Макс Коллинз - You Can’t Stop Me

Harrow said, “How do you think Cathy and Mark would feel about what you’re doing? About what you’ve been doing for the past ten years?”

The eye on view flinched, but the killer’s comeback was quick: “How would your wife feel about you tracking me down, all over hell and TV and gone?”

“She’d hate it,” Harrow said.

“Like mine would what I’ve done.”

“And yet you kept on.”

“I did. And you’re here, aren’t you? What our gentle wives would have done is beside the point. You and me, Mr. Harrow, we’re men. Screwed-up men. We do what we can. We do what we have to do. Anyway, the dead don’t get to have opinions. And your opinion is, you’d like to kill me.”

Carmen’s eyes pleaded with Harrow. He wasn’t sure what she was begging him to do. He wasn’t sure she even knew.

“Maybe,” Harrow said. “Maybe not. We both know this much — nothing brings them back. Not revenge, not justice, nothing. I’d guess you know that better than anybody, Mr. Shelton.”

“Sheriff Gibbons was lead investigator,” Jenny whispered in his ear. “Shelton was his only suspect.”

Wondering why the sheriff had omitted being the lead investigator, Harrow said, “Why does Gibbons think you killed Cathy and Mark?”

“He doesn’t — he was in on it. He’s part of the conspiracy.”

“I need to hear about this conspiracy. America needs to hear. It’s time to let Carmen go, Mr. Shelton, and get those cameras up here and—”

But Shelton was somewhere else: “They wanted the land, all the land,” he was saying. “The ones that wouldn’t sell, they drove out.”

“But you did sell,” Harrow said.

His face flashed from behind Carmen’s and his brow was clenched and his mouth twisted. “Only after they killed my family! That money they gave me, their blood money, that’s what’s financed my deliveries. Oh, I bought that little crummy shack on the other side of town, but the rest, the insurance money for Cathy and Mark, every dollar and cent’s been used to deliver my message to the world. To let everyone know the kind of greedy goddamn grubbing that’s been going on in the center of America.”

“And what is going on, Mr. Shelton?”

“I told you! They want all the land.”

Jenny whispered, “Shelton sold out to Castano Developments.”

“So Castano Developments wants all the land in this neighborhood?”

“Not just here! Everywhere.”

“The whole town?”

“Everywhere, all of it!”

“They want all the land.”

“ Now you’re getting it.”

“And they kill people to get it.”

“Yes, yes, yes — and they’re using the deputies and cops, and maybe even the state police as their hatchet men.”

“The state police?”

“Yes, them too. I went to them after Cathy and Mark were killed. They came back and said they couldn’t find anything either. That meant they had to be in on it too. Maybe even the FBI — they listened nice and polite when I drove up to Kansas City, to tell them all about it. But they didn’t do a goddamn thing. Didn’t even pretend to do something, like the state police did. No one has... not till you, Mr. Harrow. Not till you.”

Carmen’s eyes begged him: Stop him... end this...

“When did you talk to all these people?”

“In the weeks and months after the murders, but they didn’t do a damn thing. That’s why I started delivering the messages myself. I knew sooner or later someone would come to my rescue.”

Harrow knew these were the ramblings of a lunatic mind. Shelton thought the evil developers were after his land, and everyone’s land everywhere, and that all of law enforcement had conspired to kill his family.

At this point, the only remaining question was how to get Carmen away from this crazy, before the man decided to deliver one last message...

“Mr. Shelton, how long have you been after these people? Ten years?”

“Ten years.”

“Well, I’ve been investigating this for only a few months. I did look into my family’s deaths, but it took me all these years, and some corn from this county, to bring me to this porch. So if you want us to stop them, you’ve got to share the information you’ve found. That’s going to take time, and we can’t do it here, not like this. We’ll get you in front of a camera, and you will tell your story, and you will tell it in detail.”

Shelton said nothing. The hand with the gun seemed to be shaking, just a little. Was that good, or bad?

“You can’t stay on this porch with a gun to my friend’s head forever,” Harrow said. “Let her go. I’ll stay with you as your hostage, until the cameras can come in.”

Shelton swallowed. “We could go inside and talk. Where this started. Where they killed them. That would be... dramatic, right? Good for TV?”

The gun dropped from Carmen’s temple, but Shelton’s arm was still looped around her waist as the man shifted, about to ease out from behind the woman, if Harrow was any judge.

And in his right ear Harrow heard: “I’ve got a shot, do I have a go order?”

From the darkness, where he was shouting into his radio, Gibbons’s voice registered for all to hear: “ Go! ”

“Bastards!” Shelton said, and ducked behind Carmen again as the sound split the night and the shot thunked splinteringly into the front door between Harrow and the captor with his hostage.

Shelton’s sudden movement caused Carmen to stumble and the two went down in a heap, Carmen screaming, Shelton making animal sounds as they hit the old wooden slats of the porch. Then Shelton was on his knees, pulling Carmen’s hair as he tried to bring her up as a shield again, his gun-in-hand rising to take its place at her temple.

Looking down at them, Harrow didn’t hesitate — his hand whipped around his back and came back with the nine millimeter, which he aimed and fired in one smooth motion, the bullet punching through Shelton’s forehead, the crack of his skull audible, the gunshot itself a thundercrack that seemed to shake the old house.

The gun clunked from the killer’s hand to the porch as limp fingers released Carmen’s hair, and the self-styled messenger slumped to weathered wooden slats, dead as his family, dead as Harrow’s family, oozing brains that had been damaged long prior to the bullet.

Then Carmen was in Harrow’s arms, sobbing, holding him tight, as they sat on the bottom porch step. For his part, he just stroked her hair and let her cry.

Hathaway and Arroyo were next to Harrow and Carmen, filming even before Gibbons and his men got there.

“Byrnes broke in on America’s Wackiest Wedding Videos ,” Hathaway said, obviously stoked. “That’s the network’s second-biggest show, you know.”

Arroyo said, “Whole thing went out on the network live — seven-second delay, of course, in case somebody got shot.”

“That’s entertainment,” Harrow said, and Carmen interrupted her crying to snort a laugh, then returned to her tears.

Even as the cameramen spoke, they never stopped shooting. The audio personnel were moving in now, as well.

Laurene and Choi appeared, and managed to each get in the way of a camera as Harrow helped Carmen to her feet. With Laurene, getting in front of a camera was accidental; with Choi, Harrow wasn’t so sure.

Finally he asked Carmen, “How are you doing?”

Her tear-smeared face had a bitter cast. “You talked him down. They didn’t have to take that shot.”

“I know. Bastards risked both our lives.”

“You gonna do something about that, boss?”