Slight of Mind, ch 11
Beyond Reason

Mac walked toward the house and stepped up onto the porch. The front door was closed, but the frame was obviously damaged and there was a footprint on the panel of the wood where it had been kicked in. Mac stood to one side and pushed it open.

All inside was a wreck. Mac walked slowly through the debris of what had once been a neat, orderly house. Everything was overturned, broken, or smashed; it was as if a cyclone had moved through each room.

Mac walked through until he came into what once might have been a family room. He squatted down and sifted through a pile of wreckage, where he found a picture frame and a toy. The picture was of a father, mother, and son. The frame was heavy and valuable, but the glass was now smashed and picture shredded. The toy was a small red fire engine that had a tiny ladder which extended but was now badly bent. Mac picked up the engine and tried to bend the ladder back into shape.

"Don't touch that." A shadow emerged from one corner; a man wearing a scowl as black as thunderclouds; John Kelly, a man MacGyver had never personally met, but recognized by Pete's description. He stood among the destruction he had wrought, fists clenched down at his sides. There was a small, ugly gun in one of his hands.

Mac remained where he was, still holding the little truck in his hands. "Looks like they left in a hurry… someone forgot his favorite toy."

"You… you thought… you believed that they were here. They read it in your mind."

Kelly's voice was hoarse, as if he had been screaming.

Mac heard the dangerous anger and hysterical desperation in the man's voice; more than this, he knew just by being so near to him that Kelly had nearly lost grasp of his own reason and humanity. He knew that if he moved—or said—the wrong thing, the man would very likely let his anger loose on Mac.

Mac kept his voice in an easy, matter-of-fact tone, "I used to have a truck like this. The rolling ladder really works—though this one is a little dinged up…"

A wave of disorientation swept through Mac's mind as he held the toy in his hands. Mac nearly dropped the thing as he wobbled on his haunches; he had to throw one hand out to steady himself. His head began to hurt in earnest, but the pain was overridden by the images that were flashing before his mind's eye; he saw small hands pushing the fire engine through fresh-cut grass; he could smell the sharp odor of lawn-clippings and exhaust from the mower and taste it in the air; his knees were damp from kneeling on the ground. A thought crossed his mind that Mom would harass him about the stains on the fabric, though he knew that she wouldn't really be angry… she never got angry, not the way Dad sometimes got—

"Don't touch that!" Kelly insisted. The fist gripping the gun came up a few inches in MacGyver's direction.

Mac blinked and forced his attention back to his own reality. His blood was pounding through his body, belly clenched against nausea; Mac carefully set the toy on the floor. It had felt so real, Mac thought, as if I really were a child playing in the grass…more real than any sensation I've had before! He must be close by!

"They said that you thought they were here," Kelly repeated. "Where are they?"

"Clare's in police custody and Eddie's taking a nap on the lawn," Mac offered, knowing that he was answering the wrong question. He knew he had to keep Kelly's attention on himself until help arrived.

"Not them!" Kelly snarled, "Cath and JJ… where are they?"

"I thought that they were here," Mac said, spreading his arms to indicate the house. The gun came up and centered on him. "Sorry… I was just gesticulating… don't shoot."

"You know where they are! Tell me!"

"Hey… I thought they were here... and that's the truth! Think about it, Kelly … why else would I be here?"

"The Feds are after me… and you work for them! You won't bring me in!"

"That's not my job," Mac said calmly.

"Don't lie to me! They can read people's minds… do things… I've seen the things that they predict happen; they're psychic!"

"Maybe. Or… maybe Clare and Eddie aren't as psychic as they thought they were." Mac gestured around at the ruin of the house. "Are you sure you got the right place?"

"This is the place," Kelly said, his voice shaking. The gun dropped a few inches, and John Kelly took a couple of steps forward; his eyes appeared raw and red. There was a deep gash across the back of the hand he was holding his gun with; he seemed unaware of the drops of blood leaking from the wound, dripping down the barrel to rain onto the debris strewn across the floor. "Tell me where they are, MacGyver. Tell me where I can find my son."

