An American Bullet

by John Stonehouse

  A half hour is all it should take. Half an hour, eat breakfast, walk across the road, check the outdoor store he’d seen.

  Anthony would be alright. Wrapped up in all that winter fishing gear. He was out of the wind and snow in that shack; sheltered. If he couldn’t get to Lauren, he was going to need him.

  All the doors of the vehicle are open; nothing locked. Agent Rimes stands by the park ranger Explorer in the mini-mart lot, feet numb, in spite of the Timberland boots.

  A basic visual examination has shown nothing to indicate a body. No sign an injured person has been transported. She's wearing black, nitrile gloves, she’s made a minimum of contact. Nothing untoward is inside the vehicle—no blood, no mud, no debris from the ground.

  A streak of brass colored light paints the snow in the lot. She leaves the doors open, steps away.

  Turning toward the uniform cop, she calls over, “Officer Stevens?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I need the radio.”

  The store manager, Karsten, watches her.

  “Go right ahead,” Stevens says.

  She squints into the sun, trudges to the cruiser. Yanks open the door, slides in.

  Shaking off the cold, she shudders, lifts the radio transmitter from the console.

  On the top floor of the hotel downtown, Inspector McBride talks fast into his cell. It’s the third call inside of ten minutes; Whicher glances at him from his place at the picture window.

  McBride nods as he listens, then clicks off the call. “Agent Rimes is going to wait down there,” he says. “Kinawa’s calling in a crime scene technician.”

  “At least we know they're not in that vehicle,” the marshal says.

  The inspector stands, walks to the window. “Maybe,” he says. He peers out into the middle distance. “I have to say it’s not looking real promising.”

  Whicher follows the man’s gaze to the wooded hills beyond the city skyline. “No need to search the forests,” the marshal says. “Or check on outlying properties.”

  “Kinawa thinks they’ll be out of state, long gone.”

  “He thinks they have another vehicle?”

  “No reports have come in,” McBride answers. “Nothing’s been stolen. They’re going to check with the rental car places.” The inspector shrugs.

  “If that park ranger SUV was dumped downtown,” Whicher says, “they could be in here now. Right here in Rapid City.”

  McBride eyes the younger marshal. “There's no sign of blood. He could’ve just shot the poor son of a bitch and dumped him someplace in the woods.”

  “He shoots Anthony, then drives to Rapid City?”

  “Nobody would find the body, maybe not for months.” McBride scowls. “If he's in here somewhere, we’d have no way of knowing about it.” He runs a knuckle over the salt and pepper mustache. “If the guy drove into town, he could have picked up a phone, called for somebody to come get him. Kind of thing he might do if he was alone by that point...”

  Whicher thinks about it. “You’re saying you think he killed him?”

  “Explain it, if he didn't.”

  The marshal turns to stare out over the rooftops, steam rising from flue vents and chimney stacks at the sides of buildings. “If the guy came to kill Lauren and Anthony, how come he waited this long?”

  The inspector doesn’t answer.

  Whicher shifts his focus onto a neighboring roof, thick with snow. “The guy’s boss wants them back alive.”

  McBride steps away from the window, takes his coat from the back of a chair. “The only thing I know is I want you gone today,” the inspector says. “There’s a break in the weather, I want you out of here, you and Lauren, headed east. We get her back to Chicago. In time for the trial. After that, she’s the DA’s problem.”

  “She’s going to retract.”

  “You believe that?”

  Whicher squares his hat. “Right now? I think she’d take back every word.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Behind the wheel of the Crown Vic, Officer Stevens steers inside the ruts on the two-lane thruway.

  Janice Rimes smokes a cigarette out the open window, box stores and strip malls whumping by.

  Stevens lifts a finger off the wheel. “Right there,” he says.

  The FBI agent checks the glass-front strip of a rental car unit, the vehicles outside cleared from snow, from the caked-on salt of anything that’s been on the road.

  “Nearest rental place,” Officer Stevens says.

  Rimes takes a final draw on the cigarette, sails the butt end out of the window.

