The Ethical Assassin

Chapter 32

THE WALK TO THE KWICK STOP took a little over fifteen minutes at a brisk pace. I was certain I’d seen an OPEN 24 HOURS sign out front, and when I got there I bought a flashlight, batteries, and a large coffee to go.

I sat out front and loaded up the flashlight. The coffee was lukewarm, burned, and too thick, but I drank it quickly, and within five minutes I was ready to go again.

I didn’t much like the idea of wandering around Meadowbrook Grove after dark. I would be in Jim Doe country, and if the cop found me, I had no doubt that I’d be in trouble. Serious trouble. The kind of trouble from which you don’t ever return.

But I was close to that kind of trouble now. Wasn’t that what I’d learned from Melford, what I’d learned to put into practice that night with Ronny Neil? It wasn’t really a matter of how much trouble you were in, but how you tried to get out of it. I had to do something other than sit in the motel room. I might have done that last week, but not any longer.

I stayed off the roads. I tried to stick to backyards, ignoring the itch of insects and the various crawling, hopping, scurrying, and slithering noises of the animals I startled from either sleep or their rounds. I had to be careful of domestic animals, too. Frantic barking would draw attention. I knew from my late night rambles selling books, those long hours after dark when I was trying desperately to bag one more shot at a sale before it was time to go home, that dogs barked and owners ignored them. At least they did at nine-thirty. But at close to two in the morning, they might pay a bit more attention to furious barking.

When I turned onto Bastard and Karen’s street, I stuck close to the trailers, trying to keep out of the light. It had been there all along: the box of files in the trailer with “Oldham Health Services” written along the side. It held the key to everything- to why Melford had killed them and what he was hiding from me.

I felt a strange, almost giddy excitement. Once I read through those files, I would finally know. I would finally know who Melford really was, what he was after. And I would know if he really intended to let me out of all this unharmed.

I looked around the back of the trailer and saw that the door leading to the kitchen was open. No sign of a car or of flashlight beams inside. I went up to the door to listen. No sound.

It was stupid. Idiotic. I knew it, but I went inside anyhow, because I had to see.

I turned on the flashlight for a quick scan. It was cheaply built, and the light slouched out anemically, but I still caught a glimpse of something on the kitchen floor.

I supposed I ought to be getting used to death, but the sight of the body hit me like a punch in the gut. I took a staggered step back and hit the kitchen counter.

I turned the feeble light on the figure again to be sure. But there was no mistaking it. In the distorting yellow of the flashlight beam, I saw the face of the man who’d been in the Gambler’s room, the one in the linen suit, the one who’d looked as though he hadn’t been paying much attention. The one I believed to be B. B. Gunn.

His face was well bloodied, but I couldn’t tell how he had been killed. In fact, I was largely past concerning myself. I turned to rush out the door, but a flashlight, much brighter than my own, hit my eyes. I couldn’t say I was particularly surprised. In a way, it seemed inevitable.

I stopped in my tracks. The light was too bright for me to see who held it, but I knew. It could be only one person.

“Well, well, if it ain’t the hirer of private detectives,” Jim Doe said.

I stared at him. How could he have known that?

“You stupid fucking shit,” he said with a slight cackle. “You go to find out a thing or two about B.B., and you hire a buddy of mine to do it. Didn’t you think for a minute that a guy who lives in Meadowbrook Grove might know me? But I guess it don’t matter, because it seems to me like you are under arrest for murder.”

There was a second, maybe two seconds, before I acted, but I thought of lots of things in those couple of seconds. I thought about how unlikely it was that Doe would shoot me, an unarmed encyclopedia salesman. Doe wanted to keep attention away from himself, not draw attention closer. Considering that our earlier encounter had been observed by Aimee Toms, the county cop- the county cop who had warned Doe to stay away from me- a shooting now would only draw the kind of scrutiny Doe could not afford. On the other hand, Doe might easily shoot me and make me disappear. And if that happened, I would never see Chitra again.

So I ran.