Rose City Kill Zone

by D L Barbur

  It was all for show, or so I told myself.

  “You think you’re going to torture me?” The note of bravado in his voice was false.

  I forced him into the chair, and put a ratchet strap across his chest, tight enough to not be comfortable, but he could still breathe. Then I zip tied his legs to the chair legs.

  “I want a lawyer,” he said.

  “I don’t give a shit,” I answered, and walked out the door.

  Casey was sitting at the desk and cleaning off the thumb drive with a disinfectant wipe when I walked into the next room. Her laptop was open, and I could see the feed from the camera mounted high up on the wall in the next room. Marshall was looking around wildly and struggling against his bonds. I didn’t think he would be able to get free, and even if he did, I was in the next room, so I wasn’t too worried about it.

  “How long are we going to give him?” Casey asked. She finished cleaning the USB drive and slotted it into the computer.

  I shrugged. “Until Alex is done with Dale and Robert. We need to get this show on the road. Burke should be here soon, and I doubt it’s going to take the FBI too long to figure out what’s up.”

  A bunch of complicated looking stuff flashed on the laptop screen. I couldn’t follow it. It just made me want coffee. Casey grunted.

  “Was that a good grunt or a bad grunt?” I asked.

  “It’s complicated. If I’m going to get into this it will take some time. It’s not a sure thing, and it might be trapped to erase the data. It would be best to just get the password.”

  I shrugged out of my combat vest and enjoyed the feeling of being twenty pounds lighter. I set the vest and my carbine over by Casey, who was tapping away at her keyboard.

  “Have Alex knock before she comes in,” I said.

  “Will do,” Casey said without looking up from her screen.

  “And turn off the video recording,” I said.

  She looked up at me, but didn’t say anything. She scrolled through some menus on the other laptop on the desk and clicked on a box.

  “Done,” she said.

  I took a deep breath and walked back in the room. I’d interrogated people more times than I could count, but this was the one that would matter the most. A voice in the back of my head was telling me I should wait for Alex to show up with her magic truth serum, but I ignored it.

  “I want a lawyer,” Marshall said again, as soon as I entered the room.

  By way of reply, I kicked him in the chest, not too hard, just hard enough to tip the chair over.

  I stood over him and resisted the urge to start stomping until my legs got tired.

  “I think you’re misunderstanding your predicament Henderson,” I said. “Remember those girls your son kidnapped and sold? They didn’t get lawyers, why should you?”

  “They were trash,” he said from the floor.

  That was exactly the wrong thing to say to me. I was, by nature, an angry man. I suppose one day I’d need to sit down with a therapist or something and deal with it. I’d grown up surrounded by anger, and violence, in a Tennessee trailer home that stank like cheap whiskey most of the time. My time in the Army had been characterized by testosterone-fueled violence and my police career after that had given me plenty of reasons to feed my anger. So I was no stranger to red-hot rage.

  There was another level beyond that though, a cool, detached calm anger that made me feel like I was outside of myself, floating around and looking over my shoulder. The last time I’d felt it, I’d been in a highway rest stop in Oregon, looking at Henderson Marshall’s son. Now I thought of a young woman named Heather Swanson, killed by Gibson Marshall and dumped in the weeds like so much trash. Her death had started all of this.

  I jerked the chair back upright. A thin trickle of blood was running out of Marshall’s nose.

  I took a step back, shucked my pistol out of the holster and put it on the floor. Then I opened my folding knife. Marshall flinched when I walked up to him, but I used the knife to cut the zip ties from his hands and legs. Then I put the knife away and undid the ratchet straps.

  I stepped to the side. All Marshall had to do was stand up, take three steps and the pistol would be in his hands. His eyes were on it, and I could almost hear the gears turning in his head as he calculated his odds.

  I leaned over so my lips were inches from Marshall’s ear. The room was full of the stink of his fear sweat.

  “You want to talk about trash? Let’s talk about your son. He was kidnapping women and selling them. I think you knew that. I don’t think you wanted him to do it, but I think you didn’t do anything to stop him.”

  He didn’t say anything, just sat there looking at the gun on the floor, and the closed door. A bead of sweat popped out of his forehead and ran down his nose.

  “Now you’ve got something those girls didn’t have Marshall, a chance to fight back. You want a lawyer? There’s something better than a lawyer. All you have to do is get that gun, and get through me, and you’ve got a fighting chance.”

  His hands were down by his sides, and in my peripheral vision, I saw his fingers flex, but he still didn’t make any move to get out of the chair.

  I leaned in closer. My lips almost touched his ear.

  “Your son is dead Marshall. I killed him. I shot him in a bathroom that smelled like piss, then I dumped his body in the forest for the coyotes to eat.”

  One truth and one lie. I’d certainly killed his son, but his body was somewhere in the Willamette River weighed down by chains.

  Marshall still didn’t move. He made a little sound, halfway between a grunt and a whimper.

  “There was something about your boy that wasn’t right. I’m no psychologist, but I’m guessing it stemmed from early childhood trauma. You have a thing for little boys Marshall? Maybe your own son?”

