The Shack: An Unreasonable Man

***

I'd planned on following his car, but Sheree had a better idea. "Why follow him? Didn't you say Delaney's mother put some kind of GPS thing in her phone? Don't they sell things like that?"

"Okay. I probably shoulda thought of that. Shit. You're good at this."

Sheree grinned. "I saw Shelley's ankle bracelet this morning. They're monitoring her again. Made me think of that GPS thing."

It cost four hundred dollars, but it made things a lot easier. Delaney easily slipped into the impound lot and put it on his SUV.

It even came with a tracking app that could alert me when the SUV moved.

I also bought a surveillance system for the trailer at the yard. I really couldn't see us moving back there, and if Ronnie Pelton or his jackass friends got any ideas about stealing from me again, I wanted them on video.

Over the weeks, I felt more and more like we belonged in the cabin; it just fit us. I managed to get a couple of solar panels put up to keep our cells phones charged up until the co-op could run lines out the place, and Delaney just did her school work at the trailer. I had to run the slow cooker at the trailer and just bring it to the cabin with us, but that was fine. We didn't miss electricity that much; we could wait for the lines to get to us. Movie Night had never actually been about the movies anyway.

The day the SUV finally moved, I rounded up Delaney and gave Sheree a call. She was working late shift again, due to the usual Shelley-induced schedule changes. I watched Delaney dash back into the garage where she kept her project car for a backpack while I talked to Sheree.

"We'll be home before you are, Babe."

"You take of her, Les." We'd talked it over for weeks. Sheree felt Delaney needed to be part of this, needed to feel like she could do something. She was nervous for her, but Sheree's faith in me was way stronger than I thought it should be.

Delaney was remarkably calm, all things considered. "So what's the plan?"

"We're going to do a B&B."

"Okaaaayyyy... what the fuck is that?"

I started laughing. "It's a home invasion technique; it stands for 'bait and bitch'."

"I must be the bait, but my mother isn't here, so I guess you're..."

"Shut up."

Two hours later, Delany rang the doorbell of a skeezy apartment.

Asshole opened the door and stared at her in shock.

Delaney smirked. "You lookin' for me?"

"What are you, Di Niro all of a sudden?" While he stood frozen, I stepped up from the side and leveled the .45. I shook my head at the Asshole. "I have got to start her on some different movies, you know?" I nodded towards Delaney. "Besides, it's 'You talkin' to me?'"

He held very still, looking from her to the .45 pointed at his head.

We had him tied into a chair in just a couple minutes.

He glared at us. "This is bullshit. You're gonna try some "good cop, bad cop" shit. Ain't gonna fucking work. Hell, she's a fucking kid."

I gestured helplessly. "Work with what you got, you know? But teenage girls don't have much in the way of empathy, and she knows exactly what you fuckheads were planning on doing to her, so..."

Delaney looked dead at him. "You think it was an accident, shithead? An accident that the fucking welding shop and house outside Durham burned down? With everybody in them?" She threw the paper on the table in front of him. The article headline "Fourteen Dead in House Fire" blared out him.

He looked over it disbelievingly.

"You notice anything missing, Asshole? Like the three girls you fuckers kept in cages?"

I could see him realize what Delaney meant.

I kicked his leg to get his attention. "We have a few questions we want answered."

"Wait." Delaney rummaged through her backpack. "I have... lineman's pliers. A propane torch... this..." She pulled a bizarre kludge of auto parts wired to a short plank and put it on the table.

"What the hell is that?"

She twisted her mouth doubtfully. "An electrical shock thingy. If it works. I took an alternator and..."

"Where the fuck did you learn how to do that?"

"You have a book with a brown cover in Sally's garage."

"Jesus. That's a Spetsnatz field interrogation manual. It's in Russian. You don't even read English very well."

"I said 'if it works.' Shit. There were a lot of pictures. They had a littler battery on theirs, though."

I shrugged. "I guess we'll find out."

The Asshole stared at me from the chair. "Look I know you're not gonna..." He was cut off by his own scream as Delaney jammed her electric nightmare into the side of his head with a sharp crackling sound.

I shoved her back. "Jesus, Delaney."

She thrust her chin out defiantly, eyes flashing, ready for an argument.

He turned to look at her disbelievingly and I could see a scorch mark on his scalp. "You bitch..."

