Hard Return

by J. Carson Black

  His brain felt like that.

  He had several pieces of information. Some pieces would be superfluous, and he’d have to toss them out: triage.

  According to Special Agent Andrew Keller (if he was telling the truth) the FBI was operating on the theory that the first shooter had been taken out by a second shooter, and that the second shooter had been hired just for that purpose. Which meant that Special Agent Keller believed that this shooting had bigger implications. The SA had been on a fishing expedition, and he had tipped his hand.

  By now Landry was fairly certain that Keller would have done a background check on “Detective Jim Branch” and would have discovered there was no such person. In fact, he would have found out that there was no Deer Valley Community College, no Zephyr, Montana, and no brother with a hunting lodge.

  Landry was likely now Keller’s chief suspect as the man who took out the shooter.

  And yet Keller had given him information—the existence of Sabrecor. In the hope that Landry would say something stupid?

  What was he trying to find out? What did he think Landry knew?

  What was the bigger picture?

  Had Keller used a story about the cooked fingerprints as bait? Or was there a shred of truth to it?

  There still was the possibility that the special agent wasn’t on to him, in which case Landry could learn a lot more . . . No. He couldn’t take a chance.

  Landry had enough to go on. If in fact Keller was telling the truth, he’d learned something important about the shooter. If the shooter had indeed cooked his prints, he was a serious operative, and in this way Landry could narrow his search.

  Sabrecor International. The mention of Sabrecor was intriguing. Landry had heard stories about them, but they were only stories. Sabrecor International was a deep dark secret. They worked with the United States government. They worked for other governments, too.

  Even mentioning Sabrecor to a civilian was taking a chance. Was Keller trying to get something out of him?

  Landry thought so. The only thing he didn’t know was why. But he had to start somewhere, so he would start with the idea that this killer had indeed been hired to shoot up the school—which led him back to the students killed.

  The most obvious secondary target was Landry himself. If someone suspected he was alive, they might try to draw him out. The only thing that would make him break cover was a threat to his daughter or his wife.

  He removed another burner from his duffle and put in a call to Gary.

  Gary responded within the hour. “What’s going on?”

  “You need to get Cindi and Kristal to a safe place.”

  “Why? Did something happen?”

  “This is not a game,” Landry said. “If you don’t get them to go now, their deaths could be on your head. You saw what happened at the school.”

  “You gave up your right to call the shots, bro. I—”

  “If someone’s after me, if someone knows I’m alive, what are they going to do? Use your brains. How will they try to find me?”

  A pause on the other end of the line.

  “Bingo.”

  “So you think . . . ?”

  “They were trying to get to me? Yes. I’m looking at the other kids. I’m going to eliminate all of them to make sure, but—”

  “It’s you.”

  Landry heard the accusation in his brother’s voice. “I want to get them out of here fast. Any ideas?”

  “I don’t . . .” Gary was silent for a moment. “It could work.”

  “What?”

  “Jim’s training for Robby Marin now.”

  Landry knew whom his older brother was training for. “So?”

  “Then you probably know Monica’s Selfie won the Santa Anita Derby.”

  Landry saw where Gary was going with this. “He’s going to the Derby.”

  “Well, yeah. The horse came out of it okay. Not sure he can get a mile and a quarter but—”

  “Focus, Gary. This is important. He’s taking the horse to the Kentucky Derby.”

  “Uh-huh. Man, he’s loaded for bear this year. Has three with enough to get in the gate, and one on the bubble. So what if he asked Cindi and Kristal to go?”

  “They have to go.”

  “Whoa, bud. They don’t have to do anything. I’m betting Kristal won’t wanna go anywhere.”

  “She’s going to miss a chance to go to the Kentucky Derby?”

  “Her boyfriend was shot to death trying to save her life. Might just be she’s not up to having a good time.”

  “It will take her mind off her troubles.” Even as he said it, he realized he’d said the wrong thing. And truth was, he didn’t really believe that. Kristal was in love—at least what passed for love in a teenager’s eyes. And considering what Luke had done to save her life, it was plain to Landry that she’d loved the right kid after all.

  Gary’s voice broke his thoughts in half. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “What’s the matter with me? I’m trying to save their lives. If the man who ordered that school shot up is after me, then he’s not going to stop until he draws me out. He has one lever, and he’ll use it if he can. You know that.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “You get my point,” Landry said.

  “Sure I do, but I don’t know if I can get them to go. It’s a free country.”

  “Tell them they need a change of scenery.”

  “It’s not like it’s you telling Cindi. Those days are over.”

  “I know my wife. Her first thought is that someone’s trying to get to me through her.”

  “She thinks you’re dead, bro.”

  “Yeah. But—”

  “Look, I’ll do what I can.”

  “No,” Landry said. “You’ll do it. I don’t care what it takes, you get them out of there, and you do it fast enough they don’t talk about it.”

