She’d awakened one night, shortly after they’d moved in, and heard the sounds of digging in the back yard. She’d peered out the window of her bedroom, but couldn’t make out the pale figure in the backyard. It was only when she’d gone to the back door that she recognized her father, dressed in a white t-shirt, sweating and straining as he dug a hole next to the scattered blocks of the barbecue grill. She’d watched for a long time as he excavated a hole amongst the disorganized piles, then put the blocks back in place. She’d felt herself too young at the time to ask him what he’d been doing. But now, as she feels danger closing in from every side, she thinks she knows.
FORTY-TWO
“Fucking bitch.” Brandon is pacing back and forth behind his truck. The pair of boys who’ve stayed with him since the bar look at each other nervously. “Fucking bitch.”
They’re pulled up at a spot on the bank of the river, a gravel lot where a half dozen other cars and trucks are pulled in, little knots of people congregated around each vehicle. Mostly they keep to themselves, but now and then a figure will move from one group to the other, conduct some business, then go back to his own clique. The faint sounds of southern rock, country, and heavy metal meet and mingle in the spaces between.
“Hey, Brandon,” Pete, one of the followers, says. “Let’s just go home, bro. This night’s fucked.”
Brandon stares at them through eyes rendered small and blood-red by whiskey and the smoke he scored from one of the other cars a half hour ago. “Fine, motherfucker. Go on home.”
“You’re our ride, man,” the other follower, a lanky, buck-toothed boy everyone knows as Bunny, points out.
Brandon laughs, a harsh cough without any humor in it. “Guess y’all are the ones fucked, then, ain’t ya?” He spots a truck pulling into the gravel lot and laughs again. “Night’s lookin’ up, boys.” Without looking back, he heads over to greet the new arrival.
By the time Brandon makes his stumbling way across the lot, the driver of the truck is out, leaning against the left rear quarter panel. He’s a skinny dude in a wife-beater that may have been white at some point but which has now been badly and repeatedly washed into a sad and nondescript gray. He looks at Brandon through heavy lidded eyes. “Whassup, young blood?”
Brandon is too wasted for subtlety. “I need a pistol, cuz.”
The man by the truck looks around. “Jesus, Bran, keep your fuckin’ voice down.”
“Sorry, Jake,” Brandon says with no perceptible decrease in volume.
Jake rolls his eyes. “Fer Chrissakes. How goddamn wasted are you?” Before Brandon can answer, Jake motions to the front of the truck. “Come on, man. Talk to me. In private.”
Brandon follows Jake around the front of the truck, tottering a little on the edge of the embankment that leads down to the river. Jake turns and delivers a stinging slap that rocks Brandon’s head to one side. When he looks back at Jake, Brandon’s eyes are a little more focused, but still flaming red. He smiles with a little blood on his teeth. “Shit. Can’t you hit no harder than that? Daddy’d knock me down by now.”
“Your daddy hits you ’cause he’s an asshole,” Jake snaps. “I’m just tryin’ to wake your drunk ass up.”
Brandon nods. “Okay. I’m awake. Now sell me a gun.”
Jake sighs with exasperation. “And why you need a gun?”
“That’s my business, ain’t it?” He flinches as his cousin Jake raises his hand for another slap.
“It’s my business,” Jake says, his hand still raised and poised but his voice incongruously reasonable, “if you’re gonna use this pistol, which I may or may not have, in some sort of half-bright criminal enterprise that might get traced back to me.”
“It ain’t comin’ back to you, cuz,” Brandon says.
“Imagine how much better that makes me feel. Now, why you want a gun?”
Brandon grits his teeth and looks away. “Son of a bitch disrespected me.” He doesn’t want to say that the person he’s really ashamed of being disrespected by is a woman.
Jake shakes his head. “So, you want to shoot him, that it? You’re gonna risk the death penalty ’cause you got your feelin’s hurt?”
