Bad Signs by R.J. Ellory
“Get the fucking money,” he told Digger.
Digger grabbed the canvas cash bag that Jean Rissick had filled from the tellers’ stations. Later, when he counted it, there would be seven hundred and forty-three dollars. More money than he’d ever seen in his life. In that moment all he was aware of was Danny Leggett still standing there.
“What about him?” he asked Earl.
Earl seemed to notice him for the first time. He smiled. “You wanna kill him?”
Digger felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He looked at the gun in his hand, at the man ahead of him. Then he looked back at Earl.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Earl said. He gave the shotgun to Digger, snatched Chester Bartlett’s handgun, didn’t hesitate for a second. Danny Leggett didn’t have time to even raise his hand or his voice in protest. Earl aimed the gun at the young man’s forehead and pulled the trigger. He didn’t fall. Not immediately. There he stood, a neat punctuation mark centering his forehead, a fist-sized mess at the back, and he just stood there—those same staring eyes, that same open mouth.
Earl laughed, and then he took one step back and let fly with an almighty kick to the man’s knees. He fell like a tree then. A single drop, no flailing arms, no roll. Boom, down, like a stone.
Earl, still hanging on to the collar of Laurette’s dress, looked at Digger disapprovingly and said, “Am I going to have to take care of everything myself?”
He gave Digger the revolver, took back the shotgun, didn’t wait for a response.
Digger stood there, blood spatter on his hands and face, across the front of his shirt, his eyes wide, his mouth open, a vague sense of disconnection and disorientation permeating everything he thought and felt. Before it had been different—in Pinal, at Marana. Both times he’d been looking the other way when Earl had done his killing. It hadn’t connected. Not like this. This was up close. Right up close in front of him. The man was alive. The man was dead. That was all it took. And it could have been him. He— Elliott Danziger—could have done it. Then he would have known if killing someone was the realest thing in the world.
Earl was out the front door onto the steps, Laurette as a shield, the shotgun pointing out beneath her armpit, his voice clearly audible to Sheriff Jim Wheland and his three deputies.
“Hey there, motherfuckers! Back up and get the fuck outta my line of sight. We’re taking a car and this girl and you ain’t gonna get anyplace near us for ten fucking miles!”
Jim Wheland came up from behind the open car door and stood looking at Earl Sheridan. It was Jim Wheland who saw the younger one come out behind Sheridan. Now he had two to contend with, and that doubled the odds on this going all to hell and back again.
“Well, son, I don’t know that I can let you do that,” he said, and his voice was measured and calm and matter-of-fact. The one with the hostage looked crazy, like there was some mad light burning right through him. The younger one just looked terrified.
“Hell, Sheriff, you got some stainless-steel cojones there, ain’tcha? And what the hell makes you think you have a choice in the matter?”
Wheland smiled.
“Fuck you!” Earl said. “I don’t wanna fuckin’ listen to you anyway.”
Wheland took a shotgun load to the shoulder. He would survive, but at the time he believed he wouldn’t. The force of the thing threw him back against the rear fender of the car and down to the ground. He was out like a light, and would stay in the dark until it was all over.
It was in that moment that Digger knew he wasn’t going to make it out of there alive. He dropped to the ground and started shuffling sideways. He used the fact that all eyes were on either Earl Sheridan or Jim Wheland to get alongside the sheriff’s car and flatten himself against it. He had the money bag in his left hand, the empty revolver in the right. It was then that he saw Wheland’s .38. Wheland must have been holding it when he was hit. It was no more than three or four feet from where Digger crouched, and using the bag as a sufficient weight to drag the thing back to him he was soon armed once more.
Earl got Laurette out ahead of him. He had one barrel empty, one loaded, and he guided her to the door of the sheriff’s car. Digger got in back, had Wheland’s gun in his hand, kept his eyes on the three deputies, all of them staring back at Earl Sheridan with deer-in-headlights eyes.
“Digger!”
“Back of the car, Earl,” Digger replied.
