Envy the Night

8

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The sign on the door said CLOSED, and there were no lights on in the office. Frank was early, too. So had she forgotten, or was she planning to come back? It was only five twenty. He stood on the sidewalk in front of the body shop with two full grocery bags in his hands and wondered what the hell he should do.

She didn’t seem like the type to forget. Too put together and in control for that. Things had gotten a little hectic there, with the gray-haired guy rushing everybody, and it was possible. She’d said six, though, and that was a while off, so maybe he should just wait.

He set the bags down by the front door and looked around, wondering what Nora Stafford drove. The only car parked on this side of the street was a black Dodge Charger a block away. No cars in the handful of parking spaces in front of the shop. Maybe she’d gone out on another tow. He’d check to see if the truck was still parked behind the shop. If not, he’d wait. If so . . . maybe wait a little less.

Leaving the groceries where they were, he walked around the building and into the back parking lot. There was a wire security fence around the lot to protect the towed vehicles, but the gate was open, suggesting she hadn’t left for the day. He went through the gate and into the parking lot and saw the tow truck parked there, his battered Jeep behind it. Okay, she wasn’t out on a tow. But the gate wasn’t locked, either. So where the hell had she gone?

At first, he thought he’d imagined the cry. Short and muffled, not a scream but a mild sound of outrage, or maybe pain. He tilted his head and listened and heard nothing but silence. Took a few steps toward the back door. Still no sounds, but now he could see light on the other side of the door. Then something fell inside, a clang of metal on concrete.

He saw them as soon as he opened the door. A tall man with his back to Frank, shoving Nora Stafford against a toolbox on the far wall. He had her arm twisted behind her back and his other hand covered her mouth while he used his weight to keep her pinned against that toolbox and spoke in a low voice. Frank probably could have made out the words if he’d tried, but he was already moving, crossing the concrete floor fast and quiet, sidestepping enough to keep himself positioned behind the tall man’s back, out of his line of sight.

It was maybe fifty feet from the back door to where they stood, and Frank made about forty of it before the guy heard him or sensed the motion. He twisted his head, saw Frank coming at him, and shoved Nora Stafford away. A small pile of bolts and a socket wrench hit the floor with her, bouncing off the concrete in a jingle of metal as the tall man reached under his jacket and brought a gun up.

For his thirteenth birthday, Frank Temple’s father gave him a musty hardbound book with a blue cover. Kill or Get Killed, the title. A close-quarters combat text. His grandfather’s book, then his father’s, now Frank’s. Read it, his father told him. All of it. Frank had. Two weeks later, his father challenged him to try to take a gun out of his hand. The first of many lessons.

The gun facing him now was a 9 mm automatic, and the man who held it was used to the sight of a gun having some stopping power on its own, because he kept lifting it, passing over Frank’s body and aiming for his face. He wasn’t planning to shoot. Frank knew that as he closed the rest of the distance between them. Put a gun in the face of most people, they’ll stop moving. That was the expectation. The reality was going to be a little different.

Frank’s first strike, delivered a quarter of a second before the next, was with the edge of his left hand on the wrist that held the gun. He moved his head down and to the right as he did it, and then the gun was pointing harmlessly away from him. The second strike was really two at the same time—he hit the tall man’s chin with the heel of his right hand while he brought his right knee up and into the groin. It was a simple move, using the momentum he already had from his forward rush, but it was effective. He actually missed with his knee, hit on the inside of the man’s thigh instead of the groin, but since the guy’s head had already snapped back the blow was enough to keep him going. He hit the same toolbox that he’d pinned Nora Stafford against, and now Frank caught the man’s wrist with his left hand and slammed it into the metal edge of the toolbox. The gun came free and bounced away. Frank ignored it, got his hand behind the other man’s neck while he released his wrist and then slammed him forward, using his leg to upend him and spill him onto the floor.

The guy took the fall well, rolled back onto his feet and lunged upward just in time to be greeted with the socket wrench Frank had recovered from the floor. He laced it downward with an easy stroke, about fifty percent of his strength going into the blow, but it was plenty. Caught the guy right across the back of his skull and dropped him back onto the floor.

