The Psalmist

by James Lilliefors

  She stood stock-­still in the field and heard it again: a pitched sound that might have been a goose or a swan. But she knew it wasn’t.

  And then, turning very slightly, she saw it: a faint glimmer of moonlight several feet above the earth, catching something that was moving through the fields; a windshield, maybe.

  Hunter waited, not breathing. And heard the sound again. This time she recognized it: a car engine, accelerating in the distance, followed by another sound, what seemed to be tires spinning in the mud. Her eyes inched through the darkness and found it again: two glints, front and back—­the shape of a small car, moving in slow motion over the field. He’s driving toward the highway, his lights out, plowing through all this darkness. She followed his trajectory—­at this angle, he would reach the highway east of the police surveillance checkpoint, emerging just past Gracie’s Crab House. He’d be in the next county by then, where he could slip into traffic and disappear.

  Hunter glanced back at the distance she’d covered—­at the lit-­up farmhouse and the police activity to the south of it, where they’d found the Jeep. She called Crowe on the radio.

  “He’s moving outside the perimeter, northeast, less than a mile from the county border, headed right for the highway,” she said. “I just saw him. He may be having some trouble with the muddy fields.”

  “Repeat please.”

  But Hunter was already running, back to the SUV.

  Chapter 54

  “HOW DOES HE get out, though?” Dave Crowe said as Hunter raced the Ford Explorer north through the darkness along Route 11, lights out, windows down. “All of the roads in and out are covered.”

  “So he crosses where there isn’t a road,” she said.

  “Where?”

  Hunter said nothing. She was tracking Rankin’s route again through the darkness, but seeing nothing out there anymore: no glints of glass or metal where she expected he should be. Had she lost him? Maybe he’s changed course. Or maybe he’s already reached the highway, maybe he’s gone.

  She took her foot off the accelerator, letting the SUV coast. Until it finally stopped on its own.

  “What are you doing?” Crowe said.

  “Just getting my bearings for a second.”

  “Why?”

  “Shhh.” She listened, straining to hear anything. She studied the terrain to the north and to the east—­the direction he’d been driving. About a quarter mile past the county line on Capsize Creek was Gracie’s Crab House. A band was playing tonight at Gracie’s Back Room, the club behind the restaurant, the parking lot was packed. Route 11 would’ve taken him west of the crab house lot, still inside the county boundary. But what if he’d driven east across the soybean field? From Route 11 it was a straight shot to the crab house parking lot; and from there he could enter the highway, circumventing the police surveillance checkpoints.

  Then she heard it again: the now-­familiar whirring sound. Wheels in mud. “Shit!” She held up a hand to silence Crowe, who was beginning to speak. And again—­car tires struggling for traction. Hunter turned her eyes farther east.

  The muddy fields on the edge of Tidewater County are holding him back. They’re trying to stop Gil Rankin from leaving. They’re trying to keep him here.

  She clicked on the police radio. “Suspect may be en route to Gracie’s Crab House from the southwest,” she said. “Block entrances and exits. Code one,” she added. “No lights or sirens.”

  “Where? I don’t see anything,” Crowe said.

  Hunter pointed through the windshield, her eyes scanning the plowed bean fields. Wishing she were out here alone.

  It was only a minute before she saw it: just west of the creek, a glint of glass and a low dark shadow, the boxy shape of a small car moving north across the moonlit field toward the restaurant parking lot. But having trouble: she heard the whirring again, the high-­pitched accelerations of the engine, the whining of tires spinning through the mud. Tidewater County is trying to keep him, she thought again, warmed with a sudden pleasure.

  “Hold on,” she said. Pressing the accelerator, she drove full tilt toward the highway, letting her foot up just for a moment as the car slammed into the recently plowed farmland. Then flooring it again, the SUV bucking and sliding across a soybean field toward the crab house, Crowe protesting. ”Jesus Christ!” and “What the—­”

  Several times they lost traction, too, and the tires spun, but this was a four-­wheel drive, better suited for the terrain than the front-­wheel-­drive car Rankin was in.

