An American Bullet

by John Stonehouse

  The crow's feet around McBride’s eyes crinkle. “Go ahead and take it.”

  Rimes presses on the key to receive.

  “Janice?” Her boss, Kinawa’s voice.

  She puts the cell to her ear.

  “We heard from Whicher. He called from the Coburn ranch.”

  “Do they have Anthony?”

  There's a pause before Kinawa replies.

  Rimes glances at the inspector in the passenger seat—compact, a lined face, in his early-fifties, hair starting to gray.

  She feels a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.

  “They lost him,” Kinawa says. “They lost him, but they have the sister.”

  “Say again? They what?”

  “I don't know how, but they’re with the sister. They're coming down here, the marshal's bringing her down. Anthony’s been abducted,” Kinawa says. “And from what we can tell, a female park ranger is missing...”

  Jerzy Belaski shields the side of his face in the hood of his parka. Hands in his pockets, he heads along the sidewalk, boots sinking into freezing snow.

  The federal building in downtown Rapid City is dotted with lit windows. He reaches the end of the block, turns the corner beneath the streetlamps.

  Wind slashes at every exposed piece of skin. He hurries the few yards to where the Yukon is parked.

  He can just see the federal building. Not much traffic is moving. A city truck pushes snow from a plow at the end of a street.

  He opens up the Yukon, climbs in, starts the motor. Cranks heat.

  Gone, now, he tells himself, he would’ve been gone already. If it weren’t for the storm. He could’ve been clean gone with both of them—Lauren and the kid.

  He thinks of her, pinned inside the crashed Nissan on the logging road. Law enforcement had her, they’d have to move her, now. But travel would be next to impossible.

  He stares at the federal building. Lights glare from offices on three of its floors.

  They had her, they’d have to move her. But they had to bring her somewhere first, while they figured out what to do, what to do about Anthony.

  FBI were protecting the brother in South Dakota, they’d known about it, Coletti’d told him, even before he’d set out. Feds wouldn’t want another agency involved.

  Whoever was in that building had to come out sometime. He could wait.

  Belaski watches the lights in the office windows. He pushes back in the seat.

  Behind the wheel of the ranch truck, Galen Coburn steers along St. Joseph Street, the downtown roads only half-cleared.

  From the back seat, Whicher watches snow blow sideways in the gaps between buildings, streetlights veined in the windshield, traced in ice.

  Lauren DeLuca holds a hand to the bruising at her neck.

  “That’s it,” the ranch owner says, “that’s the place, right over there.”

  The marshal looks at the office block set back at the side of the thruway.

  Coburn signals, turns from St Joseph onto Ninth.

  Half a block down he pulls over.

  Whicher unhooks his seatbelt, looks out over the sidewalk—no sign of anybody moving, just a few cars parked at the curb.

  He takes the cell from the pocket of his coat, dials the number—it answers first time.

  “We’re here,” he says, “we’re on Ninth. We’re about to come on in.”

  Lauren fastens the coat around her, puts a hand to the door.

  “Wait,” the marshal says.

  She looks at him.

  “Let me get out first.” He takes out the Glock.

  Coburn shuts off the motor, turns around to look from Whicher to Lauren and back again. “Just what the hell kind of trouble is she in?”

  The marshal doesn’t answer. He fits a swollen finger through the trigger guard of the semi-automatic. Checks up and down the street.

  Opening the door, he feels the push of the wind.

  He steps out. Nothing’s moving, nothing coming, the nearest parked vehicles over a hundred yards away. The vehicles are covered in snow, they’ve been there hours.

  He takes a pace into the road.

  “All right,” he says. “Let's go, let’s move out.”

  He sees the truck as it rolls in, sees it slow, sees it pull in at the curb. Sees the figure that steps from the rear door—a plaid coat, a Western hat. Belaski recognizes the man in an instant; the man from the train, the man who shot at him—the rider from the hill.

  A second man steps out from the driver’s side.

