Spectre Black (28 page)

Chapter
38

This part of Branch reminded Landry of California. Green, dewy lawns, sprinklers shooting out arcs of spray. Although there was a moon, the night had muted color. But Landry knew that every house up here was either white with red tile roofs, beige with red tile roofs, or brown stucco pueblo style. All of them surrounded by gardens that would shame Omar Khayyam’s poetry. Fruit trees aplenty, hedges to hide the sprawling properties, tall eucalyptus and Aleppo pines. Behind clipped hedges he glimpsed the occasional swimming pool or tennis court.

The rich
are
different.

They came around a turn and nearly ran into Jace’s Camaro.

It was parked haphazardly, having come to rest against one of the pillars marking the entrance to the Denboer estate. Dark, bulky, the ugly paint job swallowing light. The right fender was crumpled—not bad, just a minor fender bender. The kid had misjudged the distance between his car’s bumper and the pillar. But it was enough of a bump to deploy the airbags. Two of them. They looked like a couple of Pillsbury Doughboys, chef’s hats and all.

The driver’s door was open.

Reflection from a streetlight picked out a river of antifreeze trailing down the road.

A blood trail wandered up the steep incline to the house. Not a lot of blood, just splotches. Maybe one of them had been shot.

Two people
. Jace and the sheriff.

Landry nodded to Jolie and Eric, reached into the car and grabbed his MP5. He shouldered his duffle, and started up the drive.

“What’s in the duffle?” Eric asked.

“Tennis balls.”

“Oh. Planning on a match?”

“Grudge match, maybe.” Landry winked at Jolie. Her face remained composed, but he could see that she was having a good laugh inside. He secured the duffle to his back. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. He really didn’t want to leave behind his secret weapon.

Halfway up, they encountered a bloody sock and a running shoe. The footprints continued on, up past the cactus garden and the privet hedge and the lawn as smooth as the felt on a pool table.

The night sprinklers were going.

Landry glanced back at the crumpled-up car. Jolie was right about the Camaro. It was one of the ugliest things he’d ever seen.

They approached the door to the manse. Two doors, actually, opening inward; massive stained-glass doors set into heavy timber. One of the doors stood open, leaking out light. More blood splotches. It was easy to track Jace—like following Hansel and Gretel’s trail.

The three of them watched one another’s six. Landry went in first, low, aiming the MP5 this way and that.

The house lit up like a Christmas tree.

The foyer was empty.

Landry had never owned a foyer, and this one did little to convince him he needed one. They covered all four directions in turn. And the balcony.

More blood had been mashed into the oriental carpet that covered most of the Mexican tile floor.

The room was huge, the furniture large and heavy. Spanish stuff, boxy and dark. The two-story-high foyer dwarfed all of it. The word for it was “grandiose,” someone’s idea of a powerful room. On the right was a curved staircase against blindingly white walls. Railed by wrought iron. Landry saw blood on the first step, so he started up, careful not to mire his shoes in the sticky fluid.

Eric covered him.

He came out on the balcony, which circled the foyer below.

Gave the all-clear signal, Jolie and Eric followed him up.

He followed the bread crumbs some more. They split up, Jolie and Eric on each side, Landry in the middle, clearing the balcony. They did it fast, working together like a well-oiled machine. Amazing how that happened.

There were probably a dozen rooms. Landry lost count after six. It was almost like a hotel. The doors were closed but not locked. He looked in the first two and saw magnificent bedrooms. Empty. All the rooms had full-length windows looking out onto the grounds. Landry walked across the thick carpet to the windows and looked down. More billiard-table grass. The huge expanse of acreage was hemmed in by an oleander hedge probably ten feet high. Tennis courts to the right under bright lights. Landry thought their electric bill must be astounding. A pool to the left, lit from within. Flagstone paths meandering through cactus and flower gardens.

The pool resembled a Mickey Mouse head without the features. It was as big as a hotel pool. There were ramadas. Thatched roofs, a wet bar at one of them, and another structure that Landry took to be cabanas. Chairs, tables, and big umbrellas by the pool. To Landry’s left was another two-story wing. The first story faced out onto a colonnaded walkway.

