Silent Approach

by Bobby Cole

  “Can you unlock it?” Winston asked in a whisper.

  “The doorknob lock, yes. The dead bolt? No, I don’t think so,” Runt whispered back. He could tell by the accelerated whistling of Winston’s nose that he was pissed and added, “I’m just being honest.”

  Winston had never encountered a house without windows or at least a sliding glass door. Who in hell lived like this? If there was a fire between the man and his one door, he’d burn to a crisp. Winston was tempted to light one just to prove it to him, but that wouldn’t get him what he wanted.

  He forced himself to calm down and start thinking about a Plan B. If he could get John Allen out here, he’d have the advantage.

  His eyes were adjusted to the darkness now, and he felt he owned the night. “Go see if you can break in to his car. It’s okay if an alarm goes off. If it doesn’t, see if you can crank it. He’ll hear the engine and come running out here. I’ll hide here in the shadows and jump him when he runs out.”

  “Got it,” Runt said with enthusiasm. He had stolen lots of cars but never a Porsche. After two steps he stopped and softly added, “Do you think he has a wife in there?”

  “He had on a wedding ring,” Winston whispered, then formed a devilish smile. “We can hope.”

  Winston eased into position behind the door. John Allen wouldn’t be able to see him until he stepped outside. The open door would block his view.

  Runt had been gone about a minute. Winston had no idea what Runt was doing, but he expected to hear the car crank soon. He could be patient.

  The car was locked. Runt didn’t see any intermittently flashing light that would indicate an alarm was set, so he pulled a Slim Jim out of his bag and intended to slide it down the window, just like he’d done dozens of times on American-made cars. He slid the thin bar down, and as soon as it hit some interior structure, the alarm went off in a cacophony of blaring horn and flashing lights, sending Runt scrambling back away from it.

  Winston shook his head and mumbled under his breath, “Well, that will do it.”

  He positioned himself to be ready.

  John Allen thrashed awake from a deep sleep and struggled for a few seconds to make sense of the wild sounds. His car. Someone was trying steal it, or a cat had jumped on the hood again. Not taking any chances, he snapped on a light and ran for his pistol. At the door he slipped into his boots and jacked a shell into the chamber, then turned the dead-bolt lock and yanked open the door.

  Standing there in his boxers and boots, he could see the lights flashing from his car at the end of the barn. He flipped on the outside security light. He didn’t see anyone running and couldn’t hear anything with the car horn blaring. There were no neighbors to worry about disturbing, so he let it continue to go off.

  He started toward the car with his pistol ready, then the world went dark.

  Winston had allowed John Allen to exit, and when he’d turned away, he’d knocked him unconscious with the butt of his pistol. He’d collapsed in a satisfying heap at Winston’s feet, then sorted himself out on the gravel, so he looked for all the world like he was napping there on his side—but for the trickle of blood oozing down the side of his head.

  After checking to make certain his victim was out cold, Winston rushed into the house and started flicking on lights, clearing each room in turn, expecting to hear a woman scream. His first pass revealed no other occupants, though, and he quickly found the key for the car and pressed the “Unlock” button to kill the alarm. The silence relieved him.

  Runt came running into the room. “Secure him,” Winston instructed him, and he instantly obeyed.

  The barn was actually a house, or the house was a barn, depending on how you looked at it. Winston liked the simplicity of it. He took another tour of the place to make certain there wasn’t a wife hiding under a bed or in a closet, then went back to the den to learn a bit about John Allen.

  There was a briefcase with cash and the casino chips. The seed pot sat next to it, still wrapped in the same robe. This is too easy, Winston thought.

  Outside, Runt had quickly zip-tied John Allen’s hands behind his back and, once he was secure, placed two fingers on his throat to make certain he was still alive. He noticed the blood beginning to pool under his head, but he didn’t care. He stood up and looked around to see whether anyone was approaching, and seeing nothing, he gazed about for something else to steal. The first thing he grabbed was John Allen’s pistol.

