“Yes, Higgins, we have his ‘seed,’ as you so lovingly call it.”
“What are the chances of me getting my hands on that?”
I had to ask. The scent the wolf would get from that little Baggie of play-pudding would get the job done.
“No chance,” Van Buren responded. “It’s all been sent out to different labs, you sick, sick man.”
“Do you have addresses for these labs?”
“What do I look like to you, a goddamn directory?”
“What about the Polaroid thing? No prints?”
“No prints,” he said.
“No hair? None of that?”
“No.”
“Do those Polaroid boxes have serial numbers? Would you be able to figure out where it came from?”
“Yeah, the feds did that the day we found it.”
“Where was it from? Around here?”
“No.”
“Where?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why?”
“Don’t worry about it, Higgins, it didn’t pan out.”
“Don’t fuck with me, man, just tell me.”
“A fucking bumwater town, Higgins. No murders happened there, so whatever. People weren’t on the lookout, so no one down there knows a damn thing.”
“Just … where?”
“This fucking shantytown in New Mexico. Marshall something or other.”
I swallowed hard. A heavy meal I couldn’t recall eating plunged its way into the lowest areas of my belly.
“Marshall Falls,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s it. You know it?”
“Vaguely,” I replied.
“I’d never heard of it.”
That sonofabitch prettyboy was mine. “Well, knock me the fuck down,” I said.
With that, Van Buren rushed me. This time with a football tackle that sent me back into the dirt. He jumped on top of me and gave me three right jabs to the face. Four. Before I knew it, he was going crazy on my face with short punches. I got a thumb in his mouth, hoping to pull his head down, but he bit it.
I grabbed his ear after that, and twisted it back. I could feel blood on my fingertips. He screamed. With that, I brought a leg up over his head and kicked him off of me. He went flying onto his back. We both got up, he more slowly than me.
“You sonofabitch,” I hissed.
“Your ass is mine, Higgins,” he said calmly. “You think you can get away with this shit? Blackmail me, threaten my family? You’re not making it out of these woods.”
“Let’s not get dramatic,” I said. “You’re a jerk, but you ain’t no killer.”
“We’ll see.”
I rushed him this time. He threw a handful of dirt at me that he’d palmed, hoping to get it in my eyes, but he failed. I faked, then came up with a left hook that spun him on his heels. Before he fell, I grabbed him by the shoulders and delivered two swift knees to his guts. A karate chop to the back of his neck. He went down on his knees. I punched him in the forehead.
He drove an elbow up into my crotch. I lost my breath.
He pulled on me by my belt and came up with an uppercut. My teeth met like chimes. My face vibrated. He followed the uppercut up with a series of gut shots. Lefts, rights—all of them left me wishing I’d had breakfast just so I could have thrown up on him. I backed up into a tree, wheezing. I saw his hook coming from a mile away—he put so much of his weight behind it—that I had time to duck. His fist rammed into the tree, and he let out a scream. I grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, and then I head-butted him. Once. Then again. I let him fall in a heap, his nose a bloody mess.
I limped away, toward his car. I was going to take the keys out and chuck them in the woods, just to be an asshole, but I was interrupted. He came up behind me and cracked the butt of his handgun off the back of my head. I got dizzy and stooped forward. He used my momentum against me and hurled me onto the hood of his car. My head cracked his windshield. A little bit of blood got in my eye.
I rolled onto my back, saw him lunging. I raised my leg and let him run into my boot. It made contact with his jaw, and did enough damage that he had to take the time to shake out the cobwebs. I rolled off the hood, got a kick to my knee, but it grazed without breaking bone, and with him off balance, I took advantage. My right hook came out of nowhere and met his jaw like an atomic bomb.
He went down and didn’t get up again.
I went through his pockets, found his cuffs in a belt holster, and cuffed him out of spite. Then I took his badge. He started to come to.
I grabbed him by the collar and said, “Keep your boys in blue away from me. There’s a lot more people at stake here than your goddamn family, and that’s a fact.”
“I can’t let you go,” he mumbled.
I brought a foot down into his face.
“You’re gonna have to. You have too much to lose, cop. Let me do my job.”
Back in the truck, I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. I wasn’t as inconspicuous as I’d been five minutes earlier. With the blanket on the seat, I wiped the blood off my face. My hands were shaking, but I felt great.
“Anthony,” I said. “Anthony, Anthony, Anthony. Time to pay the piper.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The sun came down in brilliant rays, and the air was warm. There was a slight breeze. On any other day, it all would have been enough to make you happy to be alive, but to the citizens of Evelyn, the daytime had become nothing more than a handful of hours in which they felt just a little bit less afraid. Me? I was in good spirits. I was bleeding out of my face, but I knew who the Rose Killer was.
I still didn’t know what the deal was with how he had been able to conceal himself from the wolf, but it didn’t matter too much anymore. I knew his face. I knew his name. I knew his car. Hell, a little bit of his blood had run onto my hand when I knocked his lights out in the parking lot. He was as good as dead. But still, I wanted him. He had caused too much pain and chaos in my life for the wolf to have all the fun. I wanted a little piece of him just for me. All I had to do was find him.
The whole situation with the bloody face was kind of pressing, though. I couldn’t very well go around town looking like I’d gotten intimate with an ugly stick, so once I drove back to Old Sherman Road and the civilization on the other side of it, I headed to the closest deli. There was one just a few blocks away.
I walked in, and the old man behind the counter took one look at me and opened his mouth. “Son,” he said, “you’re not looking like you’re doing too good.”
“I can’t complain,” I said, and went back to one of the coolers to grab myself a bottle of water.
I took one of the few remaining dollars out of my wallet, slammed it on the counter, and headed back out. It was there on the sidewalk that I saw someone I didn’t expect to see again.
She was wearing a pair of sweatpants, sneakers, and a tight white T-shirt with a picture of Jimi Hendrix on it. Sunglasses hid her beautiful eyes from me. I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Hey, darling,” I said out of habit. I kind of instantly regretted it.
She removed her glasses. “Hey, Marley,” said Alice.
“You look good.”
She laughed. “I wish I could say the same about you. What happened?”
“Oh, you mean this? Just been a tough day is all….”
“Maybe we shouldn’t be talking now,” she said plainly, like she’d flipped a switch inside her and turned off her emotions.
“Wait, please, let me explain.”
“Marley, you don’t need to explain anything to me. It’s not
like …”
“Please don’t say it, Alice.”
She stopped.
“I need to apologize about the other day. About following you.”
“That’s fine, Marley. You don’t owe me an explanation.”