No shelter, p.24
No Shelter, page 24
They left the office and stood just outside in the dark, windy corridor.
“Earlier,” she said, “Dr. Corcoran said we were in for an unpleasant surprise. Before that, he was talking to someone on the phone. I think it was someone from Vendon Labs.”
“What do you think he meant?”
“I don’t know, but I think we should keep it in mind. If Vendon Labs decides to step in and clean this mess up before it gets out… well, that probably wouldn’t be good for us.”
Ollie needed no encouragement to believe that Vendon Labs would do anything it needed to do to protect itself and its relationship with the government. He nodded slowly and said, “Thank you for telling me that. Smart of you. I think you know as well as I do, don’t you, Dr. McManus, that if they have the chance, Vendon Labs will come in here and make all of this disappear.”
“Yes. That’s why I mentioned it.”
He smiled behind his mask. “Nice to know we’re on the same page when it comes to Vendon. Got any ice for your face?”
“I think we used it up after you hit me.”
“Too bad. You need to learn to duck.”
He left her in the office and went to join his men in the hunt.
6
Andy kept his hands on Donny’s shoulders as he stood rigidly near the living room’s entrance, watching the others. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but tension filled the air like an odorless toxic gas. They did not belong there. Andy had the sickening sense that something bad was about to happen. He had to get Donny out of there as soon as possible, but he had no idea where to go.
Everyone in the living room became silent as they stared at the doorway through which Ram had just passed, waiting tensely for… something. Then the moment was shattered by Ram’s voice from the kitchen, which somehow sounded at once happy and menacing.
“Well, what the fuck have we got here?”
The question was chilling because from the sound of Ram’s voice, he’d found something bad but not unexpected.
Latrice, the black woman seated in the recliner, got up slowly and walked through the living room. She suddenly broke into a run and grabbed her coat before rushing out the front door.
Donny watched her go, then looked up at Andy curiously. Andy shrugged.
Voices argued in the kitchen and heavy footsteps stomped over the floor.
“I can’t handle this shit,” Giff said as he stalked into the living room.
“Where the hell you think you’re going, Giff?” Ram said, following him. He reached out and grabbed the upper part of Giff’s left arm to stop him and turn him around.
Giff roared like a bear as he pulled away from Ram and spun around, instinctively reaching with his right hand to grab his injured arm. When he did, he only hurt himself more and instantly pulled his hand away. But he continued to wail, bending over for a moment, then walking in a small circle as the features of his face all pulled toward the center in a mask of pain.
“Uh-oh, got a little owie, there, Giff?” Ram said, grinning like a little boy given free reign of a toy store. “How’d that happen, huh? Is it bad?” He stepped over and punched Giff’s wounded arm in an amiable fashion.
Giff screamed as he dropped to his knees, then fell forward and propped himself up with his right hand on the floor, arm rigid. He held his left arm close to his body.
Andy could not stay here and subject Donny to this sadism. They could at least go outside and sit in Ram’s car. They’d be out of the wind and rain and away from this horror show. It suddenly occurred to Andy that he could use the radio to call for help.
Mia stood up from her seat on the couch with the children and said firmly, “He’s sick! Stop hurting him.”
Ram turned his grin to her and his eyes glared for a moment. “Well, if he’s responsible for the bloodbath in the kitchen, then, yeah, you’re goddamned right he’s sick.” Ram hunkered down beside Giff. “Did you do that? Huh, Giff?”
Giff was groaning and whimpering, head hanging low from his shoulders.
Ram spoke louder, nearly shouting, when he said, “Did you finally get around to killing your daddy like everybody in town’s been waiting for you to do, Giff? Huh? Is that what you did?”
While Ram was still speaking, Giff’s groan became a growl.
“He’s got a fever,” Mia said. “He needs to be in bed.”