  Belaski reaches into the footwell of the Yukon, picks the suppressed SIG Sauer off of the floor.

  The far-side passenger door opens.

  He levels the gun at the inside of the windshield—Lauren DeLuca steps out in line with the barrel.

  He holds the gun directly at her—adjusting on instinct, raising the can-like muzzle for the yardage.

  He’ll take out the Yukon’s windshield, but there’s no time to stop, to get out, he’ll be seen.

  Two shots, at least, with a pistol—three to kill her? Maybe more?

  His finger curls around the trigger—ten pounds pressure on the first pull, down to four on the second and following shots.

  He takes a breath, holds it.

  At the top of a set of stairs into the federal building, Janice Rimes has the street door open.

  Whicher moves the party of three off the sidewalk, they clip up the wide, brick steps.

  Passing inside, into a corridor, Rimes shuts the door behind them.

  Whicher knocks snow from his coat, puts away the Glock.

  Janice Rimes studies Lauren DeLuca.

  Galen Coburn jabs a finger at the FBI agent. “You owe me an explanation, ma’am—you place a minor at my ranch—somebody comes up looking for him with a gun?”

  A moustachioed man in a heavy wool coat steps into the corridor. “Inspector McBride,” he says. “From the witness security program.”

  Whicher touches a finger to the brim of his hat.

  The ranch owner looks at Rimes. “Who the hell are all these people?”

  McBride steps to Lauren. “Are you alright?”

  Lauren turns to Janice Rimes—the two women lock eyes. “Are you responsible for my brother?” she says. “I want him found.”

  At the back of the corridor a man descends the staircase—thin, fast-moving. Japanese-American.

  “The sheriff's department have taken a phone call from the hospital,” the man says. “It's the park ranger, the woman. Sheriff's office say the hospital have her.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Car headlights sweep along the crack at the bottom of the drapes in the motel room. Jerzy Belaski lays on the queen-sized bed, TV on—a football game, a night game, Miami—the crowd in T-shirts and jeans.

  On the night stand is the SIG, plus his cell. He thinks of calling up Coletti, back in Chicago. Stares at the leather badge-holder on the bed—US Marshals Service—ID in the name of Dale Corrigan.

  He could have shot them all—all of them, right there in the street.

  Watching Lauren cross the road, he’d been itching—take her out first, then take the big guy in the hat.

  But at the federal building, a woman was there on the steps. She had the door open, waiting for them. They’d return fire as soon as he took his first shot. They would’ve rushed him, come up the street; they could call down every cop in the city. One marshal was dead already, Corrigan. Belaski wouldn’t hold back. But the play had to be right—no Hail Marys.

  He lets his eye blur on the TV game, mind wandering back to the first night—in Fisherville, with the Amtrak train. Sitting five rows back, he’d watched the pair of them—Lauren and her escort, Corrigan. When the train collided with Jimmy Scardino’s car, he’d watched the marshal get up, quickly leave his seat, leave the train.

  Belaski’d followed him—nobody else had gotten off.

  He'd waited till they were at the head of a car, stepped forward, shot him once in the back of the he
ad. The suppressed gun inaudible above the noise of the train. He'd dragged the man beneath the train hitch, through the pitch dark, the few short yards into the woods.

  Nobody'd seen him do it. It was black outside, lights blazing in every car, everybody focused on the collision up at the front.

  He’d dragged the marshal into the woods. Took his ID, his badge.

  Running back, he’d checked for blood on the ground. What little he’d found he’d kicked over with fresh snow.

  By the time people were stepping off the train, getting down from all doors, moving around, a hundred-plus passengers, churning things up, you couldn’t see a goddamn trace.

  But back onboard, there was no sign of Lauren.

  He half-watches a running play repeat in slow-mo on the screen.

  From that point on, not finding her there, the whole thing’d been going to shit. Cops turned up, a fire truck, EMTs. He’d gone back in the woods. He’d found Scardino, together they’d dragged the marshal's body in deeper.

  They’d made a fast decision, a pressure call; stay on the train if it got re-started.

