Orchard Grove Page 26

  “Because you don’t have a choice, now do you?”

  “What exactly is it you want?”

  “I need you to commit one final murder in your long string of murders.”

  “Carl,” she said, “would you be so kind as to escort Ethan to the gunroom where he will break into the cases, steal a weapon, load it, and attempt to shoot dead a helpless, grieving widow?” She giggled like this was all a child’s game to her.

  “Sure thing, baby,” he obeyed.

  Again, that pistol shoved against my spine. But suddenly, the pain didn’t matter. Because Lana finally said something that would without question, implicate her in a conspiracy to set me up for murder, and I had it recorded on my cell phone app. That is, my phone was still working.

  “Baby,” I repeated with sarcasm, limping across the vestibule toward the room. “Hey Carl, looks like you’re the next contestant in Fuck ‘em and Kill ‘em by Lana Cattivo.”

  “Shut up, cripple,” he said, jabbing my shoulder with his fisted free hand.

  “Not very PC of you,” I said. “I’m telling Obama.”

  Entering into the gunroom, I could see that it had been cleaned. No more brains, blood, and hair stained the slider window or the wall behind Cattivo’s desk.

  “Now,” Carl said, open the closet, pull down a box of 9mm rounds. Got it?”

  As ordered, I went to the closet, slid the wood door open. I found one of the boxes of bullets stacked on the closet shelf, and pulled one down.

  “Set the box down on the desk,” Carl demanded.

  I did it.

  “What next, Carl?” I said, sensing for the first time that although the cop knew what he wanted to ultimately accomplish with me inside the gunroom, he wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it. Here’s how I scripted it out in my mind: he would make it look like I fled the police out in the country, then managed to evade his highway surveillance of me while somehow making my way back to the city, and eventually to Orchard Grove where I broke into Lana’s house. I immediately made my way to the gunroom, smashed one of the cases, stole a weapon, loaded it, then used it to shoot Lana or Susan or Carl or all three of them. Attempted to shoot them, that is. But in order to make the plot viable, he’d have to stain everything with my prints, just like Lana managed to do less than forty-eight hours ago when she handed me the very .45 caliber bullet that would plow through her husband’s head.

  Leaning my left hand on the desk to take some pressure off my right foot, I looked into Carl’s eyes. They were wide and slightly out of focus. His face was tight, his lips in deep frown position.

  “What’s wrong, Carl?” I said. “You look confused. Confused and nervous.”

  “Quiet, Hollywood,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “That’s what my partner used to call you, right? Hollywood? Well tell you what, Hollywood, stop leaning on that desk and put a foot through that glass on the case to the right.”

  Bracing myself for more pain, I approached the case on the right.

  “You mean this one?” I said. “You sure about that, Carl? The case housing the pistols? Or should I go for the gold and break open the case with the machine guns? If I were going to script a mass murder, I would go for the more-fire-power kind of scenario. But then, hey, that’s just me. Mister Hollywood. But this is your show, Carl. The Lana, Susan, and Carl murder show.”

  “Shut your trap, Forrester!” He was shouting now. Losing control. Perhaps for the first time, he was beginning to realize the gravity of what Lana was asking him to do. Commit murder on her behalf. As a cop, it would go against his very nature, no matter how much he loved her, wanted her, needed her. I’d been in the same position just a short time ago. I was Lana’s slave.

  “Tell me, Carl,” I said, tossing him a look over my shoulder. “Before I go ahead and start this thing, tell me something. Why are you doing this? You know what Lana’s all about. You’ve seen what she can do to people, men and women. She’s not exclusive to any one person. She fucks who she wants and then she fucks them over. She is a pathological case if ever there was one. How is it you don’t believe you’ll end up just as dead as I’m about to be? As dead as John is, and maybe even my wife? What have you got to gain by doing Lana’s dirty work? I mean, this can’t be out of respect for John. Even you’ve admitted how much you hated him. Is your obsession for her that bad?”

