Aftermath Page 9

  “I’ve got nothing more to say to you, cop. I want my lawyer.”

  “Fine,” Charlie said. “I don’t think I need anything else from you. One of the victims was an old buddy of yours, Roy Naylor. So with the forensic I know we’ll get, and your link, you’re toast, Sammy.”

  “Like I told you, this is a set-up,” Sammy said. “You need to be talking to the piece of shit that broke my door down, assaulted me, and planted this stuff.”

  “OK. Give me a description of him,” Charlie said.

  Sammy thought it over. Maybe the stranger who’d paid him a visit was his only way out of this. “He was at least a couple of inches taller than you,” he said. “All muscle, with short, muddy hair and gray eyes.”

  “And?”

  “And what? He didn’t introduce himself. I’d never seen him before in my life.”

  “I need more than a vague description of some big guy with gray eyes, Sammy,” Charlie said. “If you’re on the level, then think who’d send him to work you over and leave evidence that could get you the needle.”

  Sammy closed his eyes – that were still troubling him from the hot coffee – and wondered how best to get out of the bind he was in. “You just mentioned his name,” he said, opening his eyes and meeting Charlie’s gaze. “Roy Naylor wanted me to be part of a crew. Said that he and another guy were being paid to put the frighteners on a family. I said I was going straight and wasn’t interested. Thing is, Naylor gave me a few details before I said no. Maybe someone thought I’d talk.”

  “Someone?”

  “Whoever Naylor was working for.”

  Charlie shook his head, stood up and headed for the door. Paused and turned round. “Back when I was a rookie I was given good advice from an old street cop,” he said to Sammy. “He told me that if something looked, smelled and tasted like bullshit, then it probably was bullshit. You’re digging your own grave, Sammy. I’m done with you.”

  The door was closing behind Charlie when Sammy called him back.

  “Don’t waste any more of my time, Sammy,” Charlie said. “Give up what you know and I’ll work on it. Lie to me and I’ll wrap you up like a Christmas gift for the DA.”

  “I work for Jerry Brandon,” Sammy said. “He had a beef with his accountant; a guy by the name of Richard Jennings. Jerry asked me if I knew anyone who’d lean on him. I said I did. Next thing I know the accountant is killed in a hit and run, and Naylor told me that Brandon wanted the wife and daughter out of the way.”

  “How does that involve the guy that roughed you up?” Charlie asked.

  “Roy told me that he appeared from nowhere and stepped in to save the accountant’s wife. He hurt Roy bad.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “He said it was Johnson.”

  “So Johnson comes to Charleston to kill Naylor, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Which doesn’t figure. If he’d wanted to kill him he would have done it first time round.”

  Sammy hiked his shoulders and winced as the movement made his head throb. “Maybe he thought it over and decided that Roy and Sal were still a threat.”

  “You just said Roy and Sal,” Charlie said. “Who’s Sal?”

  “He’s Roy’s pal, Sal Mendez. That’s all I’ve got, his name. I never met the guy.”

  “Where is he?”

  “No idea. He could still be after the women. Ask Brandon.”

  Charlie grinned. “Oh I will, Sammy, you can count on that.”

  Everything seemed to slow down as the hitman put his cell phone back in his pocket and pointed his gun at Sharon. Rita thumbed off the safety of the pistol, simultaneously withdrawing it from under the cushion, pointing it at the man and pulling the trigger.

  Sal saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and swung the gun forty-five degrees to the right and took a snap shot at Rita, a split second before a slug whined past his left arm, taking a piece of material from his jacket sleeve with it.

  Rita kept firing as the cushion that had concealed the gun was blown apart next to her.

  Sal dropped to the floor as the second bullet from Rita’s gun drilled into the inside of his left thigh. A third bullet hit him in his right side, and before the pain had time to paralyze him he rolled towards the door, out of Rita’s line of sight, to loose off a couple of shots at the back of the settee as he exited the cabin, dragged himself upright and limped along its length and into the bushes.

