Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

“Any rate, Broker comes over with this nurse. .”

“Like real light blond?”

“Right. And we’re all excited and I’m not tracking-like, who is this chick? But she knows her stuff, she makes this alphabet board thing and gets him to wink to select letters to make words. Guess what his first word was?”

Earl gritted his teeth, heaved up, and swung his feet over the side of the bed. Funny how the idea of Hank talking put his pain in perspective. He eyed his clothes which hung on hooks in the small bathroom alcove. “What?”

“Killers.”

Earl started hyperventilating and struggled to get his breathing under control. “Did he name anybody?”

“Not exactly, he blinked out the words: ‘Not Amy fault.’ ”

“Who’s Amy?”

“The nurse Broker brought.”

“I don’t get it.” Earl discovered he had more than partial use of the fingers of his left hand, limited range; but he could painfully grasp and hold. Maybe he could drive. Thankfully his van was an automatic. He managed to pull on his jeans. He held the phone wedged to his ear with his good shoulder.

“She was the anesthetist in Ely. She’s one of the nurses we’re suing for Hank’s accident. She came down with Broker. They’re working together.”

“I still don’t. .” But he had a bad feeling.

“Broker didn’t arrive just to deliver Hank’s truck, he used that as an excuse because he’d read about Stovall in the paper and he was suspicious. Then he tried to get close to me.”

“Try, shit. There was no daylight between you.”

“Well, that’s what he’s good at, see; the nurse got real excited about Hank. A regular babbling fucking brook. She was telling me how Broker was an undercover cop. BCA.”

Earl started hyperventilating again.

“Earl? You there?”

“Jesus. Fucking. Shit. We are-”

“Yeah, how do you think I feel. I said was -he’s retired. But he knows all these cops.”

“Shit!”

“We have one thing going for us. The last word Hank blinked was: ‘nurse.’ Then he was exhausted, or something; and he fell asleep. I have no idea what he’s getting at, but Broker and this Amy start making like detectives and think he meant the other nurse up there in the recovery room tried to kill him. So, I’m playing for time and I suggested we pack up Hank, drive up to Ely, and try his blinking routine on the nurse.”

“The old killer-nurse theory,” Earl said.

“It buys time. Maybe twenty-four hours.” She paused and Earl heard her exhale. “You sure can get offered some fucked choices in life,” she said.

“Amen,” Earl said.

“So, can you get a cab back here, pick up your van, and meet me up there?”

“Like you say, it’s a fucked choice, but I’m with you.” Despite his pain, Earl smiled because it felt like old times.

“Okay, we’re going to Broker’s uncle’s place. It’s called Uncle Billie’s Lodge, on Lake One. They say it’s just outside Ely. Any gas station can direct you. Nobody is there this time of year. You with me so far?”

“I’m still here. Uncle Billie’s Lodge on Lake One in Ely, Minnesota. Then what?”

“Page me with sixes when you get in position, like outside the front door. I’ll lure Broker out. Then I’ll try to distract him so you-”

“I get the picture.”

She paused, then said, “So you better bring it .”

“I thought we weren’t like that anymore,” Earl said, clicking his teeth.

“I don’t see any other way,” Jolene said.

She clicked off the phone, flicked her cigarette, and watched it spiral out, sparks in the gloom. She straightened up her shoulders and raked her fingers through her short hair.

She reminded herself that she didn’t kill that guy in North Dakota.

And she wasn’t going to kill Amy and Broker, either.

They’d folded down the rear seat and put in a futon mattress and blankets. Broker lashed Hank’s wheelchair to the rack on the roof. Hank slept on his side with a pillow between his knees. Amy was stretched out next to him. Jolene rode shotgun. They had good tires and a full tank of gas. The heater worked just fine.

“I don’t want to talk to anyone until he gets a full night’s rest. And he’s fed. And he’s comfortable with his new surroundings,” Jolene said.

“Understood,” said Broker, who was feeling very agreeable. The day had taken on an irresistible momentum. Hope rode with them. Broker wondered if the brief exercise with the alphabet system could foreshadow some kind of recovery.

He settled in and focused his attention on the cold, empty pavement unreeled in the Jeep’s high beams. Interstate 35 going north was almost deserted, as if the plunging temperature and the wind had swept away the cars.

Earl heaved out of the cab with his trench coat slipping off his shoulders. He was only able to get his good arm in a sleeve. The shredded left sleeve hung empty. Cursing at his clumsiness, he paid the cabbie and fumbled one-handed in his jeans pockets for his keys. Just as Jolene had said, the house was deserted and his van was in the garage. Goddamn chickenshit Rodney still had the Ford.

He lurched going through the door and slammed his sling against the doorjamb.

“GODDAMN SONOFABITCH!”

The curses echoed in the empty house. They’d left for up north: Jolene, Hank, Broker, and the smarty-pants nurse with the alphabet board. Now he had to follow them. And he didn’t want to think about what was going to happen.

Shit.

He was still wearing his hospital gown under his coat. A nurse had knotted the belt around his waist as he rushed through processing. He wasn’t wearing undershorts. Or socks.

His shoes weren’t tied.

All that was too hard, bending with his cast and sling and the swollen fingers.

And he was hungry, but he didn’t have time for that, either.

Plus, he hurt, but he couldn’t afford to take any more of the pills because he was heading into a four-hour drive. Muttering, he went down the stairs and stooped to the file cabinet next to his computer and opened the bottom drawer. In the back, behind some folders, he located the small canvas zipper case. With difficulty, using his numb left fingers to wedge the case against his hip, he unzipped the case. He removed the heavy Colt automatic and the two loaded magazines-fat, stumpy bullets in a staggered row. They looked like spring-loaded teeth from a small tyrannosaurus rex. Earl shook his head. The pistol was a fossil from another era.

He tried to remember the last time he’d cleaned the.45.

Hell, he hadn’t even fired the thing for years. Stovall hadn’t known that, though.

Goddamn Jolene. This off-and-on roller coaster had to cease. When this is done, we’re going to take the money and go someplace warm. An island, maybe, full of people who speak a different language to limit her ability to get into messes.

He inserted the magazine, pulled the slide with difficulty. Snicker-snack, the mechanism loaded a round in the chamber. Okay. He set the safety. Then he put the other magazine in his jacket pocket, grabbed at a fleece sweater, some socks, gloves, a hat. He stuffed them in the first thing that came to hand-a plastic bag from CompUSA. Funny, he hadn’t been to CompUSA lately.

It’d be cold up north.

Which forced him to think in practical terms. The ground would be permafrost, impossible to dig; and he couldn’t anyway with his arm. So hopefully the lakes wouldn’t be frozen, because that’s where they’d have to put Broker and the nurse.

And what about Hank?

He was in the middle of this thought, coming up the steps into the kitchen, headed for the refrigerator, hoping to find something to eat real quick-