Rage Against the Dying Page 27

  Wondering why he was in no hurry to eliminate or at least immobilize me, I sat down across from him while Cheri’s body sagged in the chair to the right of me. Even with a psychopath like Emery, it felt macabre to have Cheri in on the conversation.

  But it helped, too. The sight of Laura Coleman lying helpless across the room and Cheri dead before me made me drain out of myself in much the same way as when Carlo had found my bloody clothes in the washing machine. Only this time it was good, that I could stay as collected, as free of sympathy, as the killer before me. This is what I had tried to explain to Coleman, that we all must become what we want to conquer, and it was welcome, because it meant the Brigid Quinn I needed to survive had just kicked in.

  “Why did you kill Cheri?” I asked, stalling for time until I could figure a way out of this mess. “Because she saw what you did to Agent Coleman?”

  “No. Because she saw this in the walk-in freezer.” He kicked a booted leg out from behind the desk. He looked disgusted, as if he blamed the corpse for his lover’s death.

  My resolve slipped for a moment before I could get it into my head that Carlo didn’t wear boots. “May I?”

  “Be my guest. Just move slowly.” He kept my pistol trained on me as I stood slowly, steeled myself for what I might see, and moved to the side of the desk for a better view. The body was fairly intact except for a little dried blood around the mouth.

  “Who is it?” I asked, relieved that I did not know.

  “Who knows? It took a while to find someone with decent teeth who was apparently homeless so no one would be looking for him.”

  “Was there a reason, or just for kicks?”

  He looked offended. “A very good reason. He is going to be me when I blow the place up.”

  I managed to avoid reacting, kept to the key information. “What about ID, fingerprints, dental records?”

  Emery knocked at the side of his face. “There aren’t any dental records. I have a jaw like a rock. That’s what the cops will remember me saying. Plus, just in case, I had this happen in the bar earlier today…” He lifted his front lip to show me the gap where his tooth was missing. Then he lifted the lip on the corpse to show it had one missing, too. “No fingerprints on record,” he said. “But thank you; just in case, I’ll make sure to obliterate them in the explosion. Anything else I may have missed?”

  “How long have you had him?” I asked, to keep him talking and discover whatever mistakes he might have made.

  “Oh, he is fresh enough. He wasn’t in the freezer long.” Still holding the gun on me with one hand, he opened a desk drawer and took out some clear packing tape. “Amazing how useful office supplies can be,” he said. He tossed me the tape. “Sit on the floor over there and wrap some of that around your ankles, would you?”

  “Go fuck yourself,” I said to him without rancor, without any feeling at all. I said it to test the effect.

  Emery picked up a metal stapler from the desk with his left hand and stepped over to where Coleman lay listlessly on her right side, her head on the floor. I shouted, but not fast enough to stop him from stapling the edge of her ear. The pain brought her around and she screamed.

  “There, I do make myself clear, don’t I?” Emery said with a patience that sounded almost sincere.

  I took the tape and wrapped a strip around my ankles as he directed, thinking all the while how I could buy time to save us both. When I had disabled myself to his satisfaction, he took the tape from me, stood me up from the chair, and wrapped my wrists and hands behind me in the same fashion, so that my fingers were covered.

  “Tying up loose ends,” he said, and, despite his being behind me, I could almost feel him smiling to himself, his confidence growing. “Being able to make puns in a second language is very smart, don’t you think? I thought I had lost any chance of taking care of you. And here you are.” He threw me onto the floor.

  After catching my breath and gaining some balance, I said, “Did you meet Peasil the same way you met Lynch, over the Internet?”

  Emery shrugged his assent. “I thought Floyd Lynch really was another killer. He told me he was not when I saw him in the hospital. I assume he did die?”

  I nodded.

  He said, “Lynch was the mistake that has led to my losing this bar. But I can always buy another one in another place. With a different identity. And now that Cheri’s gone, start all over.”

