part0008

LOGAN heard the voice calling from above him, and by its light resonance was certain that it was the boy he had seen standing at the rear of the wrecked vehicle with the two men. Maybe it was a trap. The men could have parked up and walked back, and told the youth to lure him out of hiding.

Crawling slowly along a narrow ledge on his hands and knees for what he thought was a distance of at least sixty feet, Logan came out from under the rock roof and climbed up to the dirt road, to raise his head above the drop and look both ways. There was no sign of the two guys or his Chevy, just the kid that had been in their company.

Will called out again, but got no reply. And there was no sign of the guy on the canyon floor. Jack had probably hit him with the shot from the pump action. There was nothing he could do. He had no intention of attempting to climb down and look for the body of a stranger.

Will had been so preoccupied scanning the scene that he had not heard the approach of the man he had been looking for. He yelped in surprise and a degree of pain as his shoulder was grasped in what felt like the jaws of a vise.

Logan relinquished his grip and the boy spun round, reached up to rub his aching shoulder, and stared defiantly up into the face of a guy who appeared to be a man mountain.

“Who are you, and where are the two men that you were with?” Logan said.

Will said nothing. He was not about to tell the stranger jack shit.

Logan saw a look of stubbornness, confusion and fear in the boy’s eyes, and sensed that he was feeling isolated and vulnerable.

“Okay, kid,” Logan said as he turned and began to walk away in the direction that he had recently driven in.

“I didn’t have anything to do with what they did,” Will shouted after him. “That’s why I’m still here and not with them.”

“Hey mister, wait up, willya?”

Logan paused and turned around and gave the youngster a hard look.

Will walked towards him, to stop several feet away and say, “I came back to see if I could help you.”

“Tell me why that guy took a potshot at me,” Logan said, looking down to where spots of blood had seeped through his tobacco brown colored chinos from the peppering of pellets that had ripped through them and caused skin-deep wounds that were sore but no big deal.

Will thought it through. There are key events in life that are like stepping stones across a stream. He was moving on, away from what had been and into a future that he could not begin to contemplate.

“The guy is my stepfather,” Will said. “He and three of his friends robbed a bank in Phoenix, and I was part of it, but didn’t know what they were going to do. Until the rock fall happened I had no idea what they had done. And then I saw the bag full of money, the masks and the shotguns in the trunk and knew what had gone down.”

“Start at the beginning and tell me everything you know,” Logan said. “And then I’ll call the police and report what has happened.”

“I’m not going to say a word if you intend to call the cops,” Will said. “I would be accused of being a part of it, and I guess I was but like I said, I didn’t know it at the time.”

Logan believed the kid. Honesty had a way of shining through a person’s eyes. Most youngsters had not lived long enough to tell lies with the conviction that many adults could.

“Okay, son, no cops. What’s your name?”

“Will…Will Parker. What’s yours?”

“Logan. And to be honest at this moment in time all I want is the Chevy and my rucksack back.”

“Don’t you care that the two men in the front of that 4x4 are dead, and that the other two are armed bank robbers?”

“No,” Logan said. “A couple of lowlifes being flattened by a pile of rocks don’t register on my give a fu…damn o-meter. All I want to do is find the other two.”

“I never want to see Jack or Lee again,” Will said. “I plan on heading west to Los Angeles.”

“Start over, somehow.”

“Bad idea. The place is more like the city of the devil than the city of angels. You need to be with family or friends to get past this episode.”

“My dad died of stomach cancer when I was eight. My mom married Jack Mitchell when I was ten, and then she took off to Abilene two years ago with an insurance salesman. All I have are grandparents in Tucson that I hardly know and haven’t seen for a few years.”

“They’re probably your best bet in the short term. You need to get back on track.”

“I was a Marine, and then a cop and homicide detective with the NYPD. Now I’m footloose and fancy free and just follow my nose.”

“You’re a drifter, right?”

“If you have the need to put a label on me, yeah. Tell me about Jack and Lee?”

“Like I said, Jack Mitchell, the guy that shot you, is my stepdad. Lee Roche is one of his buddies. The names of the two in the Explorer are Gil Boyett and Joel Shaw.”

“Tell me the story, from the beginning.”

“Jack asked me to go with him and the others. I was dropped off at the front of a bank and Jack gave me a cell and told me to phone him when I spotted a particular guy enter it, and then wait to be picked up. Gil drove off and made a left down the alley next to the bank. There was a pic of some dude on the phone. When he turned up, I made the call and just waited. They came back maybe a quarter hour later and I got in and we drove here with just one stop. I think that Lee changed the license plate.”

“What do you suppose went down at the bank?”

“I thought that they’d robbed it, but I wasn’t sure ‘til I saw the bag of money and the masks and shotguns in the back, just before you turned up.”

“Did you hear anything from the bank, like shots?”

“No, but I was listening to music on my MP3 and had ear buds in.”

“On the cell that your stepdad gave you?”

“No, on my Galaxy. The one that Jack gave me is just a burner.”

“Do you still have it?”

“Yeah,” Will said, taking the cell from a pocket of his baggy blue jeans.

“You could give him a call, right? Where were they heading for?”

“A cabin just a few miles west of here. But I don’t want to speak to him ever again, he’s a loser.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He comes across as a regular guy, but used to beat up on my mum when he’d had too much to drink. That’s why she left. All adults seem to have a secret side to them that they keep under wraps. Jack got laid off from some piping system plant he worked at south of the river. We just about got by for a few months, and then he had money again, but didn’t have a regular job. Now I know where it came from. He and the others were bank robbers.”

“How old are you, Will?”

“Thirteen, if that counts for anything.”

“I guess it doesn’t. It’s just numbers, but you seem older.”

Will shrugged. “What’s the plan?”

“You lead me to the cabin, and we get my Chevy and belongings back and take off. I’ll drive you to your grandparents and you can start over.”

“If we go to the cabin it will end badly. Jack and Lee will shoot you, and when they find out that I led you there, I’ll be history, too.”

“They already think that I’m dead, and that you’ve done a runner, so the last thing they’ll expect is company.”

Will thought it through. The big guy in front of him seemed to have his shit together and had a calm and confident quality that he found impressive.

“OK, Mr. Logan, Let’s do it.”

“Just Logan, Will. Can you walk us to the cabin from here?”

“Yeah. I’ve been there a few times,” Will said, and then his eyes widened and he bit his bottom lip as the burner rang. He knew that the caller would be Jack.