Jack Stone - Wild Justice (16 page)

Stone nodded.

Lilley shook her head, confused. “But you said the man you wanted was the sheriff.”

Stone nodded again. “But I can’t get to the sheriff until I get rid of Dodd. He’s part of this too, Lilley. I’m going to destroy him, and then I’m going after the sheriff. It’s like a cancer. Every trace of it needs to be cut out, or else it might come back. And I don’t want that to happen.”

Lilley said nothing. Stone put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close against his chest. “And besides, Dodd won’t let this rest until it’s over. Now the war has started, one of us has to end it. That’s going to be me.”

Lilley pulled away from Stone. She sat up straight. Took a deep breath. “Then I’m coming with you.”

Stone shook his head. “No. You’re not. I’m taking you to the motel.”

Lilley got to her feet, her face defiant. “No. I’m coming with you. The motel is the first place Hank Dodd and the sheriff will look for me, Jack. I’m going to be in danger if I’m not with you.”

Stone shook his head again, but with less commitment. “You won’t be safe if you’re with me, Lilley.”

“I’ll be safer,” she said defiantly. Then she reached out and took his hand in hers. “I know what you’re going to do now, Jack. You’ve got my gun. You’re going after those men – and you’re going after Hank Dodd. Aren’t you?”

Stone smiled. “No,” he said.
“I’m going to get Hank Dodd to come to me.”

Twenty-Six
.

They cruised into town, Stone driving slowly along Main Street. The blue SUV was gone, the street deserted. The neon sign in the window of ‘Stan’s Bar’ had been turned off. The building was dark and empty. The street was dark and empty.

But there were lights burning at the police station.

Stone drove past slowly, went all the way past the town limits and parked up on the shoulder of the road. Kept the engine idling. The Chevy gurgled and rattled as he sat there thinking.

“The police have been alerted,” Lilley said, sitting small and quiet in the passenger seat.
She had her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Stone knew she was coming to terms with what had happened back at her house. The realization was setting in; she had shot a man, and the enormity of what she had done was sitting heavy on her shoulders. “Did you notice that lights were on at the police station?”

Stone nodded. “My bet is that Dodd has called the sherif
f. Told him what has happened. So now he knows we’re onto him. They’re probably deciding how they can make me go away – permanently.”

Lilley said nothing. Just sat in the dark thinking. Stone was
watching her. Lilley seemed unaware of his scrutiny. Her preoccupation was absolute. Stone wondered what she was thinking – wondered what dark thoughts were smoldering there.

“I didn’t see any cars out front of the station,” he said at last. “Where does the sheriff park?”

Lilley shrugged. “There is a driveway down the side of the station house.”

Stone nodded.
“Would Hank Dodd use that driveway?”

“Maybe,” Lilley shrugged again. “He is the sheriff’s brother-in- law.”

Stone nodded again. Didn’t say anything else for a couple of minutes.

“If this is a network run by Dodd and the sheriff, it’s unlikely the deputies from the diner are involved. This is the sort of thing they would keep to themselves,” Stone said. “So my guess is the two deputies are clean.”

More silence. Lilley and Stone frowning. Lilley seemed lost in her own thoughts. Stone’s mind was working on a plan.

“I need to take a look at the driveway alongside the police station,” he said at last. “I need to see whose cars are there. ‘What kind of car does Dodd drive? Do you know?”

“Sure,” Lilley said, seeming to be drawn back to the conversation from a long way away. “A white Taurus.”

Stone was surprised. He hadn’t figured Dodd for a Taurus owner. “And the sheriff?”

Lilley shrugged again. She had changed into jeans and t-shirt. Shrugging the way she did kept drawing Stone’s attention to her breasts. “He drives a Crown Vic police car,” she said. “It has a black nudge bar on the front.”

Stone nodded. The cars the deputies had arrived at the diner in were Crown Vic’s too – but Stone hadn’t remembered seeing nudge bars on the front of either car.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to the police station to take a look around. “If Dodd and the sheriff are the only ones there – as I suspect they are – then I’m going to need to separate them. I can’t take them both at once. I need Dodd isolated, and then I need to deal with the sheriff.”

“How, Jack? How will you do that?”

Stone shrugged. “One thing at a time,” he said elusively. “The first step is to see who is at the station. The second is to take Hank Dodd down. The third step is to confront the sheriff.”

Lilley sat back in the darkness and her voice was small and almost fragile in the night.

“What do you want me to do?”

Stone tuned to her. He smiled.

“Get your cell phone,” he said. “I need you to phone someone for me.”

Twenty-Seven
.

Stone walked back to the station, leaving Lilley parked up on the roadside, and out of danger. As he walked, Stone sensed a looming change in the world around him. He glanced up at the sky. The slice of moon was blanketed in dark cloud, making the night heavy and black, and there was a kind of charge in the air – a kind of electricity. Stone kept walking, eyes on the ground in front of his feet, but his senses heightened.

He heard a distant rumble of thunder that seemed to roll across the sky and shake the air. The world seemed fraught with the fury that was gathering. The cloud front was boiling overhead, racing across the night sky from the west and dragging a skirt of cold damp air beneath it. It swept past Stone, and the sudden plunge in temperature made him shiver. Then, with a wild shriek, the wind was upon him, flattening his shirt against his chest, and turning the air into a driving spray of sand and loose gravel.

Stone lowered his head, walked on into the night. In the distance, veiled by the dust-filled wind he could see the glow of a light at the police station. He walked faster. A bolt of lightning ripped the clouds apart in a wicked jagged flash of blue. Stone counted. Three seconds later came the shuddering bass rumble of a thunderclap, seeming to sound directly overhead in an avalanche of sound that numbed his eardrums.