  Without explaining what he meant by starting all over, Emery tucked my pistol in the back of his pants and left the room. I turned my attention to Coleman. I needed to know what she knew, what the possibilities were. I scootched closer to her so I could speak more softly.

  “Talk fast,” I said. “Are you on something?”

  Coleman nodded, her eyes closed. “I’m sorr—”

  I would have slapped her if I had the use of my hands. Instead I leaned my forehead against hers and said, “Look at me, Coleman. I’m going to get us out of this. We’re both going to live. So get tough now. Did he drug you?”

  She stuck to essentials in staccato bursts. “Roofie. Worn off.”

  “How did he get you here?”

  With more strength in her voice she said, “He was waiting outside my house. Tasered. I didn’t see it coming.”

  “Happens. Keep looking at me. Weapons.”

  “The shotgun he used to kill Cheri. I don’t know where it … and yours. That’s all I know of.”

  Coleman’s teeth started to chatter and her eyes grew vague. It looked like she was going into shock.

  “How much pain?” I asked, keeping my tone as bland as if I were asking for the time.

  “Not too bad,” she said.

  “You’re doing great. You’re doing great. Stick with me, kiddo.”

  She kept trembling, but her eyes were back on mine as she shook her head. “He kept me locked in a storage room somewhere.” I could see her struggling to think of anything else that might be useful.

  “Why are you still alive?” I asked.

  “He said … he said he wasn’t sure when he would need to get out of town and he needed my body to be fresh.”

  I nodded, then heard a footstep in the hallway leading to the kitchen.

  Forty-nine

  Emery walked into the office with his shotgun and the jar of pickled pigs’ feet. He stood the shotgun in the far corner leaning against the wall and placed the jar on his desk. “I don’t want to forget to take this,” he said, and went on as if in mid-conversation. “Even though, after Kimberly’s sister—you found they were sisters, right?”

  I nodded.

  “—came in about six years ago looking for a job,” he ran a thoughtful hand down the side of the jar, “it lost its appeal. The whole business lost its appeal, and besides, Cheri alive made a much better souvenir. Every time I made love to her she reminded me…” He stroked Cheri’s dead hair on the way to his chair behind the desk, where he filled his pipe with the cherry-bourbon tobacco whose smell I could never hope to forget.

  “You know what they say about the seven-year itch.” He lit the pipe, puffed it a few times, and pressed a button on what looked like the stereo console behind his desk. We all listened to our voices:

  “Talk fast. Are you on something?”

  “I’m sorr—”

  “Look at me, Coleman. I’m going to get us out of this. We’re both going to—”

  I said, “You made your point: the whole place is bugged.”

  Emery obligingly turned off the recorder and put a fresh piece of tape over Coleman’s mouth. “I’ve been listening to you for a long time, Brigid Quinn.”

  “You could hear us talking wherever we were in the bar just by pressing the right button.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean just recently in the bar.” He raised his voice into a mockery of a female, “Jessica? Jessica, are you there?”

  He meant to taunt me. But remembering that night, thinking of how he had put the radio receiver headphones on and heard me call out for her, strengthened m
y conviction that one of us would die before much longer.

  Emery watched me while relighting his pipe. He puffed, the smoke coming out the sides of his mouth like stray thought. “I couldn’t foresee that Floyd Lynch would know about that abandoned car, get himself caught, and use the bodies to make a deal. It would have worked out perfectly if you weren’t here to support Coleman’s suspicions.”

  “And kill Peasil.”

  “You did kill him?” Emery laughed, hiccuping a puff of pipe smoke out his nose. Seeing his plan come together without a hitch except for Cheri’s messy demise was making him feel more comfortable. “You know, I wasn’t absolutely sure about that, could only guess it was what happened.”

  “I guess I spoiled that part of your plan.”

  “Yes, but here you are again, so that’s okay,” he said. “Is there anything you don’t know? Have you told anyone else?” Emery frowned at the thought.

