“Well, you actually cross out a lot of possibilities, son. So that’s of some help. It ain’t a code, it ain’t nothing from the Bible or the numbers or letters in the Bible. That cuts it way down.”
“I won’t charge you.”
“Charlie, how many times do I have to say this: Charge me!”
Bob disconnected.
“Nothing. And if you’re right, if they have some kind of caper going on against a deadline, here we sit with nothing to show for it, no progress made. Could it have to do with the race? The big race?” He looked at his watch. “Hell, eight-thirty. It’s started. Could it be a rob…”
But he let it trail off.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Nick. “How could they rob something in the middle of the biggest traffic jam in Tennessee this year? How could they get in, get out? I suppose they could go on foot, but how much could each man carry? I just don’t see any reasonable methodology here. Those roads are going to be like parking lots for hours. Nobody’s going anywhere.”
“I am at the end of the road.”
“Man, I’m about to say, call it a day. Maybe tomorrow I can run it by the analysts back in D.C. and get some genius to look into it and see what we don’t. I do need a drink, a real one. But let’s ask: What do we know the most about?”
“The answer is Nikki. I know Nikki. I know how her mind works and what a stubborn little cuss she can be.”
“So let’s think along with her. Take us through her thoughts on that last night. You know she’s called you.”
“She calls me…but I’m not answering. She gets a burr under her saddle, she’s got to get it out. She calls me, I ain’t there. What does she do? Call someone else? Who else would she call? She’s been to a gun store, she had a Bible she got from the Reverend, she can’t find no satisfaction, she calls me, I’m not there, who else does she call? It’s early evening, most places are closed down. Who does she call? The newspaper? Could she have called the newspaper?”
“But you said she didn’t.”
“That’s right.”
“Maybe she didn’t call anyone. Maybe she just up and left for home and the driver caught her and-”
“No. Gal wouldn’t give up. That’s not how she was taught. She’d want to do something positive, achieve a sense of progress. So somehow she’d continue to search. So, who’s open that late? Who never closes? Who has information on anything on tap even if you’re in the woods in rural Tennessee in the dark?”
They looked at each other.
“She had a laptop, right?” said Nick. “Wireless, right? She went to the Internet. She tried to Google Mark 2:11 and came up with what we came up with-ten thousand explanations of how Jesus cured the cripple and sent him home, and she couldn’t make any sense of it. Who does she call next?”
They looked at nothing and then they looked at each other again.
They looked at the package that Bob had just dumped on the floor. It said AMAZON.
“She buys a book!”
THIRTY
Vern’s cell rang.
“Yes sir.”
“What’s the word, Vern?”
“Ernie, what’s the word?”
“Ain’t no word, goddamnit, Vern, and you’d know that if you done your job. Don’t know how you can take money for tonight, just sittin’ there hammerin’ on that poor little girl and her family.”
Vern sat next to the little girl on the sofa, his big hand draped protectively about her. Gently he’d been caressing her arm for about and hour, whispering softly into her ear.
“Well, sir, Mr. Holy Water, I will do my job, same as you, and earn my money, same as you.”
He went back to the phone.
“Sir, I-”
“Vern, I heard discord. I told y’all I didn’t want no discord. Discord is what makes things fall apart, that I know true and straight.”
“Sir, Ernie and I are fine. We just ran into some unexpected situation is all. As for that old man, he ain’t peeked out a bit. Ernie kept a good watch on him, yes he did. There’s no move or nothing.”
“Okay, we are about to let hell out of the jar here. The race’ll be over in a little bit-they’re up to lap four eighty or so now-and they’ll let the traffic build a bit, and then they go and we jump. Like I said before, that’s when you go up, you bash in the door, you hit him with both barrels, a lot of shooting, it don’t matter, no po-lice getting there for six hours with the mess we making here. Then you git gone but good. I’ll call you later so’s you can pick up your swag.”
“That is a good plan, sir.”
“Boys,” said the Reverend, “I just want you to know, you’re doing Grumley work tonight, but more important, you are serving the Lord.”
“Sir, He has rewarded me. I have met the gal of my dreams here tonight, yes sir!”
THIRTY-ONE
Bob tore open the Amazon package.
It was
“Sniping,” said Nick. “So she was trying to find something about snipers.”
“She couldn’t have found a gun. Nobody loses a gun. She’d found, I don’t know, a piece of equipment, a gillie hat, a range book, or maybe some shell-related thing. The shell itself, the box, a piece of carton, a manifest, a bill of lading, something with a shell designation on it. But it had to be something unusual. The girl is my daughter. She’d been around cartridges her whole life. She knew the difference between a.308 and a.30-06 and between a shell, a cartridge, and a bullet.”
“And it had to be arcane then, if she didn’t know it right away and sought someone with more information-the guy in the gun store, you, finally the book.”
“Let’s try Mark 2:11,” Bob said.
He went to the index. Damn! No Mark 2:11. But he was so close now, he could feel the answer almost as a palpable presence, floating just out of focus in the corner of the room.
“Damn,” said Nick. “I was so sure it-”
“Wait,” said Bob, “I think technically they abbreviate ’em. And we never saw the word ‘Mark’ written in her own hand. Don’t know if it really was a Mark or some kind of abbreviation. I think the military uses ‘
“Go back to the index.”
Bob found the designation “Mk.211, 622.”
Bob turned to page 622 and immediately saw a photo of a group of long, big, mean-looking cartridges, missiles really, their sleek brass hulls propped upright as they rested on a rim, while at the top, a bullet like a warhead promised speed, precision, and destruction. The conical, streamlined-to-death-point thing itself was sometimes black, sometimes blue, sometimes red, sometimes tipped in these colors, all a part of the complex system of military enumeration, by which armies on the prowl in far dusty places could keep their logistical requirements coherent.