  The Crown Vic slows, signals. Makes the turns at an intersection.

  Stevens parks in the rental car lot, he shuts off the motor, hustles out.

  Rimes zips up her coat. Stevens puts on his cap. They cross the lot to the big glass door of the office—push it open, wipe their feet on the mat.

  A black woman is seated behind a counter. She’s wearing a roll neck sweater, her hair in braids.

  Janice Rimes takes out her badge-holder, shows it. “FBI, ma'am.”

  The woman looks from one to the other of them.

  “I need to ask you about rentals, any vehicles rented here yesterday. Or today.”

  “Did you get a look out there?” the woman says. “At the weather out there?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nobody's looking to rent right now.”

  “You didn't rent any cars?”

  “The way things have been, with the storm, no. Yesterday, not a thing,” the woman says. “Nothing so far today, but I guess it's early.”

  The patrol officer spreads his hands.

  “I can check with the other office,” the woman says.

  “Where would that be?”

  “It’s just up the road—the corner of Mount Rushmore and Columbus.”

  Stevens shoots an eyebrow. “It's not that far.”

  “I guess,” Rimes says. She nods at the woman.

  The clerk picks up the phone.

  The FBI agent watches traffic rolling into Rapid City, workers headed in, a string of big rigs headed out.

  The woman behind the counter talks into the receiver.

  Rimes turns to Officer Stevens. “How about crime scene? You think they’re going to dig up anything?”

  “If something’s in there...”

  The room goes quiet.

  “Downtown rented a vehicle last night,” the clerk says. “Nothing today.”

  The FBI agent leans in closer to the counter.

  “A GMC Yukon,” the woman says. “Yesterday evening around six—the guy wanted it for a week.”

  Rimes looks at Stevens.

  “An Illinois state drivers license,” the clerk says.

  “Tell them,” says Rimes, “tell them we're on our way...”

  Streaks of sunlight hang in the dark interior of the cabin—Anthony’s mind drifts, his eyes half closing.

  He listens to the sound of his own breathing, feels the dryness of his throat, his swollen tongue.

  Yards distant, just beyond the log-walls, beyond the ache inside his head, the world is moving. He tries to sit up—all his muscles are cramped, limbs like weights, his tail bone numb.

  The wood stove at his back is drilled onto a concrete plinth, he can feel the bolt-heads with his fingers, feel the rough dry surface of the cement.

  Waves come and go, waves of emotion. All night, feelings—fear mixed with anger, a bottomless well of despair. Sometimes, a strange kind of calm. Now it must be morning. But cold and dark still haunt him.

  He tries to move sideways against the stove, to find a moment's respite.

  His back is screaming, rippling with pain. Hunger comes and goes, sometimes intense, sometimes nothing. But the muscle spasms leave him fighting for breath.

  All night he's had to think—to think of getting out, trying to free his arms, to rip his hands from the cuffs. Over and over, trying to dig his heels into a plank floor. Scrabbling, pushing with all hi
s strength. Useless against the bolted-down stove.

  The thirst is constant, now, racking every living atom.

  He thinks of her again, tries to conjure her; the mother he can't remember, that he never really knew. A beautiful stranger. Gone, gone before she was even there. No memory, nothing save for photographs, a single video, her wedding day.

  So many times he's tried to reach inside, to feel, to touch something—something he must have known, or felt, as a child. Two-years old, looking up into her eyes. If only he could summon it. Commune somehow.

  He lets the thought sit. Somewhere out there—just in front of his eyes.

  Maybe we'll be together. In just a short while. Together again.

  He thinks of his mother’s eyes—sapphire blue in the faded photographs. A shade that only existed in one other person; Lauren. He thinks of his father—was he with her now, with their mother? Free from everything, the misery that’d seemed to stalk him—the drink-pity-rage.

  He'd never gotten over it—that’s what everybody told him. Everybody in the family; if only he could have seen his father—known him, before.

