Demons

Chapter 18

Cahill said, “Come on in here, slick. Nice and slow.”

I moved ahead, halfway to the couch before I stopped again. You could feel the strain in there, the hard scraping edge of tension, but it wasn’t as acute as it might have been. Cahill was keyed up, sweating, but he seemed to have the furnace of violence in him under control. Kay Runyon was calm; there was no panic in her eyes, only a dull fright. She had been through so much recently, her sensibilities bludgeoned and bruised to the point of numbness. I felt bad for her, and bad for Matt, and angry as hell at the half-wit with the gun.

I asked her, “You okay, Mrs. Runyon?”

“Yes.” Low voice, as stunned as her eyes.

“He didn’t hurt you?”

“No.”

“How long has he been here?”

“More than an hour... just before he made me call you. He forced his way in—”

“Shut up,” Cahill said. His gaze, when he shifted it to me, showed more heat. “Don’t talk to her, goddamn it. You talk to me.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“That’s what you think. You carrying heat?”

“No.”

“Show me.”

I opened my jacket, fanned it up and out, and did a slow turn. “Satisfied?”

“Go stand next to the kid.”

I went over beside Matt. His hands were fisted at his sides, locked down rigid; when I glanced at him I could see his neck cords bulging, the pulse throbbing in the hollow of his throat, the faint forward straining of his body. Like a pit bull at the end of a leash, I thought. Release him and he’d try to tear Cahill apart.

I said to Cahill, “What’s this all about?”

“You know what it’s about. You fuckers sicced the cops on me, you and Runyon. Richie told me that.”

“Richie?”

“My fuggin’ brother-in-law. He turned my own sister against me. A few bucks and a set of wheels, that’s all I wanted; but no, Richie drags out his piece” — he waggled the Saturday night special — “and sticks it in my face. Would of shot me, too, if I hadn’t taken it away from him. Fixed his wagon for him, the bastard.”

“What’d you do to him?”

“Busted his head,” Cahill said. “Gave Marj a jolt too. That’s what she gets for marrying Richie. A spic — what’s she want to marry a fuggin’ spic for anyway?”

His smooth red face turned brooding and petulant; you could see his emotions running naked there. He’d backed himself into a corner, not for the first time in his miserable life, but he didn’t see it that way. It was always somebody else’s fault — in this case, the Runyons’, mine, his sister’s, his brother-in-law’s. Angry, persecuted, trapped, and not very bright, with no place to run and no place to hide, taking out his frustrations on the people he blamed for his trouble.

But that still didn’t explain why he’d come here. This was a bigger risk than anything else he might have done—

Runyon, I thought, that’s why. He’s after Runyon.

And Nedra. Even now, on the run, he can’t let go of his fixation for her.

“Here’s the way it stacks up,” he said. “You give me what I want and I walk out of here and nobody gets hurt.”

“I can’t give you what you want. None of us can.”

“No? I’m talking about Runyon.”

“I know what you’re talking about.”

“I told him we don’t know where Vic is,” Kay Runyon said. “I told him and Matt told him, but he won’t believe us.”

“It’s the truth, Cahill. They don’t know and I don’t know either.”

“You got to have some idea.”

“No. If I had, don’t you think I’d have been out working on it instead of sitting around my office this morning?”

He shook his head stubbornly; he had one thought in there and by God nothing and nobody was going to drive it out. “You people put me on the run — okay, that’s over and done with. But I ain’t going anywhere until I find out what he did to Nedra.”

I asked Kay Runyon, “Did you show him the note your husband left you?”

“Yes.”

“That note don’t mean shit,” Cahill said.

“It means he’s not coming back. It means he may already have done away with himself. What good is it going to do you to hang around here waiting?”

“I ain’t gonna hang around here long. Neither are you. You don’t know where Runyon is, all right, then you go find him and bring him here.”

“Jesus Christ, how am I going to do that? I just told you, he may already be dead—”

“He’s not dead. I don’t buy that.”

“I’ve been hunting him ever since he left last night. So have the police. Nobody has any idea where he is. How the hell can I find him if I don’t know where to look?”

“I don’t care how you do it, just do it.”

