The Goodbye Man

by Jeffery Deaver

  “You overhear where they were going?”

  “No.”

  “Where could they get from here on foot?”

  A who-knows shrug. “There’re a dozen cabins in the foothills.” Another shrug meant: good luck finding them.

  “Any towns in walking distance?”

  “Depends on who’s walking. It’s a trek but there’s one they could make in a day. Snoqualmie Gap. Used to be called Clark’s Gap. After Lewis and Clark. But got itself changed to Snoqualmie. That’s a word, Indian word. Means ‘fierce tribe.’ Some folks were pissed off they changed it. You can go too far, this PC crap.” He’d looked Shaw over, perhaps registering “Caucasian” and guessing it was okay to offer the comment—not knowing Shaw did in fact have some Native American in him. “Funny thing is, don’t make no difference either way.”

  Shaw didn’t understand. He shook his head.

  “Lewis and Clark never got here, and the Snoqualmie River’s nowhere near either. So might as well call it New York, Los Angeles or Podunk. Maybe those boys were headed there.” He frowned briefly. “You know, there’s this place in the mountains outside of it—Snoqualmie Gap. Some people ask for directions.”

  “Place?”

  “This retreat.”

  “Separatist thing? Neo-Nazis?”

  “Don’t think so. More, some New Age bullshit. Hippies. You’re too young.”

  Shaw had been born in the Bay Area long after flower children and the Summer of Love, 1967. But he knew about hippies.

  He looked at a map on the wall. He saw Snoqualmie Gap, a small town, about ten miles from Hope’s Corner. Quite a hike in the mountainous terrain.

  “Where’s the retreat?”

  The clerk squinted. “About there, I guess.” Tapping a valley in the mountains beside a large lake. Shaw estimated it was six or seven miles from Snoqualmie Gap, accessed via a state route and then the narrow and eerily named Harbinger Road.

  Walking, it would take them three to four hours to get to Snoqualmie, and another three to get to the retreat, if that’s where they were headed.

  “I didn’t see much traffic on the way here. Going that way, to Snoqualmie, could they hitch a ride?”

  “Somebody could. They couldn’t.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “That guy with your friend’s son? I wouldn’t pick him up on a dare. Something about his eyes.”

  Shaw thanked the man and started for the door.

  “Hey, mister?”

  He turned.

  The clerk was frowning. “You forgot to pay your bill.” He looked at the check and said, “That’s eleven twenty-eight you owe me.”

  6.

  In ten minutes Colter Shaw’s job was over.

  He found Adam Harper and Erick Young on Old Mill Road, about two miles from Hope’s Corner and still a ways to go to Snoqualmie Gap.

  Shaw stopped on a narrow shoulder and looked down, to his left. Here the road was made up of switchbacks because of the dizzyingly steep grade. It descended to a valley in which a river glistened, blue and silver. On the other side, the road rose into the hills once more.

  The young men were fifty feet below Shaw. They were trudging along like college kids on a weekend hike. Each had a backpack. Adam was holding a large refillable water bottle. Erick pointed to the steep uphill climb they’d have once they crossed the bridge. Adam said something and Erick nodded.

  Strolling, not a care in the world.

  Shaw carefully examined them; he couldn’t see the profile of a pistol, or a protruding grip, in the pockets of either.

  Erick dug into his backpack pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. Jerky, Shaw believed. He ate a piece and offered some to Adam, who declined with a shake of his head. The suspects came to the end of the straight portion of the switchback and followed the road, curving to the left. Shaw watched them emerge. They got halfway along this stretch of road and stopped where it swelled with a broad shoulder on a cliff. It was a substantial drop; boulders had been placed here to serve as guardrails. The two sat down on one of these, the size of a park bench. Erick ate more jerky. Adam made a phone call.

  Shaw examined his Rand McNally map and discovered that they were in Hammond County. He placed a call to the sheriff’s office. He was connected to the sheriff himself, a man named Welles, and explained about the crime in Pierce County and told him that he’d just found the two suspects. The sheriff hesitated a moment, taking in the information, then asked for Shaw’s location.