Through the arches, Landry could see three sets of French doors to what he took to be three separate rooms. The third set of French doors was different. One of the doors stood open. Parked inside the walkway was a golf cart from the farm.

Landry hand-signaled the other two.

Gun at the ready, he moved at a quick shuffle-walk, pivoting to the right and left at each door, weapon eye level, clearing as he went.

But there was nothing. Just the night shadows and the three of them.

The blood trail stopped at an elevator. Landry knew what had happened. Whoever was wounded had gone upstairs. Judging from the open French door below and the lamp glow coming from the room up here, it was likely he was inside. Likely, but not definite.

Eric and Jolie had cleared the other side and gone back downstairs. He waved to them, pointing down and to the left. Landry took the stairs down.

The three of them worked their way toward the open doorway—a pincer movement, with Eric and Jolie coming from the opposite direction. They had to run across an open area, Landry coming from the direction of the main part of the house and Jolie and Eric from the other side. Landry covered them, aiming at the open doorway, waiting for someone to pop his head or weapon out.

Landry followed the colonnaded walkway toward the door. He kept his weapon leveled down the walk, concentrating on the open set of French doors. The golf cart parked out front was still empty.

They approached the door from either side. Heard arguing. Landry recognized the voices: one voice belonged to Carla Vitelli and the other to Sheriff Waldrup.

“What about you?” the sheriff was saying.

“What
about
me?”

“Your involvement!”

“What involvement? I had nothing to do with any of this. If you remember, I warned you that you were playing with fire—”

“You and your talk about clean hands. Is that really how you want to play it, Carla? What about you and Jace?”

“What about us?” She sounded cool. Cool and collected, as if chastening a child.

“Who killed my deputy? Just who was it who killed Dan Atwood?”

“
What?
”

“You heard me. Who killed Dan Atwood? Was it Jace? Or was it you?”

“That’s the stupidest thing I—”

“Funny thing about being sheriff. People come to me with all sorts of shit. You knew all about Danny Boy, didn’t you? Dan Atwood the fresh-faced serial killer?”

“What’s that got to do with—?”

“The night before Dan didn’t show up for work, someone complained about a loud car racing around that area. Really putting on the afterburners. You know what else they heard? A backfire. At least they
thought
it was a backfire, but I have another theory about that.”

Landry could hear most of the conversation, but not all. Some of it was muffled. But fortunately, Denboer must have added this wing on later, and used cheaper materials. Landry could hear enough. He motioned to Jolie, who quickstepped over to the other side of the door, gun at the ready. She leaned close to the wall and listened.

The sheriff said, “Someone might think it was a gunshot they heard, not a backfire. And the way that kid takes care of that Camaro, I don’t think he’d let it get into that kind of shape, do you? Maybe someone was shooting out there. First, there’s the sound of shooting, and then there’s the sound of a muscle car. Maybe somebody who couldn’t sleep at night, someone across the highway, maybe that somebody heard gunshots. Maybe the sound woke him up.”

“No one reported it.”

“No? And how would you know that? You have no idea what comes across my desk that never sees the light of day.”

“I don’t think—”

“Are you sure that nobody reported it? They wouldn’t report it to the FBI. They’d report it to me.
My
jurisdiction. The Tobosa County Sheriff’s Office.”

Jolie, standing on the other side of the door and holding up her weapon, nodded. She could hear them going at it, as well. Her lips formed the question,
Jace?

Landry shook his head. Jace didn’t appear to be part of this.

“What if I could prove you were there?” the sheriff was saying.

Carla: “No one was—”

“You think you’re so smart. You blow into town every once in a while dressed to the nines and you think you’re the queen of the county!”

“Are you recording this? If you are, what you’re doing is against the law. Give it to me!
Give
it to me!”

“You know this recording will be admissible in court. In fact, I can arrest you, right here, right now. And you’d better believe I can and will use this against you.”

A scuffle. Landry could see them. Waldrup had the gun and Carla pulled at his arm. The gun aiming wild. A dangerous situation. Waldrup grunted, his ugly little face turning beet red. Carla gave up on the gun and closed her hands around his neck. They danced across the elegant Mexican tile floor, the clumsiest dance in the history of the world, neither of them able to get the upper hand. With a gun waving around, Landry wasn’t about to get in the middle of it.