  Keep him guessing. Even though Coleman was passed out on the floor, she still looked alive. Keep her alive. “Floyd Lynch wasn’t a genius. But he could remember what he read pretty well. And he had all your e-mails. Copied them over by hand to make it looked like his own words.”

  “Isn’t it funny, Brigid Quinn?” He smiled to himself, as if he relished saying my name to my face after all these years. “You made me do this. I was contented with my little black souvenir for years until you and the agent came in here talking about how Lynch didn’t do the crimes. That was when everything started to unravel.”

  His words had made me nearly lose my cool no matter what the consequences, but just then his attention was diverted from me to a knock at the front door.

  Fifty

  The two of us both listened harder for the second knock. Only Coleman, still in a stupor from the pain and drugs, had not reacted. I would have taken the chance of bolting out the door if it hadn’t been for the tape around my ankles. I had time for one loud yelp that probably couldn’t be heard all the way outside before Emery backhanded me across the face. While I was stunned, he put a strip of the tape over my mouth before going into the public room of the bar, closing the door behind him.

  After trying and failing to shout through the tape, I let my head drop, my cheek resting against the blood-soaked thin carpet. I quieted my ragged breathing as well as I could and listened with all my might, while rubbing my face against the rough nap of the carpet to make the tape come loose.

  “Hold on just a moment,” I heard Emery call loudly enough for us all to hear. Footsteps seemed to go away from the bar, and that was confirmed when I heard a motor go on, possibly the dishwasher in the kitchen. That muffled the sound of the footsteps further, until the sound of music blended with the dishwasher, but softly so it wouldn’t appear he had just turned it on. I don’t know what was playing, some old twangy country western thing. Then his voice again.

  “Well, hello there. We’ll be open in just a bit; I had to take care of a small problem. An appliance.”

  Whoever was there must have stepped through the door because I could hear a man’s voice, barely distinct over the music if I held my breath and listened with all my senses. “I’m actually looking for someone.”

  “Nobody here but me right now.”

  “Just the same, I was wondering if I could ask you a question?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ever hear of a man named Gerald Peasil?”

  Pause. “No, I’m sorry. I haven’t. Who is he?”

  “We’re following up on a half-dozen phone numbers and this is one of the places he called.”

  Pause. “You know, I’m not being hospitable. Please come in and have a drink, Officer…”

  “Coyote. Deputy Sheriff.”

  A longer space of quiet as Max must have moved farther into the bar.

  “I’m Emery Bathory. I’ve seen you here before.”

  “It’s a popular place.”

  “Come.”

  “Mr. Bathory, I don’t have much time.”

  “And neither do I. But it is civilized, as well as good business, to offer you hospitality. Come.”

  The dishwasher and the jukebox blotted out the sound of footsteps, so I couldn’t tell where they were, but the quiet made me assume they were moving in the direction of the bar. I imagined Emery going behind, angling carefully so Max couldn’t see the gun shoved in the back of his pants, Max standing at attention or sitting on a stool.

  “Soda?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “So you think this, who did you say?”

  “Gerald Peasil.”

  “You think this Gerald Peasil might have called here?”

  “Well, yes, we know he did, but he’s not the one I’m looking for. It could be a coincidence, but there’s a car parked in the lot just behind your place. Belongs to a woman I’d like to talk to.”

  “Why do you think she’s here?”

  “She’s a short woman with very white hair. Older but fit.”

  Was Max playing Emery? No, he had managed to get the deleted phone numbers off Peasil’s phone, but he would have no reason to suspect that Emery was the one connected to Peasil, let alone a killer himself. Max would see the number of Emery’s Cantina as just a bar on a list of takeout joints, a routine check. At best, Max might have suspected that Peasil was contacting one of the patrons here and had been about to follow through on that lead when he saw my car.

  The door was hardly more than a sheet of paneling. If it was thin enough to hear their conversation easily, it might be flimsy enough to bust open with one good kick if I put all I had into it. I jerked my body, trying to roll closer to the door. I managed to get onto my back, pain shooting up my spine and down my arms, which were pressed at an unforgiving angle into the floor. All the while straining desperately to listen.