  Should have taken the Jeep, Rankin, she thought.

  She crossed a private drive into the last plot of farmland before the highway and saw his car again on the other side—­rising onto the berm before the parking lot. Then disappearing into a jumble of cars and lights. The state police chopper roared behind them and swung low, lighting up the fields, briefly blinding Hunter. She wondered if they’d lost him.

  Up on the highway, police and sheriff’s cars were sealing the entrances, their patrol lights all spinning. “No! No lights!” Hunter said as she slammed over the berm, stopping just inside the parking lot.

  “Jesus H. Christmas!” Crowe said.

  Hunter climbed out, pumped up. She surveyed the lot. Dozens of cars, parked every which way. She glanced at the restaurant and then back at the fields.

  “I’ll see if they have anything,” Crowe said.

  “All right.”

  He walked quickly toward the entrance drive, as if wanting to escape from her. Good, she thought. Her body was still pulsing from the motion of racing through open country. It was warmer here, out of the wind, the air scented with steamed seafood. The Explorer was covered with mud, as were her boots; Rankin’s vehicle must be, too. She walked along the edge of the lot, her eyes tracing the route he must’ve taken out of the darkness, finding the spot where his tire tracks had cut into the berm and spun down into the gravel; fifteen yards, maybe, from where she’d entered.

  So where was he? She tried to follow the path his car had taken, but saw that it was pointless: the car tracks disappeared quickly into gravel.

  There were too many vehicles out here. He could have parked anywhere.

  He might be sitting in his car now, or he might be out in the marshland, walking. Or maybe he’d already found a way to cross the highway.

  But she didn’t think so. There were too many eyes out here now. The Bureau agents and troopers were beginning to fan out through the parking lot. He’s here, she thought. He had to be here, hiding in plain view. Amid the chaos.

  Hunter walked toward the front deck of the restaurant, taking the safety off her Beretta. She stopped to look back at the dark country they’d just driven through, seeing what the moonlight revealed—­plowed soil, marsh creeks, an occasional metal road sign. Nothing else; nothing moving.

  She walked the steps to the restaurant, circulating among the ­people who’d come out onto the deck, curious about what was happening. Shrugging when someone locked eyes with her, as if to say, I don’t know, either. But feeling a charge again—­the nervous excitement of closing in.

  Dressed in jeans, work boots, and her army jacket, Hunter could pass as a customer. It gave her a passport to go inside and quickly mingle. But first she leaned on the railing and scanned the lot once again. Saw Crowe near the highway entrance, hands on his hips, talking with a ­couple of other agents.

  She turned then and went inside. Took the steps down to the lobby bar, which was dimly lit and crowded. There were fish nets and captain’s wheels on the walls. ­People were eating dinner at the bar, some waiting for a table. The air was thick with the smells of steamed crabs and boiled shrimp.

  She ordered a beer. There was an animated, lubricated mood here, a din of voices. Hunter watched the dining area: ­people cracking crabs with wooden mallets on paper tablecloths, waiters carrying seafood platters, taking away plate
s of shells.

  She carried her beer to Gracie’s Back Room. A band was on stage, a local group she’d seen a ­couple times, once with Ship; men and women playing music as a sideline to their day jobs as watermen, an auto parts clerk, a hairdresser. A cover band, performing country and classic rock crowd-­pleasers. Hunter leaned against the wall and pretended to drink her beer.

  The band launched into a song by J. Geils, a favorite here that always drew whoops and cheers after its opening line: “We met in a bar, out on Chesapeake Bay . . .”

  But Hunter was surreptitiously surveying the edges of the room—­for ­people in dark places or in crowds. Several of them caused her to look twice. One, a third time.

  At a table near the back of the room, a large, wide-­faced man wearing a dark jacket and a Baltimore Orioles cap. His chair jutted out at an odd angle, as if he wasn’t quite with the others at the table but trying to be.

  Or maybe she was just imagining it.

