The John Milton Series Boxset 2

by Mark Dawson

  It reminded him of his time in the regiment, and especially the training in the Brecon Beacons, long days and nights living off the land even as other soldiers were trying to track him down. He had been good at it then, and he had been pleased to find that his skills had not atrophied from lack of use. His previous life, in the Group, had often occasioned a life of ease and comfort in the lulls between assignments. On other occasions, he had been required to stay in high-end hotels so as to present the right impression to the targets he had been sent to eliminate. He had never been comfortable with conspicuous excess, and he had found these last days, with their simplicity and honesty, to have been exactly what he needed.

  But as he had trekked northwest through the Straits State Park, the rains had come. He had been caught on the road during a particularly heavy downpour. The rain had lanced down so hard that the noise was loud enough to obliterate the sound of the engines of the cars that had ignored his outthrust thumb. He had quickly been soaked to the skin and the rains had been constant, more or less, ever since. He had put up his tent and sheltered for a day. But when it became obvious that the weather had settled in for the long haul, he had struck camp and set off again. He needed to keep moving and if a little discomfort was the price that he had to pay, then so be it.

  The rains had continued as he headed north. The tracks that he followed became muddy quagmires, and he had to be wary of flash floods, previously empty riverbeds that became rushing torrents with frightening speed. His clothes were permanently sodden, his hair and beard streamed with water, and the cold started to leech into his bones. He had not intended to stop in a town until he crossed into Wisconsin, but the more he mused on it the more he figured that he could adapt his plan. His time in the wilderness had weakened his urge to drink, and he felt strong enough to resist the temptation again. He saw from his map that the town of Truth was on his route, so he had decided to stop. A warm meal, a hot bath and a clean bed suddenly sounded particularly attractive.

  And then this.

  You really couldn’t make it up.

  He glanced around at the parking area, the path that led down to the lake and, on the shore, the open space that was reserved for campers. There was a tent there, the beige canvas just visible in the dying light. It was a big one, pitched next to a four-wheel drive. Fishermen, Milton guessed. And as he paused there, he heard the sound of voices blown up to him by the breeze that came off the water.

  He could pitch his tent down there, he supposed. The site was big enough that he could put enough distance between himself and the fishermen so that he wouldn’t be disturbed. He remembered from his map that the town of Wakewood was twenty miles to the west. He usually covered around three miles an hour and, if he stayed close to the road, the terrain wouldn’t slow him down too much. He could camp here overnight, set off early in the morning, and be in town in time for lunch.

  He almost resolved to do that when the sky cracked with a deep, booming roll of thunder. He looked to the south and saw a huge jagged fork of lightning that lit up the water. The first spatters of moisture fell to earth, splashes that burst on his face as he looked up to the swirling dark clouds that were sweeping to the north. The lightning flashed and the thunder boomed again, closer now, and Milton changed his mind. He didn’t want to wait until he got to Wakewood. Damned if a prejudiced hick cop was going to tell him where he could and couldn’t go.

  He rolled his shoulders to settle the straps of the pack, picked up his rifle, and crunched across the gravel to the hardtop. He turned to the east and started to walk the mile back into town.

  IT TOOK him twenty minutes. The rain fell heavily, another drenching deluge that defied all logic by the way it seemingly grew in intensity the longer it went on. He passed the WELCOME TO TRUTH sign on the edge of town and kept going until he reached the crossroads where they had briefly stopped for the red traffic light. He had kept a close watch as Grogan had driven him through the town and knew which direction he would need to go in order to find the centre. The rain washed down, slicking the asphalt so that the red, amber and green reflected in long, painterly streaks. He waited for the traffic to clear and then crossed over the road and headed north. It was another two miles to the town proper and, by the time he got there, another half an hour had passed.

  As Milton came into the town proper he thought, with a smile, that it was pleasant not to have to concern himself with the procedures that he had lived by for so long. Normally, on arrival in a place like this, he would have conducted an SDR—a Surveillance Detection Run—a routine designed to flush out anyone who might have been following him. That was ancient history for him now, although old habits died hard.

