Discussing that specific aspect reminded me of something. I asked Van Dalen if she knew anything about the vehicle Kelper had rented. She said the agreement was in amongst the stuff we had brought from the room the three of them had shared. I searched for it, discovered it tucked away inside a paper wallet with the car hire company logo emblazoned all across it. After checking out the details, I gave Drew a call.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked me.
‘We’re getting somewhere. It’s slow going, but it’s progress. Vern was definitely here in New Mexico. We know where he was and when, and we know he drove the car down here. Also that he was not alone. In fact, your nephew was with two other people. We’ve located one of them, and we’re talking to her now.’
‘You keep saying he “was” there. Not that he still is.’
Drew’s voice sounded strained, which was understandable. I had no idea how quickly he had expected us to wrap this up, but we were less than two full days in, and we had already come a lot further than his investigators had. Though we had benefited from the discovery of Vern’s minivan, I thought we were doing okay.
‘Vern dropped off the map again after dumping the car. But we’re closer to him now than we were, Drew. We’re catching up.’
‘So who is the person you’re speaking to?’
‘Have you ever heard Vern talk about a friend by the name of Bruce Kelper?’
‘Kelper?’ He paused for thought before responding. ‘Not that I’m aware of, no. That’s who you have?’
‘Actually, no. Vern and Kelper went off together. We have Kelper’s girlfriend. And she’s being extremely co-operative. Terry and I need to work her now to see what we can get out of her, see where it leads us next.’
‘That’s terrific. Thank you so much, Mike. I appreciate it. We all do.’
Now I heard some relief in his voice, and I was gratified by that.
‘Well, we’re still on the trail, but it did just get a little easier for us. We’ll keep pushing at this end, Drew. But listen – I have a task for you. This Bruce Kelper that Vern took off with hired a car so that they could dump Vern’s. We believe they are both with that vehicle now. I need you to locate somebody who can find out if it has an on-board GPS, and if so trace it for us. Can you get that done, Drew?’
He said he would give it his best shot and would get back to me. When he and I were done, I had a brief chat with Wendy, who was interested in where we had been and what we had done. I fed her the boring stuff and omitted the getting shot at and the fight out on the road beyond Roswell.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Van Dalen asked me, having listened to my side of the conversation with Drew. We had opened up a beer each and were trying to make the most of the evening. ‘I thought it had to be for money, but that was your daughter you spoke to at the end there, right? Where do you fit in with all this?’
I explained about Donna and Drew. The telephone conversation that had sent me hurtling across the ocean.
‘You must really love her,’ she said.
‘Wendy? Of course. She’s my kid. My whole world.’
But the young women was shaking her head. ‘No, I meant your ex-wife. You’re out here risking your life to help someone you have never met; the nephew of the man your ex is now married to. You’re certainly not doing this for either of them. You can only be here because the mother of your child needed you to be.’
Chelsea van Dalen might be young, tired, beautiful, and in a great deal of trouble, but she had a good head on those narrow shoulders. I shrugged mine.
‘She needed help. It’s only natural to give it if you can. Besides, I get to see my daughter.’
‘Not out here you don’t,’ she pointed out.
I nodded. ‘Right now I’m busy providing the help I offered. Me and Wendy will have time when all this is over.’
Van Dalen turned her gaze upon my friend. ‘And how about you, Terry? Why are you here?’
‘Mike asked me,’ he said simply. He drank from his bottle as if ending his part in the conversation.
As the night closed in and the cabin lights reacted by dimming, the three of us put our heads together again to see if there was anything left to scrape together. That was when Terry threw out Chastain’s name.
‘What about him?’ I asked.
‘He could have more to offer. He may know more than he thinks he knows.’
‘But he told us he never saw Vern. What more could there be?’
‘I don’t know for certain that there is. But everything Vern has done since he went to Vegas has centred around this UFO nonsense, from Area 51 to Corona to the crash site to Roswell. That’s a definite link between the two of them. I don’t know how it may be tied in, but it could be. Might be a good place to start.’
Overnight we had no better ideas, and by the time the three of us headed out of the airport in the Jeep nothing else had occurred, either. It was slim, but we decided that grabbing a cup of coffee and bending the old man’s ear would take up only an hour at most of our valuable time. And we had nowhere else to be.
When the bar owner had told us that he had been unable to raise Chastain, he looked worried. He wore a deep frown on his tanned forehead. The kind of tan that had set in as a youngster and had yet to pale.
‘Which is unusual at this time of day,’ he said. ‘Al likes his schedules and sticks to them almost religiously. I can’t recall ever not being able to get a hold of him of a morning.’
Hearing that unnerved me. I had no idea what use Chastain might be to us, but learning that his pattern of behaviour had altered since we met him, gave me a bad feeling. I glanced at Terry, who shook his head once.
‘You remember us from yesterday, right?’ I said to the bar’s owner.
The man nodded. ‘Yep. You two and the young lady here from before.’
‘So you know we spoke at length with Al and that we’re no threat to him, right?’
