“I can’t help you with that.” Walker started down the steps, speaking back over his shoulder, careless, more casual than how he’d come up, which Rice took as a hopeful sign. “Meet me at my office in an hour. Your DEA friend will be there. We’ll figure this out.”
Rice watched Walker’s vehicle back out and turn and roll down the driveway. DEA. He must’ve let that slip on purpose. Rice stood there thinking for a long while after the sheriff’s brake lights disappeared into the forest, but he failed to come up with even the most far-fetched theory to explain why a DEA agent in Virginia had developed a grudge against him.
Thirty-Eight
He parallel-parked in a two-hour spot on Main Street and found the sheriff’s office in the basement of the old brick courthouse. The lady at the front desk was on the phone, talking to someone about the hurricane, explaining without much patience that if the water comes up to the house then they ought to get out of the house. She held up a finger and gestured toward a line of plastic chairs along the wall. When she hung up he approached the desk and told her he had a meeting with Sheriff Walker. She rolled her chair forward and gave him a singles-bar once-over.
“He’ll be here in a minute, had to stop off at his house and change. You don’t look like a drug mule.”
“Thanks. You must be Suzy.”
She typed a few keys and looked at her monitor. “You don’t want me to process you into custody, do you?”
“How’d you know?”
“Sheriff said you were paranoid.” She smiled and picked up a plastic pen, leaned back in her chair, laid the tip of the pen between her teeth. She was a little heavy but pretty, buxom and dressed to show it, probably not much older than he was.
“I didn’t think I was going to be arrested anyway.”
“You’re not. Did you have to swallow condoms stuffed with heroin?”
He grinned. “It wasn’t like that.”
“I’m so glad.”
He knew she was flirting and it flummoxed him. Must be his sexy scars and bruises. Now that he checked, no wedding ring. He didn’t have one either, of course, and they were of an age. Had he lost all of his instincts for this stuff? He used to be a relatively normal guy.
“You look like that actor, Viggo Mortenson? But not in a good way. You know, like in The Road?”
He wasn’t sure what to say to that. He hadn’t seen the movie.
Still appraising him, she said, “You look like you’re not getting enough sleep.”
Walker came through the door, looking harried. He’d changed into jeans and work boots and a blue short-sleeved shirt untucked. A Virginia Tech baseball cap, tan golf jacket under his arm.
“Anything on the missing guy?” Rice asked.
Walker shook his head. “No, but I am getting tired of hearing your name. Names. Bilton Stiller called to accuse Rick Morton of murdering three of his bear hounds. Said they went missing a couple of weeks ago on Turk Mountain. He’d heard about Alan Mirra, and he figures you’ve gone crazy, killing men and dogs too up on that mountain.”
“Mr. Stiller has been watching too much television.”
“Mr. Stiller’s an asshole.” This from Suzy.
Walker ignored her. “I asked him how many beers he’d had so far today and he laughed and hung up. You ready?”
“We going somewhere?”
“We have to sneak out to an old motel on Route 22 to meet this character. You’d better drive. Everyone knows my truck.”
“Is he undercover or something?”
“That he is, Mr. Moore. Agent Johns is an undercover pain in my arse.”
“Y’all have a nice time,” Suzy said.
Outside, darker clouds were piling up in the south, with heavy arms and wispy tentacles reaching northward, the storm reconnoitering. Rice drove, and Walker pulled his hat down low and slouched in his seat. The county sheriff’s ass on his illegally concealed .45 gave Rice some shortness of breath, but he’d tried sitting on it himself when he’d started hiding it in the seat. Rice had fifty pounds on the sheriff, and if he couldn’t feel it, Walker couldn’t feel it.
“I’m too old for this cloak-and-dagger crap. I hope you appreciate it.”
“I do appreciate it, Sheriff.” A light turned yellow and he accelerated through it. Who was going to stop him? “You know the Stiller family pretty well?”
“I know ’em better than I want to. Bilton’s all right.”
“But the boys?”
“What are you getting at, Mr. Moore?”
Best out with it. “I think they raped Sara Birkeland. Them and that guy Jesse who’s always with ’em.”