  If Lauren got back on, Scardino could follow in the pickup, the road followed the rail line, they knew it could work.

  Belaski'd get her off of the train or shoot her. One of the two. Except that son-of-a-bitch had been there; right there.

  Then Millersburg. More bullshit.

  A pony-ass town, the middle of no-place.

  Trailing them to the forest, to that piece of crap hunting lodge in the woods. The fat cop showing up just one more piece of bullshit bad luck. None of that should ever have happened. What choice had there been but to shoot him?

  Belaski sucks in air over his teeth.

  A US Marshal. Plus a cop. No coming back from that. He’d be looking at lethal injection.

  If ever they got a hold of him he'd probably never make it to any court. They’d have their orders, he tells himself. Shoot on sight.

  He nods.

  Don’t ever give them that chance.

  South of downtown, off of 16, the hospital on Cathedral Drive is close to capacity—Whicher watches staff deal with a steady flow of arrivals; falls and accidents from the storm compounding mid-winter illness.

  The waiting area is over-heated, too hot, too dry. The marshal sits with Lauren DeLuca on one side of a low table, Inspector McBride and Agent Janice Rimes seated opposite.

  Through a glass panel in the door, the marshal watches an Asian doctor consult with a hospital nurse. The doctor finishes his conversation, runs a hand over the stethoscope at his shirt. He pushes open the door.

  Whicher stands.

  “You can't all go in,” the doctor says.

  “I need to see her,” the marshal says.

  Lauren gets to her feet.

  Janice Rimes stares at her. “Sit down.”

  The doctor holds up two fingers. “Two. A maximum of two, no more. Officer Cook has second stage hypothermia. She's willing to talk—I'll allow it, in the circumstances. But not for long, and not all four of you, she doesn’t need the agitation and stress.”

  Lauren takes a step toward the door.

  “I told you to sit down,” Agent Rimes says.

  “Let 'em go in,” the inspector says. “You guard the door, I'll cover the corridor.”

  “This is a hospital,” the doctor says.

  Whicher moves forward, “Nothing's going to happen.”

  He steps through the door, to where a nurse is waiting, Lauren following him in.

  The nurse exchanges a look with the doctor. She puts her hand to a second door. “In here,” she says.

  Maddie Cook is laying in a hospital bed, a drip attached to her arm. Covering her body is a forced-air warming blanket, hooked up to a thermostat and hose.

  She lifts her head an inch from the pillow.

  The marshal turns to the nurse. “If you wouldn't mind, ma’am?”

  The nurse looks at him.

  “The conversation here is private.”

  The nurse steps from the room, closes the door behind her.

  Whicher looks at the woman on the bed. Her face is reddened, blotched in places, her eyelids sore, swollen, her lips cracked.

  Lauren crosses the room, lays the palm of her hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  Maddie Cook glances from Lauren to Whicher.

  “I was there,” the marshal says, “coming down the hill. I was the man on the horse.”

  Maddie’s eyes slide off Whicher's.

  “I couldn't just keep on firing...”

  Lauren squeezes the woman's shoulder.

  “You and a young man were taken hostage,” the marshal says.

  “My brother,” Lauren cuts in.

  For a moment, Maddie Cook just lays in the bed breathing shallow. “He put my cuffs on your...brother. We were driving through the woods. He made me stop, made us all get out. I thought he was going to shoot us.”

  Nobody speaks.

  The only sound is the faint hum of blown air in the heating blanket.

  “He told your brother to get in the trunk,” Maddie says. She looks at Whicher. “He wanted to know how to get out of the forest...” She stares at the ceiling.

  “It's okay,” the marshal says.

  “They’re in my vehicle...”

  “Everybody’s out looking for it.”

  “I didn't have much of a choice,” the woman says. “I told him the track joined a logging road, then went down onto the highway.”

  “You think he went that way?” Whicher says. “The way you told him?”

  “I could see they did. I followed their tracks.”

  “There must be all kinds of places in those hills?”

