The Good Killer Read online

Sean opened the door and tossed the mirror onto the back seat.

  “Are we all set?” Cole asked him.

  “Yes we are.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Simple. Should have been simple.

  But the man in the parka didn’t cooperate. He tried to block Cole’s way.

  “Hold on now,” he said.

  Cole leaned into him. Spoke in a low voice. “Listen to me. I’m not interested in being part of this power trip you’re on. You want to get some kids arrested over nothing, over an accident, good for you. But we’re going now. Back off.”

  The man’s eyes went wide. He took an uncertain step back.

  Cole went past him, around the rear of the car to the passenger side. Sean reached for the handle of the driver’s door. The snow fell. White flakes glimmering in the light of the streetlamps.

  Sean saw Cole grinning at him across the roof of the car.

  And the man in the parka made a decision. He must have put things together. Maybe he’d been puzzling it out all along: wondering what was in the briefcase and the backpacks and why these two strangers felt the need to leave before the police came. Anger might have had something to do with it too—anger and humiliation, because of the way Cole had talked to him.

  The reasons didn’t matter. What mattered was that he drew a revolver from somewhere under his parka and brought it up into a two-handed grip.

  “Freeze!” he shouted. “Don’t move!”

  Cole looked at Sean across the roof of the car. Half-amused. Half-disbelieving.

  “Did he say ‘Freeze’?”

  Cole’s left hand was braced on the car. His right hand was out of sight.

  “Don’t,” Sean said. “Don’t do it.”

  *

  It seemed unreal. Sean witnessed it, but the images were blurred; the sounds were muffled. Everything moved slow.

  Then things sped up to normal again and they were in the car. There was a hum in Sean’s ears, separate from the hum of the engine. Cole’s voice seemed to reach him from far away.

  “Didn’t see that coming,” Cole said. “I really didn’t.”

  “Me neither,” said Sean.

  “That old guy, packin’.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sean was driving fast, away from Khadduri’s street. He had his phone out, looking at a map. As he rounded a corner, he fishtailed in the snow.

  “Tell you one thing,” Cole said. “That guy can shoot.”

  “I suppose,” said Sean.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I’ve seen better.”

  “You always were hard to impress.”

  “The way I see it, he had six chances,” Sean said. “He only hit you twice.”

  Cole, in the back seat, snorted and shook his head from side to side.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Don’t make me laugh.”

  Stop sign up ahead. Sean slowed and rolled through, picking up speed on the other side. Two blocks on, he came to Coolidge Highway, which would take them north to Beaumont Hospital.

  The humming in Sean’s ears was getting quieter—the memory of the gunshots receding into the past.

  “You must be disappointed,” Cole said.

  Sean glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Why?”

  “’Cause I only hit him once. Barely. Winged him.”

  “He had the drop on you.”

  “Still.”

  They came to a red light and Sean had to stop or risk slamming into traffic. He stopped. As soon as the way cleared, he went through.

  Cole said, “You shot him, though. Right?”

  “Nope.”

  “Seriously?”

  “He was empty.”

  “Empty. Did you punch him at least?”

  Sean had come close to shooting him. The Beretta in his hand, his finger on the trigger. The old man running from him, tripping on the curb. Sean had kicked him in the ribs, rolled him over, bashed him in the face with the barrel of the Beretta.

  “I broke his nose,” he said to Cole.

  “Guess that’s something.”

  Sean had left the old man lying in the snow. Had gone to find Cole sitting slumped against the car, bleeding from his neck and his chest. Thought he was dead. Until his eyes opened.

  “Can you get up?” Sean asked him.

  “You’re funny,” Cole said.

  “I have to move you.”

  “I don’t want to scare you, but I can’t feel my legs.”

  Sean grabbed him under the arms and hauled him up. Hefted him onto his shoulder. Managed to get the car door open and wrangle him into the back seat. Laid him down at first, and then decided it would be better to sit him up. He wanted to keep the neck wound higher than Cole’s heart.

