An American Bullet

by John Stonehouse

  An intersection is coming up, a road crossing. He studies the apron where the side-road meets with the highway. The churn of the plows has left a berm of thick snow. But road crews have cleared the intersecting exit and entrance-way.

  He glances in the rear-view, comes off the gas.

  He waits until the last moment.

  For a split second, he thinks of the kid, Anthony, handcuffed in the trunk.

  Nothing’s on the road behind him. He sweeps off the highway—not fast, not too slow.

  Momentum carries the SUV across the lumps and frozen ridges at the edge of the road.

  He glances again in the rear-view. Nobody there to see him turning off.

  He steers along a single set of wheel tracks hugging the center of the road.

  No sound from Anthony behind the rear seats. Silent, Belaski thinks. Some go silent.

  The wipers flick back and forth on the windshield.

  Close to the highway would be best—just far enough, not too far. In Rapid City, he can dump the Park Ranger SUV—he can pick up a vehicle at a rental office, so long as he doesn’t have the kid.

  He thinks of Lauren DeLuca. She’d be scared for her brother—maybe she'd already have it figured out.

  He strains to pick up on any feature ahead; the road is starting to climb—rising steady, trees taller now, dense, blocking out the light.

  He sees another opening—a track into the forest. A green shield on a wooden post shows gold lettering, the outline of a tree.

  U S Forest Service.

  No vehicle has passed there.

  He turns the steering wheel, eases the big Ford down the side track.

  The depth of snow is greater, he feels it drag beneath him. Fresh snow is blowing in, showering the hood.

  The track follows the contour of the hill, the sky nothing but a dull strip of light between the trees.

  Reaching a wide turn, the trail splits into two—one fork disappearing into dark woods, the other climbing.

  He pauses. Higher up the hill, between the old-growth pines he can see a clearing—two cabins set back at its rear.

  He picks the uphill route, drives the Ford through a bank of snow.

  Steering off the track at the clearing, he pulls up by the cabins, stops, opens up the driver’s door.

  He steps out—the snow is mid-calf.

  He wades through to the first cabin. It’s padlocked, shuttered windows on two walls.

  He checks the second cabin—it’s the same as the first.

  Crossing back to the Ford, he opens up the rear hatch.

  Anthony blinks at him in the glare of light.

  “Move your feet.” Belaski reaches in to the chainsaw, unhooks the ratchet-strap retainer—frees it. Hoists it out.

  Anthony recoils, his eyes go wide.

  Belaski unscrews the filler cap on the chainsaw—there’s gasoline in the reservoir.

  He screws the cap back, flicks the switch to 'on', sets the choke.

  He puts a knee on the engine cover. Pulls the starter cord, sharp.

  It coughs, dies. He knocks off the choke, pulls again.

  Anthony’s face is white; “Wait, wait, what’re you doing?”

  The chainsaw spits into life.

  Belaski whips it from the ground, guns it—thick oil spatters the glistening snow.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  In a back office of the federal building in downtown Rapid City, Janice Rimes leans against a metal file-cabinet, staring down into the wide street. Cars and trucks roll slow down St Joseph, the roadway is a river—full of frozen brown slush.

  For a moment, she watches the halo of ice and snow swirling around a street lamp. The FBI field office is empty. She presses a knuckle to the double-glazed window, feels the chill against the glass.

  So far, she’s telephoned the Coburn ranch twice. Nobody’s returned from Elk Lake yet, she’s left instructions for them to call the minute there’s news.

  Mathis, from the sheriff's department, has been up there. They’d been surprised to see him, then alarmed, according to the deputy.

  She turns from the file-cabinet, thinks of smoking another cigarette. Can't do it, not inside the office. She gnaws on a nail.

  She can catch a smoke outside on the building’s steps. She opens the office door.

  From somewhere along the corridor is the sound of her boss, Kinawa—the Rapid City senior agent. He's talking fast with somebody—one of the county attorneys, she thinks. She utters a silent curse.

