by Layton Green
Grey had to find him. Now. Before they took her too far away.
And the alternative, a little devil in the back of his mind whispered? The one where she hasn’t gone anywhere at all, and never will again?
No, whispered back. They need her alive. They do. They do.
Grey called Lieutenant Palmer and got his voicemail. He left the address of the tire shop and said a man named Ronnie Lemieux had evidence crucial to the investigation.
Oh, and that he was on his way there himself. That should get the lieutenant moving.
In the blink of an eye, Moreland Avenue transitioned from a bourgeois neighborhood to the narrow streets and grungy strip malls of East Atlanta. Grey noticed he had messages from Viktor and Dr. Varela. He didn’t bother to listen. No distractions. As the tire shop drew closer on the GPS, Grey’s left hand slipped to the grip of the Beretta, and he pressed the accelerator.
Soon after he passed an old drive-in movie theater, he whipped into a lot full of rusted cars and lurched the transmission into park. His eyes flew across the parking lot of the garage. It looked deserted.
Was everyone at lunch? Or had they heard about the Peach Shack and decided to take a day off?
As he stepped out of the car, a side door to the garage burst open and the snout of a hunting rifle poked out, gripped with two hands by another member of the group who had attacked Dr. Varela, the thick-necked man in overalls and black combat boots. The only addition to his wardrobe was a nametag and a worn baseball cap bearing the name of his shop. Ronnie’s Tire and Auto.
“Like I said before,” Ronnie growled. “Get your ass outta here, boy.”
Grey pulled the Berretta up to nose height, both hands on the grip, and aimed at center mass. He estimated they were fifty feet apart. “How’s your aim?”
Ronnie chuckled and held the gun steady. “I been hunting the Georgia woods since the day I could walk. My daddy and uncles taught me.”
“I hunt men. A Force Recon sniper with an Olympic medal taught me.”
The tip of Ronnie’s gun wavered. “What do you want?”
“I want to know where she is. The girl Dag took.”
“The little negress you asked about earlier?”
Grey fired into the garage wall, a few inches above Ronnie’s head. The bullet ricocheted off the concrete and shattered the window of a parked Ford F-150.
Ronnie stumbled backwards, away from the door. “Goddamn, boy!” He realized he had exposed his position and tried to duck into the garage. Grey cut him off with another shot. Ronnie stilled like a deer in the forest.
“Hands high!” Grey ordered.
Ronnie set down the rifle with a string of curses. “You’re making a big mistake.” He turned out his forearm to expose a large tattoo, a red stylized A surrounded by a circle. “You know who I’m with?”
Grey recognized the symbol of the Aryan Brotherhood. He stalked forward, keeping the gun trained. “Where is she?”
“I wouldn’t tell you if I knew.”
“Where’s Dag?”
He grinned through tobacco-stained teeth. “Who?”
Grey waved the gun at the garage door. “Inside.”
The conviction in Ronnie’s voice faltered. “Why’s that, now?”
“Go!”
As Ronnie took a reluctant step towards the door, knowing what was in store, Grey heard brakes screeching to a stop behind him. He whirled in time to see the doors opening on three pickup trucks and a van. A dozen armed men, ex-con types, spilled out of the vehicles and fanned out around Grey.
“I told ya,” Ronnie crowed from behind, “you done stepped into the wrong pile.”
Grey scanned the crowd of newcomers, assessing the situation. A public road with traffic was steps away, and he was going to call their bluff. He had no choice. If he was taken, Charlie’s hopes disappeared.
Instead of dropping the gun, Grey lowered it and started walking back to his car.
“I said drop it!” Ronnie screamed.
“You going to shoot me in full view of the street?” Grey asked, without bothering to turn.
“He’s right about that, boys,” Ronnie said. “Take him inside.”
A barrel-chested man in a flannel cap took the first step, and Grey leveled the gun at him. “So you’re first?”