  He screws his eyes tight, tries to push away the thought. Thinks instead of Lauren—helpless, trapped in the front seat of the crashed Nissan.

  His head slumps an inch between his shoulders. Why did the little they’d had get ripped away? He thinks of the day, a few short months back—police arriving at the yard, and men in suits. All of them, rushing up to the house. He’d stood in disbelief as they arrested her.

  Lauren.

  They’d put her in cuffs, they’d taken her away.

  Nothing made any sense in the weeks that followed. Nothing anybody told him, nothing anybody said.

  They were putting her on trial. All the evidence they had, they'd convict her, that’s all they’d say. Organized crime. She'd be in prison the rest of her life.

  He stopped going to school.

  Stopped getting out of bed.

  Stopped everything, those weeks. Till finally, one day, a black car rolled up to the house.

  A man and a woman. From the FBI, they said. Lauren was going to cut a deal, they told him. She’d be cutting a plea.

  But everything they'd ever known would be different.

  New names, new lives, in new locations.

  His eye follows a speck of dust floating in a shaft of cold sunlight. He wills it to stay, to float just as it is, suspended. Only cling on in the narrow band of light.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  In the car park beneath the federal building, Whicher waits with Lauren DeLuca—wind blowing powdered ice off the hardened-steel security bars.

  A hum of street traffic echoes in the bare, concrete space.

  He looks at Lauren. “They'll be here soon.”

  The morning air is chilled, now. Un-warmed by any sun.

  She gives back the barest nod.

  The marshal stares out into the street at vapor pooling above the slow-moving traffic. Feels only distance between them.

  The hood of a police department cruiser pulls in view.

  It swings in from the road, lines up on the entrance ramp, beyond the locked gate.

  Whicher stares at its windshield, the sky reflected, etched wide.

  “Tell them,” he says. “Even if you don't mean it.” He glances at Lauren. “You're a federal witness. Tell them you'll cooperate.”

  A uniformed driver reaches out of the cruiser window—he presses on a switch by the gate.

  Lauren angles her head toward the car about to enter their space. Finally, she turns. Her eyes search the marshal’s face.

  The walls echo to the clack of a lock, the gate slides back on its runners.

  The cruiser rolls in, parks.

  Janice Rimes steps out.

  The rear door snaps open—Inspector McBride.

  The uniformed driver exits the vehicle—a patrolman, he glances at the blonde woman huddled in an oversize coat.

  “Alright, Stevens,” Rimes says, “you can go, now.”

  The officer strides across to the door for the main building, punches in an access code. Steps inside.

  Rimes takes out a pack of cigarettes. Shakes one out. Lights it up.

  Inspector McBride turns to Lauren. “We think it's him.” He pulls a Xeroxed copy of a drivers license from his pocket.

  Lauren stares at it.

  “In the name of Gary Farndale,” McBride says. “It’s fake. But a good one.”

  She nods. “That’s him.”

  “He picked the vehicle up at six o'clock last night,” Rimes says. “At a car rental. Downtown. On Mount Rushmore and Columbus.”

  “Alone?” Whicher says.

  Rimes’s eyes are hooded. She takes a hit off the cigarette, blows a thin stream of smoke out of the side of her mouth. “The clerk said he was alone.”

  In the chilled space of the car lot, the only sound is traffic rumbling.

  “Fifteen hours,” Rimes says, “that vehicle could be anywhere.”

  “All law enforcement units have been notified,” McBride says.

  Janice Rimes clamps the cigarette to her mouth. “The parks service SUV was clean.”

  Whicher studies the FBI agent's face, unwilling to voice the question in his mind.

  “There was nothing in it,” she says, “nothing to see.”

  “You mean there was no trace of my brother?” Lauren says.

  Rimes doesn’t answer. She looks away at the floor. “They could tell he was in there,” she says, finally. “But nothing more.”

  Inspector McBride turns to Whicher. “You need to get going. I have to leave. I have a flight back to Albuquerque, y’all need to be on the flight for Minneapolis, at noon. There's a half-hour layover, the connecting flight to Chicago should get y’all in around four-thirty. Agent Rimes will drive you to the airport.”