  He used the seat belt to strap him in. Cinched the shoulder harness tight in the hope that it might help to slow the bleeding of the chest wound. He slipped the knot of Cole’s tie and tugged it free. Rolled it into a pad and pressed it over the hole in his neck. Put Cole’s hand over it and told him to keep it in place.

  The bleeding worried him, but not as much as it might have. The blood seeped; it didn’t spurt. Sean thought the bullets must have missed the major arteries.

  “You’re good,” he said to Cole.

  He said it again, speeding north on Coolidge Highway, a light turning green just in time for him to breeze through: “You’re good.”

  Cole smiled at him in the mirror. “Where are we going?”

  His breathing had been rough all along. Now it sounded rougher.

  “We’re going to get you some help,” Sean said.

  “I want to see my mom.”

  “You’ll see her.”

  “I want to see her now. You should take me to her now.”

  “It’s too far. We have to go to the hospital first. But I promise you’ll see her.”

  Cole’s smile faded. “You’re not very smart.”

  Sean shifted his attention back to the road. The snow fell more quickly than before. It was harder to see.

  When he looked in the mirror again, Cole’s eyes were closed. His hand, holding the tie, had fallen away from his neck.

  “Hey,” Sean said. “Don’t go to sleep.”

  Cole’s hand came up, hovered, and fell away. His eyelids fluttered open.

  “You know I love you, right?” Cole said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t do the things I do for you.”

  When they reached the hospital, Cole’s head had fallen to the side. His eyes were closed again. Sean braked to a stop in front of the emergency room doors and leaned on the horn as he got out of the car. Two paramedics who had just made a drop-off ran out. When they saw Cole, one of them ran back in for a gurney.

  The one who stayed behind said, “What happened?”

  “Couple of kids,” Sean said. “They tried to steal our car.” A lie, but he made it sound true. “Punks,” he added. “One of them had a gun.”

  The paramedic nodded in sympathy. The other came out with the gurney, a young doctor jogging along behind him. Sean stepped back and let them work. The doctor, checking for a pulse, seemed surprised to find one.

  The paramedics hauled Cole from the car and rolled him inside. The sliding doors opened for them and stayed open for Sean. He heard the doctor calling out to a nurse, telling her to get a resident down from surgery.

  Sean grabbed the doctor’s sleeve. “His name is Cole,” he said to her. “His blood type is A positive.”

  She patted his arm. “Good. That’s good.”

  She punched a button on the wall, and a pair of gray doors swung open. The paramedics rolled Cole through and pushed him down a bright hallway. Sean followed them. Saw them make a right turn into an exam area. The doctor swept a curtain into place to block his view.

  Sean stood still in the middle of the hall, and the world moved around him. Two nurses hurried in to join the doctor behind the curtain. The paramedics cleared out.

  One of them brushed Sean’s arm as he passed.

&
nbsp; “You shouldn’t be back here,” he said.

  Sean ignored him. He needed to stay, even though he knew what was going to happen.

  Voices narrated for him from behind the curtain. Calm and professional. They called it out when Cole’s left lung collapsed, when his blood pressure crashed. Sean knew the exact moment when Cole went into cardiac arrest. He heard the doctor asking for a shot of epinephrine. Heard the tone of the defibrillator charging.

  They shocked Cole three times, trying to revive him.

  The doctor sounded heartbroken at the end. “That’s enough,” she said. “Time of death, ten oh four p.m.”

  Sean didn’t wait for her to come out. He retraced his steps down the hall, to the ER waiting area. A nurse from the reception desk spotted him. She told him his car had been blocking the ambulance bay. One of the paramedics had moved it. She handed Sean his keys.

  “You should have a seat,” she said. “The police will want to talk to you about your friend.”

  She pointed him to a bank of chairs. He walked past them toward the sliding glass doors.

  “Sir,” she called after him.

  He went out through the doors into the cold night. No one tried to stop him.

  He found his car in the visitors’ lot. The snow drifted down all around him. He started the engine and put the car into gear. Drove out of the lot and kept on driving.

