by Rachel Ford
“That’s his fault too,” Jimmy put in.
Joey nodded eagerly, apparently grateful for a scapegoat.
“Whose?” Chief asked.
“Day’s. This guy.”
“Explain.”
“We were going to clear everyone out right away,” Joey said. “But then there was the fight at the camp site.”
Chief’s eye twitched. “What fight?”
“Not us. Not us, boss. It was Day, and some yahoo slapping his wife around.”
“Day’s wife?”
“No, the yahoo’s wife. This guy decided to be a hero and go intervene. Save the damsel in distress, I guess.”
Joey shook his head disgustedly. “Next thing we know, there’s cops crawling all over the place. Then the yahoo’s friends show up. It’s chaos. People getting arrested and evicted. We had to lay low, stay out of sight.”
“So you waited until the next morning?”
“Exactly. Then we got the family out of there, and I stayed back. You know, to take the campsite down. Clean up. That kind of thing. Shannon checked us out. She looks like the woman, kind of.”
“And how did you wind up at the showers, where this guy and his kids could ID you?”
Joey shrugged again. “It was a long night. A lot of sweating. You know how it goes. I needed to scrub down.”
Chief spread his arms and turned right and then left, in a wide, expansive gesture. “And what? This place doesn’t have running water?”
“Course it does.”
“So why were you at the public showers, instead of using the shower here?”
Joey wrinkled his nose in disgust. “You know how old people are. They shit themselves. They stink. They sure as hell don’t wash the shower out regularly.”
Chief rubbed the bridge of his nose and took a long breath.
“Anyway, I figured the damned baby would still be screaming. I wanted to give them time to, you know, settle in.”
“So to recap…just tell me if I got this right, Joey. You kidnapped a family for a site we didn’t end up keeping anyway. You killed the hostage that I expressly told you not to kill. You dropped his body out the back of your truck, so this guy–” This was said with another thumb, jutted my way. “Could find it. You hung around to take a shower so this guy’s kids could ID you, because you didn’t want to deal with a baby – the same baby you kidnapped for the site you didn’t need.”
Joey didn’t answer.
“Am I missing anything?”
“No,” Joey said. “But it’s all under control. We covered our tracks.”
“Not really,” I said. “Deputy Wagner sounded pretty suspicious when he called me just now.”
Chief turned from me to Joey. “What?”
“It’s nothing,” Joey said. “We took care of it.”
“What happened?”
So Joey told him all about the phone call, and how they’d made me keep it on speakerphone. “He bought it, boss. Hook, line and sinker. We’re in the clear.”
“So you kidnapped someone, and kept his phone on the whole time?” Chief asked.
Joey glanced at Jimmy. Jimmy glanced at Tyler. Tyler glanced at Shannon; and she stared right back at her boss. He licked his lips again. “I mean…yeah. No one knew he’d been kidnapped, right?”
“Okay,” Chief said again. “Okay. What’s done is done.”
Joey started to relax. The tension sagged out of his shoulders, and he breathed out. Jimmy shifted the bags and gun cases. Tyler took a half step toward one of the distant hall doors.
Then Chief drew a short, suppressed pistol from under his jacket, and shot Joey in the head three times.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The first shot blew the back of his skull off. The second evaporated the front, and the third passed clean through a pink mist of blood and brain matter.
The suppressor contained the worst of the noise, but the shots still filled the small space: three sharp, staccato pops in the silence.
Jimmy and Tyler jumped backward. “Jesus Christ,” Jimmy said.
Tyler said nothing. He just scrambled for his own weapon.
Shannon stood there, paralyzed, unmoving and unspeaking.
The other guys, Chief’s six men, suffered no such inhibitions. They’d already drawn their weapons and trained them on the remaining three members of Joey’s team.
Chief spoke, quietly and firmly. “Put it down, Tyler.”
Tyler froze, his barrel halfway between the floor and Chief.
“Put it down, or they will kill you. And neither of us want that.”
Four barrels trained directly on him. The other two were split between Shannon and Jimmy, one apiece.
“Now,” Chief said.
Tyler dropped the gun.
“You killed him,” Jimmy managed at last. “Jesus Christ. You killed him.”
“He was a fucking idiot,” Chief said. “A complete fucking idiot.”
“You killed him,” Jimmy said again.
“Yes, I did. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” He was still holding the pistol. I couldn’t make out much, but it was a Ruger of some kind, with a short barrel – three, maybe three and a half inches long, and a short suppressor. “But you and me? We got no problem unless you make it a problem. Understand?”
Jimmy stared at him and said nothing.
Chief glanced at the other two, Shannon and Tyler. “That goes for all of youse. You don’t got to answer for Joey’s stupidity. Not unless you want to.”
Shannon blinked twice, then shook her head. “No. No, I got no beef with you, Chief.”
“Me neither,” Tyler said.
“Good,” Chief said. “What about you, Jimmy?”
Jimmy considered for another long moment. Then, he shook his head. “No. No beef.”
“Good. Okay, first things first: we got to clean this mess up. Where’d you say you buried Callaghan?”
No one spoke.
