Hard Return (21 page)

CHAPTER
26

Marcella Rouch knew she’d hear from her sister-in-law, Barb Carey. She knew Barb would feel angry and betrayed. Marcella didn’t have much use for Barb anyway, so that wouldn’t pose a particular problem. Marcella also knew that Barb suspected that Justin had swiped the photo of Joe Till from her phone. She would assume that he’d shared the photo with Marcella, and boom! More family drama.

Now the photo was all over the news—on TV and the Internet—and Marcella had already ignored two calls and deleted three text messages from Barb. Barb was no dummy. She knew there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of photos that the Gordon C. Tuttle School Shooting Task Force had to go through, and she knew that one way to narrow it down was to rely on sources in law enforcement—from other cops. In other words, trustworthy sources. Marcella was all cop; she worked Crimes Against Persons with San Diego PD.

Yesterday, Marcella had received a phone call from a member of the Gordon C. Tuttle School Shooting Task Force. An FBI special agent on the task force took her statement. Marcella told him about Joe Till’s odd hours, and her sister-in-law’s own conjecture that Till drove someplace every weekday and returned by early evening. Barb herself had done the math, how he could have driven five days a week to Torrent Valley to familiarize himself with the school and the kids there. She’d suspected as much—that he had gone there day after day, on weekdays, when school was in session. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to make the connection. Not to mention, Barb had also said she’d had a bad feeling that day, even calling Marcella to check to see if Joe Till had been injured or killed or—God forbid—jailed when he failed to come back.

Deep down, Barb knew. Marcella was sure that Barb knew exactly what had transpired. Joe Till knew that there would be a school shooting—knew it would go down. It was her opinion that he had kept that knowledge secret.

Why, she couldn’t imagine. But she’d always thought there was something wrong with him. Maybe he’d been damaged by the war. She’d had no qualms about submitting the photo to her sergeant.

But so far, as far as Marcella knew—and they could just be withholding info; in fact, they were
probably
withholding info—they had not been able to identify the man she knew as Joe Till.

Then the FBI special agent working the case called her. He’d kept his cards close to his vest, just asked her where she’d obtained the photo and when it was taken. That was yesterday. She suspected that law enforcement might very well converge on her sister-in-law’s place—and soon.

She hoped Barb wouldn’t be held as a material witness. She hoped that she wouldn’t be arrested. But justice was justice and the school shooting task force needed to know. She was a cop first, and family, second. Barb Carey wasn’t much of a sister-in-law, and now Marcella was returning the favor.

If she could prevent this guy from going off again and killing more people, she would be happy. It was the way she rolled.

Landry awoke in the darkness of the hotel room. It was the middle of the night. For a moment he forgot where he was. He was back in Afghanistan. Or maybe Iraq. No—Afghanistan. The Korengal Valley. It was bad—he’d lost two good friends that day. Then he realized he was in another hotel room, another anonymous hotel room, and nothing had awakened him except his own mind. Jolie was gone, back to New Mexico. His wife and daughter were gone, too, and Gary refused to tell him where they were, except to say they were “safe.” He doubted that. What would a pansy comptroller know about safe houses? Would he fight off the bad guys with a briefcase and a spreadsheet? Fortunately, Landry had made sure that both Cindi and Kristal knew how to protect themselves. If they took their weapons with them, they would know how to use them.
If
they’d kept up their practice. He hoped they had. They’d also had martial arts training, but he knew Cindi and Kristal would be no match for whoever was coming for him.

The person behind this had used Landry’s family once to try and draw him out. He would have no qualms about doing it again.

Right now, though, he could feel that something—or someone—was closing in on him. It wasn’t just the photo on TV, but the idea that someone, somewhere, had turned an eye on him.

He knew it was personal.

Again, he felt it in his jaw. He felt it in his whole body, which had tightened up, like a violin string to its breaking point. He took a deep breath. Closed his eyes. Let the white noise in his head subside into silence. He’d had years of practice letting go of his fears—war had done that for him.

Whoever it was—one person or an army—he would be ready for them. He knew how to evade, and he knew how to fight, and he knew how to kill.

He allowed himself to drift back into sleep and awoke again at four a.m. Rested. Ready. He ordered room service. Turned the shower on and left the bathroom door open. Called out to the hotel employee who brought it to leave it outside the door. He waited ten full minutes and then retrieved the food.

He turned on the television. The “news” had moved on. There were more pressing and important things in the world than a poor photo of one person of interest.

There was nothing about Gordon C. Tuttle High School. Already it was old news, fading like that photograph would if it were printed up and exposed to the light. Presidential, global, and local politics took the spotlight, the same flames fanned over and over again.

But Landry thought about the school. He wondered where his wife and daughter were. He wondered how Kristal was handling Luke’s death. He wondered if she suspected it had something to do with her father.

