Nelson Demille Read online

  Get the hell out of here.

  Ward left.

  Cliff Baxter sat at his desk and stared at the wall awhile. He understood that things were starting to come apart. He looked at the framed photo of Annie on his desk and said, Bitch.

  He kept looking at her photograph and recalled last evening. She'd gotten home after him, and he'd waited for her in the kitchen. They hadn't said much to each other, and she went right to bed, saying she had a headache. He'd gone out to her car and tried the mobile phone. She hadn't answered any of his calls, but the phone worked fine. Still, you never knew with these car phones. On the other hand, she'd seemed weird last night, and he would have pushed her a little, but he had some checking to do first, and he knew not to ask questions until he already had answers.

  Somewhere in the back of Cliff Baxter's mind was the important fact that his wife was smarter than he was. But smart people, he'd discovered, sometimes were too smart, too cocky, too sure of themselves, and they thought their bullshit didn't stink. He nodded to himself and said, Aunt Louise. I ain't seen Aunt Louise in a while.

  Cliff Baxter glanced at his watch and saw it was seven A.M. He picked up the phone and dialed.

  Tim Hodge, the postmaster of Spencerville, answered in a sleepy voice, Hello . . .

  Hey, Tim, I wake you?

  Yeah . . . who's this?

  Let go of your cock and grab your socks, the mail must go through.

  Oh . . . hey, Chief, how you doing?

  You tell me.

  Oh . . . Tim Hodge cleared his throat. Well . . . yeah, I went out to St. James last night . . .

  You better have. What happened?

  Well . . . let's see . . . they . . . uh . . . they had a crowd—

  I know that. My name come up?

  Yeah . . . yeah, it did. Matter of fact, it came up a bunch of times.

  Baxter nodded. Come on, Tim, I'm a busy man. Give me the who, what, where, when, and how.

  Yeah, okay. Well, the city council lady, Gail Porter, kind of led the meeting. Her husband was there, too, and they had . . . like a lot of witnesses.

  Witnesses? Was this a fucking meeting or a trial?

  Tim Hodge didn't reply immediately, then said, Well . . . they had some people there who had a few . . . kind of complaints against you.

  Like who?

  Like Bob Aries's wife, Mary, and some woman named Sherry . . . some weird last name.

  Kolarik?

  Yeah.

  Shit. What did she say?

  Which one?

  Both of them. What did those lyin' bitches say?

  Well . . . Mary went on about you taking things from the store, you know, and signing off on more gas than was pumped—

  Fuck her. What did the other bitch say?

  Well . . . something about . . . she sort of said that you . . . like you and her . . . like you had something going .

  Jesus Christ. You mean this bitch got up there in front of all those people in church . . . and lied about . . . what'd she say?

  She says you fucked her. Been fucking her for some time. That you paid her parking fines or something, and that, to pay you back, she had to fuck for you. Hodge added, She got real detailed.

  Lying bitch.

  Yeah.

  People believin' that?

  Well . . . I don't.

  Hey, why don't you stop by this afternoon for some coffee and tell me what you seen and heard last night. About three. Meantime, don't spread no gossip yourself, and keep your ears open.

  Right, Chief.

  Baxter hung up and stared out the window onto Main Street. Goddamnit! He slammed his fist on the desk. Goddamned bitches, can't trust any of them to keep their damned mouths shut.

  He thought about how this development was going to affect him and decided he could keep it under control. Sherry Kolarik was a whore, the worst kind of witness. Mary Aries was another problem, but he'd get her husband to put a zipper on her big mouth real quick. Baxter wondered what else had come up at that meeting. He pulled a piece of paper toward him and began a list, writing the name Keith Landry, followed by Sherry Kolarik, then Mary Aries, then Gail Porter, then the other Porter whose first name he didn't remember, then hesitantly, he wrote Pastor Wilkes, then thought a moment and added Bob Aries's name for good measure. He'd have written Annie's name, too, except that she always had the honorary first position on his weekly list of people who pissed him off.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee from a thermos jug and sipped on it. Things were definitely getting out of control. This wasn't just a bad week, it was the start of a bad life unless he started to kick some ass.