  Inside, Winston marveled at the barn’s interior. It was like a brand-new house on the inside. There weren’t any pictures on the wall, and the furniture was just placed for function. There was no woman’s touch. Winston knew because he had lived in a female-influenced house, and he had also lived without.

  He looked under the bed and in closets, searching for anything of value. There wasn’t much. There was a heavy-duty gun safe. Winston tried to open it, but it was locked. He wondered what was inside but was smart enough to know better than to waste any time on it.

  “Damn bachelor pad,” he mumbled, realizing there wouldn’t be any jewelry or silver. Grabbing John Allen’s wallet and walking back into the den, he saw a pile of papers on the bar that separated the room from the kitchen area. Bills and a payroll stub. The stub interested him. He was curious about how much the man made being an accountant.

  “Choctaw Tribal Nation?” he said out loud. That was a troubling coincidence.

  Winston searched through more papers for clues to the identities of any of John Allen’s other clients. He was about to give up when he found an insurance guidebook from the Choctaw Tribal Nation.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. The man was an employee of the tribe.

  The implications of this discovery filtered into his brain. “Hey, Runt!” he hollered out the door. “This piece of shit works for the Choctaw Nation. I bet he’s an Indian cop,” Winston said with pure contempt.

  “I knew he smelled like a pig!” Runt said as he walked in the door.

  “Be careful not to leave any prints anywhere,” Winston said. “I haven’t found a badge, but look in his wallet.” He tossed him the leather wallet.

  Runt caught it, and before he opened it up, he looked around the den. “He sure ain’t got much shit,” he said with a laugh.

  “More than you. I bet he just got a divorce,” Winston said, pointing at a framed photo on the end table of a smiling woman at the beach. “And I bet she cleaned him out.”

  “He’s got an expensive ride out there.”

  “That’s his bait to catch his next woman, is all. That’s just a monthly payment. They finance those cars for ten years. Trust me. That ain’t shit.”

  Runt, who wasn’t known for his superior intellect but did have a mind for police procedures, began to be puzzled by recent events. “So why didn’t he bust us yesterday after you bought that skull?” he asked, already trying to distance himself from the crime.

  Winston wondered about this, too. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t been arrested yesterday, unless they were trying to sucker him into a bigger purchase. Would a more expensive artifact carry a stiffer penalty than the skull? He didn’t know for sure, but he didn’t think so. Hell, he wasn’t a lawyer, but he knew he had committed enough of a crime to do some serious time—ten years, probably. Recently they’d started trying to make examples of artifact pillagers.

  He had to think through the situation. He had the pot. He looked in the briefcase and put his hands on the casino chips and cash. Good, good, good.

  Walking around, Winston’s mind was racing. Now he knew the woman John Allen worked for was the Choctaw chief, the most powerful person in a very influential tribe.

  “He didn’t bust us yesterday ’cause he ain’t a real cop,” he said. “Maybe on the tribal lands, but not out here. He was just setting us up. That son of a bitch.” He kicked over a chair.

  Runt was busy pillaging the wallet. “No badge, sixty bucks in cash, a speeding ticket, and—wait, here it is, a photo ID for the Choctaw
Nation. You’re exactly right.”

  “I can’t believe I was so stupid. I’m careful all these years, I drop my guard for a few minutes, and now this. This is all your fault, you know,” Winston said, growing angrier and thinking about the seed pot. “All for a shitty $8,000!”

  Runt knew what was coming now. Winston had a temper that would intimidate an MMA fighter when he got mad. He needed to manage him. “What do you want me to do, boss?”

  “Shut up and let me think. Go load his ass into the back of the Suburban.”

  “I want his boots.”

  “I don’t care and he don’t need ’em,” Winston said, exasperated.

  Winston had dealt with a Choctaw agent before—he’d killed him and had hidden his body, and nobody had ever found it. Now he was going to have to do it again, but he didn’t have much time to plan. One good thing about being a career criminal, though—he knew how to operate on the fly and cover all the critical bases. This was all second nature to him. But he couldn’t overlook any details here or they’d bite him in the ass. He had to watch Runt, too. The man was no kind of thinker, and his mistakes could take them both down.

