Salvation Row - John Milton #6 (John Milton Thrillers)

by Mark Dawson

  The second shot shattered the rear window and then the front as it passed through the cabin, bisecting the two front seats.

  Milton swung the wheel to the left, bounced across the grassy verge, and put a line of traffic between them and the shooters. He swung the wheel left again, skidding into the junction of Poland and North Roman.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her, sweeping glass out of his lap.

  “Yes.” She prodded her neck and shoulders with her fingers. “I think so. I feel sick.”

  “It’s shock. It’ll pass.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  The airbags on Milton’s side of the car were already deflated, the last remnants of air escaping with a soft, sibilant hiss.

  “It was them,” she said. “I saw them.”

  He nodded. “The two from before.”

  “The ones who came to the house.”

  “Yes.”

  “They tried to kill us.”

  Milton allowed himself a grim little smile. Civilians often had a habit of stating the blindingly obvious after something outrageous. “I’d say so.”

  “Are you laughing?”

  “No,” he said. “But someone really doesn’t want you to get to court.”

  #

  MILTON PULLED up next to the courthouse. It was a grand building, five storeys tall, built in the 1940s of Georgia marble. The building covered the length of the city block, a dominating structure of towering stone piers and tall leaded windows. Cast-iron grille work covered the lower windows and doors. Above the arched entries were carved stone spandrels depicting eagles and weaponry. There were crenellated battlements high above where overfed pigeons made their roosts, depositing their guano on the pedestrians below. Izzy had explained that the Fourth Circuit of the Louisiana Court of Appeals was the judicial body with appellate jurisdiction over civil matters, matters referred from family and juvenile courts, and the criminal cases that were triable by jury. Izzy’s appeal of the city’s case to take the charity’s land had ended up here.

  Milton got out.

  “What are you doing?”

  He scanned left and right. There were a few pedestrians going about their business. A handful of people were climbing the steps into the building, the door held open for a man and a woman who were coming out. The parked cars looked empty. It looked like a normal afternoon. Nothing unusual. Nothing out of the ordinary. Milton knew that the men that had tried to kill them would try again, but they would need time to plan. They wouldn’t have expected them to have escaped the last attempt. They shouldn’t have escaped. He had been negligent. He had been careful, but not careful enough.

  And Izzy could have died because of it.

  He wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

  “Milton?”

  “I’m walking you to the door.”

  She looked back at the Buick. The wing had been badly damaged and the fender had been halfway torn off, one end of it scraping against the road. “You can’t leave that there.”

  “It’s a hire car,” he said. “There was a crash. Not my fault. I’ll get another.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t argue. Come on.”

  He took the heavy case from the back and crossed the sidewalk. She followed and they climbed the steep flight of steps to the main entrance.

  “You can’t nanny me all day, John.”

  He ignored her. “Which way?”

  She frowned at him, but didn’t push it. “Court eighteen.” She pointed along the corridor. “This way.”

  Milton went first, pulling the case behind him. The court had the quiet sepulchral air that buildings like this often had, the men and women who circulated around its corridors doing so silently or in hushed, charged semi-whispers. The interior would have been grand, once, with the wide expanse of marble and granite, but now it was dusty and shabby, a reflection on how the very notion of municipality had fallen into disrepair. Katrina had put on a very stark practical demonstration of what local government could and could not achieve, and its abject failure in the face of that test had meant a loss of faith that would never be made right.

  They reached court eighteen. There was a man standing there. Milton recognised him. Jackson Dubois. He was dressed in an expensive suit and, as he saw them turn the corner and approach, his face fell. Milton glanced over at Izzy. Her face had hardened with determination.

  “Didn’t think we’d be here?” she asked him.

  The man extended his arm so that his sleeve rode up, revealing a big expensive Rolex. “Ten minutes late, Miss Bartholomew. The judge is unhappy.”

  “We had difficulties getting here. But I expect you know all about that.”

  The man said nothing.

  “This is Mr. Dubois, John,” Izzy said, her tone laced with derision. “He works for Mr. Babineaux.”

  Dubois looked at Milton with unmasked distaste. “And who are you, John?”

  Milton took a step forward. He was the same height as Dubois and of similar build. Milton could see that he was in excellent shape. His jacket draped off wide shoulders, his belt cinched around a narrow waist, and the muscles were obvious through the fabric of his trousers. Dubois looked at him, perhaps preparing to say something, but, if he was, the words died on his lips. Milton knew the effect that he could have on others. His eyes, the coldest blue, nuggets of pure ice, were devoid of emotion and empathy. He had fixed murderers in his gelid stare and watched the arrogance and pep drain from their faces in the moments before he killed them.

  But Dubois was made of sterner stuff. He didn’t back down.

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Lucky for you,” Milton said.

  “You’re very full of yourself, aren’t you?”

  “A word of advice, Mr. Dubois? Fuck off.”

  Dubois paused, weighing Milton up. He looked at Izzy, back at Milton again and, deciding that there was no profit in extending the confrontation, he returned inside.

  Milton turned to Izzy. She was looking at him with an expression that he found difficult to read. Amusement, admiration, something else?

