“Let’s not get dramatic,” I said. “You’re a jerk, but you ain’t no killer.”
“We’ll see.”
I rushed him this time. He threw a handful of dirt at me that he’d palmed, hoping to get it in my eyes, but he failed. I faked, then came up with a left hook that spun him on his heels. Before he fell, I grabbed him by the shoulders and delivered two swift knees to his guts. A karate chop to the back of his neck. He went down on his knees. I punched him in the forehead.
He drove an elbow up into my crotch. I lost my breath.
He pulled on me by my belt and came up with an uppercut. My teeth met like chimes. My face vibrated. He followed the uppercut up with a series of gut shots. Lefts, rights—all of them left me wishing I’d had breakfast just so I could have thrown up on him. I backed up into a tree, wheezing. I saw his hook coming from a mile away—he put so much of his weight behind it—that I had time to duck. His fist rammed into the tree, and he let out a scream. I grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, and then I head-butted him. Once. Then again. I let him fall in a heap, his nose a bloody mess.
I limped away, toward his car. I was going to take the keys out and chuck them in the woods, just to be an asshole, but I was interrupted. He came up behind me and cracked the butt of his handgun off the back of my head. I got dizzy and stooped forward. He used my momentum against me and hurled me onto the hood of his car. My head cracked his windshield. A little bit of blood got in my eye.
I rolled onto my back, saw him lunging. I raised my leg and let him run into my boot. It made contact with his jaw, and did enough damage that he had to take the time to shake out the cobwebs. I rolled off the hood, got a kick to my knee, but it grazed without breaking bone, and with him off balance, I took advantage. My right hook came out of nowhere and met his jaw like an atomic bomb.
He went down and didn’t get up again.
I went through his pockets, found his cuffs in a belt holster, and cuffed him out of spite. Then I took his badge. He started to come to.
I grabbed him by the collar and said, “Keep your boys in blue away from me. There’s a lot more people at stake here than your goddamn family, and that’s a fact.”
“I can’t let you go,” he mumbled.
I brought a foot down into his face.
“You’re gonna have to. You have too much to lose, cop. Let me do my job.”
Back in the truck, I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. I wasn’t as inconspicuous as I’d been five minutes earlier. With the blanket on the seat, I wiped the blood off my face. My hands were shaking, but I felt great.
“Anthony,” I said. “Anthony, Anthony, Anthony. Time to pay the piper.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The sun came down in brilliant rays, and the air was warm. There was a slight breeze. On any other day, it all would have been enough to make you happy to be alive, but to the citizens of Evelyn, the daytime had become nothing more than a handful of hours in which they felt just a little bit less afraid. Me? I was in good spirits. I was bleeding out of my face, but I knew who the Rose Killer was.
I still didn’t know what the deal was with how he had been able to conceal himself from the wolf, but it didn’t matter too much anymore. I knew his face. I knew his name. I knew his car. Hell, a little bit of his blood had run onto my hand when I knocked his lights out in the parking lot. He was as good as dead. But still, I wanted him. He had caused too much pain and chaos in my life for the wolf to have all the fun. I wanted a little piece of him just for me. All I had to do was find him.
The whole situation with the bloody face was kind of pressing, though. I couldn’t very well go around town looking like I’d gotten intimate with an ugly stick, so once I drove back to Old Sherman Road and the civilization on the other side of it, I headed to the closest deli. There was one just a few blocks away.
I walked in, and the old man behind the counter took one look at me and opened his mouth. “Son,” he said, “you’re not looking like you’re doing too good.”
“I can’t complain,” I said, and went back to one of the coolers to grab myself a bottle of water.
I took one of the few remaining dollars out of my wallet, slammed it on the counter, and headed back out. It was there on the sidewalk that I saw someone I didn’t expect to see again.
She was wearing a pair of sweatpants, sneakers, and a tight white T-shirt with a picture of Jimi Hendrix on it. Sunglasses hid her beautiful eyes from me. I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Hey, darling,” I said out of habit. I kind of instantly regretted it.
She removed her glasses. “Hey, Marley,” said Alice.
“You look good.”
She laughed. “I wish I could say the same about you. What happened?”
“Oh, you mean this? Just been a tough day is all….”
“Maybe we shouldn’t be talking now,” she said plainly, like she’d flipped a switch inside her and turned off her emotions.
“Wait, please, let me explain.”
“Marley, you don’t need to explain anything to me. It’s not
like …”
“Please don’t say it, Alice.”
She stopped.
“I need to apologize about the other day. About following you.”
“That’s fine, Marley. You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“I feel like I do. I know you have a line. It’s something I’ve heard you say a thousand times, and I know you don’t want to hear it, but I care about you.”
She put her glasses back on to hide her eyes.
“You can think what you want about me,” I said, “but there’s more to me than you could ever imagine. There’s a lot I would have liked for you to know about the real me, the me that’s been kind of hidden away for so long, and I feel like now,
“You sound like you’re not going to be around anymore.”
That was true, one way or the other. “That’s right,” I said.
“Why?”
“Things have kind of come to a head.”
“What things?”
“Things.”
“There are bands of men looking for the killer in vans and pickup trucks. They have chains, pipes, whatever they can get their hands on, I guess. I hope you’re not one of them. This town doesn’t need that kind of justice.”
“I’m not a vigilante,” I said.
“Marley,” she said sadly, “what are you caught up in?”
“I wish I could tell you.”
She turned and ran her fingers through her hair. “Everything’s gone to hell so fast. These killings are ruining everything. He got Josie, and now I feel like I’m losing …”
“Losing what?”
I thought she was going to say she was losing me too. “Nothing,” she said. “When do you think it’s all going to end?”
“Soon,” I said. “I promise.”
I headed back to the truck and said, “Be careful.”
“You too,” she said.
I got in the truck and took off. I poured some of the water on a towel and washed my face. It would have to do.
Anthony the serial killer had once told me that he had a room rented over on Lincoln Street, on the east side of town. After consulting the phone book at a telephone stand, I saw that there were three
