The Dead Caller from Chicago

Fifty-eight

I ran without lights, two blocks behind, as they drove east through the bungalow neighborhoods. Then, abruptly, they turned onto the dark old road that led to the factory district.

Old-timers at the health center still talked about how that narrow old road used to jam up tight with factory workers, three shifts, six days a week. They said the big-ton stamping and molding presses used to pound the road so hard that cars shook clear up through their steering wheels, and a man couldn’t hold his beer right until he’d been home fifteen minutes and the shakes went away.

No more. Now it was pitch black nighttimes, because there was no sense replacing burned-out bulbs on a road that went nowhere. The asphalt had crumbled, giving in to years of the brown husks of weeds, some as tall as late-summer corn, that ran in arrogant abundance down the center of that nowhere road. Mr. Black, or Mr. Red, pushed Jenny’s headlamps through them like he was bulldozing used-up crops, filling the night with the gunshot sounds of dry stalks snapping fast beneath the Prius’s front bumper.

Only a killer would have need for such a road.

The Prius flashed its brake lights, lighting the night red. I cut my engine and coasted to a stop a hundred yards behind, careful not to tap out any red of my own.

He’d stopped in front of the old wood bridge crossing a bend in the Willahock and switched off the headlamps. The Prius faded into the darkness, and for an instant, the night went silent. It was March; it was cold.

The Prius’s interior light snapped on as the passenger door flew open. Jenny lunged out of the car, hugging something. A gunshot sounded loud as the man in the fedora fired through her open door. She disappeared into the darkness. Running, or down.

Mr. Black, or Mr. Red, twisted toward his door, to get out and finish his kill.

I turned the key and gunned the Jeep forward, switching on my high beams.

He rolled out of the Prius, throwing up his left arm to shield his eyes, and raised his gun with his right to fire into the blinding light.

He was too slow. My bumper hit his knees, slamming him back against the Prius’s open door. He went down like the dry stalks he’d just mowed over. I threw the Jeep into reverse, spinning my wheels backward to see how bad I’d hit him.

He was flat on his back, unmoving in the light of my headlamps. Blood ran from his nostrils, gashes on both arms, and one leg. His gun arm was extended at crazy angles, broken at least twice. His automatic had flown out of his hand and lay on the crumbled asphalt a yard away. He was Mr. Black, the man who’d dropped me with one punch at the health center. I killed my engine, but left my lights on, and got out.

“Jenny!” I yelled into the night.

A twig snapped past the shoulder of the road, and she came up on skittish legs to stand trembling beside me. “Is he… is…?”

I kicked his gun well off the road and knelt to feel his neck. There was a pulse. It was faint. He might live.

He might wake up.

“Let’s get to the Jeep,” I said, straightening up.

“I have to find my camera.”

“In a minute.” I grabbed her arm and tugged her to the Jeep.

“The camera’s all I have,” she said.

I fished behind the seat for a roll of silver tape, grateful that every financially challenged Jeep owner must carry at least one, for those moments when previously taped tears in the vinyl roof open up to greet the sun. Or more usually, the rain.

“The key’s in the ignition,” I said, bringing out the roll. “Take off if he wakes up.”

“I threw it down the bank,” she said, making no move to get behind the wheel.

“So someone would find it, after you were found dead?”

“Brilliant, right?” Her voice was shaky, no matter the cool of her words.

“Let me take care of Mr. Black, then we’ll look.”

The Russian still lay motionless, but broken arm or not, I figured him for having more in killer instinct than I had in ingenuity. I worked feverishly, winding tape from his good wrist up to his neck for a once-around, then down to finish it off around his broken arm. One yank with either arm would send him to the moon in pain, if it didn’t choke him.

I taped his ankles together, and his knees. I wrapped his eyes and his mouth, reasoning that if he couldn’t see and couldn’t yell, he wouldn’t try to hobble off, and he’d stay put long enough for the sheriff to get there. When I was done, I did it all again, until I’d trussed him into something that looked mummified in shiny silver linen. By then, I’d run out of rational. I walked back to the Jeep only when I ran out of tape.

