Spectre Black (20 page)

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He connected the watch’s mini-USB to the USB port on his laptop.

A hard rap on the door and Eric came in, toweling his hair. “What you got, bro?”

Landry pointed to his magic watch, and Eric grinned. Sat down on the queen-size bed next to Landry to watch the show. There was approximately two hours and twenty-five minutes of video.

They went through the footage. The second time through Landry stopped and froze the frame at certain spots. Eric used a sketchpad to sketch the layout of the farm and would match that with the aerial view on Google Earth. “Kid sounds all business,” he said. “I thought you said he was a paranoid schizophrenic.”

“He must have tightened up for the interview.”

“I guess so. What’s the plan?”

“I’m going to take the job.”

“
Hoo
rah!”

“You’re awful cheery.”

“That’s because I ran into one hot-looking lady at the Laundromat.”

“Seriously?”

“Hey, I takes ’em where’s I finds ’em.”

“Watch your back, brother. You can find trouble anywhere.”

“Yeah, ain’t
that
the truth.”

Chapter
24

Jolie Burke dreamt about the bean field where Dan Atwood was buried.

She awoke thinking about the kid, just twenty-four years old, and about his home in Sitka. She’d reached out to his parents but there had been no reply. First she’d tried calling them from the number Dan Atwood had given for next of kin, but the number belonged to someone else who had never heard of Dan Atwood. She’d gone through the phone numbers for “Atwood” in Sitka, Alaska—there weren’t many—and had contacted the sheriff there to deliver the news, but she’d never heard back from him. The idea that Dan Atwood might not have parents in Sitka, Alaska, had been stuck in her head as she swam up out of sleep.

Jolie hadn’t pressed the issue. There had been a lot on her mind, and she’d assumed the sheriff—her boss—would also make a call. She had been distracted by crime, and plenty of it. Homicides. Especially on the border with Mexico. Drugs, shootings, domestics.

It was still dark, so she lay on her bunk in the Bayliner and tried to figure out what it was about Dan Atwood that bothered her.

Barney Fife
.

Dan had been so clueless, so gung-ho, so . . . pathetic, he was almost a stereotype.

For instance: He’d been stupid enough to seize Jace Denboer’s car. Jolie was sure that Jace either killed him or had him killed, but there was no way to prove it after all this time.

But why bury Atwood in the bean field at Denboer’s farm?

She sat up.

There had always been something wrong about this. Yes, Atwood had confiscated Jace’s car—for about five minutes—but Jace got it back the very next day.

No one crossed Jace Denboer.

Look at Rick Connor. Jace had no qualms about shooting him point-blank in front of witnesses. He’d just done it. And what was the result?

He got away with it. Everyone knew, or at least suspected, that it was Jace Denboer who had shot Rick Connor in cold blood. But he was still walking free. If Jolie hadn’t been on the run herself, she would have asked for the case and gone after him.

And very likely might have been killed for her trouble.

So, yes, Jace could have killed Dan Atwood for any reason under the sun. Confiscating his car was probably an excellent reason in Jace World.

But why the bean field?

That was what bothered her.

He either killed Dan elsewhere, transported him to his father’s farm to hide the body, or he had killed him there. There at the bean field.

How would that play out? Maybe Atwood had stopped
Jace
Denboer and his Camaro on the road outside the Valleyview
Agriculture Experimental Station. Maybe to ticket him, or even arrest
him. And there had been a struggle. That was the most likely scenario.

It made sense, but something about it bothered her. Dan Atwood wasn’t working the night he disappeared. She’d checked that specifically. Bad things could happen to patrol officers on shift. Police work was dangerous. There was always a chance that you could be ambushed. Always a chance that a domestic call could be turned on the officer. Always a chance that you could make a routine traffic stop and be shot right through the heart. You never knew what was coming your way.

It could have happened a dozen different ways.

But most ways wouldn’t include burial in a bean field—close to the road, or not.

Maybe it was the times, but most people involved in a homicide would just point, shoot, and take off.