  “I’ll be at the intersection of State Route Sixty-four and Old Mill Road.”

  “Okay, sir. Let me check this out and we’ll be there soon.”

  Shaw turned the Kia around and drove back up Old Mill to the intersection, about a half-mile away. He preferred to meet the law enforcers in a place separate from Erick and Adam’s actual location. He didn’t know the procedures—or style—of the deputies here and didn’t want them blustering up, sirens wailing, acting all tough cop. That might spook the pair into shooting . . . or taking to the brush. If that happened it would be a true chore to track them, especially if they split up. And, equally worrying, this was dangerous territory: steep cliffs, hazardous slopes, torrential rapids. The river below was beautiful. Shaw knew it would be cold as January metal and guessed the speed of the current was twenty miles per hour.

  Shaw parked where Old Mill and the state route met and soon three official vehicles and one private—a mud-stained SUV—arrived. Shaw and the men climbed out. Five of them. They varied from youthful twenties to middle age. Welles, the sheriff, was around fifty, rotund. Blond hair and—curiously, given the shade of the strands on his head—his eyes were brown as aged leather.

  All wore gray uniforms, except the tallest, a lean and bony bearded man in green-and-black camo, his dark tan baseball cap sitting backward on his head. He radiated military and, at early forties, he might’ve recently retired. You serve twenty and you’re out. A faded name tag sewn onto his jacket was crooked, cut from one uniform and stitched onto his hunting garb. DODD, J. The SUV was his. He appeared to be civilian, though Shaw noted a blue light affixed to the Pathfinder’s dashboard. While the others gazed at Shaw and his sport coat and city shoes with curiosity, Dodd’s gaze was expressionless.

  Welles approached. A paw of a hand embraced Shaw’s. “You BEA?”

  “No.” Shaw had never considered being a bond enforcement agent, whose days were usually spent tracking down bail-jumping druggies—men, usually, who were stupid enough to hide out at their parents’ or girlfriend’s bungalow.

  He explained about the reward.

  This raised an eyebrow or two.

  He expected the next question to be “How much?” But that query wasn’t forthcoming. Instead, one of the deputies asked, “You don’t bring ’em in yourself? Why call us?” A solid, jowly man, Welles had a fitting voice, like distant thunder.

  “I don’t apprehend. I only find the whereabouts. The rest is up to the person or agency offering the reward, or local law enforcement.”

  The sheriff said, “My, that sounds formal.”

  “Say, Sheriff, we get any?” one of the younger deputies asked.

  “Any what?”

  “Of that reward?”

  “Tell me, Bo: you didn’t go and find anybody, did you?”

  “Just asking.”

  “Now, now.” To Shaw, Welles asked, “You armed, sir?”

  “I am. I’ll show you my ticket.” He slowly extracted his wallet and displayed a Utah concealed carry permit, which was recognized in Washington State.

  “Do me a favor and keep your piece tucked away, will you?”

  “Sure. My job’s pretty much done here.”

  Another deputy: “You tracked ’em all the way here from Gig Harbor?”

  “I did.”

  Welles said, “I checked with the Pierce
County public safety chief. He confirmed they’re fugitives and there’s a reward. He didn’t know about you.”

  “I was in touch with a detective there, not the sheriff. Chad Johnson.”

  “He told me these boys shot up a man of God, burned a church.”

  “Partly true. There was a burning cross, and they defaced the place. Some graffiti. No fire damage to the building itself. A janitor and a lay preacher were wounded.”

  “They skinheads or Nazis or what?”

  “They don’t seem to be. The main suspect’s Adam Harper, late twenties. I can’t piece together Erick’s role. He’s only twenty.”

  “Whatever,” Sheriff Welles muttered, waving aside one or two of the persistent mosquitos, “the warrants’re for both of them.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Any trouble from ’em on the way here?”

  “None that I saw or heard about.”

  “Why are they headed this way?”

