by Chuck Dixon
“He’s married to my wife’s sister,” Levon said, shit-eating grin in place.
The guy barked at that and slid the room card to him.
After checking for cameras Levon met Merry at a back exit. There were none and he let her in. They used the stairs to reach the room. Without a word she locked herself in the bathroom. He lay back on the bedcovers to close his eyes for a second. He could hear the shower running.
That was the last thing he heard before he awakened to the drag and boom of truck traffic out on the highway. Sunlight was streaming in through a gap in the drapes. Merry was asleep in an armchair pulled up close in front of the TV, curled in a ball under a quilt. A smiling man and woman on the TV were making something in a dream kitchen, clean white aprons worn over immaculate clothes. The volume was reduced to a sibilant mutter.
He took a long shower, thought about shaving and decided that it should wait.
When he came out of the bathroom, Merry had moved to the bed. She lay under the covers, facing the window, her back to him.
Levon dressed and went to see about getting them breakfast.
He walked to an IHOP down the road from the hotel. The Lacrosse was backed into a space at the rear of the lot behind the America’s Best. It wouldn’t draw attention to itself. Cheaters parked that way to hide their plates.
Merry was as he left her when he got back with two plastic bags of take-out waffles in clamshell containers. The smell was enough to lure her out from under the covers. She ate in silence, digging into a stack of strawberry shortcake waffles. She nodded when he held up maple syrup packets.
She wasn’t angry, wasn’t sullen. When she did look at him it was with an expression of heartbreaking sadness. He knew she was hurting at the idea of them separating. He couldn’t help but read into it a resentment about all that he’d put her through since they left Huntsville almost a year ago.
Levon knew his little girl would never hold that against him. Since her mother died, Merry accepted that life was capable of cruel surprise. A hard thing for an eleven-year-old to deal with, even harder for Levon to take on. A father was supposed to shield his child from trouble, not bring more on. And she had no idea of half of the trouble he invited into their lives when he’d agreed to go hunting for Jim Wiley’s daughter. He was a wanted man. The only grandparents Merry knew were dead. They lived on the road, changing names and homes.
His decision was a hard one to make. But it was best for her and that’s all that mattered.
Even though these next few days would not be the happiest between them, they were still precious to him. Waiting in this hotel room, eating take-out and watching TV wasn’t anyone’s idea of quality time. But they were together and that would have to be enough for him and, hopefully, enough for Merry when she looked back on it.
For now, they were waiting out the days until Gunny got the package he’d mailed the day before.
10
After seventy-two near-straight hours of wakefulness, Bill felt like he was watching the landscape go by through the wrong end of a telescope. He wished he could be the next FBI agent shot in the line of duty just so he’d have permission to lie down.
“You look like shit,” Ted said, eying him from behind wheel.
“I feel like shit,” he replied, drooping against his shoulder strap.
“Lexington is coming up. I’m dropping you off for some rack time. There’s nothing going on right now anyway.”
Bill could only nod. Even that motion was a supreme effort.
Ted dumped him off at a Day’s Inn close to the highway.
Ted called from the car, “Take a shower. Get your clothes pressed. And get some sleep. I can give you six hours max.”
Bill waved. He slumped toward the entrance, bag slung over his shoulder. The automatic doors hissed open and warm, welcoming canned air swept over him from within. He thought he heard angels singing but it was only Abba on the lobby PA system.
Showered and wrapped in a towel, Bill lay back atop the covers on his economy double bed and punched in the numbers to reach Nancy Valdez at Treasury. He wasn’t sure why he was calling her. All he knew was that, beat as he was, he wouldn’t be able to sleep without talking to her. She was his confessor and sleep was his communion. The nuns would approve of that analogy, he thought as he listened to the Brahms piano concerto that served as hold music for the T-men.
“They’ve brought me in on this Maine thing,” Nancy told him once he reached her.
“Yeah?”
“Same as the bureau brought you in. My background on this. They’re putting together a cross-agency task force. A hump from DHS is taking lead.”
“What’s Homeland’s interest here?” Bill said.
“They found a pickup truck up at the Maine site registered to the Mitchell Roeder alias. An automatic rifle and lots of ammo were found concealed in it. That’s all they need to claim domestic terrorism.”
“Brompton’s not going to be happy about that.”
“Who’s that?”
“Agent I’m working under. He thinks he’s lead on this.”
She said, “He’s not lead as of an hour ago. The Blanco ex is talking a blue streak to save her ass. I don’t have details but she swears that whatever the guys in this crew were looking for was in the Maine house. I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying ‘told you so.’”
“What about Tex? Roeder? The guy on the run?” he said with a yawn.
“She says he wasn’t with the crew. Just the right guy showing up at the wrong time. She followed him to Waltham and braced him. She thought, as Blanco’s only surviving ex, she was entitled to a piece of whatever he got away with.”
“She know his real name? Where he’s heading?”
“She knew him as Mitch Roeder from Arkansas. That matches a—” He heard her tapping keys. “—a Mitchell Jennings Roeder, born in Jonesboro. Born in ’85. Died in a car accident aged four. It’s a professional identity appropriation. This guy either paid a lot or had help.”