It should have been done, but Frank was caught by the tide now, unsatisfied with just how damn easy this had been, wanted to grab that gun off the floor and put it to the bastard’s knee and blow a cloud of blood and bone onto the concrete. He went for the gun, saw it wasn’t on the floor, and looked up to see Nora Stafford standing with the weapon in her hand. Her eyes moved from Frank to the man at his feet, and then she held the gun out.

“Here.”

It was a Glock, no safety to remove, just squeeze that trigger and watch the thing kill. Frank knew the gun well. By the time it touched his palm, though, the flush of rage was gone, a cool calm sliding back into its place. He slipped the Glock into his waistband, cast one glance at the unconscious man on the floor, and then turned back to Nora Stafford.

“It would seem,” he said, “that you should probably call the police.”

Frank was worried about her until she came back out of the office. Was she going to fall apart, get hysterical, give him another problem to deal with before the cops showed? Then she stepped back into the room and stared at the tall son of a bitch stretched out on the concrete and he knew she was fine. The look was laden with anger and disgust, not fear.

“You’re early,” she told Frank.

He nodded. “Didn’t want my milk to spoil.”

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Wouldn’t want that, no. Thanks for the help. He just walked right in here . . .”

“You don’t know him?”

“No. He came in this afternoon and asked about the Lexus.”

Frank tilted his head. “Car that I hit?”

“You got it.”

He blew out a long sigh as a siren began to close on the body shop and looked to the side, where the partially disassembled Lexus stood.

“That guy was all wrong. Shit, I’m sorry. I should have said something earlier. Had a bad sense about him, but I was trying to ignore it. Figured it had nothing to do with me.”

That was total bullshit—Frank’s original sense about the guy was a personal thing indeed, but he didn’t see what would be gained from explaining that to Nora.

“I had the same sense, and told myself the same thing,” she said, “but I didn’t count on this.”

She was holding her right wrist with her left hand, rubbing it gently, and Frank saw for the first time the dark red streaks left on her skin, left by a firm and no doubt painful grasp.

“You okay?” he said.

“Fine.” She dropped her arm as if embarrassed to have her pain noted.

“What did he want?” Frank gestured at the unconscious man with his toe.

“To know where your buddy in the Lexus went.”

“No kidding?” Frank looked at the guy on the floor. He’d arrived pretty damn fast after the car was left at Stafford’s Collision and Custom. And if he didn’t know where Dave O’Connor had gone, then how had he found the Lexus?

Frank slid the Glock out of his waistband and looked at it. Good gun, not uncommon, but the sort of thing preferred by people who knew what they were doing. The guy he’d taken it from hadn’t been that bad, either. Just hadn’t expected Frank to be any good, that was the difference. The way he’d shoved Nora past him and cleared the gun in one swift, easy motion . . . he’d been around.

“He told me the guy’s name was Vaughn,” Nora said.

“What?”

“Dave O’Connor, right? That’s what he told us his name was. This guy, he said the person driving the Lexus was named Vaughn.”

“You see a driver’s license, any sort of ID?”

She shook her head, and he saw a spark of irritation in her eyes. Maybe at him for asking, maybe at herself for not getting it.

“Anything in the car?” Frank asked, but the sirens were in the parking lot outside, and Nora walked away from him, toward the door. The guy on the floor was starting to come back, rolling his right foot a little, eyes still closed, left side of his face pressed to the cold stone.

The cop came in with Nora, and Frank was surprised to see it was just one guy. About forty, ruddy faced, thick fingers. He was speaking into the microphone near his collarbone as he entered, reporting his position and situation, casting a scowl at the sight of the body on the floor. When he was done talking into his radio, he withdrew a plastic bag from his hip pocket and reached out to Frank.

“Gimme the gun.” His badge said MOWERY.

Frank dropped the gun in the bag, and Mowery sealed the plastic lock and jammed the gun, bag and all, into his belt. He nodded at the man at his feet.

