by Louise Penny
“By who?” Zelinsky asked. “You have any suspects?”
“No identified suspects,” Dixon said. “But it’s a group that calls itself T3P. Short for ‘the third panel.’ Within a day, maybe two, they will reach out to you in some way to take responsibility for this and to vow to continue the work they believe law enforcement is failing to do.”
“Jesus Christ,” Henry said.
“We believe they are an offshoot of something that started in Europe two years ago. It was the five hundredth anniversary of Bosch’s death and his work was displayed in a Holland exhibition that drew tens of thousands and probably sparked the uprising. Since then there have been similar multideath attacks in France, Belgium, and the U.K.—all of them targeting the purveyors of human misery.”
“It’s sort of like they’re terrorists against the bad guys,” Henry said.
Dixon nodded.
“An international meeting with Interpol and Scotland Yard is scheduled for early next month,” Dixon said. “I’ll make sure you get the details.”
“What I don’t understand is why you haven’t gone public with this,” Henry said. “There’s gotta be people out there who have to know who these people are.”
“We most likely will after the international meeting,” Dixon said. “We’ll be forced to. But up until now we hoped the two cases were it and we’d have the chance to quietly identify and move in on them.”
“Well, this one is going to go public,” Henry vowed. “We are not going to wait around for fucking Interpol.”
“That’s a decision above my pay grade,” Dixon said. “Right now I just came out to confirm the connection and I need to get the helicopter back. The special agent in charge of the Los Angeles Field Office will be reaching out to the sheriff’s department to discuss task-force operations locally.”
Dixon turned toward the helicopter. The reflection off the cockpit windows made it impossible to see the pilot. Dixon raised his arm and twirled a finger in the air. Almost immediately the turbine engine turned over and the rotor blade began to slowly turn. Dixon started peeling off the protection suit.
“Do you want to keep the print?” he asked. “We have others.”
“I would, yes,” Zelinsky said. “I want to study the fucking thing.”
“Then it’s yours,” Dixon said. “I just need the tube—my last one.”
The helicopter blade started kicking dust up again. Zelinsky reached up and grabbed one of the canopy’s cross struts when the tent threatened to go airborne. Dixon put his suit jacket back on but kept the mask on to guard against breathing the dust. He picked up the empty tube and recapped it, then tucked it under his arm.
“If you need anything else, you know where to reach me,” he said. “We’ll talk soon, gentlemen.”
Dixon shook their hands, then trotted back toward the helicopter as the turbine began to obliterate all other sound. Soon he was inside the cockpit and the chopper lifted off. As it rose Zelinsky saw that the F in the FBI decal was starting to peel off in the downdraft from the rotor.
The craft banked left and headed south, back toward L.A.
Zelinsky and Henry watched it go, keeping a steady altitude of no more than 200 feet above the hardscape. As it headed toward the horizon the sheriff’s men then noticed the kickup of dust from an approaching vehicle. It had lights in its grille that were flashing, and it was moving fast.
“Now who the hell is this?” Henry asked.
“They’re in a hurry, that’s for sure,” Zelinsky added.
The vehicle took another minute to get to them, and when it arrived it was clear it was a government vehicle. It pulled to a halt behind the other vehicles scattered on the road in front of the cook house. Two men in suits and sunglasses got out and made their way to the canopy tent.
They pulled badges as they approached, and Zelinsky recognized the FBI insignia.
“Captain Henry?” one of them said. “Special Agent Ross Dixon with the Bureau. I believe we spoke earlier? This is my partner, Agent Cosgrove.”
“You’re Dixon?” Henry said.
“That’s right,” Dixon said.
“Then who the hell was that?” Henry said.
He pointed toward the horizon, where the black helicopter was now about the size of a fly and still getting smaller.
“What are you talking about, Captain Henry?” Cosgrove asked.
Henry kept his arm up and pointing at the horizon as he began to explain about the helicopter and the man who had gotten off it.