As he starts to walk away, Brandon remembers the confrontation at school and blurts out “They threatened me, too.”
Jake stops and turns around. “Well, that’s different, ain’t it?” He leans his head back and regards his cousin through narrowed eyes. “You ain’t lyin’ to me, are you?”
Brandon shakes his head. The beer, poured on top of the liquor from the bar, combined with the weed he’s just smoked, has his head spinning. He feels like he’s about to throw up and doesn’t trust himself to speak. He leans against the truck, closes his eyes, and braces himself with one hand until the spinning stops. When he opens them again, Jake is standing there with a cloth bundle in his hands. He’s frowning.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Brandon mumbles.
Jake doesn’t look convinced, but he unwraps the bundle to reveal a short-barreled black handgun. “Ruger 9 mil,” he announces. “One magazine loaded. You want more ammo, I can get that, too.” As Brandon reaches for the gun, Jake pulls away. “There are some conditions.”
Brandon squints at him. “What conditions?”
“If you have to use this, you get rid of it. Immediately. Bring it back to me if you have to. I know how to make guns disappear.”
“What, you don’t trust me?”
“I seen that look in your eyes,” Jake says. “Like a kid at Christmas. This is a pistol, cuz, not a new toy. If you have to use it, it turns into evidence. That’s how motherfuckers get caught.”
“I got it.” Brandon licks his lips. “How much?”
“Two hundred.” Jake grins. “Family discount.” When Brandon looks hesitant, Jake shrugs and begins folding the cloth back around the pistol.
“Wait.” Brandon reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. He counts some bills into Jake’s outstretched hand.
When he’s out of bills, Jake looks at him, sighs, and returns a couple of bills to him. “You gave me too much,” he says. “Whyn’t you let me hang on to this till tomorrow, when you’re not totally fried?”
Brandon shakes his head. “I paid for it. Give it here.”
Reluctantly, Jake hands the pistol over. “Go home,” he says. “And sleep it off. You try to use this tonight, you’re gonna shoot your dick off.”
Brandon doesn’t answer, just turns and walks away, a slight stagger in his gait. But by the time he makes it back to his worried friends, he’s whistling. “So, Pete,” he says. “You know where the bitch lives, right?”
FORTY-THREE
Marie awakens to the sound of shouting outside her house. She sits bolt upright in bed, instantly awake. She hears an unintelligible yelling outside, then a sound she never wants to hear anywhere near her or her children again, the sound of a gunshot.
She leaps out of bed and crosses the room in a second, taking her service weapon from the lockbox on top of her dresser. Another shot, and she hears the shattering of glass in her front windows. She pulls back the slide and chambers a round just as her bedroom door opens.
Francis is standing there, his blonde hair a bright spot in the dimness. “Mom?” his voice is quivering with fear.
She rushes to him and crouches down, throwing an arm around him, then moves him behind her. “Go get behind the bed, baby,” she whispers. “Stay there till I come get you.”
“Why?” She can hear the tears in his voice.
“Do as I say,” she hisses, and shoves him toward the bed. He falls on his ass and begins to cry harder. Another figure appears in the doorway.
“What’s going on?”
She swings the gun around in a two-handed grip pointed at the shadowy outline. It leaps backward.
“Jesus, Mom!”
She lowers the pistol. “Get in here,” she orders Ben in a low, urgent voice. “G
et your brother. Get behind the bed.”
“Mom,” Francis wails, loud enough to make Marie grit her teeth.
Ben reaches down and scoops him up under one arm, carrying him to the space between wall and bed. “It’s okay, buddy,” he says. “Shhh. It’s okay.” He deposits the boy in the narrow space, then slides across the bed toward her.
“What are you doing?” she demands.
He rolls off the bed onto the floor and holds up the cell phone he’s grabbed from the bedside table. “Calling 9-1-1.”
She nods as he begins punching in the numbers. “Good. Stay here.” She moves in a crouch out of the bedroom, gun extended before her, straining to hear if anyone’s trying to breach the front door. She hears another shot, then a whoop of drunken laughter.
