The Silent Places

by James Patrick Hunt

“I do. I think you do, too.” Anders turned back to indicate the two mercenaries eating their dinner. “But not to worry. I’ve got these two and a few more. There will be at least half a dozen men covering your house at all times. And these are professionals. Not a bunch of Keystone metro cops.”

  Preston gestured to Dexter Troy and Clu Rogers. He said, “You’re going to have these guys follow me around?”

  “Not exactly,” Anders said. “They’re not guards. They’re hunters.” Anders smiled again. “Don’t worry, Alan. If Reese is in town, they’ll find him.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Hastings sat at his desk, looking at the bottle of pain pills he had been prescribed. His shoulder hurt and he wanted to part with the pain. But he had never liked taking pills. Even antibiotics kept him awake at night. He wondered if he could just take a couple of Tylenol and get a full night’s sleep. He wondered if John Reese would still be in town when he woke up. He wondered if pain medication would affect his thinking, his ability to track Reese. He wondered what it would be like to be back there in the darkness, looking up at the sky, waiting to die. He wondered if he would be able to turn off the memory. He wondered if he would be able to stop feeling scared.

  The telephone on his desk rang.

  “Hastings.”

  “George?”

  “Carol?”

  “Did you—were you shot?”

  “Uh, not really. It was more of a graze.”

  “You were, weren’t you? God, why didn’t you tell me? I heard about it at the courthouse today. Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Sorry. I—really, it’s not that big a deal.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just a little bruising. Like knocking your shoulder into a door.”

  “You were shot. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just’ I’m sorry.”

  “Is it because we’ve broken up? You think you can’t tell me about a major event like that because we’re not seeing each other anymore?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Like I wouldn’t care?”

  “I never thought that—”

  “For God’s sake, George. Give me some credit, will you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t do that to me. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Silence for a moment. Then Carol said, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just a little pain in my shoulder.”

  “Did they get the bullet out?”

  “There was no bullet to get out. I told you. It just passed through.”

  “Well, don’t get short with me.”

  “I’m not. Sorry.”

  “And quit saying you’re sorry. Jesus.” Carol said, “George?” a familiar tenderness in her voice.

  “Yeah, sweetie?”

  “I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  “But we did the right thing, huh?”

  “I think we did.”

  Another silence. Then Hastings said, “Carol?”

  “Yes?”

  “…Nothing.”

  Carol said, “Do you want me to come over tonight?”

  “Well…” It was exactly what he’d been going to ask her. He leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

  “You guess so.” He could hear a smile in her voice.

  Hastings sighed. “I don’t know, Carol. It’s a bad idea. You broke up with me for good reasons. I’m lonely and I’m horny and I’m—well, I’m…”

  “A little scared, too. Am I right?”

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, George. You could have been killed. I cried when I heard about it. Even when I was told you were okay.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I told you to stop that.”

  “I know.”

  Another silence. Then Carol said, “Will you be home in an hour?”

  “…Yes.”

  “I won’t stay the night. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Carol said, and hung up the phone.

  He awoke from an unpleasant dream around three in the morning. The room came into focus and he looked to his right and saw Carol lying naked in a fetal position, her back toward him, her skin pale, her figure beautiful. She was sleeping peacefully beside the covers. She had always been comfortable with her body, comfortable being naked. She swam thirty laps a day, five days a week, and it showed.

  Hastings’s shoulder throbbed. The Tylenol had worn off. He quietly climbed out of bed and walked to the kitchen and took two more. He stood in the dark for a moment and then he walked to the large front window of the condominium. An old habit. He looked out the window at the street and saw his car parked below. Still, quiet, no traffic on the street. He looked beyond the street to Francis Park. Nothing going on there. Nothing he could see anyway.

  Go back twenty-four hours and change. A man running through another park. A man hunting another man, the hunter becoming the hunted. Shot, wounded, vulnerable. Very vulnerable. A fucking victim.

  Had Reese shown mercy? Had he let him live? Or was he stretching out the kill for his own satisfaction? For sport. What if Murph hadn’t shown up when he did? Lighting up the park with the police car.

  He’d survived the night. And now he had to hide things. Hide his fear from his daughter, his ex-wife, the men on his squad, and, perhaps most importantly, the department brass. He couldn’t let them see weakness. He couldn’t let them see that he felt … ashamed. Ashamed, and he didn’t know why.

  Carol saw through him. Consequently, she offered herself to him. He needed her and she knew it. Maybe he needed her particularly or maybe he needed just someone for the night. Either way, she wasn’t going to ask him which. Maybe she needed to be needed, though that would be a chickenshit way to think about it. She was a good lady.

  You shouldn’t have come after me.

  That was what Reese had said. It haunted him now. What had the man meant by that? That Hastings wasn’t in his league? That he was outclassed? A fool? Were they the last words he was to hear before getting the last, fatal shot to the head or the heart?

  Or was it just a taunt? An insult to be added to the mercy.

  He was out of it now. The deputy chief and Captain Anthony had told him he was relieved of duty, taken off the assignment. Senator Preston had apparently had enough of him. For reasons Hastings could not understand.

