An Empty Hell Read online

  “Okay. I knew you weren’t going to get a Bud Light. How’s that?”

  Herrick shrugged.

  “Do I really have to tell you how to do your job? The more you get to know Donne inside and out, the easier it’ll be to guess where he’s gone. Does he have family?”

  “His brother-in-law bailed town. His sister was gone before that. Donne doesn’t seem to have much. Just a lot of loss. And a lot of violence. You’ve seen the news stories.”

  Susan shook her head. “There’s more. He’s gotta know people around here.”

  Herrick shrugged again. “Why did you really ask me out tonight? You said no earlier.”

  Sarah took another sip of mojito. A short one. “I’m impressed with you.”

  “How so?”

  “Two of your players came in to talk to me, about how great practice is. About how much they believe in you. No one ever does that with me about teachers.”

  “Did you tell them about the time you played basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters?”

  “When I was a kid?” She swirled her glass. “Of course.”

  “Will they run through a wall for me?”

  “You’re a good man, Matt.” Sarah pushed hair over her ear. “I know what you’re doing is important, but these kids, they need you too. Don’t forget about them.”

  Herrick thought about the unmarked phone calls. The fact that he had a cop car circling the school all afternoon.

  “I won’t,” he said. “They’re much more important to me than Jackson Donne.”

  Now if only everyone else cared about other cases, he would be in the clear.

  Sarah knocked back the rest of her drink. “All right. Enough of this serious shit. Let’s talk sports or something.”

  “Works for me,” Herrick said. And for the first time in two days, he laughed, and the tension rolled out of his shoulders.

  DONNE FOUND himself outside the motel again. It was just as empty, caution tape still flapping in the wind.

  After crunching across the gravel parking lot, Donne went back into the lobby. He wanted a phone, but not a cell phone. Being tracked was easy these days, GPS, triangulating cell phone signals, Facebook. He’d given up cell phones back when he’d moved up here. He had a landline under Tennant’s name. He never used it.

  With the call he was about to make, he didn’t even want to slip up there. Never give anyone a reason to track you, if you can help it.

  Donne found the phone and smiled. Did star 69 even work anymore? He tried it and the phone rang. This was a shot in the dark. A hell of a shot in the dark. But leave nothing unturned. Sometimes overlooking the simplest thing could lead to the biggest slip-ups.

  He counted five rings, then someone picked up. Donne nearly crushed the plastic receiver in his hand.

  “Hello?” A female voice.

  “Hi. I got a call from this number and I’m returning it.”

  “Who is this?”

  He almost said his name. But he forced himself to pause a beat, then said the name of Mario’s motel.

  “Oh! Yes, yes. Thanks for calling me back. Do you have any vacancies for the weekend of February eighteenth?”

  Donne said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. We’re closed that weekend.”

  “But the website says—”

  “Family event.” He hung up.

  Donne took a breath and put his palms flat on the counter. He stared out into the parking lot, as if trying to will another car to appear. None did. But the phone rang. The shrill tone made Donne jump and he nearly knocked the receiver to the ground. He caught it instead and answered.

  “Yes?” An odd response to his greeting.

  Donne took a deep breath and then said, “I’m looking for Mario. He needs to come home safely.”

  “He doesn’t matter to me.”

  Donne didn’t say thing, trying to figure out what that sentence meant.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  What Mario had said on that answering machine message must have been true.

  “I want to talk to Mario.”

  “Your best bet is to turn yourself in.”

  “I need to know Mario is alive.”

  There was a small chuckle. “Yeah. Okay. He doesn’t matter to me, except that he matters to you. He’s not dead.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Pause. “I don’t think so. I think you’re going to do what I say.”

  “I’m really not.”

  Donne gripped the phone so hard that the skin on his knuckles was taut like a trip wire.

  “You don’t understand.” The voice turned almost to a growl. “Everyone does what I say.”

  “Let me talk to Mario.”

