9 More Killer Thrillers

by Russell Blake

  “Okay,” Gunner continued. “What kind of terror do you figure this guy for? Bombing? Sniper? Mass poison?” Gunner kept a straight face and even tone, but I could tell he wasn’t serious. I hoped Benny wouldn’t notice.

  “Hell. I don’t know what kinda terrorist he is,” Benny’s voice was suddenly louder. “Ain’t that your job?”

  Gunner was chewing a mouthful of response when I interrupted.

  “What else have you seen? Do you know anything about a meteor hitting Rodney’s place a few days ago?”

  “That’s another thing! You all believe that BS about meteors and comets and stuff? What’s a damn terrorist gotta do to get somebody’s attention around here?”

  “Actually, Benny,” I said, “I’m suspicious, too, about that thing Rodney claims is a meteor. But I need you to settle down and take a breath. Okay?”

  Benny raked a comb of thick fingers through his matted hair. It didn’t improve his appearance any, but it seemed to calm him down.

  “Army or Marines?” I said, after a few moments.

  “Huh?”

  “Did you serve in the Army or the Marines?”

  “Private First Class. Regular Army. Fourth Infantry Division. Served in ‘Nam from ’66 to ’70.”

  There weren’t a lot of veterans who were proud to have served their country in Vietnam. Benny, it seemed, was an exception.

  “Four years,” I said. “You volunteered?”

  “Damn right.” Benny’s right eye began twitching. He pawed at it with a leathery hand.

  “I spent some time in Iraq,” I said. “You know, the first time around. Desert Storm. Can’t compare to what you went through though. Had to be hell. But I bet you’d rather not talk about the old days. Never met a Vietnam vet who was much for war stories. I do appreciate your service, though. It was a helluva sacrifice and I thank you for it.”

  Benny’s eye stopped twitching, and his breathing gradually returned to normal. Now he peered at me from beneath wild eyebrows.

  “I guess . . . you’re welcome,” he said quietly.

  He wouldn’t have wanted my pity, but he had it anyway.

  “You don’t sleep much, do you, Benny?” I said matter-of-factly.

  Gunner gave me a puzzled look. I stared him into continued silence.

  Benny considered my question. “Not a lot of sleep, I guess. Couple hours here and there. It’s enough.”

  “The reason I’m wondering,” I said, “is because you must have a lot of time on your hands. What do you do to pass the day?”

  “There’s never any passin’ to do. I keep busy. A person’s gotta watch out, ya know. Protect hisself. Do his part for Uncle Sam.”

  No longer a soldier in the U.S. military, but a patriot still.

  “You do a lot of surveillance, don’t you, Benny? You keep an eye on things. Make sure you’re doing your part.”

  “I do.” He was clearly proud of the fact.

  “That’s why you see things happening at your neighbor’s farm, isn’t it? You keep pretty close tabs on him, don’t you?”

  Benny checked with Gunner to see whether he might be getting himself into trouble. Gunner nodded for him to continue.

  “Nobody else ain’t gonna do it,” Benny said. “So I keep my eye on ‘im. Other folks, too.”

  “So I’m thinking you might have seen Mr. Holton with the object he calls a meteor a few days ago. Maybe you saw where he found it? Or whether he did something to it?”

  “Like try to cut it open with his torch?” Benny said. “Or haul it in from the field on his tractor, all wrapped in a shirt and stuffed in a fender?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Exactly like that.”

  “Or hiding it in his cellar, so nobody can git it?”

  I wondered how close to Rodney’s home Benny’s surveillance duties had taken him. You can’t see someone hiding a bowling ball in a basement from a thousand yards, no matter how good your binoculars.

  “You’ve convinced me that Rodney Holton’s object isn’t a meteor,” I said. “Have you seen anything that might tell us exactly what that thing is?”

  “Like I said. It’s prob’ly drugs, or a bomb,” Benny said. His eyes closed and he tilted his head back, as if smelling something. “Then again, he wouldn’t try to cut into a bomb with a torch, would he?”