  Chicago FBI was lighting up Kinawa’s phone. They'd done everything right—that seemed to be Kinawa’s main concern; Rapid City had done everything by the book—she could hear him now, down the corridor, using the exact same expression—by the book, he was telling the attorney.

  Anthony had been offered a choice of locations—he'd wanted the Coburn Ranch. The ranch was pre-approved, in full validation by the state. Rapid City FBI weren't expected to guard him, shadow him. Just keep tabs from a distance, check in, from time to time.

  Rimes wraps a hand around the lighter in her pocket, taps the pack of cigarettes. Stepping from the office, she puts her head down, turns for the stairwell.

  Her boss calls out, “Agent Rimes...” He breaks off with the attorney. “We need to talk.”

  Rimes lets go the lighter, takes her hand from out of her pocket.

  She takes the few steps back down the corridor.

  James Kinawa follows her into the office.

  “What now?” she says.

  “They don't think we're liable.”

  “Who don't?”

  “Judge Thompson. And Reese Carter, the county attorney.” Kinawa pulls at the cuff of his dark suit. Trim at forty, he’s strictly vegan, runs ten miles every morning, doesn't drink, doesn't joke. “The WITSEC marshal from Albuquerque will be here in an hour or so,” Kinawa says. “The boss of the program, Inspector McBride.”

  Janice Rimes looks out of the window, to the skyline over the street. “That's if his plane can even land...”

  “They're landing.”

  “Did you check?”

  Kinawa grunts. “You need to drive out to the airport, pick him up.”

  “Me again?”

  “Take a decent car.”

  At the head of the column of four riders, Galen Coburn stretches out a lead. The weather and the dark and fatigue are setting in; the temperature dropping, sun disappearing, snow descending despite the canopy overhead.

  Will Jacobs at the rear of the group, rides a draft-cross mare, the Springfield rifle slung at his back.

  Lauren DeLuca rides her brother’s horse—Whicher behind her, his hands and feet numb, despite the boots and gloves.

  In the pocket of the woolen hunting coat is the Ruger revolver. The marshal stares ahead at Lauren. A ribbon of white between the trees is the only marker showing the way along the track.

  The horses keep their heads down, tread cautiously. The feel of the woods is deep and still, the air weighted with a primal silence.

  “We make it back,” the marshal says, “we can get out of these hills.”

  Lauren rocks a little in the saddle as she turns.

  “We get to the ranch,” Whicher says, “to Coburn's place.”

  “We need to find Anthony.”

  “Other people will handle that.”

  She stares at him through the dim light, swaying slightly with the motion of the horse.

  “The sheriff's department,” Whicher says, “the FBI.”

  She turns away again to face forward.

  The marshal kicks his horse onward, rides up closer to Lauren on the track. “You have any idea what this guy might do? Where he might go?”

  She only stares dead-ahead.

  “You were with him when he rented that Nissan—he must've given a name?”

  “He wrote it.”

  “He never said his name out loud?”

  “He wrote it on the rental form.”

  Whicher glances at her. “The clerk
didn't say it?”

  “Once,” Lauren says. “Once, I heard the clerk say it. He took a set of keys from a drawer in the office. He said something like, ‘Farndale. Mister Farndale’, or ‘Farnday.’”

  Whicher says the name over in his mind. “The boss of your WITSEC program is flying here.”

  She turns her face half toward him.

  “One of his marshals is dead, he’s going to want you moved just as fast we can.”

  She shakes her head.

  “He'll want to know everything that happened.”

  “Not before we’ve found Anthony.”

  “You're a federal witness, you got a legal obligation.”

  “I have a brother...”

  The marshal strains his eyes to see along the path of the track.

  Lauren gathers the reins in her hand, stares straight ahead into near-dark.

  “Before you disappeared last night,” Whicher says, “from the station at McCook—you made a phone call.” He looks directly at her. “Who were you calling in that waiting room, Lauren? Who were you talking to back then?”

