Bleeders

19

I got to within thirty yards of the shack before the wind lulled and Johnson heard or sensed my presence. His head jerked up; then he was on his feet in one awkward lunge. He was linebacker big, going soft around the middle but with the kind of size and muscle that would make him rough goods in a fight. If he’d made any sort of move in my direction, I would have had to show him the gun. But he was not the aggressive type. He stood swaying slightly, slump-shouldered, gawping at me out of widened eyes, his face twisted with anguish and confusion.

“Who the hell’re you?” he said in rumbly tones.

I told him who I was, name and profession both. Recognition brought a grimace and the words, “Oh, God.” Favorite Johnson family phrase in times of stress, as if it were an invocation for first aid.

“Where’s Annette Byers?”

I was prepared for lies or evasions; I got neither. He said, “Inside. Asleep, unconscious... I don’t know.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah. She’s hurt, sick...”

“Hurt how?”

“Somebody beat her up. She wouldn’t say who... the guy she was mixed up with, I guess, the bald guy they wrote about in the papers. I think she’s got internal injuries... she’s been puking up blood.”

“How long has she been like that?”

“Awhile. Before she came here on Saturday.”

“You were here last night. For Christ’s sake, why didn’t you take her to a hospital?”

His eyelids slatted. “How’d you know I was here last night? How’d you find out about me, this place?”

“Never mind that. Answer the question. Why didn’t you take her to a hospital?”

“I wanted to, but she wouldn’t let me. She said the cops would arrest her for murder, arrest me for harboring a fugitive. She’s so damn scared... I couldn’t force her to go. I’ve got my family to think of. And Annette, she’s the mother of my oldest son. You understand?”

I understood, all right. I’d heard it all before, in one form or another, and I didn’t like it any better this time than I had the others.

“She gave me some money,” Johnson said, “ a lot of money... she wanted me to buy her drugs. Methamphetamines, cocaine, morphine, whatever I could get. She’s strung out, real bad.”

“Did you make a buy for her? That why you came back up here today?”

“No. I couldn’t do it. I know a guy, but... I hate drugs, I hate what they do to people. I came back to tell her I couldn’t, that the only thing I could do for her was take her to a doctor.” He raked hooked fingers through his beard, making a raspy sound that was audible above the thrum of the wind. “She... went crazy. Called me all kinds of names, tried to claw my face. Then all of a sudden she passed out.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Twenty minutes, half an hour. I couldn’t wake her up, so I came out here to think. Decide what to do.”

“Well now you won’t have to do any more thinking. I’ll make the decision for you.”

“What decision? What’re you gonna do?”

“Go inside and have a look at her, first. You wait here.”

He started to argue, changed his mind, and stepped aside to let me pass. Soft-hearted, his wife had called him. Soft-headed, too, for all his bulk: weak, indecisive, ineffectual in a crisis. I pitied his family in any other emergency that might come up in their lives.

The shack was one room, maybe fifteen feet square, dim because the single window overlooking the river was tightly shuttered. There were shelves and an ancient icebox on one wall, a table and two chairs in the middle of the bare floor, and a double tier of bunk beds against another wall. No cooking facilities, a chemical toilet in a doorless alcove, a space heater near the bunks that was turned on but didn’t throw out much heat. The air in there held a chill, smelled rawly of sickness and human waste.

Annette Byers was on the lower bunk, a curled mound hidden under a skimpy blanket. I went over and eased the blanket down so I could see her face. An unhealthy white stained with fever blotches and a purple-yellow bruise on the exposed temple; pain lines deeply etched around her mouth, the lips so cracked there were spots of blood where the fissures had opened. She moaned, flopped over on her back, but her eyes stayed shut. I laid the back of my hand on her forehead. Hot. One of her hands was clear of the blanket; I lifted it, held it for a few seconds. Her pulse was weak, fluttery.

Johnson had said she might have internal injuries, so I drew the blanket down far enough to have a look at her torso. Jesus. She wore a T-shirt and panties, and the shirt had hiked up under her breasts; a solid pattern of bruises covered most of the exposed skin across her belly and abdomen. Heavy blows to that part of a woman’s body could easily rupture the spleen, damage other organs, and cause internal bleeding.

She moaned again, shivering. I recovered her, and as I did, the lower edge of the blanket came loose from around her feet and I noticed the bulge of something down there, wedged partway between the bunk and the wall. I knew what it was even before I got a grip on it and dragged it out.

Jay Cohalan’s cowhide briefcase.

