Shallow Creek (17 page)

“Maybe you’re right,” Brendan said absently, staring at the back of the driver side headrest.  “I want this finished, and you’re promising me you’re close to ending it.”  He met her gaze.  “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“You said that earlier.”

“Well, this time I mean it.  I’m not a cop.  This isn’t my job
.”

The admission hurt more than he’d thought it would.  Accepting failure wasn’t part of his DNA, and now he was going to walk off into the sunset and let someone else take care of his problem.  She was probably right, though.  What would be the best case outcome for him if he kept pursuing his brother?  Killing Grant and then spending twenty years in prison for it?

“That’s right,” Spee said.  “Leave it to us.”

Brendan nodded and waited while she got out of the car and opened his door.  Finally facing the crossroads of whether or not to keep going, he made the difficult choice to let it go.  He slid out of the car, ignored the two agents, and skulked off towards the main road.

As he reached the corner, he glanced back over his shoulder to see Spee watching him stoically beside her unmarked cruiser.  The crackle of the radio broke her fixation and she ducked back into the car.

That was it then.  It was over.

He turned the corner and strolled to the main street, hands dug deep into his pockets.  When he reached the intersection, a familiar black Dodge pickup flew around the corner, heading up towards the back of the grocery store.  He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the truck that had followed him and Kim out to the park the other day, before that whole relationship had failed impressively.  Apparently the DEA had kept better tabs on him than he’d thought.

His sullen march towards his
truck progressed unimpeded, but thoughts of Kim and the story she’d entrusted to him plagued him every step of the way.

Chapter 40

A loud pounding from downstairs roused Brendan from his fitful sleep.  Rubbing his eyes, he rolled over and grabbed the small alarm clock, begging the display to show a reasonable time.

Two A.M.

Muffled shouting traveled up the stairs to his room, and the owner of the voice was not happy.  Brendan rolled out of bed, pulled on some jeans, and then slipped on a pair of sneakers.  Before walking out of the room, he turned and grabbed a clean shirt off a hanger in the closet. 
As an afterthought, he pocketed his cell phone, which had been charging for the couple of hours he’d slept.  He could hear his dad yelling as soon as he cracked the bedroom door open.

“You have no right to do this,” his father protested.  “This is an illegal search and seizure. 
You just wait till the sheriff hears about this.”

From the landing at the top of the stairs, Brendan had no view of the front of the house.  He quickly descended and made the U-turn that left him on the far side of the living room, looking at a big man wearing a vest with a DEA logo.  The man took a break from screaming at his father when his eyes locked onto Brendan.

“Get him!”

Two guys clad in full SWAT gear charged around their leader and rushed Brendan.  Fighting the instinct to lash out at the pair, he held his tongue, knelt down, and put his hands over his head.  Judging by the way everyone was acting, he assumed this was what they wanted.

Sure enough, they wrestled his hands down, yanked them up behind his back hard enough to lift him to his feet, and then cuffed him tightly enough to cut into his flesh.  As their commander strode towards him, having waited until Brendan was properly restrained, Brendan started to wonder what the hell his brother had done to him this time.

“Brendan
Rhodes, you are under arrest in connection with the disappearance of Special Agents Casey Spee and Mario Tyson,” the DEA guy said, his face less than an inch from Brendan’s.  “You have the right to remain silent.  Anything you say will be used against you in a court of law.  You have the right to an attorney.  If you cannot afford one, one will be provided to you.”

Brendan caught a glimpse of his mother breaking down in hysterics in the doorway to her bedroom.  When his dad moved to comfort her, one of the SWAT guys made to motion him back, but good ol’ dad slapped the man’s hands away and pushed past to get to his wife, who’d crumpled in a heap on the floor.  Brendan twitched involuntarily as the anger consumed him.  In response, one of the men holding him drove the butt of his rifle into
his side.  His lungs emptied in an instant, leaving him on his knees, bent double and gasping for air.

“Stay down!”

“That all you got?” Brendan said, trying to suppress the convulsions in his chest.

“Bring him,” the leader snapped before turning quickly and power walking his way out of the house.