“But he is a southern boy.”
“Well, according to the ex he is. Of course, she’s Boston born. Anyone south of Philadelphia sounds like Reba McEntire to her. Guy could be from anywhere from Indiana to the Florida Keys. And the composite isn’t much good.”
“A bulletproof false ID,” Bill said, “and he knows how to defeat facial recognition and elude a combined state, local and federal dragnet. And he brought down a crew of badasses all by himself. Think he’s one of us? Or was one of us?”
“Does sound like he has skills, doesn’t it?” Nancy said.
“Or former military.”
“You sound tired.” The cynical cool had melted from her voice.
“You have no idea,” he said and watched the ceiling swimming in and out of focus.
“The world will still be here when you wake up.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, Nancy.”
“Good night, Bill.”
He was already gone, the cell phone tumbling from his hand to the carpet.
11
It was flurrying snow when the taxi pulled up under the apron at the entrance of the America's Best. A big guy in work boots squeezed his way into the cramped confines of the minivan's rear seat. The driver eyeballed the guy in the rearview. He looked like he was dressed to go deer hunting. Or, with a heavy growth of beard on his jaw, maybe fresh back from a deer camp.
“Where to?” the driver said.
“You tell me . . . Phil,” the big man said, leaning forward to read the driver’s name off the ID plate on dash.
“What’s the supposed to mean?” said the driver whose name was not Phil. That was his cousin who owned the hack and allowed a couple of family members to rack up hours behind the wheel, though that was not strictly legal. In truth, it was entirely illegal.
“I’m new in town. I don’t know where to go.” With an easy smile, the big man rested back on the seat.
“And I’m supposed to tell you?” not-Phil said,
studying his passenger in the reflection.
The big guy leaned forward, a fifty folded between his fingers. “Just a few helpful suggestions, you being a local.”
“Help me out, son. Are you thirsty or are you lonely?” Not-Phil took the fifty and slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt.
“Lonely.”
“I know just the place,” not-Phil, said and put the mini in gear to roll out toward the highway to enter the stream of golden lights flowing past in the winter gloom.
The place was a single home in what was once a blue-collar neighborhood in nearby Carbondale. The house glowed amber under twinkle lights left up long after Christmas. They gave off a dismal rather than festive effect. A four bedroom with a three-car carport on a half-acre lot enclosed by cyclone fencing. Two Dobermans trotted around the yard. The snow was mottled with their feces.
A train passed by in the dark close enough that Levon could hear the clank of the coupler heads as it slowed into a yard.
The driver handed over his business card.
“For the drive back,” not-Phil said.
“Thanks.” Levon let him keep the fifty for a twenty dollar fare.
A waist-high gate opened from the sidewalk onto a paved walkway lined either side with cyclone fencing creating a lane all the way to the front door. The two dogs loped beside him, heads held low, sniffing through the links. Not a sound out of either of them. They were biters.
At the barred front door he pressed a doorbell. A voice spoke from an intercom. A man’s voice. Gruff.
“What house are you looking for?”
“This one,” Levon said and held up the cab driver’s business card to the lens of the camera mounted above the door inside a mirrored plastic dome.
There was a buzz and a click and Levon turned the knob and entered.
The impression of a typical suburban home ended once he was inside. A cramped foyer with paneled walls and a single steel door mounted to the left. To his right was an opening that resembled a teller’s booth in a bank. It was fronted by a pane of Lexan with a pay slot built in at the bottom. The once-clear plastic was yellowed by years of nicotine. An immensely fat man sat behind the pane in a brightly lit room no bigger than a closet. He wore suspenders over a shirt decorated with red roses. A half-eaten apple pie sat by him on a narrow counter. He stuck a fork in the crust. He inclined his head to look at Levon through glasses perched on the end of his nose.
“I don’t know you.”
The same razor-gargling voice Levon had heard over the intercom.
“I’ve never been here before,” Levon said.
“Andy sent you?” That must have been not-Phil’s real name.
“He drove me here. Just dropped me off.”
“You’re not a cop. I know all the cops,” the fat man said without a trace of accusation in his tone.
“Me? A cop?” Levon acted as if the suggestion was both amusing and ludicrous.
“There’s a menu on the wall. Prices are not negotiable.” The fat man poked a sausage finger to his right.
Levon stepped closer to read a printed page enclosed in a plastic sheet that was tacked to the paneling. It listed, in graphic and unmistakable terms, the services offered and the prices demanded. Costs went all the way to five hundred dollars. A notice in the bottom in yellow highlight stated that “each additional party to any of the above services requires an additional charge equal to the price of the selected service.”
“You want a white girl? A black one? We have an Asian girl but you’ll have to wait for her,” the fat man announced through the slot.
Levon stepped back to the Lexan and stood to one side of the waist-high cash slot.
“I was looking for something not on the menu,” Levon said.
The fat man glanced away from his pie, his eyes narrowed. His mouth turned down in a wet frown.
“I don’t want any trouble and I’m not going to have any.”
“Slow down. It’s not like whatever you’re thinking it is,” Levon said, smiling easy, hands held up before him.
“Then what is it?”
