“You’re in charge,” Parker said, “but if I was driving, and I come across a gas station, I’d put in a few bucks.”
“We’re fine,” the guy said.
As they’d been driving, to ease the tendency to cramp in his shoulders and upper arms, Parker had been rolling his shoulders, exercising them from time to time, keeping them limber. The guy hadn’t liked it the first time he’d done it, but then he’d realized the reason, and hadn’t minded after that. Now, as they approached that T, Parker rolled his shoulders, and this time he hunched his butt forward just a little on the seat, which increased the pain and pressure on his arms at the same time that it gave his hands some room between his body and the seatback. The fingers of his left hand plucked the paperclip out of his right palm. Both hands worked at straightening one end of the clip. Then the fingers of his left hand found the lock in the middle of the cuffs and bent it up so that it gouged into his flesh, but the fingers of his right hand could insert the end of the clip, holding fast to the part that was still bent.
He’d done this before; it would be painful for a while now, but not impossible. He probed with the end of the clip, feeling the resistance, feeling where it gave. There.
“The T will be coming up in a couple minutes,” he said, the words covering the faint click, already muffled by the seat and his body, as the lock released on the right cuff.
That was enough. He could undo the left cuff later, and in the meantime it could be useful.
They reached the T, and turned right. Parker rolled his shoulders, clenched and released his hands. His arms stung as the blood moved sluggishly through them.
“We turn left up ahead,” he said. “There’s an intersection with a Getty station and a convenience store.”
“If it’s there,” the guy said.
“No, it’s there. I got the church off by one, but this is right. You see the sign? There it is.”
The red and white Getty gas station sign was the only thing out ahead of them that wasn’t green. It was a small place, two pumps, a small modular plastic shop behind it that had been built in an afternoon. There were fishermen’s landings nearby, and a few small manufacturing businesses tucked away discreetly in the hills, not to offend the weekenders with the sight of commerce, so there was enough business to keep this gas station open, but rarely was it busy.
It was empty now. The guy slowed for the intersection, and Parker kept quiet. Push him, and he’d push the other way. And if this place didn’t work, there was one cabin that had been shown to them by one of the real estate agents that they hadn’t liked because there was no easy way to get down to the river you were supposed to admire the view, not enter it but that would do very well now, if necessary. Be better if it hadn’t been rented to anybody, but Parker would take what came.
“Maybe I will stop.”
Parker nodded, but didn’t say anything. The guy angled in toward the pumps. “I also gotta take a leak,” he said. Parker had been counting on that. Almost always, people want to take a leak before they go into something dangerous or intensive or important to them. This guy didn’t want to face five armed people that he meant to rob, and be thinking about his bladder.
“I could do the same,” Parker said.
“You can wait,” the guy told him. “Encourage you to get us there quicker.” He pulled his shirttail out, so it would cover the gun in his belt, and climbed out of the Lexus, shutting the door.
Parker sat facing front while the guy pumped gas, and then watched to see if he’d pay first or go to the men’s room first, and he headed around the side to the men’s room.
The second he was out of sight, Parker unhooked the seat belt and got out of the car. The cuffs dangled from his left wrist. He put his fingers through the right cuff, and held it like brass knuckles, as he strode across the asphalt and around to the side of the building, where the two doors stood side by side, MEN and WOMEN, with a broad concrete step in front of both.
Scrubland back here led to woods and nothing else. There was no one around. Parker stood to the left of the door marked MEN, facing the building, left arm cocked at his chest. He held the ballpoint pen in his right fist, gripped for stabbing. He waited, and the doorknob made a noisy turn, and the door opened outward, and as the guy appeared, in profile, Parker drove the metaled left fist across his chest on a line directly into that bandaged ear.
The guy screamed. He threw both hands up, and Parker stabbed for his right eye with the pen, but one of the guy’s flailing arms deflected it, and the pen sank into his cheek instead, high up, through the flesh, then scraping leftward over teeth and gums.
The guy was trying to shout something, but Parker was too busy to listen. His left fist, inside the handcuff, chopped at the cheek and the pen jutting out of it while his right hand reached inside the shirt and yanked out the .38.
The guy staggered backward, wide-eyed, blood running down from under the bandage covering that ear, more blood running down his cheek, spilling out of his mouth. He slammed into the sink behind him, but he was scrabbling for his left hip pocket, so that’s where Parker’s Python would be.
Parker stepped into the room, pulling the door shut behind himself. The guy’s hand was in that pocket, closing around something, when Parker shot him just above the belt buckle.
The bullet went through the guy and cracked the sink behind him, and he sagged back, staring, just beginning to feel the shock. Parker stepped forward, shifting the .38 to his left hand where the cuffs dangled downward again, blood-streaked now, while he reached around and got the Python out of the left hip pocket. Then he put the Python away, because it would be much louder than the .38, switched the .38 to his right hand, and then collected from another pocket Cathman’s four-page dream. He stashed that inside his shirt, then reached around the guy to find and collect his wallet. Then he stepped back, .38 in right hand, wallet in left, and the guy folded both hands over his stomach where the bullet had gone in. He stared at Parker with dulled and unbelieving eyes.
“Now,” Parker said, “we can talk.”
13
The guy said, “I’m
I’m gut-shot,” as though it should be a surprise to Parker, too.
Parker opened the wallet one-handed, looked at the ID in there, looked up. “Raymond Becker,” he said. “You’re a cop, Ray? I thought you might be a cop.”
“I need an ambulance, man.”
“Local cop, far from home. Sit down on the toilet there,” Parker advised him. “Keep holding it in, you’ll be all right.”
“I’m gonna die! I need an ambulance.”
Parker said, “I could shoot off your other ear, just to attract your attention. Or you could concentrate. Sit down there.”
Ray Becker concentrated. His breathing came loud and ragged, bouncing off the tile walls. He looked at Parker, and saw no help. Slowly, both hands pressed to his bleeding gut, he slid along the cracked sink to his right, and dropped backward with a little bark of pain onto the closed toilet lid.
Meanwhile, Parker studied Becker’s ID some more. “You don’t act like most cops, Ray,” he said. “Particularly far from home. You act more like a guy on the run, desperate for a stake.”
“I played my hand,” Becker said. He sounded weaker. “I lost. But I don’t have to die.”He was clenching his teeth now, pushing the words through them. The sweat drops that had started to form on his brow, silvery hobnails in the glare of the overhead light, reminded Parker of Marshall Howell.
He said the name aloud: “Marshall Howell.”
The name seemed to sink slowly into Becker’s consciousness, like a bone dropped into a lake. Parker watched him, and saw his eyes gradually focus, saw him at last look at Parker with a new kind of fear.
Parker nodded. He waved the wallet. “I see where you’re from, Ray.”