  She lets out a breath. “No-one else was up there...”

  “Cabins, camps, shacks,” he says. “Could they have gone someplace else?”

  She lays on the bed, eyes roaming the ceiling. “I saw their tracks go down the hill...” Maddie pauses, shifts her head on the pillow to look at Lauren. “After he made your brother get in the trunk, he made me get out.” She swallows.

  Lauren lifts a jug of water from a stand by the bed. “Do you need a drink?”

  “No.” Maddie closes her eyes. Opens them. “He told me the only reason he was letting me live was so that I could give a message. To a Lauren DeLuca. Is that you?”

  Lauren nods.

  Maddie runs her tongue over cracked lips. “He said—it's time for you to do the right thing.”

  Whicher looks at the woman.

  “That’s what he said.” Her gaze shifts to the end of the bed.

  Beyond the open blinds on the sixth-floor window, powdered ice and snow swirl in the lit up air. Whicher crosses the room, looks out into an empty lot. “You think this man expected you to find your way out? The storm the way it is...”

  “I think he didn't much care.”

  The doctor re-enters, looks at each of them in turn.

  “I'm sorry,” Maddie says.

  Lauren leans in close, strokes the side of her face. “You did everything you could possibly do.”

  Half an hour later at the federal building on St. Joseph Street, Agent Janice Rimes is last into the lobby.

  Senior Agent Kinawa leads Whicher, Lauren and Inspector McBride down a corridor to a small office. Janice Rimes pushes the door closed. She brushes by Whicher as she sits.

  Kinawa crosses his arms over the front of his suit.

  McBride, settling behind the desk, leans forward. “Lauren,” he says. “We have to move you.”

  She doesn't answer.

  “Soon as we can, we have to find a way, get you moving—get you far from here.”

  She gives a half-shake of her head.

  “I have to get you to Chicago,” the inspector says. “You have to be there in time for the trial.”

  “Find Anthony,” she says.

  “The trial starts Monday.”

  “Then find my brother.”

  “Anthony is the responsibility of
South Dakota FBI,” McBride says. “You, on the other hand, are mine.”

  Lauren’s head drops a fraction.

  “WITSEC has been protecting you these past months, lives have been on the line. One of my men is dead already—Marshal Dale Corrigan.”

  She presses her lips together. “My life is on the line, too.”

  McBride studies her a moment. “We think the people who parked the car across that train line in Fisherville were from Chicago. Police found the body of a man named Jimmy Scardino. Do you know him?”

  Lauren shakes her head.

  “He pretty much moved in your old circle.”

  She eyes McBride, now, a hot looking flush in her face.

  Kinawa cuts in, “How did people from Chicago know you'd be on that train?”

  Whicher raises a finger. “This man who kidnapped Miss DeLuca, and then Anthony—he already knew where Anthony was at.” He turns to Lauren. “That right? They knew exactly where Anthony was hiding out.”

  Kinawa regards the marshal, stone-faced. “What do you mean to say by that?”

  “What do you think I mean?”

  Janice Rimes turns sideways in her seat. “What're you saying? That our security is compromised?”

  “Are y'all saying WITSEC’s is?”

  “Look,” Lauren says, “you don't know these people. They have friends everywhere...”

  “You got off a train at McCook,” Agent Rimes says. “You’re in the middle of Nebraska, scores of people around you, all the other passengers from the train. But this guy manages to get you off, get you out of there.” She gives a little snap of her fingers. “Like that.”

  Kinawa stares intently into Lauren’s face.

  “Galen Coburn?” Rimes says. “The man who owns that ranch? He says a woman claiming to be Anthony's sister called his ranch this morning. Wanting to know where he was, wanting to speak to him. Was that you?”

  Lauren lets out a choked breath. “They knew,” she says. “They knew Anthony was at the ranch...”

  “How?” Rimes stares at her.

  “He’d made phone calls. To Chicago. To some of his friends.”

  Agent Kinawa looks at Rimes. “Could he have? Could he have called back home?”