“What are you, his doctor?” Ram said as he rose to his feet. “This boy won’t be goin’ to bed, he’ll be goin’ to jail because he’s under arrest. In fact, everyone in this room is—”
Giff roared like a bear as he lunged forward on his knees, mouth open wide, and closed his teeth on Ram’s crotch.
Ram’s scream was shrill as he stumbled but instead of letting go, Giff moved forward on his knees, his teeth hanging on to the crotch of Ram’s pants. He finally let go as Ram fell over backwards.
He had not yet hit the floor when Marcus jolted from his chair. As soon as Ram was down, Marcus bent over and took his gun from its holster.
Andy leaned forward and whispered into Donny’s ear, “We’re going back out to the car now.” He kept an arm around Donny and hurried him toward the front door. There was nothing but screaming and shouting behind them, and he wanted out before it turned into gunfire.
“It’s going to be windy,” Andy whispered as he reached for the doorknob, “so hang on.”
The door flew open before Andy could reach the knob and it thwacked his hand before hitting the wall with a bang. Andy pulled Donny backwards as pain exploded in his hand.
Latrice stomped into the house almost at a run, shrieking at the top of her lungs as she swung a fist and connected with Andy’s cheekbone.
The world flashed white and the house turned on end and the floor flew up and crashed into Andy. He quickly tried to get to his feet, but the house would not stop tilting and swaying as the room rapidly grew darker.
Andy suddenly found himself on his back staring up at the ceiling. Had he lost consciousness for a moment? Longer? Probably not long. Nothing had changed. He could still hear Ram bellowing, and now Giff was shouting a long stream of obscenities and threats, and Latrice was still screaming, and all he could think about was getting Donny out of there.
Donny! he thought as he sat up. He was still a little dizzy, but he tried to ignore it as he looked around for Donny.
Latrice’s hands were on Donny’s throat and she had him pinned to the wall with his feet a couple of feet off the floor. He tried to kick his legs, but she was standing too close, pressing her body against him to hold him to the wall. His face was red and his eyes were bulging as they turned to Andy and silently begged for help.
There was a frenzied storm raging inside Latrice’s head that was every bit as powerful and chaotic as the one battering the house outside. It was made up mostly of directionless rage that swirled like a tornado inside her, looking for some outlet, any outlet, and some of it flew into her hands as she squeezed the throat of a small eight-year-old boy, pressing him against the wall with her body, a stream of profanity-laced gibberish coming through her clenched teeth. As she squeezed his throat, she pounded the back of his head against the wall.
In the very center of the storm that was erupting inside Latrice’s head stood Latrice herself, calm and confused and isolated from the world by the swirling, roaring tempest. But there was a moment when the inner Latrice had a window on the outside world and she saw Donny’s small, frightened, discolored face, mouth open, tongue sticking out, bulging eyes rolling around in their sockets, and in that moment, when the inner Latrice saw what the outer Latrice was doing, she connected with that inner self in a galvanizing instant of awareness and horror.
In that instant, Donny’s face melted into Robert’s.
She released her hold on the boy.
He dropped to the floor in a gasping, coughing heap.
Latrice was paralyzed for a moment and stared at the wall as the horror of what she had been doing dug into her with barbed hooks.
Someone standing close was shouting at her: “—him alone you fuckin’ nigger what the fuck you think you’re—”
Latrice turned to see yet another gun pointed in her face, this time by Marcus, who was shouting at her.
Then a hand came down on the gun and shoved it downward as Miguel said, “Don’t we have enough fucking trouble as it is? Shut up and calm the fuck down!”
“Did you see what she was doin’ to that kid, Miguel? Jesus Christ, what the fuck am I supposed to—”
“Give me that goddamned gun and go sit the fuck down.”
“Why do I gotta give you the gun when she’s the one who was—”
Miguel grabbed Marcus’s wrist with his left hand and wrestled the gun from him with his right, shouting, “Will you shut the fuck up and go sit the fuck down now!”