The weight of it said it was full; I unfastened the catches and looked inside just long enough to verify the contents. The money, all right. A few of the packets torn open, the rest intact. Most if not all of the seventy-five thousand. Even as hurt and sick as she was, she’d kept it close the whole time she was here — slept with it, maybe fondled it to help ease her suffering. The damn money to these people was the world, the universe, God and the devil both.

I looked around for something else to cover her with, keep her warm. Nothing. The space heater was turned up as high as it would go; I moved it a little closer to the bunk. Then I snugged up the case and took it outside with me.

Johnson was pacing around on the grass in front. He stopped when he saw me. The briefcase didn’t seem to register on him; his gaze held on mine.

“She awake now?”

“No.”

“You think she’ll be all right?”

“If you’d gotten her medical attention last night, she’d have a hell of a lot better chance than she does now. That truck of yours equipped with a mobile phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Go put in an emergency medical call. Tell them where we are and to get an ambulance or a medivac helicopter out here as fast as they can.”

“Can’t we just take her to a hospital?”

“It’s too late to risk moving her. Do what I told you, no arguments.”

He bobbed his head. “Should I tell them her name?”

“Might as well. They’d find it out pretty soon anyway. But you don’t need to say anything about me, now or later. I won’t be here when the medics and the law arrive. Take all the credit for yourself.”

“Credit,” he said. “Oh, God, I hope she doesn’t die. I loved her once, she’s Kevin mother. I couldn’t stand that on my conscience...”

“Goddamn it, make that call.”

He hurried away to the pickup. I went in the opposite direction at a trot, opened the car’s trunk, traded the briefcase for the blanket I keep in there. I could have left the money in the shack for the authorities to find, maybe should have; but it had been my responsibility, and at least some of this mess would not have happened if I’d been more careful. I was not about to walk away from it now that I had control of it again.

I drove to the shack, turned the car around there. Johnson was still in his truck. I took the blanket inside, tucked it around Byers’ trembling body. She’d become restless, moving her head from side to side, making noises in her throat. Some of them were words, but I couldn’t make sense of them. Delirious. I’d had the idea of trying to wake her up, see if I could get her to answer some questions, but here with her again it seemed futile and risky.

Her suede shoulder bag was on the top bunk. I dumped out the contents, pawed through them. The usual stuff, and the only item of interest a dog-eared address book. Dingo was listed in there, under that name alone, with the Duboce Street address and an old phone number scratched out and new ones inked in — Pueblo Street in the city. That must be where he’d been living recently. Would he be holed up there? Possible, but not likely. The other names and addresses told me nothing, but there were a few I didn’t recognize. I pocketed the book, scooped the rest of the stuff back into the bag.

“No!”

The sudden cry made me jump a little. When I looked at her, her eyes were wide open and red-flecked drool crawled from the corner of her mouth. But she was not seeing me or anything else in the room. She muttered something that I couldn’t make out, then began babbling in fits and starts. I sank to one knee, leaned my head close enough to her mouth to feel and smell the sour warmth of her breath.

“Stop it stop it stop it... crazy bastard what’s the matter with you, leave me alone! Dirty son of a bitch!” Incoherent. “How d’you like it huh? How d’you like getting hit you sick creep... break your fuckin’ head open...” Incoherent. “Oh shit what am I gonna do now... kill me if he finds me...” Incoherent. “Please... hurts so much... puking up blood he must’ve broke something inside...” Incoherent. “I’ve got to have it for the pain... something anything please Grant please...” A series of whimpers, more sentence fragments, as if a nightmare scene kept replaying on a loop in her head.

I’d heard enough. Had enough in here. I straightened, made sure the blankets covered her completely, and then went back outside and shut the door behind me.

Johnson was standing there, running his hands up and down his sides as if trying to cleanse them. He said, “They’re on the way.”

“Make sure you wait for them. And make sure you forget I was here.”

“I will. What’re you gonna do?”

“Find the man who hurt her like that.”

“Then what?”

“That depends on him. Did she say anything about him? Where he might be?”

“No.”

“Mention the name Dingo at any time?”

“Once. She said if Dingo found her he’d kill her.”

“She tell you where she was before she came here? Where he beat her up?”

“No. She wouldn’t talk about any of that.”

I brushed past him, went to the MG. The driver’s door wasn’t locked. Spots of dried blood on the driver’s bucket; nothing else on any of the seats. And nothing on the floorboards or among the clutter in the glove box. I pulled the trunk release and looked in there. Nothing.

Johnson was still rooted in the same spot. “All right,” I said to him, “I’m going now. Stay inside with her until somebody comes. Keep her warm, don’t let her kick the blankets off.”

“I’ll take care of her,” he said.

Sure you will, I thought. Just like you’ve been taking care of her since last night. You soft-hearted, compassionate tower of strength you.