Макс Коллинз - Spree

Jon shook his head; he’d tried to help her. Just like she tried to help him. But she had, not so indirectly, provided the circumstances for her father’s murder — in which Jon was an accomplice.

He wondered about her. He wondered if she would find any kind of life in La-La Land. Waitress? Hooker? Something better, he hoped. He wondered how long it would be before she learned of her father’s death, and how she’d react. How would she feel about Jon, and Nolan? Would she bite her lip and understand? Or would she be the next Comfort to come out of the past and want to kill them?

The sun, not at all high in the sky, glinted off the cold gray choppy surface of the river. Up ahead Nolan was driving. Comfort’s son Lyle was in the back seat, trussed up like something out of a bondage magazine, but sitting up nonetheless, so he could see out the window and give Nolan directions. The excess clothesline, and there was quite a bundle of it, was on the floor in the Camaro’s back seat. So was a flashlight.

“We’re not going to leave her down there,” Nolan had said, with a passion unlike him.

Left unsaid was the faint hope that she might be alive. But both knew that hope was so faint as to be transparent as the wishful thinking it was. The girl was dead. Sherry was dead. Nolan would have to face that.

Recovering a body wasn’t Jon’s idea of a great way to start a day; his bones ached, he was so tired, and he supposed hunger was behind the grinding pain in his stomach, but after his session with the UZI, eating was out of the question — the idea of ever eating again seemed in fact abstract.

He’d killed those men, those two Leeches. Nolan’s bullets had been in there, too, but Jon had seen the UZI bullets zing across the chests, going in black, coming out red. His mouth was dry.

They were murdering lowlife sons of bitches but he had killed them. Self-defense, but he had done it. He had killed them. He could face that.

He could live with it.

What he wasn’t sure about was whether he could live with murdering Lyle Comfort.

Nolan had left his unregistered long-barreled .38 back with the dead bodies (Jon’s UZI too) — the revolver was, after all, the gun Comfort was killed with; Nolan had even placed it in the hand of a dead Leech. In return he’d taken the unfired Colt Woodsman that had belonged to Comfort; that was the gun Lyle would be killed with, Jon assumed. Nolan would do it. Dumping Lyle’s body on a roadside in his cherry-red Camaro. He was planning to do it. With luck Jon wouldn’t have to watch.

But he’d be a part of it, just the same, and he wished he’d never met Nolan, and wished this dream over, this nightmare which at the moment was a strangely lyrical one, sun-dappled Mississippi, starkly beautiful snowy woods, please God let it end.

They passed a sleazy little motel, the Riverview, with signs boasting water beds and XXX movies in rooms; so much for lyricism.

Up ahead the red Camaro’s brake lights indicated a slowing down, and soon Nolan pulled off to the right, into one of many little picnic areas along the river. Jon pulled in behind him. The road seemed deserted; it was 6:37 A.M. Friday.

Jon got out, wearing his long navy coat, and gloves, but unarmed. Nolan got out of the Camaro, wearing no jacket or even sport coat, the Colt Woodsman stuck in his waistband, looking black against the light blue shirt, a shirt Nolan seemed to have been wearing constantly (the shirt Sherry bought him, Jon suddenly realized, the afternoon she was kidnaped!) and went around on the other side and opened the door and took out a knife and leaned in the back seat. Christ! Jon thought, but then realized Nolan was only cutting the ropes.

Jon walked over to the Camaro, wishing he were anywhere else, except perhaps that bloody loading dock which awaited some hapless I. Magnin employee.

Nolan hauled Lyle out of the back seat; the boy looked pale and confused but, oddly, not frightened. His expensive brown jacket and gray slacks looked a little the worse for wear. He wasn’t bound in any way.

Nolan held him by the crook of one arm and smiled tightly. “You’re sure this is the place, Lyle?”

Lyle nodded. “Not far from here.”

A car went past.

Without looking at him, Nolan said to Jon, “Get the rope and the flashlight.”

Jon got them out of the back.

“Let’s go,” Nolan said. Keeping his gun in his waistband, he guided Lyle by the arm like a child, across the highway. Jon trailed after, carrying the thick ring of clothesline in one hand, the flashlight in the other.

They walked up a snowy slope; leaves under the gentle layer of snow crackled beneath their feet. The sky was a slate blue and nearly cloudless. Wind whispered, but it was a chilly whisper, a ghostly kiss.

At the edge of the woods, Nolan said, “Do you know where she is, Lyle?”

He nodded.

“You wouldn’t play games with me, would you?

He shook his head no.

“Good,” Nolan said. “Now lead the way.”

He let go of Lyle’s arm and withdrew the Colt from his waistband and walked just a few steps behind Lyle, who led them into the woods; he wasn’t moving quickly. He seemed defeated. Near catatonic. And, as Jon knew, and as Nolan most certainly knew, he was thick as a post. He wasn’t planning anything. Or if he was, it wouldn’t amount to much.

They hadn’t walked far when Lyle stopped. He pointed up ahead, through the gray trees, where it seemed slightly more open.

“Over there,” he said.

Nolan poked him in the back with the .38. “Show me.”

Soon they could see it, where the sharp angles of broken planks jutted up like strange weeds. Nolan shifted the gun to his left hand and grabbed Lyle’s arm and pulled him along and ran. Jon ran, too. He stumbled once, over a root, but didn’t fall.

You couldn’t tell what it was, at first. Weeds and leaves and snow still covered most of it, but in the center a jagged hole yawned, where the rotted planks had given away. Nolan put the gun in his waistband and cautiously crawled out to where she’d fallen through. He was on his side, his feet on the snowy ground, his trunk on the rotted wood.

“Can’t see anything,” he said, looking in. “Give me the flashlight.”

Jon handed it to him. Lyle was just standing there, glum, obedient.

Nolan shot the light down there and said, “I think I see her.”

He moved back off the planks. On his hands and knees at the place where the snowy earth met the planks, he started tearing the rotten boards away.

“Help me clear these goddamn things out,” Nolan said, and Jon slipped the ring of rope around his shoulder and helped. The wood was so old, so weathered, so decaying, it almost crumbled in their hands.

“You help, too,” Nolan demanded of Lyle, and Lyle did. He got on hands and knees and tore at the wood. Just one of the guys.

Then the opening of the old well was exposed. It was about four foot in diameter. It was quite deep; with the sun as low in the sky as it was, there was no hope of seeing down there without a flashlight. Nolan shined his down.

“I see her,” he said, leaning in one side.

“I do too,” Jon said, leaning in opposite him.

She was down there all right; on her back, her head to one side. She was in a lavender outfit. That was all they could make out.

“How the hell deep is this thing?” Jon asked.

“Probably thirty feet,” Nolan said. His voice was quavering.

Jon looked at Nolan; a single tear streaked the man’s left cheek. Nolan looked at Jon and wiped away the tear, leaving some dirt from a hand that had been tearing away rotten planks. It was a moment neither would ever forget. Or mention.

Now Nolan stood and looked to Lyle. Nolan started to smile; it was an awful smile. He walked over to the boy and gripped him with one hand by the expensive leather coat and said, “You killed her, you little cocksucker.”