  He wasn’t looking at the gun, or the door anymore. Now his eyes were closed and he was shaking.

  “In a little while, a US attorney is going to come in here. You’re going to waive your right to an attorney and tell her everything you know, on video. If you don’t do that, she’s going to get up and walk away. She’ll deny that she was ever here, and then you’ll be left with just me to talk to.”

  The knock at the door made Marshall jump, and a thin stream of piss ran out of him and onto the floor. I picked up my pistol and holstered it.

  I let Alex in. When she saw that Marshall was unrestrained, she gave me a quizzical look.

  “Henderson has decided to cooperate,” I said. Marshall stared at a corner of the room.

  She pulled out the syringe and checked it.

  “What’s that?” Marshall asked. His voice was flat like he was asking about the weather.

  “Something that will help make you a better man,” I said.

  Alex didn’t say anything, but I saw her hands shake a little as she injected Marshall.

  It took effect quickly. His breathing slowed and he relaxed.

  “Let’s have a show of good faith,” I said. “Tell me the password to the thumb drive.”

  He had his eyes closed. His breathing was so deep and regular that I thought for a moment he was asleep. Then he stirred.

  “You should get something to write with.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  We got Marshall cleaned up and into a pair of paper coveralls. He was pliant and docile the whole time. You could tell he was stewed to the eyeballs on something, but hopefully, he’d be convincing on video. Casey tried the password he’d given us and gave me a thumbs up. I looked over her shoulder and saw a directory with thousands of files. She started opening them at random. There were emails, contracts, audio recordings, video recordings. I had no idea if any of it was valuable. It would take days to go through all of it.

  I heard the crunch of tires on gravel outside and looked out the window. Burke was here. Dalton met her in the parking lot and walked her in the door. When she came in she looked me up and down. I realized I probably looked like hell, covered in b
lood and dirt.

  Burke didn’t waste any time. She sat down across from Marshall and presented her credentials.

  “You can either decide to tell me everything, and we’ll turn on the camera, or I’m going to walk out of here and forget I was ever here.”

  His eyes slid over to me, then went back to Burke.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” he said.

  Casey turned on the cameras. Burke explained who she was, and asked Marshall to sign a form waiving his right to counsel. I was watching the video over Casey’s shoulder. I didn’t think Marshall looked obviously stoned. He wasn’t slurring his words or rambling.

  Burke primed him with a couple of questions, and then he was off to the races. He explained the plan to divert billions in Iraqi reconstruction cash and smuggle it back into the US. Along the way, he sprinkled references to documents on the thumb drive. Casey found them and nodded to Burke as Marshall talked.

  Marshall started naming names, and I started getting scared. I recognized some of the names. I recognized them from the evening news. They were political figures, military officers, business leaders. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. This was bigger than we’d imagined. Marshall had apparently decided, with the help of the chemical cocktail, that if he was going down, he was going to take all his buddies with him. The problem was, the longer he talked, the harder it was for me to imagine a way that we would get out of this alive.

  At one point, Casey looked over at me and mouthed the words “holy fuck!” She seemed excited by all this, more than scared. Sometimes I wondered if Casey had some type of gene that made her fearless. As she made note after note on her yellow legal pad, Burke looked paler and paler, and I wondered if she was having second thoughts about this.

  Finally, Marshall trailed off and stopped talking. Burke blinked a couple of times and flipped back to the first page of her notes.

  “Ok,” she said. “Let’s go back to the beginning, I have some things to clear up.”

  Somehow, Burke had managed to keep the whole narrative straight in her mind. She would ask Marshall a question, which would lead to three more questions and so on. After a while, the sound of their voices just became a drone, like a bee buzzing in my head. I stumbled and realized I’d almost managed to fall asleep on my feet.

  I glanced over at Casey. She gave me an “ok” sign and jerked her head towards the door. Marshall was handcuffed, and shackled to an eye bolt in the floor. I knew Casey was carrying a pistol, and figured Burke probably would be too. I grabbed my vest and rifle.

  I stepped out of the bunkhouse, glad to be away from the smell of Marshall’s sweat. The bunkhouses were long low structures, divided into three or four rooms that each had an exterior door. The rooms where we stashed Marshall were at the end of one building. We’d set up Alex’s makeshift clinic at the other end of this building and the room in between was empty.

  The other bunkhouse ran perpendicular to this one. We’d set up our living quarters in there. In its heyday, the ranch had employed almost a dozen men, so there was plenty of room for us.

  I looked in the infirmary. Dale was asleep, probably enjoying whatever righteous drugs Alex had administered via his IV line. Robert was lying on a bunk with his bandaged leg propped up, reading an issue of Guns & Ammo. I gave him a thumb’s up and moved on, not wanting to disturb either of them.

  As I turned from the doorway, I heard the crunch of a foot on gravel, and my hand dipped automatically towards my pistol. It was Henry, looking vaguely ridiculous in his plate carrier with a carbine slung around his neck.

