No Going Back - 07 Read online

  From what I’d learned from Jay and Nicole, he’d delighted in hurting them, but he hadn’t shown any sexual predilection for them the way Brent and Carson had. He hadn’t paid Ellie any attention, so I thought she was safe now. Back with her parents, Ellie would be out of sight and mind, but I took it that he’d enjoy hurting the older girls if he thought it would hurt me. I’d have to prepare for that eventuality. My weapons had been seized as evidence, I hadn’t retrieved my cellphone from Jay and it too had been placed into an evidence bag. Luckily I had my wallet and a roll of dollars left over from the advance on expenses that Jameson Walker had given to me, so I wasn’t stuck. As soon as I got round to feeding my need for coffee and food, I’d hire a cab or rental to get me back to Holbrook. But before that, the first thing on my mind was ringing my friend, Rink.

  I found a coffee shop and took a booth at the back where I could watch the door and everyone who entered. Not that I expected Samuel Logan to come charging in but I had a feeling Chambers and Witherspoon might keep an eye on me for the next few days. I wasn’t worried about Witherspoon: he was old school, and in his time he’d probably slapped the heads of many recalcitrant criminals, but Chambers was a different story. I could understand how his image of me might be clouded by what had happened to his brother, but I couldn’t allow him to get in my way.

  After I’d downed one mug of coffee and ordered another, I went to a payphone at the end of the serving counter, inserted coins.

  ‘I was just planning on how I was gonna bust you outta prison,’ Rink said, after I told him where I was. ‘What the hell did they take you to Phoenix for?’

  ‘To keep me out of trouble, I guess.’

  ‘Like I haven’t been trying the same thing for years, and you know how successful I’ve been.’

  ‘You know me, Rink. I’m a trouble magnet.’

  ‘You can say that again. That text message I got? It kinda ruined a nice evening with Rene.’

  ‘What text message? Oh, never mind, I get you now.’ When I’d spoken to Jay earlier, she’d told me she couldn’t contact anyone on the cellphone during her flight from the desert, but had written a text and set it to retry. Somewhere along the way the signal must have been strong enough for the cell to send it.

  ‘Is Rene mad at me?’

  ‘Nah. She knows what you’re like. Plus, I forewarned her that you’d gone on a solo job and would likely need me to haul your ass out of the fire. I’ll get the first flight out, OK?’

  ‘Everything’s cool, Rink. There’s no need for you to come here.’

  ‘You sure? I could be there in no time.’

  ‘Everything’s fine now at this end. You concentrate on entertaining the good lady vet.’

  ‘Heard there was still one bad guy outstanding.’

  ‘Guy called Samuel Logan. Don’t worry about him. I shot the bastard twice. I expect the search parties to find him soon, dead from blood loss or the heat.’

  ‘I should come down then . . .’

  ‘No, Rink. You should stay there. I’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Why not immediately?’

  ‘Couple of loose ends to tie up first.’

  ‘You’re gonna go look for this punk, ain’t ya?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Bullshit. I’m coming.’

  ‘No. It isn’t necessary. But you can do something for me.’

  I asked him to Fed-Ex my spare weapons from Florida to Holbrook.

  ‘And you’re tellin’ me you ain’t planning on going after this punk?’

  ‘Who knows, Rink? Maybe he’ll come looking for me first.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he moaned. ‘I’d best get back to formulating a plan for a jail break.’

  29

  The following morning, Ellie Mansfield’s parents both hugged me. They had tears of gratitude on their cheeks, and alternated between weeping and laughing and then hugging me again. I felt a little uncomfortable, but persevered. Gratitude wasn’t something I expected or demanded, and it was thanks enough for me when Ellie waved goodbye from the back seat of their minivan. I waved back and watched as they drove away from the Great Western motel in Holbrook where I had returned from Phoenix the evening before.

  I hoped the kid would get over the nightmare soon.

