Spectre Black (8 page)

Every town had one. A royal family. The tradition had probably been handed down from the dawn of time, down through the ages—the Dark Ages, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Age. The wealthiest families and most royal of the royal, the cattle barons and railroad barons and captains of industry all the way down to small-town mayors. Every municipality, every small town, had a family. It had become a meme: “To the manor born.” Apparently, in this small city, the Denboers were the royal family.

Which explained a lot. It explained why Vitelli had felt entitled. It explained why she’d run roughshod over him—

Literally.

There was at least one family like that in every town.

Vitelli had felt extremely entitled. In fact, Landry was still recovering from her right to entitlement.

He approached The Satellite INN from behind, across an empty lot, a scrub patch of desert. The white subcompact rental car was in back, one of ten to twenty other cars there, give or take. His van was out front.

A sheriff’s cruiser had pulled up catty-corner to the rental Nissan, as if planning to
stop an escape in its tracks. Landry could hear the crackle of the unit’s radio.

He looked up at the open door to his motel room on the second floor. A hive of activity. Deputies in tan uniforms, big-hipped from their duty belts, coming out with white trash bags in their gloved hands.

Landry felt the tickle of hair on his neck just before he heard a loud engine gun down the side street and screech into the dirt lot.

“Police! Don’t move! Hands on your head!”

Landry obeyed.

Chapter
7

“Can you tell me what you’re charging me with?” he asked the deputy who had cuffed him and was marching him toward a sheriff’s car.

“You have the right to remain silent, and if I were you I’d do just that.”

“I’ll take it from here,” a gruff voice said. Landry turned his head to look at him. The man was older, beefy, with a gray mustache like a whisk broom.

Landry had already been to the Tobosa County Sheriff’s website, and he knew who the man was. He was the Tobosa Sheriff’s Office’s undersheriff, Walt Davis.

The undersheriff grabbed Landry’s shoulder and spun him toward his own plain-wrap Crown Vic.

Landry was delivered to the Tobosa County Jail in the back of the undersheriff’s car, already handcuffed and chained. They must think he was dangerous, or perhaps it had been reported that he was dangerous, and they were taking no chances.

Containment
.

There was a separate entrance for arrestees, and in this smallish cinder block building that entrance was in the back, as it usually was. Davis marched him up a loading ramp and into a gray hallway with gray linoleum and gray-painted walls. The only brightness was the row of fluorescent light panels at intervals along the ceiling, which seemed to chase the shadows into what few corners there were. The artificial light made it brighter than day, like those warehouse shopping marts, only worse in every respect. He could smell disinfectant that did little to mask the odor of piss and vomit.

He knew his first stop would be Intake. It would be a long, drawn-out process, designed to humiliate and cow him.

The first precept for cops was control. Clamp down on the perpetrator so he can’t make a move. Intimidate him into not even thinking about resistance. Always, the goal was to cut off rebellion at the source. Police were trained to run to meet trouble, to stop it before it could get any traction at all. Police work was based on the concepts of prevention and containment. Never let the tossed match turn into a brushfire.

Landry understood this and even admired it, but he had been on the wrong end of this policy before, and he didn’t like it.

He didn’t like it now.

The undersheriff called to one of the guards. “Don’t bother with the other stuff, just give him the once-over and get him in lockup. I’ve got twenty-four hours.”

There was one other man to be processed before him, so he waited. As he waited, his mind ran through the possibilities. The number-one possibility: his car, a white subcompact car, had been seen going through the checkpoint shortly before one of the militia members was shot to death.

Landry knew that the guy who stopped him at the checkpoint did not write down his driver’s license number or even jot down the license plate of the car. The other two people at the checkpoint had been engrossed in conversation. Landry was sure the big guy who stopped him had not looked inside the duffle.

Pretty sure.

And if he had, what were the odds of him talking about it? He’d remarked on the box of tennis balls on the seat and the racket in the trunk—that was all. But maybe Landry’s memory was faulty and the man had unzipped the bag and looked inside.

No, his memory wasn’t faulty. The guy did not look inside the duffle. One, he didn’t have time to, and two, Landry would have heard the duffle zipper open.

Even if he had looked through the duffle, he had been killed shortly after Landry went through. He might have remarked to the other two about something he saw in the duffle, but again, Landry was sure he didn’t open it.

Another car, another white subcompact, could have come by within the hour, and that car could have contained the shooter. The two other militia members struck Landry as not too bright. He doubted they had seen that kind of carnage before. A man being blasted by a shotgun—a man they knew. A man they spent time with.

They would have been in shock.

So were the police interested in his car? After all, it was a white subcompact.

But no one knew Landry in this town. No one could have looked at the white Nissan Versa and known he had rented it. He had used a different identity to check in to the motel.

The only person he had spent any time with in this town was Agent Carla Vitelli. Perhaps she suspected him and somehow found a way to link him to the car?

It was hard to think in here. There were a number of mentally ill people around him. All of them claiming to be innocent. Some of them screaming, some of them crying, one of them vomiting, some of them just sitting there staring into space. A few talked casually to one another, as if they were in bleachers at a ball game. Landry sat quietly and nobody talked to him. To his right was a homeless man who hugged himself and sang under his breath. To his left was a big hulk of a man, Hispanic, with the concentrated visage of a sumo wrestler. Except he wasn’t naked, fortunately for everyone there. He wore a tank top and those long, sloppy shorts that only looked good on basketball players, and blinding white top-of-the-line running shoes.

