John Gilstrap - Nathan’s Run

The rest had been shockingly simple. Mark found Ricky by following the guards as they left the JDC at shift change and gathered at the Woodbine Inn for drinks. They were not a happy lot, bitching constantly about every aspect of their jobs. Of all the guards, a young skinny one named Ricky Harris was the most vocal.

“I’d do anything to get out of that fucking place,” he’d said.

Mark bought Ricky a drink. Over the course of the evening, Mark bought him a lot of drinks. It was nearly midnight when Mark made his pitch. All Ricky had to do, he explained, was kill the kid and skip out of the country. Twenty thousand dollars went a long way in some parts of the world. As luck would have it, twenty grand was more money than Ricky Harris had ever seen in one place, and with that much cash up front, he didn’t seem especially bothered by the prospect of killing one of the worthless pukes under his care. When he found out that the target was that pussy Bailey, he seemed thrilled.

And so it had started.

As Mark now sat alone in the sweltering heat of his soon-to-be-repossessed house, he marveled at just how wrong everything had gone. The stack of legal ‘sheets’ strewn on the table served as yet another monument to his shitty life. And in the sureness of his own approaching death, he grew terrified of his appointment with hell. Somewhere deep within his self-pity, there was even a growing tumor of remorse for what heed forced Nathan to endure.

He was pulled from the past by a knock at his front door. He was frightened at first, until he realized that it was impossible for Pointer to have gotten back so soon. He considered for a moment that it might be a cop. In his stupor, he was unable to decide if that would be good news or bad.

By the time Mark staggered to the door, the visitor had grown impatient, pounding with his fist.

As he swung the door open, a large man, maybe six-three, stood silhouetted against the brilliant white background. Mark winced in the wash of sunlight.

“What do you want?” Mark demanded.

The man stepped in without being asked. “I came to talk to you, Mark,” the man said. “Mr. Slater sends his regards?’

In the car, Jed and Harry listened to The Bitch on the radio, and her ongoing interview with Nathan. Warren was right, Jed realized. If you listened to Nathan’s side of the story and accepted it at face value, Warren’s hit man theory explained it all.

Jed suddenly felt terribly guilty. He’d allowed himself to get so wrapped up in the boy’s escape and the events surrounding it that he hadn’t taken the time to look at the obvious. In his heart, he’d always believed that Ricky Harris probably deserved to die; that he was caught in the act of something despicable, perhaps even sexual. But until his conversation with Mitsy, he’d never considered that his sole purpose was to kill the boy. And even then, it didn’t make any sense.

In an effort to manage the frustration, Jed had written off such details as irrelevant in the short term. The whole department had. All that mattered was the boy’s capture. They’d all rationalized that whatever motivation Nathan might have had for killing the supervisor was between him, the prosecutor and the jury.

Jed silently berated himself and his colleagues as he realized that this collective myopia had nearly cost a young boy his life. The very police force that was supposed to protect him had in fact eased the burden on his killer. That thought—and the thought of those poor cops in New York—sickened him. Soon, though, they’d set it all straight.

The first thing Jed noticed about Mark Bailey’s untidy little house was the drawn curtains. They gave the structure a haunting, abandoned look.

“I wonder if anybody’s home,” he thought aloud.

Things didn’t look right. A Ford Bronco sat in the driveway, its image shimmering in the heat rising from the driveway. Nothing moved this day but the thermometer. It was barely noon, and the temperature had already topped ninety-eight degrees. The weatherman on the radio said to expect a new record at 104. Jed longed for the fall.

“That’s his car:’ Harry offered. “In the same spot as yesterday.” “Does the place look odd to you?” Jed asked.

Harry studied the front of the house for a moment. “No,” he said. “Looks like a house. What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” Jed mused. “Looks odd to me for some reason. Like nobody’s home. All the blinds are shut.”

“Well, his car’s still in the driveway,” Harry reminded him. “My guess is he’s just trying to keep the place cool.”

Jed said nothing else. He opened the car door and walked silently up the sloping front yard toward the porch. Harry followed, three steps behind. The younger man was startled when Jed withdrew his big nine-millimeter Glock from the high-hip holster under his sportcoat.

“What’s up?” Harry asked as he drew his own weapon.

“Don’t know,” Jed replied, whispering now. “Just doesn’t feel right.”

Standing off to the hinge side of the door, out of harm’s way in case someone blasted bullets through the door, Jed knocked loudly enough to draw a look from the neighbor across the street. There was no response. Harry took a mirror position to Jed, on the knob side. Seeing the guns, the neighbor moved quickly inside, gathering her five-year-old daughter in her arms.

Jed knocked louder. “Mark Bailey!” he shouted. “This is the police. Open the door!” In the humid air of the still neighborhood, his voice echoed off the houses. Despite the noise, nothing moved from within Mark Bailey’s house.

Jed eyed the doorknob, then nodded to Harry, who reached down and tried to turn it. When it didn’t budge, he returned his eyes to Jed and shook his head.

Jed swung away from his defensive position and took a shooter’s stance, two-handing his aim at the door, while Harry swung around to jam the sole of his boot into the door just adjacent to and a little above the knob. As though blasted open with dynamite, the steel door exploded inward with a crash and rebounded closed, just as Harry dove sideways to catch the door with his shoulder. From his awkward position on his left side, Harry could cover the front hallway to the right. In three quick steps, Jed darted into position to cover the left.

“Mark Bailey!” Jed yelled again. “Police officers!” Harry scrambled to his feet, staying crouched down low, ready for action. Still, nothing moved.

“Check out this level:’ Jed instructed. “I’ll go upstairs.”

They split up, and even as they parted, Jed knew what they would find. There is a smell to death, a thick sweet odor. Over the years, he’d learned to detect even the faintest traces of the stench. Mark Bailey’s house reeked of it. Jed had just reached the top of the stairs when Harry called out from the living room.

“Oh, shit!” shouted Harry, clearly unnerved. “Oh, Christ, Sergeant, I found him! He’s in the living room! He’s dead.”

I knew it, Jed thought as he headed back downstairs.

Harry was finishing a frantic primary search of the first floor while Jed entered the living room, holstering his weapon. “Bad guy gone?” he asked, inwardly amused by the fear on the young cop’s face.

Harry nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “the place is clean. Look at him, though. That’s disgusting:’

“Yeah,” Jed agreed as he surveyed the body, instinctively reaching for his little notebook. “He sure as hell pissed somebody off.”

Mark Bailey’s body was tied rigidly into a dining room chair, his head cast backwards over the chair back. His mouth was open wide, a yawning cavern rimmed with crimson smears. His graying blond hair dangled heavily, matted and violet. In the middle of it all, a long finger of extruded brain tissue extended like a ponytail from a ragged hole in the crown of his skull. Both arms dangled limply at his sides. Harry was the first to notice that the cast had been removed from Mark’s right arm, and that his purple, swollen fingers were twisted at horrifying angles.