Dead Watch

by John Sandford

  “We can do that. I can do it,” Darrell said.

  “If we can get that out for tomorrow—even if the feds equivocate—we’re in good shape. If we can get that out there tomorrow, it’ll make suicide more reasonable. It’ll take the story away from Bell and those other fuckups, no matter what they did.”

  “I’ll move,” Darrell said eagerly. “The Post, the Times, three or four TV channels . . . I’ll talk to Patricia. He’s got contacts everywhere. He’s got the phone numbers. We can reel it back in, Arlo. They won’t be naming a new guy until after Landers is gone, and that’ll take a while. We’re still good.”

  Merle’s was a long, low concrete-block building painted an anonymous cream, buried in a block of warehouses in the flight path of Dulles International. The sign outside, an unlit wooden rectangle, said, MERLE’S, and nothing else, in fading red paint.

  Jake parked, carried the rifle around to the front door, pushed in, was hit in the face by the not-unpleasant tang of burned gunpowder. The shooting lanes took up the back of the building; the first fifteen feet in the front was the salesroom, isolated from the shooting lanes by a double concrete wall, with panes of double vacuum-glass on both walls. You could still hear the gunfire, but distantly.

  Merle Haines was leaning on the counter, paging through a copy of American Rifleman, while Jerry Jeff Walker sang “I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight” from a buzzing speaker mounted in the ceiling. Haines nodded at Jake, who was a seasonal regular, and asked, “How’s it going?” Jake nodded back and said, “I need to tune up the .243.” He handed over his car keys and Haines hung them on a Peg-Board and said, “Lane nine.”

  “And two boxes of that Federal Vital-Shok, the one-hundred-grain Sierra, if you’ve got it, and two targets.”

  “Goin’ huntin’,” Merle said. He took two boxes of 100-grain Federal off the shelf and two target faces from under the counter, and passed them over. Jake paid him, took his earmuffs out of his pocket, put them on, and pushed through the door into the range. The first eight lanes were for pistols, the last three lanes for rifles, with shooting tables. He walked past two fat guys shooting revolvers and one in-shape military-looking guy shooting a Beretta, down a short flight of stairs, to lanes nine, ten, and eleven. He was alone.

  He’d be shooting down an underground tunnel at fifty yards—not long, but long enough to get an idea of where the gun was. He sat down at a table, arranged a pile of sandbags on the table in front of him, took the rifle out of its case, pressed three rounds into the magazine, and jacked one into the chamber.

  The .243 was a comfortable gun, accurate and easy on the shoulder, if a little slow to reload. He fired five shots slowly, carefully, breathing between shots, then pulled the target in. Four of the shots were tight and all over the bull, right where they should have been. The fifth was a half inch to the right; he’d pulled it. Nothing had moved since Wyoming.

  He fired five more shots at the second target, and got one ragged hole three-quarters of an inch wide, across the lower face of the bull. He packed the gun up, collected the remaining cartridges, and walked back out through the salesroom.

  “Short and sweet,” Merle said, as he handed over Jake’s car keys. “Good luck with them critters.”

  On the way to Madison’s, she called and said, “I’m in the backyard. Johnnie Black is here, I’m calling on his phone. We’re talking about Howard. Johnnie’s got a source who said that the FBI crime-scene investigators have found something weird with the body. There were some scratches on his wrists like he might have been handcuffed and they’ve gone to the three cops and collected their handcuffs.”

  “Jeez. How could they, he wasn’t . . .”

  “The thinking is, they cuffed him, he didn’t resist, then one of them hit him on the back of the head with something heavy, and they threw him out the window—but because he went out and landed on his back and head, there’s no evidence that he was slugged. That’s what the thinking is.”

  “The FBI’s thinking?”

  “No, no, that’s Johnnie, trying to figure out what could have happened. But he’s going to talk to a couple of his media pals, just pass the speculation around. It’ll be on the air tomorrow—keep Goodman shuckin’ and jivin’.”