She didn’t talk to Dan Atwood much, but he had talked to her. He would have followed her around like a little lamb if she’d let him.

She remembered him talking about Jace’s car after he confiscated it. How ugly the paint job on the Camaro was.

This was long before her date with Jace, when she’d seen the unsightly paint job up close.

Dan Atwood told her something else. Something so un-Barney Fife-ish that she’d managed to discount it until now. It didn’t fit in with the stereotype of the kid, so she had just . . . forgotten about it.

Atwood had told her he’d confiscated Jace’s Camaro just to look at the paint job.

She’d asked him why. He’d said something about “research.”

Research
.

Jolie had asked him what he meant by that, and he’d shrugged and said it wasn’t important.

She remembered other things about him. One time she’d come around a corner and he was talking to someone she didn’t know. What had struck her was the difference in his demeanor. He didn’t come off as clueless, or hapless, or accident-prone, or fumbling. He’d sounded like one professional talking to another.

Now that she was actively searching her memory for examples, Jolie realized there were other things. Phone calls that ended abruptly when she came into a room. Usually he’d say good-bye to his mom, his dad, or his sister. She’d wondered why he spent so much time calling home. But she’d figured he was young—a raw rookie who was homesick.

And there were times when she’d tried to reach him by radio, and he hadn’t answered.

She remembered that the sheriff himself didn’t like him. It wasn’t just that he didn’t like him, but he didn’t seem to trust him. He would call on-the-spot meetings, and would find a way to exclude the kid.

Thinking about it, Jolie realized the sheriff had tiptoed around, had practically
avoided contact
with—

Barney Fife.

Jolie remembered an old saying: don’t pay attention to how a person acts, but how other people react to
him
. She’d learned that from a psychiatrist friend, who’d described what the hallmarks of sociopathology and psychopathology were. “Look at how people are around that person,” he’d told her. “That will tell you what you need to know. A sociopath always affects someone negatively. There’s always something there, even if it’s minor. Something bad there.”

Maybe that was it. Maybe Atwood was a psychopath.

Or maybe, he was something else.

Possibly, he was undercover. An undercover agent? Maybe DEA. Or maybe he was just someone who’d gotten in over his head and paid the full price for it.

She had no way of knowing. Not from here.

Dan Atwood—and Jolie was sure as shit that wasn’t his name—could be anything.

Chapter
25

The next morning, Jace Denboer called Cyril Landry’s cell.

“So, you want the job?”

Landry said he did, but told Jace he needed a week before he could start. “That going to be a problem?”

“Nope.”

“Good.”

“So that would be next Monday, right? Come in around eight and Gary Stella—he’s head of security—will make sure you’re all set.” He paused, and Landry could hear him swallow. “Thanks again for what you did. Telling me about Kilbride.”

“I take it your troubles are over.”

“I’m good.” Jace laughed. His laugh was a little off, but what could you expect from a paranoid schizophrenic? The kid was working to hold it together, probably every single day of his life.

“Glad to hear it,” Landry said.

There was a pause. Landry thought Jace would fill in the silence and he did.

“You heard, right?” Jace said. “Kilbride got himself killed.”

Landry would start in a week. He didn’t know if he’d need the whole week, but it was better to be safe than sorry. He’d need that time to put everything into place. The first thing he did was contact a soldier pal of his he’d befriended during the Iraq War—one of those people you could always count on. Jeffery Briggs was not a SEAL, but an Army signal corpsman. They’d forged a friendship in the hot wind and blowing dirt of Iraq. Landry’s unit relied on the corpsmen many times for their comms.

Jeff Briggs had the highest security clearance available—he was an SC-16.

Anything above SC-12 was not just good, but stellar. An SC-16 had the best security clearance imaginable. Even the FBI went from only an SC-9 to SC-13. So Jeff Briggs’s designation beat the crap out of the FBI. Classified at that level, you could pretty much go anywhere and do anything you wanted.