“And what makes you think that?”
“They had a motive, to intimidate her, run her off. The bear galls are worth a lot of money. They threatened her.”
He glanced over at Walker. He was shaking his head.
“And I asked one of them about it. He acted fishy, guilty.”
“Ho. I’d best lock those fellas up.”
“Sara said they supposedly had alibis.”
“I’m not talking to you about this. Take a right here.”
On Route 22 north of town, they pulled into a weedy parking lot fronting on an abandoned strip mall. At one end of the mall was a little motel and Walker told Rice to drive around behind it, where the vehicle wouldn’t be visible from the highway. A dark blue F-150 was already parked, and the door to one of the decrepit rooms was open. When they walked in, Rice realized he was in some little bit of extra trouble.
Thirty-Nine
I guess you recognize me,” the man said, interrupting Walker’s attempt at an introduction.
Walker shut the door behind him with a hollow clack and the room fell dark but for an orange glow seeping through the drawn curtain. Rice whirled and put his back against the nearest wall, sank into a defensive crouch. It was just reflex, but his sudden movement startled Agent Johns, who said “Hey!” and sidestepped fast to the window.
Walker asked what the hell was going on, the question directed at both Agent Johns and Rice. He sounded annoyed. All he’d done was shut the door. Johns swept open the curtain and the room brightened. He had his pistol in his other hand, pointed at Rice. It looked like the same one from before, a compact SIG with an intimidating .45-caliber hole in the end of the barrel. No one said anything for a moment. Rice held up his hands and grinned, wondering if his life could get any more absurd.
“The plastic bag,” he said.
Johns lowered the pistol but didn’t holster it. His beard was trimmed and he looked showered and generally cleaned up, but he wore mud-specked jeans and the same dark Carhartt jacket. “You obviously weren’t some redneck bear hunter. I was curious. I got more curious when I saw your record.”
“But you couldn’t find me.”
“I sure wish I had.”
Walker had recovered from his surprise and he moved between the two men. “Put that away, Johns. He’s not armed.”
“You sure?”
“I’m not armed,” Rice said.
Walker stared at Johns until he reached the pistol back under his jacket, behind his hip. The sheriff seemed to want Johns to explain, so Rice kept his mouth shut and glanced around the room. The brown carpet was torn and stained and stank of mildew. In the back, a counter and a sink, a cracked mirror reflecting the window and the parking lot outside.
“My cover,” Johns said. “Black market in bear parts. It’s just an entry. Mr. Moore tried to sell me some pig galls, fakes. I called him on it and he got rough.”
Walker turned and looked at Rice. Eyebrows up, not smiling but maybe not far away from a smile.
Rice shrugged. “He started it.”
Johns ignored him. “A small-time drug mule from Arizona selling fake bear galls in Virginia made no sense until you told me he’s the caretaker at that nature preserve. Now I get it. He was trying to figure out who the bear poachers are. Takes his job a little too seriously, thinks he’s one of those rangers guarding rhinos in fucking
Zimbabwe. He’s delusional, convinced he’s got shoot-to-kill orders. Found a poacher in the woods and shot him in the back.”
Rice laughed. “How about I found a poacher in the woods and he nearly killed me.”
“Sheriff Walker told me your story. If Mirra had attacked you, you’d be dead.”
“That’s what everyone says.” He held up his bandaged palm. “You want to see stitches? Here, in my side? Look here.” He tilted his chin up. “I thought he’d been using poisoned bolts on the bears. When he cut me I thought I was dead.”
“He does use poison. But it’s not like in the movies where the Indian dips his arrowhead in fucking curare. He stuffs powdered Anectine—suxamethonium chloride—into a rubber pod behind the broadhead. The rubber peels away when he shoots a bear. If he was coming at you like you say, stabbing and whacking you with the broadhead, the pod would’ve burst, and you would’ve got some of that shit in your cuts. Again, you’d be dead.”
“I guess I’m lucky.”
“No one’s that lucky.”
“A little Sux in a cut won’t kill you,” the sheriff said to Johns. “You’re being ridiculous.”
