“You need to get me a little higher.”
Country looked up at him. Sheriff Jeremiah’s fingers stretched towards a window just out of his reach. His weight pressed down on Country’s shoulders. Country flexed his calves and got an extra couple inches of height.
“Not … quite … there,” Sheriff Jeremiah huffed as if he was the one carrying the person who ate one too many steak dinners. “If … only … I … could … ugh. Nope. Can’t get it.” He looked down with disgust. “Come on, young man. You can do better. Find a way to get me up there.”
Country imitated the sheriff in a quiet, mocking voice. “Come on, young man. You can do better.” He growled. “Maybe he should be the one on bottom, and I could climb on his shoulders. Or, at the very least, he could come down so I didn’t have to carry him in-between buildings.” Mocking again. “I’m too tired. My feet hurt. You’re so comfy. Blah, blah, blah. Maybe you’re just a fat, lazy, blubber-butted ….”
“What’s that?” the sheriff asked.
“Nothing,” Country replied. “Just thinking up a solution.”
“Well, make it quick. We don’t have much time to save your friend.”
Country took a deep breath. The heat from the encroaching fires singed his lungs. Thoughts of Genny tied up in the middle spurred him on. Looking around, he found a pair of discarded pallets leaning against the wall. He threw them on the ground beneath the window and climbed a bit higher.
“Almost there,” the sheriff said. “Nope. Not good enough. Maybe if you could push me upwards.”
Country reached towards the sheriff’s tush. His hands sunk in a couple inches before hitting something solid. He died a little inside.
Mustering all of his strength (and imagining he was lifting the world’s largest bowl of jello), he pushed the sheriff overhead, whose only contribution was to offer encouragement. Country’s legs started to shake. His elbows quivered. Sweat poured down his brow like that waterfall on the Niagara River, the Canadian side, not that sluggish, good-for-nothing American side.
“That’s it,” the sheriff said. “You’re doing great. I’m almost there. Two more inches. That’s all I need.”
Country’s hands extended straight up. The sheriff balanced on Country’s fingertips, swayed for a moment, and grabbed the ledge. With the ease and grace of a severely overweight gymnast, he swung himself towards the window. The crash of a shattering pane, followed by a series of muffled thuds, let Country know that the warehouse breach had been successful. He put his hands on his hips and tried to calm his pounding heart. A few seconds later and the door swung outwards.
“What are you just standing there for?” the sheriff said. “We got a job to do.”
For the briefest of moments, Country thought about defunding the police. He quickly shook it out of his mind.
Country picked up his rifle. “I’m taking the lead,” he said.
Sheriff Jeremiah didn’t argue but fell in line behind him. This warehouse was similar to the three they had already searched. Long, dark corridors which led to an open space in the middle. Offices on one side of the hall, windows overlooking the main area on the other. Papers, invoices, memos, long abandoned, fluttered in the hot wind which tore through the building in a hurry to warn everything in its path of the danger lying in wait just around the bend.
On all sides, flames cast flickering shadows on the walls as though a movie projector played behind a curtain. Shapes appeared and disappeared before their eyes, ephemeral silhouettes of rats, ghosts, hallucinations. Impossible to tell which in the hellish half-light. To their left, shards of sheetrock, crumbling teeth, clung to the top of a large hole in the wall and threatened to fall at any moment. Perspiration trickled from an exposed, rusty pipe, a pungent liquid fleeing through invisible pores and evaporating almost as soon as it hit the floor. The incessant dripping of the water, like the ticking of a time bomb, cut through even the roar of the fire. Country covered his ears and his nose with his shirt, but the smell of charred wood and sulfur, the heat and the haunting howl of steel beams melting, penetrated his defense. As hard as he tried to suppress the thought, as much as he willed himself to focus on the task at hand, he couldn’t help but have the feeling he had stepped onto the set of a dark tragedy, where the lines had already been written for him.
Sheriff Jeremiah halted. “Listen,” he said, his face holding a look of concern.
Country turned his head to the side. “I don’t hear anything.”
