The front door of the house opened, and I purposely opened the back door of my car, and reached for my camera bag. I kept an eye on the figures that emerged from the house through the back window. Sure as hell, Cletus detached himself, and came stomping over toward us, making loud noises. Two others followed, but hung back just a bit. Confrontation with cops wasn't something relatively normal people undertook lightly. Unless you were Cletus Borglan, and had yelled at cops for a long time.
I backed out of the car, and made a show of opening my camera bag. 'You understand him yet, George?'
'I think it's something like 'What the hell are you doing?' or something like that.'
'Cool.' I rummaged in the camera bag. I was sort of worried about it, too, as it was my wife's camera. Sue had let me borrow it about ten years before. I just never got around to getting it back to her, and it had been acting up ever since the night of the Colson brothers discovery. I would have returned it to Sue if the department had bought me one, but people like Cletus had always objected to expenditures.
'Get off my property!' Cletus. Beautiful.
'What?' I hollered back, waiving, and watching him stomp closer. He was so determined he was causing a fine spray of whitish mud to splatter around his ankles as he came toward us. I looked back into my bag.
'GET THE HELL OFF MY PROPERTY! YOU BETTER HAVE A WARRANT!'
I looked up. Son of a bitch was fast. He was already at the back of my car.
'Hi, Cletus!' I grinned.
'EITHER SHOW ME A WARRANT, OR GET OFF MY PROPERTY!'
I checked the other two. They were a good fifty feet away, but coming on. Coming in for the fun, I thought.
By that time, Cletus had come around my car, and grabbed me by my shoulder. 'YOU HEAR ME?'
I just stepped back, held out a copy of the arrest warrant, and handed it to him. As his eyes dropped to read it, I pulled my handgun out, and stuck it in his face.
'You're under arrest for murder,' I said. 'Get in the car.'
'What?' He was too startled to even be particularly loud. He just stared at the gun barrel three inches from his nose.
George had stepped in behind him, and Cletus was handcuffed in two seconds flat.
'Watch your head,' I said, as we stuffed him into the car, and shut the door.
'What the FUCK is going on here?' Cletus's support group was about twenty feet off the rear bumper.
I kept my gun in my hand, but pointed downward. 'Cletus is under arrest for murder,' I said. They both stepped forward. 'Interference with this arrest permits me to use deadly force,' I said, perfectly evenly. It was hard to say it that way. I was nearly laughing. 'Think twice, gentlemen.'
They were absolutely rooted to the spot. Stunned. These weren't hard-core professionals, obviously.
I got in the car, looked over at George, grinned, shut the door, and was backing up before the two men in the drive could even move.
As we hit the end of the drive, I let out a loud 'YES!' and hit the gas.
'You can't do this,' said Cletus. He didn't sound too convinced.
'You're under arrest for murder, Cletus,' I said. 'You might want to remember that you do have a right to remain silent…'
Cletus had made the big mistake. He was predictable. Altogether too predictable.
I looked over at George. 'What'd I tell you?' He just grinned. I picked up the mike. 'Comm, Three is ten- seventy-six, one ten-ninety-five.'
In other words, we were en route, and we had one prisoner in custody.
'Ten-four, Three.' She sounded relieved.
'Three, One?' That was Lamar. 'Meet you back at the office.' He sounded pleased.
'Ten-four.' Nonchalant. You had to be.
16
We got back to the office, and I was just getting my proud little ducks in a row to begin booking Cletus into the jail, when Lamar approached me.
'Mike can start that,' he said. He looked very grim. 'You come back here with us.'
I thought it was sort of strange, but I went back with him into his office. George and Volont were there. They didn't look too happy, either.
'Sit down,' said Lamar. 'Special Agent Volont has something to tell you.'
I didn't like the sound of that.
'First,' said Volont, 'you have to know two things. One, I'm telling you this because events have, well, overtaken us here. Two, the two brothers were killed by a single individual, acting alone.' He looked at me, evenly.
'Your surveillance team did witness the murders,' I said. Hell, that wasn't such bad news. Not at all.
'No.' He sighed. 'No, they managed to miss that, with the same skill they demonstrated when you caught them.'
He made a little pyramid with his extended fingers. 'They were killed by a man I've been tracking for years. You know him as Gabriel.'
'You're kidding me…' All I could think of to say.
'No.'
Jesus. In the first place, it had just dawned on me that Gabriel, who was a professional in every sense, and was not only capable of killing without remorse, but who was also very able as well, could very easily have been at Borglan's residence as we were arresting Cletus.
'You might have said something a little sooner,' I said. I looked over at George. 'Or did you know?'
'No.'
'That,' I said, 'violates just about every 'need to know' guideline in the book.' It did, too. You were never supposed to expose an officer to danger in the name of confidentiality. Never.
'He isn't there,' said Volont. Just a flat statement. 'I'm just telling you this because you'll probably find it out from Cletus.' He looked at me. 'You do intend to interview him, don't you?'
'So where the hell is he?' I thought it was an appropriate question. 'Gabriel, I mean. We'll need to find him as soon as we get a warrant for his arrest.'
Volont held up his hand. 'Just a moment. The Bureau has a source fairly close to our Mr. Nieuhauser,' he said. 'I receive the reports on a regular basis. Gabriel's movements and intentions are usually known to us in near real time.' He sounded pleased. 'We have to wait until Gabriel is at a location that we could discover by other means, before we can move on him. Otherwise, we reveal the informant, and place them at risk.'
'That the purpose of your surveillance team, then?'
'One of them, yes. So we can reveal them at the proper time, with their data, and show that they were the ones who tracked Gabriel. Saving the life of the informant is a high priority.' He made a tight little smile. 'The irony is, now we can use you to confirm the presence of the team, now that you've… uhmmm… apprehended them, as it were.'
I knew Volont just well enough to think that he would tell his superiors that he'd planned for the surveillance team to get busted by us. He was adept at that sort of thing.
'Our Mr. Nieuhauser, or Gabriel, has much unfinished business in this county. He'll undoubtedly be back, and we think fairly soon.'
Volont said that he'd known Gabriel had been in Nation County since around Christmastime. He hadn't been precisely sure where, but he was now certain it had been the Borglan residence, at least part of the time.
No shit.
'I want that son of a bitch busted as soon as he sets foot in my county,' said Lamar. 'None of this pussy-footin' around like last time.'