Zelinsky turned to the equipment table and looked at the print of the third panel. He realized that the only thing the man from the helicopter had touched before gloving up was the cardboard tube and he had taken it with him. He moved the boxes that weighted the print and flipped it over. On the back there was a printed message.
T3P
we shall not stop
purveyors of misery
be warned
T3P
Zelinsky stepped out from the cover of the canopy and looked off toward the horizon. He scanned and then sighted the black helicopter. It was flying too low to be picked up on FAA radar. It was no more than a distant black dot against the gray desert sky.
In another moment it was gone.
John M. Floyd
Gun Work
from Coast to Coast
Will Parker sat alone on the wooden platform beside the pulpit in the empty church. He was watching, through one of the side windows, the bay horse he’d tied to the hitching rail half an hour ago and the rippling rust-colored leaves of the trees in the distance. It was a sunny October morning, bright enough to light up every corner of the little sanctuary, and the breeze through the open windows was cool but not cold.
Parker crossed his legs, took off his hat, and balanced it on one knee. The pews facing him were as empty as the church, but he had chosen this seat—which wasn’t really a seat—because it offered a clear view of the front door. Whenever possible he sat this way, facing a room with his back to a wall. He remembered what had happened to Bill Hickok.
For the tenth time, Parker checked his pocket watch. He’d been intentionally early, but it was now twenty minutes past the time his client had set for this meeting.
His client. That still sounded strange to him, even after several years as a private investigator. But Parker liked the job, and the agency he and his brother had founded in San Francisco had been surprisingly successful. Granted, most of his recent work was dull—checking backgrounds, locating beneficiaries of a will, uncovering shady deals and/or relationships, etc. (unlike the tough assignments he’d had during his short time with the Pinkerton Agency years ago)—but occasionally he was given something interesting and challenging. He had a feeling this case might be both. After all, he wasn’t often instructed to meet a client at a church in the middle of the week, in the middle of nowhere.
“Mr. Parker?” a voice said.
He looked up to see a tall man in a brown hat and vest standing in the front doorway. Parker had heard no hoofbeats, no footsteps. A quick glance confirmed that his own horse, rented from the livery stable in Dodge early this morning, was still alone at the hitch rail. So much for being watchful.
“Who else would I be?” he said. “We’re probably the only two people within miles.”
“Sorry I’m late,” the tall man said.
Parker stayed seated, watching him. “How’d you get here?”
“Quietly. My horse is tied some distance away.” A smile touched the man’s lips, but only for a moment, there and gone. “The cautious, I have found, live longer.”
“Cautious of what?”
“Of everything.”
With that, the man strode casually down the aisle and extended his hand. “Cole Bennett.”
They shook hands and Bennett took a seat in the front pew, facing Parker from a distance of eight feet or so. Cole Bennett appeared to be in his late fifties, maybe ten years older than Parker. But he looked strong and fit, an
d had what Parker’s wife, Bitsy, would call a world-weary face. Bennett took off his hat and set it down beside him. “Thanks for coming,” he said.
“You paid for my transportation,” Parker reminded him. “I arrived on last night’s stage.”
“But not from San Francisco. Your brother wired me that you were already fairly close to here at the moment. Redemption, he said?”
“Yes—my wife lived there when I met her. We’re visiting her parents.”
“That was convenient for me.”
“Convenient for me, actually. Less expensive for you.” Parker hooked his thumbs in his gunbelt. “How can I help you, Mr. Bennett?”
Bennett blew out a long sigh. “First I need to tell you a story.”
“I’m listening.”
“Do you remember the Ford brothers? Jesse and Dalton?”
“Barely.”