  He stood and went out into the office where Ward was entering the list of license plate numbers into the motor vehicle computer and getting names and addresses printed out. Baxter said, Turn that fucking thing off.

  Ward exited the file, and Baxter asked him, You got a report on Landry's movements last night?

  Sure do. Ward handed Baxter a typed sheet of paper, and Baxter glanced at it.

  Baxter said, Krug saw him leave his house at seven-thirty P.M., then you and Krug and the other guys saw him in the parking lot at St. James at eight thirty-five.

  Right. The meeting was still going on, but I guess he left early.

  Then what?

  Well, then Landry went into the parsonage with Pastor Wilkes. I drove out to Landry's place and waited on 28 a couple hundred yards from his driveway, but I never saw anybody pull in. But then I noticed lights on upstairs, and I called him on the mobile phone, and he answered. Don't know how he got there unless he came in from the south, using the tractor roads. He must've been scared, you know, figuring we were laying for him. Ward added, It's all there in the report.

  Baxter glanced at the paper again and said, You called him at ten thirty-eight and he answered?

  Yup.

  He could have been home about an hour already.

  Could have. Depends on how long he stayed with Wilkes, and where he went after that. Like I said, I think he took the long way home. He was scared.

  Yeah. You really scared him. You see any other car goin' in or comin' out of his farm?

  Nope.

  You stick around after you called him?

  No, because it looked like he was in for the night. But about an hour later, I drove by again, and his light was still on upstairs. What are you thinking, Chief?

  Nothin'. I'll be at the Park 'n' Eat for breakfast.

  Okay.

  Cliff Baxter left police headquarters and walked the half mile down Main Street to the east end of town and entered the Park 'n' Eat at seven-thirty A.M.

  He took his customary table, and an older waitress named Lanie came over and said, How're you this morning, Chief?

  Just fine.

  Coffee?

  Sure thing.

  She poured him a cup of coffee from a carafe and asked him, Need to look at the menu? •

  Nope. Ham, two eggs over easy, home fries, biscuits, no toast, and no juice.

  You got it. She started to walk away, but Baxter said, Hey, where's Sherry this morning?

  Lanie replied, Called in sick.

  Yeah? Friend of mine saw her last night.

  Lanie smiled. Maybe too much partying.

  Nah. This guy saw her at church. St. James, out by Overton. Baxter studied the waitress's face, but clearly she didn't know anything.

  I'll get those eggs going for you.

  Yeah. Hey, if she comes in or calls, tell her I'm lookin' for her. We got to talk about some parking fines.

  Lanie's smile dropped, and she nodded and moved off.

  Breakfast came, and Cliff ate. Nearly everyone who came in greeted him, and he tried to guess who knew what at this early hour.

  One of the city councilmen, Chet Coleman, who was also a pharmacist, came in and saw him. Coleman sat down opposite Baxter and, without any preliminaries, said, Hey, Chief, you know about that meeting at St. James?

  Heard about it.

 
; Yeah, while we were having our council meeting, those folks were bad-mouthing us.

  No shit?

  I didn't like what I heard.

  How'd you hear?

  Well . . . had a friend there.

  Yeah? A friend who stayed up late to call you, or a friend who got up early to call you?

  Uh . . . this morning . . .

  Yeah? Friend couldn't be named Mrs. Coleman, could it?

  Chet Coleman didn't respond to that, but he didn't have to.

  Baxter said, You know, Chet, this whole goddamned country is getting out of control. You know why? Pussies. When the men can't control the pussies, you might as well kiss the whole country goodbye.

  Yeah . . . well, there were a lot of men there, too, and from what I hear—

  Let me give you some advice, Mr. Councilman. If your wife winds up on the wrong side of this thing, it ain't gonna look good for you in November, and it ain't gonna look good for your business ever. Baxter stood, threw a few dollars on the table, and left.

  It was eight forty-five A.M. now, and there were cars and people on Main Street, not as many as there'd been twenty years ago at this hour, but enough so that Cliff Baxter felt like he was walking through his domain, greeting his subjects like a prince who'd stepped out of the palace to check out the mood of the populace. Most people seemed their usual selves, but now and then someone seemed to be avoiding him or looking at him funny.

