Murder Mountain: An Eli Quinn Short Mystery / Prequel Read online

  “Oh, man. Nawww.” Markus’s head swayed some more. “C’mon, man. I can’t do this. I swore.”

  I pulled a couple big bills out of my wallet and handed them to him.

  “Three more of those if you tell me what I need to know,” I said. “Then five more once I know the information was accurate. Lie to me and you’ll think Bart Toon was a pussycat.”

  Markus Simper spoke and smoked for twenty minutes. He told me about Cherry Pie and Apple Pie, two premium strains of cannabis Toon was known for. We pulled out the topo map I’d bought at the local sporting goods store, and he showed me the location of DeRouin’s pot farm and his camp, about six miles apart.

  “What’s he do on a typical day?”

  “Hikes over at daybreak to tend the plants, works until around noon, man, then hikes back.”

  “Stays at the camp every night?”

  “Far as I know, man. Comes into town every week or two for fertilizer and food.”

  “Why’s he let you out there?”

  “Lotta work. Especially at harvest. And then he disappears for weeks at a time. I take care of things. He trusts me, knows I won’t talk.”

  “He pay you?”

  Markus laughed, then coughed. He pointed at the joint he was about to finish.

  I gave him two more hundreds, and promised myself to track him down when this was over and give him the other five. If he didn’t lie. And if I survived.

  Chapter 11

  ~ ~ ~

  The redwoods gave way to spindly alder trees as the trail, coming in from the east, flattened out and widened into a small clearing. A rough dirt road led out the south end and down the mountain. The clearing was hard-packed dirt with patches of well-trod grass.

  DeRouin’s white camper trailer was straight out of the sixties, rounded on the back end, seeming to lean forward in the front, aluminum trim all around. A broad light-blue stripe ran down the side. The wheels were rusty white, the tires old with faded whitewalls. Two concrete blocks supported the tongue, and another one served as a step to the side door.

  A simple tent sat behind the camper. His pickup was silver, a Chevy from the eighties, paint splotchy and peeling on the hood. Either we’d beat him to the camp or he was waiting for us and I’d be dead shortly. I had no plan for the latter scenario, so I assumed the former and moved quickly. It was an easy choice. I had nothing to lose. In the grand scheme of things, DeRouin had taken from me the one thing that mattered most. There was no point to my life if I knew he was out there somewhere living his.

  Solo stayed at my heel as we ran into the camp. I stopped, looked around, found the other trail leading into the clearing from the north. If DeRouin wasn’t here somewhere yet, I expected him any moment on that trail.

  We hid on the south side of the trailer. Nothing fancy about the plan. DeRouin would come into the clearing. I’d lean out from behind the trailer and shoot him. I’d never shot anyone before. This wasn’t the time to think about that. My hands shook. I closed my eyes, took deep breaths, squeezed my fists— moving the gun to my left hand then back to my right, then focused on relaxing my shoulders. One last deep breath and I had my body under control.

  DeRouin would be out of breath. Another advantage.

  Solo sat, panting. We waited. A full minute went by. I saw DeRouin before I heard him. He was jogging, alert, gun out. I didn’t know the command for Solo to be quiet, so I just held my palm up. Solo had caught his breath by now, too, done his own version of doggie Zen. He put his tongue away and was silent.

  DeRouin slowed to a walk. He was maybe forty yards out. No question it was him. About six-two, an inch taller than me. Strong jaw and narrow features as I’d seen in pictures. He’d taken his shirt off, had it tied around his waist. He was strong, wiry. The only difference from his photos was the hair, stringy and hanging almost to his shoulders.

  I couldn’t get a clear shot from my position behind the trailer. Poor planning. Thirty yards. The longer I waited, the easier the shot would be. For either of us.

  When DeRouin was twenty yards out, I stepped out from behind the trailer and made my first big mistake as a journeyman hunter of men.

