I thought I was going to die. Ellen would probably find me. She’d have to call Anna. I wouldn’t see my daughters grow up. For just a moment, I felt a sense of closure. The same man who had killed Benjamin Collins was now going to kill me.
“Just like old times,” the man said, affecting an effeminate lilt to his voice. The same one that had fooled me a few years back. “Me and you,” he said.
If I was going to die, I at least wanted some answers. I thought I deserved them before I had my brains splattered on the boat’s walls.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He chuckled softly. There was a pause, and I expected to see a burst of light and then nothing but darkness.
Instead, the man said, “Start the boat.”
Chapter Forty-Five
There was now a raging storm on the water. Gray clouds obscured the stars, and white foam whipped off the waves.
With the man’s gun trained on my head at all times, I backed the boat out of its slip, then pushed it toward the harbor opening where I could see Lake St. Clair in all its glorious frenzy. It had begun to rain, and the water came down in sheets, as if poured from the black sky. Chain lightning flashed on the horizon across the lake, over Canada.
I toyed with the idea of jumping overboard, but something told me I’d get as far as one step, maybe two, before my head was fully vented.
As I steered the Air Fare, I thought about how appropriate this was. The boy entrusted to me, Benjamin Collins, had been sliced up and found floating in Lake St. Clair. A lot of people blamed me, including myself, for what had happened. Although I hadn’t actually been the one to kill him, I’d had the opportunity to save him, and I’d blown it.
So now here I was with his real killer, and I was faced with the same fate. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be able to save myself from him either. I could imagine the story in the newspaper: “Cop Killed in Same Manner as Earlier Victim.” They’d have a field day with it. Or maybe the man here had a plan to make it look like a suicide. I was sure he had a plan.
“Where to?” I shouted as the rain whipped directly into my face.
“Out,” he said.
Maybe he was going to conk me over the head and toss me overboard. Even in good shape, I’d have trouble swimming in this shit. Knocked unconscious, I wouldn’t have a chance.
The Air Fare was a good-sized boat, twenty-nine-feet long. However, Lake St. Clair was some three hundred square miles, and waves commonly got as big as they do on Lake Huron, or even Lake Michigan. Right now, my boat was being tossed around pretty good. In fact, I’d never been out in water this rough. Wave after wave bashed into the prow, and we rode the water like a mechanical bull.
“Why?” I shouted to the man, who had now moved around directly behind me. He seemed a bit unsteady. If he killed me, how was he planning to get back to shore? Somehow, I was sure he would manage.
I glanced back at him, and he shook his head then gestured with the gun for me to look back to where I was going.
In my mind, some questions were starting to get answered. I’d always assumed that the man who’d killed Benjamin Collins had been a psychopath. Not a jilted lover. But now I knew for sure. My guess was that when I’d killed Erma and Freda, Teddy had brought in someone new. Or someone old, in this case.
The man was a hired killer.
So why had he killed Benjamin Collins? As soon as I thought about it, I realized it wasn’t the right question.
“Who hired you to kill Benjamin Collins?”
I looked back, and he had a smirk on his face. He shook his head.
I turned back just as a giant wave washed over the front of the boat. Water hit me in the chest, and I staggered back. I didn’t know what to be more afraid of. Being murdered by a contract killer. Or being washed overboard and drowning. Same result, different paths.
Did he plan on taking me over by the yacht club? Where he’d left the butchered body of Benjamin Collins? Right now, we were pointing straight out to the middle of the lake.
I heard the man singing behind me. Over the din of the wind and the rain and the crashing waves, this fucker was singing. I recognized the tune. “Let it Bleed” from the Rolling Stones. Wonderful.
It pissed me off. Here I was, about to die. My two daughters were about to lose their father, Anna was about to lose her husband, and my killer was singing. Having a grand old time. Well, fuck him.
I let go of the wheel and faced him. “You’re the scum of the earth—just so you know,” I shouted at him.
He continued his little musical number.
“You can kill me,” I said. “But you’re a coward. A rotten, murdering piece of dogshit.”
The anger choked up inside me, and I realized there was no point in waiting. If I was going to die, I was going to die the way I wanted.
He seemed to read my mind.
He brought his gun up and now held it straight out from his body pointing at me.
“Come on, you rotten sonofabi—” I started to say.
A resounding crash screamed in my ears, and the boat’s deck slipped out from underneath me. The splintering of wood shattered the sounds of the storm, and I landed on my side, pain slicing up my back. I saw the prow of another boat bisecting the Air Fare. Cut it right in fucking half.
The ship’s prow was white, and I saw the line of blue down the side along with the word POLICE.
I struggled to get to my feet as water rushed all around me. The Air Fare was sagging, nearly broken in half.
A weight pressed on my back, and hands grasped the side of my head. My head was wrenched to the side, and the pain shot up my neck. He was on top of me, trying to break my neck. Unbelievable. How had he moved that fast? How had he gotten behind me again so soon after we were rammed?
Pain shot through my body, and I twisted beneath him. Just as I wondered why he wasn’t shooting me, I realized he must have lost his gun.
I immediately stopped twisting and, instead, pulled him in the direction he was trying to make me go.
We both rolled and crashed against the side of the boat as another wave broke over us. It knocked him off me, and I thought I heard other voices shouting.
I got to my feet and whirled around just as he came at me. He hit me in the face and then in the stomach. My breath flew out of me in a gush, and then he whirled, a karate kick that would’ve finished the job of taking off my head had I not ducked at just the right moment. I slipped as another wave caught me full in the face, and my feet flew out from under me. I crashed into the Air Fare’s stern, which had become the receptacle for the damage done in the boat’s middle.
I slumped to the deck, water up to my waist, and felt sharp fragments of wood scrape my back. I looked up and saw the impossible.
He was coming at me, full bore, with a steadiness and animal grace that made me look on in awe.
As I watched him come with the inevitability of Death itself, my hands wrapped around something that felt like a wooden bat. Just as he got close enough and I could see him winding up for another killer kick, I lashed out. The blow caught him in the side of the neck at just the right time. Off balance, he fell to the deck as another wave crashed over us. I was knocked down and the pole, which I now saw was the jib’s handle, had broken in half. A nasty, jagged break with a long sliver of wood jutting from the middle.
The Air Fare tilted, the weight of the water in the stern sending the bow up. The man slid down the deck toward me, blood in his mouth either from my blow or from being knocked down by a wave.
I raised the pole over my head with both hands and fell on top of him, driving the pole straight into him like a pile driver. My mind was on autopilot, just a raw, savage fury and a fear of dying pounding in my head.