  Landry could almost hear his brother think. “I’m gonna need money. Airfare and a place to put them up.”

  “I’ll reimburse you.”

  Left unsaid between them: Landry had infused Gary’s farm with money several times in the last three years. It was because he loved his brother, and because he didn’t need much money living the way he did, but it was also a way to make sure Gary kept his silence.

  Landry believed in redundancy. He never left something to chance, even loyalty. Even though he knew his brother would never betray him. It might be the only thing he knew for sure. He could trust Gary with his life. He did trust Gary with his life.

  “I don’t feel good about this,” Gary said.

  “About what?”

  “All of it. Letting them think you’re dead—”

  “Stop.”

  “It’s just—”

  “No.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll get them to go somehow.”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard. Kristal used to love being on the backstretch.”

  “When she was a little girl. She’s all grown up, almost . . . Ah, man, poor kid.”

  “Someone may be after them.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “I know enough not to take a chance. You know that, Gary. You have to get them to go.”

  “If they’re that good—whoever they are—they could easily find them in Kentucky.”

  “If they know.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll see if we can make it a surprise.” He added, “She’ll want to go.”

  Todd the comptroller. Landry tasted iron in his mouth and his throat was suddenly full. It’s your fault, he told himself. You’re not there. You gave up your right to your wife. But he said, “You sure she’s sleeping with him?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You’re a sarcastic SOB.”

&n
bsp; “And you’re nuts if you think after three years Cindi and Kristal aren’t gonna move on. They’re alive. And as far as they know, you’re dead.”

  “I know that.”

  “Maybe you should think about keeping it that way.” Gary cleared his throat. “It’s not the same, bro. It will never be the same. It’s been three years and they’ve moved on. They had to get over you and now they are over you. You can’t un-ring a bell like that . . .”

  “I’m not going to—”

  “I know you. You’re gonna try. I’m just telling you it’s not going to work.”

  “Listen—”

  “What are you going to tell them? That the guy was trying to draw you out so he shot up the school?”

  “You don’t know that for sure. Neither do I.”

  “You don’t think Kristal will blame you for Luke?”

  That got through. Yes, that was exactly what his daughter would do. And she would be right. He said nothing, because there was nothing to say.

  Gary sighed. “I’ll do what I can. I’ll figure out a way, but you can bet Cindi will want Todd to go with her.”

  “Nothing I can do about that,” Landry said.

  “Nothing you can do about anything,” Gary said.

  CHAPTER 13

  Devin Patel, 18: Devin always had a smile for everyone he met. He transferred to Gordon C. Tuttle this semester from El Cajon. —“In Memoriam,” Special Section, the Los Angeles Times

  Landry lay awake in the lumpy motel room bed with the thin sheets that had been laundered a million times. The light from the sign threw a patch of yellow on the bed. He couldn’t sleep. His mind was brimming with theories and rat mazes and dead ends.

  He admitted to himself that he had been looking for another reason for the school shooting. He did not want it to be on his head. He didn’t want to be the cause of all those kids dying. But the odds were in favor of someone trying to draw him out. He had reviewed that possibility, going back through all his years as a Navy SEAL, all his years in Afghanistan and Iraq, all his years working for Whitbread Associates—first in the Green Zone at the beginning of the war, and later here at home.

  Whitbread Associates was one of dozens—now hundreds—of private military contractors that had sprung up after Vietnam. They had gone on to spread like wildfire after the United States and its allies invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. The job at Whitbread had been lucrative for Landry in the extreme. He had been wise with his money and hidden it in many places, including an offshore tax haven. Landry had always known that there might come a day when he would have to pull the plug, when he would have to disappear. Over the years, though, he’d become complacent. What had at first seemed like a temporary solution to his loneliness almost twenty years ago had turned out to be a true relationship—he became a husband and then a father. There was a whole other world he lived in when he was not deployed, when he was not working. Landry had always been a compartmentalizer, and it had stood him in good stead. He concentrated on what was in front of him, and in many ways, there were two Landrys. There was the happily married man who loved his wife and daughter and would kill to protect them, and there was the other Landry, who did his job without question. When he worked, he put his emotions away. As a Navy SEAL, he didn’t debate policy; he carried it out. There would always be pros and cons, but that wasn’t his job to sort out. His former employer, Mike Cardamone, liked to say that Landry was “mission centric.” Mike Cardamone also said that Landry was the purest of the pure, in that he was apolitical—he would kill anybody, no questions asked, as part of his job. Mike called him “Switzerland.”

  Neutral.

  Turned out that Mike Cardamone didn’t know Landry as well as he’d thought he did. He didn’t understand that the loner had a wife and a kid, and he wasn’t like Switzerland at all.

  Landry thought back to the island in Florida, the place where, for all intents and purposes, he had died and gone to heaven. He went over who had been there at the end. The attorney general of the United States and his daughter and her daughter and her daughter’s best friend. And the sheriff’s detective, Jolie Burke.