  “All right. I doubt that’s what happened, though,” Jake said. “Too complicated—especially with witnesses right there in the office.”

  “Maybe . . . Listen, I really need you. I’m scared, I’m sad, I’m messed up by everything that’s happened.”

  “I need you too,” he said. “But if your place is bugged . . .”

  “If the place is bugged, if the bedroom is bugged, then they’ve heard it all before. I don’t care anymore, Jake. I’m going to send Johnnie home. But I need to spend some time with you. Right now.”

  “I’m on my way,” he said.

  He parked a block from her house, got his stick, tapped down the sidewalks, a glorious April evening, sunlight still warming the sky, but cool with a touch of humidity to soften the air. Another car was parked farther down the street, and when he turned in at Madison’s sidewalk, a woman jumped out of the car and called, “Sir, sir, could I speak to you a minute? Sir, I’m from the New York Times . . .”

  Jake called back, “I’m sorry, I really can’t speak to you.” On the porch, he knocked, saw the woman was still coming along the sidewalk, a notebook in her hand, and she called again, “Sir, sir . . .”

  Madison opened the door. He said, quickly, “New York Times coming up fast.” Madison looked behind him, grinned, said, “Come in, Mr. Smith. Good to see you again . . .”

  “It’s a sad day,” Jake said, as the door swung closed. When he heard the snick of the lock, he pushed her back and said, “Not so close to the glass . . .”

  Then her arms were around his neck and his hands were on her hips, and he steered her toward the stairs. At the bottom step she broke away long enough to whisper, “There would be a certain frisson to know that Arlo Goodman was listening, but I freshened up the guest room . . .”

  “Just hope the bed can take a beating,” Jake said.

  The first time they’d slept together had been one of the first time situations that combined curiosity with wariness and possibly courtesy, an effort both to discover and to leave a favorable impression. This time was a collision, with Jake pulling at her clothing, with Madison ripping at his shirt, falling together on the bed, no preliminaries, nothing but in, and consummation, Madison groaning with him, her short rider’s nails digging into his shoulder blades, as he forced himself into her and pressed her down.

  When they finished, she gasped, “God . . . bless me.”

  He was sweating, breathing hard, his heart thumping, and he wanted to do it again, right then, but was temporarily hors de combat. He rolled away, stood up, shook himself, crawled back to her, put his mouth next to her ear, and said, “No jokes about bugs.”

  She said, aloud, “I wonder if anyone has figured us out? The first time we met, Johnnie Black was there, he picked up a little electricity.”

  “Probably me,” Jake said. He was on his back now, his arm under her head. “I was asking a million questions and all I really wanted to do was jump you.”

  “That’s pretty romantic,” she said.

  “Hey. It’s the truth. The first reaction was sexual. Only later did I begin to appreciate your fine mind and deep understanding of Arab culture.”

  She sat up. “My ‘fine mind.’ More like my fine ass.”

  “You do have a terrific ass,” Jake said. “When Danzig sent me to see you, one of the things he mentioned in the briefing was your ass. I’ve noticed that a lot of serious women riders have great asses. Probably all the pounding. Anyway, I’m thinking of nominating you for Miss Ass, USA. We could create a pageant in Atlantic City . . .”

  “We could call the contestants ‘aspirants’ . . .”

  “Your spelling sucks,” Jake said. “Anyway, we could have the Atlantic City Ass Parade, like the Rose Parade in Pasadena, b
ut instead of flowers on the floats . . .”

  “That’s enough. Did Danzig really mention my ass?”

  “Yes, he did. And your . . . breasts.”

  “Except he called them tits.”

  “Yes, he did.” He rolled up on one shoulder. He lightly dragged his index finger from the notch of her collarbone to her navel, and on south. “It’s a weird thing. With most good-looking women, you might want to play around a little. You know, get them up on top, or just . . . fool around. With you, all I want is in. And I want to stay in. I just want to be inside, be as close as I can get.”