  Rita watched as a starburst of cloth and foam rubber erupted six inches to her left, and another appeared only inches away from it. She threw herself forward onto the rug next to Sharon and twisted round, to rise up and sit facing the open door, ready to fire again if the hitman reappeared.

  After a long minute, Sharon stammered, “H...has he g…gone, Mum?”

  “I think so, honey,” Rita said. “Are you OK?”

  “Yes, are you?”

  Rita nodded, but could not take her eyes away from the doorway. Through it, all she could see was the sparkling lake and the wooded mountains beyond. Strange how such explosive violence could take place in such beautiful and normally tranquil surroundings.

  Sharon got up, walked over to the door and closed and locked it. There were big teardrop-shaped drops of blood on the floor.

  “You hit him, Mum,” Sharon said, turning, rushing to Rita and helping her to her feet, before hugging her and putting her head on her shoulder.

  Rita rubbed Sharon’s back, then pulled away and went over to the table to pick up one of the untraceable phones. She dialed Logan’s number and prayed to God that he would answer.

  He did.

  “Yeah?” Logan said.

  “The man you were talking to on the phone just tried to kill us,” Rita said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Detective Charlie Garfield nosed the unmarked Crown Victoria into a slot outside the showroom and killed the engine. Went inside accompanied by Detective Russ Adams, a new kid on the block in Charlie’s opinion, having only had his Detective shield for a little over a year.

  Charlie stepped up to the counter and ID’d himself to the young woman behind it. She looked very pale and her eyes were as skittish as a deer that has just picked up a hunter’s scent.

  “I need to speak with Mr Jerry Brandon,” Charlie said.

  “Mr Brandon is at the hospital,” Marcie replied.

  Charlie frowned. “What happened to him?”

  “He didn’t say,” Marcie said. “Just told me to phone for an ambulance.”

  “What’s your name?” Charlie asked her.

  “Marcie. Marcie Neilson. I’m just the receptionist.”

  Funny how some things are just as plain as a boil on your nose. Charlie saw the deep concern in the woman’s emerald eyes. The redness around them showed that she had been crying. He would have almost bet his pension on his conviction that she was screwing her boss.

  “I’ll ask you again, Marcie, what happened to him?” Charlie said.

  “I…I think his arm was broken. And his hand was all swollen up.”

  “An accident?”

  “No,” Marcie said. “He had a visitor.”

  “Who?”

  “He told me that his name was Johnson. That he knew Jer…Mr Brandon from the past. I think he attacked him.”

  “What did he look like?” Charlie asked.

  “He was very tall, and he wore cheap-looking clothes and had short brown hair and gray eyes.”

  “Had you seen him before?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Do you know what business he had with your boss?”

  “No.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “About three p.m.”

  “What else can you tell me?” Charlie asked.

  “The walls are thin. I could here them talking. Mainly Mr Brandon’s voice, it got loud. He called the man Logan, more than once. And I heard him mention the IRS.”

  Charlie went through it again with her, but there was nothing e
lse.

  When Charlie and Russ arrived at the hospital, Jerry was undergoing surgery on his arm and hand. It was going to be quite a while before they could question him. They met and spoke to his wife, Gloria, but she seemed genuinely shocked and clueless as to why someone would have assaulted her husband. Charlie asked her if she knew Roy Naylor, Sal Mendez, Sammy Lester, or a guy by the name of Johnson or Logan. She said that Lester worked for her husband, but that she had never heard of the others.

  Charlie was intrigued. He wanted to know who the big guy was. He would just have to wait and sweat it out of Brandon when he was conscious again. Meantime he could make calls. See if a guy by the name of Johnson or Logan popped up.

  “What happened?” Logan asked.

  “After he’d talked to you on the phone he pointed the gun at Sharon. He was going to shoot her. I shot him first.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No, he got away, but I hit him more than once. There’s blood on the floor.”

  “Did anyone hear the shots?”

  “I don’t know. It’s very quiet.”