  20

  NOW

  Molly Winter

  Molly misses the campground at Wrinkled Rock. It felt like autumn there, and she loves autumn. But she saw the wisdom of moving on. There’s risk in staying too long in one place.

  She and Sean have covered almost fifteen hundred miles in three days. They camped one night at an RV park near Lincoln, Nebraska, and once by a lake in southern Illinois. They would have stayed longer at the lake, but they got spooked by a middle-aged dude who spent hours pacing along the shore with a metal detector. He never approached them, but every once in a while he would stop and stare. Molly couldn’t decide if he recognized them or if he was thinking about how he would murder them.

  She didn’t want to wait and find out. Neither did Sean. They took to the road again, and it brought them here: Cumberland Avenue in Knoxville, the northwest edge of the campus of the University of Tennessee.

  Knoxville feels like summer. It’s seventy degrees on an October afternoon. The sidewalks are filled with students in T-shirts and short pants.

  The sun is shining, and it feels good to be out of the car. Molly is walking arm in arm with Sean. They’re older than the college kids around them but young enough to blend in.

  “It should be here,” Sean says.

  “Let’s try the next block,” Molly answers.

  They’re looking for a place called the Vienna Bar and Grill. They found it once, a long time ago, when she was Molly Bowen and he was Sean Garrety. Someone told them you could go in there and ask for Steve Z., and Steve Z. could start you over clean. He could give you a new name, a new birth certificate, a new Social Security card, a new driver’s license. Everything you needed.

  Steve Z. helped them once. They’re hoping he can help them again.

  They walk two more blocks and there’s no Vienna Bar and Grill. There are no more businesses here, only academic buildings.

  “It’s back there,” Sean says. “We missed it. Or it’s gone.”

  They go back, strolling along the sidewalk on the north side of the street. They pass a Chipotle and a Chinese restaurant and a bar called the Copper Cellar. There’s a sandwich shop, and across the street Molly can see the Taco Bell. They left Sean’s Camry in the Taco Bell parking lot. There’s a skinny shirtless guy standing in front of the drive-through window. He looks agitated. He’s waving his arms.

  Sean is looking at the door of a restaurant called Rusty’s All-American.

  “This,” he says. “It was this building. I recognize the brickwork. This used to be the Vienna Bar and Grill.”

  Molly pokes him on the shoulder. “If only there were a way to know for sure,” she says.

  He laughs and takes out his burner cell phone. Does a Google search and finds a listing for the Vienna. Under “Hours of operation,” it says “Permanently closed.” The address is the same as the address of Rusty’s.

  “We can still go in and ask,” she tells him.

  When they enter they find a late-lunch crowd: a few big tables with groups that look like office workers or staff from the university. There’s a waitress doing double duty as a hostess. They ask her if she knows Steve Z. She gives them a warm smile. “I sure don’t. Will he be joining you today?”

  Molly asks her a few more questions. Does she remember when this used to be a bar? She sure doesn’t—must have been before her time. Is there anyone who might remember? Maybe Bonnie. Is Bonnie working today? She sure is. But Bonnie turns out to be no help. She doesn’t know anyone who used to work at the Vienna, and she doesn’t know Steve Z.

  Molly thanks her and takes Sean’s hand, and they go back out into the afternoon. From the sidewalk outside Rusty’s, they see something troubling: a blue-and-white car turning into the Taco Bell parking lot across the street. The letters on the door read: CAMPUS POLICE.

  “Huh,” Sean says.

  The car pulls into the space next to Sean’s Camry. A campus cop steps out and walks to the drive-through. The shirtless guy is there—the one they saw before. He’s sitting on the ground now, blocking the lane.

  The cop crouches down by the shirtless guy. Friendly. As if he knows him.

  Molly squeezes Sean’s hand. “I’m hungry,” she says. “Are you hungry?”

  “I could eat,” he says.

  They head back into Rusty’s. The waitress gives them her warm smile again and leads them to a booth with a view to the street.