  “DeRouin!” I shouted. I don’t know why I did it. No other words came out. I wasn’t making a speech. I hadn’t meant to warn him. I just wanted to kill this man, plain and simple. But something inside me had screwed up, and in the fraction of a split second it took me to realize my error and pull the trigger, DeRouin, former Army private sniper, wife killer, long-running fugitive, raised his pistol and fired. In that insanity of slow motion that occurs during the most stressful, deadly situations, I saw his body jerk up and to the side and his gun move in the opposite direction, down and diagonal. My shot hit him in the left shoulder, throwing his aim off ever so slightly, causing his bullet to graze my outer thigh. I knew he’d aimed for my head.

  DeRouin flew backward, pistol flying to the side. I still had hold of mine, trained on him for a second shot.

  Solo didn’t wait for a command. He was out from behind the trailer, around me and on top of DeRouin before he could reach for his gun. Solo barked just once. DeRouin tried to get up and Solo bit down hard on his forearm. I heard the bone break. DeRouin screamed, deep and primal. I’d been warned that Solo could be overly aggressive. It didn’t bother me one bit. He’d never shown any aggression toward another human in the six months he’d been with me, until now. He understood the situation, reacting with just enough force, I realized, and maybe a little more.

  Careful not to shoot Solo, I pointed my gun skyward. My wound was painful, not life-threatening. I limped as quickly as I could, picked up DeRouin’s gun, emptied the shells and stuffed it into my belt. I called Solo off. He backed up two feet, growling, and sat.

  DeRouin took several deep breaths, then spat his words through gritted teeth. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Name’s Quinn,” I said. “Eli Quinn. You killed my wife. Six months ago.”

  “Ha,” he said. “That redheaded bitch at the rally.”

  I raised the gun, pointed it at his head.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Been running my whole life. Makes no difference to me. Probably gonna bleed out anyway.”

  “Why,” I said. “Why her?”

  He spat. Took a couple deep breaths, wincing. “She was the one standing there when the moment arrived.”

  “What moment?”

  “When I decided to do it. When nobody was looking.”

  I lowered the gun.

  “You chased me all this time, all this way?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Damn, you’re good,” he said. “Nobody knew Bartholomew Toon was me. Who told you where I was. I’ll kill the motherfucker.”

  “That’s it? Random. You just picked someone out of the crowd?”

  “Helluva challenge to kill someone in a crowd like that and get away with it. And I’d never killed a woman before.”

  It would have been so easy. I wanted to kill him. My hands itched to do it on their own, make use of my fourth-degree black belt. Almost every ounce of me wanted to kill him. Except for the tiny part that wouldn’t pull the trigger. Something to do with the difference between doing the necessary thing, maybe the right thing, whatever that was, and committing murder. Solo glanced at me and barked once. His bark jolted me out of the moment.

  “So do it, asshole. Otherwise I’ll go in that trailer, get another gun, shoot your fucking balls off.”

  Solo wouldn’t let that happen. And I was grateful he was on my team. Because at that moment my whole body turned cold and I started to shiver. My hands were shaking, the gun wavering. I bent to my knees and set the gun on the ground. What I had done—months of searching, the chasing, the shooting—it all seemed right. But wanting to kill him, even as he lay helpless. I didn’t recognize that part of me. I had almost done it. A split second, the bark of a dog. My body convulsed and I leaned over and threw up. Solo kept watch over Devin DeRouin while I heaved myself dry.
/>   “Fuckin’ wuss,” DeRouin said when I was done.

  I had a retort in mind. I had several. A million things I wanted to say to this lousy excuse of a human. None of them meant anything now. I’d done what I had to do, didn’t do what I could’ve done. My mind was running on fumes, my body spent, leg on fire. Everything was too muddled, too complex, to know how I felt about it all. I’d sort things out later. One thought emerged, crystal clear: I didn’t ever want to look at this man again, never wanted to speak his name again.

  I pulled out my iPhone and called the one man who could roust a search and rescue faster than anyone, even from another state: my friend Jack Beachum, posse man extraordinaire from the small town of Pleasant, Arizona.

  “Beach,” I said. “I need a favor.”