Earl lost connection for a moment. He turned for a split second to push Laurette Tannahill into the rear of Wheland’s car, and it was in that split second that he was alone, unshielded, defenseless. The deputy that shot Earl Sheridan was Alvin Froom’s brother-in-law. A head taller, ten pounds heavier, a good deal more handsome, Lewis Petri would now carry the legend for the rest of his days. The man that shot Earl Sheridan. Like his own Liberty Valance thing going on. Alvin would always be the one who fainted in the bank, no more capable of securing a paper bag than a financial institution. The love of a good, heavy wife couldn’t hold him from the shame he felt. He would later drink himself into forgetfulness and his wife would divorce him for a skinnier guy called Stanley Osler.
Earl span sideways and careened off the wing of the car. It was a neck wound, deep enough to bleed him out if he was left unattended.
Digger knew it was now or never. He vaulted the back of the driver’s seat, and had gunned the car into life before Earl had a chance to move. Laurette Tannahill, merely a couple of years older than Jean Rissick and almost as pretty, was in the backseat. It was her presence alone that prevented a barrage of gunfire from the deputies. Already there was trouble enough. They didn’t need a dead girl, this time courtesy of the Wellton Sheriff’s Department.
Digger floored the sheriff’s car. He went in the direction the car had been pointing—back toward Casa Grande along the Tucson-bound I-8.
Behind him two deputies stood over Earl Sheridan while the third went into the bank to survey the carnage. Four dead, two unconscious, the sheriff hit, Earl Sheridan too. The second robber on the run with a hostage. And it was only Monday afternoon.
Outside, Lewis Petri and the second deputy, Reggie Sawyer, kneeled beside Earl Sheridan. The wound in his throat was a good one. Blood wasn’t leaking, it was pumping. Not a great deal at a time, but there was little doubt that this was the end of the road.
“Who was your accomplice?” Petri asked. “Who took the girl?”
Earl smiled. “F-fuck y-you,” he gasped. The pain hit him in that moment, and then there was something else. That mad light in his eyes, something malign and wicked, and he tried to smile with his facial muscles closing down and it came out like a sneer.
“I’ll t-tell y-you,” he stuttered. “F-fuckin’ ass-assh-holes …” He tried to turn his head but he couldn’t. “Uuugghhh,” he exhaled, a sound not unlike that uttered by June Fauser as she was launched across the bank toward the counters.
“Fu-fuckin’ co-cock-cock-su-suckers,” he said, and then he grabbed the collar of Lewis Petri’s shirt and pulled him closer. “Yo-you wa-wanna know hi-his n-name?”
“Just tell us who took the girl,” Lewis said.
“Too-took the g-girl, sure. Bu-but we did th-that guy back in P-Pinal County, and th-those guys i-in Marana … and my friend … my friend, he di-did th-that swee-sweetass b-bitch in Twe-Twentynine Palms. He fu-fucked her g-good and th-then he killed her … and he killed the other kid as well, the Da-Danziger kid …”
“His name?” Petri said. “What is his name?”
“His name is Cla-Clarence,” Earl said. “Clarence Lu-Luckman took your fu-fucking girl …”
Of all things to say, this was his last. Earl Sheridan died less than a minute later. It was 1:43 p.m., afternoon of Monday, November 23, and he went with a smile on his blood-spattered face, sick bastard that he was.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Two in the afternoon, walking for the best part of five hours, resting every once in a while in silence. They’d covered twelve miles, and not once had
Still the girl had not spoken.
She did look at him, and in her expression was malice and bitterness and fear and sex. Perhaps the sex only to deny it if he asked.
He didn’t know what to think of her, and then after three or four miles she just stopped dead in her tracks, sat down at the edge of the road, and bawled like a baby. She did not make that sound, that wailing and heartbreaking sound that she had made back at the store. Clay didn’t know if he could have handled that again. This time she seemed to fold into a tight ball, her knees up to her chest, her arms around them, her face hidden as she sobbed her little heart out for a good fifteen minutes. And then, almost as unexpectedly as it had started, she got up, wiped her face, and carried on walking. He reckoned the guy back in the store must have been her father. She was all tore up in rags and tatters. She was a mess. Whoever the hell she was, she wasn’t talking. Most people had a whole suitcase of problems, and they would just share them out like candies. This one was different. This one had her own thoughts, and after four or five hours of nothing Clay figured it was best to leave her alone with them. She would talk in her own time, or she would not.
