I took my lean-over peek and froze in the middle of it: Little Moe lay duct taped to a hospital gurney in the center of a big plastic drop cloth, which was spread across the floor with one edges duct-taped onto the wall partway up as a splash guard. On the floor next to the drop cloth was an open-topped case box half filled with bottles of bleach.
A wheeled operating room table was parked next to Little Moe’s gurney. On it were implements, most of them surgical but some toolbox stuff as well; they looked well cared for; somebody loved them. They glowed with the evidence of their owner’s affections; they smelled of honing oil even through the stench of disinfectant filling the room.
Little Moe saw me right off, his brown eyes pleading above the duct-tape gag. I stood back up straight and leaned against the wall, out of the doorway’s line of sight. I’d seen no sign of the Driver.
A creak came from the direction of the garage and I gulped, but it was only the old house settling.
Fuck this shit, I thought. It’s Clint Eastwood time.
I pushed off the wall and marched through that door with my war hammer up by my ear and at the ready, feeling wild.
That was the instant he made his move. He’d been plastered against the wall inside the left side of the doorway like a big lizard, waiting.
If I’d still had both eyes I would have seen him in my peripheral vision. As it was the only warning I had was Little Moe grunting hysterically past his gag as he pointed to my left with his jerking chin and flashing eyes.
The Driver lunged in, grabbed the wrist of my free hand in a vise-like grip and stabbed a hunting knife up towards my belly in a disemboweling thrust, a snarling grimace on his blond-haired blur of a face. A cry of dismay blurted out of me as I smashed the heavy hammer down onto his knife hand, snapping his wrist bones and redirecting the blade so it missed my stomach and stabbed into my thigh. I hissed at the knife’s bite, and the Driver squealed at his broken wrist as he let go of me and pulled away.
A nonstop ululating yell came out of me as I lunged after him, clumsily due to the knife in my leg. I brought the hammer down onto him once, twice, thrice. I snarled each time the head embedded itself into his chest, shattering his ribs with a series of hollow thuds like I was destroying an overripe watermelon.
The Driver’s arms wind-milled as he thrashed backward to crash spread-eagle on the floor, hitting hard enough I felt the impact through the soles of my feet. Chief Jansen’s breath came in harsh gargling coughs as he lay there with the blond wig dangling off his head, drops of blood spewing from his mouth with each gasp. His left hand pawed at the caved-in dents on his upper chest; his right arm was draped across his waist, the broken wrist bent out of true.
I hovered over Jansen for a few seconds with the hammer, ready to smack him again if he had any more fight in him. But the Chief was through. He was done.
Next to where he lay was a table filled with enough prescription bottles to medicate a zoo. I recognized the names on some of them from prison: Zidovudine and Combivir, Immunitin and Intelence, Agenerase and Fuzeon; a hard-core end run AIDS medication cocktail. I finally understood the Driver’s reckless desperation, why Jansen had been spiraling downward into final rampage.
I turned and limped to Little Moe, then peeled the tape from across his mouth. “How you doing, little man?” I asked.
“Okay,” he whispered, watching Jansen gurgle on the floor.
I shifted over to block Little Moe’s view of the Driver’s mewling agonies and plucked at the duct tape around his wrists. “I’m here to take you home, Little Moe,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be making too many promises if I were you,” Reese said behind me.