I took out my cell phone to call the sheriff.

“They’ll be here any minute,” she said, heading toward the Prius. “I need a flashlight.”

“Who’ll be here?”

“The Rivertown police, of course.” She stopped, noticing the look on my face. “Dek, what’s-?”

“I was at the excavation, too, Jenny. I saw, same as you.”

“OK; good,” she said, like it was no problem.

“No, not good. I recognized the bray, Jenny, and I recognized the sister’s voice.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you called, did you give your name?”

“Some kid answered. His mouth was full. I told him there was a killer bound up at a bridge on a dark road and hung up.”

We’d gotten lucky, at least for a few minutes. Benny Fittle had pulled night duty. He’d have to call somebody. That would take time.

“They can’t have witnesses, Jenny. We’ve got to get out of here.”

She stared at me for a moment, wanting to ask a hundred questions, but then she ran toward the Prius. “Not without the camera,” she yelled.

She grabbed a flashlight from the glove box and disappeared down the embankment.

The road toward town was still black, but they wouldn’t come with their lights on.

Please, Benny Fittle: Be confused. Be slow to call.

I ran after her. By now, she was halfway down the embankment, moving her flashlight beam side to side through the weeds.

She stopped. The camera lay on the mud, five feet from the ice at the edge of the river. It was small, almost pocket sized, and I was surprised she’d found it.

The bank of the Willahock was still dotted with slippery splotches of frozen snow, and it took too many minutes to reach the camera. It was light and didn’t rattle when I picked it up.

She turned to look up toward the road. “No one’s coming.”

“They won’t use their headlamps.”

“No witnesses?” she asked, suddenly shivering.

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

We scrambled up the embankment.

Mr. Black lay immobile. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, decided it didn’t much matter.

“Your fingerprints are on the silver tape,” she said, looking at him.

“They might not worry about that,” I said, thinking of the speedy digging job earlier, at the excavation.

I ran to the Prius and tried to pull back the ruined driver’s side door. It was bent back flat against the front fender and wouldn’t budge.

I slipped behind the wheel. “Follow me.”

She didn’t protest. She ran to the Jeep.

We ran without lights, seeing only by the moon. I hugged the right side of the road; odds of a head-on collision between two cars running dark were good, if they didn’t find us first by the sound of the Prius’s ruined door. It banged against the front fender like a big steel drum at every ripple and heave in the road.

Luck rode with us. We got to the neighborhoods without passing anyone. I stopped so she could pull up alongside.

She reached over to roll down the Jeep’s window. “What now?” Her voice was high, but she was in control.

“Is there anything in this car you want to keep?”

Her face froze, and then she understood about the blood that must be smeared all over the front bumper, a concern for any body-and-fender shop. She got out. “My damned camera, Dek. My notebook, and my purse.” She came around to the other side, swept papers from the glove box into her purse, and grabbed her notebook and camera.

She ran back to the Jeep. “Do not pull in behind me,” I called out.

I drove to the health center. This time I stopped right in the middle of the parking lot and got out holding the last of the cash from my wallet. After a moment, two of them sauntered over, zippered in black leather and smelling opportunity like wild things sniffing meat.

I handed them the money. It was a little more than a hundred and fifty dollars. “There will be no report of a theft for a week,” I said.

I walked out to the curb and got in the passenger’s side.

She tried for a smile. “My car’s been stolen?”

“In a week, no sooner, though I expect it will become parts tonight. Let’s get you home.”

For an instant, she stared straight ahead, out the windshield. Then she drove to the turret.

The sensor lamps switched on the moment we stepped inside, lighting the two white plastic chairs, my table saw, and all the fears and promises in the world on her lovely face.

Once before we’d had such a moment, supercharged, as hot as the sun. Though it had been July, it had been cold from fear and horror, just like now. We’d let that moment go; our ghosts were too close.

Now she moved a few miles closer to me and looked up. A fine grin spread wide across her face. “You’ve got wood?”

I nodded. For sure I had wood.

“Then let’s have a great fire,” she said.