  Whicher nods.

  Lauren only stares across the car park space.

  Janice Rimes walks to the cruiser, opens up the front passenger door, reaches in. She takes out a set of nylon flexi-cuffs. “Hold out your hands,” she says to Lauren. “I'm getting you across the city, to the airport.” She looks at Whicher. “What you do with your witness after that is up to you.”

  “You get to O’Hare,” McBride says, “Chicago FBI will take charge. It's their case, Lauren’s their witness, our responsibility ends.”

  “Put out your hands,” Rimes says. “Palms together.”

  Lauren stares straight ahead.

  Agent Rimes takes a hold of her arms, fits the double-loops of white plastic around her wrists, pulls the ends of the straps through the zip-locks. “You have to cut these off,” she says, to Whicher. “I'll let you have another set in case a bathroom break is unavoidable. You cut them off, wait outside the door. Put them back on right after.”

  The marshal fixes her with a look. “I know how to transport a person.”

  “Safety first,” Rimes says.

  “Agent Rimes will accompany you to the airport,” the inspector says. “She'll drive you, see you to the gate.”

  “We’ll take my car,” Rimes moves toward an unmarked Jeep Liberty parked two spaces along from the cruiser. “It’s my own private car,” she says, “nobody can clock it for a law enforcement vehicle.”

  Whicher places a hand in the small of Lauren's back.

  The FBI agent looks at him. “You're armed and ready? Right?”

  Guns are lined floor-to-ceiling on the back wall at the outdoor supply. Belaski rests his full gut against the counter edge. Assault rifle, he thinks. Assault rifle could be good.

  The breakfast from the diner sits like lead inside his stomach. He eyes an M16, an AR15. Spots the Heckler and Koch. If numbers started stacking up against him, an assault rifle would give him weight of fire. But better not to let that happen, better just to pick up the brother, get out someplace safe; Anthony would buy Lauren’s silence. The further he could get from law enforcement, the better.

  The store clerk is looking at hi
m. “Sir?”

  He pushes off the counter.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I need some handgun ammunition.”

  “Alright-y.”

  “9mm, hollow-point.”

  “Did you have a brand preference in mind, sir?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, we have a range on sale...” The clerk turns, taps a finger along the stacked boxes on the shelf behind him. “9mm, hundred-fifteen grain.”

  “I'll take a couple hundred,” Belaski says. “Long as I'm here.”

  The clerk pulls down four fifty-round boxes.

  Belaski eyes a saw-tooth hunting knife displayed beneath a section of glass in the counter top. “I could use a decent knife.”

  “That's a carbon-steel, military grade survival knife, sir.”

  “Looks neat.”

  “Finished in zinc phosphate. You got something needs cutting, that’ll cut it.”

  “Break one out for me.”

  The clerk stacks the boxes of bullets, searches in the drawers beneath the counter. He takes out a brand-new, packaged knife. Takes it from the sheath, lays it on the counter top. “It comes with the ribbed leather handle on a five-inch blade.” He flicks a finger against it.

  “Bag it for me.”

  “Yes, sir. Will that be everything? I just need to see a driver’s license on the ammo.”

  Belaski shrugs, takes out the license. “I got to pick up some other things in the store. Sleeping bag, a tarp, maybe.”

  “Yes, sir—Mister Farndale. Over on aisle ten you got your camping equipment. You have a good day, now. Looks like the snow is set to break.”

  Belaski looks at him. “They're saying that?”

  “Yes, sir. Clear air moving in.”

  Belaski takes the knife and the boxes of bullets. Walks around the store, finds a rolled sleeping bag, pre-packed. He takes one. Moves along the aisle till he finds the tarps.

  Up at the check-out, a cashier bags everything, Belaski pays the man in used bills.

  He heads out, walks in snow at the side of Highway 16.

  Cars and trucks are moving steady in both directions, now. Stores open, workers out with shovels, everybody in layers. The kid would be cold.