After a tense silence, he changed the subject with an audible clank.
“Okay. We’ll think about Sallytown later. I checked the television. It was still warm as well. But I think they always are. The channel mode was set to DVD. I found this in the machine. I guess Rainey was watching home movies.”
He held up a homemade DVD with a colorful label on it, a family photograph, Miles and Sylvia and a younger Rainey, taken in front of a brightly decorated Christmas tree.
Kate took it and stared down at it, and the image blurred, and she realized she was crying again. She handed it back to him, and he laid it down on Sylvia’s desk. Kate saw a shelf with Sylvia’s notepaper on it. She took a blank sheet, sat down at Sylvia’s desk, and wrote out a note, but she didn’t use Sylvia’s pen.
Dear Guys … if you’re reading this you know we have been at the house. We’re not angry at all and we hope you’ll both come home and talk about this. Rainey, I think Nick and I haven’t been paying enough attention to how much you miss your mom and dad. And Axel, you have to be feeling pretty confused about where your dad is and what he’s doing. So don’t worry about anything. We love you both and we’ll make things better as soon as you get home.
Love and hugs
Kate
She set the pen down, placed a small carved netsuke rabbit on top of the note, and got up.
“Okay. They’re not here. Where to now?”
Lemon glanced out the window, saw the light fading as the evening came on, slowly but surely.
“No call from Eufaula?”
“Nope.”
“Then we have to go to Patton’s Hard.”
“I know,” said Kate. “I just don’t want to.”
When It Absolutely Positively Has to Be Dead by Midnight
By the time Boonie and Nick got to the Galleria, the situation had, as the saying goes, hardened. The mall was locked down and all the staff and civilians had been herded to the outer edges of the mall parking lot, where they were clustering around a harried cop like a squadron of Canada geese, squawking that somebody had better go get their cars and stuff because well because and because …
The cop was close to losing his temper and they heard it finally go with a loud bang just as Boonie pulled through the cordon of Niceville cruisers—their light racks slowly flashing.
A large female staff sergeant in blue and gold with the name CROSSFIRE engraved on a silver plate on her tunic loomed up out of the crowd of cops and brass and leaned down to look in the driver’s window. Mavis beamed down at Boonie, and then noticed Nick in the passenger seat.
“Nick, what in the name of blue devils are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in the hospital. Does Kate know you’re here?”
“Tig Sutter sent me. Is he here?”
“No. Tig’s too smart for that. We got enough chiefs already, now that Boonie’s here. How are you, Boonie?”
“I’m fine, Mavis. What’s the sitrep?”
“Sitrep, Boonie?”
“You know what I mean, Mavis. Gimme a break.”
She smiled, blew out her breath.
“Well, it is a cluster—it’s a circus for sure. Deitz and a guy named Andy Chu are holed up inside the Bass Pro Shop—”
“How’d they manage that?” Boonie wanted to know.
“Well, I’m afraid we Niceville cops are going to take the heat for that. We got an anonymous call from this party saying that a Securicom employee named Andy Chu hadn’t gone in to work and that maybe he was sheltering Byron Deitz at his house. Since Deitz is a multi-jurisdictional problem, well, Chief Keebles decided—”
“Oh jeez,” said Boonie, putting his head down on the steering wheel.
Mavis patted him on the shoulder.
“There, there, Boonie. It’ll be all right. Anyway, Chief Keebles decided to hand the job to our own Emergency Response Team—sorta break them in, they being brand new and all—and by the time they got their pull-ups and onesies on and hit the road on their Big Wheels, it seems that this Chu guy and Deitz were already rolling in Chu’s Lexus. So the chief figured, better not try to take him down until they had an idea of where he was going. Chief Keebles felt that maybe he was going to dig up the money he stole from the bank—”
“And he’d share in the glory of its recovery?”
“That’s our boy.”
“Was there air?” asked Nick.
