“And hopefully ballistics will match the slugs shot into our car tires when Junior was killed to the gun taken from Eddie,” pointed out Michelle.
“Just let me get hold of him,” said Williams. “We’ll have a confession in no time.”
“If we get hold of him,” said Michelle.
“He can hide for a while, but we’ll eventually catch him,” said the police chief confidently.
“The person he’s after,” said King. “That’s the key. We find him, we find Eddie.”
“You really think that?” said Bailey.
“No,” replied King, “I know it. He’s got one more to go. Just one more. And we have to get there before he does.”
CHAPTER
91
EDDIE SAT BACK ON THE
small cot in his cave. He’d rested, eaten and planned. He had a battery-powered TV/radio/police scanner and had kept abreast of the search developments, which was fairly easy since there were none. However, he was limited in his movements. He could only go out at night, and it was a long hike to the battered old truck he’d hidden away in a patch of woods just for this contingency.
After all these years of bouncing from thing to thing, never really etching an identity anywhere, he’d finally found his niche: fugitive killer. He laughed, rose, stretched, dropped to the ground and did a hundred push-ups and an equal number of sit-ups. He had wedged a steel bar between two jagged o
utcroppings of rock farther back in the cave. He did twenty-five quick pull-ups and then five with each arm. He dropped to the ground, breathing hard. He wasn’t twenty anymore, but for his age he wasn’t doing too badly. Big cop would no doubt have attested to that.
He slid the pistol out of its holster and chambered body-armor-piercing ammo he’d purchased on the black market with as much
ease as clicking a mouse key. Hell, you could buy anything on the Net—guns, ammo, women, children, marriage, divorce, happiness, death—if you just knew where to look. But it was only one gun against a thousand, far worse odds than even at the Alamo.
And yet a man with nothing to live for is a powerful man indeed. Perhaps unbeatable. Had he read that somewhere or just made it up? Whatever, it would become his coda from this point forward.
They’d eventually hunt him down and kill him. Of that he was certain. But it didn’t matter so long as he got to his father’s killer first. That’s all that really mattered now. Wow, he’d certainly streamlined his life. He laughed again.
He took the list from his pocket. The names were dwindling, but he wasn’t sure he could manage now to get to them all. However, after much thought he might just have come upon a shortcut. He’d try it out tonight. Two more deaths: his father’s killer and his own. And then Wrightsburg could get back to normal. His family could move forward with fresh lives, finally free of their monster patriarch.
He lay back down on the cot, listened with one ear to the radio and with the other to any noise coming from outside. The cave’s isolated location and well-hidden entrance made it highly unlikely anyone would come near. However, if they had the misfortune to, he’d give them a proper burial. He was not a monster; in his case the apple had fallen far from the tree.
I am not my father’s son. And thank you, Jesus, for that. But I’ll be seeing you soon, Pop. Maybe the devil will bunk us together. For all time. We’ll talk.
He cracked his thick knuckles and dreamed of such an encounter as the afternoon receded into night. The night when he’d be on the move. To his shortcut. To his last target. And then the big curtain would come down on the Eddie Lee Battle Show. There’d be no encore. He was getting tired. Good-bye, everybody, it was cool while it lasted.
Just one more to go… Or maybe more? Yes, maybe more. What did it matter after all?
CHAPTER
92
THE SMALL BUILDING
housing the Wrightsburg Gazette was dark and empty at this hour of the night. There was no alarm system and no night watchman either, for what was there to steal from the venerable but money-losing Gazette other than paper? Cash was tight at the daily publication, and the owner didn’t like to waste it on protecting things he believed didn’t need it.
The back door’s simple lock turned and then opened, and Eddie moved inside, shutting the door behind him. He shot across to the small room at the back of the printing area. He pushed open the door to this windowless section, shone his light around at the flat file cabinets stacked one on top of the other and started reading the labels on the fronts.
He found the one he wanted, opened it, lifted out the spool of old-fashioned microfiche and went to one of the terminals that lined the outside ring of the room. He sat down, inserted the spool into the reader, clicked on the light behind the screen and turned on the machine. He knew the date he was looking for, and he quickly found the story he wanted. Of course, it all fit now, all the things he’d heard over the last few years, the little clues here and there. Another thought struck him as he remembered something Chip Bailey had once told him. It had happened before, not in this country, but in another.
Yes, now it all makes perfect sense.
He removed the spool and replaced it in the file cabinet. He was about to leave but paused, thinking something over, finally breaking into a smile. Why not? He picked up a Sharpie pen from a holder on one of the tables and went over to the wall. He wrote the four letters large on the concrete wall. They couldn’t very well miss it, could they? Not that they’d have any clue what it actually meant. He wanted to get there first after all. They could come and pick up the pieces after it was all over.