  Cliff Baxter stopped and spoke to a few citizens, shook a lot of hands, chatted with shopkeepers opening for business, tipped his hat to women, and even walked old Mrs. Graham across the street.

  He lingered in front of police headquarters awhile and greeted everyone who walked by, calling most of them by name, joking with Oliver Grebbs, the bank president, about Oliver embezzling money to keep a mistress and both of them knowing the embezzlement was a joke, but the mistress wasn't.

  He looked across the street at the courthouse where the city employees were walking through the park to go to work. At some point today or tomorrow, he knew, he'd have to go see the mayor.

  Cliff Baxter couldn't get a sense of how the wind was blowing this morning, but he had the feeling that it was like an early north wind, gentle at first, almost imperceptible, so that it took a while to realize the warm west wind wasn't blowing anymore. In fact, it was calm, quiet, and only a few people noticed that the wind had changed direction.

  Police Chief Baxter turned and went into police headquarters, where Sergeant Blake, at the front desk, greeted him with forced nonchalance.

  Baxter walked into the inner office and said to Ward, We ride at ten.

  Baxter went into his office and closed the door. He went to the window and looked out at Main Street, the park, the courthouse, his world. A lesser man, he told himself, would be worried. But he felt he had his hands around enough prominent balls to hang on. But if he couldn't hang on, he'd take a whole lot of people down with him, starting with the short list on his desk and moving on to the longer list in his files.

  In a way, he associated all this bad shit with the arrival of Keith Landry, though he knew this had been brewing a long time. Still, if he could get rid of Landry, at least one of his problems would be out of the way. Then he'd go for Gail Porter, not to mention Sherry Kolarik, the bitch, and Mary Aries, and any other women who thought they had more balls than Cliff Baxter. Then he'd go for the men if he had to. Basically, people frightened easily, he knew; there were no heroes left, only cowards who sometimes got together and thought they were heroes. He didn't think he had to kill anybody, only frighten them half to death—and if you frightened somebody half to death twice, they were a hundred percent frightened to death.

  Keith woke at seven A.M., and the first thing on his mind was Annie.

  Things were a little more clear now: They had made love, they were in love. He wasn't leaving. He wanted to stay, to make a life here with her, sit on the front porch with her and watch the sun go down.

  But he knew she wouldn't stay if Cliff Baxter was still here, and she really didn't want her husband dead now that she had another option. But that option was to run off together, and Keith didn’t want to run.

  He lay, staring at the ceiling. It took him a while to realize he smelled her scent on the sheets.

  It was a warm day, and he worked in the barn bare-chested. He wondered when and how they'd meet again, when they could make love again. He realized that he could take her away with probably no more than a few days' notice, and all this worry and fear would be behind them. They could be in Paris in less than a week. He wondered if she had a passport. No problem. He could get one for her within twenty-four hours. There were people who owed him favors.

  Then, after a year or so, he would come back to Spencerville on his own and, if Baxter was still around, they should be able to settle matters at that point without bloodshed. Then Annie and he could return as husband and wife. Good solution. Done.

  At about quarter past ten, he heard a vehicle crunching over the gravel and went out through the barn doors.

  Sitting in his driveway was a blue and white police car, and on its door was painted the gold shield of the chief of police.

  The car was between him and the house, and Keith had no weapon with him. The driver of the car spotted him, and the car turned across farmyard and came toward him. It stopped about thirty feet away, and he could see two men in the front seat. The passenger door opened, and a beefy man in tans, wearing mirrored sunglasses and a Smokey Bear hat, got out and came toward him.

  Keith walked toward the man, who he saw was indeed Cliff Baxter. They stopped a few feet from each other and stared.

  Keith's eyes went to the car, and he saw that the driver had gotten out. It was Officer Ward, but Ward didn't move, just stood near the car watching.

  Keith looked back at Baxter. He recognized him after nearly thirty years and saw that, despite the potbelly, the man was still good-looking and still had the same sneer.

