Page 148 of One of Us Is Guilty

I leaned through the broken passenger window, grabbed the shovel from the back seat and started to move.

Dekker was seven, maybe eight feet from the car. That meant I had to be seven or eight feet from the car, right now. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but that was a bad idea. I stepped to my left, my shoes making hardly any sound in the soft dirt road, and I came at him in an arc because I knew exactly what he would do.

He squinted, returning his focus to point to the last position he’d seen me, but he still couldn’t see – his retinas were still burned from that blinding reflection of his flashlight, which, if anything, had only increased its brightness. He let off three shots, fast, pumping the trigger on the pistol, and I heard more glass breaking, and a metallic thud from a slug hitting the steel body of the car.

Blinking, he turned toward me. Maybe he’d sensed my movement, or heard me, and the flashlight fell over me as I closed my eyes and whipped my torso, shoulders and arms in a wide sweep like I was trying to swing a baseball bat through a fastball with every ounce of strength and speed I could muster. My hands shook with impact, my wrists and forearms instantly numbing with the shock and I let the shovel go, stumbled and fell, such was the force of the swing. I got onto my hands and knees instantly, scrambling toward Dekker, when my fingers touched his gun lying on the cold earth. I got to my feet, pointed the gun at him. He lay flat on his back, his legs twitching violently.

The flashlight lay on its side, pointing at the car. I brought the gun up, following the flashlight beam. The other guy was the stocky blonde that had taken me to see Julian Vanderpool, and who I’d hit on the knee with a tire iron later. He was wide-eyed, his shirt soaked in blood, and his dead hand still clutching his throat. One of Dekker’s shots at me must have taken him out. To make sure, I felt for a pulse on his wrist. Nothing. I closed his eyes, grabbed the flashlight off the floor, pointed it at Dekker’s face.

Then turned away.

I didn’t want to see that.

The gun felt cold and heavy in my hand. I watched Dekker’s legs twitch and thought about putting a bullet in his head. It was a fleeting thought, but his legs became still suddenly. I felt for a pulse.

Nothing.

I felt his pockets and found a phone in his jacket. There was no signal.

As the fear and adrenaline subsided, the pounding in my head came back with a vengeance. I swept the flashlight around.

We were on a dirt road in a forest, more of a track really, that wound higher and deeper into the trees. Either going back down or going higher might help with the phone signal.

As the beam hit the road, I saw tire tracks heading up. They weren’t fresh, but they didn’t look that old either. I looked back down the hill, examined the tracks we’d made coming up.

Same tire tread.

I followed the older tracks up the hill, and they stopped dead just twenty feet from where we’d parked.

Footprints in the dirt. Boots. Two different treads. And shoes too. The shoes were much bigger than the boots. Three people. Heading into the trees, I trained the flashlight into the foliage.

Shit.

I checked the phone.

One bar.

My hands were shaking so hard it took me a good thirty seconds to punch the number into the phone. I hit dial.

‘Harry, it’s me, I—’

‘Where the hell are you? I’ve been calling. Bloch found your phone on the street in West Forty-sixth Street.’

‘I don’t know where I am. Dekker and another guy hit me from behind, stuffed me in the trunk of a car and drove me God knows where . . .’

‘Are you alright?’

‘I took a hard hit, but I’ve got a hard head.’

Silence.

Then, ‘Are they . . . ?’

‘They’re dead, Harry.’

I took a moment to catch my breath – last thing I wanted was to pass out now.

‘I need you to call Bill Kennedy, give him this number and tell him to call me and trace my location. I need him and his team up here, fast. I need someone I trust at this scene. I can’t spend another night in a jail cell. Also, tell him I’m looking at a big fresh mound of soil in the woods.’