I cuffed him hard across the back of the head. "Shut the fuck up." I shook my head at Delaney. "Not in the head. You'll scramble whatever Asswipe uses instead of brains and he won't be able to answer any questions. Kidneys, liver, arms, legs, testicles, the sciatic nerve, maybe the soles of his feet, just not his head. He has to be able to talk."

"Oh. Sorry. I didn't think of that. At least we know it works, though."

I shrugged at the Asshole. "See, no empathy at all."

Delaney studied him like she was looking at a bug. "Where's this, sy... sy... the nerve thingy?"

"The back of his thigh, it's kinda hard to get to, but we can..."

"Wait! Jesus. You're fucking crazy!"

I backhanded him hard. "Watch your fucking language, Asshole, there's a kid here."

He shook his head to clear it. "What do you want?"

"Why are you coming after Delaney?"

"I don't know, Manny set it up. We were supposed to just kill her and dump her, but Manny had a... a customer who wanted a girl like her. Really young. He likes them fresh but broken in and scared. I never met him or heard his name but he wanted them messed up; the more terrified, the better. We've done it before, but this time I was just supposed to cap her ass and get gone."

Delaney lunged and drove her prod into his side. Maybe I let that happen that time. I waved her back.

"Who the fuck is Manny?"

"Manuel Ortiz." He caught his breath and nodded toward the newspaper. "Third from the top on the second column of pictures."

"Shit. And you don't know anything? Like who or why?"

He shook his head.

"Fuck it then. He's all yours Delaney."

He looked up in panic. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait goddammit! I was supposed to call a number and tell them when it was done so we could get the other half of the money."

"Not Manny?"

"No, just some guy."

"Okay, here's the deal then. You call and set up a meeting. Tell him you got the girl, but Manny is dead and you want the other half of the money."

"What if he won't meet?"

"Then I step out to get lunch for an hour and leave you with a girl your crew tried to rape, torture and murder. I have no fucking idea what she'll do, but I'm betting you won't enjoy it. I'd be really fucking convincing if I were you."

I untied one hand and let him use his phone.

The conversation was very short, and the guy on the other end agreed to meet him without any argument in one of the smaller, less frequented state parks in a few hours.

Asshole didn't seem to realize what a bad sign that was and I didn't bother explaining that he might have been better off taking his chances with Delaney. Might.

I ordered pizza while we waited; Delaney looked at me like I was crazy when I asked what type he liked and got him one of his own.

After we got to the park, I took his phone and put it in the inside chest pocket of his jacket with an unopened Allen wrench box.

I let him out of the trunk and held the .45 on him. "Put the jacket on and zip it up."

He eyed me suspiciously while he did it. "What now?"

"Here's the deal. Feel that thing in your jacket pocket? There's not much explosive in that thing, but more than enough to kill you. You give us any trouble and one of us will push the button. Try to run, try to take off the jacket, try to talk to a cop. Boom. We will be watching."

We watched with binoculars from an overlook while he waited near the trail. Joggers went past him infrequently, but it was quiet for a long while. I'm sure most of the joggers who went by him were convinced he was there for a drug deal, but that's hardly rare in the parks anymore.

I finally saw what I was looking for. A jogger who'd come by earlier passed him from behind.

We heard the flat snap of the small handgun as Asshole crumpled to the ground.

"Let's go, we need to follow him from the parking lot."

Delaney moved sluggishly to her feet, almost in shock. "No. We don't. That was Dave something or other. He worked on my Dad's campaign. He still works for him."

I stopped. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. "Let's get back to the cabin then."

She dragged down to the parking lot, head down, listless and dragging her feet.

As we pulled out, she looked up. "You knew he'd be killed, didn't you? That's why you let him have the kind of pizza he wanted. That 'last meal' thing."

"I thought it might happen, it was too easy to set up the meeting."

"Fuck him. He deserved it." I could hear a little of her spirit coming back.

"He deserved a lot worse."

A quick, painless death was better than the Asshole should have had after what he'd done, but nobody ever said life was supposed to be fair. That wasn't what Delaney was brooding over as she sat quietly for the whole two hours back to the cabin.

When we got back to the cabin, she went to her room wordlessly, and I just waited for Sheree to get back from work. As Sheree came in, she started to ask what had happened but I shook my head and silently mouthed, "Later."

When she heard Sheree arrive, Delaney trudged out in pajamas, red-eyed and sniffing, dragging her blanket and a pillow. "I know it isn't Friday, but... can we have a Movie Night tonight?"

