FireWatch

by Scott Blade

  “He’d never allow it?”

  “I mean. He wouldn’t have stood for it.”

  Watermoth asked, “He abuse her?”

  Ryman said nothing.

  “He beat her up?”

  “Sometimes. Honestly, I didn’t approve, but it’s his marriage.”

  Watermoth nodded.

  “He was my partner. You know? My brother.”

  She nodded again. She knew what that was like. Currently, she didn’t have a partner. They tended not to stick around. The FBI kept saddling her up with some new guy, but within months, she’d drive him away.

  “Well, Mr. Ryman.”

  “Danny. Please.”

  “Danny. Sounds like you should know that this isn’t a DEA case, then. There are no drugs. Nothing related to drugs or Mexican cartels, not so far. That makes this an FBI case.”

  He nodded, said, “I know. I just want to be a part of it. I’m not here to tell you what to do or boss you around.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No offense, lass, but it’s not up to you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Like I said. No offense. The DEA has already authorized me to be here. You can call your SA. They should already know. Agent Lee may have been handling sensitive information.”

  SA stood for Supervisory Agent. In Watermoth’s case that was John Smith, which was his real, birth name, or as he like to put it his “Christian name.” She would call him to confirm this news. But only because she was a thorough type of agent. She already knew that Smith would go along with it, even if he didn’t confirm it. He was that type of agent. He was a yes man, a team player.

  “What kind of information?”

  “The sensitive kind.”

  She looked away.

  “I’m with you until we find her, whether you like it or not.”

  Watermoth said, “Come on. Let’s take a look at the crime scene.”

  “No need. I already saw. You won’t find anything in there about Lee or Portman.”

  “What about Portman’s car? Did they take it?”

  “That’s good thinking. It may be in the back. I don’t know.”

  “So you’re not going to be much help then?”

  “I’m not here for help. I’m here to find out why my partner is dead,” Ryman said, and he put the toothpick back in his mouth. He shoved his hands into his pockets and smiled. That primal, sinister look returned to his eyes.

  Watermoth wasn’t sure about him. She stepped away. She had a job to do, with or without the help of her new, unwanted partner.

  TWO MINUTES LATER, Watermoth stood in the rear security parking lot of the stationhouse. She had walked around through the building. Saw the two dead bodies, but she stayed back and out of the way of the state forensic team. They would do a good enough job that she did not need to call in her own.

  She walked out the backdoor and stared at the lot. Only one parked cruiser. Collins met her out the back. He walked up behind her, made himself known.

  He said, “That guy’s a real piece of work.”

  “Forget about him. What do you make of that?” she asked. She pointed at the backdoor.

  Collins reversed and stared at it. There was one forensics woman standing on the other side of it. She was measuring the broken door with yellow measuring tape. Then she wrote down the measurements onto a clipboard.

  Collins looked at the door, up and then down. He said, “Looks like someone broke through it.”

  “That’s obvious.”

  “Then what are you asking about?”

  Watermoth stepped closer, pointed at the hinges, the shattered lock, and the doorframe.

  “What’s that look like to you?”

  Collins knelt and took a closer look. He didn’t touch anything.

  “Looks like a breaching charge?”

  “That’s exactly what it is.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means this stationhouse was raided.”

  “By who?”

  “Someone with access to police equipment.”

  Collins said, “This is the country. Everyone out here has probably got access to explosives and charges.”

  “Not breaching charges. Breaching charges are designed to be as quiet as possible. Plus, they are designed not to inflict harm on people on the other side of the door you want to breach. They’re for hostage rescue. This is police equipment.”

  “You think Portman breached his own stationhouse?”

  She ignored that stupid question.

  “This was done by more than one person. No one breaches the back alone. Not when you can just walk in the front door. No this was more than one person. Probably a small team of people to get the drop on two armed policemen.”

  Collins didn’t bring up Portman acting alone again. He said, “That means someone took Portman with them. And killed the other two. But why?”

  “They didn’t want Portman. They wanted Molly Lee.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Silence.

  Watermoth said, “Can you excuse me? I need to call my SA.”

  He looked at her dumbfounded.

  “My boss.”

  He nodded.

  She stepped away and took her smartphone out of her pocket, dialed Agent Smith.

  The phone rang and she heard his voice.

  “Joanna. You got there okay?”

  “I did.”

  “What d’ya think?”

  “It’s strange. It’s still preliminary, but strange.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “There are two dead bodies. Both male. Both shot with forty-five Autos.”

  “What else?”

  “One of the men shot is a sheriff’s deputy.”

  “Where’s the sheriff?”

  “He’s missing. Taken, I believe.”

  “Taken?”

  “It looks like someone raided their stationhouse.”

  “Raided?”

  “Yeah. There’s evidence of breaching charges on the door. And they did take down a sheriff’s deputy. Plus, the sheriff himself, we have to assume they overpowered him. Probably, drew their guns first. Took them both by surprise.”

  Silence fell over the line.

  Watermoth could hear Smith breathing and then the clicking of keys on a keyboard.

