Snow Blind

by Jim Heskett

  Whether he was or not, he seemed the most likely person to have been inside that balaclava last night, swinging the baseball bat.

  Harry appeared in the mirror behind him, grimacing. “It doesn’t look good.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But I think I can play it off as a slip in the woods. Fell and cut myself on a tree trunk.”

  “Could work,” Harry said. “If anyone even bothers to say anything to you.”

  “True. They might not.”

  “Did you keep the bat?”

  Layne shook his head.

  “I see. Was this our boy Rudy Costello?”

  Layne grimaced. “We don’t know for sure that Rudy is ‘our boy.’ More likely it was someone who works for him. But even so, it makes no sense. Someone like Rudy would be smart enough to know that if he is being tailed, there’s no benefit to a frontal assault. He’d be better off doing counter-surveillance to figure out why. Now, he’s shown his cards and we know that he knows we’re onto him. It’s sloppy.”

  “Or, maybe he’s a dumb gangster who’s lashing out like an angry child.”

  Layne tilted his head back and forth. “Could be.”

  “He might have sent the guy after you on a whim, just to keep you from getting to close to whatever he’s got going on. Thinking you’re a looky-loo garden-variety cop trying to dig up dirt on him.”

  “Or, maybe he knows everything and has got me all figured out. I thought I was clever with my spying, but I’m old and out of practice.”

  “That you are, Mr. Parrish. But, it’ll get better from here on out. Won’t take too long.”

  An odd choice of words. Layne eyed Harry. “Did Daphne say I was coming back full-time?”

  “Uhh,” Harry said, “that’s probably privileged information. If she finds out I’m telling you things revealed to me in confidence, then that’s not great for me.”

  “Spit it out, Boukadakis.”

  “Okay, yes, she did say that. She’s pretty confident you’re going to join the new team full time. You, me, Serena, and maybe one or two more. We might not reach the level of where things were before, but she thinks we’ll be able to get back up to a reasonable budget and free reign like we used to have.” Harry jabbed an inhaler in his mouth and took a couple puffs. “But, you’re the lynchpin. She used that word about you specifically.”

  Layne crossed his arms and leaned against the counter. He tugged at his chin a few times. Before responding, he wandered over to the front window and gazed out on the SMRC campus. Clouds overhead, more new snow this morning. The night-shovelers had cleared most of the walkways between buildings, but the white stuff was coming down fast enough to ruin their careful work. The surrounding mountains, which previously had been partially dusted, were now completely white on the third day of their stay. If the snow kept coming down like this, they would have new problems to deal with soon enough.

  “She’s wrong,” Layne said as he returned to Harry. “I’m not even taking a salary for this operation.”

  “That’s a mistake. This in-the-field stuff is hazard pay for me. I know you don’t need the money, but there’s no sense in working for free. Hell, she’ll probably even make you team leader.”

  “I wouldn’t want that.”

  Harry’s brow creased. “Well, I wouldn’t want it either. I don’t know how Oleg managed all of us in the field, plus doing his own part of each thing. Seems like a thankless job.”

  Layne lifted a band-aid from the first aid kit in front of the mirror and covered the cut on his nose. “Do you ever think about the London operation?”

  “From time to time. I try not to because of how it all ended. I wasn’t right for a while after that.”

  “Yeah.”

  Harry lowered his gaze. “You’re still not right. I know that sounds harsh, but I dare you to tell me I’m wrong.”

  Layne examined himself in the mirror and considered Harry’s bold assertion. It’s not as if he thought about London every day. But the similarities of that mission to this one made it impossible to ignore. “It’s been on my mind a lot, these last few days. That’s true.”

  “How’s it been on your mind, exactly?”

  “I keep thinking about the way we infiltrated the warehouse that first night. Maybe if we hadn’t gone in with all the sound and fury. Maybe we could have learned something useful, and we wouldn’t have ended up later in that alley where everything turned into such chaos.”

  “The alley operation was a mess. No doubt about that.” Harry sighed and rubbed his hands together in an absent-minded gesture. “Maybe a quiet entrance would have been better, or maybe not. Maybe everything would have ended up in the same place as it did, no matter what we’d changed. There were a lot of things out of our control during those few days.”

  “When I was first training with Daphne, she kept repeating how important it was not to second-guess decisions made in the field. She talked about how you can work yourself into a heart attack by endlessly thinking over what you could have done.”

  “Didn’t you get a degree in Psychology?”

  “Masters,” Layne said.

  “Then you should know how it works. When you’re on the job, you don’t always have time to think. You just have to act.”

  “Fight or flight,” Layne said.

  “Daphne’s right. You can spend years thinking about the correct way to do something. But in the end, none of that thinking changes anything about what’s happened before. It’s all set in stone. It’s like this… two months ago, I was in the middle of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign—”

  Layne cleared his throat. “I’m going to stop you right there, Harry. You were so close to making a beautiful point, I don’t want you to ruin it with a D&D analogy.”

  Harry chuckled. “Your closed mind is only hurting yourself, Parrish.”