Latrice was vaguely aware of her own relief that the gun had been taken from Marcus, but she was too sick and confused to care much and part of her wanted nothing more than to lie down and give her aching muscles a rest.
She turned enough to scan the room with her eyes and found that, other than Giff and the sheriff’s deputy struggling and shouting on the floor, everyone else had left the room.
Marcus looked at Miguel with slack-jawed shock. He looked betrayed for a couple of seconds, then his expression hardened as he nodded slowly and said, “Yeah, okay, I see how this works, I see how this works. It’s the spic lookin’ out for the nigger. Yeah, sure, why not, it’s happenin’ all over the fuckin’ country, so why not here, huh? You people come to this country and we give you everything, and you decide you wanna take the fuck over!”
With a look of disgusted contempt, Miguel said, “I was born in Yakima, Washington, you dumb fuck.”
Marcus’s eyes widened and he smiled and nodded faster as he pointed a finger at Miguel, poking it repeatedly in his direction, and he opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t get it out.
Something black and heavy swung through the air and struck Marcus’s face with a sharp crack and blood erupted from his forehead and flowed from his nostrils as he fell backwards. When he hit the floor, his legs began to kick spastically.
It was the iron shovel from the set of fireplace tools on the hearth and Mia held it in both hands like a baseball bat, already drawn back and ready to strike again. But Marcus had gone down. She dove for him as if he were a pile of money and started pounding with the shovel.
“Jesus Christ, Mia, what the fuck are you doing?” Miguel shouted.
As Latrice watched Mia bludgeon Marcus with the shovel, then turn the shovel so that she was stabbing him with it like a knife, she began to regain her bearings and that inner storm surged once again, isolating her from herself. She felt rage consume her, as if it were a substance pumping through her veins.
The inner Latrice had just enough of a connection left to wonder if Donny was safe from her. She turned to the place where he’d collapsed on the floor after she released him. The spot was empty. She turned toward the front door just in time to see father and son hurrying out into the storm.
She was relieved to see him getting away. The hurricane was safer for the boy and his father than the storm that was going on inside Latrice.
And inside Gifford Clancy’s house.
7
After plucking the last piece of glass from Kaufman’s face—the last piece she could find in such poor light, anyway—Fara set her tweezers on the end table. While she had been sitting in a chair beside the couch removing the shards of glass, Ollie had been standing beside her holding his headlamp on Kaufman’s face and catching the sheriff up on everything that had been happening there. He had finally removed his ski mask and the headlamp was centered in his forehead like an alien eye. It wasn’t the best light for the job, but the headlamps were the brightest they had.
“How are you doing, Sheriff?” she asked.
Kaufman lay on the couch with his head propped up on a couple of throw pillows, puffy eyes closed. His face was bloody and lumpy with swelling. Fortunately, the glass had not gone into his eyes, but a few tiny pieces had lodged in his eyelids.
He licked his lips slowly and said, “I’ve been better.”
“I’m going to clean you up now. I’ve got soap and water and rubbing alcohol. And I’m really sorry, but it’s probably going to hurt some more.”
“It’s going to hurt whether you do that or not. Look, before you do that, I’d like to make a call. But I’ll need some help.”
“Sure,” Fara said. She went to her purse and got her phone. “Who would you like to call?”
He gave her a number. “It’s my office. I need to tell them where I am and request backup.”
She keyed the number in, then placed the phone in his hand.
“Thank you,” he said. Then he turned away from her onto his side for some privacy.
Fara looked around for Corcoran. He’d moved a chair over to a far corner of the office and was making a call. That’s what he’d been doing the last time she’d noticed him, trying to make a call. Apparently, he was having no success and was frustrated to the point of anger. His face had that tight look he got when he was angry, with his small mouth compressed into a tiny, white-lipped cut below his nose.
“Dr. Corcoran, do you have anything Sheriff Kaufman can take for pain?” she said.
He glanced at her with the phone to his ear. “Not on me,” he said.
“I didn’t mean on you. Do you have access to something that will dull his pain?”