  Thankfully the Logans hadn’t touched her the way they had Nicole, but she had been a witness to their depravity. Not only that but she was there when the bastards slaughtered the Corbin family: her best friends and their parents. I shook my head, thinking about the poor family I’d been too late to help. Out there at the ranch, and later in the cave, Ellie was suffering from shock and was withdrawn, but I’d just seen a spark of life back in her eyes. I thought she’d do OK if her parents showed her the same amount of love they just had to me.

  It had made a difference to me: trading hugs for punches. Don’t know about hugs, I thought wryly. Aiming for pathos, instead I coughed out a laugh. But I knew how to handle punches.

  Across the parking lot a pick-up truck was pulling in. Three guys were staring through the windscreen at me. What was that I just said?

  After returning to the motel last night I’d telephoned Rink again, and I’d another call to make but had put it off. I’d showered, shaved, eaten and drunk more coffee. Then I’d hit the sack and slept soundly for almost eight hours. Now I felt a tad guilty that I hadn’t made the call. I owed it to Scott Blackstock. Not that it mattered, because he’d turned up in person, bringing his buddies, Burt and Robert, along for the ride. They parked up then clambered out of the truck, Scott hailing me like I hadn’t already noticed them.

  Scott approached ahead of his friends, extending his hand. I took it and we shook.

  ‘I wanted to thank you for everything,’ he said.

  ‘There’s nothing to thank me for. I’m sorry I didn’t find Helena for you.’

  He looked down, scuffed a toe on the ground. ‘It was always too late for Helena. I’m glad that you killed those fuckers though. You saved me the job.’

  ‘It hasn’t been proved that they took Helena yet,’ I cautioned him.

  ‘You ain’t heard?’ At my bemused look, he continued. ‘The cops called me this morning. Tests on Carson Logan’s pick-up found blood on the wing next to where the mirror used to be. DNA profiling ain’t in yet, but preliminary tests showed it was most likely Helena’s blood.’

  ‘They ran her over?’

  ‘Looks that way. But I don’t think she was dead. Other tests found traces of her hair and blood at their ranch. I think those bastards saw her walking to Indian Wells, sideswiped her with their truck and then took her back to their place. Jesus, man, part of me hopes that she did die when she was knocked down.’

  I thought of what Nicole had suffered. ‘Yeah, maybe that would have been for the best.’

  ‘The cops tell me you found another hostage who’d been buried in the desert. They’re bringing in cadaver dogs and experts with ground-piercing radar to search the rest of the property. Maybe I’ll get to give my wife a decent burial after all.’

  I didn’t think that Helena would be found on the Logan ranch. The fact that they’d suddenly gone out and snatched three new hostages told me that something had forced their hand. I now believed that after four months of incarceration, Helena had found a way to escape them and had unwisely headed off into the desert. Sadly she hadn’t made it home and had probably succumbed to the heat and dehydration. In my opinion the search radius should be extended. I spared Scott those thoughts.

  ‘You heard that Samuel escaped?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, with a nod to his friends. ‘We’re on the lookout for that piece of crap.’

  ‘Best you do watch out for him. He might figure out that it was you who sent me out to the ranch and look for some kind of payback.’

  ‘We’ll be waiting.’

  Robert and Burt shared a glance. Burt even folded his arms on his chest, flexing his muscles like a tough guy, but it didn’t work for him. Neither of those men would last more than a
few seconds against Samuel, and Scott would quickly follow them to the grave. ‘You see any sign of him, call the cops immediately.’

  ‘The cops didn’t do a lot of good the last time. That fuckin’ Lewin . . . I can’t believe that asshole was involved.’

  ‘You didn’t know that he was related to the Logans?’

  ‘No, I’d no idea.’

  ‘What was Carson Logan’s wife called before she was married?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  I hadn’t confirmed it yet, but I’d a good idea. She was most probably an aunt of Officer Lewin.

  ‘Did you know Carla Logan?’

  ‘Not personally. She didn’t leave the ranch that often, and only when she was chaperoned by one of her kin.’

  ‘But you’ve seen her?’

  ‘Yeah, she was a good-lookin’ gal. Looked a bit like my Hel—oh, shit . . .’

