Ridley Pearson - Killer View

He settled back onto the footstool, facing his hostage with a calm, almost serene face.

“You ever heard of Shays’ Rebellion?” Coats asked.

Mark Aker stared back, his eyes flat.

“You know your American history?”

“Don’t do this,” Aker said.

“This was near the end of the war, the Revolutionary War. The Boston merchants pressed the state legislature to levy a tax on all the farmers. And they couldn’t pay the taxes-same as we can’t pay ’ em today. Shays organized an open rebellion, put together an army of some eight hundred-odd and went after them, pitchforks and rifles. What they did was against the law, and they paid mightily for it, but that rebellion is considered the last battle of the Revolutionary War because it changed opinion forever. The federal and state governments realized they had failed at representing the people. The People, Doc. Capital P.

“Now, I’m not saying we aren’t breaking the law, because we are. And I’m not claiming to be a tree hugger. Not hardly. I’m more what you might call a militant libertarian.” That won a bemused smile. Mark eyed all the books again, his opinion of his captor changing. He’d read about Stockholm syndrome, had no desire to go there. “But we did what we did for a reason. A purpose. Our government should not be dictating to other countries about things it doesn’t have under control itself. Plain and simple: someone’s got to show the people what’s going on.”

“And that’s you? You’re Shays? That’s supposed to justify this?” he said, indicating his own situation.

“Shays’ Rebellion was put down. Eighteen were given death sentences. Two were actually executed. I understand what’s in store for me. But, goddamn it…” he said, raising his voice. His intensity lit up the air between them. Then his face softened. “I’m giving you a real chance here. All I’m asking from you, Doc, is to tell the truth. I’m not some raghead holding an AK, trying to put words in your mouth. That’s the beauty of it: I don’t have to. The truth will hang them. Whether they hang me or not.”

“Okay,” Aker said.

Coats did a double take. He looked Aker over like it was someone else sitting in that chair. “You’ll write it,” he said to himself. He tried to contain a childlike enthusiasm.

“I said I would. And I mean it this time. But I’ve got to ask: is any of what you just told me for real?”

“All of it,” Coats said proudly. “That’s our heritage, Doc.”

“Because I’ve got a story for you.”

Coats leaned in toward Aker a little too close, a changed man, gloating over his victory.

“Have you ever heard of Aker’s Rebellion?” Mark asked.

Coats’s brow knitted. At the last second, he seemed to anticipate what was coming, to understand that Mark Aker had drawn him into a trap. But it was too late.

“Now you have.” The doc moved with the quickness of a snake.

A sudden heat flashed in Coats’s thigh, followed by a searing pain that bent him over. The doc had been concealing a pair of scissors behind his back. As Coats fell forward with the pain, the doc drove both elbows into his back and forced his face against the cast iron of the hot stove. The smell of burning hair and blistering skin filled the air as Coats sat upright, at which point the scissors plunged deeply up and into his left armpit, remaining there as the doc let go and grabbed a chair. He swung the chair and a light-headed Coats ducked to avoid the blow, only to realize too late that he was not the intended target. Instead, the sheet metal stovepipe dislodged with the chair’s clanging contact and the small cabin immediately filled with acrid gray smoke. The doc snagged Coats’s winter jacket and threw it on the stove. It smoldered only seconds before melting and smoking. The doc seized his own jacket from the wall, grabbed a flashlight from the windowsill, and was out the door.

Coats vomited. The skin on his burned face felt as if it were shrinking and tightening on his skull. His beard was singed off on that side, and, in its place, branded on his cheek at an awkward angle, were the reversed letters: SGNITSAC-VERMONT CASTINGS, the embossed name on the stove.

He dragged himself toward the door, his leg wound bleeding badly, his arm in pain. The doc had known exactly what he was doing: both wounds immobilized him.

He reached the door, a blood trail painted behind him. Hacking. Unable to breathe for the pain. He tried to get to his knees, to reach the doorknob, but his leg wound wouldn’t let him. He grabbed hold of the knob, only to realize his bulk was blocking the door. He collapsed back down to the floor. Reached for his ankle. A.38 revolver, in a calf holster.

Fired off three rounds. Waited.

Debated using the last three. Decided against it: if Aker returned, Coats wanted some rounds left for self-defense.

“FUCK!” he screamed. Smoke swirled just above his head. He coughed and gagged, and forced himself up through insurmountable pain toward the door.

The doorknob.

It was Gearbox, horrified. He wretched at the sight of Coats’s face.

“Air!” Coats groaned, as he tasted blood at the back of his throat.

The cold came through the door like a hammer.

“The doc,” Coats mumbled. Right before he passed out.

MARTY, WALT’S FOUR-YEAR-OLD GOLDEN, BANGED AGAINST the fire screen and sent one of Emily’s mittens flying. The mitten landed on a fresh ember and soon the wet wool began to smolder, producing a god-awful stink.

The foul smell brought Walt from the kitchen. To the twins, who knew they weren’t supposed to play fetch indoors, their father’s expression came as a complete surprise. Not one of anger but curiosity. Laughing, they ran for cover behind the couch. But the admonishment never came.

Instead, a moment later, they overheard him speaking on the phone with Lisa and they mistakenly believed his leaving was the punishment for their crime.

“Could you possibly come over and get them to bed?” he asked. “Something’s come up at work.”

“THE SMELL?” Brandon asked, nursing his arm in the sling from the passenger seat of the Cherokee.

“A wool mitten. Yes. At first, I was pissed at the girls. Same old same old. But then I recognized that smell; I remembered that smell. Lon Bernie’s ranch. Remember that stink?”

“Impossible to forget.”

“Burning wool,” Walt said. “That’s what the smell was: burning wool.”

WALT KILLED the headlights way out on the plowed two-lane state road and continued on by the dim glow of a fingernail moon. They parked the vehicle a half mile from the driveway leading onto Lon Bernie’s ranch and went on foot, both sporting day packs, six-cell flashlights that doubled as nightsticks, and their 9mm Berettas.

They made quite the pair, throwing night shadows in the soft moonlight. Walt, cursed with DNA that got him to five foot ten only with boots on, had compensated by working the weight room until he was as wide in the chest as he was tall. Brandon, meanwhile, shopped the Big and Tall Guys stores. Now the deputy was one-winged and walking awkwardly because of it.

They held to the left of the road, putting the fence as a screen between them and Lon Bernie’s farmhouse.

“Does it bother you that we have no authority in this county?” Brandon said, his words puffing out from his mouth as gray fog.

“I wouldn’t say no authority, but it does make things a little tricky.”

“Tricky? If he’s up to something he’ll shoot us like dogs and ask questions later. Welcome to Lemhi County.”

“I’m aware of that,” Walt said.

“Oh, and this just in: he wasn’t real thrilled to see us last time, in daylight.”