The man stopped moving. The others seemed confused. Grey reached the Cherokee as someone shot out his tires. Grey got in the car anyway, holding the men at bay with the gun pointed out the window. He started the car, prepared to drive back into town on ruined wheels.
They were all pointing guns at him and screaming, and Grey wondered if anyone had the guts to shoot. Just as he started to pull away and find out, a pair of cop cars whipped into the lot, sirens whirring.
At first it looked like there might be a gun battle, but one of the policemen ordered the men to stand down with a megaphone, and said that more police were on the way.
After a muttered exchange, Ronnie and his men laid down their weapons and put their hands behind their heads. Car doors flew open, and a quartet of policemen jumped out, led by Sergeant Palmer.
“You’re all coming with me,” he said, and then pointed at Grey. “Including you.”
“What were you thinking?” Lieutenant Palmer said to Grey, as soon as they were alone in a conference room.
Grey told him about Charlie.
The lieutenant sank into a chair. “Jesus.”
“You know how it is with kidnappings. The trail goes cold,” Grey snapped his fingers, “like that.”
The lieutenant shook his head and drummed his fingers on the table. “I’m sorry about the girl, real sorry, but that doesn’t mean you can run around the city like Charles Bronson.” The lieutenant sighed and rose to pour a cup of coffee from a thermos. “Who’s Ronnie Lemieux?”
“Aryan Brotherhood.”
“Yeah. I know. How’d you find him?”
Grey told him about the conversation at the Peach Shack.
“And they told you about him because you asked them to?”
“I might have asked firmly.”
“Yeah, I bet,” the lieutenant said. “You know I can’t use any of that as evidence.”
“You can use it to help me find Charlie.”
The lieutenant threw his hands up. “What, you gonna take on the whole white supremacist movement in Atlanta in one night?”
“If I have to.”
“Do you know how big it is here?”
“I know I just have to find one girl.” Grey leaned forward. “Will you help me? We both know it involves whatever’s going on with the mutilated bodies and the CDC.”
“No, you think that. And you’re lucky I’m not locking you up for possession of two hot pieces and whatever it is you did at the Peach Shack.”
Grey’s face tightened. He stood to leave.
The lieutenant pointed. “Sit.”
Every muscle in Grey’s body twitched, and he could feel the blood rushing to his face. Still, he knew it would only hurt Charlie if he got arrested. Even if Jacques bailed him out, Interpol couldn’t order the APD to let Grey run around Atlanta. With an effort of will that felt like wading through wet cement, he returned to his seat.
“Now wait,” the lieutenant said.
He disappeared, leaving Grey seething at the delay, pacing the room and running through scenarios in his mind. Twice he started for the door, then told himself he had to hear the lieutenant out.
Nearly an hour later, the lieutenant returned with Captain Gregory. The captain had donned a pair of reading glasses, and he folded his massive arms and looked down his nose at Grey. “You have friends in high places. You can stay in the city, but I’m putting you on a short leash. No investigating without the lieutenant. You get him for two days.”
Grey swallowed his disappointment. Two days. “Thanks,” he muttered.
The muscles in the captain’s arms tightened as he pointed at Grey. “I won’t tolerate the vigilante stuff. I mean it. One more strike and
you’re out.”
Grey pressed his lips together, did his best to look sincere, and nodded.
For the next twenty-four hours, eating and sleeping became disposable functions. Grey sat in while Lieutenant Palmer interviewed Ronnie and the other men who had stormed the tire shop. Other than a few unregistered weapons charges, they didn’t have a good reason to hold them. Since Grey had entered the property carrying a weapon, Ronnie was perfectly within his rights to brandish a rifle. The other men should have called the police instead of gang-rushing Grey, but they had backed down from the lieutenant, and Georgia had gun laws as loose as a two-legged stool.
A search into Ronnie’s background revealed two stints at Jessup, a federal prison in South Georgia where he had become a full-fledged member of the Aryan Brotherhood. Meaning he had killed a black or a Latino to make his bones.