“Take that, bitch!” a voice yells, and it’s a voice she knows too well.
“Brandon,” she snarls. “Now you’re at my fucking house?” She straightens up and moves to the door, caution giving way to outrage and fury. The sound of a big engine comes through the door. She yanks it open, ready to do murder, but all she sees is the taillights of a jacked up white pickup disappearing down her long driveway. She steps out onto the porch of the farmhouse, weapon at the ready, as the truck disappears into the night, the thumping bass of some kind of rap music slowly diminishing as they get away.
FORTY-FOUR
Keller pulls his truck into the tiny gravel pad that serves as a driveway to his cottage. He sits in the quiet for a moment, listening to the slow tick of cooling metal, and rubs his eyes. The day has left him both exhausted and too wired to sleep. It’s a feeling he’s all too familiar with. He glances across the field separating his house from the church. Might as well get some work done. He exits the truck and trudges down the narrow gravel path separating the old parsonage from its church. Halfway to his destination, he stops, places his hands at the small of his back, and stretches to work out the stiffness he feels there. The arch of his back makes him look up at the stars, glittering and uncaring. After holding the stretch for a moment, he resumes his walk to the church. He knows the door won’t be locked. A plaque in the churchyard tells the story of a man found dead on the steps after a snowstorm in 1898 and the resolution of the church elders to never again lock the sanctuary doors to anyone in need. It’s a nice story, but Keller has gotten MacDonald to admit that there has been some vandalism and some acts of outright desecration as a result. But, the preacher has been quick to point out, one of the vandals, while cleaning up the obscene graffiti he’d scrawled in his own feces on the sanctuary walls after being caught and put on probation, decided to commit his life to Christ and is now a valued member of the congregation. Despite himself, Keller hopes that story is true. Redemption is something he’d very much like to believe in.
The big oak doors creak as Keller enters. He snaps on the lights in the sanctuary and locates the vacuum cleaner in a closet off the foyer. He plugs the machine in and begins the process of cleaning. It’s not a large church, but getting into all the nooks and crannies and narrow spaces between the pews is time-consuming. But that’s exactly what Keller needs at this point: to consume time with as little thought as possible.
He’s worked his way from the back of the church almost to the worn rug before the communion rail when he notices the figure seated in the next to last pew. Shit, he thinks, how did I not notice? He kills the vacuum cleaner and waits until its high-pitched whine cycles down before calling out. “Can I help you?”
The person doesn’t answer at first, just looks around the simple interior as if they’re seeing the cathedral of Notre-Dame for the first time.
Keller frowns and walks up the aisle. “I said, can I help you?”
“Perhaps.” The person in the pew slides down and out and heads up the red-carpeted center aisle, stumping toward Keller on a dark wooden cane. As they draw closer together, Keller sees that the visitor is a middle-aged woman, no more than five feet tall. Her hair is cut short and curls around her face, black streaked with silver-gray. Her face is lined and friendly.
“I don’t think there are any services until tomorrow night’s prayer meeting,” Keller says. There’s an uneasy feeling he can’t explain. “Reverend MacDonald will be here in the morning, if you need to talk to him.”
“Good. Good,” the woman says absently, still looking around. Then she turns her focus on Keller. “But it’s you I’d like to talk to,” she says, “Mr. Keller.”
Keller shoves the vacuum cleaner to one side and faces the short woman. “So talk.”
She looks amused. “You look as if you’re getting ready for a fight, Mr. Keller.” She chuckles. “Do I look as if I’m eager to fight?”
Keller realizes that he’s dropped into a slight crouch, arms by his side, as if confronting a threat. He’s still not willing to concede that she isn’t, but he relaxes slightly. The woman chuckles again and slides into a pew about halfway down the aisle. She takes a seat in the middle and pats the cushion next to her. “Come. Sit.” Keller hesitates, then takes a seat just out of reach. That makes the woman shake her head in amusement and look down. After a moment, she speaks. “I’m looking for Ted Wilson. I understand you’ve been looking for him as well.”