Chief prompted, “Jimmy?”
“Huh? Oh. Uh. Out back. Behind the barn.”
“Good. You can put Joey there, with him.”
“Me?”
Chief considered, then shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m being insensitive. I would have assumed you’d be just as happy to be rid of him as I am, but I forget that you worked with that clown.”
I couldn’t tell if he was mocking or being sincere. His tone sounded somewhere between the two. The east coast accent didn’t help, either.
“You got another guy upstairs, right?” Chief went on. “The husband with the baby?”
“Cody Carter,” Tyler said.
“Good. Get him down. Him and Mr. Day here can see to the burying. You can go with them, to make sure they’re sufficiently respectful to the deceased and all that.”
Jimmy and Tyler exchanged glances, like they weren’t sure who the order had been intended for. “I’ll do it,” Tyler said.
“Okay, good. Jimmy here can show me around when you get back.” He turned to Jimmy. “Right?”
Jimmy nodded. “Yeah, sure thing.”
“Good. Excellent. Shannon, you keep an eye on the Millers. Marco, you’re with me. The rest of you can start getting settled.”
A round of, “You got it,” and, “Right,” and “Copy that, boss,” followed.
Jimmy stayed where he was. Tyler headed to the stairs, leaving his cases and bags at the bottom of the staircase. Shannon went for the living room, her face pale and drawn.
Five of Chief’s crew dispersed throughout the house. They stepped over Joey’s body, around the chunks of brain matter and the dark pools of blood, like it was the most natural thing in the world, the way someone would avoid a spilled drink or a dropped piece of food.
Jimmy, the guy called Marco, Chief and I stood where we were. Chief seemed completely at ease, as if none of what had just transpired bothered him in the slightest. Marco stood easy, with a relaxed posture and easy manner.
He was one of the medium sized guys, with an average face
and average build. But underneath the unconcerned exterior, his eyes held a sharp, attentive light.
As for Jimmy, he definitely looked the worst of the trio. His face had gone terribly pale, except for a cluster of splotchy red patches on each cheek.
“Tell me about yourself, Mr. Day,” Chief said in a moment.
I glanced over to him. “Me?”
Chief nodded. “You have gotten in my men’s way an awful lot for someone who says he has no connection to us.”
“I told you: it was a coincidence. They camped near me. They dropped the body on the road I was on. That’s it.”
“Tell me about yourself,” he said again. “Who are you? What do you do?”
“My name’s Owen,” I said. “I’m an insurance actuary.”
“Exciting,” he said.
“It pays the bills.”
“Where do you live?”
“Kennington.”
“Where’s that?” he asked.
I told him: another midwestern state, just a few hundred miles away.
“Are you from Wisconsin? Originally, I mean? You got family here?”
“No.”
“Then why Wisconsin?”
“We’re camping in the state forest.”
“Why?”
I looked him straight in the eye. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”
“Try me.”
“Okay. My niece heard about a place called Random Lake.”
“It’s near here,” he said.
“Yes. She wanted to visit it.”
“Why?”
“Because she liked the name. She thought it was funny.”
He raised an eyebrow, and then laughed.
I shrugged and tried to pretend I wasn’t thinking about the gun he still held. “I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here.”
“You and your niece?”
“And my nephew.”
“But not their parents?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because their dad is dead, and their mom is at Disney World with her youngest and her new boyfriend and his kids.”
He cringed, a little amused and a little sympathetically. “Rough. Welcome to the real world, am I right?”
I said nothing.
“So you’re the good uncle, taking care of them while she’s gone?”
“I’m trying,” I said.
“So you really didn’t have anything to do with us?”
“Not a damned thing.”
He nodded. “Well, the good news is, I do believe you, Mr. Day. The bad news is, thanks to this dumbass…” He tapped his toes against Joey’s bleeding corpse. “You’re in this now.”
“We don’t want trouble,” I said.
“Good. Because neither do I.”
I didn’t quite know how to respond to that. The guy was standing there, gun in hand as he hovered over the body of a guy he’d just shot down.
“I’m a plain man, Mr. Day. By now, I’m sure you’ve figured out that we have a plan. You don’t need to know the details of it, but it gets down to money. A lot of money, that I’m going to take. That’s all I’m interested in.
“So, provided you don’t interfere with that, you got nothing to worry about. Okay?”
I said nothing.
He frowned. “You don’t believe me?”
I shook my head. “You want me to be honest?”
“It’ll save us both time.”
“Okay. You’re holding my niece and nephew hostage. You’re holding me hostage. You just shot someone. And you want me to believe you’re going to just let us walk away when you’re done with whatever it is you’re doing?”
Chief paused, like he was considering my words. “Okay,” he said. “That’s fair, from your perspective, I guess. But you’re overthinking this, Owen. I didn’t take you hostage. That was Joey. I didn’t want you hostage. That was Joey.”
“But you’re not letting us go, either.”
“Not yet. Not until the job is done. But if I wanted you dead, Owen, you’d be dead already. I don’t want you dead. And stop worrying – I don’t need to kill you to keep our secret. We’re going to be out of the country long before it could be a problem.”