The tire shop was obviously a front, Ronnie was really bad news, and none of that helped get them closer to Charlie. No one would breathe a word about Dag, and while Ronnie was a player on the local scene, he was a small-time thug compared to this mysterious parent organization about which Grey was starting to get a very bad feeling. He didn’t think Ronnie knew where Dag was staying, though if nothing else panned out in the next two days, Grey was going to go back and ask him again.
They tried the FBI, the DEA, and any other federal agencies that might have a bead on Dag. Still nothing. The man was a ghost.
In desperation, Grey asked the lieutenant to visit the penitentiary in Atlanta and talk to the highest-ranking white supremacists in residence, hoping for a lead from a rival gang.
Surprisingly, the lieutenant agreed.
They went.
Nothing but flat stares and silence.
Lieutenant Palmer headed home for the night. Grey shoved down some takeout Japanese and returned to his hotel. Despondent, he hunkered down in his room with coffee and his smartphone, spending the night researching hate groups and human trafficking. Maybe they were keeping Charlie in a known stash house.
Sickened by what he read, the extent of the trafficking crisis in America and the likelihood of hundreds of stash houses hidden around Atlanta alone, he knew he was grasping. Charlie was slipping away. Her life was sand pouring through an hourglass in which he was trapped, the grains spilling over his fingers, and he couldn’t stop the flow.
A molten sun crept above the tree-lined horizon. Grey splashed water on his face and drove to the station. He hovered over a coffee in the conference room until Lieutenant Palmer walked in.
“Don’t you sleep?” the lieutenant asked.
“How did he get in the country?”
“Huh? You mean Big Red?”
“He’s got a very distinct look. Thick accent.”
“You thinking immigration records? Airport cameras?”
Grey nodded. “Maybe we could trace him backwards, find out where he’s going next.”
“That would take forever, even if we got permission.”
Grey scratched at his beard. He should have taken a shower; he could smell his own stink. “We could try Hartsfield, at least,” he muttered.
“You know that’s the busiest airport in the world, even if he did come through.” The lieutenant gave Grey a pointed look. “Which we both know he didn’t.”
Grey slumped in the chair and put his fingertips to his forehead.
The lieutenant laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll put in a request.”
Working through Jacques again, the lieutenant got permission to scour immigration records at Hartsfield over the last several weeks. It took them the rest of the day to pore through the computer records, but none of the passport photos resembled Dag.
By late afternoon, Grey was a sleep-deprived zombie. After they had exhausted all the short-term avenues they could think of, the lieutenant pulled into The Varsity, a famous Midtown diner. “When’s the last time you ate?” he asked Grey.
“Last night,” Grey muttered.
“Enough is enough. We’re taking a break.”
As the lieutenant ordered, Grey watched a few homeless men shuffle down the street outside the window, which made him think of Charlie. The first time he had met her, she had strutted into his jujitsu class and tugged on her dreads and declared she already knew how to fight and wasn’t sure what Grey could teach her. A grin escaped him at the memory.
Something else had stuck with him. He would never forget the look on her face the first time he had asked her to teach a wrist lock to the rest of the class. Not just a look of pride, but of shock. A deep and profound disbelief that anyone would find her worthy of something, even as small as a class demonstration.
Charlie, he whispered to himself, I’m so sorry.
As the lieutenant grabbed straws and napkins, Grey heard his cell buzz. He glanced down, annoyed at the interruption. Couldn’t Viktor get the hint?
Grey berated himself. It wasn’t the professor’s fault. Then again, if he hadn’t talked Grey into leaving New York in the first place . . . .
Disgusted, furious at himself and the world, Grey read the text, which to his surprise had come from an unlisted number.
And then he stopped breathing.
Want to see your muffin head again? You got something we want, too. Climb to the top of Stone Mountain tonight. Alone. Zero two hundred. No cops or guns. If you don’t know how to listen, she dies.
Another text came in showing Charlie sitting on a filthy linoleum floor, holding a copy of the New York Times. With trembling fingers, Grey Googled the Times and clicked on the PDF of the front page of the day’s edition. It was the same photo.