  Scott looked like he was about to vomit, and it went some way to confirming my theory. Once Arlene passed away, Carla had been the only woman in residence at that remote ranch. Had those sick monsters treated their own flesh and blood the same way they had Helena and Nicole? The thought was abhorrent and alien to me, but I’d heard much worse. In recent years a number of stories had come to light where men driven by unhealthy sexual appetites had kept women prisoners, some their own daughters, using them for years as their personal playthings. Was it too much to assume that the Logans had been seeking women to replace the one they’d fixated upon for so long? My hope was that Carla had indeed managed to run away to the West Coast, but another part of me believed the cadaver dogs or ground-piercing radar crew might turn up a corpse after all.

  ‘The son of a bitch. His own sister? If I ever . . .’

  I held up a palm to stop him.

  ‘Samuel Logan’s a dangerous man,’ I said. ‘Don’t try to take him on. Do as I said. Go straight to the police.’

  Scott wiped his mouth with the back of a wrist. Maybe he was recalling the last time they’d met and Samuel had almost crippled him with a single blow to the solar plexus. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right. Not that he’ll show up around here. He knows that the cops are hunting for him. He’ll be miles away from here by now. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about him again.’

  His final words had sounded hopeful. I too was hopeful because despite Burt and Rob being a pair of hapless goons, I’d grown to like Scott Blackstock. I didn’t want to see him or his buddies dead.

  ‘So what happens now?’ Scott asked.

  ‘I’m heading to Florida and back to work. You know us private dicks, always looking to make a buck off someone else’s misery.’

  Scott laughed with embarrassment, reminded of how he’d first greeted me on the telephone. ‘Well, if you’re ever out this way again, look me up. I owe you a beer.’

  ‘You’ve got a deal.’

  We shook hands, then I accepted the hands of Burt and Rob. Seems I was forgiven for smacking them around. I felt bad about having done so, but, at the time, it had been necessary. They wandered back to their pick-up and bunched inside. Scott hit the horn and then peeled out of the parking lot.

  I was uneasy at having just lied to them about going back to Florida.

  But that had been necessary too.

  Scott I could trust to keep his mouth shut. The other two I wasn’t so sure of. Robert didn’t have much to say, but I suspected the first time Burt got drunk his lips would start flapping. One thing I’d learned was that family connections ran deep in this part of the desert. Who knew who might carry tales back to Samuel?

  If that was the case I wanted him to think I was well out of the way, so that if he went for the women again he wouldn’t be expecting me.

  A lot of good my lie would do if Samuel chose a different course of action. I was counting on the fact that he cared enough for his family to try for a second go at the women. Maybe the sick-headed freak couldn’t give a damn and was already heading for the Mexican border.

  It would be preferable for Nicole and Jay if he was; but not for me. I wouldn’t be happy until Samuel Logan was dead and gone, for choice by my hand. The first time we fought I’d been more concerned with the fate of the girls, and had kept things as low key as possible. Samuel had latched on to that weakness and had taken a liberty. I was still in pain from the clubbing that he’d given me and wanted nothing more than to pay him back. Of course that was selfish of me, but I was looking for revenge for Helena, Carla, and who knew which other women fallen victim to his demented family.

  I’d checked out of the motel and had already slung my belongings into a rented Chrysler, so was ready to go. I only had a short drive to another hotel further along the strip. There Jay Walker and Nicole Challinor were waiting for me. They’d been given lodgings at the state’s expense: five-star luxury at the Tipi Hotel. The only concession was that they had to put up with a uniformed guard at their door for fear that Samuel might make a try for them sooner than anyone expected. I was glad that the guards were there, but couldn’t see how Samuel would be ready yet. I was positive that my first bullet had struck him, but the second?