  Benny’s straying thoughts were coming into focus.

  “Last night, way past midnight, I seen a guy sneakin’ around Holton’s place. He came outta the woods and snuck up to the cattle pen.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t Rodney?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine a reason for someone else to be tending Rodney’s cattle in the middle of the night. This detail might throw the remainder of Benny’s testimony into even deeper doubt than when we began.

  “Not Young Man Holton,” Benny insisted. “This guy was smaller, and he walked younger. Tennis shoes. And when he got right up to the wood fence, he woke up the cows – prob’ly by accident. And then he shot at ‘em with some weird kinda gun.”

  “What?” It was Gunner. He had sat quietly for a good while, and I suspected his patience had worn thin. “Somebody was shootin’ at the cows? A cow killer? This is the biggest load of crap . . . . I gotta get back to work.” He stood. “You guys use the room as long as you want.”

  Benny looked at Gunner, then at me, then at Gunner again as his butt departed the venue.

  “Forgive him, Benny,” I said. “He’s having a bad day. Tell me more about the guy shooting at the cows.”

  “Not much to say,” Benny continued. “He shot at ‘em but must’ve had a silencer ‘cause I didn’t hear nothin’.”

  I tried to conceive of the scene Benny had just described. No one would be shooting at cows, certainly. So just what had he witnessed?

  “My real name’s Blastus,” Benny blurted.

  “I beg your pardon?” My mind had wandered.

  “Blastus,” he said. “It’s from the Bible. Guess Mom and Dad had me pegged as a traitor right from the get go. I proved ‘em wrong though.”

  Benny’s eyes had clouded over. They stared at me now, dull and empty.

  “Well, Blastus,” I said, patting Benny on the shoulder. “I thank you for your help. Would it be all right with you if we visit again sometime . . . maybe after I find out more about what’s happening at Holton’s farm?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his gaze meandering toward the ceiling. “Yeah.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Holton’s Farm. Rural Ottawa County, Minnesota

  When his dog started barking in the middle of the night, Rodney Holton had feared the worst – a thief had come to steal his meteor. He grabbed a twelve-gauge Remington pump from the closet and rushed down to the cellar to defend his treasure. When the dog stopped barking a few minutes later without incident at the house, Rodney figured Ranger’s hissy fit was likely due to a coyote sniffing around the cattle, or maybe a raccoon poaching his vegetables.

  But the fear that he hadn’t taken appropriate steps to protect his treasure kept him up the rest of the night, drinking coffee at the kitchen table, the shotgun lying across his lap. He cursed himself for his carelessness and vowed to find a safer hiding place for the meteor in the morning.

  By sunrise, Rodney had worked out a strategy of decoys and frequent relocations to ward off any ne’er-do-well with designs on reaping his rightful reward. He would stash the meteor in a different hiding place each night, keeping any potential robber guessing as to its location. And there were plenty of places on a farm to stow this baby.

  The next evening, after a long day awaiting viewers for the meteor exhibit, Rodney was ready to put the new security plan into action. Just after dark, he carried three identical black backpacks out to the meteor crater. Two of them held fieldstones sufficient in weight and size to serve as meteor doubles. Rodney placed the meteor into the third pack, then picked up all three and began walking a circuit, first through his house, where he left one pack, then through several outbuildings. In two of the buil
dings, he left the remaining backpacks – the first he buried in a grain bin, and the second, he stowed beneath loose floor boards in the old cattle barn.

  After depositing the last backpack in its hiding place, he returned to the house for the night.

  Rodney was pretty pleased with his new security arrangement, but less happy about the meager income his exhibit had generated. He had to develop a new marketing plan – one that would reach the masses. Damn that Becker and his assayer!

  As Rodney checked his email that evening, the answer hit him. He needed to tap into the vast resources of the internet to maximize meteor income.

  Tomorrow he’d take some pictures and list his find for sale on Ebay!

  * * *

  Participating in ecommerce turned out to be more complicated than Rodney had initially thought. He needed to setup an Ebay account, then another account on an internet payment site called PayPal. He had to figure out his bank’s routing number and provide that information to both web companies.