Clay himself, well, he was hot and irritated. He could feel things moving inside his shirt collar. He would have given his eye-teeth and most everything else for a lemonade stand. He had the coins from the store at Marana, and he would have bought a whole pitcher and shared it with the girl. But there was nothing. Other folks’ houses—some of them along the roadside and some of them set back; people working in the fields here and there; a crowd of women coming out of the trees, and then cutting back in like they’d forgotten something. Things went on the way they did, and he and the girl were just invisible people walking through the midst of it. Where he was going, why he was going there, hell, he didn’t know, but he was going anyway.
Clay thought about his brother. He thought about Earl Sheridan. He guessed they’d be doing something dark and dangerous someplace. Earl would kill some more people, rob some more money, and he’d wind up dead or disappeared. He hoped that would happen, he really did. He figured that that’d be as good a humanitarian act as could be perpetrated by one human being for another. Earl seemed hell-bent on turning Digger into an awkward mess of horrors, and the sooner Earl was put out of everyone’s misery the better. Maybe then there would be a chance for Digger. He would get himself straight, get it all figured out right again. Clay doubted it, but there was no harm in hoping.
Another mile elapsed and Clay started talking. He just opened his mouth and started talking, just assumed that the girl was listening and let it go.
“That thing back there. That was a hell of a thing. You know who those people were? The older one was Earl Sheridan. He was supposed to be hanged somewhere down south but he sprang me and the other one from a juvenile place at Hesperia and took us along as hostages. He stole a car, and he robbed money, and he didn’t only kill those folks back at Marana, he killed some others too. A waitress in a diner in Twentynine Palms. I didn’t see him kill her, but I know he did. I think he raped her too. Anyway, I’ve never seen such trouble in all my life and he did that all in just the few days since he took us along with him. And the other one. That was Elliott Danziger. And he’s my half brother. Same mother, different father, and only a year and a half between us. Everyone calls him Digger. He was a good brother, a real good brother, but I think he had a weakness in his mind and now he’s under the influence of that other crazy son of a bitch. He sort of latched on to Sheridan, and Sheridan is one of them people that always needs to have someone looking up to them or they don’t feel like no one. I think if he doesn’t get away from Sheridan then he’s gonna wind up just like him, ’cause I reckon there’s some people that are just born bad, you know? I don’t know what you think about that, but that’s what I reckon. There’s some people that are just born bad, and it don’t matter what you say or do they’re always gonna be bad. Earl Sheridan is like that. And then there are some people who just fall under the influence of the bad ones and becomes bad themselves. On their own, well, they seem to be fine, but hitch them up with a bad one and they all go to hell together. Digger is like the second type of person. Me, on the other hand, I was born under a dark star. You know what that is? Well, I’ll tell you. A dark star is like a conjunction of the planets. You know what conjunction means? It means a combination of events or circumstances. Well, when I was born I believe there was a conjunction of the planets. One planet was one place and one planet was someplace else, and then there were a whole bunch yet someplace else again. And they have a magnetic force. That’s what they do, the planets. They have a magnetic force or something and they control the tides and whatever. Anyways, they was out there in whatever positions, and I was born just at the wrong moment, and that’s why my name is Luckman, ’cause I ain’t never gonna get none …”
Clay paused, watching the girl. She just went on walking, but there was something about the way she was walking that was different. Perhaps it was his imagination, but she seemed a little less tense, her shoulders a little less rigid. Maybe the sound of his voice soothed her. Maybe she thought he was as crazy as Earl and Digger, and now—by saying what he was saying—he was demonstrating that he wasn’t completely off his head. He figured there was nothing to lose by carrying on.