The goons in black forced Brendan up and prodded him onward as he continued to cough uncontrollably, still reeling from the strike.  Shame stung him deeper than the butt of the rifle as he shuffled past his wailing mother, who lay inconsolable in her husband’s arms.  Darryl Rhodes’ eyes narrowed when he shifted his gaze from his wife to his son.  Brendan refused to break the demoralizing stare until his escorts shoved him on.

Outside stood the SWAT truck and a couple of cruisers, lights flashing.  They’d been so kind as to leave their sirens off, but Brendan could see his parents’ neighbors watching from their lawns up and down the street.  Just once he would’ve liked to not cause his parents so much grief.  An unknown agent popped
open the back door to one car and the SWAT guys guided Brendan into the backseat.

The car in front pulled away from the curb and Brendan’s vehicle followed suit.  He shifted in his seat to see the SWAT truck sticking close behind.  This was a hell of an escort, so obviously something huge
had happened, but Brendan was damned if he knew the secret that everyone else seemed in on.

“What happened to Agent Spee?” he asked the two strangers transporting him to what he assumed was the sheriff’s office.

Neither man acknowledged him.

“Do I file the claim for my broken ribs with the DEA’s insurance, or the sheriff’s?”

And still nothing.  These were pros, federal agents with explicit instructions not to talk to their quarry, not sheriff’s deputies like the punks who’d transported him from the hospital to the police station yesterday.  How the hell had he ended up in the back of a police car for the third time in twenty-four hours?

As the journey wore on,
Brendan’s meager two hours of sleep started to catch up to him.  Despite the awkward position of sitting with his hands behind his back, his head still drooped forward of its own accord.  Suddenly hands were on him and dragging him from the backseat.  He processed all of this just in time to force his feet out in front of him, otherwise he’d have face-planted into the sidewalk outside the sheriff’s office.

His
entourage cleared a couple of gawking deputies from the entryway and led Brendan to the same damn interview room that Spee had interrogated him in the previous morning.  Once they had him situated in the familiar uncomfortable chair, everyone left except for the lead agent.

“I’m Special Agent Norman, and—”

“Nice vest.  Worried I’ll shoot you?”

“I’ll ask the questions here.
” The guy slammed his palms onto the same table Casey had used before.

“Do you guys take acting lessons for this, or does it come naturally?”

The man leaned closer, his heavy breathing the only noise in the otherwise silent room.  Rancid breath from overdosing on dense coffee filled Brendan’s nostrils.  The agent balled his hands into white-knuckled fists on top of the table.  When Brendan refused to break eye contact, the guy stood straight up.

“What happened after Spee and Tyson picked you up last night?” he asked
.

“Spee chewed me out for getting in her way and then sent me home.”

“What happened after that?”

“I wa
lked to my truck and drove home,” Brendan said, his fatigue setting in again after all the excitement.  “Why?  What happened?”

The man cracked his knuckles impressively and folded his arms while he stood before Brendan.
  “You are the last known individual to see my agents alive, so I’d like to know what the hell happened.”

Brendan ground his teeth before responding. 
“When I was walking away, a black Dodge pickup flew by me, heading back up to where Spee was parked,” he said.  “You know, behind that old grocery store.”

Norman stared at him for a moment, and then nodded to the invisible observers hiding behind the one-way mirror on the wall.
  “I think we both know who’s probably involved here.”

“Yup, and it ain’t me.”

“Do you have any idea where my agents would be taken?”

Norman was
now calmly composed on the outside, but his voice cracked slightly.  Brendan understood.  If Grant had captured the agents three hours ago, every minute counted now.

“Check all the property listings under my name, since that’s the trick they used with the farm.”

“We’re already looking into your holdings, and any property owned by any of your family.”  He briefly ground his palms against his temples.  “Can you tell me anything useful?”

Brendan rolled his shoulders and popped his neck with a quick tilt of his head
.  “No, I can’t,” he said.  “Can you get these damn cuffs off me now?”

Chapter 41

Brendan’s butt
ached from sitting in the small wooden chair.  Hailing from time when comfort wasn’t a primary consideration, this particular model featured a paper-thin cushion and sharp edges all round.  He shifted his cuffed hands in his lap.  At least they’d moved his hands to his front, and they’d definitely loosened the cuffs by a couple of clicks this time.  Brendan sighed, leaned his weary head back against the wall, and closed his eyes.