Again Bennett hesitated, obviously choosing his words. “Some time ago,” he began, “a U.S. marshal, Sam Ewing, shot Dalton Ford during what was said to be the robbery of a bank up in Hays City. The marshal lived here in Dodge but was in Hays the day this happened. Anyhow, Marshal Ewing shot Ford and killed him. Afterward one of the witnesses said Ford was in the bank, sure enough, but wasn’t robbing it—he said Ford was chatting with one of the tellers. Whichever way it happened, the marshal got word he was there, entered the bank, and Dalton Ford—a man wanted for multiple crimes—wound up dead as a pine knot. Dalton’s brother Jesse, who was in prison at the time, heard about the killing, and when he was released a year later he showed up at Ewing’s house just outside Dodge with two of his buddies.”
“Looking for revenge.”
“Yes,” Bennett said. He paused and studied his folded hands.
Will Parker waited, saying nothing.
“According to the official report,” Bennett continued, “Jesse Ford—I’ll just call him Jesse from now on—and his friends arrived one day in July to find Ewing and his twelve-year-old son, Andrew, home in their farmhouse north of town. Not far from here, actually. Mrs. Ewing had died three months earlier, some kind of fever, and Ewing had retired as marshal and took to raising crops and some cattle. Apparently Jesse and his men surprised them. They struck Ewing in the head in the kitchen, held him and the boy at gunpoint, and Jesse ordered his two men to go outside and wait. Five minutes later Ewing got the jump on Jesse and shot him dead, then went out and killed one of Jesse’s friends as well. The other one got away.”
Parker thought that over. “The official report, you said?”
“Yes. It’s what Ewing told the sheriff afterward.”
“Go on.”
“No more to tell. That’s the background,” Bennett said. “The current situation is, I received word recently that things didn’t happen the way everyone thought they did that day at Ewing’s house. I’ve been told that Jesse Ford was shot in the back. One of his two companions was killed with an entry wound in the chest, just like Ewing reported, but—again—Jesse’s wound showed that he was shot from behind.”
“And how did you find all this out?”
“From an old friend of mine. He’d been a sheriff’s deputy in Dodge, back when the incident took place, and saw the two bodies the sheriff brought in. He told me this a few weeks ago, on his deathbed. A week or so after that, I noticed an ad in the newspaper about your agency and sent the wire requesting your services.”
Parker waited for more. When it didn’t come, he asked, “So what is it that you need?”
Bennett turned to look out the window at the small stand of oaks Parker had been watching earlier. The wind had died; the leaves were still. Like Bennett’s expression.
“I need to know what happened that day,” Bennett said. “What really happened.”
“Why don’t you just ask the sheriff?”
“Because the sheriff is dead. So is former marshal Sam Ewing, and even his son, Andrew. The son died young, from an accident on a cattle drive, south of here. They’re all gone now.”
Parker studied Cole Bennett for a moment. “What haven’t you told me, Mr. Bennett?”
“I haven’t told you when all this happened.”
“When did it happen?”
Bennett let out a lungful of air. “Sam Ewing shot Jesse Ford twenty-two years ago.”
“What?”
“My friend—the deputy—said he kept the secret all those years because the sheriff asked him to. Said everybody in town loved Sam Ewing, all the Ewings. Said the sheriff figured what good would it do to tell the whole story? Jesse Ford was dead, along with one of his cutthroat friends, and the world was better off for it. Why complicate things? The deputy said he and the sheriff, and of course Ewing and his son, were the only people who knew Jesse was back-shot. And that only the two Ewings knew how it happened.”
Bennett went quiet then, staring down at his boots as if in deep thought.
Parker let the silence drag out, then said, “I think we have a problem here, Mr. Bennett. If this took place more than twenty years ago and everyone involved is deceased, why do you think I could find out any more than what you just told me?”
Bennett raised his head. “Because I don’t think they’re all deceased.”