  “Dalton wanted me to stand watch? While he and Jack fueled the helicopter?” It came out as a question. Henry was out of his element and he knew it. I gave him a nod and headed towards the other bunkhouse.

  I was most of the way there when I thought of something. I looked over my shoulder at Henry.

  “Hey Henry, good job last night.”

  His face lit up like a kid’s, and for a second he reminded me of a young PFC I’d had in one of my Ranger squads. I gave him a wave.

  I saw Alex over by one of the fences a hundred yards or so away. She was petting one of the horses, and from the looks of things sneaking it a treat or two from her pocket. I stood and watched her for a second. She looked happy and I decided not to bother her.

  There was a mirror inside the bunkhouse and I caught a glimpse of myself. I looked like something out of a horror movie. I dumped all my clothes in the corner and climbed into a shower stall. We’d bleached the hell out of the place, but it was still filthy from years of neglect, and decades of transient male occupation before that, so I didn’t linger.

  Fresh clothes were a godsend. I still needed food and coffee, but it was a good start. I was strapping my pistol back on when Alex came in the door. I noticed her rifle was in the corner, next to her vest and her pistol was still strapped to the holster on the front of the vest. I almost chastised her for going unarmed but decided to let it be.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  “He rolled,” I said.

  “That’s good, right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I explained what Marshall had told us, how far the conspiracy went. I started naming names and she sat down on the bed.

  “Holy shit,” she said. “What now?”

  “I don’t know. Some of it is up to Burke.”

  “I thought it would end after this,” she said.

  “It’s just getting started.”

  “No. No more. I’m done.”

  She walked over to the corner of the room and pulled out the Hill People Gear backpack she’d been wearing during the raid. She unzipped it and showed me what was inside: stacks of $100 bills.

  “You cleaned out the plane,” I said.

  “We barely made a dent in it. There was so much money in there. Casey filled up hers too.”

  We’d debated taking some of the money, and had agreed we’d try if there was time. The money was untraceable, so oddly it had very little value as evidence. In all the other excitement, I’d forgotten to ask them about it.

  “How much is it?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had time to count it. Casey did some math and she thinks it’s over a million dollars, maybe closer to two.”

  I hefted the backpack in my hand. It was heavy. Thirty? Forty pounds? I realized it probably contained more money than I’d made so far in my life.

  “Casey and I had plenty of time to talk while we were in that hangar, waiting for you,” Alex said. “She learned a bunch from Bolle about how to hide money, set up offshore accounts and corporations, that sort of thing. She thinks we should take the money in our bags and create an escape plan for ourselves.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” I said slowly. I once again had that familiar feeling of things happening quicker than I could keep up with them.

  “I think we should just leave Dent, just scatter to the four winds with the money.”

  I shook my head.

  “I told Burke we’d help her get Marshall to safety. After he gives his statement, we’re going to fly him straight to FCI Sheriden. Once he’s booked, and the evidence is recorded, we’ve got leverage. They can’t just make that vanish.”

  That was the plan anyway: to create enough of a paper trail, a big enough official record that it couldn’t be easily erased. Once we had Marshall’s statement recorded, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he died of a sudden illness or slipped in the shower, but our case would be much stronger if he remained alive. The Federal Corrections Institution at Sheriden would be under the microscope if something happened to him.

  “I want to be done with this Dent,” she said. “How many names are on the list Marshall gave you? How long will it take to build a case against all of them? We could spend the rest of our lives doing this.”

  I sat down heavily on the bed. The room spun a little for a second. I was bone tired and just wanted to lie down, pull the covers over my head, and wake up when all t
his stuff had gone away and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

  “The question is,” I said slowly. “Are we safer trying to bow out of this and fading into the woodwork, or seeing it through to the end? What’s that saying? ‘Once you ride the tiger, you can never get off?’”

  “I don’t think it will ever end, Dent. What are we going to do? Arrest everybody in the federal government? The military? Every contractor?”

  I held my head in my hands.

  “Let’s do this,” I said. “I’ll help them get Marshall to Sheriden then we go. We’ll take some of the money, get a vehicle and just take off.”

  She sat down next to me and put an arm around me.

  “God, what will we do?”

  “I don’t know, but we should probably buy a place big enough for you to have a horse.”

  She leaned against me.

  “That sounds nice.”

  She kissed me then, and despite my fatigue, and the fact that every time I breathed through my nose I still thought I could smell blood, I enjoyed it. She put her hands on the sides of my face, just the way I liked and kissed me harder. I made a little noise in the back of my throat.

  Before I even realized I was doing it, I slid a hand under her shirt. It felt so good to touch her skin.

  She laughed. “Easy there, tiger.”

  “I don’t have anywhere I need to be,” I said.

  “This isn’t exactly private.”

  I immediately started running through the options there on the ranch. It was nice to have something to think about besides impending death.

  From outside, I heard a sound like a book slamming shut, then the crunch of gravel. I almost dismissed it, but something tickled at the base of my brain, some alarm bell that I was only half conscious of.

  I was up and moving toward the door before I even thought about it.

  “What is it?” Alex asked.