"Answer the question."
"Why I didn't gun down McGill? I guess I wasn't in the mood." Looking up from his food, he saw that Sheffield was staring at him, waiting for more. "Was that a serious question?"
"Deadly," Sheffield said, his face turning hard. "If 9/11 taught us one thing, it's that humanity is running out of time. Don't you see that, Nathaniel? Don't you see that these people will destroy us all?"
"That's a bit of an attenuated—"
"What was going through your mind as you watched McGill through your rifle scope as he brutalized his wife?"
"I don't know."
"You wanted to shoot him."
"Part of me did, I suppose."
"But something held you back."
"Of course."
"You were afraid you'd be held accountable."
"No. I mean, yes, I'm sure that was on my mind. But not at the forefront. Just in the background noise."
"Then what was it? Let's establish a logical baseline. Why didn't you shoot him?"
"Maybe because it would have been wrong?"
Sheffield looked irritated. "Wrong? What does 'wrong' even mean anymore?"
"Huh?"
"The world isn't black and white."
"Some things are."
"In our world? In the shadowy world of intelligence and counter-terrorism? No, sir."
"We're sworn law enforcement officers now. This isn't SOG."
"Now you're really splitting hairs. McGill was a murderer and a terrorist."
"Okay, but—"
"Do you know what McGill is up to these days, Nathaniel?"
"Besides fighting to preserve the viability of his sphincter?"
"He formed a book club with fellow maximum security inmates of USP Lee."
"That's nice."
"He and his ring of deranged sycophants meet twice weekly to discuss white supremacist and anti-Semitic literature."
"Oh."
"Indeed. And get this—none of the fellows in the book club were part of McGill's Holocaust Museum conspiracy. No, these are new recruits. He's spreading his ideas to a new flock of crazies, several of whom will be released inside of fifteen months. Loosed on society to do heaven knows what, with McGill's teachings poisoning their hearts and minds. Maybe they'll murder other Ethiopian Jew convenience store clerks. Maybe they'll try to blow up the Holocaust Museum. Who knows? But rest assured, Nathaniel, they'll do something. Something terrible. And do you know what the stink of it is?"
"What?"
"It's that you could have stopped it from happening. You could have nipped les fleurs du mal in the bud. Could have stopped the growing storm when it was still a puff of cloud on the far horizon."
"Lovely metaphors, Roland."
"So I ask you again, why didn't you shoot McGill when you had the chance?"
"I don't know, professor. You might as well ask why we have laws. Or why we have a judicial system. Anyway, you can't hold me responsible for McGill further sowing his seeds of evil."
"Can't I?" Sheffield stared at him for a moment, then said, "Ah, I'm just jerking your chain, old boy." But his shoulders slumped forward just noticeably, and he stared down at his lunch without raising his fork. Arkin thought he looked defeated—altogether unusual body language for Sheffield. Maybe something else was eating him.
It was the first of several conversations they would have on the same theme over the following months, right up until Arkin's exile to Durango. Sheffield presented different hypothetical scenarios each time, and would quiz Arkin and Killick as to whether vigilante justice might be called for, and why. But no matter how Sheffield changed the facts, Arkin never changed his position that there was, absolutely and without exception, no place in federal law enforcement for extrajudicial killing. And despite the improbability and absurdity of it, Arkin swore that with each passing conversation Sheffield's seeming bewilderment and disappointment over his inflexibility appeared to grow until it bordered on genuine despair. It perplexed Arkin to no end.
The strange memory was interrupted by shrill beeping from Arkin's Durango motel room alarm clock. Dawn light was just beginning to peek through the crack between the drapes as he lay in bed, already wide awake. It was going to be a long day, he was certain of that. Morrison had called before dawn to let Arkin know that he was in position to watch the Sundial Ranch access road for any surveillance operatives dispatched by Killick. Arkin remained skeptical that Killick was involved but saw the wisdom of eliminating him as a suspect.