“Yep. Ours was in the shop, so Chief Keebles asked for help from the Air National Guard, and they sent a Huey over—”
Boonie started bumping his head on the steering wheel. It was distracting. Nick reached over and stopped him. Mavis, paying this no mind, went on in a detached and amused tone.
“Well, of course Hueys tend to attract attention—no mistaking that thrumpety-thrumpety sound—one thing led to another and now Deitz has locked himself inside the Bass Pro Shop—”
“Any hostages?” Nick asked.
“Well, maybe. We’re not quite sure of the status of this Andy Chu guy who’s in there with him. Chu is head of IT at Deitz’s company. Chu fired a round at our ERT guys outside the entrance to the Bass store, so maybe he’s more of an accomplice. Or he just panicked. They were shooting at him, after all. And he threw his gun away a second later. Could have gone off by accident. Looked like he had a wound. They found blood all over the gun he was using. Deitz went through the store—even knew how to get the clerks out of their hidey-hole behind the gun racks—and he herded everybody he could find up onto the roof and went back down the stairs and bolted the steel fire door shut. They used the Huey to extract those folks.”
“Praise the Lord,” said Boonie.
“Amen. But it grieves me to tell you that there’s a lady out there in the parking lot, name of Delores Maranzano, says her husband, Frankie, and his grandson, Ritchie, were using the bathroom in the Pro Shop and now they’re missing and nobody knows where they are.”
“So they might still be in there with Deitz?”
“Possibility, Nick. Definite possibility.”
“Did they have cells?”
“She says they’re shut off.”
“How old’s the grandkid?”
“Fourteen.”
“Has this Frankie guy called out yet?”
“Not a peep. Probably laying low. There’s a wrinkle, however.”
Boonie lifted his eyes to heaven and said, “Of course there is.”
“What is it?” Nick asked.
“Seems Frankie has a concealed carry permit.”
Nick sighed.
“And of course he has his piece with him?”
Mavis nodded.
“Delores says he’s never without it. He worries about being kidnapped, she says. Apparently he’s filthy rich. He sleeps with it under his pillow.”
“What’s he got?”
“Oh, you’ll love this part. Checked the registry. He has a Dan Wesson .44 Magnum—”
Boonie moaned.
“Don’t tell me,” said Nick. “With the eight-inch barrel.”
Mavis nodded.
“She says he has a custom-made shoulder rig with a couple of slots for auto-loaders.”
“So he’s a shooter?”
“The wife says he goes to those combat simulation ranges. Takes Little Ritchie along with him. Ritchie’s a shooter too. A keener, like his granddad.”
“How old is this guy?”
“Forty-eight. From his driver’s license shot, he looks a bit like a thug. Got a mean mouth and little eyes. He’s six one, runs one-ninety. Wife says he’s a lifter. He looks it.”
“What does he do for a living?”
Mavis shrugged.
“Nobody knows. But Delores fits the trophy wife pattern. They’re driving a Bentley. She says Frankie has commercial real estate down in Destin, Florida, but he made his big money in contracting out in Nevada.”
“Nevada? Anything against him?”
Mavis shook her head.
“Negative on NCIC and MAGLOCEN and the rest of the
databases. Boonie, he ring any bells?”
Boonie wiped his face with both hands.
“There’s a Frankie Maranzano lives right across Fountain Square from my office. Top floor of the Memphis. We check out anybody has a clear line of fire into our space, so we looked at him. But his lawyer, fucking Julian Porter, started squealing about how Italian Americans were being targeted by the Feds. There was really nothing solid against him. Like J. Edgar said, ‘Not every dago is a don.’ ”
Boonie pulled himself together.
“Anyway, what counts here is we got an aggressive guy and he has a hand cannon and a grandson he’s gonna want to impress and he’s prancing around inside that store somewhere.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Anybody killed yet?”
“Not yet. Securicom guard named Jermichael Foley got himself shot in the right knee—”
“Securicom?”
Mavis nodded, knowing where this was going to go. “That’s right. Securicom as in BD Securicom. We checked the records and guess who personally oversaw the design and installation of the security systems for the entire Galleria Mall? Including the Bass Pro Shop?”