“I need papers. Eye-dee. They don’t have to be the best. Just enough to get me where I’m going,” Levon said.
“Now’s when I ask you if you’re cop. Are you a cop?”
“Thought you knew all the cops.”
“All the cops in the county. Not all the cops in the state.”
“I’m not a cop. State, federal or otherwise. I’m just a guy who needs to be someone else for a while. And I need it quick.”
“Quick is expensive,” the fat man said, eyeing Levon’s workman clothes.
Levon counted out five hundred in fifties and twenties and placed them on the smooth sill of the cash slot. The fat man grasped them, all interest in the pie forgotten. He tugged on the bills but Levon maintained his grip.
“Driver’s license, any state. And something with a matching address. Utility bill or like that. And an insurance company card,” Levon said, meeting the other man’s piggy eyes through the hazed pane.
“Bring twice this much back tomorrow.”
Levon released his grip. The fat man plucked the bills away.
“What time?”
“We open at one in the afternoon. I should have what you need by then.”
Levon nodded.
“What about a picture?” the fat man said.
Levon placed a flat square of plastic the size of a postage stamp on the counter and slid it through the slot. It was the photo cut from his Mitch Roeder driver’s license.
“This do?”
“Sure. You staying awhile? Your money’s good here,” the fat man said, nodded toward the menu.
“Maybe another time. Buzz me out,” Levon said and stepped out into the cold.
12
Bill Marquez was rested and restless. Two days of doubling back, re-reading notes, re-questioning sources, left him sour. He was ready to punch a hole in a wall.
Mitch Roeder’s, AKA Tex, trail died in Roanoke.
They found the GMC truck that belonged to Calvin Shepherd on a city lot. There was a report from Roanoke PD of a stolen Buick taken off a hospital lot. Could be their man. If it was he had a twelve-hour head start and could be in any one of seven states by now.
Ted Brompton got Bill his own car and sent him back upstream to talk to witnesses. The night counter guy at the Dogwood in New Market critiqued the composite image. He’d gotten a good look at the guy. Described, as best he could, the little girl, too. Witness descriptions of kids weren’t worth shit generally. Men really never looked at kids unless they were pervs. Women were better at descriptions of children; they noticed things like eye color and clothing.
The counter guy remembered that Roeder went outside. Pointed to the front door of the Dogwood, the street sunny now with afternoon light.
“But it was pissing rain that night. Said he wanted a smoke. He came back inside after a little bit, paid for the check with a twenty and took the little girl out with him.”
That would have been when Shepherd was killed only a few doors away.
“Anyone else here that night?” Bill asked.
“Someone was in one of the other booths. A local, I think. A regular. Give me a second and I’ll remember,” the counter guy said, nodding to an empty booth behind Bill.
“Anyone else you do remember?”
“Two deputies. Howard Chase and Barry Tillotson. But they had their backs to the guy the whole time. We were talking basketball,” the counter guy said.
“I’ll talk to them anyway. You never know.” Bill went for his wallet to pay for the tuna sandwich and Coke he ordered. The counter guy waved him off.
“Take it off my taxes,” he joked.
Bill faked a chuckle and turned to leave.
“Hey, can we start using the ladies room again?” the guy said, gesturing to the door at the back of the place. There was yellow crime scene tape across the opening of a room marked GALS.
Bill s
hrugged. “Sure. We got all we can out of there.”
Bill drove over to the sheriff’s annex and caught the two deputies clocking in for the four to midnight. Neither of them had seen a damned thing. Had their backs to the perp the whole time. One of them actually used the word “perp.”
Everyone watches too goddamn much television, Bill thought as he backed the bureau Chevy out from the row of black and tan county cars.
He pulled onto 81 and drove north toward DC. Tex’s possible route down from New Haven was starting to come together and they had gathered footage from bridges, toll booths and red light cameras. More videos were trickling in from gas stations, discount stores and fast food drive-thrus. There was a team reviewing video. A model was being built backtracking Tex and his daughter all the way back to Lake Whatsis in Maine.
Ted wanted him to wrangle the team and apply pressure for results. It was bureaucratic gravity in effect. DHS was applying pressure to Ted to bring them some good news. Ted was raining shit down on every agent below him.
The current administration was positively sex-mad for homegrown terrorists of the non-Islamic variety. They were always making a case for the danger of militias and white supremacy groups. Anyone in fed law enforcement knew this was boogeyman stuff. The only militias Bill had ever seen were weekend warriors out playing Rambo in the woods. Tubby guys who got bored reenacting Civil War battles and wanted to play with semi-automatic rifles instead of muskets.
And the racist groups were even sadder. They mostly spent their time in court fighting for permits to join parades or set up booths at state fairs. When they weren’t doing that they were making videos for their web sites. It was Bill’s opinion that they should run those videos during the Super Bowl and let the whole country see what a bunch of pathetic assholes these master race dickheads were.
To get the task force that the bureau and Treasury wanted, Ted let the political animals at Homeland think the guy they were chasing was the next Timothy McVeigh. That allowed them to tap the IRS and the NSA for Intel. Hell, the IRS had four times the agents that the G-men and T-men had.