  He blinked his eyes and cocked his head, almost like he didn’t quite understand the question. Or perhaps he understood it all right, but was deathly afraid of the answers. But then, if anyone understood his obsession, it was me. Keeping the gun poised on me, he turned in search of Lana, as if she would provide the correct dialogue for him. But she was standing out in the hall, her hands gripped into tight fists, her lips pressed together. Suddenly she didn’t look so beautiful. Now she just looked cheap and evil.

  Carl turned back to me.

  “So what if I did hate John,” he said. “He was still a brother. Now you have to pay for what you’ve done to him.”

  “For what I was set up by Lana to do, Carl,” I said. “Let’s at least be honest and get it right. And of course, it’s not up to you to make me pay for anything, is it? It’s not your place any more than it’s God’s place. It’s entirely up to a court of law. You’re just following a script prepared for you by Lana. Or maybe you’re just convinced that you’re doing this for John. My guess is that, had John lived, he would have killed you. Killed you and Lana both for fucking each other behind his back… for breaking that secret code you cop partners share. Now why don’t we do the right thing and stop this nonsense before someone else dies? Why don’t we place a call to Miller?”

  In my pocket I now had the voice recordings that would at the very least, get me off for the charge of murder in the first. Now was the time to bring in Miller. I had to at least try to convince Carl of that. An impossible task to be sure. But I had to at least try.

  The hand that gripped the gun was growing unsteady. But Carl’s finger was still on the trigger. Out in the hall, Lana looked on pensively.

  “Let’s get this over with, Carl,” she said. “Time is wasting.”

  He said, “If I call Miller, Hollywood, and have you arrested, you might end up getting off. Me, I could never allow that. Not now. We’re in too deep.”

  “Carl!” Lana barked. “Now!”

  More voice recording evidence for Miller to listen to. If only I would live long enough to play it for him.

  “I see,” I said. “So that’s what this is all about. You’re in this thing too deep. Lana has you by the balls. I know too much and now, like Susan before me, I have to be eliminated. That’s how this works, right? Just remember, you’re just moments away from your own elimination, pal.”

  His eyes blinked more rapidly now, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his thick neck.

  “But you honestly don’t believe that you’re going to die do you, Carl?” I went on. “Maybe Lana has promised you something, haven’t you, Lana? Maybe she promised you a life of living together. You could sell the house, move out of town and live on John’s pension and insurance money. Because after all, there’s more than a million dollars there. Sound familiar? It’s exactly what she promised me before she revealed the plan to kill John by faking his suicide. Maybe you’d even retire early from the force, sweeten the deal by adding your pension to the mix. But all you’ve got to do is show your loyalty to Lana by getting rid of me first. You do that, you destroy the potential body of evidence that can prove, without a doubt, that Lana organized her husband’s murder.”

  The sweat was pouring into his eyes, and he wiped his brow again with the back of his hand. His face was flushing redder and redder by the second.

  “How many times I gotta tell you to shut up, Forrester?” he said. “How many fucking times?”

  “Have it your way, Carl,” I said. “I’ll shut up. But since you’re going to kill me anyway, at least answer this. Are you really in love with Lana? Or is it just
a case of lust? Think carefully now, because there really is a difference. But before you nail the coffin shut on yourself like I have, you not only have to ask yourself that very question. You need to be brutally honest about the answer.” I smiled. “Love or lust, Carl? Which is it? Love or lust?”

  He thumbed back the pistol hammer.

  “Break the fucking glass on the fucking case,” he said. “Do it now.”

  “I’ll take that as lust,” I said. Then, turning back to the case that housed the pistols. “This case here, Carl?”

  “Yeah, that one for Christ’s sakes,” he said, waving his gun with one hand and wiping a new layer of sweat form his brow with the other. “Hurry up about it already.”

  Inhaling a second breath to quell the pain in my foot, I balanced myself on its heel, then raised up my good foot and kicked the glass in. It shattered while I shrieked in agony.

  “Jesus,” I said, exhaling the breath. “You’d think a guy like Cattivo would have used safety glass to house his arsenal.”