He wondered how she had taken the news about him—that he was alive.

What would she think? Would she think he had something to do with the deaths of those kids? With Luke’s death?

He couldn’t believe that. Kristal would know he loved her. She had to know he loved her and her mother more than anything else on earth. She had to know that he would never shoot up a school.

From what he’d seen on the news, they were still leaving out details on the shooter’s death.

In fact, they had ignored that whole aspect. More than a week had gone by and there was very little on the shooting, if anything. When his picture popped up on the screen yesterday, Landry assumed that they were thinking he was an associate of the shooter. Maybe an accomplice.

They would assume that a sniper of his caliber would be a professional. These were no dummies, these cops. If he were working the case, he would have guessed that the two had worked together—himself and the shooter—and that he had shot the shooter to keep him from being captured and questioned.

Caught and interviewed—those were the nonmilitary terms for it.

The problem was, they were looking at it the wrong way. Landry was convinced that someone had shot up the school to lure him out. Someone already suspected he was alive.

And all those kids were dead because of it.

He had to stay at large. He had to figure out who had tried to draw him out. And he had to find his wife and daughter and make sure they were safe.

The restaurant, Sam’s Place, was on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles proper, a busy part of town with plenty of high-rises, businesses, four lanes of traffic, bistros, shops, and hotels lining the streets. Not too upscale but not down in the mouth, either. Sam’s Place was a chain with four rooms chock-full of talking people. It was lunch hour, the noise level was high—a loud babble, people leaning forward and conversing earnestly with one another. The waiters were young and attractive, probably college students, friendly but busy. They couldn’t afford to linger. Taking orders was down to a science. The kind of place where the young server tried to sell them an appetizer by rote.

Eric wore blue. Landry wore gray. Just like Landry’s favorite film of all time,
Casablanca
, a heady cauldron of war, betrayal, spies, sentimentality, patriotism, and outrageous heroism. Sam’s Place fit the theme.

Eric the Red had cleaned up nicely. He wore a blue shirt and a blue tie and navy-blue slacks. Good shoes. Reasonably good slacks, a nice watch. Eric could afford a nice watch. He had the requisite iPhone and the get-down-to-business-after-the-first-drink attitude. Busy, busy, busy.

Landry, likewise. He wore a gray shirt, a darker gray tie, charcoal gray slacks.

There were plenty of others who wore those two colors, but the uniformity of the presentation made them stand out across a crowded room.

Of course Eric the Red would stand out in any room.

They made it easy on the server. Generic food. Generic drinks. Earnest conversation—and the server knew from experience that the best thing he could do was leave them alone, popping up only to put down a plate or sell another drink or dessert.

They’d managed an out-of-the-way corner at a two-top where the weak and unobtrusive sound system played “As Time Goes By” through the speaker above. Eric had set his briefcase on the small table, had a printout under one hand.

“Got some news for you, bro,” Eric said, leaning forward so he could be heard over the rush of sound. “It’s from the Toolshed.”

Landry had known it was coming. “I’m a mark?”

Eric nodded.

“You know who put out the paper on me?”

“No idea.”

Landry absorbed this. He’d been prepared for this eventuality, ever since his photo was put up on TV.

The trip to Austria had yielded results, but not the one he’d expected. He’d expected to be hired for a hit, thought that he would get into the network that way, as—Peterman.

“The pic, man. They’re taking it seriously.”

“Who’s taking it seriously? Is there a way to find out who put the paper out on me?”

“No idea and no way to find out.
Somebody
got a nasty surprise when you showed up on TV.”

Landry reflected that it would be a lot of people. Hard to narrow down.

Eric leaned forward. “I do have a marginal framework—a hack. He may be able to get you what you need.”

Two questions. Landry asked them. One was “How long will it take?” and the other was “How much?”

“Might be a couple of days, or it could be like that.” Eric snapped his fingers. “You know how it goes.” And he named a price.

Just then the waiter, who looked to be all of twelve, came by with the food. “Careful,” he said. “These plates are hot.”

Andrew Keller, FBI special agent, Los Angeles field office, had figured out within a few hours that the man who spun stories about a brother with a fishing lodge in Montana—and had extracted information from him—was a fake. And Andrew could thank his lucky stars that the information the man had extracted was minimal.

Think about it: how easy it was. The man who called himself Jim Branch from Kalispell never replied to the message Keller’d left on his cell, and when Keller had finally called the municipal number, he got a message saying he’d reached an office in human resources on the first floor. He called back later and got a receptionist. The receptionist said she’d never heard of Jim Branch, homicide detective from Kalispell, Montana—or his son—and as far as she knew there was no one named Branch working in the building. She’d added that if Jim Branch’s son was indeed a police officer, he would have called from one of the three offices in the Las Vegas Municipal Police Department, or used his cell.