Sheree took one look and nodded. "Get a fire started, Les. I'm getting my pajamas on and grabbin' a blanket."

After Delaney had finally fallen asleep on the couch next to us, I explained to Sheree what had happened.

Sheree pushed a little hair out of Delaney's face. "This isn't going to stop, is it?"

"Not if I'm right. Not until I make it stop. I've got some guesses but I'm not sure exactly why. I'm damn sure going to find out."

She watched Delaney sleep for a minute. "The cops won't be any help, not on this. They might sort it out after, but that'd be too late for her."

I kissed the top of Sheree's head. "She needs to stay here with you this time. You were right she had to have a chance to really fight back, it's in her nature. She needed that. But this part... this part isn't for her to do. This is my job."

"I think she knows that. This is the first time I've ever seen her like this."

I nodded, running my fingers through Sheree's hair.

We just sat for a while. Sheree studied Delaney's sleeping face, then looked up at me with a steady gaze. "You do what you gotta do, Les. Nobody comes after our little girl."

*****

It wasn't hard to find him at all.

The office building Dave Cunningham worked in had security guards, cameras and too many people to count going in and out at all hours.

His sleek new apartment building had a great view, very nice amenities, like a weight room, a pool and a sauna. What it didn't have was good security or very many tenants, yet.

I gave Dave a couple days to relax, then grabbed a clipboard, some plain blue coveralls and a jacket.

I knocked on his thirtieth-floor apartment door.

"Yeah, what is it?"

I looked at my clipboard. "David, um, Cunningham?"

"Yes."

I'm with Mark's Glass, gotta see if we have to replace one of your windows."

"It's a brand-new building.

"Yeah, well, code says one window has to be tempered glass. The code required tempered or laminate glass for floor to ceiling windows like yours. Builder screwed it up all over the place, used only laminate. We're just going to swap some of them out. Safety requirements, you know?"

Dave looked back at his windows. "Safety?"

"Yeah, Laminate is really hard for fire fighters to break out, so the tempered glass is used to allow them entry. They have special hammers or something with hard ceramic tips. Metal hammers don't do so well on tempered glass; the ceramic ones shatter it right out."

I pulled my sunglasses out of my pocket and held them up, then rotated them sideways until black bars appeared on the widow to the right. "See those lines? Temper marks, you can see them with polarized glass. I just need to get the specs on that window and I'll be out of your hair."

He stepped back and let me in. "I didn't know that."

"Yeah, nobody does. Teenagers figured out the ceramic thing, though. Break the ceramic off spark plugs to bust out the side windows on cars. Call 'em ninja rocks. Some kind of physics thing."

He blinked. "That's actually kind of interesting."

"Yeah, it is, isn't it? Let me show you something really cool." I pulled the .45 out of my jacket and leveled it at him. He gawped in shock. "Hands where I can see them, Jackass. Keep quiet."

I sat him down at his desk. "You and I are going to have long talk about why the fuck you're trying to have Delaney killed."

He wasn't particularly brave. I promised him if he cooperated I wouldn't hold him for the police. He just wanted a head start to get away. Dave Cunningham explained everything. Little of it was surprising or particularly original.

I had him take thorough notes on his computer.

After we were done, I felt the ceramic shards in my pocket. "Let me show you a cool trick, Dave."

*****

State Senator Charles Morris stormed in, flicked his desk lamp on and threw his briefcase down in obvious annoyance at a really long day. I let him sit down at his desk and waited while he arranged the few things on it "just so."

"Having a bad day, Chuck?"

He face went pale as soon as he saw me sitting in the wingback chair in the corner of his office. He yanked the top drawer open instantly and I could hear his manicured fingernails scrabble against bare wood.

"It's not there." I held the handgun up. "Springfield XD-S. In .45. Not a bad little gun." I pulled the magazine and cleared it. "You really should keep a round in the chute if you plan to use in for self-defense in the office. Don't worry, I'll give it back. I promise."

"What do you want, Lester?"

"We need to talk, Chuck." I leaned back. "This is really kind of fucked up. I mean, you took my wife and my daughters, but we've never even been in the same room at the same time. Until now."

I could see him decide to play it cool. "What could we have to talk about? Charlotte dropped you and moved up, your kids dropped you and moved up."