Arkin allowed himself a long, hot steam in the flimsy and mildew-stained motel shower, drank a canned espresso, and suited up. Then, leaving the Forest Service truck behind out of an abundance of caution, he set out for his office on foot, keeping to the fringe of the scrubby hillside that ran along the highway, doing his best to stay out of sight.
Being suspended, his only reason for going in was to call Killick from a phone he was sure nobody was monitoring. But after sneaking in through the back door of the building, he decided to grab a couple extra boxes of bullets and shotgun shells, just in case. After shoving the ammunition in his gym bag, he went down the hall to the same Forest Service cubicle and ID-blocked phone he'd used before. Leaving the lights off, he dialed Killick's encrypted line while standing by the window and watching the parking lot and surrounding area through a small gap in the blinds.
"Where the hell have you been?" Killick said. "I've been calling your cell every 10 seconds since yesterday."
"Battery. I think my charger was in my house when it went up."
"Where are you now?"
Arkin decided to play it cool. "I'm still in bed."
"Hungover again?"
"Suspended. Or hadn't you heard?"
"Suspended? What did you do?"
"Long story for another time. So did you get the phone number for the Canadian company back from your tech team?"
"Still working on it."
"You mean the Director of Operations can't just pick up his phone and get a simple scrap of readily available information from his lackeys in about five seconds?"
"Don't be an ass. Your needs aren't the only ones on my plate right now. I have political masters who need to bolster their crap self-esteems by making me dance like a monkey every half hour."
"So what did you need?"
"Let's start with where you're staying. Not in the ruins of your house, I hope. Can you give me a number for wherever you are so I can call you if there's an emergency?"
"Sure. I'm staying at a place called Sundial Ranch. It's northeast of town, out in the woods a bit. I don't have the number on me, but I'm sure you can Google it."
"Alright. Well, look, the lead agent on the Pratt investigation needs to take a statement from you. He can do it over the phone."
"That's why you've been calling my cellphone every 10 seconds since yesterday?"
"Plus, we want to set up a college fund for Pratt's kids. I just wanted to confirm that he had four, right?"
"Yes. There are four of them." The thought saddened Arkin. He could picture them climbing all over Pratt—all over their dad—as he rolled around on his family room carpet with them, rough housing, tickling them, pretending to bite their ribs as they laughed hysterically. Happy kids. What would become of them? The LDS church would probably take care of them. They were good about that sort of thing.
In thinking about Pratt's kids, something else occurred to Arkin. "I just thought of something."
"What?"
"I think I know where to. . . ."
"What? You know where to what?"
A dark blue Nissan Altima went down the road, passing the driveway to the building, just a hair too slowly. It was the second time Arkin had seen it in the past five minutes. Damn. "I have to run."
"No, wait."
"I'll call you back."
"Wait, Nate. Wait!"
He hung up, un-holstered his gun, and chambered a round, then topped off his magazine and slid it home so that he was loaded for duty-carry.
He slipped down the hall and down the stairs, emerging on Pratt's floor. Pratt's office was still wide open. Arkin stepped inside, turned on the light, and saw what he was looking for. The Strawberry Monkey notepad was still lying on Pratt's desk. Arkin grabbed an old-fashioned graphite pencil from Pratt's desk caddy and began rubbing the oblique side of the lead on the notepad—thinking, as he did so, that he probably first learned the trick from, of all things, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mystery stories of his youth. Faint text began to appear on the notepad. Please, yes. A word. 'O-R-G….' The words 'organic 2% milk' became visible. But there were more words beneath them. Hopeful, Arkin kept on with it, his rubbing revealing the words 'maple-brown sugar oatmeal,' 'carrots,' 'peach yogurt,' and so forth. Nothing more than a grocery list. Arkin's shoulders slumped as he set the pencil back down and stared at Pratt's desk. There were conspicuously clean squares and rectangles on the dusty surface where Pratt's computer monitor, printer, and phone had sat. Meager, ephemeral vestiges of a good man's life. Dispirited, Arkin gave Pratt's chair a quarter turn as he prepared to leave. But, giving himself a moment to sigh before he stood up, facing the wall to the left of Pratt's desk, he found himself momentarily transfixed by the empty jack where the cord to Pratt's phone had once been plugged in. A little, black, square hole, in an old off-white plate soiled and streaked with the finger oils and filth of untold generations of users of what had been Pratt's office. Soon a new user would move in, and all traces of Pratt ever having worked there would vanish. As he thought about this, about the seeming futility, the certain tragedy and needless waste of the whole Priest affair, it struck Arkin as rather odd that a fit of depression could seemingly be triggered by, of all the trivial things, the emptiness of the phone jack. But then something else occurred to him, and he took a deep breath, rose, and strode down the hall to retrieve a telephone from a different office. Back in Pratt's office a minute later, he plugged a phone into the jack for Pratt's unsecured land line, then dialed the operator.