  I have this ability. I can snapshoot a scene for recalling later. Usually I can recollect the most minute of details. The only problem with my skill is that I must make a conscious decision to do so otherwise my memory is as woolly as anyone else’s. As I drove, I thought back to the incident at the ranch and how I’d surprised Samuel on his return to the house. I was down on one knee when he’d shambled out of the darkness and on seeing me he’d given a start, before leaping for his life as I’d fired. And that’s what was bothering me most. I recalled him spinning with the impact of the bullet, his arms flailing. But was that a true memory, or was I conjuring what I wanted to see? Had the spinning to the floor been his instinct to escape the bullet and had it even hit? When he struck the ground I’d fired again and saw him jolt as my bullet impacted his body. Then again, it had been dark and I’d heard no corresponding shout of pain. At the time I believed I’d mortally wounded him, but I’d also wanted to be sure and had lined up a third shot only for Carson to thwart me when he launched his attack. I ransacked my memories, trying to find something to assure me that I’d seriously injured him, but wasn’t confident. No, I had to accept that Samuel wasn’t hurt bad and that he could be ready much sooner than any of us thought.

  As unlikely as it sounds, there was the possibility that both of my bullets missed their mark, but for one thing. If I hadn’t hurt Samuel, he’d have launched a counterattack while I’d been engaged in my duel with Carson or minutes later with Officer Lewin. So he was injured. He had to be. Then again there had been times in the past where I’d been shot, stabbed, hit by shrapnel, but had managed to survive my wounds. Back when I was with Arrowsake, and deep in the middle of combat, I’d witnessed men with their entrails pooling out of their eviscerated bodies still laying down covering fire for their comrades. Once I heard of a woman who was stabbed more than forty times by her abusive husband, only to turn the knife on him and end the torture with one thrust. The woman lived. The human body can sustain terrible injuries and survive, or something totally inane can kill it. It’s all about the luck of the draw, and Samuel could have been very lucky that day.

  30

  When he was a boy it had become apparent to Samuel that he was unlike other children. When he took a tumble, or banged his head, or scuffed his knee it didn’t move him to tears like it did the others. His resistance to pain hadn’t concerned his parents, and if anything his father was proud that his boy was as tough as the rugged desert around them. He was seven years old before he’d become fascinated with his ‘condition’, and in the intervening years it had never been far from his thoughts. At school there was much pinching of flesh, slapping of ears, kicking of shins, and he had wondered why it elicited howls from his schoolmates when to him it was nothing. He felt the force of a punch, or a kick to the guts, but there was nothing immediate or lasting about the way it affected his body or mind.

  H
is fascination with his inability to feel pain had morphed into something else, something that he now understood as sadism, but in the early days he looked upon the agony he doled out as an exercise in self-knowledge. Countless times he’d nipped and dug at the nerve clusters lying beneath his skin, feeling little more than a tickle, yet when he did the same to another child they’d howl in torment. As he’d grown older, his experiments had progressed to punching, kicking, head-butting and biting, and he’d learned much about causing pain to other human beings. He’d discovered books on ancient Chinese systems of martial arts; he thought that the talk of meridians conducting the life force throughout the body was a pile of bull crap, but the corresponding Chi points equated to those same places on the body he’d found elicited most pain. There had to be something in it, and he’d delved deeper.

  He learned of another Chinese art: Dim Mak. Supposedly there were masters of the art who could touch certain points on the body and induce death. He thought that was a load of crap as well, but couldn’t deny that by striking or pinching certain nerve clusters he could momentarily paralyse someone, or even make them succumb to an unconscious state through the intense agony he inflicted. He didn’t have any truck with the reputedly magical skills of the old masters, and knew that it was rooted purely in the physiology and neurology of the human body. So too was his inability to feel pain. There was something loose inside him. That was it. Some juncture that should carry the nerve impulses to his brain simply wasn’t working right, as if a circuit breaker had flipped to the off position. He didn’t find it an encumbrance, seeing as it had made him fearless, but it had made him careful. Many times he had injured himself without realising. He recalled a time when he’d leaned his weight on a cooking range and had only become aware that his flesh was sizzling when a smell like frying pork had reached his nostrils. He’d suffered serious burns to his backside and never felt a damn thing.