Boonie lifted his head from the wheel. There was a bright red bar, slightly curved, marking the pale pink skin of his forehead.
“That place is a fortress,” said Boonie.
“That it is,” said Mavis. “And Deitz knows it better than any of us.”
“We can’t leave him in there,” said Boonie. “He’s got enough supplies to last a month. And there are two civilians in the line of fire. Has anybody tried to reach Deitz?”
“Yep. Our platoon boss got him on his cell phone.”
“Deitz want anything?”
“Yep. He wants the Live Eye crew, and his lawyer—”
Boonie put his head back down on the wheel.
“Warren Smoles,” he said.
“That’s the man,” said Mavis. “He’s here now. Pulled up in that big white Benz over there. He’s been on the Live Eye feed twice already, saying we were about to assassinate an innocent man, demanding immediate access to his client.”
“Boonie,” said Nick, “you let Warren Smoles in on this—with the Live Eye people along—and he’ll turn it into a six-week reality show starring Warren Smoles. He’ll deal out the film rights for a half mil. Deitz will have a book deal by Friday. And in the meantime Deitz will have that whole store trip-wired and booby-trapped so tight that it would take a platoon to pry him out of there. The longer you wait, the better prepared his defensive position will be. And Frankie will eventually make a dipshit move and get himself killed. Little Ritchie too. I’ve seen this all before. You have to take this on the fly, before Deitz gets dug in.”
Boonie looked at him.
“You got any suggestions?”
“Yes. First of all, don’t let Deitz call out anywhere. To Smoles or the media. Jam his phones.”
“Already done,” said Mavis.
“We’ll need the engineering drawings for the store. The latest. We need to know if anything has changed since Deitz and his crew were there.”
“Already got ’em,” said Mavis.
“Good. For thirds, I’ll need a couple of guys.”
A general pause here.
“You?” said Mavis, one eyebrow raised.
“Yes. I’m going in and rip him out of there.”
Boonie shook his head.
“No goddam way. You just got out of the hospital. That’s nuts. I can’t let you—”
“Mavis said Deitz was a multi-jurisdictional problem. Tig Sutter sent me down here, so the CID automatically takes precedence over the Niceville folks—sorry, Mavis. Boonie, you take precedence over the State guys—so if you—the FBI—the Special Agent in Charge—step back and let me do this, it will all be over by midnight.”
“But what about this Frankie guy?”
“That’s why we have to move now. So far he’s kept his head down. If we can neutralize Deitz, everything else can be handled. It’s all we have.”
Boonie was thinking it over.
After all, the guy was Special Forces. And getting an FBI team down here would take hours. And draw the national media like bats to bugs. “I have to ask you. Is this personal?”
“Yes. But it’s also what needs to be done.”
“Not often those two go together.”
“Hardly ever.”
“You said two guys. Who?”
“My partner. Beau Norlett.”
“He’s just a kid.”
“He’s steady and gutsy and I can count on him. I know how he’ll react. That’s important.”
“Okay. And who else?”
“I’ll need a base of fire, a sharpshooter to keep Deitz pinned down while we move in on him. I need suppressing fire that actually suppresses. So it has to be somebody good.”
“A rifle shooter? Not a guy with a SAW?”
“No. A squad automatic weapon’s a bludgeon. And if Deitz is bunkered up in the gun section, which is where I’d be, that means there’s black powder in there too. Pounds of it, all tight packed in steel cans. Lot of muzzle-loaders shop at Bass Pro. Stray rounds hit black powder, that all goes up, maybe a secondary starts in the ammo crates, and thousands of serious hunting rounds start cooking off. People on the perimeter could die. I want a surgical shooter. Somebody with a cool head.”
“How about Coker? He’s the best we have.”
“Is he available?”
“He’s already here. Charlie Danziger too, because it was his Wells Fargo shipment that got boosted. Coker brought his gear with him.”
Nick smiled.