“There. Again.” The sheriff pointed down the hall.
All Country heard was the screaming of the steel as the flames bit at its limbs. “It’s just the fire,” he said.
The sheriff was insistent. “We’ve got to go, Marvin.”
“The fire’s worse that way. There’s no way we can ….” Country stopped talking and held his breath.
“You hear it, don’t you?” the sheriff said.
Faint, a whisper in a storm, yet somehow clear. High-pitched, afraid, tortured. Repeating a phrase. “Please stop. Please stop.”
“Genny!” The words escaped his lips, flowing out like Juliet’s anguished cry when she saw the bottle in her true love’s hand. He dashed blindly down the hall. Windows bubbled and popped as he ran past. Ceiling tiles fell, allowing electrical veins to spill between the metal frames. A cloud of floating embers singed his flesh as he ran through, his arms doing their best to protect his eyes from the burning ashes. Sheriff Jeremiah caught Country just before the entrance to the open space in the middle of the warehouse and yanked back on his arm.
Country spun around, his eyes as red as the flames. “Let me go,” he snarled.
“Hold back,” the sheriff said. “You don’t know if it’s a trap.”
“I don’t care.” Country’s heart pounded through his be-muscled chest. “He’s got Genny.”
“Take a look first. Size up the situation. Know what you’re getting yourself into. For all you know, it’s nothing more than a frightened cat.”
“Please stop.” A woman’s voice, closer and clearer.
“That’s no cat.” Country moved towards the entrance.
“Look first,” the sheriff repeated.
Country glanced at the sheriff, an expression containing one part anger and two parts acquiescence. He growled once and stuck his head around the corner. Sheriff Jeremiah peered around Country as best he could. A ring of fire circled the outer edge of the room. In the middle, maybe a hundred feet away, a somewhat tall but thin man dressed in black stood with his back towards the entrance. The man’s body was positioned in such a way that it blocked the view, yet Country could see enough.
The man hunched over a chair in which someone sat. Long legs with worn-out running shoes at the bottom peeked from behind the man’s body. Clumps of matted, blonde hair stuck out from beneath his armpits. The man reared back and struck the woman with the force of Richard Simmons fueled by roid rage. A sickening smack, like a nightstick striking a pumpkin, echoed throughout the room. The cry of pain which followed broke Country’s heart, and he charged into the room, unconcerned with anything other than to save his Genny. Sheriff Jeremiah followed on his heels, gun out of holster and held high in his hands.
They tore off in the rage of a Plains Indian seeking revenge for the murder of his wife. Legs churning like the wheels of an out-of-control locomotive.
Halfway to their goal, Country’s feet gave way, and he fell headfirst, tumbling a few yards before coming to a stop. The same thing happened to Sheriff Jeremiah. Unfortunately for them, the guns, jarred from their hands by the force of the impact, continued to slide across the polished cement floor. To their rear, the sound of a door slamming shut made them turn their heads for a moment. When they looked back, the man in black was facing them. His expression could only be described as delighted evil. His laugh, somewhere between ‘Ha ha ha’ and ‘Mwah ha ha,’ flew at them like a Mockingbird flies at things.
“You fell for the old hidden tripwire trick,” the man laughed. “And the old door rigged to shut when you enter trick. Thanks for your guns by the way.” He removed the bullets and put them in his pocket. “You won’t be needing those.”
Country righted himself and stared at the man. “You let go of my Genny, or I swear I’ll rip your head clean from your shoulders.”
“Let go of your Genny?” the man chided. “You mean this Genny?”
He stepped to the side. A figure with long, be-jeaned legs slouched in the chair. Broomstick arms poked out of a white t-shirt. A pumpkin head collapsed to the floor, its blonde wig spilling to the side in a tangled heap. A falsetto, ‘Please stop,’ came from the man’s mouth.
Sheriff Jeremiah swore under his breath. “The old scarecrow Genny with the pumpkin head and blonde wig trick. That’s the third time this month, dang it.”
The sheriff’s heart sunk. Country’s only became more resolved.