  “You must mean that little older lady who started coming in here with someone from the FBI, I think. A tall, very pretty young woman with short curly hair.”

  “You saw them together here?”

  “A couple of times, yes. But you’re interested in the older woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was here earlier. Why do you want to see her? Has she done something wrong?”

  “I just have some questions about an ongoing investigation.”

  It was hard to move and hear what was happening at the same time, but I managed to roll over twice, getting halfway to the door. Not fast enough. Rolling onto my back again, and using my knuckles behind me for leverage, I sat up.

  “So when was she here?” Max asked.

  “It has been a busy day, so I’m not sure I can say with any precision. She didn’t stay long. I think she met that FBI agent and they headed off together, left her car in the parking lot. You could leave a message for her, though, on her windshield. And of course if they come in here later I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.”

  There was a small silence, then Max again: “I don’t think she could be that far away.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The tote bag she usually carries is on the front seat of her car.”

  “How careless.”

  I was inching my way forward now, nearly to the door, and could see that the lock was on my side, which meant Emery couldn’t have locked the door. That would make it even easier to kick open. Falling to my side and drawing up my knees. Kicking at the door, but not close enough to connect. Inching forward a little more. I happened to look in Coleman’s direction and her eyes were wide open, staring into mine, knowing what was happening.

  “Level with me, Mr. Bathory. Is she here? Did she talk you into cov—”

  I’d only have one chance to surprise them both. I drew up my knees again and crashed the door open.

  Max turned to look, and even Emery was distracted for a second before drawing my 1911 from the back of his pants and shooting Max in the chest.

  Fifty-one

  Emery was pissed. He looked at Max bleeding and still on the floor where the .45 had knocked him off his
feet. He slipped Max’s gun out of its holster, stepped over the body to lock the front door, then ran the few quick steps needed to reach me where I lay on the floor, having rolled over onto my stomach to ease the agony of my arms taped behind me. I couldn’t see him, only hear him as he stepped on my neck and punched the gun into my temple. I felt a spray of his saliva. With the part of me that could drain out and witness myself, I heard myself whimper like a muzzled dog.

  But Emery was scared, too, and losing his cool. The surprise of Max’s appearance came out in a rasping, screaming voice. “Did you leave your purse in your car as a signal?” He punched the gun against me again, harder. I gasped with the pain. “Who else is going to show up here?” When he saw I couldn’t answer because of the tape over my mouth, he ripped it off.

  All I said was, “Go ahead and fire that weapon, you motherfucker. Someone is bound to hear one of the shots and call the cops. They’ll see Max’s car outside.”

  A greater sense of concern seemed to have overtaken Emery. He grabbed his pipe from the desk and puffed so steadily that if I lived I would never again be able to separate the smells of cherry, bourbon, and clotting blood.

  I pressed my small advantage. “What’s the plan, Emery?”

  He thought. He paced a bit. “They’ll think somebody who hates cops bombed the place. Or they’ll think there was a gas leak and it was accidental.” He spoke faster, clearly assuming that any delay was increasingly risky but wanting to make sure he thought everything through. “No, that won’t do, they’ll find evidence of a bombing.” He looked triumphant. “Here you go. They’ll think someone was after you and the rest of us were just collateral damage.”

  “What about the bullet in Max? They’ll find it.”

  “Maybe they’ll think you went berserk and shot Coyote and then killed the rest of us to hide the fact. It was your gun.”

  “And then blew myself up with the whole building? You’re too smart for this, Emery. You know they’re going to be able to figure out that something is wrong with this whole setup.”

  He pondered that a moment, gave a final decisive puff, and put his pipe back on the desk. “You know what? It doesn’t make any difference how they reconstruct the crime just as long as they think an innocent bartender is dead.” He put the pistol into the front of his pants. “I have to position the bodies and get this over with.”