  Truth looked like a small kind of place, the kind of town that had most things that you needed, but only a few of each: a couple of hotels, a few restaurants, a few bars. Down on its luck, too, from the looks of the faded and peeling paint on the buildings and the cheap neon signs that fizzed and popped. It was the kind of town Milton had gotten used to seeing. This part of Michigan was a poor country of poor people. The young men he saw on the street corners flashed him threatening looks, crippled by divorce and schools that had failed them, driving rusting jalopies or chopped motorcycles that spluttered and coughed. Drinking beers and smoking cigarettes they couldn’t afford, snorting Mexican dope, waiting to commit the senseless crimes that would lock them away. Properties were put up for sale with no hope of selling them, faded memories and broken dreams recycled like the counterfeit shoes and knock-off DVD players that filled the second-hand stores and pawnshops. Milton had walked hundreds of miles and had not seen a Lexus or a Mercedes. Instead he saw dented Fords and Chevys left in front of Laundromats and convenience stores. Scattered homesteads were named Hope Ranch and Last Chance without a trace of irony.

  He stopped at a late night Laundromat and asked for directions to the nearest hotel. The attendant directed him up the road and then to the right and, after a short walk, Milton reached it. An old neon sign, with some of the letters unlit, announced it as Perkins Village Inn. Milton went inside, wiping the water from his face.

  The teenage girl behind the counter looked up at him with distaste. Milton frowned and then remembered what he must look like.

  “Hello,” he said. “I need a room.”

  “How long for?”

  “One night.”

  The girl chewed gum with lazy insouciance and radiated disinterest. She pecked her fingers against the keyboard in front of her. “Yeah,” she said. “We got a room. Fifty bucks. You pay up front.”

  Milton reached into the waterproof belt he wore around his waist, unzipped it, and took out his roll of money. He peeled off two twenties and a ten and laid them on the counter. The clerk took them, slid them in the till, and fetched a key from a rack on the wall behind her.

  “Room twelve,” she said. “End of the corridor, turn right, on your left.”

  Milton thanked her, collected his backpack and rifle, and followed her directions. The hotel was old and down-at-heel. The carpet was stained in places, and the furniture in the communal areas had seen better days. Milton didn’t see any other guests and, as he looked out of the window onto the parking lot outside, he saw that it was empty. It didn’t matter.

  He found room twelve, although the “1” had dropped off, and he could only be sure it was the right door because it was between “11” and “13.” He unlocked the door and went inside. The room beyond was tired. There were holes in the plaster, and in one corner a leak from the roof had discoloured the paint in a wide downward splash. The carpet was damp, with mould clinging to the skirting board in places, and the curtains had a tear all the way down the centre. The bureau was propped up by a folded cardboard coaster beneath one of the legs and the bed felt lumpy and uneven. The sheets were clean, though, and there were no signs of bugs. That would be good enough.

  He had to fight another old urge, to sweep for cameras and bugs. That, too, was old thinking. No one was looking for him now. He
was just another drifter, hardly worthy of a second glance. That, at least, was what he was aiming for, although the fuss with the sheriff suggested that he needed to work on that a little.

  Milton dumped the pack and his rifle and stripped off his wet clothes. He would take them to the Laundromat to be cleaned tomorrow. There was a shower attachment fixed to the taps, but the bracket that would have supported the head had been snapped off, and there was no curtain to stop the water splashing onto the dirty tiles. Milton stepped into the bath, turned the faucet, and directed the lukewarm spray onto his body. It grew warmer the longer the tap was running and, within two minutes, it was piping hot. Milton emptied the complimentary bottle of soap into his hands and rubbed himself all over before taking the shampoo and washing his hair and beard.

  He turned off the tap, stepped out of the bath, and dried himself in front of the mirror. He felt cleaner and fresher than he had for days. He reached up and stroked his whiskers. They were already thick, two inches of growth that was soft to the touch now that they had been washed. He had worn a beard before, when he was in the regiment. Most of the men had grown one. He didn’t mind it, but he knew that it was his appearance that contributed to his treatment from the sheriff earlier.