"I can't do that," Mac said. "I don't know."

"You know… you can see them! You've got the power… you can find them!" The gun came up, the black eye of the barrel red-rimmed as Kelly's own.

Mac stepped back, hands held out in a placating gesture. "Kelly… think about what you're doing. You don't really want to hurt them… your own family?"

"Family…" Kelly echoed. "…I'm doing this for the family."

"The Family, you mean," said Mac. "Does the Mob really have more of your loyalty than your own wife and child?"

"Family," Kelly echoed numbly. Mac realized that the man was disoriented… as if intoxicated, or under the influence of some drug. "I'm doing this…" Kelly began to repeat, but then he stopped and stared at Mac. "What makes you think I want to hurt them?"

Mac looked around at the destruction and then back at the man with the gun, thinking, Okay… reason is not going to work with this guy—he's nuts!, and swallowed his first obvious remark. Instead he said, "You know… I got a fire engine like that for Christmas when I was eight years old. I used to play with this all the time… I even slept with it. It had a siren and a flashing light that really worked…"

"Quit stalling." Kelly thumbed back the hammer on the gun; an ugly sound. "The only way you could know what I intend to do is because you've read my mind… and if you can do that, you can find JJ…"

Mac knew that Kelly wasn't bluffing; the man was trying to decide the best place to shoot Mac so that he could still talk for a while before he died, bleeding to death among the debris…

Mac blinked, forcing the vivid premonition out of his thoughts. "I really don't know where they are, Kelly. They are beyond my reach… and yours."

Kelly laughed, mania edging into the raucous sound. "You know that, do you? You can read my mind and tell? Well… you're only half right! I would never hurt JJ… but she betrayed me… she abandoned me!"

"No, you betrayed her," Mac said firmly. "It was your crimes which drove her away from you. She was only trying to protect her son.… you can't blame her for trying to do that."

Kelly's jaw clenched and his eyes went flat and black. "She stole my son from me!" Kelly thrust the gun forward like a punch, firing wildly in MacGyver's direction.

Mac threw himself sharply to his left; he felt something tear into his side with fiery teeth. He hit the floor and kept rolling. He scrambled into the next room, scattering debris, putting the dubious protection of one thin lathe wall between him and Kelly. The folded edge of a large hook-rug tripped him as he tried to get to his feet. Mac kicked it away and pressed himself against the wall, panting, and looked around for a likely escape route. He needed a distraction badly!

At that moment, an odd noise made both men stop and listen. A tinny but distinct noise began to fill the house. The toy fire truck, struck by Mac's foot perhaps as he had rolled across the floor, lay on its battered side emitting the thin siren wail, with little red, blue, and white lights the size of thimbles rotating and flashing.

The sound startled Kelly and he brought the gun around toward the source of the noise. He laughed gratingly when he realized where it was coming from. "I always hated that damn truck! I thought I'd managed to break the stupid noisemaker…"

Mac picked himself up, one hand covering his side just under his right arm where Kelly's bullet had grazed him. The room he found himself in had a wide picture window overlooking the back yard, bordered by a row of invitingly concealing trees—providing Mac could get that far without getting shot again.

He glanced down at himself to assess the damage done. That was when he noticed the door in the floor. It would have been concealed by the rug, except that one corner had been turned back; this is what he had tripped over. If they went down into the basement to hide, there was no way that they could have re-covered the door after they had descended through the hatch. Mac guessed that in his fury and madness, John Kelly must have overlooked it.

Mac was torn between his urge to fly—to leap through the window and run from the gun-toting maniac in the next room—and the knowledge that he couldn't risk letting Kelly discover the trapdoor, beneath which he was now sure that Catherine Kelly and her son were hiding, cowering in fear of the dreadful sounds occurring above their heads.