Johns started pacing back and forth in front of Walker, the taut skin of his cheeks and forehead flushed. “Doesn’t change my point. Alan Mirra is a vet, ex-marine, four tours in the sandbox, he saw more combat than most, got tapped for MARSOC, top five percent of his ITC class. He’s not just tough, he’s an expert.” He wheeled on Rice, pointed his finger in his face again. “You surprised me that night under the bridge, and I had to stop the fight, so sure, okay, you’re competent, violent, you can handle yourself. But I’m not a genuine badass. Mirra is. You do not walk away from a fight with that guy, especially if he has a weapon and you don’t.”
Rice was quiet, remembering how the poacher—Mirra—had absorbed a tackle that should’ve knocked him cold. Rice had come out of nowhere, a complete surprise. He must’ve cracked some ribs. Seven seconds later he was in full retreat, wondering if he was going to survive.
Johns made a show of looking Rice up and down. “Are you a genuine badass, Mr. Moore?”
Walker was leaning back against a rickety veneer desk in a corner next to the window, watching Johns with his arms folded. There was no bed in the room, but you could see where it had been, the rectangle where the carpet was darker.
The sheriff turned to peer out the window. “I knew Alan Mirra when he was younger,” he said.
The desk creaked as Walker hitched himself up on it, feet dangling. The room was uncomfortably stuffy and for a moment it looked like he was going to try to open the window. But he took off his jacket and leaned forward, resting his weight on his palms on the front edge of the desk. His underarms were dark with sweat. He started telling a story that Rice assumed must be pretty familiar around here, the abusive, alcoholic father, the young teenage son finally standing up to him. Except instead of getting himself killed, Mirra had put daddy in the hospital, told him not to come back.
“Can you stop that?”
Johns had been pacing back and forth in the little room. He stopped and looked at Walker.
“What?”
“Just hold still for a minute.”
“Okay. Whatever.” He started bouncing from foot to foot. Dude was seriously wound up. Rice thought he might be on something. Undercover cops got hooked on shit all the time.
Walker stared and then gave up and resumed his story. Rice walked to the back of the room and sat on the counter next to the sink. It sagged but held his weight. In the poorly lit bathroom to his left, the toilet bowl was dry, crusted with mineral deposits. A broken shower curtain rod lay on the floor.
Mirra had dropped out of high school as soon as he could, Walker said, and got tangled up with bikers from up north. Eventually Philly PD caught him stealing cars, and a judge must’ve seen something in his character and offered him an ultimatum: military or prison. He picked the military, and found his calling.
“In a few years he’s a genuine war hero, headed for Recon, like you said. But then he gets hurt, and suddenly he’s back home, a decorated vet with an honorable discharge. I keep an ear out, hoping he’s shaped up for good. For a while it’s quiet. Then rumors start coming in, violent, erratic behavior, he’s quit his job at the plant in Coalville, he’s back in with his old motorcycle gang, getting by with no obvious source of income.”
There it was. Rice felt a satisfying click in his mind as the connection between Mirra and the Stiller boys fell into place. Mirra would be the full patch the bartender at the Ape Hanger had mentioned. Like Boger had said, the Stillers weren’t enterprising, not on their own. But as foot soldiers for a honcho like Mirra? He recalled Sara’s story about the radio-collared bears. Mirra would know how to hack the electronics.
Johns tried to interrupt, but Walker wasn’t finished, held his hand up and kept talking. “Now he disappears, and you start calling, taking risks to get in touch with me, meeting out here in broad daylight, hell, you’re about to wet your pants. I understand, he’s your CI and you’re worried. But like Mr. Moore said, Mirra probably thinks he killed a man. Even the DEA can’t protect him from that. Maybe he panicked when he saw what happened to his truck, took off on his motorbike.”
“What, you think he rode off on that fucking bike?” Johns seemed not to have considered this possibility before, and when confronted with it he was outraged, let his voice get a little louder than was absolutely necessary. “You want to disappear you don’t roar off on a bike like that. People notice you. I gather nobody’s called in saying yeah I saw Alan Mirra hightailing it for Mexico on his dirt bike?”
