“She is such an angel,” Bob said, holding Miko close.
“Daddy, maybe she’ll wake up today.”
“I hope she does, sweetie. I hope and pray she does. You and Mommy, you’ll stay here and watch over her.”
“Yes, and the Pinks will guard her so nobody can harm Nikki.”
“Yes, honey, they’re very good men.”
He put Miko down.
“Now Mommy and I have to talk. Honey, you stay here for a minute, okay?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
He and his wife walked wordlessly down the hall to a visitor’s lounge, where they bought bad coffee in Styrofoam from a vending machine and sat at a blank table in a blank room.
The first thing he said was, “I have satisfied myself that this thing did not come upon Nikki out of something I did some years ago, when I was off doing this or that. It seems that she cut trail on some kind of plan-I don’t know what it is. But somewhere in Johnson County there’s a group of very bad fellows who are planning something equally bad, and Nikki picked up on some aspect of it, and they had to finish her as she was going about her business, trying to do an overall story about methamphetamine use in the county. She’s innocent; she was just a young woman full of life who ran afoul of bad customers. She may not have even known what it is, but it has to be something she was close to figuring out and that’s why it’s so dangerous. Now I know what the clue is, and now people are coming for me.”
He told her his story, each discovery at a time, each event at a time, including Mark 2:11.
When he told her he’d killed two men the night before, her gaze showed nothing. She had changed. It was her daughter; her rage and instinct had been aroused and now she understood that she could not allow anyone-
“You can’t go to the police?” she finally asked. “Wouldn’t that be the wisest thing?”
“Well, I’m not sure how they figure into it. I think this Detective Thelma Fielding is okay, but the sheriff is a pompous son of a bitch with his eye on something else. Loves publicity, won’t stop talking about his time in the war. But the real problem with them is they got it all figured out to be a bad kid on a binge, looking for somebody to squash. That’s all they see, that’s what they want to see, that’s the file it’s in. They think it’ll just be a day or so till somebody snitches him out, and meanwhile they got other fish to fry. So if I go to them, I have some kind of institutional inertia working against me to begin with. Then I have to explain why I ran out after the shooting, what my suspicions are, and their minds aren’t equipped to deal with any of that yet. It’s too much information, too fast, and it challenges the way they do business. It’s like the Marine Corps used to be on snipers. They just don’t want to know about it. Took a war to change their minds.”
“What about the FBI? Can you call Nick Memphis? He’d drop anything to help you. At least he can put Bureau resources behind you, and your learning curve will be much quicker.”
“Hmmm,” said Bob. “You sure you haven’t done this before? That’s a great idea. No, that didn’t occur to me because I been so goddamn caught up in my own drama and not thinking straight. Yeah, I will call him first thing, and see what he can get me.”
“Can you handle this? You’re older, Bob. Maybe not so fast. Maybe your mind is a little slower than it once was, as well as your hands. And maybe this time you’ll run out of luck, you know that. You’ll end up face down, shot by some kid with a.22 who has no idea he’s just murdered Achilles.”
“I may run out of luck, sure. And I ain’t too happy to be a hunted man once again, and to have to go to guns once again. But it’s come, and I told you, I will do with it what I must. I need you behind me.”
“But it seems since Japan you’ve had doubts, even fears. I know. You thought I was asleep, but many’s the night you woke with a start, all asweat. In this kind of game, you can’t have doubts. You’ve said that many times.”
“If I was working for a government or a sheriff’s office, I might have doubts and they might get me killed on the job. But I am working for my daughter. So those doubts don’t count. They went away. I have no doubts, and last night, it was the same old Bob Lee back, gun in hand, shooting for blood, making the right moves. I do need one thing. I need you behind me.”
