Pearce Hansen - Stagger Bay

“But if you need me to, if it’ll make you feel better even the tiniest little bit? Just nod, you don’t even have to open your mouth. I’ll do it, and we’ll never speak of it again.”

Sam’s eyes still glittered from Jansen’s venomous words as he thought hard. I readied myself in the ways I knew so well. “No,” Sam said with an evil smile. “He doesn’t get the easy road. We feed him to the Man.”

I held my hand out to Sam, hiding my pride. “Give me the phone, then.”

“You promised,” Jansen yelled, and I turned to tell him to shut the hell up.

That old exultant grin leapt onto my face as he pulled his Glock service pistol from underneath him, where it was holstered at the small of his back this whole time. I dropped to one knee and the hammer came down hard, not slowing even as the pistol’s shot flashed, its blast roared, and I felt the round whizzing past my head to embed itself in the ceiling.

His suddenly terrified expression and futilely outstretched arms made a gratifying tableau: he didn't appear to like my inner killer as much as he’d thought he would. I brought the hammer down onto his face again and again, grunting with effort at each blow. His bleating stopped as soon as the first blow landed but I just couldn’t stop, just couldn’t stop, just couldn’t stop.

When I was finally done my eye patch dangled down off my ear -Jansen had apparently scrabbled at my face without me even noticing. I stood and turned away from Sam and Little Moe until I had that evil red eye pulled back up and in place.

I looked down at Jansen’s corpse. Was it a dragon I’d slain tonight? An ogre?

No: It was just a rag-doll meat puppet lying in front of me, the final leavings of a sick hot-brained monkey that mind-fucked himself into believing he was god. All his victims had been no more than pointless human sacrifices to his own delusions, their dissolution into agony a Darwinian waste.

I looked at Sam looking at what was left of the Driver, seeing that same old combination of titillated excitement and horrified revulsion in his eyes.

Did you like it? I almost asked my son. Was it as much fun as you thought it would be? But of course I didn’t shame him so.

Little Moe’s eyes were rapt upon the body as well. The Driver would be visiting him in his nightmares soon enough; and at least now Moe would have this image to use as a weapon in dreamland self-defense.

“Let Reese up,” I said. Sam let him stand but kicked his Magnum away and kept a firm come-along hold on his arm that Reese didn’t resist.

I picked up Jansen’s pistol before returning my attention to Reese. “There’s no escaping this. You know that.”

Reese looked at the bloody hammer in my left hand. I was swinging it idly, twitching it from side to side as his gaze followed it.

“You gonna dangle hope in front of me too?” Reese asked. “Be kind of hard to make it fly; my credibility might be a little strained here. But I’ll confess to being as unenthusiastic about meeting the Feds as the Chief was.”

Had I been toying with Jansen? Sure. But I could still convince myself I’d been going to let him live, couldn’t I?

“What we was talking about before, about your brother,” Reese said. “I’ll admit I could've just wounded Karl and busted him. But I guess I did have my instructions, you know?”

“From who?”

Reese laughed. “Maybe Jansen was a rat, but I’m not. I told you before I won’t apologize, but I know its all unraveling now. One thing I’d like to know first, though – about Kendra.”

“Oh?”

“Well, not about her exactly. About the slime that killed her.” He looked at me, eyes still hawk-bright even in defeat, not afraid to lock gazes with his own murderer. “I’m not asking, you can stick it up your ass if you think I am. But I wouldn’t mind knowing they died badly.”

It didn’t even occur to me to snub him. “They didn’t enjoy it a bit. And none of them died like men. Unlike her they all died like squealing rabbits – like this one,” I said, gesturing at Jansen.

He nodded. “That’s good, then,” he said in a quiet, satisfied voice. “That’s good.”

It was strange to see him studying me like he thought I was watching a TV show he desperately wanted to see for himself, if only he could find the right channel button to press on his remote.

“Maybe you two want to get a room,” Sam said.

“You should show more respect for your elders,” Reese chided him.

“Go fuck your mother,” Sam said. “You know who you serve.” Reese winced as if those last words were ones he’d heard before from someone else.

“If Sam hadn’t taken you down, you were gonna do us when you were finished with Jansen,” I pointed out. “Little Moe, too.”

“Are you complaining?” Reese asked, voice cold. “Snivel, whimper, whine. You won here. Things turned out the way they turned out.”

“The hell with might have beens,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment then looking down at Jansen’s corpse. “He crossed the line when he went after Kendra. But I knew she was sniffing around all the wrong places. I knew some of the guys were talking, and I knew she was blowing it too.”

“And I didn’t say nothing to her nor to them. I didn’t do a thing. I left her hanging.” Reese looked at me and licked his lips. “I’ll give you another freebie, so you can laugh at me some more when you’re done here and you leave. Kendra broke up with me the morning she died. The wedding was never gonna happen.”

“Ouch,” I said. “Why are you telling methis?”

“Give me back my gun,” Reese said. “And one bullet.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Sam said. “He killed Karl; we should be the ones to do it. Or do you want him to live too?”

“She almost married me,” Reese said, ignoring Sam. “I know it’s all over, but you can’t link her to any of the things I did. My death, and you and your boy are both guiltless of it in exchange for leaving her name out of it forever. Please keep her clean, don’t let me sully her.”

“You never met Kendra, or you’d understand,” I told Sam, wondering even as I said it why I was arguing the enemy’s side.

“Sure, I did,” Sam said, eying me strangely. “She was a couple of grades ahead of me before I dropped out, but everyone knew Kendra. We’d be doing this for her?”

I nodded.

“All right, then,” he said, grimacing.

I pointed Jansen’s Glock at Reese as Sam stepped away from him. Sam picked up the Python, kicked out the cylinder, and dropped all the Magnum rounds into his other hand. Sam handed Reese the empty revolver without getting in my field of fire, then backed off again.

“You asked me once about Kendra’s part in all this,” Reese said, spinning the revolver’s empty cylinder. He looked me full in the eye as he stuck the barrel into the soft flesh under his jaw. “She didn’t know. She wouldn’t have had anything to do with it if she did know. But she suspected, and she was closing in.

“And after she found out, she would’ve been standing on the same side of the room you’re on right now if she was still alive. Lord knows I should’ve been.” He dry-fired the pistol. He flinched a bit as the hammer clicked down on the empty chamber, but otherwise showed good form.

Reese pulled the.357 from under his chin. “Will this pay for it? Will I be clean?”

He hefted the empty pistol in his hand. “Do you think she could still love me?”

The veneer had broken; this was the total cash-out of a life. It was as though he was returning to something he hadn’t even known he’d lost until it was too late, both for himself and for his Kendra.

I could almost admire how he was facing his end. “I’m not the one to say. But Jansen couldn’t make Kendra a victim even if he did kill her. There was no quit in her. She was too brave to live, and she chose her own path by charging forward against all odds. Neither Jansen nor anybody else can ever take that from her.”