  Logan had studied the area on the road map. “Let’s assume that someone did and has called the police,” he said to Rita. “I want you away from the cabin. Head west along the shore of the lake and keep walking along the trail until you come to a scenic overlook with a parking lot. I’m not far away. I’ll meet you there. Keep out of sight till I arrive.”

  “OK,” Rita said.

  Logan ended the call and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. He was still twenty minutes from the rendezvous point, so would probably arrive before Rita and Sharon. He hoped that Rita had mortally wounded Mendez. With any luck the out-of-control hitman had bled out as he made his way back to wherever he’d left his car. Worst case scenario was that he had only suffered flesh wounds and may be regrouping. There was always the chance that he would see Rita and Sharon leave and follow them, intent on finishing a job that he should have walked away from.

  Logan phoned Rita back; told her to be aware that Mendez may still be a threat. He had only one immediate goal, to collect the women, leave the area and find somewhere to stay the night and keep an eye on news updates to see if Mendez had attended a hospital or preferably been found dead. Gunshot wounds or a corpse with slugs in it made news. He shook his head as he accelerated, impatient to cover the last few miles.

  This had seemed a simple enough operation. A visit to Charleston and a talk with Brandon should have brought it to a conclusion. He hadn’t figured on a loose cannon opting to kill for personal reasons. It didn’t figure. Maybe it was pride. Sharon had escaped from Mendez in D.C., and his partner in crime had failed to kill Rita. This could just be a guy that, like him, didn’t quit something he’d committed himself to.

  Sal leaned against a tree trunk at the side of the trail and sucked in a deep lungful of air as the shock hit him like a sledgehammer. His pants were soaked, clinging to his legs. His left thigh was pissing blood. Maybe the slug had nicked an artery, he didn’t know. The wound to his right side was less serious, just a flesh wound, through and through.

  Unbuckling and pulling his belt out through the loops, Sal wound it tightly around his meaty thigh as high up as he could and refastened it, before moving on, not just limping now but having to drag his left leg. He needed a hospital, but couldn’t go to one. There was the matter of the dead cabin owner that he would not be able to explain when some doctor reported his wounds to the police.

  Making it to the car, he got in the driver’s seat and had to lift his left leg in. Both of his hands were slick with blood. He had smelled the coppery, salty scent of it many times in his life, and was usually a little enthralled by it, but not when it was his own.

  He drove with both hands at the bottom of the steering wheel, so that the bright red could not be seen by people in oncoming traffic. Funny, but he felt as though he’d had a little luck, for if the bullet had hit him in the right leg he would have found it extremely difficult to work the brake and gas pedals.

  Sal drove for four miles along blacktop which cut through the forest like a funereal ribbon, before he saw a sign at the end of a driveway advertising a veterinary surgeon’s practice. He pulled in and followed a track for a half mile to a large, stone-built, one-storey ranch-style house with a cedar-shingle roof. A pickup drove out as he pulled in to the graveled parking area. All he could see was an apple-green Dodge Durango standing at the side of the property.

  He parked outside the Main door. Fell out of the car to his knees and had to pull himself upright by clinging to the door and using arm power to get to his feet.

  Lurching up the three steps onto a non-slip material that covered the wide porch, Sal pushed the door open and stumbled across a waiting room to a counter at the back.

  Lynn Marshall looked up from the appointment book and took a pace backward as a man drenched in blood approached her.

  Drawing his gun and pointing it at the woman’s chest, Sal asked, “Who are you?”

  “I’m the vet,” Lynn replied.

  “Who else is here?”

  “No one.”

  “Good. Lock up; you’ve got work to do.”

  “I can’t help you,” Lynn said. “I treat animals, not people. You need a hospital.”

  Sal gritted his teeth. If he hadn’t needed this woman’s expertise so badly he would have put a bullet in her head. “We’re all fuckin’ animals,” he said. “I want you to fix me up. I’ve been shot, so I can’t go to a hospital.”