  “I’m okay with that.” Layne tilted his head at Harry’s open laptop, sitting on the bed. “Got anything useful on Rudy Costello yet?”

  “Not really. Even connecting to networks is a challenge up here, let alone being able to connect long enough to pull useful data. Makes me wonder why Daphne insisted I come along. I could have stayed in Virginia and done all of this remotely, with better tools and better access.”

  Layne knew exactly why Daphne had insisted. It was so Layne would feel that sense of camaraderie he used to feel with Harry; to make him want to rejoin the team full time.

  “What do you know?” Layne asked.

  “I know he’s rich, but it’s all in stocks and other above-board things, as far as I can tell. No dirt.”

  “I see.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “Well,” Layne said, “next, I’m going to wait until dark, and then break into Rudy’s bungalow. See if I can’t hurry our investigation along.”

  9

  Layne crouched in the trees behind the bungalow occupied by Rudy Costello. Layne could feel the cold of the snow seeping through his boots, eating away at the warmth in his feet. Brutal nights so far here on the west coast of British Columbia, probably due to the moisture in the air. Colorado was so dry, a low temperature didn’t feel like actual cold. Back at home, the cold didn’t bother him one bit.

  There were no lights on currently in the multi-room bungalow. Most everyone at the retreat center was now attending the dinner after-party, the nightly post-session mixer where people were supposed to get to know their fellow meditation retreat guests and drink overpriced and underpowered drinks from a cash bar. Layne didn’t always shun parties, but he probably wouldn’t have gone, even if he weren’t already occupied with another task.

  But, since today was his second full day and with no good info, he might have been forced to swallow his distaste and attend, anyway. There was a finite number of chances for Layne and Harry to discover useful evidence in their trafficking investigation.

  All day long, Layne had attended sessions like yesterday’s. Meditation groups, lectures on mindfulness, hands-on exercises to learn how to
deal with stress. Layne had kept an eye out for the sauna man, but he hadn’t appeared at any session Layne or Harry had attended. Not normally so odd, because the guests came and went as they pleased. Layne was hoping to find him, though, to see if he was wearing any matching bruises to the ones Layne had bestowed on the anonymous attacker from the night before.

  Layne also hadn’t interacted with Rudy. His previous plan—to approach the target and make a joke about their shared sauna experience—didn’t seem like a smart move anymore. But, during the few occasions Layne had glimpsed Rudy throughout the day, Layne’s target hadn’t given him the impression anything was off or unusual. He went about his business, not noticing—or not caring—about the interaction from the night before.

  Hence the reason Layne decided to carry through with his promise to break into Rudy’s bungalow.

  Layne crept forward, staying clear of the porch light to sneak around to the back door. Outdoor surveillance was nonexistent, at least as far as he and Harry had been able to discern. But that didn’t mean some random person might not spot him skulking around outside a building he had no right to skulk around.

  This bungalow was bigger than his and Harry’s, so he wasn’t yet sure of the layout inside. He guessed he’d find a bedroom or two, a living room, and maybe a kitchenette.

  At the back door, Layne drew a small plastic box from his pocket and extended a cord from the bottom of the device. With a thin screwdriver, he removed the panel over the door’s lock and located the power source. He attached the cord from his Raspberry Pi microcomputer into the lock’s power supply and pressed a button on the side of the device.

  A light flickered on the device, trying to connect to the electronics via the power supply. Layne held his breath. After a pause, the Pi’s light turned green, and the lock clicked.

  “Perfect,” he said. Not quite like Fort Knox, but sometimes even pedestrian locks could present their own difficulties. The device worked on about a quarter of the locks in the world, so Layne considered himself a little lucky tonight.

  He replaced the lock’s cover panel and creaked the door open a few inches. With his ear turned to the inside, he closed his eyes and focused. Just because the lights were off didn’t mean no one was home. Breathe in through his nose, out his mouth, making himself still and focused.

  He slipped a tight baseball cap over his head and latex gloves on his hands. He made sure there were no stray hairs on the shoulders of his jacket. Nothing that could leave any trace.

  After a healthy pause, Layne entered the bungalow. He found himself in a combination living room suite and kitchen, with the only light source emanating from running lights under the cabinets in the kitchen. Layne waited for any shadows in the room to shift. None did.

  He set an internal timer. He would allow himself a maximum of two minutes inside the bungalow before he’d consider it pushing his luck. If Rudy walked in while Layne was poking around, it might explode the entire operation to pieces.

  Since the blinds on the windows overlooking the open courtyard outside the bungalow were open, Layne stayed low as he slinked across the room. In a few short seconds, his eyes adjusted to the slim light filtering in from outside.

  He started in the obvious places, like the closets and Rudy’s random belongings strewn about the bungalow. Layne wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he had a reasonable idea. A passport with an alias, any messages that appeared to be in code. Anything at all feeling out of the ordinary.

  No reason to think Rudy would have installed a secret compartment or something so elaborate, but Layne did check the out-of-the-way spots. He unscrewed the vents and peeked inside. He lifted the toilet tank and searched inside it, and then checked the bathroom for loose tiles. All the usual unusual places were clean.