  Something else struck her about him: instead of focusing on the band, he kept turning to the entrance, watching ­people as they came in.

  Maybe just waiting for someone.

  Then, as she was watching, the man surprised her by looking directly at her. Hunter turned her eyes to the band.

  She sipped her beer, waiting. Watched the band.

  When she finally looked back, he was gone.

  GIL RANKIN FELT momentarily safe, hidden in a sea of unfamiliar faces. Hide and seek. He was good at that. But he still had to find a way out; he couldn’t go home the way everyone else would tonight. Those fucking fields, waterlogged from the snow-­melt. Mother-­fucking fields, had been like quicksand.

  Rankin stepped onto the deck, taking a deep breath of the cold air. Darting glances at the curious eyes, ­people trying to make sense of what all the police lights were about. No one giving him a second look.

  The irony of his predicament wasn’t lost on him. This was supposed to be his last job, ten years after he’d first been hired to set up surveillance on the Client’s property. And every operation until this one had gone smoothly. All of the others had come off clean.

  He leaned on the railing, took a deep breath, the air energizing him a little. He let his eyes drift over the parking lot. Yes, it’d be a challenge for him to slip out of here. But he would. That’s what he did. He was a man who didn’t get caught. Always had been. He prided himself on that.

  He scanned the ­people again, figuring options. Briefly his eyes connected with those of a man across the deck. A man wearing a knit cap, looking right at him, it seemed. For a disoriented moment he thought it was his client, with those dark, penetrating eyes he had. Jesus Christ!

  He turned away. Of course not, it can’t be.

  What was the matter with him? He pushed back into the restaurant. In the lobby, he saw the woman in the oversized army jacket again, striding across the room. Looking at him. What the fuck’s her problem? Rankin changed direction, steering his own ship. He walked toward the signs for the restrooms. There’d be a back exit that way. He’d take it and just walk out of this shitty place. Back to Florida.

  And if I don’t make it, he thought, for the first time, I don’t make it. It won’t be something I’ll ever have to worry about again.

  FOUR UNIFORMED STATE troopers made circuitous paths toward the back of the restaurant, their eyes scanning the dinner tables. What are they looking for, exactly? Hunter wondered. Do they even have a good description of Gil Rankin? Just two photographs that probably look nothing like him.

  Hunter walked the other way, through the restaurant toward the front deck, where maybe two dozen ­people were gathered, watching the police activity. Or lack of it. But as she came through the lobby, she saw him again—­the big guy in the Orioles cap.

  His eyes briefly met hers but he kept moving. Crossing in front of the lobby bar, under an arrow pointing to REST ROOMS.

  Hunter couldn’t get a fix on him: Was he trying to hide, or was he just looking for someone? Or did he need to use the bathroom?

  She continued to follow, at a distance. Stepping into the corridor to the restrooms. Twenty yards separating them now. Hunter felt her heart shift into overdrive. Still not sure.

  At the end of the corridor were two doors. Signs reading SOOKS and JIMMIES.

  But he wasn’t going there.

  Just before the restrooms was a door to the outside—­a rear exit to the parking lot. The man slowed at the door and leaned into it. He’s leaving.

  But that still didn’t mean anything.

  Hunter reached for her gun as the door began to open.

  “Gil Rankin!” she shouted.

  Something, a slight hesitation. Then he turned to look at her.

  “Police!” she said. “Raise your hands!”

  The man turned slowly toward her, his back to the door, as if he couldn’t understand what she was saying. Then he twisted back to the door and his right hand went inside his coat. It came out, gripping a .45 caliber handgun.

  Hunter shot first, catching him in the chest. Rankin fired back, off-­balance, the bullet just missing her left arm. She crouched and shot again, shattering the window as he pushed out, stumbling several steps into the parking lot, staggering forward and falling onto his right side. Hunter followed him out, her Beretta aimed double-­handed.

  She stood several feet away, gun pointed. Rankin lifted his head. He seemed to be looking past her now. And then—­what had to’ve been suicide-­by-­cop—­he slowly aimed his gun at her but didn’t fire. Hunter shot him once more in the chest, killing him.