“Who are you?” Country said. “What do you want with us?” Fury flashed in his eyes. Bitterness puckered his cheeks.
“Who am I?” the man repeated back. “All in due time. Our little group isn’t complete yet. As to what I want, I thought you knew.”
“Clearly I don’t, or I wouldn’t have asked,” Country said.
“You really should know.”
“I don’t.”
“But you should.”
“But I don’t.”
The man huffed and looked at his watch. “Well, I suppose I have a little time to explain, seeing as how your girlfriend is late to the party. What do you want to know?”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Country said.
“Hmm. The beginning.” The man scrunched his lips. “It sort of started when you arrived in town.”
“What do you mean, sort of?”
“You know, if you insist on interrupting, I’m never going to finish.”
“I beg your apology. Please proceed.”
“Mmmgggmggg. (Ahem). It sort of started when you arrived in town. The day after, to be precise. That’s when I killed the first one. OK, OK. Not the first one. I’ve been killing for, phew, a while now. But the first one I decided to pin on you. At first, I was trying to decide whether I should get you or your blonde girlfriend to go down for the crimes.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Potato. Potato.”
“You said the same thing twice.”
“Interruptions!”
“Of course.”
“But who would believe your girlfriend would be capable of such, shall we say, handiwork? No. No one would. It had to be you. It took a few dead bodies before I could get the trail to start pointing towards you. Breadcrumbs in the forest, as it were. I employed the deputy to make you look guilty. That was his job. His one and only job.”
“Did he help you kill those people?” Sheriff Jeremiah asked.
The man scoffed. “No. I reserved that pleasure for myself. He was simply the one feeding me information from the inside, setting things up, focusing your attention where I wanted it to be. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t convince you. You always had reservations. Even when every shred of evidence I manufactured pointed towards Mr. Bivins, you had reservations. I never could understand it. Not that I minded. It just meant I had to double down, kill a few more people. Admittedly, that was fun. But I couldn’t understand it. In the end, though, you became too much of a liability. That’s why I sent him and that Pierre guy to kill you. I needed you out of the way. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“What was Pierre’s role in this farce?” Country asked.
“He worked on your girlfriend. Kept her away from you. More specifically, he was hired to drive a wedge between you two. Split apart the dynamic duo. Roger helped with that also. I thought the plan might have succeeded, but that girl just couldn’t be corrupted. At that point, I had no choice. I had to take her out, and I would have done it, except for some unfortunate timing by a really bad driver.”
“Roger, huh?” Country said, ignoring the last part.
“Yep, Roger,” the man said. “He was my money guy, controlling everybody else’s purse strings. I made him hire you to keep you close. Had him invite you to the party. Tempted you with wine, woman, and fame. You couldn’t be corrupted either. I’ve never met a man so … so pure of heart. Not perfect mind you. Far from it. But noble in a way that makes me sick. Ugh.” He shuddered. “Anyway, his responsibility included getting your mind off your girlfriend, making you realize that she was holding you back from reaching your dreams, your desires. In case I couldn’t make the murders stick, that is. Plan C, if you will. A little piece of advice, always have a plan C.”
“Plan A was to get me thrown in jail?” Country clarified.
“No. That was plan B. If you were in jail, then you and your girlfriend would have definitely stopped seeing each other.”
“Genny would have come to see me.”
“That’s what plan D was for. Or was it plan E?” He shrugged. “Who cares? It was one of my many backup plans.”
“Why were you so intent on splitting me and Genny up? Did you want her for yourself?”
“Oh, hecky nah. That’s not my thing.”
“Then, why?”
“But my boy, I haven’t finished with Roger yet. Don’t you want to hear the rest?”
“I suppose,” Country said. “And I’m not your boy.”
“Can’t argue with that. Anyway again, Roger was my money guy. He paid Pierre and the deputy to do my bidding, which came in handy, especially since I don’t have any money. Like none. Zippo. What I did have was leverage. Roger was an unhealthy guy.” He rolled his eyes. “That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one. Deathly ill is a more accurate word, and I was the one keeping him alive. Still, I had to appeal to his baser nature. Throw him a bone or two. Otherwise, ‘life wouldn’t have been worth living.’ He didn’t actually mean that. In the end, he begged for a little more time. They all beg for a little more time.”