  “I wasn’t the guy who came into the hotel yesterday. When you ran. That wasn’t me.”

  Donne didn’t say anything.

  “Nah. I was waiting down the hill. Knew you were around, but my brother and me, we like to have fun.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That phone cordless?”

  “Yeah.”

  Donne looked at the picture of the woman again. It was crooked. And he had straightened it yesterday. He remembered doing it, when he looked at the number on the back.

  “Take the phone and go to room 107.”

  Donne didn’t bother to respond with a negative. It wasn’t worth arguing anymore.

  “I’m going,” he said.

  He took the phone and was back on the gravel. The wind dug into his cheeks and ears, to the point where the cold burned him. He found room 107 and approached the door. That’s when the wind caught the smell and took it to him.

  “No,” Donne said.

  “I didn’t hear you open the door yet. You don’t know what you’re going to find.”

  “I know.”

  “You sure?”

  Donne turned the doorknob with his free hand and pushed the door open. He barely had to take a step inside. The acidic smell burned his nose and brought tears to his eyes, as if he was cutting an onion.

  On the ground, with one bullet wound in his chest, was a man in a black suit. One of the men Donne saw yesterday.

  “I can tell by your breathing you see him. That is a cop, Detective Arlen Cricket. From down the road. His colleagues are going to be pissed. Told you it was smarter to turn yourself in. And wait until they find out it was you.”

  Donne wanted to throw the phone away.

  “Or you can turn yourself in to me.”

  Donne took a breath and nearly choked on the smell. He really didn’t have any choice at all.

  “Come get me,” he said. “I’m yours.”

  DONNE HEARD the car before he saw it. His thigh muscles tensed and he was ready to run if he had to. The Feds weren’t going to be the ones to take him down. Not with Leo Carver’s name still floating out there.

  He had to talk to Mario, and if getting caught by the lunatic on the phone was the way to do it, so be it.

  A black Cadillac rolled into the lot as Donne watched. It came to a stop near room 107. Donne checked the parking lot entrance. No other cars. The Cadillac idled. Donne counted to ten. The Cadillac still idled.

  After two deep breaths, Donne stepped out of the room. The smell was still palpable, but at least the air felt fresher. The driver’s door opened and a man got out. Tall, dark hair, James Bond–like. He even wore a black suit. He came around the front of the car, his finger trailing along the hood. Donne felt air catch in his throat.

  The man stopped about three feet from Donne. He stuck out his right hand. Donne ignored the gesture.

  “Hello. My name is Steve Mosley. I’m the man who’s going to kill you,” he said. “Just not yet.”

  Donne rubbed his beard.

  “Mario,” he said. “I want to see him.”

  “You look different,” Steve said. “From the pictures we have, anyway. Must have been how I missed you. I mean, you were thirty feet away from me. That’s never happened before.”

 
“I asked to see Mario.”

  Steve shook his head. “Actually you demanded.”

  “Then you ought to listen.”

  Donne tensed the moment Steve put his hands in his pockets. But he only leaned against the car. Nothing else.

  “You’re not scared of me,” Steve said.

  “You should be scared of me.” Donne sniffled, trying to clear the odor of death out of his nostrils. “You know what I’ve done.”

  Steve laughed. Outright guffawed. “Done? Please, Jackson. I’ve killed men far tougher than you. You’re an ant without a hill. I’m going to step on you.”

  “I’m still waiting to see Mario.”

  Sighing, Steve said, “Oh, you’re no fun.”

  He came out of his pockets with the car keys and pressed a button. The tinted back window rolled down halfway. Donne peered inside. Mario sat there, face bloodied, hands behind his back, staring at his knees. His eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell in regular rhythm.

  “You didn’t have to beat him up,” Donne said.

  “You’re right.” He shrugged and pressed another button on the car keys. Donne heard the lock pop. “Get in.”