  He could walk away, be done with it. Senator Preston was a nasty piece of work anyway. The best thing to do with such people was to avoid them. If Preston was intent on being stubborn, leaving himself open to Reese, that was his problem. Walk away. Be glad you’re alive. Be glad you have people in your life who care about you.

  Hastings thought of Bobby Cain, a cocky young sergeant who had been assigned to his squad when Klosterman was in the hospital with cancer. Hastings had not liked Cain. Cain had a big mouth and he had political connections and a rank that he probably hadn’t earned. But to Hastings’s surprise, Cain had been a courageous, thoughtful, diligent detective. And when he was killed in the line of duty, Hastings’s grief was genuine.

  What had he told Cain? What had he told him after they left the prison where the inmate had talked smack to Cain and Cain wanted to tear his head off? Hastings had expressly told Cain not to take the work personally. That a turd was a turd and should not be a concern to any police officer. If the turds got away, they would eventually die or be arrested for something else or otherwise wither away. What difference should it make to a police officer? Life was too short.

  Yeah, good advice, Lieutenant. Hastings wondered now if he was any smarter than Cain had been.

  He returned to bed and pulled the covers over Carol and within a couple of minutes he was asleep. When he awoke the next morning, she was gone.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Klosterman set the rifle on Hastings’s desk. He said, “They found it in Forest Park,
a couple of hundred yards away from where you were shot. No prints. He was wearing gloves or he wiped it clean.”

  Hastings examined it. A Model 70 Winchester .30-06 Springfield. A scope on top. Hastings thought of himself being sighted through that scope.

  Hastings said, “This is a good weapon.”

  “Not a junkie’s weapon,” Klosterman said. “You have no doubt it was Reese?”

  “None. I wish I had physical evidence, though.”

  “Okay.” Klosterman said, “You think he’s still in town?”

  “Yeah,” Hastings said. “He hasn’t got what he wants yet.”

  “But he knows we’re onto him. Why not clear out?”

  “Because he’s determined. Maybe he’s got nothing else.”

  “I thought we were out of this,” Klosterman said.

  “We’re off the protection detail,” Hastings said. “But John Reese is wanted on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. A weapon he used on me. So I’m going to find him and I’m going to arrest him. Before he leaves town. He’s in our jurisdiction now.”

  “Okay, George. But how are we going to find him?”

  “I’m working on it.” Hastings sighed. “I guess we won’t be getting any help from Preston or his people.”

  “I don’t understand that. Why would he deny that you saw Reese?”

  “I don’t know. He told us that he’d never wanted our protection, that he was doing it for his wife. Which I never believed. Now he says he doesn’t want our protection anymore. And this is after we have evidence that someone was after him.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Klosterman said. “You’d think it would have scared him. I mean, someone shot at you.”

  “With a rifle. Preston’s a fucking squirrel. He hasn’t played straight with us from the beginning.”

  “Maybe we should question him. It is a felony investigation now.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t know,” Klosterman said. “Then again, maybe we shouldn’t.”

  “What’s your concern?”

  “My concern is, maybe the deputy chief would haul you in and ask you what you’re doing bothering an upstanding public servant, treating him like a felon. He’d say, ‘George, the man hasn’t committed a crime. What are you messing with him for?’ and you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “He’ll say that you’re just trying to rattle Preston’s cage because he pissed you off. And now you’re taking it personally.”

  “Would you think that?”

  “Not for a minute.”

  Hastings said nothing.

  “…George?”

  “Kyle Anders,” Hastings said.

  “What?”

  Hastings said, “That’s who Preston was talking to. Let’s find out who he is.”

  “All right, George. But what about Reese?”

  Hastings said, “I think he’s going to look for another rifle.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Reese chose the regular targets, the ones with the circular bull’s-eyes. The proprietor of the shooting range gave him a headset for ear protection and two boxes of ammunition for the 1911 .45.

  The shooting range was outdoors, about five miles outside of the town of Piedmont. It was about an hour-and-a-half drive from St. Louis.

  Reese wished he had not driven the Mercury to the shooting range. It was black, and at a distance people might think it was a law-enforcement vehicle. But people might also think he was a militia man, wanting to look tough. Reese had come to the range in dungarees and a flannel shirt and boots. Apart from the car, he blended in.

  Reese set up his targets and began shooting.

  He had to wait a couple of hours before he found a mark. Two men in their late thirties who came in separate vehicles. They had a lot of handguns but seemed to spend most of their time shooting heavy .44 Magnums, long-barreled hand cannons that sent bullets through the paper-man targets and burrowing into the sand mounds behind. They conversed between shots, sometimes switching their guns. Reese overheard them using the term law dogs and making curt remarks about the prospect of having “George Jefferson in the White House.” He also heard one of them talking about where to get a decent Austrian army tent.

  The one who spoke about the tent was the one Reese followed.

  Kolonel Tom Boback parked his Jeep in front of his small house. The house was in an isolated area in the Ozark hills. He carried his bag of guns into the house. On the wall of Kolonel Tom’s living room was a Confederate flag. He lived alone.