But sleep
never came, no matter how much he provoked it.  His head drooped heavily, and it was tough to focus enough to hold it in one spot.  He quickly approached that boundary beyond which drunkenness and abject fatigue merged into one and the same.  Finally his eyelids accepted gravity’s gentle tug and closed firmly as his chin sought a resting place against his chest.

He jerked awake at the sound of Norman’s voice yelling at him from across the open space
that served as both the sheriff’s office foyer and the DEA task force’s headquarters.  The man’s words jumbled together and Brendan couldn’t make any sense of them.  His eyes settled on the desk next to him where Agent Norman had earlier left a printout of a spreadsheet showing all the property owned by the Rhodes family.  His mom and dad’s house was the only thing listed in their name, and only Grant’s mobile home showed up under his.  Brendan’s name on the other hand came up with three hits.  One he guessed was the farm he’d discovered a couple of nights ago.  The other two were a mystery, but also looked like farm addresses.

“Answer me, damn it.
” Norman grabbed Brendan by the shirt and pulled him close.  The agent’s awful breath assaulted Brendan’s senses one more time, dragging him fully out of his sleepy stupor.

“Okay, okay,” Brendan insisted.  “What is it?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you own a black Dodge truck?”

“I don’t.  My
Ford is green.”

Norman growled something unintelligible before shoving Brendan back into the wooden chair.  Brendan watched as the lead agent snatched a piece of paper out of a nearby assistant’s hands.

“On this list of ten vehicles that you own, you’ll see right here an entry for a black Dodge pickup.” Norman thrust the crinkled paper into Brendan’s face.  “Why do I keep finding your name everywhere I look in this investigation?”

“Because my brother’s an asshole.”

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

The piece of paper flew across the room after Norman crumpled it in a rage.  Brendan refrained from needling the agent any further.

“Why did I just find a partially burned-out black Dodge with Agent Tyson’s blood on the backseat?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’d have thought a Marine would at least know how to torch a vehicle.”

“I do know how, so it wasn’t me.”

This admission gave Norman pause.  “And why did I find a handgun with your name etched into the grip sitting on the floor?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Brendan said.  “I haven’t seen that gun in—”

“Save it,” Norman snapped.  He pointed at Marcus, who’d been standing and watching the whole scene unravel.  “You, take this man back to a cell and make sure he stays there.”

“Sir, doesn’t this seem a bit too obvious?”

Norman cut Marcus off with a violent shake of his arm.  “You do as I say right now, Deputy.  Got it?”

Marcus nodded glumly and muttered in the affirmative before leading Brendan from his perch to the holding cells.  They rounded the corner, finding themselves completely alone; the cells
sat empty this fine morning.  Maybe that meant Brendan could catch some sleep finally.

“Man, this ain’t right,” Marcus whispered as they neared the cell doors.
  “I know you didn’t do any of this.”

“Tell me about it,” Brendan mumbled before an epiphany smacked him right in the face.  He twisted around and Marcus let go of his arm.  “I need to get out of here.”

His friend glanced over his shoulder briefly, obviously weighing his options.  Surely their experience together at the warehouse proved Brendan wasn’t involved with Grant’s illegal activities.  The decision was obvious before Marcus even opened his mouth.

“Okay, you’re going to punch me in the face and escape through the back, past the guard station over there
.  Greg’s up front helping that Norman asshole, so the coast should be clear.”  Marcus fished his keys out and unlocked Brendan’s cuffs.  He sighed deeply.  “This is such a bad idea, but I know you’re not in on this.  Do you at least have a plan?’

“I think I know where they are, but I don’t know the address yet,” Brendan said, getting giddy now.

Marcus pulled a cell phone from his back pocket and handed it to Brendan.  He recognized it as his own immediately.

“This is it, man,” Marcus said as the cuffs fell away.  “I can’t help you again.”

Brendan embraced his friend tightly before pushing past him.

“Hey, aren’t you forgetting something,” Marcus whispered harshly.

The punch was pulled just enough, but Marcus still fell against the wall and slid down slowly as Brendan made a break for his freedom.