  “No idea. Maybe meeting some friends. And I heard there’s a retreat near Snoqualmie Gap. Maybe they were headed there.”

  Welles considered this. “Yeah, there is that place. I don’t know much about it. Different county, not our watch. Anybody?”

  None of his officers was familiar.

  Welles said, “If it’s a church thing, they might be planning to shoot it up too.”

  A deputy said, “Or Thompsonville. A couple of churches there. Long walk, but they could hitch.”

  Welles looked pensive. “Thompsonville. Yeah. That’d be a target for sure.” He clicked his tongue. “Men who disrespect Christ? That’s baked into the bone. They have mischief in mind, I guarantee it. All right, we’ll take over from here, Mr. Shaw. You said they’re armed.”

  “Have to assume so. It’s a .38 Police Special.”

  “Mule kicker,” somebody said.

  “Where can we find them?” Welles asked.

  “Last I saw they were taking a break. They were headed down into a valley about two klicks from here.”

  “A valley?”

  Shaw noted that the sheriff’s eyes met Dodd’s, whose head dipped a fraction of an inch.

  Shaw said, “You have a map, I can point it out.”

  Welles muttered to a deputy nearby, the youngest, “Glove compartment, kid.”

  With a brisk nod the officer scurried to the sheriff’s squad car and disappeared inside. He returned with a map, handing it to Welles, who unfurled the sheet on the nearest car hood, underneath which the engine ticked as it cooled.

  A lover and collector of maps, Shaw studied this one carefully. The crisp, unstained paper explained that the sheriff and probably the rest of the deputies didn’t get out here much. This rugged terrain was within the county they oversaw but much of the land was state park. Shaw supposed that the rangers were the main law enforcers. There was also a national forest around here, with boundaries that ran in and out of the county’s turf.

  Looking down at the map, he tapped a site. “They were there, having some water and food. I don’t know how long they were going to rest, though even if they started hiking again right away after I left, they couldn’t be more than a half mile north.” Another tap. “That’d put them about here, at the farthest.”

  Welles turned toward his men. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. They’re moving north. I want somebody to circle around to Abbott Ford, fast, get ahead of them and come back south. TJ and B., you do that.”

  “Sure, Sheriff.”

  “Me and Jimmy’ll go north.”

  One deputy said enthusiastically, “So we catch ’em in a pincer movement.”

  Which wasn’t exactly what the sheriff was describing.

  “Exactly.”

  The sheriff turned to gaunt, unexpressive Dodd. “And you get yourself up Scatterback. On the ridge. Get a good position. To cover us.”

  “K.” The lean, laconic Dodd asked Shaw, “They have long guns?”

  “No.”

  Dodd gave a nod.

  Welles folded the map. “’Preciate your help, Mr. Shaw. You’ve earned every penny of that reward.” A faint laugh. “Though easy for me to say; I’m not the one writing the check.” The smile faded. He looked over the deputies. “Gentlemen, I am serious now. We’ve gotta stop ’em. The chief in Tacoma told me victims at the church there were black, true, but they were still children of God. Now, let’s get to it.”

  Shaw returned to the Kia. He heard a whisper of “Reward.” And some chuckles. As he sat in the driver’s seat he watched the sheriff and the uniformed deputies walk to their cars, which soon sped off, leaving a haze of mustard-colored dust behind them.

  Dodd remained. The man loped to his personal SUV, lifted the tailgate and uncased a big-bore Winchester rifle, fitted with a Maven telescopic sight—an expensive one, probably equal to one of the deputy’s paychecks. He opened a metal ammunition box and lifted out a package of bullets. Big ones, .308. Sniper rounds.

  The wiry, unsmiling man began loading the magazine. His eyes, which had been dead until now, brightened considerably as he clicked each lengthy, lethal slug home.

  7.

  As Shaw sped back down Old Mill Road to the place he’d left Erick and Adam he thought:

  Never underestimate the power, for good and bad, of religion.

  This was not one of his father’s rules; Shaw had come up with it himself over a decade of reward-seeking. (He had significantly supplemented the Never rulebook since Ashton Shaw’s death, some years ago.)