He didn’t look like he was lying. But, that didn’t really mean much, did it? Some people could lie with a straight face. Some people enjoyed it.
Still, some part of his words rang true. He had just shot Joey. If we were slated for execution too, why wait?
“Okay,” I said.
Chief clapped me on the back and nodded. “Good. In twenty-four hours, this’ll all be over. So let’s work together, and all make it out of here alive and well.”
* * *
Deputy Austin Wagner, 2:00 PM
Convincing the boss was easy enough. He heard my account of the events and agreed with my conclusions.
The hard part came in deciding what to do. Did we put out an amber alert for the kids? Could we, after I’d heard someone tell Day that convincing me had saved his skin? Wouldn’t that just alert Tesch that the gig was up, that we were onto him?
“You’re sure this is Tesch?” he asked.
“Who else could it be?”
“I don’t know. But it seems like an awfully lot of effort for revenge, doesn’t it?”
“People kill people for less every day.”
“Kill? You bet. If someone had shot Day, Tesch’d be my first suspect. But kidnapping someone, and their niece and nephew? What’s his plan?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. Nothing jumped out at me.
“Did you hear Tesch’s voice in the background?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. But there was at least one guy and a woman.”
“Which means he’s got an accomplice, or accomplices.”
Tesch had friends – friends loyal enough to go to jail for him. Which I pointed out.
The boss nodded. “And Ashley? Tesch’s wife? Would she go along with this?”
That, I didn’t know. A day ago, I would have said no, absolutely not. Then again, terror was a powerful motivator. Depending on the situation, DV victims could be talked, cajoled and coerced into all kinds of things.
“Where are we at with locating Tesch?” he asked.
I told him what I knew, about the trooper and the ticket and the second campground.
He nodded. “Have you been in touch with the local PD, or sheriff’s department?”
“Not yet. I was about to when I got Day’s call.”
“Start there. Call me when you reach someone. But Austin?”
“Yes sir?”
“Keep your eyes open. I think there’s something we’re missing here.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cody came down a minute later, pale as a sheet. He glanced at me, then at Chief and Jimmy and Marco. I tried to look reassuring. Not that I was completely convinced we’d live through the next few hours. Whatever Chief’s intentions at the moment, a few hours of thinking about witnesses and backup plans might just convince him we were better off dead.
But whatever Chief intended to do, things would be worse if Cody panicked – worse because he might prompt hostile action, and worse because I wouldn’t be able to rely on him to back me up if things started to go sideways.
He froze to the spot, though, when he saw Joey. Tyler prodded him in the ribs with his gun. “Move.” He still refused to budge.
Chief glanced him over, and a half-smile formed on his lips. “You must be Cody. Cody Carter?”
Cody said nothing.
“You’re not afraid of blood are you, Mr. Carter?”
Cody still said nothing.
“Come. Mr. Rabbitt and I had a…” He paused, like he was searching for the right word. “Disagreement, about leadership styles and objectives. He lost, as you can see. I need you and Mr. Day to bury the body. That’s all.”
&n
bsp; Cody glanced at me again. I nodded briefly.
“Move,” Tyler said again.
This time, Cody did, one halting step after another. He paused three feet from the body.
“Good,” Chief said. “Now, I’ll tell you what I told Mr. Day here. Joey was an idiot to involve you, and you have my apologies that it happened. But it did. No use crying over spilled milk, and all that.”
Cody stared at him wordlessly.
“So for the moment, we are stuck together. Don’t make a problem, and we won’t have a problem. Okay?”
“You’ll let us go, you mean?” Cody asked. His voice trembled a little as he spoke.
“By tomorrow, yes.”
“You won’t hurt anyone?”
“As long as you cooperate, no.”
Cody nodded. “Okay.”
“So, Tyler is going to go with you. Take care of the mess. We’ll talk soon.”
Then he and Marco and Jimmy filed past, toward the kitchen. Apparently, the grand tour would start there. Probably, with shutting off my phone, since Chief had seized on that.
Tyler waited for them to pass and said, “Come on. We’ll use your truck.”
“My truck?” Cody asked, blanching.
“It’s that or the Millers’. And it’s falling apart. So yes, yours.”
Cody hesitated again, like it was one thing to cover up a murder, but another altogether to use his truck to do it.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s just get it over with.”
“You can’t,” he said. “The pull-behind’s hooked up to it.”
“You can unhook it,” Tyler said.
Cody went on hesitating. “Come on, man. It’s a new truck.”
Tyler stared at him like he’d lost his mind.
“I don’t want blood on it,” he explained.
“I don’t know what you think is going on here, man,” Tyler said, “but this is not a negotiation. This is not a democracy. We are not friends, trying to figure shit out. You’ve got two choices: you do what I tell you, or you get shot. There is no middle ground.”
That shut Cody up and got him moving.
Tyler marched me into the living room with Shannon and the Millers. “Watch this guy for me,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Then he and Cody headed outside. The Millers stared straight ahead, ashen-faced. Shannon beckoned me into the room with a flick of her gun hand. When I hesitated, she said, “Give me a reason, asshole.”