  “Is this okay?” she asks.

  “Perfect,” Sean says.

  She brings them water and iced tea while they look at their menus. The special is meat loaf, she says, but people like the rib eye steak too. Molly orders a Caesar salad with chicken. Sean gets the steak.

  Across the street at Taco Bell, the campus cop has persuaded the shirtless guy to get out of the way of the drive-through. The pair are still talking on a patch of grass near the curb.

  The food comes, and Molly realizes she really is hungry. She ignores what’s going on outside and focuses on her salad. The next time she looks up she sees Sean frowning.

  He chose the side of the booth that put his back to the wall. It gives him a view of the customers at the other tables.

  “What’s the matter?” Molly asks him.

  He looks down at his plate. “People are staring at us.”

  “How many people?”

  “More than I’d like.”

  “Do they seem friendly or hostile?”

  “Not hostile. Curious.”

  “Okay. Let them be curious.”

  Across the street, an ambulance pulls into the lot of the Taco Bell. Casually: no lights, no siren. Two EMTs get out and walk over to the campus cop and the shirtless guy.

  Sean nods in their direction. “This could go bad for us,” he says.

  “It’s got nothing to do with us,” says Molly.

  “Not yet. But it might. Keep your purse handy.”

  Her purse is on the seat next to her. Sean’s gun is inside.

  “If things go bad,” she says, “I don’t know what good my purse is gonna be.”

  He stabs a piece of steak with his fork. “Yeah. I don’t know either.”

  Across the street, the shirtless guy is sitting in the grass. The EMTs are checking his heart rate. One of them slips a cuff around his arm to take his blood pressure.

  Molly hears a group of diners at another table getting up to leave. One of them breaks away and tells the others he’ll meet them outside.

  He approaches Sean and Molly’s booth. Stops at a respectful distance.

  “I don’t mean to disturb you,” he says.

  Smooth voice, gray
suit, no tie. The suit is expensive without being flashy. Molly puts his age around fifty. A distinguished fifty.

  “My friends and I saw you here,” he says. “And we were going back and forth. Is it them? It can’t be them. And I wanted to know.” He smiles at himself. Rueful. “Now that I’m here …”

  He trails off and Molly says, “What can we do for you, Mr.—?”

  “Frazier,” he says. “Howard Frazier. And you’ve got it backward. The question is: Is there anything I can do for you? If you’re in trouble—”

  “We’re not in trouble,” Sean says. He sounds calm and looks relaxed, though Molly can’t help noticing his right hand resting on the table, within easy reach of the serrated knife the waitress brought him with his steak.

  “Perhaps I’m wrong,” Frazier says. “But if you were in trouble, legal trouble, I would be happy to advise you. You may have options you haven’t considered.”

  He holds up a business card and leans in to place it on the table.

  HOWARD J. FRAZIER, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW.

  Molly picks it up. “That’s lovely. Thank you.”

  She thinks he’s going to want to shake her hand or Sean’s, but he only nods and says, “Well. Pleasure meeting you.”

  Sean nods back and watches him walk away.

  When he’s gone, Sean says, “We need to get away from here.”

  “We’re fine,” says Molly.

  “You don’t know what he’ll do. Or what his friends might do.”

  “They won’t do anything,” Molly says, looking out the window. “Besides, we can’t go. Not yet.”

  Across the street, there are two fresh cops on the scene. City cops: Knoxville PD. Their cruiser is parked haphazardly in the Taco Bell lot. It’s blocking in Sean’s Camry.

  The shirtless guy is still sitting on the ground, scratching at the side of his head. The cops try to coax him up. One of them reaches for his elbow. The shirtless guy slaps his hand away.

  It goes on, the two city cops trying to get the guy to stand. Patient, even when he swats at them. The campus cop looks on. About a dozen people gather to watch. Most of them look like students, but one woman stands apart. She’s dressed professionally in a skirt and blouse. She’s holding up her phone, shooting video. She’s trying to talk to the cops. They mostly ignore her.