  He’d had a girlfriend once. Her name was Missy and she was a militiawoman and, like him, a free-born White Christian American. He had taken her to northwest Arkansas, konsecrated Klan kountry, for a militia campout last year and she had taken up with Kaptain Jim Casey and sent him home alone. She had told him she was moving on. Left him for someone of lesser rank. After that, Kolonel Tom smashed out the headlights of her car. The new boyfriend did nothing about it. If he had tried, Kolonel Tom would have shot him in the head.

  Kolonel Tom had been drawn to the militia movements when he was a teenager. School had been difficult for him. He was awkward-looking and not athletically inclined and he was often picked on. This experience did not make him any more sympathetic to the weak. The kids who tormented him were mostly white, yet their conduct only seemed to increase his hatred for Jews and blacks. He was expelled from high school after he pushed a girl down a flight of stairs and broke her arm. The girl had laughed at him about something he had forgotten. Life was a series of fits and starts after that. For six years, he managed to hold down a fairly well-paying union job at a supermarket. But then a Wal-Mart was built down the street and they closed the supermarket and Tom lost his job. Kolonel Tom attributed this misfortune to the continuing collapse of the U.S. economy as well as to the invasion and colonization of the country by illegal aliens.

  Now he put a burrito in the microwave oven. A few minutes later, he ate it in front of the television set and washed it down with Mountain Dew. He watched the news of the senator from Illinois’s progress with mixed feelings. The possibility of a coon president disgusted him, to be sure, but it gave him comfort, too, because it was a sign that the end of the nation was at hand and that the ultimate victory would be with him and his brethren so long as they put their faith in their Lord and Savior.

  Then he heard the lawn mower.

  No. It wasn’t a lawn mower. It sounded like an ATV.

  His ATV.

  Grabbing a shotgun, Kolonel Tom went outside to investigate.

  From his porch, he saw his ATV bump and roll across the front yard, no one riding it. Then he felt a gun being pressed against the side of his head.

  “Drop the weapon,” a voice said.

  Kolonel Tom turned swiftly. He saw a gun move in a quick arc. It made contact with his head and he went to the ground.

  When Kolonel Tom regained consciousness, his vision was blurred. Then he realized that the intruder had taken his glasses. The Kolonel was very nearsighted. He was also tied up, his hands bound in front of him, looped through and around his belt. When he tugged his hands up, it lifted his belt and his pants hitched. He was on the couch in his living room.

  A form before him, vague and nondistinct. A man.

  The man said, “Where do you keep the rest of your weapons?”

  After a moment, Kolonel Tom said, “Get out of my house, zog.”

  “‘Zog’?” Reese said. “Oh. You think I’m a cop?”

  “A fed. Yeah. Probably ATF.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. You see this? It’s your shotgun. If you don’t tell me where the rest of your weapons are stored, I’m going to put the muzzle against your knee and pull the trigger. With the load you put in it, you’ll lose your leg.”

  “Now I know you’re federal.”

  Reese moved closer to him and pointed the shotgun at his knee. “You want to find out?”

  “I keep the rest of my guns in the cellar,” Kolonel Tom said.


  “I checked the cellar.”

  “There’s another one in the barn.”

  “Is it locked?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on, then.”

  Reese got him to his feet and walked him out to the barn. Kolonel Tom unlocked the barn’s cellar door, which was almost flush with the ground. Then he flipped on a switch, illuminating the area beneath.

  Reese said, “You first.”

  Kolonel Tom began descending the steps.

  Reese poked him in the back with the shotgun, saying, “You try to reach for a weapon, anything, I’ll blow a hole right through you.”

  “I hear you,” Kolonel Tom said, his voice hoarse.

  Reese took the room in and thought, Bingo. It was about what he’d expected, maybe even a little better.

  On the wall was a black-and-white photograph of a World War II Tiger tank, some German soldiers standing around it. Another photo was of Field Marshal Rommel conferring with Hitler. Other assorted trinkets of the Third Reich lay about. There were several weapons on a cafeteria-length table. Rifles, shotguns, a couple of AK-47s, Chinese assault rifles, an ArmaLite with a leather strap, various handguns, an antitank rifle, two Uzi submachine guns, and a Mac-10.

  Reese smiled and said, “Planning a war?”

  “Yeah, actually,” Kolonel Tom said.

  Reese couldn’t resist it. “Were you in the service?”

  “No. Been in combat, though.”

  “Where?”

  “Training exercises. Northwest Arkansas.”

  “I see.”

  Reese looked at other rifles hanging on the wall. He said, “Have you got rounds for that Lee-Enfield?”

  “Yeah. On the workbench. Over there.”

  Reese was referring to the SMLE—short, magazine, Lee-Enfield. It had been the standard British infantry firearm in World War II and was probably the best all-around combat bolt-action rifle ever made. It could hold ten cartridges. The Enfield had a leather strap, probably vintage.

  Reese took the rifle down and inspected it. It had scope mounts already drilled into it. Sporterized, though the stock was original. Reese shoved a cartridge in the breech, then rammed it home with the bolt action.