  Maddie Cook’s hands are balled-up in her pockets, her face twisted with pain as she staggers down the logging road.

  The fall of snow is relentless; reaching up to her knees. The sky above the trees has turned full dark.

  Her son will be waiting.

  Her son.

  If only she can make it.

  In her mind, she conjures an image of him—far from the forest, far from wind and ice and snow.

  She thinks of their warm, bright kitchen, sees him padding around in his socks. Eating the pot roast she left for him. A wave of something breaks inside her—longing, a deep, dark sadness. The house might as well be a million miles further, might as well have ceased to exist. Everything was ceasing, everything inside closing down. She wills herself onward, head tilted to the onslaught of wind.

  If she can just make one foot follow after the other. If she can just keep on going.

  Somewhere along the frozen roads, a path leads through the bleak, blizzard of air. All the way back to her kitchen, to light, to warmth, to her son. She pictures wrapping both arms around him, holding his back—putting her face in close to his neck.

  But the sky is deadened, black, filled with swirling snow. The temperature will fall fast, she knows it, though she can't feel it anymore. Too late for that.

  She gazes at the dim white track before her, marked only with the ragged forms of trees at either side.

  Step after step, she stumbles in the tracks of her own vehicle. Thinks of the young man, the boy in the trunk. She half-closes her eyes.

  A rip of fear grips her, inside. A flashing sensation.

  Is she passing out?

  A speck of light—there again, then gone.

  She raises her head, sees nothing but the blackened woods, dim ground, snow.

  Steadying herself, she takes another step, another. Afraid of losing consciousness.

  Light flashes again—in a different place; moving. She feels her breath escape her. Stops.

  Specks of light are moving through the tangle of trees—flashing, winking, somewhere down below.

  The highway.

  People driving on a highway.

  People still out; still moving. Cars can still drive.

  She takes a breath, feels heat bloom behind her eyes. She sets her shoulder against the oncoming wind, lifts a numb leg, pushes forward, trying not to panic.

  The lights are gone.

  They were there.

  But now they’re gone.

  Will they be the last?

  Chapter Thirty

  Through the glass-front office window, downtown Rapid City is lit up with cars and trucks. Belaski raises a cardboard cup of coffee to his mouth, breathing in a lungful of steam.

  At the rental desk, a clerk punches numbers into a keyboard—checks something on a monitor screen. “We have a GMC Yukon, all-wheel-drive...the way the weather is...”

  Belaski nods. “That'll be just fine.”

  “All-wheel-drive and ground clearance,” the clerk says.

  Belaski turns back to staring out into the evening traffic. Reflected in the window, he sees the clerk read the drivers license—a fake license, in the name of Gary Farndale—it matches the copied credit card, not hard to come by in Belaski's line of work.

  “You'll take it for how long, Mister Farndale?”

  “A week,” Belaski says, not looking round.

  “Seven days from today.” The clerk’s fingers flit across the keyboard, he stares at the monitor screen.

  Belaski thinks of Anthony, back in the cabin.

  Breaking in had been easy—with the chainsaw; cutting clean through the wooden shutter. He’d left him handcuffed, bound to an iron stove, no way he'd make it out of there.

  It’d be cold, though, real cold. Belaski puts the thought from his mind. Of more concern is the stolen parks service Explorer—now abandoned, four blocks south at the back of a mini-mart.

  He thinks of the ranger woman—if she made it out of the forest she’d tell law enforcement the message for Lauren DeLuca. She’d have one more thing to think about, Lauren. One more worry, on top of everything else.

  “Sir?”

  The clerk looks up from behind the counter as Belaski drains the last of the cup of coffee.

  “If you'd like to step this way, I'll show you right to your car.”

  The cold and the blackness are twin entities, the only things left tangible, existing. Within the cabin, strange creaks break the silence. Things freezing, contracting. Anthony leans his chest against his drawn-up knees, rests his face against the fabric of his ice-fishing pants.