He held up a forefinger and turned away from her as he said something quietly into the phone. A moment later, he punched a button on the phone and scrubbed a hand downward over his face as he sighed and muttered, “Damn.”
“Something wrong?”
“I’m trying to make a call,” he said, irritated. He looked down at the phone again and poked at the keypad, then he put it to his ear.
“Well, how about getting something we can give Sheriff Kaufman for pain? I don’t even have any aspirin here in the office.”
He nodded toward the door. “I’m not going out there.”
Ollie walked slowly toward him, saying, “I’d be happy to send a couple of men with you. They’ll both be well armed so they can protect you from your work.”
Corcoran’s eyes narrowed and he cocked his head sneeringly at Ollie. “And who’s going to protect me from them?”
“Who are you calling, Dr. Corcoran?”
“I don’t see how that’s any business of yours.”
“Maybe you forgot. I’m the guy with the gun who’s in charge of all the other guys with guns. It’s my business. I’d rather you don’t call anybody, but since you’re already doing it, I want to know who you’re calling, and don’t give me any shit. You’re lucky to be alive, you pompous prick.”
Corcoran sighed. “I’ve been trying to reach a couple of associates.”
“Vendon Labs associates,” Ollie said, nodding. He stepped a little closer and snatched the phone from Corcoran’s hand.
“Hey!” Corcoran shouted, jumping to his feet.
“It seems to me that Vendon Labs isn’t going to be very happy about this situation, and the first thing they’re going to want to do is make it disappear. I know enough about Vendon to know they’ll do whatever’s necessary to make that happen, and anybody standing in the way will disappear, too. Like us. You think I have a legitimate concern?”
He shrugged. “You seem to think you do. Maybe you know more about Vendon Labs than I do.”
“Oh, you know plenty. They’re going to come here as soon as they can, aren’t they? To make their problem disappear. Along with anybody who knows about it. You’ll be safe, of course. Hell, they’ll probably give you a raise. But everybody else…”
Corcoran folded his arms across his chest, but said nothing.
Without taking his eyes from Corcoran, Ollie said, “Emilio, get Ivan on the phone and tell him what’s going on here. Tell him to call every media outlet he can think of and pass on the story.”
Although she didn’t think she ever would, Fara had to admit to herself that she rather liked Ollie in spite of everything.
He turned to Emilio this time and said, “Does Ivan have any media connections? Does he know anybody?”
“Yeah, quite a few.”
“Tell him to start calling in favors. He needs to get all the cameras and microphones over here that he can as soon as possible.”
“Well, the hurricane—”
“Yeah, I know, that’s gonna slow ’em down. But tell him to get ’em here, anyway.” He smiled at Corcoran. “You think your bosses are gonna like that?”
“I’m sure they won’t. If it comes to anything. And I doubt it will. Your friend may have some media connections, but Vendon Labs is owned by DeCamp Pharmaceuticals, a very big and powerful corporation, and DeCamp doesn’t have connections. It has friends and associates who own media outlets. TV and radio networks, and cable news channels, and whatever newspapers and magazines are still hanging on. They own the media. Do you see what I’m saying?”
Ollie’s smile was gone and his face was grim as he nodded. “Yeah, I see. You’re saying it’s a lost cause, a no-win situation. Except for you. You don’t have anything to worry about, do you?”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Corcoran lowered his eyes and dropped his arms at his sides.
Fara was surprised. “Have they threatened you?”
“The equivalent of a threat.”
“What do you think they’ll do?”
“I strongly suspect termination.”
Fara started to speak, but snapped her mouth shut when she realized that “termination” did not necessarily refer to Corcoran’s job.
Ollie laughed, shook his head, then laughed a little more. “And you’ve been trying to call them to plead for mercy, right?”
Corcoran didn’t look at him. “Something like that.”
“Then I guess we’re all in the same boat,” Ollie said with another laugh. “And it’s sinking.”