  Winston stood looking at the inside of the barn, soaking in the scene. He slowly turned and looked outside. Runt had the Choctaw agent by the armpits and was struggling to drag him through the gravel toward the Suburban, rather than thinking to ask Winston to move the rig closer to the downed man. Yes, Winston would have to watch him like a hawk.

  Or better yet, he could take the blame, he thought, and smiled.

  Chapter 27

  Winston and Runt took one more hurried look around the barn for any remaining traces of their visit and anything they might want. Runt took John Allen’s guitar, a pair of Costa sunglasses, and the only beer left in the fridge. Winston took a Bertucci watch and, turning to leave, told Runt to put the wallet on the counter and grab the keys to the Porsche.

  “Why can’t I take the wallet?”

  “Because your dumb ass will forget it, and some police officer will search your truck at some point and bust you,” Winston said emphatically.

  Once outside, Runt wanted to burn down the house, but Winston shot that down. “If we torch the place, someone will see the flames, and they’ll start looking for John Boy. Right now we have a good twelve-hour head start before anyone should be looking for him.”

  Though Runt nodded his understanding, even in the darkness Winston could see he was disappointed. He couldn’t tell whether that was because Runt wasn’t going to get to burn the house, or whether he was frustrated that he hadn’t himself reasoned through the risks. “That ain’t much time, really,” he pouted.

  “It’s plenty if we’re smart,” Winston said, looking at John Allen lying in the back of his Suburban. At least he had a plastic cargo tray that was catching all the blood. He would toss that out later, after they’d disposed of the body.

  He checked his watch. Almost 2:00 a.m. “I tell you what,” he said. “We don’t know our way around that golf course well enough to navigate it in the darkness, and with all that construction going on, we might bury him someplace that they’d dig up in a few days. Let’s stick with what we know and take him to the hunting camp. Nobody will be there, and we can get organized. We can dump the body in the same Indian mound as the other agent.”

  Runt thought about what needed to be done. Winston wouldn’t be much help, if any. All the manual labor would be Runt’s to do. They were almost two hours from that site. He’d have to carefully dig out and place the body, then pack it back with the same vegetation after removing the excess dirt. There was no way he could get all that done before daylight. He’d run a huge risk of being seen when the sun came up.

  “You think we have time tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” Winston said as he shut the back doors. “Maybe not.”

  Standing in the darkness, Winston looked around him. They could come after him tomorrow, but he had all the evidence with him. He opened the passenger-side door and placed the briefcase and the robe-wrapped pot on the front seat. Without the evidence, what kind of case would they have?

  “Now, Runt, we’ll have to play it cool when they ask us questions.”

  Runt nodded. “When do you think that will be?”

  “Hell, it could be tomorrow. It all depends on who knew what he was doing,” Winston explained in a quiet voice.

  “How long did it take them to ask you questions about the other guy?”

  “They never did,” Winston said with a smile.

  “Never?”

  “Ever.”

  Winston opened the backseat door, took out the wicker box with the skull in it, and handed it to Runt. “We’ll leave this here. It’s probably not even real, and it may have a tracking device.”

  “Yeah, that’s smart.”

  “Look, we’ll tell them that we met with him at the bar, and he tried to sell us a skull, but we didn’t buy it. They won’t be able to prove anything now, and I have all the chips back, and—oh, yeah,” he said, opening the passenger door and grabbing the briefcase. He quickly took the cash out and stuffed it in his pocket. “Put this on the counter inside.” Since the briefcase was heavy canvas fabric, he didn’t worry about fingerprints.

  Winston had shut the door and was walking fast around the back of the truck when Runt emerged from the structure.

  “Now what we need, Runt, my boy, is an alibi for tonight.”

  “You got any ideas?”

  “Your girlfriend.”

  “My girlfriend?”

  “We’ll get her to lie for us.”