  Lynn was very afraid. She had spent the first twenty-seven of her fifty-four years in Philadelphia, and had escaped it to the wilds of West Virginia to get away from the seething masses, rising violent crime, and a husband who had beaten her for five years, always when he was drunk, but had been the most loving human being on earth when sober, which wasn’t often enough. Her experience of men in general had soured her perception of them. Even her own father had abused her, and his premature death in nineteen-eighty-six had filled her with joyful relief, not normal grief.

  Realizing that this was a life-threatening situation, for her, Lynn found the strength to act in a way that might save her life. Walked out around the counter, past the man, to lock the door.

  “Come with me,” Lynn said to Sal, and walked back behind the counter and through the door to the surgery.

  Sal followed her. She went through the surgery and opened another door that led into an operating room.

  “I need for you to undress and lay down on the table,” Lynn said, having decided to treat him as if he was a dog, cat, or any other creature in need of a surgical procedure.

  Sal stripped down to his boxers and grunted as he sat on the table.

  Lynn gently lifted his wounded leg and helped him to lie back. Gathered up a stack of towels from a shelf and put them behind his head to raise and cushion it.

  Sal said nothing. Just held on to his gun and hoped that the animal doctor had the expertise needed to save his life.

  Lynn cleaned up both wounds and examined them. “You’ve been lucky,” she said. “There’s a lot of soft tissue damage. The bullet that went through your thigh missed your femoral artery by a cat’s whisker.”

  “So I’ll live?” Sal said.

  “I think so, Lynn said. “You’ve lost quite a lot of blood, but your belt made a very good tourniquet. Without it you may have passed out and probably not survived.”

  “What’s your name?” Sal asked.

  “Lynn Marshall.”

  “My name is Sal,” he said. “What do you need to do?”

  “Disinfect the wounds and close them up. Although the exit wound on your thigh is quite large. I should put a drain in. I don’t want to risk infection.”

  “OK, do it,” Sal said.

  Lynn went over to a wall unit, to return with two hypodermics and small liquid-filled vials and placed them on a tray on the trolley next to the table.

  “No needle,” Sal said. “I don’t intend to be drugged, so that you can
phone the police.”

  “You need these,” Lynn said. “One is a long-acting anti-inflammatory, and the other is a painkiller.”

  Sal thought it over. Decided he had to take the chance. “OK,” he said. “But if I start to feel woozy, I’ll shoot you.”

  Lynn looked him straight in the eyes and somehow forced herself to raise a smile. She said, “I’ve got drugs in that cabinet that would put a gorilla to sleep in three seconds. Imagine a double dose of that in you. I don’t know who you are or what trouble you’re in and I don’t want to. Maybe if I got the chance to call the authorities and they arrested you, then you’d turn up here again someday to get even. I just want this done with and you out of here.”

  Sal nodded. She was right; although he had no intention of leaving her alive to give his description to the police. As soon as he was sewn up and strong enough to hit the road, then he would kill her.

  “It’s your choice,” Lynn said. “You came here for help. Do you want it or not?”

  Sal didn’t like to be out of control of any situation, but needs must. “Go ahead,” he said. “Slow and easy. I’d like to think that we can both come out of this with a future worth lookin’ forward to.”

  Lynn administered the analgesic and put variously-sized suturing needles on a stainless steel tray alongside a range of thread, some of which was synthetic and coated with the latest antimicrobial substances to reduce the chances of wound infection, and other that was naturally biodegradable in the body.

  It took Lynn over ninety minutes to complete the procedures. As she sutured the drain in Sal’s thigh, he passed out, overcome by the combination of fatigue, shock and loss of blood.

  When Sal came to he was still on the table, but his gun was not in his hand.

  Lynn had picked the pistol up when it had dropped to the tiled floor. She pulled a chair up to approximately five feet from the man who had told her his name was Sal, and held the gun in a two-handed grip. It occurred to her that if he attempted to attack her, then all the work she had done to patch him up would have been for nothing. She had vowed to herself after the last beating from her ex that no man would ever mistreat her again.