"Hello. I'm hoping you can help me. I misplaced a phone number I need quite urgently, and I was wondering if you could tell me the numbers I dialed on this line on a particular date." He gave the operator the day before Pratt was killed. As he waited, he considered the long odds against him. Chances were slim that Pratt had made a rookie move like looking up and dialing numbers for any persons or entities he'd found mentioned in the INDIGO file—to confirm a number's accuracy or the existence of a number's alleged owner—taking the chance of prematurely spooking their quarry into flight to a new hiding place. It would have been far too risky, even if he'd planned to use the old trick of pretending he dialed the wrong number if someone answered.
The operator was breathing heavily through his nose as he took his infuriatingly sweet time processing Arkin's request. The sound drove Arkin half mad. Finally, the man muttered, "Okay. Here we are. At 8:47 p.m., you dialed…."
The first number was for Pratt's home. No doubt he was calling Ella to tell her when she could expect him. The second number began with area code 604, which, as Arkin knew very well, covered Vancouver, British Columbia. Holy mother! Barely able to contain himself, Arkin stayed on the line until the tortoise-speed operator gave him the other three irrelevant local numbers Pratt had dialed the day before he was killed. As soon as he hung up, Arkin ran to his own office, booted up his computer, and did a database search for the area code 604 telephone number. Up came the name "Seastar Aquaculture," and it all came back to him. He could picture the name of the company on his new yellow pad back in his office in Washington, D.C,. all those years ago. His heart was racing. He scribbled the name and phone number down on Pratt's Strawberry Monkey notepad, tore off the page, shoved it in his pocket, and slipped out of Pratt's dark office while muttering to himself, "Seastar, Seastar, Seastar, Seastar. . . ."
As Arkin emerged from the back door of the building, a strong breeze kicked up, blowing leaves across the parking lot. As he turned to pull the door shut against the force of the breeze, the door was knocked back with a sudden violence and a deafening crack ripped through the air. He dove for cover behind a cigarette-butt-filled concrete planter box, landing flat on his belly. He glanced over his shoulder to see that a large hole had been blown through the door. His mind went into overdrive. An armor-piercing .50 BMG round would penetrate the planter box, concrete or not. He crawled forward, on knees and elbows, to the better protection of a parked Forest Service pickup. There, he un-holstered his .40, rotated into a squat, and popped up for a quick peek of the area before dropping back down into cover just as quickly. He didn't see the sniper, but saw enough of the surrounding land to make a rough guess as to where the sniper was. He couldn't be too close. Probably across the river. The far bank afforded an unobstructed view of the building and parking lot, as well as good cover among clumps of scrubby trees. The breeze kicked up again, and Arkin realized it was probably what had saved him, blowing the bullet a hair off target. If the air had been still, or the sniper a few dozen yards closer, his lifeblood would already be soaking into the gray industrial-grade carpet tiles of the first-floor hallway. He took another quick peek to assure himself that the shooter was a good distance away. Assuming the shooter was across the river, it would be exceptionally difficult for him to hit a fast-moving target. With that in mind, Arkin made a crouching break for the trees at the north end of the parking lot, and when he reached them, kept going, never looking back, using all available cover—trees, bushes, buildings, cars, roadside berms—as he made his way toward the hospital as fast as humanly possible.