  There was an eerie silence then—­something that would always stay with her: just her and the dead man, together behind the restaurant, the echo of four gunshots pounding in her head, her heart pumping.

  And then the world closed in.

  Someone was rushing toward her, pointing a gun. A female agent shouting: “Drop the weapon! Down on the ground. On the ground!”

  Hunter dropped her gun and went to her knees. The agent took her down, shoving Hunter forward into the gravel. She broke her fall with the palms of her hands. The agent’s knee pressing into her back. She heard more running footsteps, cops’ voices shouting.

  “Get off me,” she managed to say. “State police homicide.”

  In the confusion that followed, Hunter heard the gruff, steady voice of her boss, Henry Moore. And several onlookers trying to explain what had happened—­in that nervous, self-­conscious and self-­important tone that eyewitnesses often adopted. Finally, the agent let her up.

  Hunter stood. Her palms were pocked and bleeding slightly from slamming into the gravel. “Sorry,” the female agent said, and tried to give her a soulful look. Hunter turned away. Gil Rankin lay crumpled behind her in a graceless pose, his legs twisted, his torso and head facing the fields. What might have been his escape. There was a cliché about shootouts seeming to happen in slow motion; but it hadn’t been like that at all. It had all happened very quickly, too quickly to think or feel anything. It was the first time she had killed someone.

  “Stand back! Everybody clear out!” a state trooper was shouting. Police were beginning to manage the scene, stretching crime tape to block the back of the restaurant.

  Hunter heard a man say, “I was standing right there when it happened! Right behind her!” His voice nearly hysterical.

  Diners looked out, their faces pressed to the glass. The band had stopped, the sound of human celebration stilled. The air smelling of steamed seafood mixed now with gunpowder.

  Hunter walked with Crowe and Moore to the edge of the lot. She couldn’t stop thinking about the agent getting on top of her and putting the gun to her head. It brought back everything that had happened fifteen years ago, when she was a junior in high school, out on a cool spring night in Pennsylvania, a lot like this one. A crime that had shaken her life, the reason that she’d gon
e into law enforcement, thinking maybe she could prevent that kind of thing from happening to anyone else. Now, she could maneuver in dark places; then, she couldn’t; now, she could make an intelligent decision on her own; then, it had been difficult.

  She carried the image of Gil Rankin’s twisted legs in her head as they walked back, and she felt a strange, fleeting satisfaction, as if she’d finally gotten even for the event that had altered her life, even though this had nothing to do with it.

  Ten minutes later she was inside the restaurant, giving a statement to Crowe. This was an FBI case now. Crowe’s case.

  “Funny how things change so quickly,” she said.

  “Yes. It is.”

  An hour earlier the table had been covered with steamed crabs and pitchers of Chesapeake beer.

  Hunter was surprised to look up when they were finished and see how the crowd in the lot had thinned to almost nothing. The last of the cars lining up now to go through the police checkpoint. To go home. Police lights still spinning blue and red. She wondered whether Rankin might’ve slipped away if she hadn’t spotted him. Instead, evidence techs were photographing his body behind the restaurant.

  “You all right?” Crowe said. The two of them walking through the cool air across the gravel, unnoticed again in the darkness. His hand splayed across her upper back.

  “I guess.”

  “You did good. You did the right thing.”

  “I did what he wanted me to do,” Hunter said.

  Her eyes were on the farmland. That’s exactly what it felt like. She’d done what he wanted her to do. She’d given him an out. Maybe not the one he ultimately wanted, but for him it was better than being caught. Somehow, that made her feel taken advantage of, complicit in his escape.

  As they drove back, she imagined what would follow: She’d be placed on administrative leave while a largely meaningless, bureaucratic “internal investigation” was conducted. She’d be assigned a counselor and maybe given some kind of interim desk job. Hunter knew the drill, and it pissed her off. It was exactly what she didn’t want. Now more than anything, she wanted to keep working. She wanted to finish this case.