  He also found it challenging to take good pictures of the meteor – ones that would adequately convey, in two dimensions, its essence as a space rock. In picture after picture the meteor came out looking just like a black bowling ball. Eventually, he decided that the meteor pics needed some context. Besides the crater, which he’d already captured in digital images many times, he thought a person expressing surprise at this unusual discovery would add a dynamic quality to the scene.

  Between learning how to run the camera’s self-timer, conducting occasional tours of the exhibit, and toting backpacks between hiding places, it ended up taking Rodney three days before the meteor auction was finally live on Ebay.

  The listing read as follows:

  Condition: New: A brand-new, unused, unopened, undamaged item (including handmade items). See the seller's listing for full details.

  Topic: Meteor

  Color Treatment: Unknown.

  Origin: Space

  Color: Black

  Shape: Bowling ball like

  Seller Description: Genuine authentic meteor (from outer space). Ten pounds six ounces. This baby is worth more than three million if sold in pieces.

  Bidding started at $1.00, though Rodney had specified a reserve price of $90,000, and the “Buy Now” price was $850,000.00.

  The auction listing included nine pictures, including one of Rodney in bib overalls holding a pitch fork American Gothic style and pointing his free arm at the meteor. A sign stuck in the burned grass beside Rodney’s image read: “Holy crap!”

  Rodney took a moment to admire the listing. Very professional, he thought. Now I’ll just wait for the bids to come rolling in.

  * * *

  After the first couple days, visitors to the “Outer Space Meteor” exhibit at the farm had dwindled, so Rodney closed the viewing area to the public. During his additional discretionary time, he increased meteor relocation frequency to four times per day while he waited for Ebay to come through.

  CHAPTER 11

  Pyongyang, North Korea.

  To the dismay of the North Korean regime, the GPS tracking beacon they had placed inside the re-entry capsule had malfunctioned. As a result, they could only hope that their special delivery package to the Americans had actually come to rest somewhere in the continental United States. Spring-launching a volleyball from a satellite travelling at 28,000 kilometers per hour, in an orbital path 500 kilometers above the earth, the scientists had explained, was not a precise scientific matter.

  To maximize the likelihood of hitting the target – the United States – somewhere, the scientists had aimed for dead center, a community called Lebanon, Kansas. The capsule could land anywhere within a thousand kilometer radius of the target, if they were lucky. Then they would have to rely on the tracking beacon to confirm its final resting place. And now that beacon had failed.

  Understandably enough, the beacon’s malfunction had caused great consternation among those responsible for the capsule’s deployment and operation. When the generals learned of this critical glitch, they unanimously elected to have the scientists explain the matter directly to the Supreme Leader.

  The North Korean president, being most displeased with the scientists’ report, placed their families under house arrest and urged a renewed effort to resolve the problem.

  Sequestered at their duty stations “pending resolution of the GPS problem,” the North Korean scientists pursued every avenue to locate the missing capsule. While one of them undertook a relentless “pinging” of the dead GPS unit, the others engaged in uncharacteristic outside-the-box thinking.

  After nearly a week of utter frustration, they got lucky. Someone in the State of Minnesota on the United States mainland had listed a meteor for sale on Ebay. Hoping against hope that the meteor might be their missing capsule, they viewed the post. By the time they’d seen the pictures, they had no doubt. Pyongyang’s lost errand boy had been found.

  CHAPTER 12

  Red Wing, Minnesota. One week after Rodney Holton’s discovery.

  My cell rang as Beth and I were enjoying morning coffee on the back porch. It was Gunner.

  “Good morning, Constable,” I said.

  “If you say so. Hey. I’ve got an FBI agent down here at the Cop Shop says he wants to talk meteors.”

  That was interesting.

  “You don’t say.”

  “Yeah, I do. And for some reason, of which I got no friggin’ idea, he wants you to be here when we talk.”

  Gunner didn’t sound pleased about that.