  “Grab hold of the automatic in front of your face,” he demanded. “The Smith and Wesson 9mm. Not the Colts.”

  Reaching out, I took the Smith and Wesson off the case wall, held it in my hand.

  “Looks like my theory is balls on accurate,” I said. “You want my prints on everything. You want to make it look like I worked my way back here to enact my revenge with one of John’s hand cannons. But you’re not actually going to allow me to load this pistol are you, Carl?” Then, locking my focus on Lana outside the door. “Is he?”

  She peered down at her sandaled feet.

  “This part I can’t watch,” she said. She turned, walked back into the living room and her apple wine.

  “Way to go, Sherlock,” he said. “Can’t trust you with a loaded gun. Now stand back.” He cocked his gun, aimed for my chest. “You don’t need no stinkin’ bullets, Hollywood,” he said with a smile planted on his red face, and a droplet of sweat pouring down over his lips. “All you have to do is approach me in a threatening manner. I’m trained to recognize when my life is in danger, and I have the right to shoot you dead.”

  That’s when I tossed the gun at his head.

  Call it dumb luck. But Carl was able to evade the gun by shifting his head at the very last millisecond. At the same time, he took two quick steps forward and triggered his automatic. The bullet grazed my left shoulder. I lunged at him, so that he reared back hard against the wall. Grabbing hold of his jacket, I held on while he pushed off the wall, propelling us both across the gunroom floor until we crashed into the case, the remainder of the still intact glass shattering. His gun fell out of his hand, hit the wood floor, slid, and came to stop by the open door.

  He made a tight fist, punched my face, dropping me to my knees. He grabbed my left ear lobe, yanked on it so that I had no choice but to face upwards at him. He punched me again and again in the forehead, nose and mouth. Short sharp punches with a tight, hard fist that had the same effect as rapid-fire hammer blows. I felt my nose crack and my lower lip burst open, my head grow dizzy from a brain that was banging against the rigid sides of my skull. I knew I’d pass out if I didn’t get free of his grip. Do it now.

  My clear vision was fading. But out the corner of my eye, I saw the gun on the floor. Rallying my strength, I raised up my right hand, set it on his bloody face, and scratched at his eyes, trying like hell to gouge the eyeballs out with my fingertips. He screamed and released me, bringing both his hands to his face. I lunged for Carl’s pistol, managing to grab hold of it with my outstretched right hand. But that’s when I felt something sharp impaled into my bad foot.

  The force of the act didn’t register at first.

  The pain that shot through my veins and nerves was so intense, so electric, so beyond anything I’d ever experienced, that all other sensory perception seemed to shut down entirely, like an overburdened power grid.

  I dropped the pistol because I couldn’t bear its weight in my now weakened state. Looking down at my feet, I could see that Carl had jammed a six-inch piece of glass into the top of my sutured foot. The knife-like glass had penetrated the Velcro strap on my walking boot, along with my skin and flesh. After a brief beat, I was able to retain enough clarity to work up a thunderous scream while I kicked at his face with the boot heel on my good foot. His head reared back and he seemed on the verge of passing out while the back of his skull collided with his upper spine.

  Sitting up, I did what I knew I had to do. I grabbed hold of the glass and yanked it out of my foot, then brought the blood-smeared triangular point down fast into Carl’s thigh.

  He yelped like an injured dog, while once more I went for the gun. He turned himself around onto all fours, came at me with his mouth baring bloodied teeth. Aiming the barrel for that mouth, I pressed the trigger. There was an explosion and his head popped like a blood-filled water balloon slapped against a brick wall, his torso dropping dead weight onto my legs.

  The gun was still gripped in my hand as it rested in my lap. I knew I should have been looking for Susan. What if she were still alive? Locked away somewhere in the house? In the basement maybe. But that was just false hope.

  I knew she was dead.