“Anyways, I’ve spent many a night looking up into the sky and searching for my dark star. I know it’s out there. I even gave it a name. You wanna know what I called it? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s called Hesperion. I called it that after the juvie place I was sent to. I went to one place called Barstow, and it was real bad there, and then they sent me to this new place at Hesperia, and I figured that it had to be better than Barstow and it wasn’t. It was then that I knew there was a dark star. It was then that I knew there was never going to be anything good for me. So I called it Hesperion, and it kinda sounds like Latin or Greek or some other old language. Anyway, make sense or not, that’s what I called it. And it follows me. It watches over me. It makes sure that I don’t ever really get a good deal on nothin’. That’s its job. Make sure Clarence Luckman is never a lucky man.”
He fell quiet again. He had never voiced these thoughts. He wondered whether he would make things worse now that he had spoken them out loud. Would the bad luck intensify, or would it diminish? Was it strengthened or weakened by sharing?
He stayed quiet for a while. He asked the girl if she was hungry. She reached out her hand for the canvas bag, took out a moon pie and some pork rinds.
“Don’t matter a damn who you are, you can’t live on moon pies and pork rinds,” Clay said. “You should eat some cheese or something. Some ham, you know? You should have some protein in you.”
The girl stopped, her mouth crammed with pie, her fist filled with rinds, and she looked at him like a disapproving schoolteacher.
Clay smiled. “Hell, you sure are as pretty as I don’t know what, but you have a sour face on you sometimes. But considerin’ what’s happened I can’t fault you for that. You go on and eat whatever you wanna eat. Sure as hell ain’t none of my business.”
The girl turned and resumed walking. Clay followed on behind her, a pace and a half behind.
If it was going to be like this all the way to Tucson, then so be it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
By three o’clock Garth Nixon and Ronald Koenig understood what had happened. The report from Deputy Sheriff Lewis Petri at Wellton had been precise and specific. Earl Sheridan was dead. Clarence Luckman, one of the hostages from Hesperia, had escaped. This Luckman kid had apparently killed Elliott Danziger, his own half brother, was responsible for the death of a waitress in Twentynine Palms, had colluded and collaborated with Sheridan in the deaths of Lester Cabot at the Pinal County Mercantile, and then Harvey Warren and an unidentified male at the Marana Convenience Store & Gas Station. They had also wounded Sheriff J
Koenig and Nixon now had a real honest-to-God trans-state, interstate, multiple homicide killing spree on their hands.
All they knew was that Clarence Luckman and Laurette Tannahill had driven away along the I-8. If he kept to that road he would pass through Gila Bend, Casa Grande, and then have the choice to go back toward Phoenix, or head toward Tucson. If he had any smarts at all he would have ditched the sheriff’s car immediately, and already be driving another stolen vehicle. They were uncertain as to whether he was armed, but presumed he was. Sheriff Wheland’s sidearm had yet to be located. And if Luckman wasn’t armed, well, he soon would be. A fugitive of this type would not go far without securing further weapons.
Contact was made with the Hesperia Juvenile Correction Facility. Governor Tom Young was asked to send over all documentation, photographs, fingerprints, and related information to the FBI Field Office at San Bernardino. They would courier the files to the field office at Anaheim. Anaheim would ensure that the information was forwarded not only to Koenig and Nixon, but also to whatever official bodies were brought in to collaborate on this case. Right now they had a manhunt on their hands. Clarence Luckman was a wanted killer, a fugitive, a runaway, and—as of this moment—it looked like he was going to be one hell of a lot more trouble than Earl Sheridan had ever been. A shoot-to-kill policy would be implemented almost immediately, the wires would burn red hot with dispatches and county-wide alerts, and if this Luckman character was not secured within twenty-four hours then the news would have to go public. Radio warnings, announcements on the television, whatever it took to secure Luckman would be activated. This was the biggest thing either Nixon or Koenig had seen in their respective histories, and—beyond such cases possessing the potential to make or break careers—there were lives at stake. Enough people had died. There would be no more.