  Chapter 12

  ~ ~ ~

  The ghost I’d been tracking down for six months was airlifted to a hospital in Arcata and was under close watch by the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office. Beach phoned to tell me that a local deputy said DeRouin had undergone surgery, was in intensive care, and was expected to recover. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  I’d taken a painful ride down the mountain in a deputy’s SUV, passed out as we came into the hospital, then spent the night one floor above DeRouin, nowhere near as bad off. A painful cleaning of the wound, a few stitches and a pile of Percocet. Every rule in the hospital had been broken to let Solo stay with me. I was told genuine fear had something to do with it.

  By afternoon the fog had lifted and a cool breeze smelling of the tide wafted through the open window of my hospital room.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “Gin and tonic,” I said.

  “Tanqueray,” she said, standing next to the bed, close enough to touch. “Slice of lime.”

  Solo had already gotten an epic ear scratch from Sam, and he sat looking at her, head cocked sideways, hanging on her every word.

  “You lost a lot of blood,” she said.

  “Only room for one on the chopper.”

  “And you chose him.”

  I shrugged. Sam blew a little air out in an almost-laugh. She understood.

  “You didn’t have to fly up here,” I said.

  “You were shot.”

  “Just grazed me.”

  “I didn’t have anything else to do.”

  I smiled. It was a modest effort, but my best in six months. Sam tucked a strand of her long dark hair behind an ear. She put her hands in her back pockets. I tried to hold the smile, but images of Jess flooded my mind, replaced in an instant by DeRouin’s face, a look of surprise I only just now noticed, just as I pulled the trigger.

  Few moments in my thirty-plus years on this earth had ever been so bittersweet, so complex. I closed my eyes and let the smile go.

  “You didn’t kill him,” Sam said.

  I was still sorting out how I felt about that. I shook my head and breathed the sea air deeply. Opened my eyes and stared at Samantha Marcos for a good long stretch.

  “I wanted to,” I said, looking away.

  “Understandable.” She said it immediately and with certainty, as if I’d stated the most obvious thing in the world.

  I met her gaze again. “That doesn’t scare you?”

  “Quinn, listen. You’re a complex man. You try to do the right thing. I know that. But life doesn’t always make it easy. Given the situation,” she flicked her head sideways, toward Murder Mountain, “I’d say you used just enough force. And if you’d have used more, I would’ve understood.”

  I thought about that. It sounded right. The fog in my head began to clear. Jess was still gone. Nothing, nobody could replace Jess. I couldn’t bring her back, and I couldn’t erase her memories or the pain that came with them. I didn’t know what was next, and I had no clue if I could face it, but I’d plugged a hole in my soul, stuck a finger in the dike of my emotions. Couldn’t be sure it would hold, but I felt better in this moment, right now, than I had since that lousy excuse of a human killed my wife.

  “Sam?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robert Roy Britt is the author of Closure, Drone and First Kill, the first three books in the Eli Quinn detective mystery series, and the short prequel Murder Mountain. His thriller 5 Days to Landfall will publish Nov 14, 2016. He lives in Arizona with his wife, their youngest son and two dogs. You can visit his website at robertroybritt.com or follow him on Facebook or Twitter. Or sign up for his newsletter.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book was made better by numerous editors and enthusiastic critics, and I’m grateful to them all. My favorite beta reader (she knows who she is) has done it again. I’m indebted as always to my sharp-eyed editor Laura Kraft, who spots stuff big and small. Ten thanks to my fellow authors at the Internet Writing Workshop—Mark, Virginia, Silvia, Judith, Lee, Elma, Bob, Michele, Francene and Elaine—for invaluable critiques and support. And special thanks to J.T. Patterson for feedback at a crucial stage in the development of this story.

  Copyright © 2016 by Robert Roy Britt

  RobertRoyBritt.com

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion of it may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, which is highly encouraged. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

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  Published in the United States of America

  Cover by Trent Design

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are imaginary or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, places, companies or events is totally coincidental.