‘I don’t know that. Not for a fact. But I’m guessing so.’
‘Then I’d like you to give us his address. I know you won’t want to. But believe me when I tell you that I think your friend may be in danger. If he is, me and my friend here are precisely the two people you want involved. I realise it goes against your nature, but you have to trust me. Us. I need to know where Chastain lives, and I need to know now.’
21
Al Chastain resided in a brick bungalow surrounded by a grey block wall, the gardens populated by a handful of naked trees so much younger than others in the street. It lay on a large plot close to Cahoon Park, in what looked to be a pretty decent neighbourhood. Terry was driving, I rode shotgun, and we cruised by the place one time without turning our heads to look. Though I had instructed Van Dalen to keep low down in the back seat, I had not told her why. She was elevated enough to notice that we were driving past the house Terry and I had been speaking about moment before.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked ‘Why aren’t we stopping?’
‘First time around is just to get a feel for the place. Also allows us to check for anything untoward.’
‘Untoward? Such as?’
Terry hung a left at the end of the street, directly opposite the park. I turned my head to talk over my shoulder this time. ‘Such as, on this occasion there was a black SUV parked halfway down the alleyway. It’s a narrow thoroughfare, with no waiting or parking I would imagine. It means someone is in there now with Chastain.’
She put a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God! So what are you going to do? Are we calling the police?’
‘That will only make matters worse,’ Terry said. ‘We need to contain this ourselves.’ He powered on to the next junction and took a left. Left again at the next. Over the crossroad, left again at the next turn. At the bottom of that road we emerged by the park, but a block further along. Terry nosed the Jeep into a small visitors’ car park and held his foot on the brake. He turned to face me.
‘First thing I have to put out there is this is not what we’r
e here for. Whoever is with Chastain right now is certainly not Vern Jackson. We could drive away and get on with our search.’
‘We don’t know if it’s connected or not,’ I said. ‘If it is, do we want to miss this opportunity to find out more? We need another link in the chain right now, Terry.’
‘That’s true enough,’ he admitted with a grudging hike of his shoulders.
‘Then there’s the fact that we both think the man is in danger right now. Are we really going to drive away from that?’
‘No. I guess we’re not. So, Chastain’s place is a corner property. Between whoever is inside and the SUV driver in the alleyway to the rear they could have all ingress visually covered. This is the closest place to park without sitting out on the street, and with the driveways these properties have nobody seems to do that, so we’d stick out too much.’
‘You’re going in there?’ she said, her voice loud with shock.
‘I think we have to,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if what’s happening with Chastain has anything to do with Vern, but I do know the man is in trouble. We can’t just leave him to it.’
‘Mike is right,’ Terry said. ‘If we stick around and wait for them to come out we could be too late. My guess is right now they are asking him questions, so he’s more useful to them alive. When they’re done, when they get what they came for, they’ll kill him. We don’t have much time.’
‘But how do you know any of this? He may just have visitors. They could be family or friends for all you know.’
‘Family or friends park on the front drive, not blocking the back alley. Believe me, Chelsea, when it comes to shit like this, we just know.’
Terry had dug out his phone and had drawn up the location on Google maps. He leaned across so that we could all see the screen.
‘We are here,’ he said, pointing a thick index finger at a car park close to what looked like an open-air pool. ‘Tree coverage looks good there, but not in winter. See here, though. We can cut directly across the road and make our way along the pavement. We really only leave ourselves exposed from the street corner. There’s no way of sneaking up on the SUV driver, so we have to focus on the bungalow and expect the driver to react accordingly.’
‘Driving over there puts us a little bit closer before they sense a threat, plus we get a few more yards of cover,’ I suggested. ‘Then we go in big and loud. Check the street view of the property.’
He did. What we saw was not exactly in our favour. ‘Hardly any windows to speak of at the side. One door.’
He slid his thumb on the screen moving around to show us the front of the bungalow, where there was also only a single door at the end of the drive leading into the property, but also four windows. He flipped back around to the side.
‘You know, these windows on this side are high and the door solid. I don’t think we get seen coming that way.’
I stared at the screen for a long time. I thought back to what we had seen on our drive-by, put it together with the view from above and what I was looking at now. I worked the angles in my head and visualised how we might attack the property.
‘Except we can’t approach it directly without being spotted from anyone keeping watch at the front or sitting in the SUV down that alley.’
Terry nodded. ‘You’re right. We have to take it out,’ he said.
I agreed. The question, as ever, was exactly how we were going to achieve that feat.
22
The Jeep trundled over the uneven surface of the alley, whose mixture of gravel, slate, broken chips of brick and concrete required cautious driving. The vehicle continued bumping along until it was a couple of yards behind the black Dodge.
