Rusty Nail

They led to the kitchen. I came through the door in a crouch, my gun pointed forward. I checked left, then right, straining to hear some kind of movement.

The house seemed silent.

The kitchen hadn’t been cleaned in weeks; fast food wrappers and pizza boxes stacked on the counters, the sink overflowing with beer bottles, the floor sticky with stains and spills.

I went through the kitchen, into a living room, which was also a disaster. Besides the empty food boxes and cans, almost every surface of the room was stacked with pornography. Magazines, videos, and DVDs, littering the table, the sofa, the easy chair, and the floor. Nasty porn too. I glimpsed a few titles: Latex Bondage Torture. Pain Sluts. House of Agony. Seymore Blood’s Human Pincushion.

A television rested in the corner of the room, next to a closed closet door. A camcorder perched on top of the TV. Even at the distance, I could make out the large letters RCA on the side of it.

The room opened into a hallway, and I moved quick but cautious, leading with my gun, staying low. My finger rested on the trigger, but I was aware of the pressure, aware that Holly was someplace in the apartment.

Four doorways down the hall, all open.

“Caleb Ellison! This is the police! Come out with your hands over your head!”

“Jack!”

Holly, from one of the rooms.

“Holly, where are you?”

“Back bedroom!”

Someone came into the hall. I dropped to a knee and sighted on the head. It was Holly. I pointed my gun at the ceiling, blowing out a breath.

“Dammit, Holly, you scared the crap out of me.”

Holly didn’t answer. In an unbelievably quick move her hand shot up and she fired three shots in my direction.

I dropped, facedown, hugging the carpet, getting my gun out in front of me – Holly ru

Holly stood next to me, wisps of smoke rising from the barrel of her 9mm. She gri

“Thirty points.”

I didn’t understand what she meant, but then I remembered the shooting range earlier that day. Six rounds in the chest, five points each.

“Give me the gun, Holly.”

I held out my left hand. My right was still curled around my.38, which was currently pointed at her belly.

“I just saved your life, Jack.”

“I know. Protocol. Backup will be here any minute.”

She nodded, handing me her weapon butt-first.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. You?”

“You check out the party in this freak’s basement? One more and he’d have enough for bridge.”

I tucked Holly’s piece into the back of my pants and got to my feet. I could hear the sirens approaching.

“How much trouble am I in, Jack?”

“I don’t know. You broke the law, but saved my life. And probably saved the taxpayers millions of dollars in an expensive trial.”

I gazed back at Caleb Ellison, whom I could ID from his mug shot. Like Steve Jensen, he had a fair share of tattoos slathering his arms, several of them the triple D symbol. His chest looked like he’d spilled a plate of spaghetti on it. There was no need to check for a pulse.

“But I’ll be out by tomorrow, right? The wedding is at noon, and I haven’t picked up a dress yet. Which is fine with Harry, because he wants us both to get married in the nude.”

Not an image I needed in my head.

“I don’t know, Holly. It depends on if the state’s attorney wants to press charges. Either way, it’s going to be a late night.”

“How about if I give you the gun and you say you killed him?”

I shook my head.

“What if I gave you five bucks?”

Which was such an absurd thing to say, I began to laugh. Holly laughed too, and we kept laughing right up until the CPD kicked in the front door.

CHAPTER 38

“FIRST ONE’S BY those bushes.”

Lorna Hunt Ellison extends both arms and points. Her wrists are cuffed together under the sleeves of her Day-Glo orange prison jumpsuit. The elastic is tight around her middle, and the legs are too long, but the color reminds her of the hunting jacket Bud used to have, the one he used for deer season, and Lorna likes that memory. She and Bud had gone hunting dozens of times, and Lorna was the one who usually brought the game down – Bud couldn’t shoot for shit. He loved dressing it, though. Bleeding the carcass, stripping off the hide, butchering the meat. Sometimes he couldn’t even wait for her to cook it before having a little taste for himself.

Bud.

She’ll see him again. Very soon.

One of the FBI guys walks up to the tree she’s pointing at.

“Right here?”

Lorna spits. “Looks about right.”

She’s leaning up against the squad car, looking for the spray-painted rock. This should be the right place. She wrote the directions down. Rosser Park, in Liverpool, the second dirt road off of Oregon Street, heading east toward the lake. Take the road until it stops. But she doesn’t see any rocks, painted or otherwise.

Lorna walks away from the car and takes a few steps onto the grass. She’d insisted they remove the leg irons, or she wasn’t showing them where any damn bodies were, guaran-fucking-teed. They listened to her. What harm could an old lady do, right?

The pig with the rifle – the one who is supposed to be pointing it at her the whole time – is scratching his nuts, the rifle butt-first on the ground. Two more cops, holding shovels, are standing next to that FBI asswipe, poking them at the dirt, trying to decide where to start digging.

“Right there!” Lorna shouts. “About four or five feet down.”

She looks to her right. No rock. To her left. The black sedan the Feds drove is parked there. One of the Feds is standing beside it, talking to some fatty sheriff.

Lorna looks beyond the car, to the lake. The area is mostly open: ankle-high wild grass, a few saplings, and those bushes she pointed at. The weather is cool, in the high fifties. No activity, no fishermen or joggers. Too early in the morning.

Everything is perfect, if she can just find that damn rock.

The fatty sheriff walks over, eyeing Lorna like she’s something he stepped in.

“After this, you’re taking me to see Bud, right? Blessed Mercy Hospital in Gary?”

He scowls at her. “That’s the deal. I didn’t make it, though. I don’t deal with scum.”

“You probably don’t deal with much. An ass that fat, you probably ride a desk all day.”

His eyes get dark and mean. “Watch your mouth, bitch.”

Lorna spots it: a small gray boulder about a foot high, surrounded by dry grass and fewer than five yards away. There’s a big red X on it.

“I apologize, Sheriff. You mind if I stretch my legs a little? I haven’t been out in the open in twelve years.”

He grunts.

“Thank you, Sheriff.”

She walks slowly, without apparent direction. When she reaches the rock she stretches, then bends down to tie her shoe.

The gun is there, in an old plastic zipper bag. It’s a derringer – a small, two-shot weapon that Doc Holliday always had up his sleeve in old Western shows.

She removes the gun from the bag and cocks the hammer. The overall length of the pistol is less than four inches, and she can comfortably conceal it in the palm of her large hand.

“Hey, Lorna! You copping a squat over there?”

Laughter from the men. Lorna stands up and gives them the finger, then heads back to the group. There are four cops and two Feds, and the derringer only has two rounds.