Hunting Season

by P. T. Deutermann

  She colored and then nodded. To cover her embarrassment, she drank some Coke. It was watery.

  “What brought Bambi and Marchand’s lapdog down here?”

  “I did, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  She winced mentally. Talking to him was like being back at the damned Academy. She kept forgetting he had been a senior agent with many years of experience.

  “I made a routine inquiry. It’s… it’s perhaps not something you want to hear.”

  He just looked at her, so she described her conversation with Dr.

  Kellermann.

  He nodded when she was finished. He had been coming at her like an interrogator. Now his expression softened.

  “And that inquiry got back to the Justice Department how, exactly?”

  “That, I don’t know,” she said. The waitress buzzed by and asked if they needed anything else. Kreiss didn’t look at her, just shook his head.

  “I mean, I guess the Counseling Division notified somebody,” she said.

  “Although I don’t know why, exactly. My inquiry concerned your ex-wife, not you.” She was trying to keep the conversation going, but there he was, looking at his watch. She had gotten nowhere.

  “Have you been to this Ramsey Arsenal place?” she asked.

  He sat back in his chair and steepled his hands beneath his chin.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I do. Why did you ask that?”

  “Because I don’t believe the PA to the deputy AG and her counterpart from Marchand’s office came down here to work a missing persons case. I think they came down here to find out what the hell I’m up to. Let me guess: They send you to get close to me?”

  The question came so directly and so unexpectedly that Janet couldn’t keep her expression from revealing the truth. Kreiss smiled wearily.

  “They’re so damned transparent. They sit around in Washington for years and years, playing all these palace games. They think field people believe their bullshit.”

  “That’s not quite it,” she said.

  “They think there’s some kind of bomb making cell that might be working out of the arsenal. They—” “Bombs?” he said with a snort.

  “The Bureau doesn’t work bombs; aTF works bombs. If they thought that, they’d turn loose a herd of aTF agents in there and find out. This

  isn’t about any goddamned bombs. If those two are here, they’re here about me. Which is probably why two Agency CE worker bees were waiting at my cabin when I got back this morning.”

  She thought she saw an opening.

  “Got back from where, Mr. Kreiss?”

  “That’s my business, Agent Carter,” he said, ignoring her gambit.

  “Now, I have a daughter to locate. I don’t really think there’s anything you can do for me. I appreciate your telling me about the Washington interest, but that’s between me and them. If I find my daughter, I’ll let you know. If I don’t but I find the people responsible for her disappearance, you’ll hear about that, too.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “Heads out on I-Eighty-one.”

  He smiled, but his eyes remained grim.

  “It’d be a change from all those billboards,” he said.

  “Did you really operate alone?” she asked. She surprised herself, asking the question, but she couldn’t imagine what that must be like.

  He thought about it for a moment.

  “Not at first, but later, yes. The backup was available, but it was more technical than human. Once I went down a hole after somebody, it was an individual effort.”

  “But why? Why give away our biggest advantage, our ability to overwhelm a subject, with agents, with data, with surveillance, the whole boat?”

  “We weren’t sent after ‘subjects,” Special Agent. We were only activated to retrieve professional clandestine operatives. That’s not a game for groups. Besides, we applied a different theory of pursuit.”

  “Which was?”

  “A single hunter. One-on-one. That made it personal, which gave us a chance to provoke an emotional reaction.”

  “Why?”

  “Emotion distracts. The more emotion, the more distraction. Distraction leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to capture. This is all news to you, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged.

  “I went through basic agent training. I’ve just never done it at the street level.”

  “And you probably never will. You’re not tough enough.”

  She felt herself coloring.

  “That something you know, Mr. Kreiss?”

  “Yes, it is. For instance, could you shoot someone?”

  “Yes. Well, I think so. To save my life. Or another agent’s life.”

  “Sure about that? Could you pull that trigger and blast another human’s heart out his back?”

  She started to get angry.

  “Well, the real answer to that is, I don’t know.

  Probably won’t know until the time comes to do it, will I?”

  He smiled then.

  “Well, at least you’re not stupid. I think we’re done here.”

  He looked at his watch again, which was when she remembered something during the discussion in Farnsworth’s office.

  “The Washington people were pretty specific about a bombing conspiracy. But one of them, the woman, said something I didn’t understand. She jumped in Ransom’s shit because he failed to deliver a message. I asked, “What message?” but she wouldn’t say, and neither would Ransom.”

  Kreiss looked away for a moment.

  “I don’t know,” he said, finally.

  “Like she said, Ransom didn’t deliver any message.”

  He pushed his chair back. She couldn’t just let him walk away, but she could not figure out a way of prolonging the conversation. She also wanted to be able to contact him again if something developed.

  “Wait,” she said. She fished in her purse and brought out her Bureau-issue pager.

  “Would you take this?” she said, handing the device across the table.

  “In case I need to reach you quickly. You know, in case we get news of Lynn.”

  He cocked his head.

  “You want me to carry your pager?”

  “It’s not what you think,” she said quickly, too quickly.

  “I mean, it’s not a tracking device or anything. It’s just a plain vanilla pager. Please?”

