Midnight Rambler_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [98]
Bash's was quick, and he was dead in less than thirty seconds. I could do nothing but watch.
Years earlier, I had plowed into a deer on a moonless night, and stood on the side of the road to comfort the poor thing. As the deer died, a smokelike substance escaped from its chest. I told a doctor I knew, and he'd said that he'd seen the same thing with many terminal patients. The substance, he believed, was their soul.
I looked for Bash's soul to escape, but saw nothing. Cheever edged up beside me.
“Is he dead?”
“Yes,” I said under my breath.
“Shit, Jack, what am I going to do?” Cheever asked.
I looked at him, not understanding.
“I might get pinned with this,” he said.
“Because you punched him in the mouth,” I said.
“Yeah, and I provoked him. The review board will have a field day. I don't want to go through what you went through.”
I didn't blame Cheever for feeling this way. If I'd learned anything from my experience with Simon Skell, the only people society expected to follow the laws were those who enforced them.
The trailer had a small kitchen. I got a rag out of the sink and washed away the blood from Bash's lips. Then I scrubbed down anything Cheever or I had touched.
“How well did you know him?” I asked.
“I came by the station when he had porno stars visiting,” Cheever said. “I knew he was a sick puppy, but not this sick.”
“Did you ever use your real name at the station?”
“No.”
“Good.”
I shifted my attention to the wide-screen TV. Jonny Perez and the other Hispanic had stopped torturing Melinda and were no longer in the picture. Melinda was looking directly into the camera, fighting back tears.
“We're coming,” I said to the screen.
We went to the door and I whistled for my dog. Then I looked at Bash lying dead on the floor. His face looked as if he'd been dead a long time. As we walked out, “Midnight Rambler” was still playing on the CD player.
We left the station and drove our cars to a deserted strip center. We got out of our vehicles, and I took Bash's address book from my pocket and showed Cheever the listing for Jonny Perez.
Perez lived in a marginal neighborhood in Sunrise. Cheever suggested that we take his car and leave mine behind. He believed his filthy vehicle was less likely to arouse suspicion as we searched for Perez's hideout.
I agreed, and soon we were heading west on 595 in his car. Cheever drove with his body hunched over the wheel and his eyes glued to the highway. I sensed he was trying to shake off Bash's death, and tried to comfort him.
“Don't blame yourself for what happened back there,” I said.
He shook his head without taking his eyes off the road.
“Bash got what was coming to him,” I said.
Several miles passed before Cheever replied.
“I need to ask you something,” he said.
“What's that?”
“Do you love Melinda? I have to know, Jack.”
The question stunned me, and I jerked sideways in my seat.
“How many times do I have to tell you, Claude? I didn't sleep with her. Not yesterday, not last week, not last year. We never got it on.”
“But do you love her?”
“No!”
The pain showed in Cheever's face.
“I'm sorry, Jack, but you're the reason she and I broke up.”
“How is that possible?”
“She said your name one night in bed. She had this thing about me wearing my badge on my T-shirt. She looked at it and said your name.”
I hadn't forgotten the cartoon drawings I'd seen on Melinda's kitchen table, and the stick figure with a badge pinned to his chest. That figure had been holding hands with a female stick figure and standing before a house with smoke billowing from its chimney. Now I understood its significance.
“I'm sorry that happened to you,” I said.
Cheever nodded regretfully.
“So am I,” he said.
Cheever took the Sawgrass Expressway to the Sunrise exit and soon got lost. Sunrise had been built by developers and was a mishmash of identical-sounding street names. Fifteen excruciating minutes later we found Perez's street and did a quick sweep.
The houses were small, their windows covered with security bars. An alley ran behind the properties.