  Runt stared at the silhouette of Winston and blinked his eyes. He was unsure how this would work.

  “You drive his car,” Winston said. “We’ll meet at the hunting camp. Check the gas gauge. We don’t need any surprises.” He calmly climbed into his Suburban as if he were leaving a party, and drove away.

  Smiling at the thought of driving the Porsche, Runt tossed the keys up in the air and grabbed them as he jogged to the car.

  When John Allen awoke, he couldn’t move. Worse, he had no idea where he was or why he couldn’t move.

  The back of his head was throbbing, and he could feel warm blood in his scalp. His hands and feet were bound, and he had a rag stuffed in his mouth. It tasted like a filthy sock. A bolt of fear shot through his body, and panic swept through his mind. His limbs ached, and the restraints cut painfully into his wrists when he tried to move them. They felt like plastic, and he assumed they were large zip ties that he knew would be impossible to break.

  His mind finally processed that he was in the back of an SUV traveling at a high rate of speed. It was dark out. Turning his head to see out the back window, he could just see reflections from the dashboard. The radio was silent, and the only sound was road noise. Occasionally bright lights flashed through the vehicle.

  The last thing he remembered was his car alarm going off. He recalled grabbing his pistol, opening the door, and seeing the reflections from his car’s flashing lights.

  He realized all he had on were boxer shorts, but modesty wasn’t his concern. The desire to free his hands overwhelmed him, and he yanked and twisted until his shoulder felt like it was going to pull out of its socket. The effort left his chest heaving, his struggle for breath hindered by the awful-tasting material packed into his mouth. He tried to spit it out and gagged. He had to calm his breathing or he was going to have a panic attack. He strained once again, and this time his shoulder did pop, causing him to scream into the sock.

  “Hey, calm down back there!” a sinister voice responded.

  John Allen knew that voice. Winston Walker!

  “Just relax and enjoy your last ride,” Winston said, then laughed.

  At 2:33 a.m. Emma woke and couldn’t go back to sleep. Her mind overflowed with thoughts of arresting Winston Walker and the satisfaction it would bring Jim Hudson’s widow.

  Annoyed by her restlessness, Billy Joel stretched his back into an arch, then jumped d
own to find a quieter spot to snooze.

  Emma tossed in her bed and stared at the clock. Her mind drifted back to the crop duster, and she wondered how that case would play out. If the suspect didn’t return while they had the surveillance going, they might never catch him. There were probably dozens of crop dusters in the delta. Ideally some vigilant citizen would jot down a tag number or snap a picture of him with their phone, but they couldn’t count on that. Tomorrow she’d search the Internet and put together a list of crop dusters. And she’d get Louisiana and Arkansas involved, since they were also huge farming states.

  Emma took a deep breath, then let it out. The pace of her job never slowed, and there was never any end in sight. Crimes were committed every day, faster than the Bureau could hope to clear cases. The work piled up. People wanted answers and justice. Her superiors wanted cases closed and convictions. Everybody wanted something, and the agents and other law-enforcement officers had lives as well. They had families and obligations, just like anybody working a traditional nine-to-five job. Only most in law enforcement couldn’t leave their work at the office. The job was constantly bubbling up in their thoughts. Consequently, the divorce rate was high, especially for detectives and investigators. She herself had contributed to that statistic, though in her case it had clearly been his fault. The bastard couldn’t keep it in his pants. But had she been emotionally unavailable for him? Had she been consumed with her work?

  Emma stared into the darkness, mentally reliving those years. Sure, she’d been an aggressive agent. She’d always felt she had to work harder and smarter to earn the respect of her male counterparts and superiors. But she had been there for her husband, she decided. It was his wandering eye and lust for something different that had caused the downfall of their marriage. The Internet had just provided the means by introducing him to a busty Brazilian aerobics instructor named Roseanne. Emma wasn’t upset or jealous anymore. In fact, she liked the way her life had turned out, except she did want a family. Although Billy Joel was great company, he wasn’t quite enough.