  The dark is almost unchanging, now. The coldness inside like a living animal—shaking, trembling—wind the only sound that comes to him. Wind in the nearby trees.

  His breathing is slow, he fights the creeping sensation, the shutting down. Dead already, he tells himself, if not for the gear he was wearing.

  Hunger churns inside, then fades. The thirst is more frightening, his tongue is thick, at times he can barely swallow.

  In dream-like moments, light appears. Moonlight breaking through the clouds, he imagines; filtering into the cabin, the outside world. No idea if it's still snowing, or if it’s clear.

  Snow would be better. Clear skies will mean the temperature in free-fall.

  He tries to move his arms, but they’re pinned against him.

  His wrists are bruised and sore, the handcuffs a kind of torture. The binding to the iron stove is tight against his breathing, against his chest. He thinks of Lauren. At the lake. Did she know, then? She must have known. Why hadn't she warned him, why would she lead a man there?

  The questions cycle, unanswered. Breath and energy slip away.

  If he can last till dawn, if there’s light, maybe he can figure some way out. Useless to think so far ahead, he can't imagine it. Even if he frees himself, he daren't go outside into the cold.

  An image comes to him, unbidden—the city of Chicago, Lauren cycling on the lake front trail. Lake Michigan, vast, under a summer sky. Eight years old. Pedaling to keep up.

  His golden sister. Big, sure, beautiful.

  He leans against his knees, his breathing stopped in his throat.

  Why had she betrayed him in the end?

  Light from the brazier fires is visible from the tree line—drums of flickering orange, the figure of a man beside the outline of a barn.

  He’s silhouetted against a crack of yellow light. The crack widens as the barn door opens.

  Coburn shouts something up ahead.

  A flashlight clicks on, pale beam moving in the tumbling snow.

  Whicher glances across at Lauren, riding beside him.

  She stares ahead.

  Still she won’t talk.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Inside the log-lined office, Whicher stands shaking in the warmth, his whole body reacting as he grabs the phone from the desk. He fumbl
es the numbers on the keypad—the phone rings, it picks up.

  “Rapid City FBI...”

  “I need to speak to Agent Janice Rimes,” Whicher says. “I’m with the US Marshals Service.”

  “James Kinawa,” the man at the end of the line answers, “I'm her boss...”

  Whicher stares out of the window into black night—a patter of ice crystals tapping against the glass. “Sir, do you know where Agent Rimes is at?”

  “She’s driving back from the airport. She’s with an inspector from the WITSEC program.”

  The marshal nods to himself. “If you’re her boss then you’ll know what this all is about? Why I’m calling?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “The brother of a federal witness has been abducted.”

  “That’s correct...”

  “Have y’all had a report of a missing parks service employee?”

  “Say again?”

  “An officer from the parks service,” Whicher says. “A ranger.”

  No answer.

  “Mister Kinawa, I'm up in the hills at a ranch belonging to a Galen Coburn—I have the witness with me. The witness, but not the brother.”

  At the end of the line, the FBI man is silent.

  “You hear me?”

  “I heard you, yes.”

  “I have to get off of this hill before the weather gets any worse than it is. I need to get into Rapid City. But you need to call the parks service, find out if anybody's missing.”

  “I don’t understand...”

  “Just call them, find out if it’s been reported. Call the sheriff's office, the PD, the state troopers—anybody you need to call—and find out. I’m coming down into Rapid City, right now. I’ll be there as fast as I can.” The marshal hangs up the phone.

  In the SUV from the law-enforcement pool, Janice Rimes eases out from the intersection.

  The man beside her nervously smoothes a short-cut salt and pepper mustache. He watches snow breaking up on the roofs and hoods of cars—slabs sliding off, crashing into the street.

  Agent Rimes’s cell phone rings—she looks at it in the center well, reads the number off the screen.