"I don't know, 'up' is kind of relative." I studied him, watching tiny beads of sweat form on his upper lip. "You're gonna hate prison, Chucky." As he recoiled from the thought, I drove on. "Soft hands, soft mouth, soft, well, probably everything. They're gonna fuckin' love you there. I'll bet you're gonna be wearing a mop-head wig and Kool-Aid make-up in a week. You'll be awful pretty. I hear they like to knock all the teeth out of the pretty ones so they can't bite down."

He turned a bit green and started to reach for the phone. "I..."

"Don't bother. Cops are already on the way. Dave is dead. Poor man couldn't handle the guilt. Did a thirty-story dive out his apartment window. Looked like a fucking full-gainer to me, but I never really watched the Olympics much. Except for women's beach volleyball." I shrugged. "Who wouldn't watch that? Dave hit that rain grate walkway outside his building. The one women keep catching their high heels in? Looked like he went through a food processor. Morgue team probably had to use a sponge-mop to pick him up."

I could see him calculating and a hint of a smile signaled that he'd reached an obvious conclusion. "Too bad. He must have been up to no good."

"Oh, he was. He thought that maybe if Delaney died at the hands of a fucking gang in a failed kidnapping, you'd get a massive surge in sympathy votes. The election would be a walk-over." I thumbed rounds out of magazine and dropped them in my shirt pocket; there were little metallic clinking noises each time I dropped a bullet in. "The gang just thought they could find a way to make money off of her instead. Getting paid twice for the same shit. That's the problem with amateurs, no focus, ya know? It all went wrong when Charlotte put a tracker in her phone and sent me after her. But her death could still be milked for political capital, so he pushed the gang to finish the job. They'd already taken half the money, anyway."

Charles stared at me evenly. "If he's dead, then that's that, isn't it, Lester? It's over."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you? But Dave sent an email just before he jumped. To you, talking about how murdering Delaney was a bad idea and that both of you were wrong about it. He went on and on about how guilty he felt about it. How you'd come up with the idea when you learned he had a friend who was a gang member. That might not have been so bad, but he accidently sent it to Tara, too. Same last name, it's an easy mistake." I held the last bullet up and studied it.

"You son of a bitch. You sent that email."

I shrugged. "Doesn't really matter, does it? They'll look into it and everything, and I mean every-fucking-thing, will come out." I put that last bullet back in the magazine. "What I don't understand is how you can just fucking decide to kill her."

His eyes reflected nothing but hate. "She isn't mine, I had a vasectomy. Charlotte and I 'entertained' a lot with the Senior Partners, and she ended up pregnant."

"Dave told me. He talked a lot before he jumped. Had a lot to get off his chest. Nice little firm you've got there, Shitweasel. And you brought Tara into it? I ought to fucking kill you just for that."

He held his hands up defensively. "Nothing like that has happened with her, she isn't senior enough yet."

"You mean that your little crew of fucksticks aren't sure Tara wouldn't lodge a complaint or sue the firm yet." I shook my head. "I can eat fuckin' roadkill, but breathing the same air with you turns my stomach. I know why you convinced Charlotte not to abort Delaney. I think Dave called it 'optics.' Nice happy family pictures make you more electable. Only she wasn't the daughter you needed, was she?"

"She was embarrassing. Stupid, undisciplined. She spent more time in suspension than in school. She was a goddamn nightmare. She's no daughter of mine."

I felt rage boil up. "You really think it's all about blood and who donated sperm? But you're fuckin' right about that, after all. She isn't your daughter. She's mine now."

I tossed the empty gun down on the desk in front of him and held the magazine up. "One bullet, Chuck. That's what I'm offering you. One. Fucking. Bullet. The police are probably on their way here already. Once they get here, it's all over. You can't run. Tara's here and she knows everything, right down to how you promised a couple senior partners you'd pave the way for her to 'entertain' them. She's already with Charlotte. By now, they have your money locked down so fucking tight you'll have to blow a drunk for a quarter to make a phone call."

He looked down the hall with dawning horror.

I grinned and leaned over him. "So here's your fucking choice, you piece of shit. Shoot me in the back when I walk out and spend the rest of your life warming some giant Aryan Nation lifer motherfucker's bed until you die of AIDS. Or, maybe whatever is left of the NCWB catches up to you first. Your shit got a fuckload of them killed. I'm pretty sure I've taught them not to fuck with me, so they'll want to make an example of you. They'll do it real slow."