  The wind whipped past them. It was Donne’s first whiff of clean air in the last ten minutes. He breathed it in, savored it. Steve tapped his foot, it gravel bouncing each time he did so. Donne nodded and opened the back door.

  He slid into the seat next to Mario and pulled the door shut. The sound of it jarred Mario. He blinked and lifted his head up, catching Donne’s eye.

  “Oh, you idiot,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Donne said. “We have to talk.”

  “No.” Mario blinked several times. “Did you get my goddamn voice mail?”

  “I did.”

  “And you’re still here.” He chewed his lower lip, as if he was actually sucking blood from one of his cuts. “You really are an idiot.”

  “You said that already. How bad are you hurt?”

  Mario nodded to the front seat. “Slick up there isn’t exactly a doctor. Me neither. But everything hurts pretty bad.”

  Steve got into the car and started the engine. He didn’t say a word, just accelerated out of the parking lot.

  “How long’s the ride?” Donne asked Mario.

  “You got some time,” Steve said from the front seat. “Feel free to catch up, because after this ride, the fun ends for you.”

  They hit a bump and Donne bounced off the seat. He grabbed the headrest of the front seat to steady himself, then sat back and fastened his seat belt. Mario still chewed on his lip.

  “I talked to Doris,” Donne said.

  “Oh, Christ. What did she tell you?”

  “About your girl.”

  Mario shook his head. “I like you, Jackson. Why are you digging?”

  “Because Doris was worried about you. She asked me to help. She was scared. So here I am, in the back of the car, apparently on my way to my death.”

  Steve laughed from the front seat. “You can edit out the ‘apparently.’”

  Donne ignored him again.

  “You don’t have to know about my past,” Mario said. “You don’t have to know about me. I’m not important.”

  “You are to Doris. And—something she said—you are to me.”

  The car took a hard left and Donne looked out his window. He tried to gauge where they were and where they were going, but it was just a mass of trees and a stream far off through them. It all blended together. It was Vermont and that was all he knew.

  “What did she say?” Mario asked. His chin was stained with blood now.

  “What is your connection to Leo Carver?” Donne noted Steve turned his head a quarter turn before turning back to the road.

  “Jesus Christ,” Mario said.

  “Talk to me, Mario.”

  “What did Doris tell you?”

  “He was my boss and then I put him in prison. I haven’t heard his name in years. And now, hundreds of miles away from where that happened—from where I’m from—his name comes up. It’s too coincidental.”

  Mario’s face twisted and he started shaking. His nostrils flared and then he started screaming.

  But not at Donne.

  “You son of a bitch! What did you do? What did you say to her? You were supposed to leave her out of this! You promised! I could have gotten him here. How dare you!”

  Steve pulled the car over and put it in park. It all happened so quickly, Donne didn’t have time to react. Steve turned around, brandishing a Glock. He aimed it at Mario and pulled the trigger. Mario’s body jolted forward and all the air went out of him. Blood splattered against Donne’s face, against the front seat, and against Steve. Steve turned back and put the car back in drive.

  “God damn it,” he said. “Now I have to clean this thing.”

  THE WARM blood on Donne’s face did not match the white-hot fire burning up his insides. He leaned forward toward Steve, grabbing the back of the passenger seat. Steve put the barrel of the gun against Donne’s nose. It burned his skin. Donne jolted back.

  “Stay there,” Steve said.

  Donne’s nerve endings jangled and his intestines twisted into knots so complicated, Boy Scouts would be impressed. He wanted to scream, but held it in.

  “What?” Steve accelerated away from the curb. “That’s what I do with a gun. It’s not a toy.”

  Mario’s skin had begun to turn gray, and a smell filled the backseat of the car. Not the same smell as the one in the hotel room, this was more acidic and sour. The combined smell of cordite and rotten egg. He gurgled, a death rattle clicking from deep within his chest. Meanwhile, the wound stopped spurting blood. Donne’s face and hands were sticky.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “My job.”