“I am behind you.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a set of car keys with a Hertz emblem on the ring. “It’s a blue Prism, Tennessee LCD 109953. I parked on the fourth floor, where there’s fewer cars, but not on the roof, where somebody in an office could see you. You pull up to it, trunk to trunk. There are some goods inside. I went to Meachums and asked Mr. Meachum what kind of rifle he recommended for self-defense in a ranch house. He was very helpful. Didn’t have any trouble on the flight. Locked case, declared firearm, the gal at the counter didn’t even want to look inside. The handgun was yours, under the mattress. I bought ammunition for it and the rifle and spare magazines. It’s all in the trunk. I spent last night loading magazines. The rifle is supposed to hold thirty but I could only get twenty-eight in.”
“Twenty-eight is fine,” said Bob. “It’s better. Less pressure on the spring. More reliable that way.”
“The handgun magazines loaded fine. Ten in each, ten of them.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Now I’m going to go. I think I have to get back to Mountain City. I can’t let them think they’ve run me. They have to know they’re in for a fight and if they’re scared, maybe they’ll make a mistake.”
She said, “You find the men who tried to kill our daughter. You take care of them.”
He kissed her, took the elevator down, went to the garage and moved his car up to hers. Satisfying himself there were no other people on the floor, he opened her trunk.
The rifle was in a Doskocil plastic travel case. He unlatched it to see what Meachum had come up with. His first thought was “Shit,” because it was an M16. Well, an AR-15, as the civilian variant was called. As a man of the.30 caliber, he’d always despised the pipsqueak.223 of the classic AR platform with its tendency to bore tiny holes in people, keep going and kill the talented orphan-kid piano-prodigy while the bad guy didn’t blink an eyelash and kept shooting. And he noticed it had all sorts of gizmos bolted on-an EOTech holographic sight that looked like a TV set, a forward vertical grip with a Surefire flashlight built into it at six o’clock, just under the muzzle. And the muzzle- well, it looked a little wider. He bent close, tried to make out the barrel marking in the dim light, and saw that it read DPMS 6.8mm REMINGTON SPC. As he transferred the gun and case to his trunk, he saw a few extra boxes of ammo, Black Hills 6.8, cracked one and discovered a short round that had a big bullet. Let’s see, 6.8, that meant about.270 caliber. And then he remembered hearing that in the sand, the Special Operations people were so pissed at the poor one-shot, take-down ratio they were getting from the.223, some of them worked with some people at Remington to come up with a bigger, more powerful cartridge. It functioned in a system using an AR lower, and only required a new upper, thus saving the government millions of dollars. If the government adopted the cartridge, it only had to buy the top half of five hundred thousand new weapons. Maybe that would happen, maybe it wouldn’t, but the cartridge had been combat-tested and was said to put ’em down and keep ’em down. That pleased him. She had done well.
The handgun was a.38 Super, his own 1911 model Kimber, a very nice gun that as he got older he appreciated more for its lack of recoil and muzzle flip in fast strings, while completely identical to the.45 in handling and operating procedures. The extra boxes indicated the load Meachum had chosen was the CorBon 130-grain jacketed hollow point +P+ ammo. His Kydex holster lay beside the case, amid the ammo boxes.
Locked and loaded, he thought. Loaded for bear or whatever.
His cellphone rang.
He looked at the caller ID and saw that it was Detective Thelma Fielding’s number. He thought a bit. What do I do? Maybe that kid broke. She wants me to come in so she don’t have to put out an arrest warrant. Maybe I ought to call a lawyer. Meantime, I have an arsenal in the trunk and no place to stash it. Damn, I wish that boy had lasted longer. Thought he had the stuff for it.
He could just not answer, of course. But what would that tell her?
“Hello.”
“Mr. Swagger.”
“Yes, howdy, Detective, what’s up?” Trying to be nonchalant, just in case.
“Sir, we’ve had a break in the case.”
“A break?”
“Yes sir. Soon’s I get free and clear of an unrelated shooting took place last night, I’m going to make an arrest. Fellow named Cubby Bartlett, a longtime meth dealer. He’s the man who tried to kill your daughter. Got him cold.