Jolie caught his gaze and mouthed something—he thought she was saying it was time to intervene. That was the moment Carla went for the sheriff’s gun, grasped it hard, and pulled the trigger. The loud gunshot stunned the air.

Waldrup staggered. His throat was blown out like an old tire, blood squirting and drenching his shirt. He stared at Carla with a look of surprise. Then his legs buckled and he fell sideways into a chair, knocking it over.

Landry stepped in first from one side and Jolie right behind, each covering their own side of the room.

Carla stared up at them in shock. She dropped the gun. “Self-defense!” she shouted. “He tried to kill me!”

Quick on the uptake, Landry thought.

“Carla!” Jace yelled from the darkness. “Carla!
Carla!
What happened? Did he shoot you? If you killed my sister, I can tell you right now, you’re a
dead
man!”

“Get down!” Landry shouted as he hit the floor. A bullet shattered the edge of a Spanish armoire—bits of wood turned into projectiles.

Jace shot another volley into the room. By that time everyone was down on the floor, friend and foe alike.

Landry couldn’t see him, but he’d try to pinpoint the kid’s voice. “Jace—you want to talk about this?”

“This is all I’m gonna say.”

Another fusillade of bullets.

“You want to kill Carla? She’s still alive, Jace.”

No sound at all from outside. Landry crawled to the doorway and saw—

Nothing.

The night seemed empty, except for the sounds of crickets, and a restless breeze that lifted the leaves of the cottonwood tree outside.

“Oh,
God!
”

Jace’s voice, close by. It had come from less than twenty yards away. But all Landry saw was the dark green lawn, the tree, in the ambient light from the streetlamp down the hill next to the road. Jolie fired in the direction of Jace’s voice. She’d fallen back and was hidden behind an arch in the colonnade. This covered Landry for the moment it took him to get outside behind another pillar.

More fire, although Landry couldn’t see where it was coming from.

A bullet chipped the stone of the pillar, shrapnel hitting Landry a glancing blow on the cheek. He needed either better cover or to go full-bore at Jace.

He stared into the night. He could see the pool, and beside that, the tennis court. He could see the lawn, a dark hump of velvet slanting down to the road—

“Four o’clock!” Eric yelled.

Landry saw something running toward him—

Something
.

Not a figure. It was more like a paper cutout of a man. Lighter than the grass but the same color. Enveloped in something flowing that moved with him and against him, like a dress.

Like cloth.

The figure hurtled toward them, firing what looked like a toy stick gun. Like those old-fashioned wooden toy guns. Dull, hard to see. He could see the lawn through it, could see the figure. A ghost.

Jace. Running toward them. Screaming like a Sioux warrior at Custer’s Last Stand. Hurtling across the space like a phantom. Now you see it, now you don’t—

But locked in on Landry.

Eric shot at the same time Landry did. Landry didn’t know which of them blew Jace Denboer to kingdom come. The running creature fell down on the grass and disappeared, as if it had never been.

Landry squinted. He could see the puzzlement on Jolie’s face, even in the half dark. He saw Eric shrug.

What just happened here?

Landry nodded to the other two, pointed to himself. He crouch-walked up the hill. Eric came from another vector. Jolie and Carla were now standing outside the door, out of the light, but he could see them in the ambient light of the colonnade’s lamp.

The kid lay on the ground, dead. Jace Denboer was covered from head to foot in what was a pretty good imitation of a burqa. Landry could see the folds of the cloth and he could see the crushed grass underneath. He could see where the bullets had seared through the material and into the body. He could see some of the blood, but not all. Landry knew there was a lot more here.

He could not see the outlines of the mass—center mass—of a human body. He couldn’t see the chest. He squatted down beside the body and felt the small snaps where the material came together. He had to pull the garment apart by the snaps to truly see it: the bullet-torn torso, the shirt, the blood. They were all there, once he spread the front of the garment apart. The hood remained, cowling the kid’s face, and Landry pushed that back as well. Then he could see the rest of Jace’s face—the part that had been hidden by the hood.