Pearce Hansen - Stagger Bay

Reese nodded slowly. I handed Sam Jansen’s Glock, then frisked Reese prison-style to make sure he wasn’t concealing a holdout piece like Jansen had.

I took Little Moe by the hand and led him to the door. Sam followed and placed one of the Magnum rounds on the bookcase, upright on its end next to a copy of the Decameron. No further farewells were made as we left Reese alone with Jansen’s corpse and the.357.

Instead of heading straight out the front door, I led Sam and Moe past the archway: the candle light flickered from the altar room, and I was drawn moth-like to it. The shadows crawled in there as before, but my memory must have been wrong. I could have sworn the statue had been looking to its left toward the room where Little Moe was stashed.

Now the statue stared directly at us as we stood in the doorway, as if awaiting our closer approach. The severed breast still appeared lonely and plaintive.

“Wanna go in there and check it out?” I asked Sam. Little Moe whimpered.

“You’re fucking high,” Sam muttered, unable even to look inside after his first glance.

I tossed the hammer in Karl’s box of evidence, awkwardly picked it up off the table, and we got the hell out of there. Blowing through that front door into the clean night air was one of the happiest moments of my life.

We heard a single shot from inside and Little Moe tugged my sleeve. “Mister Markus,” he said. “I want to go home.”

I put Karl’s box down, bent to pick up Little Moe, and grunted as my leg almost collapsed under me. With one deft motion, Sam plucked the blade out from where it was embedded in my thigh. I swore and glared at him and he laughed – but then he looked down at the knife strangely.

It was an ordinary buck knife with a six inch blade, just like the one I’d owned so long ago before my incarceration. I wondered if it was the actual one I’d been framed with, and if it had somehow made its way from the evidence locker into the Driver’s loving hands.

“This would make a great souvenir. Like a trophy or something,” Sam said, his voice dreamy and greedy as he continued studying the weapon.

“Sam,” I said.

He almost jumped as I put my hand on his shoulder, but at least he was looking at me now and not at that blade. “For too many people that knife was probably the last thing they ever saw. It’s dirty, let it go.”

Sam stared at me for a few seconds, and then he used his shirt to wipe the hilt and tossed the knife into the trees. He handed Karl’s box to me, scooped up Little Moe, and we walked to the road.

Elaine rolled up as soon as we hit blacktop. Her head barely came over the steering wheel of the big sedan. “Is it done?” she asked as we pulled out. “Is it all over?”

I wasn’t about to admit a thing, but Sam chirped, “He no longer exists. He’ll never trouble us again.”

Elaine floored it as we pulled out, and I didn’t mind that she was in a hurry to get away from there. The Lincoln took the first sweeping downhill curve, and as we came out of it I caught a glimpse of something long and metallic glinting across the road in the moonlight. We ran over whatever it was before anyone could give warning, and all four tires blew out simultaneously with loud coughing sighs.

Elaine yodeled a blue streak as her tiny hands wrestled with the steering wheel. The car shuddered along on rims and ragged rubber, bucking and swerving like we were riding out a 9.0 earthquake until we finally came to a stop.

Behind us a spike strip – one of those portable road blocks favored by para-military and police around the world – lay across the road. It was placed right at the start of the straightaway so we hadn’t seen it before it was too late; its many sharp hollow metal teeth glinted in the moonlight. A little ways down a driveway, the red strobes of a cop car torched up into fluorescence and began spinning.

“He’s dead, Officer Hoffman,” I called to the man standing next to the police cruiser. “You can be free now, like we talked about. You can be your own man, just like you wanted.”

“I told you before to call me Rick,” he said in reflex.

Then my words registered: “Dead?” he asked, favoring me with that vapid glance-away smile of his. But for all his roving gaze the riot gun was still firmly in his grasp, pressed snug to his shoulder and aimed right at us.

“I get to be the Driver now,” he said to himself in wonder. “I can be as big as the Chief ever was. I’m the one now. I don’t have to be you after all. I don’t even have to like you anymore.” He seemed to ripple; he seemed to grow several inches in height.

A gamut of emotions writhed across Hoffman’s face at the news of his ‘friend’s’ demise: joy and relief and hatred. Then the rapid succession of expressions stopped as he settled on one: a grimace of glee. Throughout, however, the shotgun never wavered.

He looked me right in the eye for the first time in our acquaintance. “Did the Cougar get messed up? Is everything in the house still okay?”

“Rick,” I said, knowing it was a waste of time even as I spoke. “It’s over. We can all go home now.”

“Oh, no,” Hoffman said. “We're going back up there. To the Chief’s.”

“I wanted to be you,” he said. “But now you’re the one that’s nothing. I’m the Driver from now on.”

“Rick, I am impressed,” I said, and meant it. “I had your skill levels pegged as sub-par, your antennae a little stubby. I was going to advise you to ramp it up a little next time. But you played us all. Kudos, you won – let it go now.”

Hoffman giggled at my stupidity, but then an appalled expression crossed his face. “Is the Chief really dead? Did you make sure?”

“I saw your graduation portrait in the living room, Rick,” I said, trying to change the subject to matters closer to sane, trying to help him continue pretending to be human. “Just how chummy were you and the Chief?”

But Hoffman just looked at me blankly. My words didn’t really involve him so he didn’t have to pretend he was even listening.

“I finally figured out why Stagger Bay protected the Driver when I saw all those AIDS medications at his house,” I continued, still trying to engage. “It’d cost a fortune to keep him in custody, a guy as advanced as that; maybe it’d even bankrupt Stagger Bay the rest of the way. Was that part of why Reese killed my brother? Because of the money justice would cost?”

“Justice?” he said. “Reese only killed people who wouldn’t be missed. He was always safe with them. He never left evidence or room for suspicion.”

“And the Chief?” he said in adoring tones like he still couldn’t make up his mind how he felt about his dead master. “He did as he wished. You can’t judge him like you do the sheep.”

“What about the Beardsleys, Rick?” I asked. “Were they the right kind of people? What about all the Citizens you’ve killed?”

“Oh, them. The Beardsleys weren’t real Stagger Bay; they’d only lived here ten years. They were newcomers, like you – like your brother,” Hoffman said, his gaze gloating as he studied my face. “And as for the others? We had permission – they deserved to play with me and the Chief.”

“Who gave you permission?” I asked.

“Get out your vehicle.”

Sam and I did so, leaving Elaine and Little Moe in the car. We rounded the Lincoln, fanning out from each other as we rolled up on Hoffman from opposite sides. Sam had Jansen’s Glock in his right hand, held down along his leg and out of Rick’s sight.

“Ah-ah,” Hoffman said. “Close enough.” He didn’t point the riot gun at either of us; instead he aimed it dead between us at Elaine and Little Moe.