Too Close to Home

When I saw Randy flip his phone open, I hit the brakes and nosed the car into the curb. I was out the door in a second, had Randy’s open, leaned in across the empty seat and grabbed for the phone in his hand.

“Jesus, Cutter, knock it off!” he shouted as we wrestled.

Once I had the phone, I withdrew from the backseat, slammed the door, and pitched the gadget as far as I could into an empty lot.

“Goddamn it, Cutter!” Randy shouted, opening his door. “I can’t do it! I can’t face that guy! The son of a bitch’ll kill me! You know he will!”

I shoved him back into the car and was ready to slam the door but he kicked it back open again. I dove into the backseat, on top of him, grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket.

I dragged him across the seat, Randy flailing at me the whole way, and when I had him on the other side of the car I lifted him up and slammed him up against the window. The back of his head hit the glass hard and all of a sudden he stopped squirming and struggling. His eyelids fluttered.

Christ, I thought, I’ve killed him.

But he was doing some low-level moaning, and was at least conscious enough to reach a hand to the back of his head to feel his wound as he slid down into the upholstery.

Confident that Randy was not going to make a run for it in the next minute or so, I got out of the backseat and settled in again behind the wheel.

As I put the town car in drive, a very bad feeling washed over me. I knew that not only was it very likely I was delivering Randall Finley into the hands of his executioner, I was delivering myself as well.

But I’d sensed that Drew was being straight when he told me he’d spare Ellen and Derek if I did what he asked.

If I had to sacrifice Randy’s life, and my own, to save my wife and son, then that was what I was going to have to do.

I was pulling into my own driveway when Randy fully realized where he was. He sat bolt upright in the back, looked out the window, saw the Langley house.

“Goddamn it, Cutter,” he said.

My pickup and trailer were parked in the lane only a short ways down from the road, so we were going to have to walk in. Maybe that had been Drew’s plan, to have Derek block the driveway to allow Drew plenty of time to see anyone, cops in particular, approaching the place.

“How’s your head?” I asked, stopping the car and turning around in the seat.

Randy rubbed it. “You goddamn son of a bitch, you attacked me,” he said.

“You’re able to form complete sentences,” I said, “so it doesn’t sound like you sustained any brain damage.”

“I can’t go in there,” he said.

“You’re going in there,” I told him.

“Okay, okay,” Randy said, doing what he did best, which was try to put a good spin on the situation. “Okay, let me just think for a minute.”

I waited.

“Let’s say I meet with this guy, I talk to him, I persuade him to give himself up. That’ll look good, right? Congressional candidate gets killer to surrender. That would work.”

“That sounds good, Randy,” I said.

“I pulled it off back there, right?” he asked, referring to his recent speech. “Maybe I can do it again.” But his voice lacked confidence this time.

“You’re the man, Randy,” I said.

“And if I can do that, maybe get this guy to surrender, the press won’t be so inclined to put a negative spin on that other stuff.” He ran his hand nervously over his mouth. “And it gets better.”

“What do you mean?”

“This girl, this guy’s daughter? The hooker?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, she’s dead, right? She got sick and died? Isn’t that what you told me?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s good news, right? It’s not like she’s going to be able to give details of when we hooked up. You know what else? Everything I said in my speech, I can just deny the whole thing. Who’s to say otherwise? I just say I was forced, I had to make that statement, that I was doing it to save your wife and kid. Even if this nutjob gets out of this alive, it’s just hearsay, right? What his daughter told him? Well, that’s not going to stand up in court, am I right? And then Lance, he’s no longer around, either, so he’s not going to be able to say shit about this.”

Randy was turning into a blathering idiot.

“This could actually work to my advantage. People see this guy, me, willing to jeopardize his career to save his driver’s family. That’s going to play very well, don’t you think?”

“You’re forgetting there’s one other witness, Randy,” I said. He appeared baffled. “Who’s that?”

“Me,” I said. “Remember, I was there? When you were with Sherry Underwood? She bit your dick? I punched you in the nose?”

I saw his face come close to a grin. “Oh, I’m not worried about you, Cutter. I already got your promise to be discreet. You forget about that?”

I said nothing.

“I got an idea,” Randy said. “Why don’t you go in first, sound him out, show him your little phone video, get a sense of what he’s thinking, then come back out here and fill me in.”

By that time, Randy would have thumbed a ride back into Promise Falls.

“I don’t think so,” I said.