After beating Doug Stodghill to death and jamming him inside a locker in the office at the rear of his auto shop, Samuel had taken the keys to a vehicle that the mechanic had just finished fixing. The car he stole gave him a head start, but he knew that would only last for so long. Soon, the car would be on the police BOLO system — an all points bulletin otherwise known as ‘be on the look out’. Samuel had driven the car via desert roads that he was familiar with, going beyond the border and into New Mexico. He’d dumped the car in a weed-choked lot behind a taco stall and hot-wired another car a little further up the road. It was an ancient Oldsmobile and the suspension creaked ominously but it carried him to Gallup. There he spent a night in a ‘no questions asked’ flophouse where he used some peroxide purchased from a drugstore to both lighten his dark hair and clean out his injuries. Most people would have screamed as the chemical invaded the raw wounds; Samuel barely felt an itch. The wound in his shoulder was knitting together nicely, but the one in his side was more troublesome. It felt mushy where the bullet had struck his ribs, and he guessed that the bone would take much longer to heal than did his flesh. The thought was troubling.
He didn’t feel pain but that meant nothing if his body failed him without warning. He had a mission to fulfil, and it couldn’t be put off for fear that his wounds had become infected. He’d just have to speed up the process and find Jay Walker as quickly as possible. This wasn’t about gaining revenge for his slain kin, because he felt as little for them as he had for his younger sister. The only reason he tolerated them was because both Carson and Brent had shared his sadistic tendencies. They’d been a good team but he wasn’t going to grow sentimental over them — even if he could. No, the reason he wanted his time with Jay Walker was solely for his own gratification. The bitch had given him the slip, thwarted him when he was about to beat her saviour to death and had spoiled the good times he had planned for her. It was only just that he balanced everything in his favour again.
He would have liked to finish what he’d started with the Englishman. From what he’d heard on the street, Stodghill had told him that the man was a private dick called Joe Hunter, and that he’d returned to Florida. Maybe another occasion would present itself; right now he desired quality time with Jay Walker. He’d wondered about Carson and Brent, and their fixation on women who resembled Carla. Women were simply women to him. Now though he understood his kin in a way he hadn’t before, because there was only one woman who was going to satisfy him.
Now it was time to go get her.
But to achieve that, there were things he had to do first.
Primarily he had to complete what he’d started when bleaching his hair. There was no way he’d get within grabbing distance of Jay Walker dressed the way he was now.
He’d stolen money from Stodghill, but it was down to less than thirty dollars, nowhere near enough to buy the clothing he required.
Early that morning, he left the flophouse — a dingy hotel advertising ‘clean linen’ — and walked towards the more opulent centre of town, if Gallup contained such a thing. The kind of people in this poor neighbourhood weren’t what he was seeking. His walk took him along West Hill Avenue, and he followed it downtown until the McKinley County Courthouse dominated the skyline. There, he thought, he’d find people more fitting. Before reaching the court buildings he looked for someone to his liking. Buildings here were decorated with murals depicting the Native American cultures prevalent in the city: Navajo, Hopi and Zuni. He had no interest in them. He found a park that looked alien when compared to the dusty streets, like it had been ripped from somewhere semi-tropical and dropped at random in the heart of the desert city. The gardens weren’t huge, yet to someone who’d grown up in the middle of an arid waste it was about the most greenery he’d seen in his life. There were people out strolling, others sitting in the shade beneath the trees, but Samuel was looking for someone of a specific type.
He spotted the person he’d been searching for. Samuel was short and squat, wide around the shoulders and arms. He needed someone of a similar build if the man’s clothing were going to fit him. The man he spotted was nowhere near as muscular, but was rotund with fat. He was wearing a grey suit, shirt and tie, more suited to a fancy hotel than the workshirt and jeans Samuel was currently dressed in. Samuel leaned against the bole of a tree and watched the man. He was reading a newspaper and drinking coffee from a waxed cup: probably on his way to the office. Samuel wondered if he could take him here, but there were too many people around. So he waited.
Finally the man stood up, heaving his bulky body away from the bench as he aimed his empty cup at a trash can. He folded his newspaper and tucked it under his arm. Samuel thought he’d head for the nearby courthouse, but the man surprised him by turning north and wending his way through the garden towards the next road over. Samuel fell into step behind him.