  Everyone else was dead.

  The AG was in prison, which didn’t mean anything. He could still call the shots from prison if he wanted to, but Landry doubted that the attorney general would be interested. If it wasn’t centered around him and his needs, he wouldn’t care. And Landry was positive the AG thought he was dead—that all of them thought he was dead.

  Scratch that—all of them thought he was dead except for the sheriff’s detective, Jolie Burke.

  It was possible she might have seen him at the Washington National Airport months later, after the trial.

  A moment of indulgence—disguising himself and attending the trial the day the verdict came in. He’d flown out afterward. It was bad timing that she had been at the airport the same day he was there. They had passed like ships in the night—or more like airline passengers in the day—and he was not convinced she’d recognized him. Although she did stop for a moment—like someone walking out to the car and suddenly remembering they’d forgotten their car keys.

  Landry couldn’t remember any other time he would have left himself bare like that, but he had, and he thought he knew why.

  She’d trusted him.

  There was something about trust that got to Landry. Misplaced trust can lead to disaster, and so Landry didn’t depend on very many people at all. He could name those he trusted on one hand. His wife, his daughter, his brother Gary.

  And Jolie Burke, the cop.

  He looked at Devin Patel’s memorial again. “Devin Patel, 18: Devin always had a smile for everyone he met. He transferred to Gordon C. Tuttle this semester from El Cajon.”

  Every kid had something they liked to do. Two were skateboarders. Several loved music. Some performed music. Some liked math, or cars, or had pets, or had fallen in love. But Devin Patel’s memorial wasn’t just short; it was skimpy. The kid had been here almost a whole semester. Did they have that little on him? He was eighteen. And all the memorial said was that he smiled at people and had transferred from a school in El Cajon this semester. Why was the Patel kid’s memorial so short? There wasn’t one specific trait or interest or attachment. By nature, the Patel boy’s memorial was different from every other memorial. Even the sentence “Devin always had a smile for everyone he met” sounded canned, as if someone took pity on the kid and thought they’d throw him a bone.

  Landry looked at his diagram again. Devin Patel wasn’t the first kid shot. He wasn’t the kid whose car was across from Kristal’s car. He was three cars beyond Kristal’s car, in closer to the school. He was at the far end of the shooter’s outside radius. He was either the last or the second-to-last kid killed before the shooter turned back, and shot Luke.

  Luke was the last, not the first. Which didn’t true up with the way Landry had been looking at it. If Kristal and Luke were the targets, why did he shoot at them last?

  Except he didn’t. Kristal’s little yellow car had been hit on the passenger’s side, too. Did the shooter come around the car because they were on the driver’s side? In which case Devin Patel was probably collateral damage.

  All he had was the Patel kid’s face and shoulders and the two simple sentences, but the boy’s face told him a lot. The kid looked unhappy. He was somewhat overweight. His complexion was white and pasty. His eyes were half circles, like two lemon slices lined up next to each other, curved at the bottom and straight lines on the top. Cartoon eyes. It wasn’t going too far in the imagination to see the kid’s lip quivering. He looked both cowed and resentful—but more resentful than cowed. Like the world owed him something and it hadn’t delivered.

  Landry knew he might be completely wrong about the kid. It was just a school picture, and for some kids—like this overweight boy—posing for the picture could have been torture.

 
He wished he could ask Kristal about him, but that was impossible. And she might not even have known him at all. He decided to start with the simplest way to find someone. He typed the boy’s name into the Google search box—

  —and found nothing on Devin Patel, except for the articles on the mass shooting. Landry assumed that there had been one or two major articles on the shooting and then many shorter pieces, probably disseminated by the Associated Press. All mirror images of what had been written in the paper—a list of names.

  There was more on what the politicians said, what the cops said (not much), what the gun-control people said, and what the NRA said. But nothing else on the victims themselves. Aside from the memorials, the kids who died got no press at all—individually. Maybe because there had been so many shootings of late that it didn’t make that much of an impact.

  If he wanted to know anything more about Devin Patel, he’d have to talk to someone who knew him. He wasn’t ready to do that just now. Mainly because there was the other theory, and that theory was a lot more obvious.

  Someone knew he was alive.

  There was Gary, his brother. And there was Jolie Burke—possibly Jolie Burke. She could have glanced at him at the airport and for a moment had a fleeting sense of having seen him somewhere. He could have reminded her of the man who had taken them hostage on the island off Cape San Blas, the man who had then fought beside her against the men who invaded the island.

  He found another hotel. This one was downtown and very nice. He made it a practice of staying on the move, to remain anonymous. In a high-rise hotel he would be just another cog in the wheel, as he had been in Vegas.

  And if need be, he could always drive to Torrent Valley and check on his wife and daughter.