“You just said—”
“I said the deputy told me Sam Ewing and his son were the only people who saw exactly what happened. But I think there’s someone else.” He leaned forward in his seat, his eyes locked on Parker’s. “I heard Sam Ewing’s son, Andrew, had a childhood friend his own age, and I heard that in the summers they were inseparable, those two boys, especially in the months after Sam’s wife passed. Way I heard it, this kid was at little Andrew Ewing’s house most every day.” Bennett paused, drew a breath, and said, “I’d be willing to bet—in fact, I guess I am betting, by hiring you—that whoever this boy was, he was probably there with Andrew the day Jesse Ford and his men came to call. I’m betting he never got mentioned because everyone involved was trying to protect him. Again, why make a simple matter complicated?”
Parker gave this some thought. “Do you have a name?”
“No. But I have confidence you’ll come up with one. And when you do . . .” Bennett paused again, his face solemn. “When you find him, maybe he has what I need to know.”
Another question was nagging at Parker. An important question.
“Why do you need to know?”
Cole Bennett settled back into the pew. “My wife,” he said, “was a Ford. Jesse and Dalton, as worthless as they were, were her nephews. Her brother’s sons. I told her what my deputy friend, before he died, told me about Jesse’s death, and it’s driving her crazy. She says she has to know what really happened in that kitchen that day.”
Parker mulled that over. “All due respect,” he said, “why do you need me? Why couldn’t you ask the same kinds of questions you want me to ask?”
“Because you’re the expert. I checked out the references your brother gave me.” Bennett picked up his hat and stood. “I’m trusting you to solve this for me, Mr. Parker.”
Parker, who had spent a lot of time doing this kind of work, knew a lie when he heard it. He knew Cole Bennett didn’t want to ask around about this matter for the same reason Bennett had picked a remote spot for their meeting today: he couldn’t afford to be connected to all this. What are you hiding, Mr. Bennett?
Parker rose to his feet also, and the two men stood facing each other.
“Your brother told me your name’s Will,” Bennett said.
“That’s right.”
“It occurred to me that you bear some resemblance to another Parker, well known in this part of the country years ago. By reputation, at least.”
“What kind of reputation?”
“He was a gunman. A killer, I’m told.”
“Is that so.”
Bennett tilted his head, narrowed his eyes. “This man’s name was Charlie Parker.”
Parker felt himself shrug. “Sorry. No relation.”
Bennett studied him a mom
ent more, nodded, and left. Parker remained standing where he was. This time he did hear hoofbeats, moments later, receding into the distance.
Parker sighed. All God’s chillun got secrets, he thought.
After another minute or so, Charles William Parker walked outside to the hitching rail, mounted the bay, and headed back to town.
It took Parker less than six hours to narrow things down a bit. Unlike the procedures he’d followed to gather information the last time he’d visited these parts—a missing-person case in the small town of Redemption—he didn’t bother with the saloons and the stables and the blacksmith and the stockyards. This time he concentrated on places where he could find and talk with the womenfolk. After several hours of visiting the general store, a dress shop, the schoolhouse, and a church—this one with more pews and more windows than the one this morning—he’d discovered that young Andrew Ewing was well remembered by some of the older teachers and ladies. One, a widow with the unfortunate name of Ophelia Reardon, recalled that Andrew had indeed made one especially close friend during his long-ago school years.
“Truitt,” Mrs. Reardon said, smiling at the memory. “Can’t recall his first name, but little Andrew Ewing played a lot with Daisy Truitt’s boy. Never saw one of them without the other.”
“When exactly was that?” Parker asked. “When they were teenagers?”
“Earlier. When they were eleven or twelve, probably.” A thought seemed to come to her, and Mrs. Reardon’s smile faded a bit. “Around the time Andrew’s mama died, and that outlaw Ford came and tried to kill Marshal Ewing,” she said.
Which was exactly what Parker wanted to hear.
“Is Mrs. Truitt still here in Dodge?” he asked, holding his breath.
“Sure is. Husband died five years ago. She and her son live on the other end of town.” Ophelia Reardon pointed toward the reddening sunset. “You turn left there at the stage office, their place is about a mile south, on the right side of the road. White house with a tall barn.”