The entrance to the police station was lit by a
single fluorescent strip light. Stone edged off the road, cutting into the soft sand and scrub. He approached the building from the side and saw a dense, solid mass of black as he grew closer.

The property line was marked by a solid red brick wall
, maybe six feet high towards the rear of the police station, and gradually stepping down towards the front. He approached with no real concern for stealth; the howling wind and the looming storm clouds covered the sight and sound of him.

He approached the wall and went slowly towards the front of the property until the bricks stepped down two rows and suddenly he could see over – and into the grounds of the police station. Just a few feet away, parked on a concrete driveway were three vehicles; a Crown Vic police car, the white Taurus of Hank Dodd, and finally the old Dodge flatbed he had seen less than an hour earlier parked across West Street. The Dodge was the last vehicle to have arrived. That meant the sheriff and Hank Dodd had been there for some time.

Stone looked beyond the vehicles to the side wall of the station house. He could see a light in a window. A dull glow behind closed blinds. The window was near the front of the building, maybe the sheriff’s office. There was an awning over the window.

Stone could picture the scene inside the station; the sheriff leaning back in his big office chair, behind a wide des
k while Dodd hunched forward, urgent and angry. He could imagine the two guys from the flatbed truck standing back in the corner, waiting for instructions. Or maybe the guy with the leg wound stretched out on a bench somewhere with the big guy trying to stem the flow of blood. He pictured the sheriff jangling keys and unlocking the weapons locker, handing out shotguns and giving orders to hunt Jack Stone down and kill him.

Only they didn’t know Jack Stone was hunting them.

Stone turned his attention back to the scene in front of him. The Dodge in the driveway meant that one or both of the gunmen were probably inside. He didn’t know how badly Lilley had wounded the guy with the pistol. He was either inside with his partner, or he was on his way to the hospital at Rapture. So that meant three, or maybe four men.

He needed to separate them. He needed a diversion.

He wanted Dodd out of the way.

And
then he wanted the sheriff alone.

He watched and waited for several minutes with the absolute patience of the predator,
then he followed the wall towards the road until it had finally stepped down in height to waist level. He went over it. Landed quietly in a crouch. Crept back down the driveway and looked inside the shattered passenger window of the flatbed.

There was
broken glass everywhere. It was littered across the torn upholstery of the bench seat, and he could see glittering pieces like tiny diamonds down in the foot well. The truck was old. It smelled of greasy oil and stale tobacco – and fresh blood. He eased the door handle up and pulled the door open slowly. The old door groaned wide on rusted squeaking hinges. Stone grimaced. Froze. Waited for the count of twenty. Saw no sign of movement from inside the building. Saw no new lights coming on, and heard no sudden sounds of alarm.

He stepped up onto the running board and
then hoisted himself across the seat until he was in behind the wheel. There was a crumpled packet of Camels on the dashboard next to a pocket-book of matches. Stone smiled and stuffed the matches into his pocket.
Why do half a job when I can do it properly?

The key was still in the ignition. It was sticky with blood.

Stone counted slowly to three – enough time to rehearse in his mind the next few minutes of action.

Outside the storm was finally breaking. It began to rain. Fat heavy drops splashed against the
windshield, and the wind gave one long last shriek of warning – and then rain filled the sky. Not just a shower – a downpour.

Stone turned the key. The Dodge wheezed, coughed, and then came alive. The whole cabin shuddered. Stone revved the engine then threw the truck into reverse. It juddered back out through the driveway, the rear
tires spinning and bouncing as they fought for traction on the smooth wet concrete.

The truck came out onto Main Street
backwards like it had been shot from a cannon. It careered across both lanes, and Stone slammed on the brakes. Stomped down on the clutch, crunched the truck into gear. Bounced back over the footpath in front of the police station in a big looping turn, and then aimed the truck at the window of ‘Stan’s Bar’ directly across the road.

“This is
gonna hurt,” he said.

He floored the accelerator and the old truck leaped forward, gathering momentum quickly. Stone held the wheel, braced his arms,
tensed his body. Gritted his teeth and prepared for the impact.

The truck mounted the curb
, the engine howling. Stone was hurled forward. The steering wheel dug into his ribs, but he held on, kept his foot planted to the floor and the truck kept on going. It surged across the sidewalk, clipped a park bench, tearing off one of the fenders, and then hammered into the front of the bar in a suicidal explosion of glass and brick and timber and engine block.

Stone felt his body thrown forward and
heaved up at the same instant. He felt the top of his head crack against the roof of the cabin, and then he was being hurled back into the seat. The windshield folded in on him, and the steering wheel kicked out of his hands, twisting savagely. He could taste the warm coppery tang of blood in his mouth and the air was thick with dust and fumes.

He groaned.

The truck had crashed through the low brick wall and brought the shop-front window shattering down on top of it. The timber door had been smashed to pieces as the truck impaled itself three feet into the building.

Stone shook his head, ignored the fierce pain, and
lay down across the bench seat. He tucked his legs until his knees touched his chin, and then kicked out at the driver-side of the truck. The door flew open, smashed back against its hinges and then sagged. Stone heaved himself upright and clambered out of the wrecked cabin.

He could hear shrill al
arms sounding in the background. Probably the security systems of surrounding shops that had been triggered by the crunching collision. He scrambled down into the wreckage and went to the bar. Broken glass and shattered shards of brick and timber crunched underfoot.

He found a bottle of brandy
on a glass shelf behind the bar. He smashed the bottle against the edge of the counter-top and spilled the contents over the timber. Fumbled with the pocket book of matches and set the whole thing alight.