Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(90)

“I’m fucking bleeding to death, man,” Inman said, but DeMarco had no interest in him at the moment. He was interested only in the art of dying as practiced by a former writer he admired, so he sat very quietly with his hand atop Huston’s head until Huston’s labored breathing ceased and he lay still and smiling and far away from the pebbly shore.

Now DeMarco turned his attention to other matters. Beside his knee lay Inman’s heavy-handled knife, where Huston had placed it. Inman was leaning forward from the edge of the water, shivering violently. There was a cut down each of his thick arms, running from the armpit to elbow, and a long cut down the inside of each thigh. His jeans and gray T-shirt bore Rorschach images in blood. Lashed to each ankle was a cement block from DeMarco’s garage.

DeMarco smiled. Something of Huston’s calmness had passed into him and he was in no hurry now; he had nothing important to do.

“That fucker got what he deserved,” Inman said. “He’s a fucking lunatic.”

“Is he?” DeMarco said.

“Look what he did to me!”

DeMarco studied the situation. Inman’s clothes were wet to his chest. Huston’s clothes were too. A thick ribbon of mud swirled through the green water behind Inman. But there were no drag marks leading into the water.

DeMarco said, “Check me out on this, Carl. He held the gun on you and marched you out into deeper water, right?”

“I’m fucking freezing here!”

“Answer my questions and you can come out.”

“All right, yeah, that’s what he did.”

“Did he tie the cement blocks to you in the water?”

“No, before. Then he made me carry them until I was out there farther.”

“And that’s when he cut you?”

“While holding this fucking gun to my head!”

“Then he walked back, laid the revolver on that little boulder there, came back here, and sat down on the shore. Do I have that right?”

“I told you he was fucking nuts, didn’t I? What did he think, I wouldn’t go for the gun? Dumb fuck just sat there grinning at me.”

DeMarco smiled. “He even left your knife here so you could cut yourself free afterward. He knew your only hope would be to get back out to the road. But the harder you ran, the faster you’d bleed out. He wanted you to experience your death. Every terrified moment of it.”

Inman shivered. “And you think that’s fucking funny?” He made an attempt to hurl the empty revolver at DeMarco, but with his wrists still bound, the handgun barely cleared the water and clattered against the rocks.

The urge was strong in DeMarco to pick up the revolver, clean it off, take it home where it belonged, the only thing he had left of his father. But it had to stay.

DeMarco looked away from Inman then, down the lake and across the water to the trees. They were still dark in the rising mist, but behind them the soft orange light of morning glowed.

“Hey, asshole,” Inman said. His voice was softer now, pleading. “You just going to sit there and let me die?”

“I would never do that,” DeMarco answered. “Come ashore.”

Inman dragged one foot forward, then the other. The cement blocks scraped over the lake bottom and churned up the mud. Finally he stood shivering and hugging himself only a few feet from DeMarco. He said, “You going to get these fucking blocks off my feet or what?”

“Of course,” DeMarco said. He then laid his left hand atop Huston’s head a final time, raised his right hand toward Inman, and put a bullet through Inman’s heart.





Sixty-Three


Bowen laid the slender sheaf of papers down on his blotter, then looked across the desk at DeMarco, who was gazing out the window. Early afternoon sunlight gave the air beyond the glass a stunning clarity. The few remaining leaves on the twin maples in the barrack’s front lawn trembled like brown flames in a guttering breeze. Bowen said, “It’s nicely written, I’ll say that much for it.”

DeMarco smiled. “I’ve been taking a crash course.”

“How about we go through it together. I’m still puzzled about a thing or two.”

“Have at it,” DeMarco said.

“Last night at your place. So Huston just showed up out of the blue. Knocked on the back door. You let him in. You take him into your living room. But you don’t remember much about your ensuing conversation.”

“Only what’s there in the report. And for that I have your little white pills to thank. I was spacy from the time he woke me pounding on the door until Inman coldcocked me.”

“In the kitchen.”

“Correct.”

“Where you went to get a couple of beers.”

“Get some beer, make some sandwiches… Huston hadn’t eaten since I saw him at the lighthouse.”

“So you go out to the kitchen, just you, and there’s Inman standing.”

“Big, bald, and ugly.”

“And how did he know where to find Huston?”

“Are you asking me to guess?”

“I’m asking you to surmise. Speculate. Ah what the hell; take a guess.”

“Maybe he was watching my place, hoping I would lead him to Huston.”

“If he wanted to kill Huston, why didn’t he do it when he had the chance last week?”