  “Sure it is,” he said, but then he took it and got up.

  “You have a good evening, Special Agent Carter. And remember to check out your passenger.”

  He left a five-dollar bill on the table and walked out. She noticed that all those intelligent-looking men at the bar again moved aside to let him by, moving quickly enough that he didn’t have to slow down. Kind of like the Red Sea opening up for Moses, she thought. She took another sip of her Coke, grimaced, and left the bar. Great job, she thought. You coopted him very nicely. Had him eating out of the palm of your hand, didn’t you? You’re supposed to be setting up on him, and he has to tell you somebody’s put a bug on your car? And in compensation for seeing right through you, he’s really going to walk around with your pager on his belt.

  Jesus, what had she been thinking?

  She went out the front door and walked directly to her Bureau car. She thought about looking for the bug, then decided to take the vehicle directly back to the Roanoke office and let someone from the

  surveillance squad take a look. It had better not have been Ransom or one of his people planting that thing, she thought, because if it had, this little game was over before it began. She started the car and then just sat there for a moment. Kreiss had touched a nerve when he asked her if she could shoot someone. She was pretty damn sure she could never do that. Even in tactical range training, when the bad guy silhouette popped up right in front other, she had hesitated. After the final qualifications, the chief instructor had given her a look that spoke volumes. It was probably still in her record. And here
was Kreiss, reading her like an open book. She wondered if he was watching her now. She resisted the impulse to look up at the windows. Then she wondered how she was going to break the news to Farnsworth.

  “Hold up a minute,” Browne McGarand said. It was another cool, clear night, with moonrise not due until around midnight. The arsenal rail gates gleamed dully a hundred yards ahead of them. Jared stopped and looked back at his grandfather, who was scanning the gates and the dark woods around them through a pair of binoculars.

  “You see something’?” Jared whispered.

  “Nope. Just looking to see if anything’s different.”

  “That counter’ll tell the tale,” Jared said, peering into the nearby trees.

  “Unless he got by your little trap and laid down one of his own. He’s been using the same gate as we have. Okay, let’s go.”

  When Jared finally read the counter, he swore out loud. Browne looked at it and let out a long sigh.

  “Zero it, “he ordered.

  “And then what? Twenty-six hits means thirteen people been in and out of here. That has to mean cops.”

  “Or one guy waving his hand twenty-six times across the beam,” Browne pointed out.

  “If he tripped your deadfall, all this means is that he got by it.”

  “Why not a buncha cops?”

  “Because there would have been a mess outside. Grass smashed down, vehicle tracks, cigarette butts. Cops come in a crowd; they leave sign.

  There was no sign out there. Let’s go see your trap.”

  They found the pile of pipes where Kreiss had left it. Browne got down on all fours and searched the concrete of the street until he found the dried bloodstains where Kreiss had lain stunned after the initial fall.

  “Here,” he said.

  “This mess got him, but he must have ducked most of it.”

  “That there’s a coupla hunnert pounds a steel,” Jared said, looking up at the steam pipe overpass.

  “I know. I carried it all up there.”

  Browne was standing back up again, looking up the street, and thinking.

  “One guy, not thirteen,” he mused.

  “One guy who doesn’t belong here, just like we don’t belong here. And for some reason, he hasn’t brought cops. Now who could that be? I wonder.”

  “Hell,” Jared said.

  “After this here, he might be back.”

  “Yes, he might,” Browne said.

  “Or he might be here now, watching us. Let’s go exploring tonight. I want a look at these rooftops, see if he’s been laying up, watching us.”

  “What about the girl?” Jared said, lifting the sack of food and water.

  “Later. Leave it here in the middle of the street so we don’t forget.

  She’ll be out of water by now.”

  “Rats’ll git it,” Jared said.

  “Chemicals got all the rats twenty years ago,” Browne said.

  “And all the other critters, too. Hasn’t been anything living in this area since the place closed down. Come on.”

  The first thing Kreiss did was to release the dogs. He climbed up on the side of the pen, ignoring the lunging, barking beasts below, and then blew hard on a soundless dog whistle. The dogs shut up immediately and began to run around the pen to get away from the painful noise. Then he tripped the pen’s door latch and swung the door open, blowing the whistle hard as he did it. The dogs bolted into the woods and then came back to bark at him. He laid into the whistle again. This time, they yelped and took off into the darkness to do what they liked to do most—hunt. Within minutes, the sound of their baying was coming from over the next hill and diminishing as they went.

  He climbed down off the pen, watching to make sure that one of the dogs hadn’t doubled back, and then he went to the trailer. The telephone repair van was there, but Jared’s truck was gone, which he hoped meant that he and his partner were up at the arsenal, doing whatever they did up there at night. And trying to figure out the number on that counter, and whether or not he or a posse of cops was waiting for them in the industrial area. He needed about an hour to get set up inside and outside the trailer, and then he would wait for Jared to return from his nocturnal operations.

  Then he would find out what Jared and his friend knew about Lynn and her friends. He dismissed the possibility that they might not know a damn thing.