  “What?” he said with exaggerated innocence.

  She laughed. “You’re full of surprises, John.”

  “Go and do your thing.”

  She collected the case, but paused at the door. “And, what? You’ll stay here?”

  “That’s right. As long as it takes.”

  He expected her to protest again, but she didn’t. She was independent and proud, but she wasn’t stupid. Perhaps, he wondered, she had grasped now that the threat against her was real. The men at the house, the cops, the crash on the way to court…there was a pattern of escalation that she couldn’t deny, or, if she was wise, ignore. She looked as if she was ready to accept his help.

  “It might take a few hours.”

  “Not a problem,” he said. “Go on. Give ’em hell.”

  She smiled warmly at him, took the case and wheeled it into the courtroom.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  MILTON SAT on the bench outside the courtroom for two hours. He got up after the first hour to stretch his legs and, curious, he opened the outer door and went through into the small lobby that separated the courtroom from the corridor. There was a narrow vertical window in each of the leather-padded double doors, and they offered a view of the interior. The room was large, with a vaulted ceiling and black polished marble wainscoting. There were six rows of wooden pews for members of the public and the lawyers, a passageway cutting through the middle and then, at the front, desks for the judge and the clerk. Old Glory and the Louisiana state flag were hung behind the desk. The carpeting was a distasteful mauve, patterned with fleurs-de-lis, and the walls were in need of a fresh coat of paint. The benches and desks looked old and unloved, too. It was shabby and unimpressive and, in that drab context, Isadora looked dazzling.

  She was on her feet, speaking with furious animation, her hands punctuating her points with broad
gestures and sudden stabs. Milton couldn’t hear what she was saying, save the occasional word, but her vehemence was as obvious as the anger in her face. He turned to the phalanx of lawyers she was facing. Dubois was behind them, his face clouded with annoyance. Whatever she was saying, Milton thought, it was causing him concern.

  Milton was outside again when the proceedings drew to a close. Babineaux’s lawyers emerged first. Two men and a woman, each immaculately dressed. Behind them came a small team of clerks and juniors. Milton counted ten people in total. They were discussing what had just happened as they swept by him, so he couldn’t make out much of the conversation. The tone was self-evident: angry and indignant. Dubois came out after them, a phone pressed to the side of his head. He glanced at Milton, but walked on without stopping.

  Isadora emerged into the corridor five minutes later. She immediately set off down the corridor, so wrapped up in whatever had just happened that she walked right by him.

  Milton stood and caught up with her. “Hello,” he called out.

  She stopped. “Sorry.”

  “Well? How did it go?”

  “As well as I could’ve hoped.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I got an adjournment. Three days. The judge wants to see a lot more evidence of why the development is for the good of the public. A full report, plus an environmental survey. They’re both going to be very expensive.”

  “But they can get them to say what they need?”

  She shrugged. “Of course. If you’ve got money, you can get anything you want.”

  “You’re not concerned?”

  “It’s three more days, John. A lot can happen in three days.”

  #

  MILTON DROVE Izzy to the Comfort Inn. He told her to stay there, get an early dinner in the restaurant maybe, and she said that she would. He waited outside for five minutes, acclimatising himself to the atmosphere, and then, satisfied that there was no immediate threat, he took the damaged Encore back to Hertz. He explained that he had been involved in a fender bender, left them his details so that the case could be investigated, and walked the three blocks south to the branch of Avis. He hired a Toyota Corolla and set off to the northwest, heading out of the city. He stopped at the same Walmart he remembered from before, bought a shovel and a pair of bolt cutters, and continued on his way.

  He followed I-10 all the way to Laplace. He recalled the drive from before. The weather had been different then, starkly different, with today’s scorching sunshine replacing the torrential downpour that had heralded Katrina’s arrival. He saw evidence, even this far removed from that day, that bore witness to the terrible damage that the storm had inflicted. Whole groves of trees had been flattened. The occasional building, its roof peeled off, had been left to rot rather than being repaired.

  He drove until he reached the beginnings of the Maurepas Swamp, turning off on the I-55 and then finding the right-hand turn into the bayou that he remembered from before. He drove on, passing spreads of bull tongue, cattail, stands of American elm, sugarberry, water and obtusa oak. The road followed the spine of a ridge that rose out of the swamp, and Milton wondered whether the area would have flooded more intensively during the storm. Probably, he thought. That might make his chances of a successful trip less likely. Only one way to find out.

  He drove along the road, the surface bone dry and rutted now rather than the hungry quagmire that had sucked at his wheels when he had last been here. He followed until it became a single track, slowing to a halt when he saw the spreading boughs of the big maple with its vivid red foliage. He collected the shovel and set off. He found the cypress grove at the edge of the narrow clearing and the large boulder in the middle, piercing the greensward like a snaggled tooth. He put his back to the rock, measured out three steps back into the clearing, and started to dig.