  They had been telling me she was dead all along, and that I was the one who killed her. I just had no recollection of the event. And if I had killed her, I had no reason in the world to live any longer. Carl’s piece was gripped in my hand and it was my turn to eat it. Opening my mouth, I raised the gun up, turned it upside down, and pressed the barrel against the roof of my mouth. Closing my eyes, I slipped my slipped my thumb into the trigger guard, just like John Cattivo taught me.

  I was just about to depress the trigger when I heard the clatter of footsteps outside the gunroom door.

  Lana screamed.

  I pulled the gun out of my mouth, once more rested it in my lap.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” she said, more angry than afraid. “You were supposed to die. We couldn’t take the chance on you testifying. That’s what Carl told us. You had to be disposed of for good.”

  From down on the floor, I readjusted the gun in my hand, wrapped my hand around the grip, pointed the barrel at Lana.

  “Where’s Susan?”

  “You know where Susan is.”

  “No I don’t. Now where is she?”

  “Far away from here. Let that be your first clue. You only have to go so far as your secret garden if you want a second clue. But then, you know all this don’t you? You’re the one who did it.”

  My body felt like it was burning up. Drowning in fever.

  “How can she be far away?” I insisted, pressing my thumb on the hammer, cocking it back into firing position. “I thought you two were in love? What does her disappearance have to do with my pot patch?”

  “Figure it out for yourself, Ethan.”

  “Maybe I should just shoot you now and be finished with you forever.”

  “You’re not gonna shoot me,” Lana said, working up the kind of smile she would assume when handing out cookies to the neighborhood children. “You’re much too in love with me for that. Every man and woman I’ve been with since I was twelve years old has been hopelessly in love with me and they have all paid the ultimate price. You’re a slave and once a slave, always a slave, Ethan. Now put the gun down and we can talk this through and then get the hell out of town. We still have a shot at being together. What do you say? Let’s just pack our bags and make our way south to Mexico. We go now, no one will ever catch us.”

  I looked into her blue eyes.

  “I lust you,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” she said. “What’s that mean?”

  “I lust you… I hate you.”

  I waited until her smile faded entirely from her sweet face before I pulled the trigger.

  Lana dropped like a stone. She landed hard onto her chest and face. She began to convulse and tremble like there was something trying to escape her dead body besides her soul.

>   Maybe it was the devil who was trying to escape, if you believe in that kind of thing. Or maybe it was just her badness. Her evil core. Whatever it was, I could only look at her until her muscles stopped moving and she exhaled a final poisoned breath.

  I ran.

  Didn’t matter that my foot was bleeding out or throbbing with blasts of sharp pain. At this point, I felt like gangrene had settled in for good, infecting my blood, infecting my mind. I didn’t care. I just needed to get to that pot patch. Susan wasn’t anywhere to be found. Lana said that I had done something bad to her and that my first clue was the pot patch. Carl also said I’d done something horrible and that I had to pay for it. The convenience store clerk said that I killed them all. But I had no recollection of doing anything bad.

  No memory whatsoever.

  I shoved Carl’s automatic, barrel first, into my pant waist, and exited the house onto the back deck. From there I made my way through the fence gate. My heart raced, my foot pulsated in bursts of agony and blood. My entire body was on fire. As I made my way in the darkness down the narrow alley created by the parallel fence exteriors, I began to make out the sound of sirens. Without a shred of doubt in my mind, I knew it had to be Miller and his men coming after me. He’d already called me once before and I hadn’t answered. He must have known that eventually, Carl would pick me up and arrest me. But it didn’t go down exactly as planned. Carl wanted to pick me up all right, but didn’t want me arrested. He only wanted me dead so he and Lana could live together forever.

  What it all meant was that I had only a minute or two to check on the patch, to prove to myself that Lana was lying… that I had nothing to do with Susan’s disappearance. Once I did that, I would get the hell out of Orchard Grove. When I was a safe enough distance, I would send Miller the sound recording I’d made of Lana and Carl as they tried to kill me. It wouldn’t prove that I had nothing to do with John’s fake suicide, but it would shift most of the guilt to Lana. We’d all share in the guilt even if most of us were dead, or fast on our way to getting there.