Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
“No. He hates me as much as I hate him. He won’t call.”
“Your granddaughter. Maybe she call?”
“She’s nine years old. I’m not sure she remembers the house number.”
“She have phone. All kids got phones.”
“Not Meredith. I forbade her to have a cell phone.” The doctor caught himself before making mention of the Danish studies.
“I believe you. You do not know. A liar would make up a story to tell me.”
Jordan relaxed at the words. His muscles ached from the strain of the tension and the cold.
“Nestor?” the tablet said. Nestor held the tablet before him and there was a new exchange in what sounded like Russian now. Nestor tapped the screen, killing the call. He nodded to Karp.
Karp pulled his Browning once again.
Jordan was more irritated than surprised.
“You want to prove that you’re idiots? You want to do the stupid thing? Then go ahead and kill me,” the doctor said. He sounded impatient with them, like they were stubborn children.
Nestor held a hand up to Karp. This was a first. Nestor had seen people in this same situation beg, pray, pass out, weep and make all kinds of promises. He’d been offered drugs, money, cars, pussy, and blow jobs by others taped in chairs, suspended by their heels or buried to their necks.
This is the first time he was ever scolded.
“We are stupid? We killed your wife. We have a gun to your head. But we’re the idiots.”
“Yes.”
“You have balls, my man. Big ones. But who holds the gun?”
“You want Kane. I’m your only possible contact. The man is a classic loner. He has no family. No friends. If I’m gone you lose any chance you would ever have had of finding him.”
“You told us you don’t know where he is.”
“That doesn’t mean that I can’t find out. Given time to think about it, without the threat of pain or death, I would be able to help you locate him.”
“You really hate his ass.”
“He killed my daughter,” Jordan said.
“Give me one more reason or my tovarichbrings this to an end.”
“I’m a doctor. A surgeon. Surely your people, your organization, the man on the tablet, would have use for a surgeon now and then.”
Nestor glanced at Karp then back at the doctor.
“You can write prescriptions?”
“Whatever you’re looking for. Whatever amounts you need. I’m on the board at Huntsville and Crestwood.”
Nestor shrugged and reached out to pat Karp’s gun hand. The brute returned the Browning to his waistband. Nestor cut the tape holding the doctor to the chair with his clasp knife. Together they carried/?dragged the doctor to the car and placed him in the back seat. Marcia went into the trunk along with the sack of tools from the table. The pair settled back in the front seat.
“We’re taking you home to get some clothes and your prescription pad. Then we get something to eat. How’s that sound to you?” Nestor said, turned in the seat to speak to Jordan.
“Yes. Could you turn the heat up, please?” the doctor said.
Karp cranked up the fan and warm air washed over Jordan. He allowed his body to unknot from the tension built up over the past hours. He fell asleep as they drove, awakened once when the corpse in the trunk rocked against wall behind the backseat. The doctor fell back into a doze, his invisible organ free to dream of warm streams and green grass under a summer sun.
They were a half hour off the county road and following a switchback coursing around hills covered in white birch. Isaac slowed to a stop twice to allow deer to cross the road.
He turned the truck onto a driveway marked with a battered mailbox with a faded Marine Corps globe and anchor painted on it. The driveway had a hard-packed stone surface. It snaked alongside a dry wash to ford a shallow creek fringed with winter ice as thin as lace.
A fringe of tall pines acted like a gateway either side of the roadway. A one-level log cabin was visible ahead. White smoke curled from the wide chimney of stacked stone. A Dodge Ram sat high on lifts and knobby tires in the gravel yard before the house. A waxed-shiny Range Rover was in the shade of a carport on a concrete hardstand. In the center of the yard was a walled flower bed empty now but for a flagpole atop of which an American flag fluttered above a smaller USMC flag.
A man stood on the deep porch that ran across the face of the cabin. He came down the steps with a double-barrel shotgun cradled easy in his arms. A black man with steel gray hair cropped close. He had massive shoulders and a thick neck visible under a denim farm coat. His eyes were hidden behind dark wraparounds. Beneath the glasses was a scowl that looked as if it were frozen there for all time. He walked out to meet the approach of the Avalanche.
“Hope it’s okay I stopped by like this,” Isaac said stepping onto the gravel.
“Knew you were comin’. Heard you pulling off the county road.” The man’s scowl deepened.
“Couldn’t be the motion alarm a mile back helped, you lying bastard.”
Merry stood by the truck, looking between the men uncomprehending.
The man with the shotgun’s scowl vanished into a broad smile of welcome.
“About time you come visit me, Kane. Who’d you bring with you?”
“My little girl. Merry.”
“Well, I’m anxious to meet the little princess your daddy talks about all the time.”
“My daddy talks to you about me?” Merry skipped around the truck to take the man’s offered hand. He held it out waiting for her to take it.
“All the time, sweetiepie.” The man pulled her close in a tight hug. He smelled like fresh cut wood and cinnamon.
“Honey, I want you to meet Gunny Leffertz,” Isaac said.