave? Maybe the fucking thing, whatever she is, needed options. Spares. In case something went wrong.”

“Why not me?”

“No idea. Maybe you're immune. Who the fuck knows? But she got into Frank for sure, and me, and maybe Kikki Matamoros, and maybe it killed him.”

“That what you are, Jack? A spare.”

“Maybe. She gets around to me, I'm going off a roof, just like Frank. That's hard, man. Hard. I really liked Frank.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“
Look, I gotta run.”

“Okay.”

“Nick. You got any idea what the fuck is going on?”

“Yeah. I think I do.”

“Good. Then do us all a favor?”

“I'll try.”

“
You're a cop. Go fix it, will ya?”

Danziger was riding through the pines, deeper and deeper into the forest, the Hanoverian mare moving well underneath him, branches slashing at him, the horse jigging and jacking around the tree trunks, hooves clattering on stones and then kicking up red earth over the flats, pine needles flying around like splinters.

The horse was in beautiful condition. Danziger felt she could run like this for miles, moving like a dancer, never wavering, ears forward, intent and eager, seeming to enjoy the chase, and up ahead a half mile those pasty man-things were running and running, not even stopping to get off a hazing shot as Danziger closed in on them.

They had gotten a good long start on him because he had stopped to check on Albert Lee—
I'm not hit too bad, Charlie, go get the man—
and then racing to the barn to saddle up Virago, galloping back up the lane, passing Glynis, who turned to watch him go, calling after him, something he couldn't hear over the drumming of the horse's hooves and the jingle of her harness.

“I'll bring him back,” he called to her as he drove through the wheat field and put the horse to the stone wall. Virago rose up like a big black bird, and Danziger, soaring with her, felt a rush of sheer joy in his chest as Virago came down like silk on the other side, caught her footing, snorted, and accelerated into the trees.

And a half mile in, Danziger had spotted the guardians, a tight pack of them, pelting down the sloping forest floor, less than a quarter mile away, the pine trunks soaring up all around like temple pillars, like being in a massive green cathedral filled with amber light and striped with long black shadows.

On better ground, the trees thinning out, he kicked the mare into a flat-out gallop, risking it all—his neck, the horse's legs, both their lives—thundering over the needle-thick earth, jerking the reins left and right, the horse snaking around the pines like a black ribbon.

Three of Teague's men stepped out of a blind at a range of two hundred yards, lifting up their long guns. Danziger saw the flames erupt from their muzzles, heard buckshot pattering through the branches at his left, and then the sounds of the shots, muted explosions deadened by the forest pressing in all around.

He put the reins between his teeth, still moving fast, closing the gap, one fifty, one forty—they were men, or looked like men, pale and staring, expressionless, motionless, watching him ride in. The ground was an easy slope here and a good gunhand on a steady-going horse could fire on the full gallop more accurately than at a rocking canter—the three men fired at him again and Danziger felt a cloud of buckshot go zinging past his cheek and something stung his left ear.

He steadied the BAR and put out ten rounds—calm and steady single-shots—and the three white figures went rolling and writhing down, falling away as Danziger thundered up a small slope, crossed a stretch of flat ground, got to the bush blind, and rode through them.

A teenage boy, his chest a bloody pit but still moving, clutched at Virago's harness. Danziger pulled out his Colt and shot the kid point-blank. The blast took the boy's face off and he fell away. Danziger glanced back to see him on his knees, hands cupping his shattered skull, and then he went down onto his belly.

Danziger looked ahead and spotted another cluster of them, moving through the trees, maybe three hundred yards—seven or eight small figures in white and blue shirts and black trousers, and in the middle of them Abel Teague, black coattails flying as he stumbled over a fallen trunk. Danziger wished for a scoped sniper rifle as Virago balked at a sudden ravine and he had to rein her in. No matter. He had iron sights, a rear notch, and a blade up front.
Use what you've got.

Halted now, with targets in sight, he dialed up the rear sight wheel to three hundred yards—
a shot any deer hunter could make
. He changed out the half-empty magazine, pocketed it, slammed in a full one, switched the fire-select button to A for auto, steadied the mare, and braced the BAR in a pine notch, centered it in the middle of the pack, on Teague's running figure.

Too many trees.