Country stood quietly for a moment, contemplating everything he had just heard. The fire continued inching forward, creeping towards them like a lion in the tall grass approaching its prey. He rubbed his chin.
“There’s a part of your story I don’t understand. Why did you want to keep Genny and me apart?”
“I didn’t want to keep you apart. I wanted you dead. That was plan A.”
“Then, why didn’t you just kill us? Why didn’t you have Pierre or Roger or someone kill us? What was the point of this convoluted plan B, C, D, etc.?”
“Trust me. From the beginning, I tried. But every time I got close, something got in the way as if … as if someone or something was protecting you. It took me a long time to realize that I couldn’t kill you. Neither could anyone connected to me. You were off limits. Not that I didn’t keep trying. However, ….” He paused. “There was never any indication that you couldn’t put yourself in a situation that would get yourself killed. Hence, the fire. The warehouse. You. Genny.”
“Plan F?”
“A bit of improvisation once the events of this evening didn’t work out. Rather ingenious, don’t you think?”
“Pumpkin-head Genny was a nice touch,” Sheriff Jeremiah injected.
The man dipped his head. “Why, thank you.”
“But why did you want us apart?” Country asked, interrupting the love fest.
“Because I couldn’t kill you,” he answered without really answering. “This fire, on the other hand … mwah hah hah!”
“There’s a fatal flaw in your scheme,” Country said as soon as the mad laughter died down.
“And what’s that?” the man asked.
“There’s one of you and two of us. And I don’t see how a noodle-arm like you stands a chance against two manly men like us. No offense.”
“None taken. But to make things a little more fair ….”
The man pulled a knife from his waistband. He held it out front for a moment, swinging it back and forth. Then, just as quickly, he threw it into the fire behind him.
“Now, you two might have a chance,” he finished.
Country didn’t wait for a formal invitation. In an instant, he was on top of the man, attacking with the fury of a lifetime of repressed anger. A left hook to the jaw sent the man’s head flying to the side, lips puckering out like Stretch Armstrong’s might have if he had been hit with a left hook. A right cross bowed the man’s head backwards. The front kick to the dangles bent him over and sent his eyeballs rolling across the cement. Picking up the chair on which pumpkin-head Genny sat a moment ago, Country drove it down on the man’s back. Pieces of wood scattered everywhere, and the man slumped to the floor.
Country stood on top of him, the rage still burning in his eyes. Sheriff Jeremiah walked over, handcuffs in hand. A feeling of supreme satisfaction warmed his heart. Reaching down, he grabbed the man’s wrist.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to say this,” the sheriff said. “You’re under arrest.”
“Under arrest?” the man said, lifting his head. “Now, that’s funny.”
Before either Country or Sheriff Jeremiah could react, the man popped to his feet. Left noodle-arm grabbed the sheriff by the throat. Right noodle wrapped around Country’s neck. They felt their feet lift off the floor, the hand at their throats constrict tighter and tighter, their lungs start to burn. Sheriff Jeremiah’s face went from red to redder to purple. Country’s didn’t change shades. A laugh, that vile, disgusting laugh, cackled out of the man’s lips.
“Ha ha ha/Mwah ha ha.”
Over and over. Hands even tighter. Lungs even burnier. Feet kicking at the air. Consciousness slowly fading. Maybe, just maybe, the man was wrong. He could kill Country after all. The thought crossed the man’s mind, and he smiled.
A knock at the door interrupted his evil contemplation.
“Who is it?” the man sung out.
“Genny.”
“Genny who?”
“Genny Haverford.”
“Come on in.”
The door opened, allowing Genny to pass through, then, slammed shut behind her. Regret, like a metaphysical pallet of bricks, fell on her.
“Oh, crap,” she said. “I really should have stopped to pee.”