  “Hmm. That’s odd,” I said. I watched Beth as she took a sip from her mug. “Why do you suppose that is?”

  “I just told you. I don’t know.” I could hear Gunner’s eyes roll. “So are you comin’ or not.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Beth looked up from the morning paper. “Gunner wants you to come to his office?”

  “Not really. He’s got some FBI guy there who asked for me. So Gunner doesn’t really have a choice.”

  “I see.” Beth returned to the paper. “You don’t suppose you’re wanted for that thing you did a while ago?” Beth smiled as her eyes scanned the page.

  “Which thing might that be?” I asked.

  She stopped pretending to read and turned to me.

  “My point exactly. You’ve got too many skeletons to keep track of. I’d be a little worried if I were you.” Beth feigned concern.

  “Well . . . if he tries to bust me, I’ll just . . . shoot my way out,” I said, tapping the Beretta in my waistband. “You’d better have your go bag packed, just in case.”

  “If you’re going on the lam,” she said, “you can do it without me. My Bonnie and Clyde years are long past.” She returned to the news.

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “Now you run along.” Beth shooed me off with a swish of her elegant hand. “And have fun.”

  “I will,” I said as I shuffled past her. “The FBI guy’s got the hots for Rodney’s meteor.”

  My peripheral vision caught Beth lowering the paper again and considering the porch ceiling. She had no more idea what was up than I did.

  * * *

  As I pushed through the glass entry doors at the LEC the receptionist/dispatcher caught my eye and waved me toward the conference room – the one where Benny and I had talked about shooting cows.

  I knocked.

  “Might as well come in.” It was Gunner’s voice.

  I turned the handle and peeked my head inside.

  “Is this Conference Room B?”

  “Just get in here,” Gunner said.

  Gunner introduced me to FBI Special Agent Costa, a fiftyish string bean wearing a black suit and a bureaucratic aura. We all took seats around one end of the table.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Becker,” Agent Costa began.

  “It’s ‘Beck,’ if you don’t mind,” I said. “And thanks for the invitation.”

  “You’re welcome. But it was actually Deputy Director Trew who
suggested I include you in this meeting.”

  Dan Trew was an old friend from my days on the Team. He was an FBI Special Agent back then. Now he occupied a big office at the corner of Big Shot and Politician in DC.

  “He said you would be helpful?”

  Costa didn’t sound like he thought I’d be helpful.

  “I’ll do my best, Agent. But tell me, what brings you to our humble village?”

  “I was just explaining to the Chief Deputy,” Costa said. “And you understand the subject of this meeting is Classified?”

  “Sure. But since you asked me here, I assume you don’t need to see my Eagle Scout badge. So if you’re okay to talk in front of Gunner . . .” I winked at the Chief Deputy. He lowered his eyebrows. “. . . we might as well get started.”

  “Very well.” Costa pulled a notebook and pen from an inner pocket and flipped through a few pages before arriving at his desired location. “I’m here to find out more about the meteor that one . . .” He glanced at the notepad. “. . . Rodney Holton of your county has for sale on Ebay. What can you tell me?” His eyes moved from me to Gunner and back.

  “Go ahead, Gunner,” I said.

  Gunner sat up in his chair. He didn’t particularly care for the FBI, but he was well aware of the hassles they could cause him if he failed to cooperate.

  “Agent Costa,” he began. “I don’t have firsthand knowledge about Rodney Holton’s alleged meteor. But based on a long history with Rodney, my guess would be that he made the whole story up. That he doesn’t have any meteor at all.”

  Costa looked to Gunner for further commentary.

  “That’s really about it, Agent Costa. I think somebody sent you on a wild goose chase. Unless you know something I don’t?”

  Costa turned to me, ignoring Gunner’s question. “And what can you tell me?”

  “My wife and I went out to Rodney’s last week and saw his meteor exhibit. It was pretty cheesy. There was no doubt he’d staged a crater and a fire on his lawn. The meteor looked a lot like a bowling ball. And I can confirm Rodney’s well-earned reputation as a huckster.”