  After a moment, she said, “That’s nice, I think. After a while, you’ll probably notice my fine mind.”

  “And your understanding of Thai culture.”

  “Arab.”

  “That’s what I meant, Arab.”

  They made love twice more, and after the second time, with her arms wrapped around his neck, she whispered, “I think . . . we could be onto something here.”

  “At my age, I’m almost afraid to think that,” Jake said. “But I hope so.”

  She pushed herself up on her elbows. “We have a huge tub in the master bath . . .”

  They spent a half hour in the bath, which was big enough to float them both simultaneously, and then climbed out, retrieved their clothes. While Jake got dressed, Madison changed into jeans, boots, and a plaid shirt. She already had a bag packed. “You ready?”

  “I’m ready.” She touched her hair, as though for a TV appearance. “Let’s do it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I think about the girl in Madison. You described her a little too well.”

  “I could figure out something with the car,” Jake said.

  “Nah—I’m going.”

  He trailed her down to the front room. Launching the play, she said, “You’re sure you don’t want another glass of wine? You have to go?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got to get this done,” Jake said. “I could use a Coke. It’s a long drive.”

  They went out in the kitchen, still talking, and Madison got two Cokes out of the refrigerator and said, “Take another one for the road.”

  “Thanks.”

  They drifted back into the front room and he twisted the top off the Coke bottle; Jake wondered if the pfffttt it made would be audible on a tape.

  “I don’t understand why you can’t look at it here,” Madison said. “I mean, in Washington, at your house.”

  “Because I’m tied into the Wisconsin thing. If Novatny smells a rat, the feds might come crashing through the door. And they must be getting frantic, with Barber going out the window. If I’ve got the package, I’m toast. I don’t even know everything that’s in it yet. It might be impossible to hold on to . . .”

  “You’ve got to hold on to it, Jake,” Madison said, urgency in her voice. He thought, Not bad. “You’ve got to. All of this will have been pointless if that thing gets out there now. All you have to do is hold it until after the convention. Or even just before the convention, that would do it. Just hold on to it for a few weeks.”

  “I’d like to. But I gotta find out what’s in it, sugar,” Jake said. “The cabin has everything I need—it’s got Internet access, got a computer, and nobody’s gonna find it. I talked to Billy and nobody’ll be there all week. For the rest of the month, for that matter.”

  “When are you coming back? I might need you here.”

  “I need you, too.” He kissed her, spent some time with it, then broke away, breathing hard again. “We gotta stop. I gotta get going.”

  “Please try to hold on to it,” she said, an urgent, pleading tone in her voice. “If Landers gets knocked out now, they’ll give the job to Goodman in a flash. He’s the one they want. Landers won’t do them any good this year.”

  “I will, I’ll hold on to it.” Sounding a little harassed now. “I’ll try to hold on. If there’s nothing in it that would push it out there right now, I’ll stick it in a safe-deposit box, somewhere that’s not obvious, and we’ll break it out in October.”

  “Where are you going to be? Give me a phone number . . .”

  “You can’t call from here, if there’s trouble, they could trace it back, they’d know you knew where I went.”

  “Only for an emergency. I’d call you from outside.”

  “All right. Got a pen? It’s 540-555-6475.”

  “540-555-64 . . .”

  “6475. Don’t use your cell phone, either. We don’t want any tracks that the feds can find later. For one thing, that might drag Billy into it, just for loaning me the place.”

  “What if I have to call you, and you’re not there?”

  “I’ll be there. Or I’ll be on my way back here. I’m gonna get up early and work on it all day; I won’t be going for a walk in the woods.”

  In the doorway she kissed him a last time and whispered, “How was that?”

  “Perfect.” Though he wasn’t sure about that: some of it sounded like dialogue from a bad novel.

  He left her in the doorway, headed back down the walk, tapping along with his cane. He was twenty feet down the walk when he heard a woman’s voice calling, “Sir? Sir, I’m with the New York Times.”