The BAR had an effective combat range of five hundred yards and those men were running away fast. He took his time, checked his sights again, concentrated on that tiny black figure; they were running toward a clearing in the forest, so he'd have no time for a second burst before they were back into the trees again…all or nothing.

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

Now.

All of them were out into the clearing, a ragged line of running figures, Teague out front. He let half a breath out, held it, squeezed the trigger; Virago, tight to the pine trunk, didn't buck or flinch—a perfect cavalry mount. Danziger emptied the box magazine—twenty rounds out in four seconds, spent brass chattering away to his right, casings clanging on stones, fire and blue smoke erupting from the flash suppressor, the gun jerking and pumping, his body braced against the recoil. A chain of copper-jacketed slugs—each weighing a third of an ounce and delivering a thousand foot-pounds of force on impact—went sizzling away at twenty-eight hundred feet per second. They covered the distance between Danziger and the running men in less than a heartbeat.

And hit them
hard
.

Danziger saw the blood flying and the black flowers sprouting on the backs of their shirts, their skulls bursting into shreds of bloody flesh, arms flailing as the heavy rounds ripped through them, and the tall black figure going down into cottonwood brush.

Then…nothing.

Silence and stillness.

No wind.

No birds no animals no brooks running.

Danziger's ears were stunned from the gunfire, and the world around him was wrapped in silence. He could feel Virago's barrel heaving under his legs, the mare blowing and jerking at her bridle, and the faint jingle of harness brass. He could hear his own breath rasping in his throat, his heart pounding, and when he touched his left ear, his fingertips came away bloody.

Across the valley floor he could see a scattering of dead men at the edge of a cottonwood stand, little doll figures, arms and legs every which way, blood spatters and splinters of white pine showing across the black tree trunks.

The light was fading. If they were smart, if any of them were still alive, they'd go to ground and wait for him to come to them. As soon as he started across this valley he'd be wide open. But this was a hunt, and there was nothing to do but go in and finish them off.

Danziger kicked out the spent magazine, racked the bolt back, slipped the half-full mag back in, slapped the base to set it in solid, flicked the fire-select button to F for semiauto.

Then he reloaded the Colt, stuck it into his belt, patted the horse's neck, and gently eased her forward. They worked down a sudden gulley, came up on the other side and out onto the valley floor.

The pines here were farther apart, and the ground was smooth, a carpet of pine needles, a few rocks here and there, some deadfall trunks rotting under the needle beds.

Beyond the forest the sun was going down, the golden rays slicing up the hazy forest air, and the sky up above was glowing violet and turquoise. The sound of Virago's hooves was muffled because of the dense blanket of pine needles and because Danziger was nearly deaf from the BAR.

As he moved toward the cottonwood stand and the scattered dead men he watched his flanks and he watched the branches overhead and he turned often to see if someone was coming up behind him.

It was entirely possible—even likely—that someone had lived through that terrible fire and Danziger could be riding into somebody's muzzle right now, the man tracking him from behind a cottonwood, his finger on the trigger, one eye closed, breathing, breathing.

Nothing he could do about that.

He got across the valley. No one shot him. Or his horse.

He reined Virago in about fifty feet away from the cottonwood stand, slid out of the saddle, and got his boots on the ground.

He led the horse forward and tied her—loosely, in case he got shot dead—to the upraised branch of a fallen pine, the branch sticking up out of a thick mat of pine needles.

Danziger, his nerves on fire, thought the spindly branch looked like a dead man's arm sticking up out of a shallow grave.

He raised the BAR up, covering the cottonwoods, and slowly moved forward, finger on the trigger, letting the rifle lead him.

Twenty yards on, right at the base of the stand, he reached the first dead man. He was lying on his belly, his legs splayed out, his head gone, bone fragments scattered in front of him like bits of broken crockery. Danziger used a boot to roll him over, bent down, and put a hand on the man's belly, feeling bones and gristle under his hand.

The body was cold.

He'd been dead for only five minutes, and he was stone cold. Danziger moved on through the others, checking each one, finding six men, and they were all dead, all shredded up by the BAR.

And a few yards up, another one.

A middle-aged white man, bony as a stick, skin as blue as skim milk, lying on his back, his entire belly gone, his intestines scattered around him like blue rope.