It was like trying to talk to a wall. I felt bitterly helpless. I couldn’t walk out of here and leave the woman and her son at Cahill’s mercy, not unless I was prepared to go straight to the police and put their lives in further jeopardy by turning this into a SWAT-team fiasco; and I couldn’t stay here because there was no way to negotiate with a monomaniacal simpleton, and no way I could see to disarm him by myself.

One more try: “It’s Nedra you really want, Cahill, we both know that.”

“I want to know what he did to her. She better be alive.”

“I think she is. I’ve got an appointment with somebody later this afternoon, a friend of Nedra’s who might know where to find her.”

“Who? What friend?”

“I won’t tell you that. But I’ll take you with me when I see her — just the two of us. That’s my condition: Leave Mrs. Runyon and her son here and I’ll take you to the friend.”

“Bullshit,” Cahill said.

“What’s bullshit?”

“There’s no friend.”

“There’s a friend. I swear it.”

“Then go get her and bring her here.”

“I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that.”

“Find out what the friend knows, come back and tell me.”

“And then what?”

“I go find Nedra myself.”

And if she’s dead and you still believe Runyon did it, I thought, and Runyon still hasn’t been found, you come back here and throw down on these poor people again. No way. You don’t get Annette Olroyd and you don’t get whatever those postcards of hers reveal.

Cahill said impatiently, “How about it, slick?”

It’s got to be the cops, I thought. Walk out, call Branislaus, tell him the way it’s shaped up in here. He’ll take over, do what has to be done.

And if this airhead shoots Kay or Matt before the negotiators can talk him out? I couldn’t live with that on my conscience.

But there’s no other way...

One other way: Leave, drive off, park somewhere out of sight, take the gun from the car and come back and try to get in quietly through the backyard and kitchen door, try to surprise him and pop him before he has a chance to use his weapon.

Sure, sure, big clumsy guy like me, make noise when I breathe — I couldn’t sneak up on a brass band. Bigger chance of the Runyons getting hurt that way than with trained hostage negotiators handling it. I’m no hero, for Christ’s sake, especially not with other people’s lives at stake.

“Come on, slick,” Cahill said, “make up your fuggin’ mind.” Angry now, letting the doors to the furnace blow open. He moved a pace to his right, took the Saturday night special away from Kay Runyon’s head so he could jam it in my direction for emphasis. His eyes had fire in them now — the meltdown glare, bright and crackling and all for me.

And that was good because he didn’t see Matt move. He didn’t but I did — a slow, sideways shifting that brought the boy up next to a spindly table with an orange pottery vase on it. There were maybe fifteen feet separating him and Cahill.

I knew instantly what was in the kid’s mind and I wanted to yell at him not to do it; reach over and grab him and haul him down before he acted. But any sudden cry or activity on my part would probably trigger Cahill. Nothing for me to do but keep Cahill’s attention centered on me and then attack when Matt attacked.

“Listen to me, Cahill,” I said. “You’re making a big mistake.”

“You listen, slick. You shag ass out of here right now, no more crap, or I hurt these two. You understand me?”

Matt’s hand was on the vase.

“Suppose I don’t?” I said. “You going to shoot me down in cold blood?”

“Maybe. You want to find out?”

“You ever killed anybody, Cahill? No, I don’t think so. Not with a gun anyway. You’re not that cold-blooded.”

“You don’t know me, you don’t know what—”

Matt swung the vase up and chucked it, all in one quick blurred motion. Oh yeah, a ballplayer — a good one, thank God. The vase slammed into the side of Cahill’s head, knocked him sideways and his hot eyes out of focus. The crack of the pottery shattering and Cahill’s pained bellow and Kay Runyon’s startled cry all seemed magnified, like eruptions blowing away the silence.

Matt was closer to Cahill and I had the couch to get around; he got there first, hurling himself at the bigger man just as the gun came up in Cahill’s hand. The thing went off and Kay Runyon screamed, but the muzzle was pointed downward; the bullet burrowed harmlessly into the floor.

The force of the kid’s lunge drove both of them, reeling, into the far wall. They bounced off, into another table; the table buckled and collapsed under their combined weight, brought them down with it in a tangle of arms and legs and broken wood. I saw the Saturday night special pop loose from Cahill’s grasp, but when I went after it somebody’s leg flailed out and tripped me, sent me sprawling into the back of the couch. Kay Runyon made another noise; I heard Cahill say “Shit!” explosively. I got my footing back, turned in time to see him punch Matt over the eye and break free. He looked for the gun, but I was already lunging for it. I scooped it up, swung around with my finger sliding through the trigger guard.

