Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

The nausea passes.

He stands up and again looks to the corpse and feels a second wave of nausea, not because he’s killed a man but because the scene he wanted the police to stumble upon has been ruined. Louis Lynch was not supposed to die there, and Eugene can’t move the body. He knows he can’t. The police would easily be able to see it had been moved, and that would ruin the illusion. He needs to work with what’s happened. He can do that.

Jesus Christ, he killed a man.

A wave of dizziness envelopes him and all at once he sits down on the concrete. He sits down hard. He thinks of nothing for a long time. His face feels numb.

He looks at his watch.

He needs to figure out what he’s going to do. He doesn’t have much time.

15

Carl drives south with his gas-foot heavy on the pedal and the pedal pushed to the floorboard. If there’s an itch at the back of his brain he isn’t aware of it. All he’s thinking of as he drives is the situation at hand. He spoke with Captain Ellis who spoke with someone else, and now the Newton Division is providing half a dozen six- and eight-dollar shooters for the warehouse raid. If what Darryl Castor told him is true, it’s going to get ugly in there. James Manning won’t walk into such a situation alone, and chances are Louis Lynch knows that, which means he probably isn’t working on his own either. There could be eight or ten armed men in there, not counting cops. Add to that situation a kidnapped woman and a milkman in the wrong place at the wrong time (based on what Friedman found in Louis Lynch’s hotel room — a switchblade knife like the one used to murder the police officer, a shirt with blood on it, a locket containing a picture of James Manning and his daughter, a typewriter that may have been used to type up a blackmail note — that’s all Eugene Dahl is: one unlucky son of a bitch), and you’ve got yourself a recipe for chaos.

He leans into the steering wheel, telling the car to go faster, you piece of shit.

But it doesn’t go faster.

He hopes he isn’t too late. He’s afraid he is.

16

Evelyn sits in darkness. She heard three gunshots several minutes ago and has heard nothing since. One of them is dead, she’s certain of it, and she thinks it must be Lou or he would have let her out of here by now.

The doors swing open, letting light in.

She squints, unable at first to see who’s on the other side. Then her eyes adjust, slowly and by degrees. Eugene stands at the opposite end of the trailer with a pistol — with what looks like Lou’s Colt Vest Pocket — hanging from his fist. Behind him she can see one of Lou’s arms stretched across the concrete. The fingers are curled around nothing.

‘Stand up.’

Evelyn gets to her feet.

‘You don’t have to do this, Gene.’

‘I wish that were true.’

‘It is true. You don’t have to do this.’

‘Come on out of the trailer, Evelyn.’

For a moment she doesn’t move. She can stay in here. If she doesn’t leave the trailer, she can stop time. Time will stop right here and nothing more will happen. She should have hit him harder when she had the chance. She should have bashed his fucking brains out. Why does she still feel love for him — or something like it? Maybe he won’t do it. He didn’t do it in the motel room. He had every reason to shoot her then, and he had the opportunity, but he didn’t do it, so maybe he won’t do it now.

‘Evelyn.’

She nods. ‘Okay.’

She walks toward the light. Her feet are bare and the cool wood feels good against them — rough and organic and good. A breeze blows through the warehouse and into the trailer. It cools the sticky sweat on her skin. These could be her last moments. She tells herself that’s impossible, it’s impossible for her to die, she’s only twenty-seven, but she knows it is possible. Maybe she even has it coming. In the last six years she’s brought death to others, and she’s done it without remorse, so maybe she has it coming.

Eugene can’t kill her. She knows he can’t. She can see in his eyes as she walks toward him that he still has feelings for her, and you don’t kill something you love.

She steps from the trailer.

17

Eugene looks at Evelyn. Her red hair’s a tangled mess. She has mascara smeared around her eyes and running down her cheeks. The skin around her mouth is red and raw from the duct tape which covered it. There’s a bruise on her left shoulder, purple in the middle but fading to yellow-green around the edges. Her blue eyes are bloodshot. She swallows and frowns and looks at him pleadingly. Once more he feels the urge to take her in his arms and tell her he’s sorry. He’s sorry for everything. The urge is great, but he knows he can’t do it. Her eyes can’t be trusted. She’s a serpent; she’ll only tempt him with doom disguised as something lovely.

He motions with the pistol in his hand.

‘Over there.’

‘I can get you money.’

‘Move, Evelyn.’

‘I can-’

‘Move.’

She walks slowly.

He watches her, following her with the gun.

‘Stop.’

She stops, stands there, looks at him. Her arms hang limp at her sides. Her shoulders are slumped. She looks sad and defeated. He tells himself it’s an act. He tells himself she’s trying to get him to drop his guard so she can attack. He tells himself she’d kill him if she had the chance, if she had even the slightest opportunity. He even believes most of those things. But he looks at her and he wants to be near her. There was a time when he believed they could have a life together, a quiet life in the suburbs somewhere, and he wants that still. Looking at her he wants that more than he’s ever wanted anything.

But he’s awake now, and there’s no time for dreaming.

He takes several steps back toward the trailer and raises the gun in his hand. He looks across the sights to Evelyn’s sad face and tells himself he has to do this. He doesn’t have a choice. He simply doesn’t have a choice. He’ll never be safe until they’re dead. These people eat people like him for lunch; they’re cannibals. Evelyn would kill him without hesitation and her father would kill him quicker still. If he’s to get his life back he has to end theirs. That’s all there is to it. Otherwise the threat will always be there. Every time he turns a corner he’ll know death might be waiting on the other side. He couldn’t live like that. There’s simply no way he-

‘Gene.’

‘No.’

He pulls the trigger. The gun explodes in his hand, kicking his arm back.

A moment later, Evelyn collapses to the floor.

18

At one twenty-five a black car pulls to a stop across the street from a dilapidated warehouse which once, long ago, was occupied by a construction-supply company. A heavy-set man in a gray suit with a red silk tie wrapped around his neck and a matching handkerchief poking from his breast pocket sits in the back of the car with a black briefcase resting on his knees. Two men sit in the back seat with him while another occupies the spot behind the steering wheel. The heavy-set man looks through a tinted window to the warehouse in which his daughter’s being held.

‘Whatever else happens, Evelyn’s kidnapper dies in there. That warehouse is his fucking coffin, right? So ready yourselves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And if you hear any gunfire while I’m inside, don’t wait. Something’s gone wrong. I intend to get Evelyn out of there quietly.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What time is it?’

‘One twenty-eight.’

The heavy-set man nods to himself, then pushes out of the car.

19

Eugene walks to Evelyn and looks down at her. She lies on her back with her legs folded under her body, her right arm bent over her chest, her left arm extended across the smooth concrete, as if she’d been reaching for something. Her eyes stare blank at the tin-roof sky.