  Browne called it off at around 10:30. They’d looked over several of the buildings and found nothing, although Browne thought that some of the ladder rungs looked scuffed. Someone or thing had obviously tripped the deadfall. There were some stains on the concrete that could have been dried blood, although the darkness made it difficult to tell. The only other hard indication they had was the gate counter. Jared was still perplexed by the deadfall.

  “That shoulda got him,” he kept saying.

  “He might have sensed it coming, or heard something above him and jumped back,” Browne pointed out.

  “Or only part of it got him. If those stains are blood, it didn’t do much damage.”

  Jared could only shake his head. Browne decided that they should stay away from the site during the day on Saturday. Let the whole area cool off. He told Jared to check the power plant while he took the food and water to the girl. Then they’d leave, and come back two hours after sunset on Saturday night. They’d do a quick night-vision sweep, and then Browne would run the hydrogen generator all night while Jared either patrolled the industrial area or hid out on one of the rooftops to spot any intruders. He told Jared to just leave the pipes out in the street, but Jared pointed out that if the security truck came on Saturday, they would see them and wonder what the hell had happened. Browne concurred, and they spent fifteen minutes moving the pipes into an alley. Then they split up, agreeing to meet up at the main gates in twenty minutes. Jared suggested setting one more trap, in case their intruder came back Saturday.

  “This time, I got just the thing,” he said.

  Janet got back to the Roanoke federal building and drove her Bureau car into the security-lock parking area. She parked it near the vehicle-search rack and shut it down. It was Friday night, so the chances of finding one of the surveillance squad techs were slim to none. She was anxious to see if she could find the bug herself, but she knew she should let the pros have a clear field. If there was a bug under there, she’d have to call the RA. And he, of course, would want to know how the meeting had gone. Oh, just wonderful, sir. He told me that he didn’t need any help from me and that I was much too inexperienced even to be out on the street by myself without a nanny. He saw through those two Washington wienies and didn’t believe a word about the so-called bomb plot. Other than that, we bonded very

  well and formed an effective and maybe a productive partnership. And I did manage to get him to take my pager along with him.

  She leaned back in the seat and tried to think it out. They talked, and then he left to do—what? He’d said earlier that he was busy tonight.

  Doing what? Going where? To Site R? What would he be doing down at the Ramsey Arsenal on a Friday night? Crashing the AntiAbortion League’s underground bomb makers’ happy hour at the abandoned munitions factory? The place was a mothballed military installation, for Chrissakes.

  Why the hell didn’t Farnsworth and his new playmates just send in the army and rake through the place with a few hundred guys and see what’s what?

  Because Foster and Bellhouser were blowing smoke. Kreiss was right:

  Their interest was in him, not some outlandish bomb plot and the mysterious message that didn’t get delivered. He had ducked her question on that at the bar. There was a lot more going on here than just some simple bomb plot. That was why they didn’t want aTF in on it. She exhaled forcefully, trying to clear her mind. For Edwin Kreiss, there was just one point of reality: He was determined to find out what had happened to his daughter. Those oily bastards from headquarters and the AG’s office knew that and were trying to leverage his personal tragedy.

  Sh
e banged the steering wheel in frustration. She literally did not know what to do. Then she remembered Farnsworth’s instructions: “Any sign of somebody else in this little game, back out and call me.” When in doubt, why not do what the boss says? What a concept, she thought, as she reached for her purse and her building key card.

  Jared got back to his trailer just before midnight and parked his pickup next to the telephone company repair van. He went in the back door, as usual. He washed his hands, grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator, slugged it down, thought briefly of taking a quick shower and heading down to Boomers, a local gin mill, and then decided not to. The West Virginia motorcycle crowd usually arrived just about now, and unless some of his own Black Hat buddies were there, he’d probably end up in a

  one-sided brawl over nothing. He checked his answering machine, and there—thank you, Lord—was a message from Terry Kay. Her husband was out of town until Tuesday and she wanted to know if he would like to come over and make some Saturday-night noises at her place. He grinned, erased the message, and got another beer.

  Terry Kay was a thirty-something housewife whom he had met on a service call out on Broward Road. He’d been out there once before, and she’d called in a second service call. Her husband was on the faculty at Virginia Tech and traveled a lot. Terry Kay was about five two, with black hair, teasing brown eyes, and a delectably round body. She had met him at the door wearing a short skirt, a straining cashmere sweater, and a pouty little smile. She was Terry Kay Olson, she said. With an 0, rounding her lips to show him. The problem was in her husband’s study; she thought it might be in the floor jack under the desk. When he had knelt down in front of the desk kneehole to examine the floor jack, Terry Kay had slid into the desk chair on the other side in such a fashion as to reveal what her real problem was all about. They had been together a few times after that, always on the spur of the moment, and always with an element of the danger of being discovered involved. Terry Kay liked it hot, hard, and fast, and Jared was just the guy for that. He had no time for the talkers. The prospect of an entire Saturday night with Terry Kay instead of another endless duty night with his grandfather at the power plant, well, hell, no contest. Besides, he was ready for a break. He finished the beer and decided to have just one more.