Landry and Eric the Red had checked out the agricultural farm’s phone line to see if they could tap in, but they could not—and that was why he needed Briggs. He’d seen the farm’s system up close—sat phones for each of the crew—six in all. Landry and Eric had gone out in the dead of night to see if there was a way to break into the telephone junction box above the ag farm, but soon realized there was no way in. The farm’s security was as good as it got, a sophisticated system that made tapping in impossible. The communication was airtight. Airtight, and scrambled.

So Landry made the trip east.

Jeff was stationed at Fort George G. Meade in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The Defense Information Systems Agency was located on the grounds of the US Army post. Fort Meade was a heavy hitter as far as Army installations went; the fort housed the Defense Information Systems Agency and the National Security Agency. The Defense Information Systems Agency was located underground.

Fort Meade also happened to be close to Laurel Park, the racecourse where Landry’s older brother stabled his horses. The day before his meeting with Jeff Briggs, Landry watched the races at Laurel. He wished he could see his brother, but he couldn’t. Wished he could spend time on the backstretch the way he used to do, inhaling the scent of hay, horse, manure, and dirt, walking a couple of hots on the shaded lane, observing horses working and galloping, topping off the day with a great steak dinner out with the family. But those days were gone.

He was a ghost.

When Landry got back to his room at the Days Inn, he put in a call to Jeff Briggs and they arranged for breakfast at the Country Inn the next morning.

They got in their catch-up time, breakfast disposed of and three or four coffee refills later, got down to talking good times—and bad.

Landry said, “Is this a good place to talk?”

“If you’re asking what I think you’re asking,” Jeff said, “there’s no problem.”

Landry agreed. The place was full, mostly Army families and ser
vicemen. The restaurant seemed to float on the babble of many voices.
Jeff was dressed like someone on his day off—because it
was
his day
off—the usual uniform of a knit shirt and khaki slacks, a belt. Landry
wore something similar. They’d found a small alcove inside the res
tau
rant, back to the wall, and kept their conversation low but casual.

Landry said, “I’m doing surveillance for a friend. Her husband might be into something that could ruin her life. I told her I’d check him out, but you know how it goes—I ran into a brick wall. Guy’s former military, high up, has clearance up the wazoo. Between you and me, I’m worried he’s been talking to someone who might do him and his wife some serious harm.”

“Harm, huh?”

Landry nodded. He knew that Briggs’s own daughter had been used as a punching bag by her husband. He knew that Briggs had a talk with the husband, and the husband had wisely decided to give his wife a divorce—including a generous settlement. Not too long after that he had been transferred out, after he recovered from the injuries he’d sustained in an accident at his home.

Briggs, who had been enjoying his omelet, set his fork down. “Serious harm?”

“The guy I’m talking about, he’s the vindictive type. He’s been harassing her—calling and hanging up, but now it’s turning into threats. I’m thinking he’s using a sat phone from his place of employment. He works at an agriculture farm.” Landry pushed the phone number across the table. “I’ve tried to get in to see what he’s doing, so I can help her, but the phones there are scrambled, and I can’t listen in on the conversation. She thinks he’s trying to set up something unlawful, with bad people.”

Briggs leaned forward. “Like what?”

“She won’t say. He’s a sneaky bastard, that’s all I know. And I know Cindy is scared shitless.”

“Is that why you came out here?”

“That and to watch my brother’s colt run.” Landry shrugged. “Thought I’d kill two birds with one stone. I understand if you can’t—”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Jeff took the slip of paper with the number on it, slipped it into his wallet, and stood up. “I know a couple of guys who wouldn’t be around if you weren’t in Iraq. Tell you what. I’ll take care of this . . . when do you need it done by?”

“Wednesday would be fine. Just let me know. You have my number.”

Jeff nodded.

They walked outside into the milky sunshine. Maryland smelled fresh and sweet compared to Branch, New Mexico. Beautiful trees, green grass everywhere. A great day on tap.

They said their good-byes and Landry got into his rental car and drove back to Laurel Park to watch the races. Musing that if things had turned out differently, he’d have been a racehorse trainer like his brother.

Too late now.