The lieutenant slid two trays laden with greasy goodness onto the table. “Chili cheese dog and rings. Best in the South. Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah,” Grey said, sliding the phone into his pocket as he reached for a chilidog. He was going to need the fuel. “I’m good.”
One a.m.
Grey shrugged on his motorcycle jacket and left his Jeep parked behind a church near the west entrance to Stone Mountain Park. With no hesitation, he skirted the gatehouse, jogged down Robert E. Lee Boulevard to the walking trail entrance, and started hiking up the isolated dome of granite that in daytime resembled a giant thimble rising out of the forest.
Fifteen miles from downtown, visible from the higher reaches of every east-facing building in Atlanta, Stone Mountain was a six hundred acre park that Grey’s research told him served many roles: popular campground and hiking destination, theme park, cultural attraction.
Stone Mountain was also a Confederate landmark, and sometimes served as a meeting spot for pro-white rallies. An enormous carving on the north face, the largest bas-relief in the world, memorialized a trio of Confederate heroes. The second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan had been founded at Stone Mountain in 1915.
After dinner, claiming exhaustion, Grey had parted ways with the lieutenant and scouted the mountain before dark, climbing up the thousand-foot outcropping with a legion of hikers from all around the world. After that, he caught a few hours of sleep to restore his wits and reflexes, then paced his hotel room until it was time to return.
At night, the moderately steep trail was as isolated as he expected it to be. Grey followed the rules. He didn’t tell the cops or even Viktor, and he didn’t bring a gun. He wasn’t about to play dice with Charlie’s life, and he was going to have to trust his own instincts and experience. A gift had been given, he felt, a chance to trade himself for Charlie or at least find out where she was.
He kept a steady pace up the trail to loosen his muscles. The aroma of pine needles infused the air. After a time, the gravel walking path merged into the natural granite surface of the mountain, pockmarked by erosion and slippery as polished concrete.
Grey made sure he reached the edge of the gently rounded summit right at two a.m. The ridged surface reminded him of overlapping tortoise shells. His breath fogged the air as he scanned the darkness. Nothing. From his earlier visit, he knew the summit spanned a few hundred
feet and included clusters of stunted pine. On the far side, a cable car provided an alternate route to the summit. He guessed Dag and his men had somehow commandeered it.
Grey walked slowly across the granite, hands above his head. A cold wind seared his face. He was sure he was being watched. After fifteen paces, the darkness in front of him materialized into a group of shadowy figures, at least a dozen strong, clutching weapons and spread out on the summit.
One of the men stepped forward. Despite the charcoal darkness blurring his features, Grey recognized the long hair and powerful bearing from the rally at the Peach Shack.
“I hear you’ve been looking for me,” Dag said.
-23-
Viktor rattled in his seat as the Land Cruiser bounced over the rutted dirt road leading to Naomi’s house. At times the headlights would illuminate a small creature, a Cape mouse or a rock rabbit, slinking into the bush.
Naomi glanced over and grinned, enjoying the drive. It caught Viktor by surprise. He realized, not for the first time, what a handsome woman she was.
He thought she was going to speak, but her expression faded and she returned to watching the road. It was easy, he thought, to mistake reserved behavior for arrogance or close-mindedness. Though he still wasn’t sure what to make of Naomi.
Viktor did not think he was in danger, but just to be sure, he tried to text his whereabouts to Grey. No signal. Naomi must use a different carrier.
He had the feeling he was about to find out where her true interests lay.
The dirt road dead-ended at a modest, L-shaped bungalow surrounded by knee-high fynbos that in the darkness resembled a shadowy ocean bottom, full of bulbous coral beds and stalks of floating kelp.
A motion-sensor light flicked on as they pulled into the gravel drive, illuminating a giant tan dog that bounded alongside the Land Cruiser, barking furiously.
“It’s just Max,” Naomi said. When she parked, the dog ran over and sniffed Viktor’s leg, and the professor gave him a pat on the head. He had not owned a pet since childhood.