Джо Горес - Dead Man

“He killed your wife, Dain,” she said cruelly. “He’ll find Trask, I used the knife on him. That ought to slow him down...”

Dain nodded. “That’s his only failure as a hitman. It’s our only edge.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“His imagination. He’s got a vivid imagination.”

“If that’s your edge, use it. What are you going to do? What’s your plan?”

“Delay him, that’s the plan.” That wasn’t what she had meant. “I’ll get you as much time as I can. I’m not strong enough to fight him, he’s too wary to be tracked down, and I’m not good enough in the woods to ambush him. So—”

“So you have to make him come to you.”

“When he does, how will he do it?”

“Under cover of this fog. He’ll row around to the rear of the island, work up through the woods afoot, probably along Papa’s fishing road...”

Dain gave a short mirthless laugh, started coughing at the end of it. “The man... who won’t... die...”

He was coughing up blood. She didn’t know if he was talking about Inverness or himself. She couldn’t leave him here in this state, she couldn’t stay with him, she couldn’t take him with her.

Inverness stopped with one foot raised and a hand extended to push aside a branch. He had heard, reduced by distance, robbed of words and given mere tones, the raised voices of Vangie and Dain. He began to trot through the woods toward them, turning into the fishing road when he crossed it, because the going was easier and faster.

And stopped dead, a horrified look on his face. Trask’s gutted body, still held by the deadly traps, had dragged the nylon tight line down so he was held up in a sort of grotesque half-curtsy. One arm was held out head-height by its trap, his legs were bent in an awful parody of a ballet dancer’s plié. He had been neatly disemboweled. As for his face, in its trap...

Inverness edged around the body, unable to look away, then was free of it. They’d been thorough. One burned to death, one gutted. Not a squeamish pair. He wondered what they had done to Maxton. Not that he cared too much. There was nothing squeamish about the survivors of this world, and he was a survivor.

Now shunning the open meandering road, he picked his way as quickly as he could through the heavy undergrowth flanking it. He pulled up short a second time: there had been a distant shot.

What the hell? That didn’t make sense unless...

Unless he remembered the butchery on Trask. Whoever did that didn’t have many compunctions. Two million in bonds... Just Dain and she left... He had been just sort of assuming they would face him together, he would kill them both, take the bonds... But maybe only one would be left to take out...

Suddenly he was sprinting ahead, crashing through the forest, careless of noise. Two more shots had sounded far ahead of him.

Ten minutes later he was at the edge of the woods, scanning the clearing. Burned-out cabin, just a heap of charred wood now. Beyond that, the blackened thing that once had been Nicky...

He moved around the perimeter, saw the tar baby in the vat. The person inside would have been burned away leaving only a shape of cooled tar, like the ancient Pompeiians caught by flowing lava while fleeing Vesuvius. Had to be Maxton. And Dain had done it with the use of only one arm.

A couple of minutes later, Inverness parted the bushes near the water’s edge to look out cautiously at the landing area and the thinning fogbank beyond. The mud was trampled, marked with footprints and keel marks. After a long reconnoiter, he stepped out. Looked up the bayou, stiffened.

Up about where Vangie had first seen Dain poling down toward the fishing camp in the pirogue, Vangie was now poling away from the camp in the pirogue. Alone. The craft was too shallow for Dain to be hiding in the bottom of it. She reached the bend of the bayou and passed from his sight.

Alone. Which meant that Dain was either waiting for him somewhere in ambush — or the argument he had heard had been genuine, the shots real, and Dain was...

He turned back to the landing area, crouched, reading sign. He chuffed, an almost silent exhalation of air. Splattered across the churned muddy verge was blood. Fresh blood, his touching fingertip confirmed.

Then his eye picked up a glint at the water’s edge, and he gave a small exclamation of surprise. He lifted Trask’s gun from the mud. Sniffed the muzzle. Looked quickly around, like an animal about to take a drink, then broke the gun. Two unfired shells. He closed it very slowly, a puzzled look on his face.

Patiently, he started over the ground again with his eyes, minutely seeking everything he had missed the first time. Gave a little grunt of satisfaction, waded out to midcalf. Tromped down into the mud and water was something, paper, man-made. He reached down, brought it out.

A sheaf of soaked, trampled, mud-smeared bearer bonds. He thumbed them. Half a dozen, twenty-five thousand each: a hundred and fifty thousand bucks. Dropped in the struggle, probably when the shots had been fired.

He started back out with his head moving, scanning the bushes, the trees, the bayou, the open water of the marshland... With a muttered exclamation he threw the bonds aside and went into a firing crouch, his right hand whipping out the .357 Magnum from its holster on his right hip with practiced ease.

The fog had lifted enough so he could see Vangie’s missing flatboat forty yards from shore and slowly being carried further. One of Dain’s shoes rested on the gunwale as if he were lying faceup, partially across the seats. His good arm was hooked over the far side of the boat so his hand was obviously trailing in the water even though Inverness could not see it.

Inverness slowly put his Magnum away again, even more slowly settled into his woodman’s tireless squat, his eyes fixed on the drifting boat.

His posture was patient but his head was spinning. Dain. Dead? Everything said he was — blood, bonds, gun, the departed Vangie. But... this was Dain. The man he couldn’t kill. But Dain had trusted her and she’d shot him with Trask’s gun and had dumped him in the boat and set it adrift so Inverness would see it and be delayed by it.

Or maybe she hadn’t. Time would tell.

Three hours later the fog had burned away and bright sunlight flooded everything. Inverness still was hunkered in the scrub by the shore, staring out at the drifting boat. His arms were now wrapped around his knees. The boat was quite a bit further away, but was slowly turning around and around in a big leisurely eddy. Dain’s good hand was indeed trailing in the water, submerged about halfway down the bared forearm.

He could only really make out Dain’s boot, a little of the hair of his head, and that arm trailing in the water. The arm made it Dain, not a dummy made up with moss and Dain’s clothes to fool him.

During those three hours the body hadn’t moved an inch.

With abrupt decision, he stood, trotted off toward the fishing road through the woods. Half an hour later he arrived back at his flatboat, seized the prow, and shoved off into the bayou as he leaped aboard. Unshipped the oars, swung the prow, and began rowing away with long steady strokes. In action he was as quick, as sure as he’d ever been. Then why couldn’t he...

Goddammit, now he was going to deal with Dain.

It was high noon, so there was no shade. Dain’s flatboat drifted in its eddy of current. From around the tip of the island came Inverness’s flatboat to the beat of his steady rowing. A dozen yards from the boat in which Dain sprawled, faceup to the sun, he rested on his oars so his boat coasted to a stop. He sat, staring. Waiting. Not quite ready to deal with Dain after all.