David Jackson - Pariah

So that makes it okay, Doyle thinks. This whole project was executed according to some warped moral code that makes it all okay. Provided you draw a line in the sand and you don’t cross it, everything is hunky-dory.

‘So where does it end, Mo? What’s the final act in this big scheme of yours? Were you planning to keep me in isolation forever?’

‘No. I never really had an ending. I guess I thought I’d just let it fizzle out. The NYPD would keep looking until it ran out of steam and the brass called it a day. You’d slowly come out of hiding, start making contacts again. Gradually you’d reintegrate and everything would return to normal.’

‘Happy ever after, huh? What about me looking over my shoulder every minute in case this guy’s still around? What about me worrying about my family? What about people still refusing to come near me in case they get whacked? You really think that it would all just go away? You think it’s okay to let me live like that, never knowing whether each day is my last?’

‘I had no choice. I was never going to hurt you or your family, but I had to make you and everyone else believe I would. I’m sorry, Cal. Really. I know what you went through, but it would’ve been okay for you in the end. It just would’ve taken time.’

‘And now?’

Franklin looks puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You keep saying “would have”. If your plan would have worked. But it didn’t, Mo. It fell to pieces. So I’m asking you what I asked earlier. What happens now?’

Franklin lowers his gun slightly, but doesn’t take his eyes off Doyle.

‘I can’t undo it,’ he says regretfully. ‘I can’t stop it now. It has to play out.’

The unease creeps into Doyle’s bones. ‘Play out how?’

‘The same way it’s gone all along. Death following you around like it always does. You chose to come here tonight, Cal. You know what that means.’

It’s only as Franklin says these words that Doyle understands. And then it is too late. Too late to do anything except watch as Franklin pulls Doyle’s Glock from his waistband, turns it on Nadine and puts a bullet between her eyes.

Blood, skull fragments and brain matter explode onto the headrest behind her, and her arms fly apart, baring her upper body as she twitches in a macabre dance to her death.

‘NO!’ Doyle cries. He starts forward, but is stopped in his tracks by the sight of two gun barrels aimed straight at him. It’s the second time his own gun has been trained on him, and the second time he believes it to be his last.

‘Fuck!’ Doyle says. ‘She was your wife, for Chrissake! You didn’t have to do that.’

‘You’re wrong. I should have done it in the beginning. Instead of all that complicated shit, I should have just killed Nadine. I thought I could fix things, but I couldn’t. I should have kept it simple. I think she knew the truth anyhow. The way she acted after Joe and Tony died, I could tell she knew it was me. Of course, she couldn’t say anything without giving up what she’d done. When I started making it look like it was about you, she latched onto that. She really wanted to believe it had nothing to do with her own infidelity. We were both living a lie, Cal. It couldn’t have lasted.’

Doyle glances again at Nadine’s body. It’s motionless now. Blood trickles down from the hole in her head and into her part-open mouth. Her eyes are wide; they stare at Doyle as if to say, Look at what you’ve done . Doyle breathes like he’s just run a marathon; his heart seems to pound the blood through at the rate of a machine gun. He wants to move, to take some kind of action.

‘How the fuck are you going to explain this, Mo?’

Another shrug. ‘She was killed by your gun, Cal, not mine. There’ll be forensic traces that you were here — I’ll make sure of that. You came here, you killed her, you disappeared. Weird, I know, but then your behavior has been pretty erratic lately. I mean, the way you just happened to turn up at Spinner’s place and find the body. That was pretty coincidental, don’t you think? Then there was the meeting you had with known criminals — again, I’ll make sure we find confirmation of that. Maybe the hotel staff saw you leave with one of ’em? I don’t know — I’m sure we’ll find something. Oh, yeah, and then you go and check out of your hotel without even informing anyone. You just up sticks and leave. Pretty strange, all right. Why kill Nadine? Who knows. Maybe you were having a little thing with her. Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been suspected of cheating like that. Or maybe she found something out about you, along the lines of you engineering this whole anti-Doyle scheme yourself. We’ll see what the NYPD manages to come up with.’

‘With you directing the investigation, naturally.’

‘Naturally.’

‘For a last-minute change of plan, that’s pretty good.’

‘Thank you. I think better under pressure.’

‘Only, I didn’t like the bit about me disappearing after I’ve been here. Can we change that?’

‘Sorry, Cal. That stays.’

Doyle nods. ‘I thought it might.’

Franklin nods too, then stands there for a while. He tucks Doyle’s Glock back into his waistband, then gestures with the other gun.

‘Let’s get this over with.’

Franklin leads Doyle through a large kitchen to the rear door of the house. He unlocks it and motions Doyle out into the backyard. He picks up a spade resting against the wall of the house and tosses it to Doyle. Then he grabs a flashlight resting on the windowsill and aims it away from the house without turning it on.

‘Walk,’ he says. ‘That way.’

Doyle looks down to the bottom of the yard. The moon overhead is almost full; it bathes the scene in an eerie gray light. He begins to walk, his feet crunching on the coarse white gravel path. Halfway down, he hefts the spade in his hands, debating whether he can swing around fast enough to smash it into the face of the man behind him.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Franklin says, and Doyle stops doing so.

They reach a fence separating the yard from the woods beyond. Franklin tells him to unlatch the gate, then switches on the flashlight and shines it into the trees.

‘Through there.’

The way he’s indicating is straight into the thick of the woods, away from any well-defined path.

Doyle pushes on. Without a flashlight of his own it’s slow going. He frequently trips on gnarled roots or gets poked in the eye by a branch. At every step, small forest-dwellers in the blackness ahead of him scurry for cover.

After ten minutes of fighting nature, he halts and turns toward Franklin, who responds by shining blinding white light into his eyes.

‘You don’t think we should be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs or something?’

‘Not much farther, Cal. Straight ahead.’

Doyle continues his struggle for another few minutes as the ground begins to slope downward toward the banks of the reservoir. Then, after unsnagging his pants from a particularly stubborn tree, he stumbles into a small clearing. Following behind, Franklin switches off the flashlight and allows the moonlight to take over the illumination of this stage upon which Doyle figures he is to play out his final moments.

Franklin circles the arena, then hops onto a large rock and sits himself down. It’s clear from his sure-footedness that he’s been here before.

‘I come here alone sometimes,’ Franklin says. ‘Just to think, to get away from the world. I’m sure there’s hardly another soul even knows it’s here.’

Doyle sniffs against the cold. His nose feels like it’s on fire. ‘I’m honored you feel you can let me in on it. Why don’t you do some more of that being-alone business while I head back to somewhere a little warmer?’