Cahill wasn’t going to fight me for it. Coward underneath all that hard-ass exterior: he’d turned tail and was running for the hallway.

I yelled for him to stop but he didn’t break stride; he veered away from the front door, though, instinctively realizing I could see him if he tried to get out that way, take a clear shot at his back. He charged ahead into the kitchen. I started after him, but Matt was on his feet by then and between me and the hall. His mother and I both shouted his name, a half-beat apart so that the effect was of an echo. He didn’t listen to either of us. Just pelted, head down, in Cahill’s wake.

I lumbered around the couch, got past Kay Runyon. “Stay here, call nine-eleven,” I told her, and ran on through the hall into the kitchen.

It was empty; Matt had just slammed out the back door. I yanked the thing open, went onto the porch. Cahill was off to the right of the studio, barreling across the lawn toward the fence that separated the Runyon property from the pedestrian ladder street beyond. Matt was twenty yards behind him and gaining.

At first I thought Cahill would slacken speed and jump for the top of the fence, try to scale it. But no, he kept right on going full tilt toward the access door. He hit it like a bull smacking into a bullring wall: head lowered, shoulder up, legs driving. The lock burst loose in a shriek of metal and wood, the door flew outward, boards splintered loose from the fence and the whole thing wobbled and sagged. Somehow Cahill kept his balance, turned uphill on the ladder street. Matt was right behind him. I could hear the two of them pounding up the steps as I ran across the yard.

When I came out onto the street and looked upward, Cahill was on the concrete halfway up, trying to use the iron side railing to give himself greater impetus. But Matt was younger, faster; he caught Cahill by the shirt, yanked him back and around, and smacked him full in the face. I saw blood spurt, heard Cahill roar with pain. Then they were locked together, slugging at each other; and then they were down on the landing, rolling around in an even more frantic embrace.

Cahill had the greater strength, would have won the wrestling match inside of two minutes. But I was up there with them in less than one, jockeying to stay out of harm’s way so I could draw a bead on Cahill’s head. He gave me the opening I was after when he rolled on top of the boy and reared back to throw a punch. I clouted him on the right ear with the flat barrel of the Saturday night special. It stunned him; a grunt came out of his throat and he tried jerkily to turn my way. I clubbed him again, and a third time as he was toppling sideways. The third blow laid him out facedown on the dirty concrete, kept him there.

There was a shout from near the top of the hill. A bearded guy had his head poked over a privet hedge, peering down at us. “What the hell’s going on down there?”

I called back, “Dangerous police situation, don’t interfere,” and his head vanished instantly. I could hear other voices now, here and there in the vicinity, and they kept up an intermittent chatter. But nobody else ventured out onto the ladder street, wholly or in part.

I looked over at Matt. He was sucking at a knuckle, his eyes still bright with rage.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. His shirt was torn, one arm and one cheek were gouged and bleeding, and he was going to have a honey of a black eye before long. “You?”

“Pretty good now.”

“I hope you busted his fucking skull.”

“I didn’t hit him that hard. You took a stupid damn chance, jumping him like that inside. And then chasing him out here. You could have got yourself killed.”

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had enough of his crap. You know?”

“I know,” I said. “Real well.”

“You want me to call the cops?”

“Your mother should already have done that. You better go and tell her you’re all right.” I shifted the Saturday night special to my left hand, hauled my keys out and gave them to Matt. “Then go out to my car and bring the handcuffs from the trunk. They’re in a box in there.”

“Right.” He trotted away down the steps.

I sat in a patch of warm sunlight and listened to the neighbors and watched Cahill. He was beginning to stir around. Pretty soon he lifted himself onto all fours, raised his head. His nose was bent and crooked, leaking blood; Matt had busted it as effectively as Cahill had busted his father’s. When his eyes cleared and he saw me he tensed, started to pull his feet under him.

“Don’t even think about it, slick,” I said. “I’ll shoot your eye out if you don’t sit still and keep your mouth shut. Believe it. It’d be a pleasure.”

He believed it. He sat still and kept his mouth shut, before and after Matt brought the handcuffs.