  Smith said, “Don’t jump to conclusions. That being said, you be careful down there. I don’t have to tell you that we must presume the sheriff is alive and being held against his will.”

  “I know, sir.”

  “Good. Get to it then.”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  Smith said, “Yes. The DEA agent?”

  “Yeah. So, then he’s legit?”

  “You play nice with him. But Joanna.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Keep an eye on him. I don’t trust him.”

  “You know him, sir?”

  “No. But my contact at the DEA says to keep an eye on him.”

  “Can I get a file on him?”

  “That might take some doing. But I can tell you what my guy told me.”

  “Which is?”

  “Apparently, this Ryman and Lee were a part of a special ops team called SWATters. Like SWAT–ters. Like they swatted bad guys or some such nonsense.”

  “I see.”

  “He’s not investigation. Neither was his partner. They were mostly undercover and SWAT. These guys operate with a certain amount of impunity.”

  “Impunity?”

  “Not the legal kind. It’s more of a turn your cheek and look the other way kind.”

  “How’s that, sir?”

  “My guy tells me the SWATters are more into take no prisoners than making arrests. Got it?”

  “Yes. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “Like I said, be nice. But be smart.”

  “Just so we’re on the same page. Am I supposed to look at him as a hostile?”

  “
No. I’m not saying that. I’m saying he may be hostile, but not a hostile. Just play nice for now.”

  Watermoth said, “I got it, sir.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, the wife of the DEA agent who’s dead. Apparently, she killed him. Maybe. And now she’s missing. In fact, she’s not even in the system.”

  “You think someone came for her? Maybe some local good ole boys?”

  “Maybe. But what I need to know is can you get me a file on Lee?”

  “The same rule applies here. About DEA files in general. But I’ll do my best.”

  “Not Mike Lee. I need something on Molly Lee, the wife. She’s not DEA. You should be able to get something on her.”

  “Sure, I’ll have someone get that.”

  “Send it to my phone, okay? Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

  She clicked off the phone and went back to Collins. He was inside, looking over the dead bodies.

  “So what now? You want me off the case?”

  She looked at him and said, “Off the case? No way. I need you and your guys on. It’s just going to be me here. No need for more agents.”

  “What about Ryman?”

  “He stays. For now.”

  “So what’s our next move? Want to hear about the bodies?”

  She looked at the dead deputy on the floor, at the pool of blood, at his lifeless eyes.

  Coldly, she said, “What for? We’re not going to learn anything here. No. But what I do need are roadblocks.”

  “Roadblocks?”

  “No,” she said, and then she told him about the dead DEA agent, his missing wife, the missing sheriff, and that Ryman was his partner.

  Then she said, “We’ve got a manhunt and a probable abduction. So, call up your guys. Tell em to be alert, but no roadblocks. Too much ground to cover. Make it happen. It’s been as many as seven hours since this all went down. If she’s got wheels and is going interstate speed limits to avoid being pulled over, that gives us a radius of five hundred miles.”

  “But five hundred miles. She could be in any of the surrounding states by now.”

  “So?”

  “I work for the state of Washington.”

  “Call whoever it is you call and use my name. Tell ‘em that the FBI is insistent. Got it?”

  He nodded. She wondered how exactly green he was.

  CHAPTER 11

  LESS THAN FIVE HUNDRED MILES SOUTH, the north stretch of Highway 101 going through northern California was dark and barren and isolated and seemingly abandoned. It was cold and wet and stark all at the same time, all in the middle of the night. All at the edge of nowhere.

  Even though it was nighttime, Widow could see a blazing wildfire. It had gone on for weeks. The middle of California was on fire. He saw it all the way up from LA.

  After he had dropped Sam off at her parents’ house, he stayed long enough to see them open the door, to see the recognition for their daughter on their faces. He watched the father drop to his knees, wrap his arms around the daughter that he thought he’d never see again.

  Widow saw the mother come running out behind them. She screamed and cried tears of joy. It was hard to peel himself away from watching something so satisfying as returning a lost child to her mother. But Jack Widow had road to cover. So, he backtracked several miles to a junkyard that he had noticed off the highway. He pulled in and left the Monte Carlo wedged up tight between several junked cars. He wiped down everything that he had touched with a car rag he found under the seat.

  He carried the second Glock and the magazine and the bullets with him for forty-one minutes, until he found a bus station. He managed to dump the magazine and bullets down a rushing sewer drain. The Glock he disassembled and pitched into a dumpster, where it would be picked up by a trash truck, shoveled in with other neighboring trash bins, and taken out to a city landfill. There it would be lost forever.

  Widow took a bus until he reached San Francisco. There he waited twenty minutes until he found a diner. He enjoyed one cup of coffee, a plate of eggs, and crisp bacon. There he met a trucker who couldn’t pay his bill. So Widow volunteered to pay for it as long as the guy gave him a ride.

  He carried the paperback book in his back pocket the whole time.