“His gun.”

“That’s right.”

“You took it from him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“After he pulled it.”

“Yeah.”

Mowery studied Frank as if he weren’t sure he believed it. “What’d you hit him with?”

“Hands, at first. Then a wrench.”

“That seemed like a wise idea to you? Swinging on a man with a gun?”

“It worked.”

“Hmm.” Mowery squatted beside the tall man, whose eyes had fluttered open, leaving him staring blearily across the floor. “Looks like he’s ’bout ready to rejoin the world. Best that he do that with his hands cuffed, don’t you think?”

“Nobody else coming?” Frank said.

Mowery gave him a sour look. “We got a lot of county and few cars to cover it right now, son. You really think I need to bring all of them off the roads, help me deal with this? Seems to me it isn’t that difficult a situation.”

Should’ve been here five minutes ago, Frank thought. Like to see you come across that room when he showed the gun.

Mowery got the cuffs off his belt and fastened the man’s hands behind his back. The prisoner was fully conscious by the time the second cuff snapped shut, twisting his head to try to look back at Mowery. The movement didn’t work so well; he made a soft grunt that seemed driven more by nausea than pain and laid his cheek back on the concrete.

“I hit him pretty well,” Frank said. “Might have a concussion. Maybe need an ambulance.”

“He isn’t gonna die in my car before he gets to a hospital.” Mowery leaned over and flicked the man’s cheek. “You with us, asshole? Want to walk out to the car with me, get that headache checked?”

The guy grunted again, and Mowery wrapped one hand over the handcuffs and the other in the guy’s shirt, then hauled him upright with a jerk.

“You can stand,” he said, as the man’s legs started to buckle. “Stand up, damn it!”

Excellent procedure, Frank thought. Way to be concerned with the potential medical condition. Should be filming this for a police academy.

“All right,” Mowery said when his prisoner held his own footing. “Let me get him in the car, get him down to the hospital. Don’t want the son of a bitch dying on us, do we? I finish with him, three of us are gonna talk.”

The tall man’s movements seemed steady enough heading across the room to the door, shuffling along without comment, casting one long, hard stare at Nora as he passed her. She gazed right back at him and flicked her middle finger up. Mowery, walking behind his prisoner, reached out and grabbed a handful of the guy’s short hair and twisted his head away from Nora.

“You don’t look at the lady, shithead. You don’t even look.”

They stepped out the door. Frank and Nora walked that far and then stopped, standing just inside as Mowery guided the tall man toward the police cruiser parked about twenty feet away, a Lincoln County Sheriff logo on the front door. Mowery opened the back door of the car, put his hand on the back of his prisoner’s head, and started to shove him into the seat. He was facing the inside of the car, and when a man rose from behind the trunk, on the opposite side, Mowery never saw him. Had no idea trouble was at hand until Nora shouted, and Frank went through the door and started toward them as the new man, wearing a camouflage jacket and black boots, hit Mowery in the side of the head with a handgun. Mowery fell into his prisoner, the two of them tumbling into the backseat in a crush of bodies, and then the gun swung down again and Mowery’s nose shattered and blood sprayed the inside of the window.

Frank had taken a few steps toward them when the new man whirled and lifted his gun, and just as he’d been so certain before that there wouldn’t be any shots if he kept moving, this time he knew there would. He lifted his hands and backpedaled, and for a moment he was sure the crazy bastard was going to fire anyhow. Then Mowery, sliding down out of the car to the ground, reached out and got his fingers in his attacker’s shirt, and that was enough to draw another whip of the gun. It was two seconds of distraction, but it got Frank back inside.

He grabbed Nora around the waist and pulled her into the body shop and swung the door shut behind them with his free hand. Nora’s feet tangled with his, and she started to fall. He let her go, turned away as she hit the floor hard on her ass, reached for the dead-bolt lock and turned it. He banged his hand over the light switch and dropped to the floor, and then it was just the two of them inside the dark room and Mowery outside with his prisoner and a man with a gun.