  He understood what God’s protector, Sheriff J. Welles, had in mind. The sheriff’s and one other car would block the road south, while the third would do the same from the north, boxing Adam and Erick in. Dodd, on high ground, would understand that his instruction to “cover us” really meant “shoot to kill.”

  Maybe Adam would lift his hand in surprise at the officers’ presence.

  And Dodd would drop him with one of the big rounds.

  “I observed a threat to the officers on the ground and I acted accordingly.”

  And Erick?

  He’d instinctively turn to the wounded Adam.

  Another shot.

  “I observed the second suspect reaching for the weapon of the deceased individual and I was concerned that he would use lethal force against the officers who were present.”

  And there would be no body cams or witnesses to give a different story.

  Having seen the look that passed between Dodd and Welles and guessing what they had in mind, Shaw had tapped a spot on the map miles from the shoulder on Old Mill Road where the two young men actually were.

  What exactly he would do when he found Erick and Adam, he couldn’t yet say. But he knew he had to keep them out of the reach of Welles and his Christian soldiers.

  He now piloted the Kia back to the hill where he’d parked when he spotted the two for the first time. Shaw backed off the road into thick, stalky growths of pine and sedge and tangled brush. The vehicle was hardly an SUV but it did have four-wheel drive and if he kept it on packed earth he was confident it wouldn’t get stuck.

  Leaving his jacket in the car, he climbed out and rearranged brush to obscure the vehicle yet more, then he walked to the road’s edge, looking down the steep, grassy slope to the shoulder where the boys sat, about sixty feet below. Now, he tucked his shirt in, exposing the Glock on his hip, facilitating a fast draw.

  He studied Erick and Adam. They still were sitting on the roadside boulder, facing the road and the hill beside it, not the spectacular view behind them: the rocky valley and gushing river at the bottom of the ten-story cliff. When Adam turned, Shaw could see that, yes, he did have the pistol; sitting had pushed the grip slightly out of the pocket of the close-fitting jeans. This was good for Shaw. Adam’s Smith & Wesson featured a hammer, which was notorious for catching when one drew it quickly.


  The suspects were speaking to each other. Then conversation paused at the sound of a default ringtone. Adam pulled out the mobile to take the call. He looked around, orienting himself and noting a road that branched off Old Mill. Shaw’s impression was that the boys were expecting someone driving from that direction. The Rand McNally was in the car but he called up the GPS map on his phone. The road was Highland Bypass: narrow but a good shortcut to Snoqualmie Gap.

  This added a complication. Who was coming to meet the suspects? How many were there? If Shaw’s undercover theory was right, might they be armed extremists?

  How long until they arrived?

  And when would Welles and his deputies assume the young men had slipped out of their trap—or figure that Shaw had lied for one reason or another? A half hour tops, he guessed.

  No time to waste. He’d have to get to the young men, disarm Adam, and zip-tie their hands. Then, into the Kia and get the hell out of Hammond County.

  I deal in information, not citizen’s arrests . . .

  Not this time.

  Picking his footsteps carefully, Shaw worked his way down the hill to the road on whose wide shoulder the two sat. From behind a tree, he assessed the scene. To approach them straight on, either from across the road or from the asphalt itself, he’d have to cover an unprotected field of fire. He’d be some distance away when he’d call for them to surrender, which might encourage Adam to draw and shoot. He was probably a better shot than Adam but that wasn’t certain, and in any event the last thing Shaw wanted was a firefight.

  Odds of success with that option: thirty percent. Not good enough.

  Stay under cover and just call for them to surrender?

  No, they’d shoot or run, probably both. The cops would hear the gunfire and move in, guns ready. Dodd would move to high ground and target them with his heavy weapon.

  That tactic had only ten percent success rate.

  Take them by surprise, from behind?

  Yes, the best option.

  Of course, that approach carried a complication of its own: “behind” was essentially a cliff face a hundred feet above the rocky valley floor.