Twenty minutes later, he flew past the DPD officer standing guard at Hannah's door and burst into her room. She was sleeping but woke to the sound of his panting.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes." He knew he couldn't lie to her. But he didn't have to tell her everything. "Someone took a shot at me while I was leaving work," he said, pausing to take a breath.
"Just now?"
He nodded.
"Call the police."
He shook his head.
"Why not?"
"I have to call Morrison."
But as he took out his phone and began to dial, a tiny rivulet of blood started to run from one of Hannah's nostrils down to her upper lip. He put the phone back in his pocket, grabbed tissues from a small utility table, and ran to her side to clean it off, only then seeing that she held a white towel already blotched with blood in several places. Her body smelled sour and slightly metallic, the odor leaving an odd flavor on the very back of Arkin's tongue.
"It's been doing this all morning. Just little nosebleeds. No big deal."
But even as she said this, Arkin saw something he'd never ever seen in her eyes before, and it took everything he had not to choke up. It was fear. Not the common, everyday variety, but a profound, dark, terrible fear. He got into bed next to her, and with teeth secretly clenched behind his tightly closed lips, he lay there stroking her bare head until they both fell asleep.
*****
Barely 30 minutes later, the burner cellphone chirped, waking them both. It was Morrison, his voice tense.
"Are you at the hospital?"
"Yeah, but listen to what—"
"I know. Someone took a shot at you. Listen, did you give anyone else this phone number?"
"Hang on a second."
"Wait, Nate!" he heard Morrison shout as he lowered the phone and pressed it against his chest. He rose from the bed and whispered to Hannah, "I'll be right back," squeezing her hand as he got to his feet. She held his hand for a moment before letting go, holding his gaze with her own. The terrible fear was still there in her eyes. But after a couple seconds, she did her best to smile, blinked slowly, and then let him go. He went into the hallway and, feeling the urge, made his way past the DPD officer, who was now chatting with a young blonde at the nurse's station, and on toward the men's room down the hall as he raised the phone to his ear.
"What's going on?" he asked Morrison.
"Did you give this nu
mber to anyone?"
"No."
"Get the fuck out of there."
"But—"
"I'll explain later. Just get the fuck out of there, and lose that phone. Meet me at the library." That was their joke code for the Diamond Belle Saloon, from the days when Arkin used to jerk Morrison's chain by pretending he had to hide their fraternizing from Hannah.
"Tell me what the hell is going on."
"A ten-second summary. I just got back from watching the road at Sundial to find a courtesy copy of a U.S. District Court arrest warrant for you rolling into my fax in tray. Some trumped-up false statement bullshit. The complainant is an FBI agent whose name I've never seen before. Consider armed and dangerous. You've got to lose that phone. If Killick is—"
"Yeah, yeah." He peeked out the window of the bathroom. Four officers in full body armor and SRT tactical uniforms were stepping out of two patrol cars as a third car pulled up to the curb behind them. "Oh, shit."
"Get out of there."
Arkin tossed the phone into the trash can, then cracked the bathroom door to observe the officer still standing at the nurses' station. He heard the short burst of static as the officer's radio came to life. The officer said something into the microphone lashed to his upper chest, then turned and walked toward Hannah's room while un-holstering his gun. As he passed through her doorway, Arkin, knowing this was his only chance, took one step forward, but then froze, thinking of Hannah. Thinking of her lying in there, terrified and bleeding. He couldn't leave her. His mind raced. If he stayed, they'd catch him and cart him off to some far away federal prison, assuming there wasn't an "accident" in store for him. And even if he lived to see a trial, he was sure they'd have enough fabricated evidence to put him away. But if he ran, and by some miracle found a way to clear his name, then he could come back. He knew it was a long shot, but it was his only chance for getting back to Hannah. He took one last look down the hallway toward the door to her room. Then, with tears blurring his vision, he ran for the door to the rear stairwell, threw it open, flew down the stairs and out the back fire door just as a half dozen police went in the front.
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