Slowly, Mac sank back down to the floor, stretching his leg out and carefully flipping the rug back over the door with the toe of his sneaker. His movement was rewarded by the appearance of two large bullet holes, inches from his head; the bullets going right through the wall. Mac closed his eyes and turned his face away from the sting of fragments of plaster and wood.

Mac thought that booming noise of the gun had messed up his ears, and then he realized that the sound of sirens was getting louder—and coming from outside!

Kelly heard the sirens, too; the piercing noises cut through his red fury. Through the doorway of the room where MacGyver went, Kelly could see daylight, the large window with an expanse of lawn and shelterbelt of trees beyond. He fired a couple more blind shots to keep MacGyver's head down, and then he ran for the windows, intent on escape.

Mac did indeed have his head down, but when Kelly went running past, he leaned forward and grabbed the edge of the rug, giving it a hard pull.

Kelly's feet went out from under him as the rug slipped. He threw out his arm to catch himself, the gun flying from his hand. But his momentum was too great; it carried him forward. With a terrific crash, he smashed through the window.

The pane of glass shattered with a thunderous sound. John Kelly had one arm across his face to protect his eyes from flying shards as he went through… but that did not save him from the guillotine-like slabs of glass that fell upon him… with horrible and fatal effect!

MacGyver turned his face away from the sight with a grimace; no amount of first aid could help the man. He backed away and waited for the policemen; they came pouring into the house like a blue tide; he let it flow around him. He was too weary to do more than lean against the wall and breathe. One police officer approached MacGyver cautiously, one hand on the grip of his sidearm.

"Are you the Phoenix Foundation agent?"

Mac nodded wearily, fishing out his ID card. "Yeah… I'm MacGyver. I assume you got a phone call from Peter Thornton?"

"Uh-huh. My name's Lt. Duke Dodge." The man hesitated, looking Mac over and seeing the bloodstain beneath his hand. "Looks like we got here a little late."

"No," Mac disagreed amiably, "I'd say you were just in time!"

"Ah well, you just stay a'right there and take it easy 'til we can get a'hold of the situation. Oh, by the by… we found a guy out in the yard wearing a whitewall straightjacket… is that the other guy we were supposed to be looking for?"

"Yeah. That's Eddie Sonne. I wouldn't let any of your men near him for a while… "

"Yeah, he's still spitting sparks… most damned'able thing I've ever saw… I don't think he's very happy. Neither is this guy…" Dodge leaned forward and inspected the grisly scene. He gave a low whistle. "Well… that's one way to avoid an indictment…"

⌂

The trapdoor was lifted and the room below investigated. Mac was surprised to learn that it was empty.

"Are you sure?" Mac asked, as he allowed a paramedic to press a bandage over his shallow wound. He had refused to let her tear or cut away his shirt; instead, he had taken it off and was holding one arm up so she could work on him.

"It's just a small basement storage room," Dodge pushed his hat back a few inches to scratch his wide forehead, then resettled his hat. "There is only way in or out—through this hatch."

Mac let his head fall back and closed his eyes. "I was so sure that they were down there…" He suddenly chuckled, realizing that the ESP drug must be wearing off finally. I hope that means that the headache will go away too, Mac thought wistfully, and then he winced as the paramedic daubed him with antiseptic. "Ouch!"

"Relax, Mr. MacGyver," the woman said as she continued her ministrations, "the bullet just grazed the skin. It's just …"

"Just a flesh wound?" Mac finished the sentence for her. "Finally… I can use my favorite line from all my favorite western films!" The woman rolled her eyes at him, but she was wearing a small smile now as she worked.

Bemused, Lt. Dodge waited until they had finished bantering before he continued, "Well, there are signs of recent occupancy. I'm guessing by the look of things that they were here… they couldn't have left more that an hour or two ago."

"Lieutenant!" another officer came hurrying across the lawn and called through the broken window. "Lt. Dodge, sir? I found them!"

Mac jumped up, forgetting his injury. The paramedic managed to smooth the tape holding the bandage in place just as he slipped out of her hands.