His chest was rising and falling. His eyes were open and he was blinking slowly at the sky.

Danziger stopped beside him, his Colt in his left hand, the BAR steady on the dying man.

The man—the guardian, the creature, whatever the hell it was—turned his head and looked up at Danziger. His lips moved.

Through the soundless bubble he was wrapped in, Danziger was barely able to make out what the…thing…was saying.

“I…can remember…”

“Remember what?” said Danziger, his own voice too loud inside his skull.

The creature closed its eyes and Danziger thought it was gone, but in a moment it opened them again. The thing had gray eyes and blue-white skin and black hair. It looked like a man. Maybe he was.

“I think there was…a yellow house.” Closed his eyes again.

“What
are
you, anyway?” said Danziger.

“I…I'm not…not this.” Opened his eyes, stared at Danziger. “What…what are
you
?” he asked.

“Charlie Danziger. A man.”

“A man? So…was I…She's out of my skull now…and I can remember some things…I had a name…and a yellow house…and we had land…
She
got into me…but now she's gone…I remember I had a wife…and we had a yellow—”

He just
stopped
, his eyes still open.

Danziger eased into the cottonwood stand, as quietly as he could, pushing the branches aside with his Colt hand, keeping the BAR up, ready to fire. There was blood spatter on the cottonwood leaves. A few yards into the stand he came on a bundle of black cloth, Teague's suit jacket.

He picked it up—it stank of the man himself—and saw that one side of it was speckled with blood. He touched the blood. It was cold.

He searched for Teague's body all around the cottonwood stand and never found it.

On the far side of the cottonwoods the pines began again, and he could see where a man had run away across the forest floor, a crooked track cutting through the carpet of pine needles, the forest floor sloping gently away toward the tree line a mile down the hill.

He walked back to Virago, got in the saddle, moved out, skirting the dead things, picked up the foot trail. He slung the BAR over his left shoulder, shifted the Colt to his right hand, kicked the horse into a trot, and followed Teague's path.

The last of the sunlight died and the dark came down on the forest, but Danziger knew exactly where he was, about a mile north of Belfair Saddlery, what was left of it.

That's where Abel Teague was going.

Had to be.

Otherwise, why was he running? Just to get ridden down and dragged back? Which meant Teague thought someone was already there, waiting for him.

Down on the slope, on better ground, Danziger put Virago into a canter again. In the fading light he could see the end of the forest about a half mile away, and beyond that an open space—the burned-out clearing where the Belfair Saddlery had been. There was a faint glitter through the trees, red lights. A car, a truck, something waiting.

And there, almost at the clearing, a patch of dirty white over black—Teague, staggering through a gap in the tree line, a tall figure stumbling, arms waving. Danziger twisted the BAR around, pumped out three quick shots…Teague flinched but didn't go down, and now he was out of the woods. Danziger kicked Virago into a flat-out gallop and came pounding down the slope, the trees rising up in the half-light, swerving to clear a tangle of deadfall—putting Virago over another downed trunk, three hundred yards, two hundred yards. He saw the taillights flicker, dimly heard a heavy door slam. He was almost at the tree line and he could see a big boxy shape, pale, with letters on the side; it was rolling, he could see it moving through the clearing. Headlights came on, a blinding white cone that cut through the night. He heard the sound of wheels on gravel and the knocking rumble of a big diesel engine moving fast, lurching away down the forest lane that led out to Side Road 311.

Danziger broke out of the forest, reined the mare hard right, and pounded down the lane after those receding taillights. The truck—it was an ambulance, a Niceville EMT unit—was moving faster, bouncing and swerving over the narrow rutted lane, pine branches scraping the sides, pressing in all around, the head lamps making the trees look like a gray tunnel of hanging branches.

Danziger lifted the Colt and fired three aimed shots, saw sparks flaring off the bumper; one taillight shattered and went dark.

The ambulance heaved left, the brake light came on…a pause…Danziger coming closer—and then the engine roared up again, tires churning. The EMT truck was flying now, receding into the distance. Danziger fired three more shots and saw a section of rear window break into a spray of glass. It rounded a turn, bounced off a hedgerow, swerved again, almost out of control, and then it was out of sight around the curve, and he could feel Virago under him, heaving and unsteady, slowing down, winded.