“Coker works for me.”
Willow Weep for Me
It was twilight by the time Kate and Lemon got to the southern end of the footpath that ran down the middle of Patton’s Hard. In the half-light the forest of ancient willows loomed in front of the windshield like a high-walled green basilica roofed in tangled webs of overhanging vines. Beth called them as they shut the truck down.
“Kate, where are you?”
“We’re at Patton’s Hard. Where are you?”
“Out of my mind. I called the school and talked to a woman named Gert—”
“Oh dear.”
“Yes. She says that Axel and Rainey have been getting Early Leave almost since the start of the term? How can that be? Why didn’t Alice let us know? How did they get permission for Early Leave? What in hell is going on, Kate? I’m half crazy—”
“Are you driving?”
“Yes. I was on my way home to see if the boys are there yet. I have Hannah with me.”
“Pull over and stop,” said Kate. “Stop as soon as you can.”
“Why—”
“I have stuff to explain, but you need to be stopped. Are you stopped yet?”
“Just a minute … just a minute …”
Kate could hear crying in the background, Hannah, picking up on her mother’s fear.
“Okay. I’m stopped. What’s going on, Kate?”
Kate told her the whole story. Beth had Kate’s talent for listening and hearing.
“Dear God. Faking notes and e-mails?”
“Looks like, honey.”
“And Alice is missing?”
“No. Not missing. There’s a note on her door.”
“Signed by her?”
A good question. Kate figured being around the FBI was rubbing off on Beth.
“Not that I was told.”
A silence.
Then Beth spoke.
“This Gert creature told me that Alice would go out and find the truants and bring them back in her car. She’d even go to Patton’s Hard. Is that true?”
“Gert said so, for what that’s worth.”
“And now you’re at Patton’s Hard too. Are they there? Axel and Rainey?”
“We’re still looking. But I’m thinking no.”
“God. Kate, what should I do? Should I come down and be with you?”
/> “You have Hannah. She sounds upset.”
“It’s the hearing aids. She’s hearing now, and I think it frightens her.
Kate, I’m … you know Byron’s out, don’t you?”
“Yes, honey. I heard.”
“At first I thought he was coming for me. But now I hear he’s in the Galleria. Somebody got shot. The police are there. Is Nick there?”
“Yes. He and Boonie went together.”
“God. Kate, what’s happening to us?”
Niceville, Kate thought, but she didn’t say it.
“Honey, I think the best thing you could do is go home with Hannah. Eufaula’s there all alone, waiting for the boys to show up. If you go there, she can go home.”
“You’re not at Patton’s Hard alone, are you? I hate that place. And it’s getting dark.”
“No. Lemon’s with me.”
“Good. I like him.”
“I know, Beth. All the women like Lemon.”
She looked over at Lemon and smiled.
“Beth likes you.”
“Tell her I like her right back.”
“Did you hear that?”
“I did. Will you call me?”
“I will, Beth. And you call me if they show up at home. Okay?”
“Okay … Kate … is everything going to be okay? Will they come home?”
“It will be fine. Just no more Early Leave for either of them.”
“I’m grounding Axel for the next ten years.”
“Good idea. I’ll ground Rainey and they can live in the basement like a couple of trolls.”
“I love you, Kate.”
“I love you too. Kiss Hannah for me.”
“I will.”
She clicked off.
Kate looked over at Lemon.
“Well, shall we?”
“We shall.”
The footpath, never intended for cars, was barely wide enough to let them run the Envoy down the middle of it, with the willow branches scraping across the windshield and clutching at the sides of the truck. The surface of the path was muddy and uneven and the going was slow. Lemon was looking at the ruts in the pathway.
“We’re not the first vehicle to drive down here. See the tracks there?”
Kate turned the lights on, and the beams picked out two shallow trenches, parallel and much narrower than the Envoy’s tire prints. Beyond the lights the darkness was closing in as the sun went down. There was a chill in the air and Kate turned the heat up.
The Homecoming Page 22