  “You said you were going to kill me.” Donne fought the urge to return his gaze to Mario. Instead he stared forward, trying to see out the windshield.

  “When we get back.”

  “Back where?”

  “New Jersey. There are a lot of people who want your head back there. Don’t you watch the news?” Steve’s matter-of-fact tone scratched Donne’s ears like a cheese grater.

  “Who are you?”

  “I told you.” Steve hung a left with enough force that Donne almost fell into Mario’s body. The smell was intensifying.

  “You’re a killer.” Two days ago he was having a conversation about hops and barley. But now he was talking about trained killers.

  This is your life, a voice in his brain said. It always comes back to this. What was it his father used to say? Violence begets violence. Once it begins, the cycle never ends. He always thought his dad was talking about abuse in a relationship. Now he doubted it.

  “No. I’m a legitimate businessman. I track down criminals. Which reminds me, I could go for some bacon.”

  Donne had no idea what the guy was talking about.

  He sat back and wiped at his face with his sleeve. He looked down at his cuffs to find a smear of red. It was hard to see into the rearview mirror, which was tilted away from him, but if Mario’s body was any indication, Donne was in bad shape.

  He turned toward Mario, actually had to force himself. The body’s head hung forward on his chest, a stream of blood dripping from his lip like drool. His eyes were wide open, staring into some horrifying abyss.

  He pictured Doris sitting on the couch waiting for news, some shred of hope that Donne had found Mario and was bringing him back alive. But good news would never come.

  Violence begets violence.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me. Of us. The Mosleys. We’re quite popular in the circles you travel.”

  “You’re acting like you’re a band.”

  “We have fans.” Steve laughed. “And even a message board, come to think of it. It’s weird.”

  “Sounds psychotic.”

  Steve shrugged and then hung a hard right. Donne bumped into the door. He thought about pulling the handle and tuckin
g and rolling. He reached up and grabbed it.

  “It’s child locked, dude. I’m not an idiot,” Steve said. “And at this speed? You’ll be a pizza. And where will you go anyway? There’s a dead cop back at Mario’s and your fingerprints are probably everywhere.”

  “Why don’t you just kill me now? You killed Mario. Why am I still alive?”

  Steve slowed down to make another turn. Donne tried to get a sense of how long they’d been in the car, but the gunshot threw off his sense of timing. His brain was scrambled right now, and he was fighting just to keep his composure. Banter and conversation with this nut job was all that was holding it together for him.

  “There are certain rules I have to abide by to get paid.”

  “Are you taking me back into Jersey right now?”

  Steve laughed again. It was like he was a studio audience member, and this was just a good old sitcom. If only it could be wrapped up in twenty-two minutes. Donne started to shake. He tensed his muscles to fight it, but it was no use.

  “We have a car to clean. A body to dump. I hear you’re good at that.”

  “Like I’m going to help you.”

  Steve nodded. “You’re going to do anything I say.”

  “You’re just going to kill me.”

  “I have a way with people. You think all those stories you heard from Doris today were true? You think Mario didn’t know this was coming? I’ve been planning this for a while.”

  Steve pulled up to a large building. What looked like a ski lodge built with logs. There weren’t any other cars in sight.

  “This is how I work. People do what I say. Mario and Doris? I used them to set you up.”

  HERRICK LEFT his car in the parking lot across from the bar and walked to the Light Rail. Sarah had assured him she was okay to drive back to Nutley, gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and was gone. She’d only had the two over their three-hour conversation. Herrick felt the warmth from the booze in his cheeks, and thought the train would be smarter.

  Sometimes he made the right move.

  He sat on the Light Rail train, waiting for it to depart from the station. The lights of Manhattan reflected off the window—a wonderful view—but Herrick vetoed it, instead picturing Sarah scratching her chin while she thought of a clever answer to his question. He smiled to himself. Must have been the bourbon. The woman across from him peeked over the Kindle she was reading and rolled her eyes.