A few minutes later, he walked outside and around to the area from where Donohue had brought in more stock. He zipped up his jacket against the chilly wind. A big Dodge Ram was parked there. Attached to it was a small trailer. The truck was locked, the trailer padlocked. As Rogers watched from a distance, Donohue came out, unlocked the trailer, took out a few more boxes, locked the trailer back up, and went inside the tent again. Rogers moved forward, glad to have confirmed which vehicle was Donohue’s.
In the bed of the Ford F-150 parked next to Donohue’s ride, Rogers saw some cardboard boxes and old, rusted tools. None of it was any use to him. What he wanted was still inside the tent. He retreated to his car, pulled it around to that side of the tent, and waited.
Light grew to night. And the temperature continued to drop.
But time and cold meant nothing to him.
His stomach had rumbled once, and then he rubbed his head, focused, and the feelings of hunger vanished.
People streamed in and out of the tent for hours, until finally the stream grew to a trickle. And then the parking lot emptied. And then the dealers started taking down their booths and packing up what they hadn’t sold.
Rogers watched as Donohue came out carrying several boxes. One of them, he noted, was the distinctive case of the M11-B. He wasn’t surprised no one had bought it. Most of the potential purchasers he’d seen inside were working stiffs. He doubted any of them had four grand to throw down on a fancy-ass collector’s pistol.
He rubbed his shoulder where Donohue had slapped him twice. He did not like people jacking him around like that. It was an insult.
Donohue finished packing and drove off. Rogers followed.
Donohue pulled into the drive-through of a McDonald’s and bought some food.
Rogers had seen the man’s Pennsylvania license plates. Maybe he was headed home.
Donohue then made it easy for Rogers. Instead of pulling over and eating in the parking lot of the Mickey D’s, he headed on down the road. About a mile or so along he pulled off down a dirt road and into what looked to be an old picnic area.
Rogers cut the lights on his ride and slowly followed the truck. It turned off onto another dirt road and pulled to a stop.
Rogers didn’t make that turn. He would finish this on foot.
Donohue switched off his lights and then must have cracked his window, because Rogers could hear music coming from the truck’s radio.
Rogers killed his engine and got quietly out of his car. He approached dead center of the trailer so Donohue would not be able to glimpse him in the side mirrors.
He reached the door of the trailer. The padlock was a solid-looking Yale with a key entry instead of a combo. The metal clasp it was inserted through was stainless steel and about a half inch thick. It was designed, of course, so that all of the screw points on the two plates were covered when the door was closed and the lock engaged. But the designers had not counted on someone with Rogers’s strength. He gripped the clasp and slowly pulled it and the support screws right out of the wood.
He quietly went inside the trailer and shone his light around. He saw the box and hefted it in one hand.
He stepped outside of the trailer.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Rogers stopped. Next he heard the click of a gun hammer being drawn back.
Using his peripheral vision, he could see Donohue standing next to the side of the trailer, gun in hand, a paper napkin stuck to the crotch of his pants.
“You can just put that down right now, asshole.”
Rogers set the box down. Out of sight of Donohue, he slipped the knife from its holder.
“Good, now I can shoot your ass and you won’t drop the box and damage that gun, dickhead.”
Rogers pivoted on one foot, swung his arm back and around, and slammed the knife into Donohue. It went right through the center of the big man’s chest and stuck into the wooden wall of the trailer, pinning him there like a moth to a corkboard.
After one long scream, the man died.
And still the screams continued.
For a moment Rogers couldn’t fathom how the dead man could still be making noise, until he looked past the body and saw a small boy leaning out of the truck’s driver’s side, a Happy Meal in his hands, a smudge of ketchup riding on the outside edge of his mouth.
The boy must have been sleeping in the front seat when Rogers had been checking out the truck and trailer.
The boy was looking right at him. But it was dark. He couldn’t possibly—
Rogers’s brain jolted and jerked and misfired under his skull. He had contemplated every possibility except this one.
He had no choice.
He lunged, grabbed the boy’s arm, and pulled him out of the truck. The boy dropped the Happy Meal and was still screaming until Rogers placed a hand over his face. He squirmed and struggled, but as his lungs and brain were deprived of oxygen, his thrashing slowed.
Rogers counted in his head, his gaze not on the boy but on the dead Donohue, probably the boy’s father.
Eight…nine…ten.
As soon as the boy fell limp, Rogers removed his hand. He checked the pulse. It was there. Weak, but the lungs were inflating, the small chest rising and falling.
He was alive.
Rogers stared down at the little boy. The hair was blond, the limbs stick thin. The back of his neck covered in large freckles.
Rogers’s brain misfired again.
What was he doing?
You never left witnesses behind.
You never left anything living behind.
Just finish it. It would only take seconds.
Instead, he put the boy back in the front seat of the truck and closed the door. He pulled his knife free from the dead man and Donohue slumped to the dirt. He wiped it clean on the grass and stuck it back into its holder.
He hefted the box with the gun and ran back to his car, got in, and drove off. He hit the main road and punched the gas.
As he roared down the road he ran his hand over the box containing the M11-B.
A collector’s item.
The vaunted M11.
More than thirty years ago a revolver had been held against his head for five minutes. Only the M11 wasn’t a revolver; it was a semiautomatic with a magazine to hold its bullets.
That’s why Rogers had not simply taken the revolver from the woman he’d killed in the alley.