After a wait of no more than thirty seconds, Van Dalen climbed out from behind the wheel and, wearing the sexiest smile she could muster, with perhaps a little more exaggerated movement in her hips, walked towards the SUV. Its tailpipe coughed up fumes, but the tinted windows were down and the air-con not needed on such a mild morning.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to the driver, her smile switched to smoking hot. ‘I thought I had room to get by you but now I’m afraid I might not. I can’t reverse all the way back up the alley. Is there any chance you could pull out so’s I can get through to the street?’
‘You got room. Go by.’ The voice was low and harsh.
Van Dalen turned the smile and smoulder up a notch or two. ‘Oh, please. I don’t want to risk scratching your car and I’d be in so much trouble from my father if I did anything to his Jeep. I’m just not used to driving it yet is all.’
The man sighed heavily. Maybe then he took her in more fully, and decided a show of valour at that moment might be worth something later. ‘I don’t want to move mine from this spot,’ he said. ‘But I’ll get your Jeep by me. Deal?’
‘Anything that gets me where I’m going. I’ll be so grateful.’
That seemed to sweeten the deal. The driver climbed out and walked behind his vehicle. He might have been taken in by a beautiful damsel in distress, but even so he paused to size up the Jeep before he clambered in. He was alert, something clearly pinging his senses, but the beautiful smile had sucked him in.
The moment he closed the door, Terry reared up from the footwell behind the seat and stuck a gun in the back of his neck. I had followed the Jeep bent double all the way along the alley, shuffling around to the passenger side as Van Dalen got out to talk to the driver of the SUV. We had left the passenger side window down, and when Terry moved so did I. I fixed my Sig on the side of the driver’s head, the width of the vehicle between us.
‘How many inside?’ Terry asked him.
‘Fuck you,’ the driver spat, his lips curling. ‘And just so’s you know, that bitch who suckered me is dead.’
‘So you’re not going to talk?’
The man said nothing.
‘Then you’re really not a lot of use to us, are you?’
Terry hooked his arm around the driver’s neck and started pulling back and tensing his muscles to choke him out. The idea was to apply pressure to the carotid artery, causing syncope – a temporary loss of consciousness. I had seen Terry pull off this move a dozen or more times and had never failed to be impressed by it. The only occasion I ever tried it, I ended up cutting off the blood supply for too long. The Iraqi sniper I left lying on the roof of a building overlooking the harbour would have brain damage, if he had even survived. It had never sat well with me, which is why I had never attempted the hold again.
The moment the driver went limp, Terry and I scooped him out of the Jeep and carried him to the rear of his own SUV. Van Dalen opened up the back and we dumped the man face down inside. I cuffed his wrists and ankles with plastic ties. When he eventually came to, he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry.
Taking out the driver opened up the rear of the bungalow to us. But one quick glance told us there was too much glass and back garden to cover, leaving us far too exposed. Instead, I instructed Van Dalen to jump back into the Jeep, reverse back down the alleyway and drive around into the street, parking up a little shy of Chastain’s property and holding off out of sight.
‘Once you’ve done that, put it in park and climb into the back again,’ I told her. ‘Leave the engine running. When we come out of there we may be coming out hot. Whatever you see, whatever you hear, you stay in the car and keep your head down. If we’re not out of there in ten minutes, you call the police. Understand?’
She was shaking, but nodded.
I smiled at her and rested a hand on her arm. ‘Good. You did great, Chelsea. Really great. Just like a pro.’ I forced the smile wider. ‘And I mean a professional, not the other kind of pro.’
Van Dalen laughed a little at the remark. ‘I do hope so. I can’t believe what I did, Mike. You think that driver is a killer of some sort?’
I thought he probably was, but I shook my head. ‘I doubt it. Usually those who are left behind the wheel are low level. He fell for the old damsel in distress with fluttering eyelashes
trick, so he deserves everything he gets.’
‘So, you won’t hurt him?’
‘No need. He’s not going anywhere.’
‘What would you have done if he’d just pulled out of the alley as I asked?’
I shrugged. ‘I guess we’ll never know.’
I felt better about the situation we were about to face. Provided we ducked down lower than the grey block wall that ran around the corner of the back garden, we had a better route to the house now from the side, completely unseen from within until we breached the door. By removing the SUV and its driver from the equation, the advantage had swung back around our way. I felt the adrenaline kick in.
‘You good to go?’ Terry asked, arming himself with weapons and spare rounds and adjusting his kit bag.
I nodded as I did the same. ‘This is becoming a habit.’
He grinned through his salt-and-pepper stubble. ‘Yeah. One we maybe need to break.’
23
Crozier had missed his breakfast and was both irritated and hungry because of it. It was a good seventeen hours since he’d stood in the Corona saloon pointing his shotgun at the bald Latino wearing snakeskin boots, with a whole bunch of other folk standing or sitting right there in the splatter zone, but his hands were still trembling more than he would have expected. Maybe it was the look in the Latino’s eyes; the blank gaze of a man who did not give one flying fuck about either himself or anyone else. Perhaps it was the memory of two FBI agents standing too close for comfort. But he had an idea that the reason for the continuing shakes was the fear of having to one day pull that trigger and become a killer.
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