  Keith studied the man's face, but, with the sunglasses and the wide-brimmed hat casting a shadow on his features, Keith couldn't determine the man's exact mood or intentions, or if Baxter knew anything about last night. Keith found he was worrying about Annie and not himself. Keith said, I was starting to think you wouldn't come.

  Baxter's mouth twitched, and he didn't respond, but kept staring through his glasses. Finally, he said, I don't like you.

  That's good.

  Never did.

  I know that. He looked over Baxter's shoulder at Ward, who was now sitting on the hood of the car, smiling.

  Baxter said, Never will.

  Keith said to him, It's very rude to wear sunglasses when you're speaking to someone.

  Fuck you.

  Hey, Chief, you're what they call trespassing unless you have an official reason to be here.

  Cliff Baxter glanced over his shoulder at Ward, then stepped closer to Keith and said, You're a fucking asshole.

  Get off my property.

  Why're you here?

  This is my home.

  Like hell it is. You don't belong here.

  Chief, I've got six generations of my people buried in this county. Don't tell me I don't belong here.

  You're gonna get buried in this county, sooner than you think.

  Keith took a step forward so that they were face-to-face. He said, Are you threatening me?

  Back off or I'll kill you. He put his hand on his pistol, and Keith could see Ward slide off the hood of the car and reach for his gun.

  Keith took a deep breath, then took a step back.

  Baxter smiled. You're not as stupid as you look.

  Keith got himself under control and said, Say your piece, Cliff, and leave.

  Baxter obviously didn't like the use of his first name and all that it implied. He took his glasses off and stared at Keith a long time. Finally, he said, You're fucking with my boys.

  Keith didn't reply.

  And you're fucking with me.

  Again, Keith s
aid nothing.

  Behind the school. Meet me behind the school. That what you said?

  Yup. I was there.

  You're lucky I wasn't. You'd be laid out right now at Gibbs, stiff as a board, with that pink shit they use in your veins. And I'd spit on your face if you had a face left after I got through with you.

  Keith didn't reply.

  My boys told me you was hidin' behind that preacher's skirt at St. James.

  You can leave Pastor Wilkes out of this.

  Yeah? Why? Anybody who fucks with me or my boys is automatically in it—up to his ears—-and that includes God Almighty himself.

  Again, Keith didn't reply but just shook his head.

  Baxter continued, And what the fuck were you doing at Baxter Motors?

  Speaking to your brother about a car.

  Yeah? And about my wife. If you keep asking around about me and my family, you're gonna die. Understand?

  Keith noticed that Baxter's eyes were set close together, the sign of a predator in the animal kingdom, and his head swiveled from side to side as he spoke, as though looking for prey or peril.

  Keith tried to picture Annie with this guy for twenty years but knew that there was another Cliff Baxter, the home model. Cliff Baxter probably loved her, though she'd never tell Keith that, and Cliff Baxter thought he was a protective and caring husband, though most people would say possessive and abusive.

  Baxter asked, Cat got your tongue?

  Nope.

  I'll bet you got to take a piss right now.

  Nope.

  Nope, yup, nope, yup. You got nothing else to say?

  Yeah, I do. How did you get out of the draft? Mental or physical?

  Hey, fuckhead, I was a cop. I did my duty here.

  Right. So did the women and schoolchildren who sent letters and packages.

  You motherfucker—

  Hey, Chief, don't talk the talk if you haven't walked the walk. You want to prove you have balls? I'll go inside and get my piece, or you take off yours. You call it. Guns, knives, axes, fists. It doesn't matter to me how I kill you.

  Baxter took a breath, and Keith saw by his body language that he wanted to take a step back. All said and done, Baxter still had the only gun between them, and there wasn't much keeping him from drawing it. Except, Keith thought, Baxter probably had other plans for Keith Landry, something he'd been thinking about for the last few weeks. Baxter hadn't come out here to kill him, so there was no reason to give him a reason. Yet, Keith couldn't resist the opportunity to mess with his mind and maybe draw him into a fair fight. Keith said, Okay? You want to have it out? I was about to take a break anyway.