  No sense in courting trouble.

  He went to his pack and took out his straight razor and then worked the soap into his beard until he had a decent lather. Then, using careful downward scrapes, he cut off the first patch of whiskers. He rinsed the razor and repeated, again and again, until he had removed most of the hair. He was right handed, so the place he was most likely to cut himself was beneath his left ear because it was awkward to see. He saved that until last, applying the blade with just enough pressure and scraping it down. He left a small cut, a shallow trench that quickly filled with blood, but it would coagulate quickly, and since he kept the blade clean, there would be no chance of infection.

  He examined his handiwork. It was a half decent job, and it would suffice for now. Maybe he would find a barber’s shop, have a professional do it properly, and have his wild hair tamed at the same time.

  Perhaps.

  He had a change of clothes in his pack. The bag was expensive, the waterproofing was good, and Milton’s experience had made him fastidious when it came to packing carefully. The fresh T-shirt, jeans and socks were dry, and, as he dressed, he felt his mood improve. Only his boots were dirty, but he spread out the copy of the complimentary newspaper that had been left on the bureau and cleaned away the worst of the mud.

  He pulled them on, laced them up, and started to think about what he would have to eat. A steak and all the trimmings. His mouth watered at the thought of it.

  THE BORED clerk was watching The Simpsons on a blurry portable TV that looked like it was a survivor from the eighties.

  “Where can I get a decent meal?” Milton asked her.

  She pointed out the door. “Johnny’s. East Helen Street, five minutes that way.”

  “Thank you.”

  Milton set off. The rain had stopped, although the clouds overhead were thick and disinviting, promising more to come. He followed the girl’s directions into a district that looked like it had, years ago, been the home to Truth’s light industry. There were several derelict warehouses, most of them empty with hopeful Realtors’ signs that had been etiolated by long exposure to the elements. One lot had been cleared entirely, the old foundations a ghostly tracing visible beneath the street’s single streetlamp.

  Milton knew a little about the area. It had been the seat of the region’s mining community. The deposits of tin and copper in the mountains had invigorated the local economy for years until the seams had grown too expensive to mine and foreign imports had undercut the price so that it had become uneconomic to continue. The area had fallen back on tourism as its main industry, but that was seasonal, fluctuating and, ultimately, unreliable.

  He walked until he found the place that the girl had recommended. It was a one-storey structure with wooden siding, a slate roof and leaded windows. A sign above the door, a halved rectangle, white over red, announced that it was Johnny’s Bar.

  He paused on the threshold. He had known, of course, that there would be alcohol involved. He had decided that he could handle a restaurant. He would concentrate on the food, eat it, and then get out. But he had expected that it would be a restaurant rather than a bar in which food was obviously an afterthought. All the old adages he had heard in the Rooms now came back to him, the ones about temptation and why an alcoholic couldn’t prosper if he kept putting it in his way.

  Unless you’re a lion tamer, you’ve got no business in the lion’s den.

  He thought back to what had happened in Ohio. About how close he had been to taking a drink. He had found himself in a bar, and it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to order a whiskey. He remembered, with vivid clarity like it was yesterday, the tumbler on the bar, the ice revolving in the warm brown liquid and clinking up against the glass. It had been almost impossible to resist.

  You go into a hairdresser’s, eventually you’ll get a haircut.

  He stopped to assess himself. He certainly felt stronger. He had been vulnerable before, but the time he had spent alone had repaired and reinforced the buttresses that he had erected against his compulsions. It had, for a while at least, allowed him to smother his ten years of guilt without the help of the bottle to do it.

  And he was hungry.

  If he wanted a proper meal, there was no other choice.

  The thunder boomed again, directly overhead and powerful enough to tremble the light fitting in the porch of the building. That was all the encouragement Milton needed. He took the final three paces, reached for the door, pushed it open, and went inside.