The traffic was already building up as the rush hour began, but over the grumble of engines Samuel could hear something else that reminded him of the thunderstorms that occasionally cut a swathe across his homelands. He couldn’t quite define the sound until the fat man led him out of the park and on to a road on the other side of which was a building site that dominated an entire block. The rumble he’d heard was the movement of large construction vehicles, cranes and a workforce of dozens of men. The fat man crossed the road and walked on the sidewalk adjacent to the site.
Samuel glanced around and saw that most pedestrians were on the park side, keeping away from the noise and the dust. It suited him. He jogged across the road, feeling his ribs grinding. He continued jogging, and, as he approached he tugged from his jeans pocket his battered wallet and held it in his left hand.
‘Sir! Excuse me sir!’
At first the fat man couldn’t hear him, or chose to ignore him. Samuel picked up his pace, caught up with the man and finally swerved in front of him. The man reared back, bringing up both palms as if to push Samuel away.
Samuel knew he looked sinister, with his bruised eyes and nose, and his grin didn’t do much to allay the man’s fears. Samuel held out the wallet.
‘Sir, you were sitting in the garden over there and as you walked away I noticed you’d dropped this.’
The man did what anyone would do, his eyes went to the proffered wallet, and Samuel knew that he was contemplating whether or not to take it. Those of an avaricious nature would wonder if the wallet contained cash and if they were on to a good thing by lying and agreeing that it was theirs. An honest person would deny it belonged to them. The man, it seemed, was honest.
‘Thanks, but it isn’t mine.’
While the man was still studying the wallet, Samuel took a discreet look around. Nobody was paying them any attention.
‘Are you sure, sir?’ Samuel asked.
‘I’m positive.’ The man dropped his guard, and his right hand sneaked round to touch the wallet in his back pocket. ‘Mine is right here.’
Samuel shrugged. ‘Oh. Then I wonder whose it is?’
‘Sorry, but I can’t help you.’
‘OK, sir. I guess I should take it to the police.’
‘Maybe you should.’ The fat man stepped past and Samuel twisted his torso as if to allow him passage. Samuel’s left hand blocked the man’s pudgy left wrist. It was an innocent enough collision and the man didn’t immediately respond. Then Samuel snaked his strong hand back through the gap between the man’s arm and rotund body. Because he was still blocking the man’s wrist he helped rotate it so that he could place his right palm over the back of the man’s hand and clamp on to the flesh nearest his pinky finger. Samuel immediately reversed the movement, twisting the man’s trapped hand with him. The action locked both the wrist and elbow and brought the man up on his toes. He began to yelp in pain, but already Samuel had nudged his shoulder into the man’s elbow and he both turned him and propelled him over a small wire fence towards an embankment sloping into the construction site. At the last second he released his grip, but there was nowhere for the fat man to go but down.
The embankment extended a good few yards into the site, and was pitched at a forty-five-degree angle. Even an agile person would find it hard to check their fall. The fat man didn’t stop until he’d rolled all the way to the bottom. Samuel took the time to check no one had noticed, then stepped over the small fence and followed him into the pit. By the time he’d reached the bottom, the man had just lifted his face from the dirt. He was plastered in damp clay. Samuel had intended stealing his suit, but that wasn’t a consideration now. Samuel forced the man back down into the muck, pressing him down with a heel on the back of his neck. The man struggled and he was stronger than his unhealthy weight would suggest, so Samuel decided for a quick dispatch. He raised his foot then stamped down at the base of the man’s skull. The struggling stopped. Samuel stamped twice again for good measure.
He rifled through the pockets of the suit and found what he required: a wallet and keys. A quick check inside the wallet identified the man as Roger Hawkins, and his address was nearby. Samuel thought there was no way this man had walked a great distance to work each day.
Samuel checked all around him but the racket from the site, the billowing dust, had all concealed the mugging from the workers. He grabbed Hawkins by his ankles, and, though it was a struggle dragging him and likely played havoc with his injured ribs, he placed him at the edge of the embankment. There were sheets of board stacked nearby, as well as other random pieces of junk that Samuel piled over the corpse. Hawkins wouldn’t remain undiscovered for long, but Samuel trusted it would be enough time to visit the man’s apartment. He bounced Hawkins’s house keys in his good hand, then went back up the embankment.
All being well he could be back in Holbrook and ready to take Jay Walker by the end of the day.