  On the way north, Widow said something that upset the guy. He wasn’t sure what, but suddenly the guy grew hostile. He kicked Widow out, right there. The guy had picked him up and his truck had spit him out.

  Widow was left, dumbfounded, watching the truck’s taillights fading away.

  Forty minutes earlier he had a nice cushy ride north. Now he found himself discarded like litter on the highway, and alone.

  He walked on the side of the road, off to the shoulder, which was practically a small cliff over a deep ditch. He looked north, looked south, saw the distant towering forest fires, still blazing, still demonic and jaw dropping.

  He looked west and looked east. He was alone in the blackness, and the faint, distant firelight. He was alone in all directions.

  CHAPTER 12

  FOUR MILES LATER, Widow’s boots and pants were dry on the inside but still covered in mud on the outside, but he wasn’t mad anymore. Not at the trucker. Not at himself. That was life. Life was full of coincidences and outcomes and unforeseeable outputs.

  Widow put it behind him and walked on. Even though the temperature had dropped, and it was slightly colder than he would have liked, it didn’t matter because the scenery more than made up for it.

  In fact, it made him smile. The forestry of northern California was a far cry from the urban desert lands of LA.

  Widow walked north through pitch darkness in terms of no city lights, or manmade towns, or streetlights, or even headlights from passing cars. However, there was dim light. Part of it came from the faint blaze hundreds of miles south of him. And part of it came from the stars in the sky and the full white moon. The night sky to the north wasn’t cloudless, but the cloud cover was sparse enough to allow most of the stars up there that shined down on Earth to do just that.

  The trees around him were shrouded in blackness, but he could see their outlines and silhouettes. They looked more like terrifying monsters than natural growing trees. They were vast and gigantic and colossal. Widow had never seen trees this big before that he could remember.

  He could not see much vegetation or plants, but he figured they were there as well. And they were plentiful. Had to be.

  The road wound and looped and curved on for long stretches. He saw mountains in the distance to the right. And as he rounded one long stretch of the highway, he saw the ocean off to the left. Suddenly, there was even more lowlight. The ocean looked calm from that distance, until he stared harder at the shoreline. Then he saw cliffs and rocks. The water line was white and crashed up against the shore in long, striding intervals. Up close and personal, he imagined it to sound loud and rugged and majestic at the same time. From this distance, he could not hear individual waves crashing. He could only hear the faint crashing of all of them at once. The sound was calming and soothing and peaceful.

  He was reminded of early explorers, crossing the vast American landscape, not knowing what was ahead. Many of them dying on the trail. Many of them leaving their dead loved ones behind. And then finally approaching this scene. All except for the highway. He imagined the way it must’ve looked to them.

  He wondered if it was all worth it.

  He was glad to be out of that guy’s cab and on foot in such a beautiful place.

  He walked on and finally came to the first sign that man had discovered this piece of land before he had, other than the existence of the concrete from the highway.

  There was a large green sign posted among the trees, but unobstructed by nature. It was up high, maybe fifteen feet off the ground because the ground beneath it dropped below the highway.

  The sign was green and reflective so that road vehicles could see it as it reflected their headlamps back at them.

  It was ten feet wide, maybe more.


  It read: Gray Wolf Redwood National Park.

  Automatically, he searched his brain and could not recall that name anywhere from any roadmap that he had seen before. He could not recall it from any conversations or newspapers or whispers or rumors. He had never heard of it.

  In smaller letters, under the title, the sign read: Gray Wolf Mountain Observatory: one mile ahead.

  Usually, an observatory meant a lodge or office structure, and most certainly had a visitor center with park workers. This time of night that would all be closed. However, national parks were under the jurisdiction of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which had a twenty-four-hour staff of law enforcement rangers. And the chance of there being a ranger station onsite at the Gray Wolf Mountain main campus was practically assured.

  Widow walked past the sign and saw his first headlights coming toward him. Going the other way. The lights came up on him and he slowed his walk. He shifted over as close to the lane as he could without being in the road to let the driver see him plainly. Which they must have because the car slowed to a crawl as it came up on him.

  It was a white pickup truck, full-sized, with a rear bench. The driver and a passenger looked at him. They seemed like they were going to stop.

  It was a couple, possibly early forties, probably married, and potentially had kids in the backseat, who were lying down, fast asleep on the rear bench. Which wouldn’t make there any room for him, anyway.

  The wife tugged on the man’s sleeve. He said something and looked right at Widow with worry on his face, which Widow presumed to be about him. And then he saw worry on the wife’s face that definitely looked to be about picking up a hitchhiker in the middle of redwood wilderness, someone who was not the most enticing ride-along companion.

  Widow waved at them. Other than being a little cold, he was happy to continue on with his current path. It was relaxing and calming and he felt a little pull to it. Like the book in his pocket.

  The couple did not stop. Instead, the truck sped up and headed back on its course in the opposite direction. Widow shrugged. He didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER 13

  AS WIDOW CONTINUED WALKING, he forgot all about the truck. The night breeze turned into gusts that felt more like a winter giant blowing down on him than a natural event.