Pearce Hansen - Stagger Bay

There was a quiet knock on the door and I almost jumped before I got a grip. When I peeked out the spy hole, a tall wide silhouette stood blocking the street light’s glare.

“Everyone in the Gardens is in place,” Big Moe said through the hole. “We’re all up for it, and if he comes we’re ready for him. We got cars if he gets away from us.”

I opened the door and shook my head. “He’ll see a car easy, and he can outrun anything you’ve got if he knows you’re behind him. Minivans and that cute little Taurus of yours got no replacement for his displacement. And if you lynch-mob after him up Moose Creek Road, you know the cops will be waiting. That’ll be suicide for you all.”

I shook my head again. “No, son. I have my plan – sometimes one guy on foot can do things a group could never get away with.”

Big Moe left and stood for a moment at the corner of Natalie’s stoop, clearly visible in the light of the full moon before wandering off on his rounds, the war chief checking his troops. Down the block I saw a cigarette coal flare, illuminating the face of a male Hmong who stood in darkness next to a bungalow. Around the area, several other still figures stood guard in whatever pools of shadow could conceal them from the streaming moonlight.

How had Sam and Elaine made out? Were they still alive, or had the Driver come calling and caught Sam napping? I restrained the impulse to call – I would have wound up wearing out the phone like any worried parent.

Sam could handle his end. And if he couldn’t, if the bastards took out my son, the only family I had left in the world? Then God help Stagger Bay, because I wouldn’t have any pity or self-preservation left in me.

Time passed and I spun myself up more and more. I couldn't stop myself from shuffling and reshuffling the cards in my head, dealing hand after mental hand of solitaire in my mind’s eye.

The Driver was the only thing I needed to pay attention to right now. Ding an Sich, baby: What was that thing in itself?

How did the he think? What drove his twisted plans? I kept trying to put myself in his shoes but they sure weren’t a comfortable fit. He was arrogant and impulsive, utterly dangerous and seemingly close to some kind of final frenzy – but he could be manipulated and somewhat predicted.

Out of the people I knew, which one was he? Hell, did I even know him? Changing his voice might’ve just been him having fun, deliberately feeding me a red herring.

No, that was bullshit. Ockham’s Razor had to be kept in play. Keep it simple, Markus – you knew the Driver, all right.

What was Rick Hoffman’s place in all this? Was he the Driver? What was going on behind that blank Noh-mask face of his right now?

Or was it Killer Reese? And just how did that rogue cop’s actions fit into the larger campaign? Kendra had loved him, but so what? Either she’d understand what I was doing or forget her.

Someone with influence was protecting the Driver, that was for sure. What would make law enforcement shield a serial killer, make them willing to frame me and let him keep on doing his thing? Was the whole department in on it, or just enough to muster a hillbilly death squad with the other Stagger Bay police unable to break the rogue cops open? They had that 911 dispatcher at least.

And how did Stagger Bay herself feel about so many law-abiding white citizens disappearing? Exactly how many were part of it? Was it pretty much the whole town – or just enough to make it fly, with all the rest too scared to do anything about it, or paying with their lives if they were reckless enough to stand up? A lot of these good people here were making healthy construction-job wages off all the new development coming in. They had enough at stake it’d be easy for them to put the blinders on and live tunnel-vision lives.

This was when it really came home that my big brother was gone forever. Karl would be calming me right now, watching my back while I prepped my head for the upcoming fracas, maybe cracking one of his many dorky jokes to break the tension.

Despite his twitchiness and his many flaws, he’d always tried to be the careful one; the complement to my wrecking-ball nature. Me, I’d always been more hey-diddle diddle, right up the middle, come right at you and say hi as it were.

Karl had always forced himself to sniff at our scores like a leopard examining possibly poisoned bait. Still, it had been easy enough for them to make him die alone with no one to notice or care except Sam and I.

As for me? I figured I was a little too high profile right at the moment for them to feel comfortable about taking me out quite yet, unless I really pushed them. Heck, I’d given them every reason to feel safe; they had to be thinking I was no threat at all.

I was a buffoon; a cage-rattling blowhard that woofed on TV, made a few soapbox speeches to curry favor with Stagger Bay’s underbelly, and talked some inconsequential smack to their faces. After it blew up on me with little Mai, I know they had to have been laughing their asses off – hell, I would have mocked me if I was them.

When I made my move, its speed and suddenness after my previous inactivity would be doubly appalling to them. Underestimate me some more, fools – it felt good they did so.

‘Unrealistic expectations,’ Sam had said. But wasn’t that what life was all about? Stumbling along, doing our best to hypnotize ourselves into believing we could make some kind of difference?

Down the block a man shouted something incoherent, his leonine roar piercing the night for a moment before being cut off abruptly. A woman howled, and I picked up the phone and dialed Elaine’s cell. Her voice was wide awake when she answered; she hadn’t been sleeping either.

Sam mumbled something behind her and she made unhappy noises aimed away from the mouth piece; there were fumbling sounds as Sam grabbed the phone from her and came on line: “Yeah?”

“Get your butt over here right now, boy. It’s going down.”

Then I was out the door, locking it behind me and checking the knob before heading on. The gun was in my hand pointing at the ground as I rolled up on the bungalow the howling had come from.

It was easy enough to spot: the front door was wide open, all the lights were on, and what looked like every adult male in the Gardens was milling around it. I went inside: a tiny black woman in a nightgown knelt on the floor cradling Big Moe’s bloody head.

“My baby,” she sobbed, staring out the open back door.

I ran out that way and joined the flood of men running toward the brush-line. “He went in there,” somebody yelled, and I followed the herd into the chaotic dark of the undergrowth, people cursing and stumbling, my face getting whipped and stung by branches springing back from the progress of all those ahead. Somebody started shooting, the muzzle flash from one round after another lighting up the shrubbery in front of me and to my left.

“Stop that, idiot,” Mackie shouted somewhere behind me in the dark. “Either you’ll hit the kid or one of us.”

That’s when the Cougar’s engine kicked over somewhere in front of me: He must have come in from above and coasted his car down one of the fire lanes cut through the underbrush surrounding the Gardens, maybe one we hadn’t even known was there. Then he’d ninja-ed his way into the Gardens and taken his prey in a smash-and-grab.

I heard road gravel kicking up as the Driver peeled out, and there were cries of dismay from that direction – his closest pursuers must have gotten pelted in the face by the Cougar’s rooster-tail.

I turned and clawed my way back through the undergrowth. As I was right by the entrance there was still a chance.