Rice thumped his heels against the loose cabinet door under the counter. “You don’t go to Mexico anymore,” he said. “I wouldn’t recommend Mexico.”
The others looked at him like they’d forgotten he was there.
He pointed up, indicating north. “Canada.”
“He’s resourceful,” the sheriff said. “Probably carries a burner phone, called one of his biker buddies. He’s a thousand miles away.” He hopped down from the desk. “Or,” he continued, “maybe he wrecked his bike in the woods and fell on one of his arrows. Someplace we haven’t looked yet.” He walked to the door and opened it, stood there looking out. Like the claustrophobia had gotten to him. The wind snatched at the door and he reached up to hold the bill of his cap. A Styrofoam cup clattered across the parking lot.
“What about Moore?” Johns asked.
“What about him?”
“Can you just hang on to him until we find out what happened to Alan? Forty-eight hours?”
Still facing out the door, Walker spoke like he was explaining to a child. “I don’t have a body, Agent Johns. You find me a body and maybe I’ll arrest someone.”
Johns smacked his open palm on the desk where Walker had been sitting. Rice figured it must be a new thing, the local sheriff standing up to him.
“You sure he’s not going to take off on you, Sheriff? I called around in Tucson, talked to some people who knew him when, and I wouldn’t be so quick to trust him.”
“Who’d you talk to?” Rice asked.
But Johns just looked at Rice with that smug face. Rice wondered if he could land a punch before the guy drew his damn pistol. Probably not.
“Agents? CIs? Did you tell them where I was?”
Johns still didn’t answer. Rice felt sick. This was much worse than the electronic flags from the plates and the prints. There were cartel moles all over the place down there, CIs switching allegiances when the weather changed. Until this moment, despite all the attention from Sheriff Walker, Rice had managed to maintain a faint hope that he would be able to stay on at the preserve.
“Thank you, Agent Johns. And the Sinaloa cartel thanks you too.”
“Bullshit, it’s not the cartel who’s after you. What I heard, your girlfriend was the player, she was working with us, and the cartel had her hit while you were locked up in Mexico. Sinaloa would’ve forgotten all about yo
u, but you did a bad thing in Juarez after you got out.” Here Johns started to cheer up. “Who cares, right? It’s a fucking war zone. What people do over there is off the radar. But what’s so beautiful is you managed to make a mortal enemy of just about the last guy on the planet I’d want pissed off at me.” He barked an unattractive laugh and asked Walker if he knew what Los Ántrax was. Walker didn’t answer.
“They’re the enforcers for the Sinaloa cartel, like mafia special forces.” He was grinning at Rice now, shaking his head in mock pity. “Anyway, maybe it’s all bullshit, or maybe Mr. Moore is a vigilante who murders people he thinks deserve it.”
“Mr. Moore isn’t going anywhere,” Walker said. “He’ll stay in Turpin County. He’ll check in with me every day. If Mirra doesn’t turn up soon I’ll have some more questions for him. You’re free to add your own. We can do this again. Just not in here.”
Rice was still sitting on the shelf against the back wall, hesitant to leave without knowing exactly when Johns had “called around in Tucson.” It mattered, but he was unwilling to give Johns the satisfaction of his asking.
Another gust of wind pushed through the open door. Walker put his jacket on and looked at Rice like it was time to go.
“Come on, Mr. Moore, I need you to drive me back to the office before Suzy has herself a breakdown. She’s not good at natural disasters.”
Forty
He found the aisle with the padlocks and picked out the biggest one, read the packaging to see if it would defeat bolt cutters. Didn’t say, but it was half again as heavy as the lock on the front gate now, with a thicker hasp. He nearly dropped it. The swelling in his hand had subsided, nothing broken, but the knuckles were still stiff, the fingers clumsy.
The store was about to close, and a skinny teenager with short black hair watched him from the customer service counter. Thorny vines snaked up out of his T-shirt and wrapped around his neck. Not the kind of ink you would expect to see in the Turpin County Farmers’ Co-op. He padded across the store and peered over Rice’s shoulder. Rice turned and glared at him.
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