  Chapter 3

  LESTER GROGAN pulled away from the school forecourt with Billy, his oldest son, in the passenger seat next to him. They were in the scarlet Chevrolet Silverado that he drove when he was off the clock. The boy slouched down, poker faced, looking for all the world like his problem was his father’s fault. It wasn’t, Lester knew, although there were moments when he wondered whether it was.

  Lester had received the call an hour ago. Billy and some of his friends had been caught breaking into the high school science lab. Lester’s deputy, Morten Lundquist, had been called out. He would have dealt with things discreetly, ensured that he could deal with disciplining the boy at home rather than something public that would go on his record and stain his character.

  That wasn’t going to be possible.

  Problem was, the principal at the school had been the one to find the boys and call the police.

  He was called Peter Lyle and he was in the habit of beating his wife. Lester had been called to a disturbance at their house six months earlier. He found the woman with a bloodied nose in the back garden. A case with her half packed clothes flew out of the back door as he checked that she was okay. If there was one thing that Lester couldn’t stand, it was a bully. He could not abide bullies. Lester kicked the door down and hauled the man out. There might have been a couple of punches to the side of the head when he had cuffed him. And his report might have mentioned that he had resisted arrest when, in all truth, he had been pretty compliant. But the way Lester read the situation, a thick lip was the least a douchebag like Peter Lyle deserved.

  Lester had been disappointed when the wife had refused to press charges.

  He had been more disappointed when the local school board had refused to give the man his pink slip.

  Because, as his wife quickly pointed out, his oldest boy was about to start at the school.

  It had turned out exactly as she had predicted. Principal Lyle was doing everything he could to settle the score with Lester. Billy’s grades had suddenly dropped off, and there had been detentions for what had seemed to be the smallest transgressions. Lester had been ready to visit Lyle, either to try to make peace with him or to explain how difficult he could make his life, he hadn’t decided which, but no
w Billy had presented his adversary with his best chance yet to drive his advantage home.

  “What were you doing there?” Lester started when he couldn’t stand the silence any more.

  “Nothing,” the boy muttered.

  “You broke the window.”

  “Wasn’t me.”

  “Someone did.”

  “Joey.”

  “You know he’ll say that you are all responsible, though, right? That you just being there is enough?”

  The boy gave a tiny shake of his head and kept staring straight ahead.

  “What about the joint? Was that you?”

  “Not mine.”

  Lester sighed. “Whose was it, then?”

  “Come on, Dad, have a wild guess how it got there.”

  He took his eyes off the road and turned to look at the boy. “You’re kidding?”

  Billy met his eyes and raised his eyebrows in an expression of ineffable cynicism.

  Lester gripped the wheel tight.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, crashing his fist against the dash.

  Billy flinched and turned his face back to the windshield.

  “You know you’ve given him the chance he’s been waiting for. How could you do something so stupid?”

  They drove the rest of the way in awkward silence. The problem had been on his mind all afternoon. He knew that it had made him crabby and short tempered.

  He pulled up outside their modest two-storey house.

  “Tell your mother I’m going out.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Go and get drunk. Solves everything.”

  Lester started to berate him, but the boy slammed the door, turned his back on him, and stalked up the drive to the front door.

  Lester put the car into gear and drove back into town, angry.

  LESTER MET Leland Mulligan, one of his deputies, at Johnny’s Bar. They took stools at the bar, drinking from bottles of Budweiser and watching football. Leland was trying to get him to talk about the new quad bike that he was thinking of buying. The bar was busier than usual tonight: there were the regular drinkers, the old-timers who had nothing better to do than to gradually pickle their livers and bemoan how the country was turning to shit. One table was occupied by the four hunters he had noticed when they had driven into Truth that morning. Another held three people: the two FBI agents who had been nosing around for leads on the bank robbers who had been busy hereabouts, and Mallory Stanton, the sister of the half-witted boy he’d had so much trouble with five years earlier. That table, in particular, was distracting his attention from Leland’s attempts to have him weigh in on the respective merits of the Kawasaki and Suzuki ATVs that he was considering.