  He needed a clue to point him in the right direction. If Serena was down in Seattle, chasing the money angle, and Harry was on his laptop, digging up biographical info, then Layne had the only remaining job: catching these people red-handed. In-the-field work. The actual dirty work.

  As he thought about it, “dirty” was the best term for it. To catch these despicable people, he would get as dirty as he had to. These traders of human flesh. These monsters who would terrorize children and rip them from their families.

  Layne would go to the ends of the earth to stop them from ruining even one more life.

  Nothing materialized in the living room or bathroom, so Layne continued on through to the bedroom. A single suitcase was leaning against the wall, and Layne picked through it. He snapped a picture of the inside contents before removing all of them and then picking through each item. He checked the lining of the suitcase, felt around the handle, but nothing out of the ordinary presented itself. No flash drives, no memory cards, no small notebooks, no nothing.

  Using the picture he’d taken as a guide, he replaced all the suitcase’s contents and then deleted the picture.

  After scouring the rest of the bedroom, Layne slumped onto the bed. It didn’t make sense. This Rudy Costello guy fit the exact profile of the two other men who had been indicted for trafficking. Both had been guests at this retreat center. Both of them stayed here right before arranging big shipments or moving lots of cash.

  Rudy gave Layne that same feeling he’d had countless times before. An unmistakable chill that triggered Layne’s sense of danger and told him there was something to uncover. A thorn under the rose.

  But the room was clean. Unless Layne had lost his edge and had missed something obvious that a younger operative would have been able to find. Maybe they had latched onto Rudy too quickly as a possible suspect. Or, maybe Layne was no longer any good at this.

  He shook his head and dragged fingernails along his thighs. No, he hadn’t missed anything.

  Layne had been convinced Rudy was their guy. But, if he wasn’t, then who had been swinging the baseball bat in the woods?

  10

  In the morning, Layne went about his business, attending sessions with Harry. The first one was about the healing power of hot rocks or something like that. Layne had to view each new class as an opportunity, not as a chore.

  He ended the session with a fresh series of burn marks on his back from the heated rocks and nothing about the procedure had heightened his relaxation level. The general atmosphere of this retreat center was beginning to feel increasingly like snake oil, actually.

  Opportunities or not, these activities were not in line with his hobbies.

  So far this morning, there had been no sign of any man who might fit the profile of the one who’d attacked him in the woods, the night before last. Layne was forming a collective sense of the whole of the retreat guests even though he only knew a few of their names. But, he couldn’t tell who was missing. Still couldn’t spot who should have been present but wasn’t.

  In a small dressing room, Layne examined the red burn marks on his back.

  “You’re getting beat up all over this place, Lenny,” Harry said.

  Layne flashed eyes at him since they weren’t alone in the dressing room.

  Harry chuckled but kept his voice down. “Relax. Everyone knows.”

  “They do?”

  “I heard some people talking about it at the thing last night. The after-dinner mixer.”

  Layne wasn’t too surprised since he recalled seeing a random man and a woman nearby when the scuffle had been taking place. “What were they saying about it?”

  “Just that someone decided to have a problem with you, and it wasn’t a good idea, given that you look more like the Hulk than Bruce Banner these days. That’s how everyone knew it was you.”

  “How?”

  “You’re the biggest guy on campus. The Alpha.”

  Layne slid on his shirt and pondered this as the others filtered out of the dressing room. “Well, nothing we can do about what everyone thinks about that now, man. Just keep our heads down and hope it doesn’t make us stick out too much.”

  Fully clothed, he and Harry left t
he dressing room and ventured back toward the front door, to find out where their next session would be. But when they stepped outside, a woman with bright red hair appeared before him. She was in her early forties, probably, muscular and tall, with a flat expression etched on her face.

  “Mr. Priest?” she said to Layne, with a hint of an American South accent. “Leonard Priest?”

  “That’s me,” he said.

  “My name is Victoria Overton. I’m the director of the SMRC.”

  “Sure. Nice to meet you.”

  Her flat expression curved into something she probably thought was a smile. “Yes. Well, I wondered if I could have a word with you. Shouldn’t take but a moment.”

  Layne turned to Harry and said, “I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “I could come along,” Harry said.

  “No need, Mr. Brown. My business is with Mr. Priest.”

  Harry flashed Layne a look like he was trying to check in with him. Layne didn’t know what to think of this, but he shooed Harry away. Keeping a low profile.

  “No worries,” Layne said. “I’ve got a few free minutes right now.”

  “Excellent.” She spun on her heels to walk back toward the main lodge, with no direct order to follow.

  Layne shrugged at Harry as he hiked after the woman on the snowy path. Victoria glanced at her phone and then shoved it into her pocket. As she walked, she pivoted her body back toward him. “How are you liking the Center?”

  “I’m enjoying myself so far. It’s a lovely campus.”

  She ascended the steps to the building. “Yes, indeed. We’re very lucky the town and the indigenous peoples let us build here.”

  “Was that a difficult negotiation? Everyone here seems to say the people of Squamish are arm-in-arm with the SMRC.”