  He had left his rifle in the airport’s luggage storage, but it was registered to him, and that made it useless for what he knew that he might need to do. He didn’t know whether the cache would still be there. The regional quartermasters moved them from time to time, depending upon the security of the locations. There would be no real blowback should a cache be discovered, no obvious way to tie them back to Group Fifteen, but having a trunk full of high-powered weapons go missing had the potential to be damaging if they were required and no longer there. This one could have been discovered, it could have been compromised during the storm, but there was no way of telling without coming out here and digging it up.

  Milton had to work harder this time. The ground had been baked for weeks, and the effort of cutting through the hard crust, together with the almost liquid humidity, meant that he was quickly dripping with sweat. Progress was a little easier once he got down into the softer soil and, soon after he did, the tip of his shovel bounced back off of something solid. He drove it down again and heard the metallic ching. He determined the proportions of the item, excavated the earth from atop it, and then dug around it until he could see the handles. He tossed his shovel aside, stepped down into his freshly dug trench, and dragged the trunk out of the ground.

  He took the bolt cutters, placed the jaws around the hasp of the padlock, and squeezed the levers together. The hasp was sheared through, and the padlock dropped to the ground. Milton opened the trunk. The contents had been refreshed since his previous visit. The M16 was still there and there was a long rifle and a fresh Sig Sauer P226 to replace the one that he had taken. He hadn’t been able to properly assess the threat that Izzy faced, but the attack on the way to court was ample evidence of her enemies’ determination, so Milton was minded to err on the side of overpreparedness rather than run the risk of being caught outgunned. He took the M16 and laid it on the ground. He collected the P226 and pushed it beneath his belt, the steel sliding down into the small of his back. There was a Heckler and Koch MP5 machine pistol, the abbreviated version, and he took that, too. He added a pair of LUCIE night vision goggles and ammunition for all of the firearms and then, making two trips, ferried everything to the Corolla.

  He returned to the trunk and took out one of the waterproof polythene baggies. He opened it, sliding his finger between the seal, and pulled out a block of bank notes. It was twenty thousand dollars. There were fifty bags in total, each containing twenty grand. A million bucks. Milton dropped the cash in the trunk of the Corolla atop the weapons.

  He pushed the trunk back into the gash in the earth, shovelled the spoil over the top of it and, covered in dust and dirt, went back to the car. He tossed the shovel and the bolt cutters into the back, started the engine, and turned around to head back for the city.

  #

  MILTON BOUGHT a change of clothes from the same Walmart that he had visited earlier, and then returned to the motel. He parked the Corolla, reversing right up against a wall that was wreathed in bougainvillea so that it was impossible to get to the trunk to open it. He would not be able to transfer the bulky weapons into his room without being noticed, and he wanted to have them close at hand. He locked the car, went to his room, and showered until the grime and muck had been washed from his body and hair. He dressed in his new clothes, stuffing the old ones in the Walmart bag and dumping them in the trash can outside. He field-stripped the P226, checking that it was still in good condition after being in the ground, reassembled it and pushed it into his waistband. Then, feeling fresher and better prepared than he had all day, he took his cellphone and sent an email. Then he called a taxi and asked the driver to take him into the city.

  He found an Internet café, Krewe de Brew, bought an hour’s worth of credit, and took a unit in the middle of the room, not obviously observed by any security cameras. He opened a browser and opened two windows. One for his Gmail account, stuffed full of spam in the months since he had last checked it. The other for a forum dedicated to the music of The Smiths. He concentrated on the latter, logging on with his old account and checking that the account was still linked to his Gmail address. The fansite had been online for nearly twenty yea
rs, and he remembered it from the last time he had relied upon it. It had been busier then, but there was still enough traffic for his simple message—a careful, precise extolment of Morrissey—to pass unnoticed amid the usual traffic. In truth, Group Fifteen had appropriated the forum and others like it as modern-day dead drops. It had been monitored by certain operatives in the employ of Group Fifteen, but that was two years ago now, and Milton had no idea whether that was still the case.

  He didn’t want the Group.

  He wanted someone else.

  Five minutes passed, and then ten. Milton was almost ready to conclude that he had struck out when he refreshed his Gmail account for a final time and noticed that he had a new message.

  He opened it and saw a single HTML link.

  No comment, no explanation, just the link.

  He clicked, and a chat window opened.

  The cursor blinked, and then scurried across the screen.

  —Who is this?

  —Number Six.

  There was a long pause. Milton watched the cursor blinking.

  —Fuck off.

  —I’m serious.

  —Wait.

  Milton did as he was told. He stared at the screen, at the blinking cursor, at the decals that had been stuck to the edges and at the graffiti that had been scratched into the old case.

  —Shit. Number Six. I believe you.

  —You’re sure about that?

  —I can see you. The webcam. You haven’t masked your IP.

  Milton gazed at the top of the screen, at the tiny black hole almost invisible against the black bezel. He thought about Ziggy Penn, somewhere in the world, hijacking the webcam and God knew what else besides. He thought of his face, filling Ziggy’s monitor, and he smiled and gave a tiny wave with his fingers.

  There was a pause before the characters filled the next line, more quickly now, a rush of them as, somewhere, Ziggy’s fingers flew across a keyboard.