  He thought, Damnit, and turned back, scurried up the front steps to the house, rang the bell. Madison appeared at the door, puzzled, and Jake stepped inside, held her close, and whispered, “The Times still has the place staked out. I’ll give you a single ring when it’s clear.”

  “Okay. I’ll start turning out lights.”

  Back outside, the Times reporter was standing on the sidewalk, carefully outside the property line. As Jake came down the front walk, she called, “Sir, could you tell me who you are?”

  “I do paperwork for Miz Bowe and the law firm. You’ll have to call Johnson Black, I’m sure you have his number.”

  “If you . . .”

  “Miss, if I said one more word, they’d fire my ass. Think of the guilt you’d feel.”

  “I’d manage somehow,” she said, but she was smiling at him.

  “Call Johnson Black.” He glanced back at the house. “Miz Bowe is going to bed. If you’re planning to stay all night, I hope your car has a heater.”

  Inside the house, the lights were going out.

  20

  Jake cruised the neighborhood for half an hour before the Times reporter left. He saw her car pulling out of its parking space, followed the taillights until she turned left at the bottom of the hill, eased up to the stop sign, then far enough out into the street to make sure that she’d kept going. When she was out of sight, he touched the speed dial on his cell phone, let it ring once, then turned the car around. Madison came down the side of the house carrying her overnight bag.

  “I hate doing this,” Jake said when she got in the car. “This is way more dangerous than stealing that laptop. Maybe we just oughta call the cops.”

  “No. If it’s the wrong guy’s DNA in Madison, we’d never find him. And we’d look like morons for pointing the FBI at Goodman. We’d have no credibility left at all—and I don’t have that much now.”

  “But hanging you out there . . .”

  “I won’t be hanging out. Besides, the car’s a problem that you can’t solve without me.”

  “If it weren’t for that . . .”

  “Did you bring me the shotgun?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then drive.”

  They got out of Washington in a hurry, stopped at a Wal-Mart and picked up a box of contractor cleanup bags, kitchen gloves, and four infrared game-spotter cameras. From there it was west and south on Interstates 66 and 81, stars out, listening to classic rock on satellite radio, lights sparkling above them on the mountains as they drove down the length of the Shenandoah. As they went past Staunton, Madison said, “We’re getting close?”

  “Another half hour.”

  They could see the lights of Lexington when they cut right into the mountains, good roads narrowing to twisting black-topped lanes. Jake stopp
ed at a dark place, a hillside looming to their left in the starlight, a deep valley on the right. “This is the trailhead for the park,” he said. “It’s three miles across the hill down to Billy’s place. If they come in navigating with maps, I think it’s about 90 percent that they’ll leave their car here. It’s what I’d do. They’ve got a straight shot across the hill and they’d come down on top of us. If they’re good in the woods, nobody would ever see them.”

  “We can’t be locked into this, though,” Madison said. “We’ve got to work out some options.”

  “Yeah. They could leave their car along the road, but the problem is, it might attract attention. Might have a cop note the tag number. There’s really no other place to park, and if you put it back in the woods, then it might really attract attention; you’d be trespassing. This parking area, you see a car in there fairly often. We just have to take care that they don’t blindside us.”

  “Or send in the Virginia State Police. We don’t want to shoot any policemen.”

  “That’s a problem. But they won’t. They won’t want anybody to see the package until they get a look at it first. It’s gonna be Darrell and whoever was with him at Madison.”

  “You’re too confident, Jake,” Madison said.

  “I know how these guys think,” Jake said. “That’s how they’d do it. That’s how I’d do it.”

  “What if they’re already there?”

  Jake smiled: “Then we’re toast. But I don’t think they’d start shooting if they saw you. You’d be too hard to explain.”

  The question of Darrell Goodman’s arrival was the one that bothered them most: they talked about it, off and on, all the way down to the cabin. If the bug in Madison’s house was monitored often, Jake thought, they’d come in at dawn. If it was monitored less frequently, they might not come until evening, or the next morning.