“Okay, we’re going to Broker’s uncle’s place. It’s called Uncle Billie’s Lodge, on Lake One. They say it’s just outside Ely. Any gas station can direct you. Nobody is there this time of year. You with me so far?”
“I’m still here. Uncle Billie’s Lodge on Lake One in Ely, Minnesota. Then what?”
“Page me with sixes when you get in position, like outside the front door. I’ll lure Broker out. Then I’ll try to distract him so you-”
“I get the picture.”
She paused, then said, “So you better bring
“I thought we weren’t like that anymore,” Earl said, clicking his teeth.
“I don’t see any other way,” Jolene said.
She clicked off the phone, flicked her cigarette, and watched it spiral out, sparks in the gloom. She straightened up her shoulders and raked her fingers through her short hair.
She reminded herself that
And she wasn’t going to kill Amy and Broker, either.
Chapter Forty-three
They’d folded down the rear seat and put in a futon mattress and blankets. Broker lashed Hank’s wheelchair to the rack on the roof. Hank slept on his side with a pillow between his knees. Amy was stretched out next to him. Jolene rode shotgun. They had good tires and a full tank of gas. The heater worked just fine.
“I don’t want to talk to anyone until he gets a full night’s rest. And he’s fed. And he’s comfortable with his new surroundings,” Jolene said.
“Understood,” said Broker, who was feeling very agreeable. The day had taken on an irresistible momentum. Hope rode with them. Broker wondered if the brief exercise with the alphabet system could foreshadow some kind of recovery.
He settled in and focused his attention on the cold, empty pavement unreeled in the Jeep’s high beams. Interstate 35 going north was almost deserted, as if the plunging temperature and the wind had swept away the cars.
Earl heaved out of the cab with his trench coat slipping off his shoulders. He was only able to get his good arm in a sleeve. The shredded left sleeve hung empty. Cursing at his clumsiness, he paid the cabbie and fumbled one-handed in his jeans pockets for his keys. Just as Jolene had said, the house was deserted and his van was in the garage. Goddamn chickenshit Rodney still had the Ford.
He lurched going through the door and slammed his sling against the doorjamb.
“GODDAMN SONOFABITCH!”
The curses echoed in the empty house. They’d left for up north: Jolene, Hank, Broker, and the smarty-pants nurse with the alphabet board. Now he had to follow them. And he didn’t want to think about what was going to happen.
Shit.
He was still wearing his hospital gown under his coat. A nurse had knotted the belt around his waist as he rushed through processing. He wasn’t wearing undershorts. Or socks.
His shoes weren’t tied.
All that was too hard, bending with his cast and sling and the swollen fingers.
And he was hungry, but he didn’t have time for that, either.
Plus, he hurt, but he couldn’t afford to take any more of the pills because he was heading into a four-hour drive. Muttering, he went down the stairs and stooped to the file cabinet next to his computer and opened the bottom drawer. In the back, behind some folders, he located the small canvas zipper case. With difficulty, using his numb left fingers to wedge the case against his hip, he unzipped the case. He removed the heavy Colt automatic and the two loaded magazines-fat, stumpy bullets in a staggered row. They looked like spring-loaded teeth from a small tyrannosaurus rex. Earl shook his head. The pistol was a fossil from another era.
He tried to remember the last time he’d cleaned the.45.
Hell, he hadn’t even fired the thing for years. Stovall hadn’t known that, though.
Goddamn Jolene. This off-and-on roller coaster had to cease. When this is done, we’re going to take the money and go someplace warm. An island, maybe, full of people who speak a different language to limit her ability to get into messes.
He inserted the magazine, pulled the slide with difficulty. Snicker-snack, the mechanism loaded a round in the chamber. Okay. He set the safety. Then he put the other magazine in his jacket pocket, grabbed at a fleece sweater, some socks, gloves, a hat. He stuffed them in the first thing that came to hand-a plastic bag from CompUSA. Funny, he hadn’t been to CompUSA lately.
It’d be cold up north.
Which forced him to think in practical terms. The ground would be permafrost, impossible to dig; and he couldn’t anyway with his arm. So hopefully the lakes wouldn’t be frozen, because that’s where they’d have to put Broker and the nurse.
And what about Hank?
He was in the middle of this thought, coming up the steps into the kitchen, headed for the refrigerator, hoping to find something to eat real quick-
When the needles raked his bare ankle.
Goddamn fucking cat!
Everything that had happened and now this. It blew his stopper. He yanked the Colt from his pocket with his good right hand, flicked the safety, and-
BLAAM!
He blasted a round at the ball of gray fur and scrambling claws and punched a ricochet notch in the floor tile that sent shards of terra-cotta flying all over, pinging off the walls and windows.
The empty casing flipped over in a plume of cordite and tinkled in the heavy burner grates on the stove.
Fucking cat was still booking through the living room.
BLAAM!
Missed again, hit the far wall, and the impact knocked two pictures down.
“I’ll get you when I come back,” Earl shouted, his ears stinging from the violence of the shots. He shook his head. Cat crossing his path, a bad sign at the beginning of a bad project.
Swinging his gun hand to clear the blur of cordite in the air, he opened the refrigerator, found nothing easy to carry except four cans of Diet Pepsi linked by a web of white plastic. He put his gun back in his pocket, took the soda and a box of day-old glazed doughnuts from the cupboard, and went to the garage and got in his van.
Ten minutes later he was driving west on Highway 36 heading for the junction of I-35. He had three-quarters of a tank of gas, and he was on his second doughnut and was halfway through a Pepsi.
Steppenwolf was playing on KQRS. Which was a good sign. It canceled out the cat. He rubbed the head of the
Allen sprinted through the pines, crashed through some underbrush, and jumped in his car. Their fault, not mine, he thought as he sped away, shifting through the gears.
Interesting the way the logic worked in this new world. Clearly they were bringing this on themselves. Almost with a mind of its own, the Saab raced toward the Timberry Trails Hospital. He visualized the procedure he must