Keller’s getting annoyed. “And you are…?”
She smiles. “You can call me Iris. It’s as good a name as any.”
“Well, Iris,” Keller says, “I went looking for Mr. Wilson. He wasn’t at his hotel.”
Her face turns serious. “I know you went looking for Mr. Wilson. I also know you’d had a confrontation with him earlier. At the diner.”
“So,” Keller says, “he’s been reporting back to you. You’re his control, then?”
“Let’s just call him a protege of mine. I’m concerned.”
“Concerned why?”
“He hasn’t reported in.”
“I’d say if you came all the way down here from Langley, or DC, or wherever you’re out of, that’s more than just some concern.”
The previous jolly attitude is starting to slip. “Wilson said you’re an annoying bastard.”
Keller smiles. “I appreciate the endorsement. But the fact that he’s dropped off the radar gives me some concerns, too. About the Khourys. Isn’t that our main goal? Protecting your asset? And his family?”
The scowl remains. “You need to leave this to us, Mister Keller.”
“That’s what Wilson said, Iris. And now he’s MIA. Seems to me you’re not in a position to refuse help.” He stands up. “Because unless I miss my guess, ma’am, there’s no other help coming.”
She stares at him, all pretense of friendliness gone. “What do you mean?”
Keller shakes his head. “I should have figured this out sooner when I saw there was only one guy detailed to the Khourys. An asset that valuable would need a team at least. Then the one guy disappears, and the person who comes down to look after the situation is his boss?” Keller leans over, puts his hands on the pew and looks her in the eye. “This is off the books, isn’t it? You and Wilson were freelancing. Trying to find that missing USAID money without the Agency finding out. So you could get it for yourself. Tell me, are those two contractors I spotted at the Khoury house yours?”
It takes almost a full second for her to hide her shock before her face goes completely blank.
“Not yours, then. So, there’s another player here. Would you have any idea who that might be?”
As Keller speaks, the woman who calls herself Iris has risen from the pew and shouldered her way past Keller. Cane thumping, she makes her way up the aisle toward the back of the church.
He calls after her as she reaches the back doors. “All I care about is the safety of…” But she’s gone.
Keller shakes his head. Then he puts the vacuum away, turns the lights off, and goes home.
FORTY-FIVE
“Are you sure?”
The sheriff’s deputy sent to respond to the shots fired call is b
eginning to piss Marie off. He’s acting as if he’s interviewing some civilian. “Yes, Deputy,” she looks at the nameplate over his pocket, “Gresham. I’m sure. Brandon Ochs. O-C-H-S.”
“And you know this how?”
“Because I hear his voice every goddamn day, Deputy,” Marie snaps. “I’m the SRO at his school. I just faced him down for underage drinking and chased him off at a local bar. I figure that gives him motive. All you have to do is find out about his movements since then and you’ve got your opportunity. Hey, are you listening to me, Deputy?”
Gresham has his head turned to one side, muttering into the mobile microphone clipped to his lapel. He finishes his conversation and turns back to Marie with a professional smile. “We’ll check this out, ma’am.”
“Yeah,” Marie mutters. “You do that.” She wonders what will happen tomorrow if Brandon Ochs shows up. It would probably be a firing offense, she muses, if she ripped the little bastard’s head off. She sighs, knowing that the right thing to do is to turn this over to her boss and her partner. But she’s not quite there yet. Hopefully in the morning.
“Motherfucker.” The voice beside her makes her jump. She turns to see Ben beside her, looking at the departing deputy with rage in his eyes.
“It’s okay.” She tries to speak as soothingly as possible, despite her own anger at the cavalier way the cops seem to be treating this. “The sheriff’s department will deal with this. Once it works its way up the chain of command.”
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