Thomas Perry - Poison Flower

"Uh," he grunted. "Let me do it."

Jane looked down and she could see that a pool of blood was collecting in the tarp below him. "How many stakes are in you"

He moved his free hand to explore. "Two. No, three. God, it hurts." He breathed hard a couple of times, then reached for the stick Jane held.

She said, "Tell me about Daniel Martel."

"A rich guy. He does what he wants. Sometimes he needs protection from what he does. He wanted Shelby's wife, he got her, kept her for a while, and then he killed her. He hired us to make sure Shelby got convicted, and then died, so nobody would ever reopen the case or come after Martel. When Shelby got away, Martel hired some more to help us hunt him down."

"Where is Martel now"

"I don't know. Probably LA."

"Not good enough. I can leave you here just like this, so you can tell the cops who you and all these armed dead men are."

"I'll help you get Martel if you'll help me get through this. I'll call him and bring him to you."

"All right. Can you lift yourself The stakes aren't in the ground deep. You can probably move them."

"I'll have to. I know that." He pushed up with one arm and dislodged two of the stakes from the ground. "Oh, Jesus," he muttered. "Oh, Jesus." Then he moved the third, and lay on his side, regaining his strength.

"Okay," Jane said. "Here. Hold on to the stick and I'll pull while you try to stand. Then we can get you up to the surface."

She saw him grasp the stick with both hands and brace himself. She pulled, and she saw in the moonlight a peculiar look appearing on his face. Then he did what she had expected. He made an incredibly fast tug on the stick, trying to pull her in onto the stakes that remained upright.

She let the stick go, and he fell backward. He was reaching into his jacket pocket when she backed away from the pit. As she turned and ran, she heard him moving. She ran a few more steps and dived into the weeds, just as he raised his hand above the edge and fired in her direction.

A moment later he called, "Come back."

She called, "You're on your own now. Look at your belly. You're bleeding out. I can wait."

"No. Stop. I'll do what I said, and bring Martel."

"Your chances got used up, Wylie."

She crawled a distance away, got up, and went to look at each of the other men to be sure none of them had survived. There were two on the front porch, one in the back. There were three she had caught shooting the dummy in the master bedroom. There was a man lying on the mattress where her rope was tied, his rifle still resting on the windowsill.

She took the rope and began the hard work of moving bodies. She dragged each of the four men lying on the second floor to the edge of the stairs and pushed him so he slid down to the first floor. Each of them stopped at some point, snagged on the railing or jammed against the wall, so she went down and pushed the body with both feet to get it moving. Then she dragged it to join the two who were already splayed on the front porch.

As she stepped off the porch, she heard the report of a pistol come from inside the pit she had dug. She paused for a second, then walked to the side of the house and out to the field, approaching the pit from a new angle so she could look down the long side.

When she was close, she pulled out her gun and stepped close to the pit. She looked inside, then away again. Wylie had put the barrel in his mouth and ended his pain.

Jane walked back into the house, found her cell phone, and called Stewart Shattuck's number. When he answered, she said, "I knew you'd be awake. Do you recognize my voice"

"Yes."

"I just killed eight of them. If there are others who might know you helped me, be ready."

"I'm pretty sure there aren't. I got the impression they were one little expedition after a reward. They wouldn't have passed on a tip to anybody. But thanks for the warning. You all right"

"I'm the only happy person for a few miles in any direction."

"Good enough. See you."

"See you."

Jane went upstairs and took the blanket off the bed where she had slept. She rolled one of the bodies off the porch onto the blanket and used it to drag him to the pit. She carried the blanket back and rolled the next one onto it. She worked hard and tirelessly. She had decided to do as much of this work as she could tonight, while it was cool and the bodies were fresh, and it was dark and she didn't have to look at their eyes. By the fourth body the blanket was soaked with blood. It didn't matter, she thought. The men were just bleeding into the grass. The ground of the state of New York, the country her people called their longhouse, had been soaking up human blood nicely for about fourteen thousand years.

When she had all seven bodies at the pit, she went through each man's pockets, dumped the contents onto a growing pile on the grass, then rolled him into the pit. When she had rolled the last one in, she lay back in the weeds and stared up at the dark sky. Clouds were coming in, and she knew that later on, there would be enough to snuff out the stars. After a long time, she got up, put the men's belongings into one man's ammo bag, and carried them to the house. She turned on the porch light and read the names on the licenses and credit cards. Wylie had not been lying-none of them was Daniel Martel.

She found the spade, then began to fill the pit. It was hard work. She took her jacket off and shoveled, letting the sweat pour off her, and soak the spine and armpits of her T-shirt. Her hair was a long, wet rope down her back. The volume of eight men and their weapons was considerable, but after the mass grave looked even with the rest of the field, Jane still kept bringing dirt until it was a bit higher. She had saved the layer of turf and weeds she had used to hide the pit, so she replanted them now in the topsoil. When she was finished, she took the tarp and spade to the house.

She turned on the hose at the side of the house, hosed off the grass, then went to the front porch and washed off all the blood she could from the high-gloss enamel paint.

She knew the men had come in some kind of vehicle, and she didn't want to leave it where they must have parked it, halfway up the dirt road. She went inside, searched the men's belongings, found three sets of car keys, took them all, walked up the road, and found the van. She tried a set of keys, got in, and drove the van to the house, then around the side to the back, where it would be hard to see from any angle.

Her night of killing was nearly used up. She began to pile things in the big brick barbecue behind the house-the tarp, the blanket, the leather wallets and other perishable items the men had in their pockets. She kept the money, identification, credit cards, and loose slips of paper. In the kitchen she found a glass jar and a rubber tube that attached to the faucet for spraying dishes. She went to the van, siphoned off a quart of gasoline from its tank, and soaked the things in the barbecue. She rinsed the jar and tube with the hose.

The last thing she did was stand on the grass in the moonlight and strip off her clothes. When she was naked except for her hiking boots, she took a windproof lighter that had belonged to one of the men, lit it, and tossed it onto the pile.

The air gave a "huff" sound and the fire came into being above the pile of human things like a little explosion that puffed against her hair. It was a big flame, at least ten feet tall at first, bright orange with an aura of blue around it. Jane watched it for a minute, until it had begun to calm down and settle into devouring what it had been given. Then she walked out of the firelight and went about two hundred feet to the edge of the lake.

She kept walking, and her boots sank into mud at first, making a sucking sound as she lifted them for the next step. The water was icy, but to her it felt clean and fierce and scouring. She kept going until the water reached her chest, and then bent her legs and ducked under. She came up gasping, feeling as though her skin were burning instead of cold. She took two more deep breaths and then went under again, scrubbing herself all over with her hands. She took off her boots and cleaned them of the lingering bits of mud, then walked up through the reeds to the shore. She put her boots back on and walked up toward the fire.