The homeless man smelled. The hulk smelled good. But both smells were overwhelming. Between the two of them Landry could survive only by breathing through his mouth.

Chains rattled. Someone snored. He could smell cigarette smoke clinging to a lot of unwashed bodies. Time dragged by. A fly lit on the homeless guy and he freaked, and someone dragged him away. The Hispanic guy did not seem to notice. He just sat there, elbows on his knees, fists cuffed together, staring straight ahead.

There were madhouse cries every once in a while, and shuffling feet, and chains.

Finally Landry was walked over to the intake desk. There was plenty of shame to go around, and a police jail was the perfect place to showcase it. The man at the desk looked at his ID and driver’s license: “Chris Keeley.” He went through the contents of his wallet and confiscated money. He paid particular attention to Chris Keeley’s one credit card. Landry wondered if this small-city police force in New Mexico pulled the scam that many others did. If they would trump up a charge and confiscate his assets.

Good luck with that. Chris Keeley had the credit card but nothing in a bank account except enough to keep the savings account open. One hundred dollars, in a bank that nobody had ever heard of.

The man processing him had a placid expression. He must have seen every possible permutation of man, and gave off the impression that nothing fazed him. He had an indoor pallor that went with the artificial light.

Next up, Landry thought:
fingerprints
. Only the man didn’t take fingerprints. He didn’t take a mug shot, either.

Good thing.

Or maybe a bad thing. If there was no record of him, they could do anything.

I’ve got twenty-four hours
.

The undersheriff had treated him as a special case.

This arrest was off the books.

As far as they were concerned, he must appear to be who he said he was. Chris Keeley, no wants, no warrants. A high school teacher from Albuquerque, New Mexico. His wallet showed pictures of his wife and kids. He had a driver’s license, a Triple A card, and one credit card.

He was not questioned.

Landry asked the officer leading him to lockup what the charges were.

“Vagrancy.”

“I’m staying at The Satellite INN motel.”

“That’s nice.”

“If I’m staying at a motel, that’s not vagrancy.”

“You’ll have your day in court.”

No use arguing with him. They sent him through the showers and gave him a yellow jumpsuit and a pair of flip-flops that were two sizes too small and slippery when wet.

He was locked in what looked like a cage you put dogs in, only twenty times bigger. It appeared to be temporary, like a cage set on the floor, until they made up his suite. His box was on one side of the room and there were four other cages opposite his. There were only three other inmates, so they had the place to themselves.

One of the inmates wailed like a banshee. It was constant. Landry was mildly successful at blocking out the sound.

There was no theater seating, so he found a place that wasn’t taken and sat down, knees up, feet flat on the concrete floor, back against the wall. He was forty-eight years old now, pushing fifty, and his years as a SEAL had compromised parts of his body in many ways—wear and tear. Despite a daily routine of flexibility training, he knew that in normal circumstances, his body would act up.

Fortunately, that didn’t apply to emergency situations, and did not impinge too much on his particular skill set. The learned memory was still there. He could still kill a man in a few seconds if he needed to.

Time to cool his heels and wait to see what would happen.

A half hour in, a jailer came for him. He was marched down another gray hallway and buzzed through two solid steel doors, deeper into the building, and deposited into a cell of his own. This cell had a bunk, a toilet, and a sink. Landry doubted that the faucets were Moen.

The door slid open and closed electronically. All the cells surrounded a common area.

The common area had chairs and a couple of tables. A little like those breakfast nooks at the Comfort Inn, except these were gray, metal, beaten up, and cheaper. Landry could see that the chairs and tables were bolted to the floor. A guard stood on duty. Two inmates sat at one table, watching a soap opera on TV.

He was surprised there were still soap operas on TV. He guessed there weren’t many channels on the TV in the common area. Landry lay down on the bunk and stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out what the game was. He was aware that he had been moved in the wrong direction, deeper into the jail. He’d require a bed, a sink, and a toilet. Which meant they would be keeping him for a while.

No one came to talk to him. No one came with forms to fill out; no cops came to question him. They were a conspicuously incurious lot. It was just him and the squirrel cage and the sound of the soap opera on TV. He thought of other things while he waited. He had waited for longer periods in worse places than this—in the desert heat, over 120 degrees—many times. If anyone was made for waiting, Landry was.

The day passed, but as he suspected, no one came to release him. The little block of sunshine from the narrow window high above moved along the floor. There was one guy across the way who cackled like a crow. One guy who had a screaming fit was moved somewhere else. There was a smell, too. Old clothes, old socks, body odor. Aftershave.

He thought about aftershave, and how he’d smelled it on his walk back through the darkening day, but saw no one. Had he been imagining things?

Night came and went. The TV droned on. By then he’d reconnoitered, but found nothing remotely interesting. There were only a few channels on the TV, and they were mostly the kind of crap you get with basic cable: infomercials and talk shows. Plenty of magazines. Dog-eared copies of
Popular Mechanics
, a
Time magazine
from two years ago, and a Holy Bible.

Landry could sleep anywhere, so he lay down on the bunk, closed his eyes, and drifted off.

The next day, the sun poked through the window again.

The electronic gate shuttled sideways and a guard brought him a tray with some inedible food on it. It looked like a sausage patty and egg, but just barely. He didn’t know if it was the fluorescent lights overhead or the meat, but it had a greenish tinge.